First published in Great Britain in 1968, this is an authoritative introduction to the life of one of the greatest intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Prompted by the belief that none of the parts of Sartre’s work is fully intelligible apart from the whole, this ambitious volume attempts to provide a synoptic view of Sartre’s oeuvre in its entirety. The editor, Robert Denoon Cumming, has organised the work around certain concepts which are central to Sartrian thought, (...) notably Consciousness in its relation to Being, to ‘the Other’, to Art, Literature, History and Society. The reader can see for himself how Sartre’s aesthetic and highly individual existentialism of _La Nausée_ is systematically transformed into the neo-Marxist sociological theory of his _Critique de la Raison dialectique_. By a skilful process of editing, Professor Cumming has provided an authoritative introduction to the life of one of the greatest intellectual figures of modern times. (shrink)

In this final volume of Robert Denoon Cumming's four-volume history of the phenomenological movement, Cumming examines the bearing of Heidegger's philosophy on his original commitment to Nazism and on his later inability to face up to the implication of that allegiance. Cumming continues his focus, as in previous volumes, on Heidegger's connection with other philosophers. Here, Cumming looks first at Heidegger's relation to Karl Jaspers, an old friend on whom Heidegger turned his back when (...) Hitler consolidated power, and who discredited Heidegger in the denazification that followed World War II. The issues at stake are not merely personal, Cumming argues, but regard the philosophical relevance of the personal. After the war Heidegger disavowed Sartre, a move related to Heidegger's renunciation of his association with the phenomenological movement at large, and one that illustrates the dynamics of the history Cumming himself has completed. Serving as convincing punctuation for this remarkable series, this book demonstrates the importance of the history of philosophy in coming to grips with the proclaimed end of philosophy. (shrink)

In the third volume of his history of the phenomenological movement, Robert Denoon Cumming argues that their differences involve differences in method; whereas Husserl follows a "method of clarification," with which he eliminates ...

First published in Great Britain in 1968, this is an authoritative introduction to the life of one of the greatest intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Prompted by the belief that none of the parts of Sartre’s work is fully intelligible apart from the whole , this ambitious volume attempts to provide a synoptic view of Sartre’s oeuvre in its entirety. The editor, Robert Denoon Cumming, has organised the work around certain concepts which are central to Sartrian (...) thought, notably Consciousness in its relation to Being, to ‘the Other’, to Art, Literature, History and Society. The reader can see for himself how Sartre’s aesthetic and highly individual existentialism of La Nausée is systematically transformed into the neo-Marxist sociological theory of his Critique de la Raison dialectique . By a skilful process of editing, Professor Cumming has provided an authoritative introduction to the life of one of the greatest intellectual figures of modern times. (shrink)

"Husserl had captured me, I saw everything in terms of the perspectives of his philosophy," wrote Sartre of his conversion to Husserl's phenomenology. In the present volume Cumming analyzes Sartre's transformation of Husserl's phenomenological method into a rudimentary dialectic. Cumming thus provides an introduction to phenomenology itself, and more generally to the ways in which debts to previous philosophies can be refurbished in later philosophies. He shows how phenomenology, which for Husserl was a theory of knowledge in which (...) "we can always presume sincerity," becomes for Sartre a theory in which imagination, self-deception, and role playing are crucial. Cumming also shows that conversion is not merely a personal predisposition of Sartre's--further manifest in his later conversions to Heidegger and to a version of Marxism. Conversion is also philosophical preoccupation, illustrated by the "conversion to the imaginary" whereby Sartre explains how he himself, as well as Genet and Flaubert, became writers. Finally, Cumming details how Husserl's phenomenological method contributed both to the shaping of Sartre's style as a literary writer and to his theory of style. (shrink)

"Philosophy as... a rigorous science... the dream is over," Edward Husserl once declared. Heidegger, Derrida, and Rorty have propounded versions of "the end of philosophy." Cumming argues that what would count as philosophy's coming to an end can only be determined with some attention to disruptions which have previously punctuated the history of philosophy. He arrives at categories for interpreting what is at issue in such disruptions by analyzing Heidegger's and Husserl's break with each other, Heidegger's break with Sartre, (...) and Merleau-Ponty's break with Sartre. In this analysis Cumming deals with how a philosophy can be vulgarized, with problems of periodization, with how the history of philosophy can be disinguished as a philosophical discipline from intellectual history. Cumming also elaborates an analogy between a philosophical method and style. (shrink)

"Husserl had captured me, I saw everything in terms of the perspectives of his philosophy," wrote Sartre of his conversion to Husserl's phenomenology. In the present volume Cumming analyzes Sartre's transformation of Husserl's phenomenological method into a rudimentary dialectic. Cumming thus provides an introduction to phenomenology itself, and more generally to the ways in which debts to previous philosophies can be refurbished in later philosophies. He shows how phenomenology, which for Husserl was a theory of knowledge in which (...) "we can always presume sincerity," becomes for Sartre a theory in which imagination, self-deception, and role playing are crucial. Cumming also shows that conversion is not merely a personal predisposition of Sartre's—further manifest in his later conversions to Heidegger and to a version of Marxism. Conversion is also philosophical preoccupation, illustrated by the "conversion to the imaginary" whereby Sartre explains how he himself, as well as Genet and Flaubert, became writers. Finally, Cumming details how Husserl's phenomenological method contributed both to the shaping of Sartre's style as a literary writer and to his theory of style. (shrink)

For the time being, however, we are disoriented by his derivativeness. His allusions extend back through the history of philosophy and rhetoric. Thus topique not only may imply "topological," but it may also suggest that "places allude to topoi. Derrida goes on to refer to the use of trace by Nietzsche, Freud, Levinas. Elsewhere he refers to Plotinus, Condillac, Blanchot and Heidegger. Derrida is notorious for his discounting of univocal usage, and one suspects that the difficulty of tracing "trace" to (...) any single predecessor may have guided him to his choice of this term. (shrink)

Develops a theory of culture based on a metaphysics that elaborates on the Platonic and Confucian traditions. In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead’s project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville’s focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou Dunyi. (...) Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines. “Neville’s work is informed by a lifelong engagement with the most important philosophers in history, including Plato, Aristotle, Whitehead, and Dewey. Here, he offers an important argument that there is beauty not only in how people see the world, but also in the world itself.” — Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University. (shrink)

Heuristics -- Pragmatics -- Religious studies -- Philosophical theology -- Players.

A new theology of ultimate reality and a new theory of religion to back it up addressed to believers and scholars of all traditions"--Provided by publisher.

The second volume in a trilogy advancing a systematic philosophical theology, this book explores the realities of human existence articulated by religion. Religion, writes Robert Cummings Neville, articulates existential predicaments and provides venues for ecstatic fulfillment. Like its companion volumes treating ultimacy and religion, Existence advances a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Issues arising in the major religious traditions are explored through a complex array of philosophical approaches. This second (...) volume shows religion to be the engagement of ultimate realities common to all human beings. Neville finds five problematics relative to ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: the contingency of existence, living under obligation, the quest for wholeness, engagement with others, and the meaning or value in life. Common to all human beings and hence “religion,” the engagement with realities is also historically and culturally bound, becoming simultaneously socially constructed “religions.” Readers will find Neville’s philosophical theology both bold and enlightening, running counter to dominant intellectual trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West. (shrink)

This is a philosophic study of theory and practical reason focusing on social obligation and personal responsibility. It draws on Chinese as well as Western Traditions of philosophy.

The author constructs a philosophy of nature dealing with being, identity, value, space, time, motion, and causality, and uses that as a basis for a theory of hermeneutics to address contemporary problems of interpretation.

From the standpoint that both modernism and postmodernism look like nothing more than two late modern movements, too preoccupied with themselves and their historical place to engage a swiftly changing world containing more than the Western ...

The Renaissance development of science fulfilled the ancient ideal of integrating quantitative and qualitative thinking, but failed to recognize valuational thinking and thus deprived moral, aesthetic, and political thought of cognitive status. The task of this book is to reconstruct the concept of thinking in order to exhibit valuation, not reason, as the foundation for thinking and to integrate valuational with quantitative and qualitative modes. Part I explains the broad thesis, interpreting the problem of the foundations for thinking and providing (...) a general theory of value. Part II explains the role of valuation at the imaginative level of thinking with discussions of synthesis, perception, form, and art. The method of reconstruction requires a cosmology that is generated in successive waves. (shrink)

The book shows the connections between the personal and the social dimensions of freedom, and how all the meanings of freedom are functions of the natural cosmos.

In the 1978 volume of Process Studies, Nancy Frankenberry published an article called “The Empirical Dimension of Religious Experience” that I thought was so good that I wrote her a short fan letter about it.1 She responded by saying that she was flattered by my praise because I was a model for her younger generation. For the first time in my life I felt old. And I wasn’t yet forty. But here I am, still fully employed, presenting a long fan (...) letter at her retirement. Nice irony! I want to begin laying out some of the themes and accomplishments of her distinguished career as a model philosopher of religion by discussing her early book Religion and Radical Empiricism.2 The context in which she wrote.. (shrink)

This book introduces Robert Corrington’s “ecstatic naturalism,” a new perspective in understanding “sacred” nature and naturalism, and explores what can be done with this philosophical thought. This is an excellent resource for scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and American pragmatism.

Explores the human condition in a range of world religions and discusses the issue and philosophical implications of comparison itself.

This paper identifies five dimensions of cosmopolitanism, though doubtless there are many more: cosmopolitanism in decision making, engaging others, attaining personal wholeness, the ultimate value-identity of life, and religious sensibility. These are discussed in terms of the Confucian ideas of the “Four Beginnings,” ritual, life as cultivated education, sagehood, public versus private life, Principle, heart-mind, harmony, value, humaneness, “love with differences,” “roots and branches,” and filiality, among others. In all, it presents Confucianism as a living tradition that is facing up (...) to how it might extend itself in light of the need for cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Fifteen years after the publication of my assessment of comparative philosophy in the inaugural issue of Dao, this article comments on some of the major changes that have taken place in the field since Dao began. One of the most significant is the improvement in the conditions for Chinese philosophy in mainland China and the return of many of the original participants in Dao’s audience to positions in East Asia from earlier careers in the West. The article also surveys advances (...) in various forms of objective and normative comparison and in the development of metaphysics based on Chinese models. (shrink)

The general thesis of this article is that contemporary Chinese philosophy needs to be more creative than it is.1 It proposes eight new projects for Chinese philosophy to undertake that involve creativity. But first it asks what the term "Chinese philosophy" means in the current philosophical context.To some people, it means the tradition of philosophy in China from the ancient world of the Zhou texts, the Confucians, Daoists, and other schools, through its development up to the point where Western intellectual (...) influences became prominent in the nineteenth century.2 An appendix to this conception is the attempt to recover the vitality of the historical Chinese schools after the onslaught of Western thought (and .. (shrink)

Let me begin by giving preliminary definition to the two kinds of contingency named in my title, although I shall argue that the distinction between them gets too complicated to sustain in the long run. Cosmological contingency is the contingency of things within the world upon other things within the world, plus perhaps their own spontaneous creativity. Ontological contingency is the contingency of everything in the world that is determinate in any way upon an ontological ground. That ontological ground cannot (...) itself be determinate, and you can recollect Plotinus's One, Thomas Aquinas's Pure Act of To Be, Brahman without qualities, or the Ultimate of Non-Being in Zhou Dunyi's philosophy for sample conceptions of... (shrink)

This book develops a contemporary metaphysics of morals.