The literary and poetic turn in philosophy exudes contempt for science and hostility against technology, both allegedly justified on grounds established by Nietzsche and Heidegger. I try to show that these grounds instead call for an extremely positive assessment of science and technology. It turns out that what Nietzsche and Heidegger describe as our highest achievement, namely, human autonomy, is really made possible by modern experimental physics. And I show how this assessment is borne out by what Heisenberg describes as (...) the lesson of quantum physics. (shrink)

I show why the standard textbook argument against thepragmatist reconstruction of truth should be dismissedas a fallacy. It only works if one inadvertentlysubstitutes for the pragmatist concept of knowledge anunreconstructed one that predates the experimentalrevolution in philosophy (likened to the Copernicanrevolution in astronomy) started by Kant and completedby Dewey. I argue (as did Dewey against Russell) thatthe concept of propositions as mental reconstructionsof what is the case converts a function in inquiryinto an independent structure, which is anotherfallacy.

I show why the standard textbook argument against thepragmatist reconstruction of truth should be dismissedas a fallacy. It only works if one inadvertentlysubstitutes for the pragmatist concept of knowledge anunreconstructed one that predates the experimentalrevolution in philosophy (likened to the Copernicanrevolution in astronomy) started by Kant and completedby Dewey. I argue (as did Dewey against Russell) thatthe concept of propositions as mental reconstructionsof what is the case converts a function in inquiryinto an independent structure, which is anotherfallacy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts ed. by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. ConwayHans SeigfriedSalim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. Conway, editors. Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 351. Cloth, $69.95.The editors contend that much contemporary reflection on the relationship between philosophy and art has been shaped by Nietzsche’s “experiments with an ‘aesthetic politics’ and a politization of aesthetics.” (...) For this reason, all contributions examine Nietzsche’s aesthetic account of the origins and ends of philosophy and the transformative power of aesthetic activity in social and personal life. They concentrate on his idea of a strictly aesthetic justification of existence. The editors argue that Nietzsche, more [End Page 686] than other philosophers, understood “art as the basic transformative impulse known to human experience,” that he replaced the traditional theoretical justification of existence with an exclusively aesthetic justification, and that he not only theorized about art, but also had artistic aspirations, and that this “dual relationship to art” accounts for his continued influence. They hope that this collection will “set out the ground for future debate” of these matters.The volume is well organized. Grouped in three parts, four essays discuss basic aspects of Nietzsche’s idea of art as a transformative power, three his understanding of particular arts and the influence of his ideas on them, and five the connection between the transformative power of art and the values that guide our transactions in social and political matters. In Part One, E. Behler, M. Nussbaum, A. Del Caro, and R. Havas discuss the power of art in ironic distancing in passion, “Dionysian rapture,” and the justification of existence. In Part Two, S. Bann explores Nietzsche’s ideas about historical consciousness and representation in French romanticism, T. W. White examines the connection between Utopian vision and genuine truth in Klimt’s “Beethoven Frieze,” and J. Carvalho discusses “improvising without memory” in jazz as an illustration of Nietzsche’s Dionysian model for self-transformation. In Part Three, F. Jenkins compares and contrasts moral and aesthetic self-formation, H. Staten reconstructs “the common matrix of aristocratic-authoritarian and democratic-liberationist tendencies in Nietzsche’s writings,” S. Kemal develops some implications of the final rejection of the “artists’ metaphysics” that Nietzsche still defended in his annus mirabilis (1886), D. W. Conway scrutinizes the political and aesthetic roles philosophers could and should play, and C. Crawford reviews some physiological processes involved in aesthetic transformation in the arts of dance, song, laughter, etc.Although the importance of Nietzsche in the discussion of art in our culture cannot be overestimated, one might want to quarrel with the editors’ claim that there are no other philosophers who believed as strongly as did Nietzsche that art was “the basic transformative impulse” in human experience. The same view was carefully developed by Dewey in Art as Experience and expanded in many other contributions to cover almost all areas of experience. But Nietzsche’s view of art and his idea that all human efforts need a strictly aesthetic justification still belong to the very best we have, and they deserve further discussion more than anything else in his writings.While these essays go a long way toward explaining the transformative power of art and aesthetic justification, they ultimately do not make clear what precisely Nietzsche’s reasons were for insisting that the meaning of existence can be justified only aesthetically and not conceptually, or why he thought that human experience is a process of transfiguration, or transformation, and not one of representation or conformation. It might help to review the reasons Nietzsche initially gave for abandoning the belief that existence can be transparently organized by the received “mechanism of concepts, judgments, and inferences,” and why he rejected the principle of sufficient reason as the basis of knowledge and dismissed the idea of “correct perception.” His description of experience as the “aesthetic operation”—Verhalten, not Verhältnis, as translated—of tentatively transferring things into a delicately woven web of changing human needs and interests does not mean that Nietzsche abandoned the conceptualization of experience. [End Page 687] Rather, it shows why we must recognize conceptualization as an... (shrink)

The literary complexity of Nietzsche's writings is by now largely familiar; it needs no further display. Instead, I try to reconstruct some of his ideas such that they amount to a sustained philosophical argument and promising project, namely, an attempt to understand — after the Kantian and Darwinian turns — the very possibility of the formation and continuation of infinite varieties of forms of life.I demonstrate that such a project could make good sense only as a transcendental experiment in which (...) the idea of a reality which is ready-made, immutable, and fixed “in itself” must not only be dismissed as something incomprehensible, but as something not in the least worth striving for, and replaced by the idea of synergetic processes (of self-organization) and what Nietzsche called art without an artist. Read as an empirical-historical narrative we would have to reject Nietzsche's account as a mere rhapsody and arrogant fantasy. (shrink)

This paper tries to shed some light on the paradox that people cling to national ideologies at just the time when nations are counting less and less in social, cultural, economic and political affairs, and when transnational corporations and international organizations increasingly determine the framework of things. Many nations still rigidly think of themselves as independent and sovereign, accountable to no one but themselves, even when our global interdependence can no longer be ignored or denied. Ethnic cleansing and crimes against (...) humanity testify to the dangers of isolationist tendencies, such as blind conservatism, which we may escape only by cultivating and advancing democracy and a shared public life on a global scale, i.e. by developing transnational institutions on strictly empirical and experimental grounds that could assist people in coping with the newly emerging world-order. (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

Though many pioneering feminists were deeply influenced by American pragmatism, their contemporary followers have generally ignored that tradition because of its marginalization by a philosophical mainstream intent on neutral analyses devoid of subjectivity. In this revealing work, Charlene Haddock Seigfried effectively reunites two major social and philosophical movements, arguing that pragmatism, because of its focus on the emancipatory potential of everyday experiences, offers feminism its most viable and powerful philosophical foundation. With careful attention to their interwoven histories and contemporary (...) concerns, _Pragmatism and Feminism_ effectively invigorates both traditions, opening them to new interpretations and appropriations and asserting their timely philosophical relevance. This foundational work in feminist theory simultaneously invites and guides future scholarship in an area of rapidly emerging significance. (shrink)

Émile Durkheim remains one of the most controversial, and deeply misunderstood, classics of social theory. His work differs from the dominant version of sociology that has essentially accepted the modernist self-description of contemporary societies; and it contradicts the individualism that has come to dominate the social sciences. For everybody who is interested in constructing theoretical alternatives to this individualism, Durkheim's sociology can be a useful inspiration - not only because of the solutions it suggests, but already because of the questions (...) it asks. Making use of the theoretical possibilities offered by the Durkheimian tradition, however, requires going beyond the familiar appropriations. The Oxford Handbook of Émile Durkheim takes stock of the different recent debates on Durkheimian sociology, and makes them accessible to a wide audience spanning various disciplines; this includes crucial debates that, due to language barriers, are not easily accessible for an English-reading public. The handbook's chapters elucidate the controversial key concepts of Durkheimian sociology; situate them within the contemporary political and theoretical debates they were originally responding to; offer surveys of empirical research that uses Durkheimian concepts (on topics that were already central for Durkheim's own work as well as on topics that Durkheim hardly touched upon), thus demonstrating the possibilities of a Durkheimian sociology; bring out the divergent, and competing, ways in which Durkheim's ideas have been appropriated and reformulated within more recent theoretical developments in the social sciences. In doing so, this volume is an important resource for all scholars and students looking to understand Durkheimian sociology. (shrink)

In feminist philosophical writings “pragmatism” has two diverse meanings. The first is closely related to the everyday meaning of the pragmatic as what is useful or even expedient. The second refers to any theoretical position that closely ties theory to practice, that values practice over theory, or that tests theory by its actual effects, most notably on women or other marginalized groups. More exactly, it refers to the historically specific tradition of classical American pragmatism and its contemporary variants.

Michela Bella & Matteo Santarelli – What did you know about Pragmatism when you started? Where did you start as a student? Charlene Haddock Seigfried – I came to pragmatism by way of existentialism. During the late sixties, I took my first graduate class at the University of Southern California – an introduction to empiricism – which I didn’t like at all, and I also attended a lecture on existentialism, which intrigued me. But I was always interested in social (...) and political issues and I was m... (shrink)