Es sabido que las obras de Marx, en sus distintas épocas, guardan siempre una relación conflictiva con Hegel. Pero, al mismo tiempo, esta relación se ve afectada continuamente por el propio desarrollo del pensamiento de Marx. Teniendo en cuenta este desarrollo, en el presente trabajo intentaremos brindar una interpretación marxiana del sistema hegeliano, tomando como punto de partida la frase juvenil de Marx que afirma que la Ciencia de la lógica de Hegel es "el dinero del espíritu". Sin embargo, bajo (...) la premisa de que Marx está mucho más próximo a Hegel en su período de madurez que en su juventud, daremos un nuevo sentido a aquella frase juvenil a partir del tratamiento del dinero en la primera sección de El capital. Esto nos proporcionará nuevas herramientas conceptuales para interpretar la filosofía de Hegel, justificando esta interpretación en los propios textos hegelianos. (shrink)

As a consequence of the explosion of enrollments, higher education institutions have been confronted by new categories of students the last forty years. In this paper, cultural and political dimensions of the integration of students into educational institutions will be explored. The focus will be on the experience of what I called “newleavers,” namely, people who are leaving their environment of origin without knowing if they will return. The contradictory commitments and challenges faced by newleavers will be studied with a (...) sociological approach based on intercultural, phenomenological and praxiological research. To sketch an analysis of the experience of newleavers in general, I will explore strangeness and uprooting in an educational setting; the research is based on the experience of Huarpes students at the University of Cuyo, in Argentina. I claim that newleavers who keep ties with their environment of origin develop an “ethnographic stance,” namely, a moral posture and a cognitive perspective allowing them to critically identify rules, norms, and values, by comparing environments and groups. (shrink)

Si no es posible comprender el desarrollo de El Capital sin conocer la Ciencia de la lógica, se busca trazar los lineamientos generales para alcanzar dicha comprensión. En seis tesis se ponen de relieve algunos aspectos importantes del pensamiento de Marx que han sido poco tratados, y se dialoga con la tradición marxista para señalar ciertos equívocos y resaltar algunas interpretaciones. Esto permite ofrecer un nuevo cuadro para entender la actitud crítica que adopta el "último" Marx frente a la dialéctica (...) de su maestro. Because it is not possible to comprehend Capital without knowing the Science of Logic, this article aims to chart some general guidelines to reach such an understanding. In six thesis, I highlight some important aspects of Marx's thought that have been little treated and dialog with the Marxist tradition to indicate certain equivocations and highlight some interpretations. This offers a new framework to understand the critical attitude that the "mature" Marx adopted regarding his teacher's dialect. (shrink)

Digital media and technology are nearly ubiquitious in contemporary higher education, As such, researchers and educators are keen to identify best practices and understand impacts. Digital media and technology present opportunities to cultivate interactive, creative teaching-learning communities. However, inclusion of digital media and technology in a course does not necessarily cultivate creative engagement or deep reflection among students. This manuscript studies how a contemplative approach to teaching with digital media, specifically TV series, can lead to more effective and engaging in (...) the process of teaching professional ethics. This research explores how the Contemplative Technopedagogy Framework can enrich the use of TV series for teaching professional ethics and positively influence the effective integration of ethical behavior into university students’ future professional lives. (shrink)

A hemi-implicative lattice is an algebra \((A,\wedge,\vee,\rightarrow,1)\) of type (2, 2, 2, 0) such that \((A,\wedge,\vee,1)\) is a lattice with top and for every \(a,b\in A\), \(a\rightarrow a = 1\) and \(a\wedge (a\rightarrow b) \le b\). A new variety of hemi-implicative lattices, here named sub-Hilbert lattices, containing both the variety generated by the \(\{\wedge,\vee,\rightarrow,1\}\) -reducts of subresiduated lattices and that of Hilbert lattices as proper subvarieties is defined. It is shown that any sub-Hilbert lattice is determined (up to isomorphism) by (...) a triple (_L_, _D_, _S_) which satisfies the following conditions: _L_ is a bounded distributive lattice, _D_ is a sublattice of _L_ containing 0, 1 such that for each \(a, b \in L\) there is an element \(c \in D\) with the property that for all \(d \in D\), \(a \wedge d \le b\) if and only if \(d \le c\) (we write \(a \rightarrow _D b\) for the element _c_), and _S_ is a non void subset of _L_ such that _S_ is closed under \(\rightarrow _D\) and _S_, with its inherited order, is itself a lattice. Finally, the congruences of sub-Hilbert lattices are studied. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos mostrar, por un lado, que resulta factible (y esclarecedor) explicar el capítulo “Of personal identity” del Treatise of Human Nature de David Hume a partir de la obra Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore de Luigi Pirandello, así como esta última obra a partir del texto de Hume; y, por otro lado, que tomando como eje la comparación de la mente con el teatro que propone Hume en dicho capítulo es también posible individuar, según el modo (...) en el que se piensa la relación del pensamiento y la experiencia con el sujeto, dos grandes corrientes en la filosofía moderna: una que podríamos denominar teatro de Autor y otra teatro sin Autor. (shrink)

Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum . After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by his (...) speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below. (shrink)

This book is a critical examination of the philosophical and moral issues in relation to human enhancement and the various related medical developments that are now rapidly moving from the laboratory into the clinical realm. In the book, the author critically examines technologies such as genetic engineering, neural implants, pharmacologic enhancement, and cryonic suspension from transhumanist and bioconservative positions, focusing primarily on moral issues and what it means to be a human in a setting where technological interventions sometimes impact strongly (...) on our humanity. The author also introduces the notion that death is a process rather than an event, as well as identifies philosophical and clinical limitations in the contemporary determination of brain death as a precursor to organ procurement for transplantation. The discussion on what exactly it means to be dead is later applied to explore philosophical and clinical issues germane to the cryonics movement. Written by a physician/ scientist and heavily referenced to the peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature, the book is aimed at advanced students and academics but should be readable by any intelligent reader willing to carry out some side-reading. No prior knowledge of moral philosophy is assumed, as the various key approaches to moral philosophy are outlined early in the book. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate certain difficulties in the text of the Eryxias and to make the author's position as a thinker clearer than it has hitherto been. The Eryxias is a work which has suffered severely from excessive partisanship. While German and Dutch scholars of the eighteenth century appear to have valued it highly—a great deal too highly—as a work of enlightened ethical purpose, the scholarship of the nineteenth century was almost unanimous in condemning it as (...) an inept imitation of Plato's early writings. It soon became apparent, however, that it was not a mere imitation. The economist Hagen recognized in it traces of Stoic doctrine and proceeded somewhat hastily to the conclusion that the author was ‘a Stoic … who expressed the sentiments of his school in the form of a Platonic dialogue.’ Otto Schrohl of Göttingen, whose thesis is the most considerable work on the subject, is less emphatic in claiming the author as a Stoic, but nevertheless traces most of his ideas to Stoic and Cynic origins. This view is modified but retained in its essentials by Professor Souilhé in the Budé edition of Plato. While stressing the importance of the Platonic element, he agrees that the author's point of view has been influenced by Stoic and Cynic teaching, the influence of Cynicism being in his opinion predominant. (shrink)

Salomon Maimon, a Lithuanian born philosophical autodidact who emigrated to Germany in the late eighteenth century, plays an increasingly important role in the research of classical German philosop...

This chapter contends that Husserl's view of history is typical for the early twentieth century, even while the specific form of Husserl's crisis is intimately connected to his personal situation as a Jew in Nazi Germany and to the situation of German philosophy as a whole at this time. It considers the analytical and epistemological aspects of Husserl's theory, examining whether it can also be regarded as a contribution to the critical philosophy of history. It also argues that Husserl cannot (...) affirm the absolutely universal character of philosophy, but he was similarly aware that in conceiving of philosophy as a European tradition, he opened it to the charge of cultural relativism. (shrink)

Professor Maurice Cranston, who died suddenly on 5 November 1993, was a man of many talents. Pre-eminent as a biographer of Locke and Rousseau, he was also distinguished for his own contribution to political philosophy and for his capacity to expound the political thought of others in clear, simple language. He did this with great success not only in the lecture room but also in numerous broadcast talks and discussions, notably on the Third Programme of the BBC. In his academic (...) work he was particularly well informed on French political thought, contemporary as much as classical, and he wrote extensively on Sartre and more briefly on Camus and Foucault. He was himself fluent in the French language and he translated Rousseau's Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality for the Penguin Classics series. He was proficient in German and Italian too, and he knew enough Danish to translate a book on Wittgenstein written in that language. His love of literature often led him to illustrate philosophical points with apt examples from classical novels. He even wrote a couple of novels himself in his youth. It will be plain from this brief catalogue that he was an eminently civilized person. He was, in addition, an exceptionally friendly man and engagingly modest about his own abilities. (shrink)

This paper is intended as a contribution to a recent vigorous debate inThe Times, between the distinguished journalist Bernard Levin, the eminent Oxford economist Wilfred Beckerman and the Archbishop of York, John Habgood, among others. The debate concerns morality, ‘free will’ and determinism. As a former German Jew, who lost close relatives at Auschwitz and who suffered personally severely in my youth under daily virulent Nazi persecution, I obviously cannot remain strictly detached and neutral. Yet, I shall attempt to retain (...) as much neutrality as possible, since I think that the main rivals in this debate have all some very relevant, interesting and valid things to say. Let me also state other, probably very relevant, biases. I am an ardent Zionist. In addition, I am a diehard mechanistic materialist as regards basic philosophy, although I am tolerant of other people's religious feelings, because I realize that my materialism is as metaphysical as their religious views. With this as background let me return to the technical issues. Obviously, in a philosophical journal one can write at a level above that ofThe Times, where there is, perhaps, insufficient room to debate philosophical, biological, physical and other niceties in some depth. (shrink)

The article discusses a key issue for Russian and international Max Weber Studies: the epistemological possibilities and place of Weberian sociology in modern social theory. Discussion articles by well-known Russian scientists — who sharply criticized the actualizing direction of Weberian studies in general, and the religious, cultural, and sociological orientation in particular — are contrasted with the re-actualization and rethinking of key Weberian themes in the “New Critical Theory” of the influential German sociologist Hartmut Rosa. Such a projection will make (...) it possible, on the one hand, to thematize the axiomatic assertion about the heuristic rather than concrete-content relevance of the classics; on the other hand, it will provide an opportunity to read Weber as a macrosociologist. In the original, criticized, and often rejected sociology of Rosa, Weber appears not only as a predecessor whose mention enhances the relevance of the new theoretical framework, but, above all, as an analyst and diagnostician of early modernity. Weber’s main ideas and theoretical constructions are organically built into Rosa’s methodological framework: analysis-diagnosis-praxis. The analysis of rationalization as a universal historical process of modernity in Weber’s sociology is rethought by Rosa as expansion and acceleration; disenchantment becomes a diagnosis of modernity and is recoded into alienation, while the concept of charisma is transformed into the key concept of resonance. (shrink)

Idealism is often associated with the kind of metaphysical system building which was successfully disposed of by logical positivism. As Hume's fork was intended to deliver a serious blow to Leibnizian metaphysics so logical positivism invoked the verificationist principle against the reawakening of metaphysics, in the tradition of German and British idealism. In the light of this one might reasonably wonder what Carnap's pragmatism could possibly have in common with Collingwood's idealism. After all, Carnap is often seen as a champion (...) of the logical positivist's critique of metaphysics, whilst Collingwood is renowned for his defence of the possibility of metaphysics against the attack to which Ayer subjected it. The answer is that they have more in common than one might suspect and that, once the relevant qualifications are made, there is as much convergence as there is contestation between Carnapian pragmatism and Collingwoodian idealism. (shrink)

Johann August Schlettwein established a reputation during the later eighteenth century as Germany's foremost Physiocrat. Schlettwein's primarily literary reputation was lent authority by his direct participation in two practical Physiocratic experiments: the Markgraf of Baden's trial introduction of a single tax during the the early 1770s, and the creation of an Economic Faculty at the University of Giessen as part of a general financial reform in the state of Hessen-Darmstadt. It is this latter case which will be examined here, where (...) university reform was assigned an important role in the general reconstruction of state finances. But why should the reformers in Darmstadt have lighted upon a maverick figure such as Schlettwein to lead a Faculty which was in turn assigned a leading role in the reform of their state university? And given the apparent failure of Schlettwein to fulfil the hopes placed in him, to what can we attribute his generally lacklustre performance in Giessen? While the first of these questions can be fairly readily answered by considering the choices facing the state government, the second problem is more open: a number of possibilities suggest themselves. The fact that Physiocratic principles conflicted sharply with those governing cameralistic teaching in the German university could have been a significant obstacle; or it could have been that the role assigned to Schlettwein proved impossible, caught between the agenda of Physiocratic reform and that of the state government; or it might of course be that Schlettwein bore personally the major share of the blame. The Physiocratic programme was sweeping in its ambitions; but where it was put into practice (in Baden), or was lent an academic platform (in Giessen), it failed. By examining the reasons behind the failure in Gie?en we can perhaps learn something more of the scope of Physiocracy as a programme of reform in the eighteenth century and thence, indirectly, about the contemporary reception of Physiocratic ideas. (shrink)

The German philosopher Robert Spaemann is one of the most important living thinkers in Europe today. This volume presents a selection of essays that span his career, from his first published academic essay on the origin of sociology to his more recent work in anthropology and the philosophy of religion. Spaemann is best known for his work on topical questions in ethics, politics, and education, but the light he casts on these questions derives from his more fundamental studies in metaphysics, (...) the philosophy of nature, anthropology, and the philosophy of religion. At the core of the essays contained in this book is the concept of nature and the notion of the human person. Both are best understood, according to Spaemann, in light of the metaphysics and anthropology found in the classical and Christian tradition, which provides an account of the intelligibility and integrity of things and beings in the world that safeguards their value against the modern threat of reductionism and fragmentation. A Robert Spaemann Reader shows that Spaemann's profound intellectual formation in this tradition yields penetrating insights into a wide range of subjects, including God, education, art, human action, freedom, evolution, politics, and human dignity. (shrink)

From the end of the 19th century until his death, one of history's most brilliant mathematicians languished in an asylum. The Mystery of the Aleph tells the story of Georg Cantor (1845-1918), a Russian-born German who created set theory, the concept of infinite numbers, and the "continuum hypothesis," which challenged the very foundations of mathematics. His ideas brought expected denunciation from established corners - he was called a "corruptor of youth" not only for his work in mathematics, but for his (...) larger attempts to meld spirituality and science. (shrink)

_A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy__ “Spare, elegant and poignant.... If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it.”—John Gray, _New Statesman_ “It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan’s luminous _The Tragic Mind_ is so urgently needed.”—George F. Will_ Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from (...) a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In _The Tragic Mind_, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This essay wishes to probe why in the 1960s and 1970s the German historical discipline did not integrate debates promoted by analytic philosophy into its own debates about theory of history, even though the topics debated by both camps were strikingly similar. I concentrate on the so-called Positivism Dispute, the Ritter School and research group “Poetik und Hermeneutik” and show how some of the writings of analytic philosophers were received and discussed. I conclude by suggesting (...) that most German historians and philosophers did not principally object to the assertions or philosophical arguments made by analytic philosophers, rather they rejected the ethical posture or intellectual deportment attributed to the practice of analytical philosophy. The ideal of systematizing the facts of the world into a coherent system was rejected on the grounds that it postulated a moral self, ill-suited to engage the modern world. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This essay wishes to probe why in the 1960s and 1970s the German historical discipline did not integrate debates promoted by analytic philosophy into its own debates about theory of history, even though the topics debated by both camps were strikingly similar. I concentrate on the so-called Positivism Dispute, the Ritter School and research group “Poetik und Hermeneutik” and show how some of the writings of analytic philosophers were received and discussed. I conclude by suggesting (...) that most German historians and philosophers did not principally object to the assertions or philosophical arguments made by analytic philosophers, rather they rejected the ethical posture or intellectual deportment attributed to the practice of analytical philosophy. The ideal of systematizing the facts of the world into a coherent system was rejected on the grounds that it postulated a moral self, ill-suited to engage the modern world. (shrink)

The article shows how Fichte's rarely discussed Deduced Plan for a Higher Institute of Learning to be Established in Berlin plays an essential role in his thought from around the time of the more famous Addresses to the German Nation, and in so doing it identifies some of the essential features of the future German republic that he has in mind. For Fichte, the university prepares individuals for the standpoint of the Wissenschaftslehre, while the love of learning for its own (...) sake demanded and fostered by this philosophical science helps to produce the kind of ethical disposition, namely, love of fatherland, that the members of the German nation need to possess if this nation is to free itself from subjection to an alien, external power. Moreover, the systematic unity aimed at by true philosophy finds its practical correlate in the idea of the nation. However, by identifying the laws of pure reason as the bonds that unite themembers of a future German republic in the way that he does, Fichte ends up reducing ethical acts to a matter of necessity rather than freedom. (shrink)

The rock climber and the law share in a common etymological allusion when each reaches a steep, high, and hard place. The climber “appeals” to the mountain by inching down on a rope and the law's “rappel” is similarly a route to more comfortable footing. Each step in this common process is germane to the eventual resolution, for it is to be found in the rappel process itself and in the meaning of each appeal.

Die Publikation enthält Beiträge zu theoretischen, lexikographischen und didaktischen Fragen von Kollokationen. Im Fokus stehen Kriterien der Delimitation der Mehrworteinheiten und die Fragen der didaktischen Relevanz von Kollokationen, ihrer Ermittlung und Vermittlung für die FS-Lerner. Die Beiträge zeigen die Notwendigkeit einer korpuslinguistischen methodischen und praktischen Grundkompetenz in der fremdsprachenphilologischen Ausbildung. In den didaktisch ausgerichteten Beiträgen wird analysiert, ob und in welcher Weise Kollokationen in den Lehrplänen behandelt werden und welche Bedeutung Kollokationen in nationalen und europäischen Dokumenten haben.

To properly comply with the Health Sector Act of 1992 a functioning competition should be introduced in the interests of the insured of the German Statutory Health Insurance, while still maintaining the principle of solidarity. This is a critical order-political aim, because the principles of solidarity and selfresponsibility as typically understood are functionally in contradiction. This paper analyzes the important measures of the Organizational Reform and concludes, that the principle of self-responsibility ought to obtain priority. Therefore, the German legislature ought (...) to focus on further competitively oriented reform steps. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the target article “Arguments Opposing the Radicalism of Radical Constructivism” by Gernot Saalmann. First paragraph: As Maturana has often reminded us, everything said is said by an observer. What I say here I say as an observer and reflects who I am, what I can perceive and what sense I am prepared to make of that. Similarly, what Gernot Saalmann says in his article is said by an observer and reflects who he is, what he can (...) perceive and what sense he is prepared to make of that. I describe myself as an English speaking mathematics educator with a family background in neuroscience. Saalmann does not describe himself in his article but appears to be a German speaking sociologist. Given that we are different observers it is no surprise that we make different observations about radical constructivism. (shrink)

Undersøgelser af sammenhængen mellem tysk filosofi og nazismens teorier med særlig vægt på Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

The recent crisis in a prominent German car manufacturer generated by unethical leadership practices has brought into sharp focus, once again, the need for radical and fundamental ethical transformation among members of capitalism’s leadership elite. The divide between ethics and business needs to be closed and to do this effectively in a globalized world, cross-cultural aspects of moral sentiment need to be better understood. The current paper contributes to the extant literature in this regard by describing and analyzing cross-cultural aspects (...) of German and South African student’s ‘sympathy’ towards business ethical phenomena, using Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiment’ as a theoretical framework and qualitative methods. The paper constructs a heuristic device based on Adam Smith’s theoretical framework and then proceeds to empirically analyze the theory by investigating German and South African student moral sentiments towards specific ethical leadership behaviors. The study indicates that while there is general cross-cultural homogeneity in moral approbation among students for fundamental aspects of ethical leadership behavior, nuanced custom-based differences emerge from the qualitative analysis. Following Adam Smith, fine grained differences in moral sentiment arising from ‘custom’ are evident. Thus, although ethicality of specific leadership behavior is found to be viewed similarly by both groups of students, significant nuanced differences arise in German students who emphasize intellectual autonomy over the conservatism favored by their South African counterparts. Practical aspects of these findings are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Moses Mendelssohn was the leading Jewish thinker of the German Enlightenment and the founder of modern Jewish philosophy. His writings, especially his attempt during the Pantheism Controversy to defend the philosophical legacies of Spinoza and Leibniz against F. H. Jacobi’s philosophy of faith, captured the attention of a young Leo Strauss and played a critical role in the development of his thought on one of the fundamental themes of his life’s work: the conflicting demands of reason and revelation. _ Leo (...) Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn_ is a superbly annotated translation of ten introductions written by Strauss to a multi-volume critical edition of Mendelssohn’s work. Commissioned in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, the project was suppressed and nearly destroyed during Nazi rule and was not revived until the 1960s. In addition to Strauss’s introductions, Martin D. Yaffe has translated Strauss’s editorial remarks on each of the passages he annotates in Mendelssohn’s texts and brings those together with the introductions themselves. Yaffe has also contributed an extensive interpretive essay that both analyzes the introductions on their own terms and discusses what Strauss writes elsewhere about the broader themes broached in his Mendelssohn studies. Strauss’s critique of Mendelssohn represents one of the largest bodies of work by the young Strauss on a single thinker to be made available in English. It illuminates not only a formerly obscure phase in the emergence of his thought but also a critical moment in the history of the German Enlightenment. (shrink)

The first book of its kind, German Aesthetics assembles a who's who of German studies to explore 200 years of intellectual history, spanning literature, philosophy, politics, and culture.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche. His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His PhilosophyAlan D. SchriftWolfgang Müller-Lauter. Nietzsche. His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy. Translated from the German by David J. Parent. Foreword by Richard Schacht. Ghicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Pp. xviii + 246. Paper, $21.95.Since this work first appeared in 1971, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter has been at the forefront of German Nietzsche scholarship. The long (...) overdue appearance in English translation of this important work is a welcome addition to the Nietzsche literature and, although dated in some respects, it remains an important work that warrants careful attention. As Richard Schacht notes in his foreword, the original publication of this work was a significant event in the history of Nietzsche studies in Germany. Coming ten years after the publication of Heidegger's massive two-volume Nietzsche, Müller-Lauter's book "provided a much-needed counterweight" to Heidegger's idiosyncratic treatment (ix). Aside from proferring a significant rejoinder to the Heideggerian interpretation, Müller-Lauter also responds to a vast array of German Nietzsche scholars, some well-known (K. Löwith, K. Jaspers, E. Fink, K. Schlechta), but many much less familiar. As such, this book is an important piece of historical scholarship, offering the contemporary English-speaking reader an interesting picture of German scholarship on Nietzsche before Heidegger's work took center stage as the dominant (unfortunately, some would say only) German work worth engaging.But Müller-Lauter's book is not just of historical interest; it offers a powerful and profound reading of Nietzsche's corpus focused on the question of contradiction, both the contradictions readers find amidst Nietzsche's various works and Nietzsche's own philosophy of contradiction, namely, that contradictoriness is in some sense constitutive of the world. For Müller-Lauter, contradiction, the unresolvable conflict between essentially antithetical perspectives, grounds Nietzsche's philosophizing in wills to power. Emphasizing the plurality of conflicting wills to power, Müller-Lauter offers in successive chapters interpretations of Nietzsche's views on history as the "concrete occurrences" of these conflicting wills to power; nihilism as the process by which an organized system of forces (physical, social, intellectual, cultural) disintegrates into an antagonistic multiplicity of competing wills; morality as demanding truths that, once discovered, it can neither face nor accept, fleeing instead into a fictitious world of its own creation; Christian truthfulness as a destruction of truth that presents a "multiplicity of mutually opposing untruths" (72). All of these interpretations are shown to rest upon a contradiction at the heart of Nietzsche's own account of will to power, namely, that the strong will to power both affirms the multiplicity of perspectives and yet imposes its perspective as absolute.This is the paradox of the overman, a paradox Müller-Lauter addresses in his final chapter on "the doctrine of eternal recurrence." Not surprisingly, the eternal recurrence reveals itself to be essentially contradictory. But this contradiction is not self-refuting; rather "since the eternal recurrence is only as a thought and a doctrine, its meaning remains insurmountably split into a duality" (121) reflected in two ultimately incompatible types of overman. There is, on the one hand, the "powerful overman" who sees the entirety of what is as necessary for his own existence; to affirm eternal [End Page 453] recurrence is to understand everything that has been as a necessary series of events that ends with himself at its apex. But there is also the "wise overman," who understands the totality of what has been and is as necessary for his having arrived at the present moment in which he transcends himself and becomes other. Where the meaning of the powerful overman's affirmation of eternal recurrence resides in his appearance as the being who is dominant, the meaning of the wise overman's affirmation lies in understanding and accepting what has been as the precondition for both what he presently is and what he can become. Although both types of overman want recurrence, Müller-Lauter concludes they want something different in it and by it: the wise overman "is concerned with dissolving in the stream of... (shrink)