In this work, the philosopher Claus-Artur Scheier reconstructs the development from industrial modernity to media modernity, following its intertwined paths. This anthology collates his works on phenomenology, the philosophy of time and the philosophy of history, which were written over the last three decades; some are published here for the first time. Scheier’s protagonists range from Husserl to Derrida, from Simone Weil to Carl Schmitt, and prove that, as a renowned expert on the 19th century, he is an inspiring interpreter (...) of the 20th century, too. After all, that is his own century: this book has been published on the occasion of Scheier’s 80th birthday. The introduction by Nicole C. Karafyllis gives background information and collates biographical notes, which are supplemented with photographs of and personal texts by Scheier. (shrink)

Derrida’s discovery of „supplementary“ logic as the basis of Rousseau’s thinking is assessed in the historical contexts both of modern philosophy and metaphysics between Leibniz and Hegel. Rousseau’s supplementary proposition proves not to be identical with the modern propositional function, but with the „infinite proposition“ („das unendliche Urteil“) in Hegels Science of Logic. It is shown that this proposition structures Hegel’s concept of disunion („Entzweiung“) in the productive overcoming of Rousseau’s anthropological critique of representation as developed in the Phenomenology of (...) Spirit. (shrink)

The following analysis of the Protagoras intends: contrary to the traditional tendency to consider the dialogue comparatively amorphous and polythematic, to clarify its argumentative architectonic; contrary to the scholarly view accompanying this tendency that of concern is an early dialogue, to make plausible the genesis of this dialogue after the Symposium; and to lay the groundwork for a more detailed discussion of the thesis that Plato, in his “middle” dialogues, makes the transition from Eleatic logic in its Megarian refraction, which (...) forms the basis of the early dialogues as well as the Gorgias and incidentally also of the first book of the Republic, to that logic of the middle which is to be regarded as the immediate historical forerunner of Aristotelian syllogistic. Particular emphasis is placed in this context on the Protagoras insofar as Plato here not so much makes the discovery of the middle as he reflects it, a discovery which has after more than two thousand years of “classical logic” become inconspicuous to us, but which shattered his relation to the Megarian school and was the first to bury the fifth century logically. (shrink)

The best reviewer of this book would be an old Platonic fox, who in the preparation of his Gorgias—and Phaedrus—seminars would lay the book next to the text and compare the one with the other, passage by passage, retort by retort. For this book is really suitable neither as an introduction nor as a refresher of one’s memory, since its author presupposes—as is after all every interpreter’s right—in each instance that his reader has a detailed command of the texts that (...) only a parallel reading provides. Nevertheless, one gladly reads on, for Benardete, a classical philologian, loves the rash reflection, the paradox, as well as the enthymeme, and writes in a parlando vivace that reminds his listener that he is a reader only when he thankfully finds it possible to comprehend more than one sentence through repeated reading. (shrink)