A prospective integration of evolutionary and other approaches to understanding rationality, as well as incorporation of individual difference concerns into the research agenda, are major contributions of Stanovich & West's analysis. This commentary focuses on issues of concern in detailing a dual-system or dual-process model of the sort they propose and using it as a basis for improving judgment.

The mechanisms invoked to demonstrate how self-deception can occur without intention or awareness imply that self-deceptive beliefs are nevertheless the outcome of inappropriate and often egoistically driven processes. In contrast, models of pragmatic reasoning suggest that self-deception may well be the “reasonable” output of a more generalized, adaptive approach to hypothesis testing.

In following the form of a standard “bias” paper, the authors highlight a potentially serious bias of uncertain magnitude. A negative focus in research has certain adaptive features in terms of professional and public support, as well as theory generation. The bias deserves attention and correction, but in ways that do not exaggerate its liabilities or overlook its virtues.

Meta-analytic findings have suggested that individual differences are relatively weaker predictors of academic dishonesty than are situational factors. A robust literature on deviance correlates and workplace integrity testing, however, demonstrates that individual difference variables can be relatively strong predictors of a range of counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). To the extent that academic cheating represents a kind of counterproductive behavior in the work role of "student", employment-type integrity measures should be strong predictors of academic dishonesty. Our results with a college student (...) sample showed that integrity test scores were moderate to strong correlates of self-reported academic cheating and that these relationships persisted even after controlling for a variety of measurement concerns such as item format similarity, concurrent assessment, and socially desirable responding. Implications for institutional honor codes and the broader relations between educational and workplace dishonesty are discussed. (shrink)

The 1847 English translation of two lecture cycles concerned with humankind's 'inner spiritual life' and the nature of communication.

Volume: v. 1 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1835 Original Publisher: Saunders and Otley Subjects: History History / General ...

The increasing availability of brain data within and outside the biomedical field, combined with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to brain data analysis, poses a challenge for ethics and governance. We identify distinctive ethical implications of brain data acquisition and processing, and outline a multi-level governance framework. This framework is aimed at maximizing the benefits of facilitated brain data collection and further processing for science and medicine whilst minimizing risks and preventing harmful use. The framework consists of four primary (...) areas of regulatory intervention: binding regulation, ethics and soft law, responsible innovation, and human rights. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Excerpt from The Political Writings of James Harrington: Representative Selections Finally, I should like to express my deep gratitude to three scholars who have generously helped me in the preparation of this volume: Carl J. Friedrich, of Harvard University, under whose kind and expert guidance I first undertook the study of James Harrington's political thought; Cecil Driver, of Yale University, who tried (with scant success, I fear) to give my prose style something of the grace and elegance (...) that distinguish his own; and Harry Hubbell, of Yale, whose erudi tion made the identification of even the most obscure classical passages seem easy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The title of the film Avatar specifically refers to the extension of the consciousness or spirit of a human individual into the body of an artificially created human–Na'vi hybrid. In his Philosophy of Nature, Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argues that Nature is the embodiment – or, as we might say, the “avatar” – of what he calls the Absolute Spirit or God. Scientists, with their mechanistic models of nature, are essentially in league with the practical exploitation of the Earth. Their (...) arid abstractions abet the arrogant approach of commercial interests, whose dismissive attitude toward nature is captured well in Selfridge's remark: “They're just goddamn trees.” When Jake passes through “the eye of Eywa” at the conclusion of Avatar, leaving his former body and his former life behind and becoming fully embodied as part of “the people,” he implicitly recognizes the truth of Hegel's definition of Spirit. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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Drawing on Nietzsche's prolific early notebooks and correspondence, this book challenges the polarized picture of Nietzsche as a philosopher who abandoned classical philology.

Elaborates the relationship between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and the cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) through close readings of their respective texts as an example of the precariousness of cultural transmission in the present.

The Alexandrian emphasis on smallness, elegance, and slightness at the expense of grand themes in major poetic genres was not preciosity for its own sake: although the poetry was written by and for scholars, it had much larger sources than the bibliothecal context in which it was composed. Since the time of the classical poets, much had changed. Earlier Greek poetry was an intimate part of the life of the city-state, written for its religious occasions and performed by its citizens. (...) But eh conquests of Alexander had altered the structure and the boundaries of the Greek world to an astonishing degree. Alexandria, the center of the poetic culture of the new age, was a city that had not even existed at the time of Euripides; it was in Egypt, not in Greece, and was a huge, polyglot community. As immigrants immersed in a new, impersonal, and bureaucratic society, the poets not unreasonably sought out what was small, intimate, and personal in their verses. The heroes of early Greek poetry are larger than life; those of Alexandrian poetry are life-size. They are human, like us; they have a childhood and an old age; they are afraid or in love or caught in a rainstorm. It was simply one way of reducing the world to more manageable dimensions. At the same time, the new world of Alexandria needed a new poetry. To continue writing epics about a mythology that seemed very far away was senseless; it was impossible to recapture either the style or the immediacy of Homer, lyric poetry, or Attic tragedy. The scholar-poets of Alexandria admired the literature of classical Greece; for them Homer was incomparable and inimitable, to be studied—but not to be copied. Far better, then, to find a new voice on a more manageable scale: instead of oral epic, erudite epyllion; instead of lyric, epigram; instead of tragedy, mime. The poets of an urban and unheroic world might long for but could never re-create the grandeur of the past. James E. G. Zetzel is associate professor of classics at Princeton University and editor of the Transactions of the American Philological Association. He is the author of Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity and, with Anthony T. Grafton and Glenn W. Most, has translated Friedrich August Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum. (shrink)

An analysis of the 1784 essays by immanuel kant and moses mendelssohn on the question "what is enlightenment?" emphasis is placed on discussions of the nature and limits of enlightenment within the berlin "aufklarung" as evidenced by debates within the berlin "mittwochsgesellschaft" (a secret society of "friends of the enlightenment") and articles in the "berlinische monatsschrift". Among the views surveyed are those of the publicists johann erich biester, Friedrich gedike, And friedrich nicolai, The jurists karl gottlieb svarez and (...) ernst ferdinand klein, The physician johann karl wilhelm mohsen, And the theologian johann friedrich zollner. (shrink)

The Fifth International Congress for the Unity of Science took place at Harvard University from September 3 to September 9, 1939 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It marked the end of the scientific community’s great forum dedicated to promoting the Encyclopedia of Unified Science,with some two hundred participants and 60 speakers. In spite of the outbreak of World War II, Otto Neurath’s International Institute for the Unity of Science had been able to organize the congress with the support of the American Association (...) for the Advancement of Science,the American Philosophical Association, the Philosophy and Science Association, the History of Science Society and the Association for Symbolic Logic. The congress was opened by James B. Conant , P.W. Bridgman, Otto Neurath and Charles Morris. Due to the escalation of the war, the abstracts and contributions submitted at the beginning of the conference could not be published, as originally planned, in the ninth volume of Erkenntnis/Journal of Unified Science . Only ten of these, already published separately, were included in the reprint of the journal Erkenntnis. The remaining preprints mostly languished in Otto Neurath’s papers. We plan to print the most important of these so far unpublished contributions to the six sections of the Fifth International Congress for the Unity of Science in the coming Yearbooks. (shrink)

Argumenta-se aqui que a melhor interpretação da estética de Peirce é como uma ciência normativa de fins ideais. As influências de Peirce neste particular incluem a noção de kalos de Platão, A educação estética do homem de Friedrich Schiller, e a arquitetônica kantiana. Baseada principalmente nos rascunhos de Minute Logic em 1902 e as Palestras de Harvard em 1903, as características essenciais de uma ciência normativa são discutidas e a relação da estética às outras duas ciências normativas da lógica (...) e da ética é analisada. O conceito de Peirce de bondade estética é desenvolvido, e os critérios para o que ele considera como um summum bonum são examinados. As próprias formulações de Peirce do summum bonum são examinados, inclusive sua noção de razoabilidade concreta, como também uma explicação interessante dos ideais fundamentais encontrada em um fragmento de manuscrito de 1903. O artigo conclui com uma discussão entre o que é chamado de estética positiva e negativa de Peirce, entendido como duas abordagens diferentes à formulação de fins ideais. (shrink)

Though irony is a category familiar to rhetoric and literature, its philosophical forms are far less explored, and this is especially true with regards to its articulation in the work of Friedrich Schlegel. Schlegel’s engagement with irony is essential to the Romantic philosophical project, one that is fundamentally concerned with contradiction and posits itself as a challenge to and continuation of idealism. Through exploring his relation to the philosophies of Kant and Fichte, this essay demonstrates that Schlegel can deploy (...) irony as a method of taking up the philosophical paradigm of idealism without limiting himself to their systems. He can use Kant and Fichte against themselves, making sincere philosophical arguments through a brazen playfulness. Further, Schlegel’s concept of irony is shown to be a philosophical faculty that is concerned with the limits of philosophy in language. Irony is much more than a rhetorical device – it is a form that allows Schlegel to approach the limits of discursivity from within and so continually stage instances of philosophical contradiction, undermining systematicity. This centering of contradiction is one of Schlegel’s major contributions to the development of German philosophy, critical of those who precede him and spurning their presuppositions of univocal logic. The outworking of Schlegel’s philosophical concern with irony is unmistakably humorous, full of puns, jokes and witticisms, which nevertheless need to be taken seriously. This paper contends that irony is at the crux of Schlegel’s philosophical project, simultaneously the content and mode of his criticism, the source and justification of his humour, and one of Romanticism’s most significant conceptual developments. (shrink)

En post-scriptum de la Constitution de la Liberté, Friedrich Hayek situa le coeur de ses convictions où il perçut qu’était leur place dans l’histoire des idées. Il était, il insistait, “simplement un vieux Whig impénitent”, en insistant sur le “vieux”. Le Whiggisme, il venait de le soutenir, était le nom du seul et unique courant de pensée qui s’opposa sérieusement à tout pouvoir arbitraire. En mettant en avant le fait que le “vrai libéralisme” n’avait pas de nom reconnaissable afin (...) de le distinguer du “faux libéralisme”, Hayek suggéra celui de “vieux Whig” – bien qu’il sembla plus proche de sa validité historique que de son utilité dans le monde réel. Cet essai tente d’illustrer ce qu’Hayek voulait dire en s’appelant lui même vieux Whig ou Whig Burkéen, comme il se décrivit plus tard. Il soulève des questions quant à la validité de la conception qu’Hayek avait de lui, et quant à la vraie nature des vieux Whig historiques. Cet article explore le modèle historique créé par Hayek, centré sur l’événement clé de la Révolution Française, pour expliquer ce qu’il appela une “contre-renaissance” en faveur du collectivisme.In is postscript to The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek placed his core beliefs into what he perceived as their proper place in the history of ideas. He was, he insisted, ‘simply an unrepentant Old Whig – with the stress on the “old”. Whiggism, he went on to assert, was the name of the only set of ideals that had consistently opposed all arbitrary power. Highlighting the fact that ‘true liberalism’ had no recognisable name with which to distinguish itself from ‘false liberalism’, Hayek tossed ‘Old Whig’ into the ring as his suggestion – though he seemed more confident of its historical validity than its real-world usefulness. This essay attempts to illustrate just what Hayek meant by calling himself an Old Whig, or Burkean Whig, as he later described himself. It raises some questions about the validity of Hayek’s self-conception, and the true nature of the historical Old Whigs. It also explores the historical model that Hayek created, centred on the key event of the French Revolution, to explain what he called a ‘counterrenaissance’ in favour of collectivism. (shrink)

En post-scriptum de la Constitution de la Liberté, Friedrich Hayek situa le coeur de ses convictions où il perçut qu’était leur place dans l’histoire des idées. Il était, il insistait, “simplement un vieux Whig impénitent”, en insistant sur le “vieux”. Le Whiggisme, il venait de le soutenir, était le nom du seul et unique courant de pensée qui s’opposa sérieusement à tout pouvoir arbitraire. En mettant en avant le fait que le “vrai libéralisme” n’avait pas de nom reconnaissable afin (...) de le distinguer du “faux libéralisme”, Hayek suggéra celui de “vieux Whig” – bien qu’il sembla plus proche de sa validité historique que de son utilité dans le monde réel. Cet essai tente d’illustrer ce qu’Hayek voulait dire en s’appelant lui même vieux Whig ou Whig Burkéen, comme il se décrivit plus tard. Il soulève des questions quant à la validité de la conception qu’Hayek avait de lui, et quant à la vraie nature des vieux Whig historiques. Cet article explore le modèle historique créé par Hayek, centré sur l’événement clé de la Révolution Française, pour expliquer ce qu’il appela une “contre-renaissance” en faveur du collectivisme.In is postscript to The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek placed his core beliefs into what he perceived as their proper place in the history of ideas. He was, he insisted, ‘simply an unrepentant Old Whig – with the stress on the “old”. Whiggism, he went on to assert, was the name of the only set of ideals that had consistently opposed all arbitrary power. Highlighting the fact that ‘true liberalism’ had no recognisable name with which to distinguish itself from ‘false liberalism’, Hayek tossed ‘Old Whig’ into the ring as his suggestion – though he seemed more confident of its historical validity than its real-world usefulness. This essay attempts to illustrate just what Hayek meant by calling himself an Old Whig, or Burkean Whig, as he later described himself. It raises some questions about the validity of Hayek’s self-conception, and the true nature of the historical Old Whigs. It also explores the historical model that Hayek created, centred on the key event of the French Revolution, to explain what he called a ‘counterrenaissance’ in favour of collectivism. (shrink)

I have elsewhere argued that the original American pragmatists revolutionized twentieth-century European philosophy by determining or reshaping the intellectual agendas of Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Émile Durkheim, Georges Sorel, Jean Wahl, and Alexandre Kojève. I have also argued that the “critique of the subject” proposed by poststructuralist feminists—particularly by Judith Butler—becomes more coherent and consequential when we rewrite its Nietzschean genealogy to include its pragmatist antecedents.1 In this space, I want to argue that William James and John Dewey are (...) better guides to the end of modernity than Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, who still reign as the court poets of the .. (shrink)

Deductive Irrationality examines and critiques economic rationalism by assessing the work of influential political philosophers and economic theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, and John F. Muth. It is one of the first serious attempts to investigate the dominant sub-fields in economic theory through the lens of political philosophy.

Robinson Jeffers’ dark view of humankind is thought to owe much to Friedrich Nietzsche while his admiration for the beauty of nature has been compared to sentiments expressed by Lucretius in de rerum natura. In many respects, however, the philosopher who stands closest to Jeffers in both thought and personality is the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus of Ephesus. Jeffers’ extended poem ‘The Double Axe’ makes no fewer than five clear references to Heraclitean ideas: (1) ‘Heraclitus’ Sibyl whose voice reached (...) over ten thousand years’; (2) the opposites ‘winter and summer…rain the drought, and peace and war; (3) ‘the eternal fire-wheel; (4) ‘One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea’s cold flow/And man’s dark soul; and (5) ‘This divine outer universe is after all not at peace with itself, but full of violent strains and conflicts. The physical world is ruled by opposing tensions.’ -/- . (shrink)

The eighteenth‐century controversy among Moses Mendelssohn, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, and Immanuel Kant undermines the tendency to equate liberalism with the Enlightenment. While the defender of the Enlightenment, Mendelssohn, championed defended such traditional liberal values as religious toleration, his arguments were often illiberal. In contrast, many of the views of his anti‐ Establishment opponent, Jacobi, are remarkably liberal. Kant's essays from the mid‐i78os advanced a liberal conception of politics but a view of Enlightenment that was quite distant from those of (...) both Mendelssohn and Jacobi. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Not These Sounds":Beethoven at MauthausenJames SchmidtIOn May 7, 2000, the British conductor Simon Rattle led the Vienna Philharmonic in a memorial performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen.1 The concert marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the Austrian camp, which had been established shortly after the Anschluss to receive prisoners who—in the argot of the Third Reich—were classified (...) as "unreformable" and "scarcely trainable."2 Those initially imprisoned included Austrian and German criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Roma. They were later joined by Poles, Spanish civil war refugees who had been interned in France and were turned over to German authorities by the Vichy government, Soviet and other prisoners of war, and Jews, many of whom were transferred from camps abandoned in the face of advancing Soviet troops during the last year of the war.3The function of Mauthausen was to work inmates to death. It proved to be ruthlessly efficient in carrying out its mission. Estimates of the total number killed range upward from 119,000 and the mortality rate was surpassed only by the extermination camps established in occupied Poland in 1941 and 1942 (Horowitz, p. 10). The camp was built around a working quarry, and prisoners were compelled to carry loads of stones [End Page 146] up the 186 steps that led from the base of the quarry to the surface. Inmates were regularly killed in falls or struck by falling rocks. But not all of the deaths at Mauthausen were the result of these horrific working conditions. Guards regularly forced prisoners outside the boundaries of the camp and then shot them on the pretense that they were attempting to escape. Between October 1941 and January 1942 prisoners were driven en masse into bathing areas where they were subjected to extended showers in frigid water: the weaker inmates collapsed and were drowned, their bodies clogging the drains, while guards forced others beneath the rising waters. Still other prisoners seized the only means of escape they could find and jumped to their death from the top of the quarry, prompting civilian laborers employed at the camp to complain to authorities about having to work amidst gore and pieces of brain (Horowitz, pp. 52–53).Authorities responded to epidemics of typhus and dysentery—the result of overcrowding in the camp—by shooting the sick. With the arrival of POWs from the Russian front, mass executions by firing squads began, and in 1941 the first gassing chamber was built at the nearby Castle Hartheim. As the slaughter increased, the municipal crematorium south of the camp was supplemented by three new crematoria constructed within the boundaries of the camp itself. When they were operational, tufts of human hair flew out of their chimneys onto the streets of Mauthausen itself, a peaceful town of about 1,800 residents who—while annoyed by the stench of burning flesh and not insensitive to the coarsening of life that the presence of so many soldiers brought to the region—generally kept to themselves and tried not to raise too many questions about what was going on at the camp (Horowitz, pp. 60–62). It was to this spot, then, that the Vienna Philharmonic came, in the late spring of 2000, to perform a symphony that ends with a choral setting of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy." Given the history of the place, it would be difficult to think of a more peculiar choice.IIThe concert at Mauthausen was intended as a contribution to a process of commemoration and reconciliation. In the eyes of those involved in its planning, it was a way to remember those who perished and to confront a part of Austrian history that was largely ignored by a nation that tended to see itself more as an unwilling victim of the [End Page 147] horrors of the National Socialist period than as an active participant in their commission. Yet, almost from the outset, the concert was plagued with controversy.Elections held in the previous autumn resulted in the formation of a government that included Jörg Haider... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 125-142 [Access article in PDF] Hölderlin's Poetic Self-consciousness James H. Donelan Nur ihren Gesang sollt' ich vergessen, nur diese Seelentöne sollten nimmer wiederkehren in meinen unaufhörlichen Träumen. I should forget only her song, only these notes of the soul should never return in my unending dreams. Hölderlin, Hyperion I FOR MANY YEARS, Friedrich Hölderlin has occupied a crucial position in both literary (...) and philosophical history. Well-known literary theorists, such as Walter Benjamin, Peter Szondi, and Paul de Man, have described him as the poet who made the transition from German Classicism to Romanticism. Several major philosophers, including Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank, claim that Hölderlin's insights into Kantian and Fichtean metaphysics were vital to Schelling's and Hegel's far more famous accounts of subjectivity. Either contribution alone would make Hölderlin an important figure in intellectual history; it is almost miraculous that he managed both, especially when one considers the brevity of his career, a span of only ten or twelve productive years.What accounts for this remarkable dual achievement? Historical accident and tremendous talent give us only a partial answer. Hölderlin was fortunate to have Hegel and Schelling as close friends at the Tübinger Stift, and to move to Jena precisely when it had become a center for new thinking in both literary and philosophical circles. He had enormous ability both for ancient Greek and poetic meter, allowing him to benefit from his predecessors and his contemporaries [End Page 125] in remarkable ways. However, his parallel accomplishments in philosophy and poetry are linked by more than just happenstance and genius. In my view, they represent the continuous development of a solution to a single problem, that of self-consciousness, realized in poetic form through an idea of music. For Hölderlin, making the transition from philosopher to poet required him to establish a connection between Idealist theories of self-consciousness and the material world. To meet this challenge, he constituted himself as a self-conscious poet through both theoretical and actual poetic creations, and constituted a musical-poetic voice, or Gesang, within his poetry as a means of joining the abstractions of philosophy with the concrete voice of the poet.The background of this transformation lies in the complex history of the idea of self-consciousness, or subjectivity. In the early Idealist accounts of self-consciousness of Kant and Fichte, the subject recognizes its existence by juxtaposing itself with an object. However, the nature of this object, and the connection between the abstract, theoretical construction of the subject and the actual, practical experience of the conscious self posed a problem that neither philosopher solved definitively. For Kant, self-consciousness emerges from a pre-reflective sense of the self's existence as the subject of different experiences of phenomena over time; self-consciousness therefore arises from a deduction of empirical experience. However, this formulation contains a surprisingly belated and unmotivated version of the self, with no clear account of its origin.Fichte answered the question about the origin of the self by stating that the self posits itself through its opposition to a material object, a non-self he calls the Nicht-ich, and becomes self-conscious by differentiating the Ich from the Nicht-ich and declaring "I am I." Fichte's explanation of self-consciousness as an act rather than an entity nevertheless relies on a kind of solipsism and still does not sufficiently address the ultimate cause of the process. The Ich that declares its own existence must distinguish itself from the Nicht-ich somehow; the relation between the two terms presupposes a subject that already possesses sensory apprehension to create the distinction between Ich and Nicht-ich necessary for the initial positing of the self.Either explicitly or implicitly, both Kant's and Fichte's versions of subjectivity rely on the category of the aesthetic, defined as the experience of precognitive sensation in general, to mediate the encounter between subject and object. Kant later expanded his inquiry [End Page 126] into... (shrink)

The Market Economy: A Reader outlines the characteristics and philosophical underpinnings of the market economy and its usefulness in the allocation of resources. This anthology offers a comprehensive set of authentic, primary source selections that demonstrate how the tenets of classical economic liberalism provide the foundation for an efficient economic system--while also maximizing individual freedom. The readings also provide a structure for analyzing economic and philosophical issues. The book includes selections from several authors who are not economists but whose work (...) is important in terms of their contribution to economic thought, such as Henry David Throeau and Ayn Rand. It also features classic readings such as Adam Smith's invisible hand from his Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo's original explanation of comparative advantage from Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, and John Stuart Mill's eloquent expression of the limits of government in On Liberty. Latter day proponents of private enterprise include Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman. These authors and others address how the market economy responds to such topical issues as the environment, income distribution, and free trade. (shrink)

This is a personal account of an intersection of the schools of research in foundations of geometry founded by Alfred Tarski and Friedrich Bachmann. Their academic lineages and the origins of the schools are also described, as well as the mathematics that resulted from this intersection.

This clearly written book, intended for both specialists and nonspecialists, focuses on Nietzsche's later writings, where he appears unsystematic and indifferent to questions of truth.

It is argued that while existentialists typically reject the notion of a "self-thing," they proceed to formulate process views of personal existence. The views of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset, Sartre, Marcel, and Merleau-Ponty are briefly reviewed. In the course of discussion, the relation of the phenomenological existentialists to the others is also considered. (It is argued that the latter group is no less philosophical or existential than the others.) I also touch on the relation of existentialism to (...) postmodernism. (shrink)

Initially proposing working definitions of the terms ‘soundscape’ and ‘soundspace’, the article examines brief excerpts from the writings of François Rabelais and Victor Hugo, as well as a striking 2005 ‘completion’ of the Mozart Requiem by the contemporary Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas. All of the works examined deploy, in their way, the idea of a post-mortem soundscape. The evocation of the sounds of a world beyond our knowing suggests awe at the idea of transcending death but also lays (...) bare some of the ideological pitfalls of memorialization. (shrink)

James Winchester brings the western philosophical tradition into dialog with contemporary African-American thinkers in an attempt to bridge the culture gap in aesthetic judgments.

A consideration of the ethical implications of an aesthetic view of life, _The Question of Value _reintroduces the Nietzschean imperative to weigh the things of the world anew. James S. Hans assumes that we must and do value the world we live in every day. Rejecting the deconstructionist view, which is always willing to defer the question of value because there are no grounds for considering it, he argues that we continue to measure the world in spite of the (...) apparent lack of reason for doing so, and that we ought therefore to give serious thought to the way we make our choices. The book begins with the premise that the major task Nietzsche set for the Western world has yet to be undertaken in its fullest sense and connects this task to Heidegger’s mode of questioning in his later work and to Freud’s reflections on the death instinct and the pleasure principle. The study’s central premise is that Nietzsche was correct in diagnosing the ills of our culture and in prescribing a cure because he came to recognize the essential connection between time and revenge. He saw that the desire for revenge stems from our disgust at being temporal creatures and that a new system of values will only be possible once we overcome that self-loathing and the endless acts of revenge that stem from it. This is the most difficult of human tasks, but it is the only one worth attempting once one is able to see the full consequences of the human desire for revenge. Instead of being a critical discussion of Nietzsche’s, Heidegger’s, or Freud’s work, then, _The Question of Value _is an attempt to think through their ideas and to implement them in our world in a new way. It establishes the necessity to affirm the value of time and seeks to provide a framework through which such an affirmation of temporality can take place on a larger ethical scale. (shrink)

In its relationship with that which might be considered to exist beyond the perceived limits of philosophical discourse—for the sake of brevity let us call it the Absolute—Early German Romanticism tends to be presented either as mystically positivistic and therefore wholly unphilosophical, or as philosophically informed and committed to a sort of critical antifoundationalism that offers, at best, a negative non-relation to the Absolute. Naturally enough, these two opposing positions give rise to opposing reconstructions of Romantic aesthetics. Whilst broadly in (...) agreement with the latter interpretation, this article argues, in relation to Friedrich Schlegel, that in the rush to establish the philosophical credentials of Frühromantik, some of its complexity has been jettisoned and along with it a more accurate understanding of the guiding spirit of Romantic aesthetics. Drawing on Fichte and Walter Benjamin, it will be argued that Schlegel's notion of the Wechselerweis is intended to bridge the ideal and the real in a positive experience of negation and that his much-vaunted aesthetics amounts to an attempt to develop a philosophico-literary form that would be able to express or, rather, perform precisely this. (shrink)

Based on Nietzsche's critique of religion and culture, including recent developments of it, assesses the origin myths that articulate western attitudes toward beauty and shame.