Collingwood and Hegel R. G. Collingwood was a lonely thinker. Begrudgingly admired by some and bludgeoned by others, he failed to train a single disciple, just as he failed to communicate to the reading public his vision of the unity of experience. This failure stands in stark contrast to the success of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who won many disciples to a very similar point-of-view and whose influence on subsequent thought, having been rediscovered since 1920, has not yet been adequately (...) explored. Collingwood and Hegel share three fundamental similarities: both men held overwhelming admiration of the Greeks, both possessed uniquely broad knowledge of academic controversies of their day, and both were inalterably convinced that human experience consti tutes a single whole. If experts find Collingwood's vision of wholeness less satisfactory than Hegel's, much of the fault lies in the atmosphere in which Col lingwood labored. Oxford in the 1920'S and 1930's, sceptical and specialized, was not the enthusiastic Heidelberg and Berlin of 1816 to 183I. What is important in Collingwood is not that he fell short of Hegel but that working under adverse conditions he came so elose. Indeed those unfamiliar with Hegel will find in Collingwood's early works, especially in Speculum M entis, a useful introduction to the great German. (shrink)

Karl Popper is one of this century's most influential philosophers, but his life in fin-de siècle and interwar Vienna, and his exile in New Zealand during World War II, have so far remained shrouded in mystery. This intellectual 2001 biography recovers the legacy of the young Popper; the progressive, cosmopolitan, Viennese socialist who combated fascism, revolutionized the philosophy of science, and envisioned the Open Society. Malachi Hacohen delves into his archives and draws a compelling portrait of the philosopher, the assimilated (...) Jewish intelligentsia, and the vanished culture of Red Vienna, which was decimated by Nazism. Hacohen's adventurous biography restores Popper's works to their original Central European contexts and, at the same time, shows that they have urgent messages for contemporary politics and philosophy. (shrink)

Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935) stands as a colossal figure of modern Jewish history and thought. Jurist, mystic, poet, theologian, communal leader, founder of the modern Chief Rabbinate and still the defining thinker of Religious Zionism, he is indispensable for understanding modern Jewish thought, the contemporary State of Israel, and the most fundamental interactions of religion, nationalism, ethics and spirituality. Despite countless studies of him, almost no full-fledged intellectual biography of him exists in any language. This study of the (...) class='Hi'>years before his momentous move to Jaffa in 1904, drawing on little-known works, including recently published manuscripts, begins to fill that gap. It traces his life and times in the remarkably intense Rabbinic intellectual milieu of late nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and his path from a profound, regularly rationalist traditionalism, towards a dynamic theology and spiritual practice weaving together Kabbalah, philosophy, universal ethics, and romantic mysticism. (shrink)

Originally published in 1980. Dogen was the founder of the Soto School of Zen and one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Japanese Buddhism. When originally published, this historical and textual study was the first to examine in detail the line of continuity between Dogen and his Chinese predecessors, through his Chinese master, Ju-ching.

Hacohen’s biography of Popper arrives with the usual effusive praise dominating the dustjacket. This is that rare book which actually justifies commentators’ praise. At 551 pages of text, the book is very large to be concerned with only “formative years.” The length is justified because of the way Hacohen integrates careful historical work with a comprehensive grasp of what is philosophically significant in the life of one of the twentieth century’s most influential philosophers. This book achieves a measure (...) of clarity which most of us desire without achieving, its historical arguments are comprehensively documented, and it advances carefully and persuasively the general thesis that the fullest understanding of the legacy of Sir Karl Popper requires that we understand his roots in fin de siècle Viennese culture. Hacohen’s biography is somewhat different from the style familiar to philosophers from Ray Monk’s works on Wittgenstein and Russell, or Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Berlin. Hacohen’s biography is much less revealing of Popper the man, and much more revealing of social context. Accordingly, those looking for penetrating anecdotes will be disappointed, while those willing to entertain a thorough rereading of Popper will be enthralled. (shrink)

What could be the motives for producing a Popperian half‐life such as the present volume? This work, which takes Karl Popper right up to his debut on the world stage with the assumption of his position at the London School of Economics, displays no inclination to follow up with the complementary second half of Popper's life sometime in the future. Indeed, the author admits that the omitted subsequent “public Popper” was frequently an embarrassment. Here is truncation with a purpose: this (...) book is written to recommend the work of the early Popper to the “academic left” and to “historiciz[e] the postmodern predicament [as] an antidote to current false consciousness” . Since this is a work in social/political theory masquerading as biography, I shall respond in kind.There have recently been a spate of attempts to revisit the major figures of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century, primarily for the purpose of explaining to ourselves what it was that provoked such an efflorescence of ingenuity, only to result in the subsequent letdown we now confront or enjoy: Cartwright et al. on Neurath, Fuller on Kuhn, and Kadvany on Lakatos. Malachi Hacohen admits that this constitutes his motive as well: he is impressed with the early Popper's political leftism and anti‐foundationalism, regarding the later Cold Warrior as a sad retrogression. It seems to me, however, that he has missed the major lesson of all these retrospectives. Crudely, what emerges from these exercises, as a group, is the thesis that the looming significance in general intellectual discourse of philosophers of science in the mid‐twentieth century was due to the fact that they were doing social theory all along under the guise of describing Science. Furthermore, their question of the true nature of legitimate Science was seen as a crucial preliminary to understanding which politico‐economic system would come to dominate in the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.From this perspective, I strongly doubt that Popper's social significance ever derived from his durable “solution” of any pressing philosophical problems: Did he really proffer a usable “demarcation criterion” for science, or rectify the problem of induction, or adequately describe probabilities as propensities, or banish “subjectivism” from physics, or even really demonstrate that Marxism was untestable? No, during the Cold War it turned out that the very best apologists for Western society were leftists and anti‐foundationalists; and one can observe this in the history of postwar social sciences like economics and psychology, as well as the philosophy of science. Kuhn et al. then took the next logical step in the sequence: something like “critical rationalism” was widely deemed a thoroughly implausible account of social organization in an anti‐foundationalist context . Social order had to be reconceptualized and reimposed, be it through “normal science,” “progressive research programs,” or whatever.Hence, banishing the half‐life of the Cold Warrior from the biographical account is to parade a pointless Popper in a plotless Punch‐and‐Judy show. Hacohen rightly cautions the reader about the unreliability of Popper's autobiography Unended Quest, but he should have taken more to heart Popper's assertions therein that although he knew almost no social theory, that didn't prevent him from seeking to dictate good “scientific method” to the social sciences ; and furthermore, that his vaunted method of “situational analysis” was little more than a repackaging of neoclassical economics as a general methodology for the social sciences . Thus when Hacohen proposes “situational logic” as a template for his historiography, is he sufficiently aware that he is merely participating in the general movement to extend neoclassical economics as a Theory of Everything for our contemporary globalized situation? If the purpose really was to demonstrate that Popper was situatedly rational, there would be no pressing need to write a biography; one could just as well fit his data to a generic maximization model. History should make us rather more self‐conscious about our scholarly and political options, not less. (shrink)

The publication of the first two volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein in the years 1987 and 1989 marks a watershed in the history of Einstein scholarship. These volumes put together all available documents relevant to Einstein’s early years up to his move to Berne, and they present all his published writings up to 1909, when he would take up his first proper academic appointment at Zurich university. The initiator of the editorial enterprise and editor of (...) these first two volumes, John Stachel, was well aware of the significance of this endeavour. Together with Don Howard, active in the editorial project as well, he also founded the Einstein Studies series whose first volume came out around the same time, in 1989. The series provides a forum for Einstein research, with an emphasis, however, on the history and philosophy of general relativity in those volumes that have appeared up to now. The present volume, number 8 in the series, focuses on the young Einstein and his early work. It has been long in the making. Some papers originated at a conference on Einstein’s early years held in 1990, in an attempt to harvest and digest the fruits of the publication of the first volumes of Einstein’s Collected Papers. Other contributions were written especially for the volume, one paper was published before and is reprinted here. It was the editors’ intention to offer a selection of some of the best recent scholarly studies of Einstein’s early years, and the outcome certainly justifies this claim. (shrink)

Politicka istorija druge Jugoslavije neprekidno je bila sakralna, a domen sekularizacije obuhvatao je mahom samo umetnost. Informbiro i razlaz sa SSSR-om otvorio je put ka vecoj slobodi u stvaralastvu, napustajuci ideju o kontroli umetnosti u vidu socrealizma. Trece stanoviste o knjizevnosti zastupao je Vladan Desnica.

This article describes aspects of our biological nature that have contributed to the dangerous current state of societal, ecological and climatological affairs. Next, it deals with stratagems to take these aspects into account, so as to allow us better choices. I will concentrate on the concepts of evolved group mechanisms and “neoteny” and explain why they direct our responses throughout our lives. The connection between our biological make‐up and our vulnerability to the current rise of certain kinds of irrational, undemocratic, (...) populism is also laid bare. I will end by listing some simple, but possibly controversial, proposals that might have value in combating these societal tendencies and help decision making in a reality‐based, more scientific, manner. (shrink)

Academic ethics among students at an undergraduate level are dictated by a variety of factors. Institutional cultures, personal preferences and notions of ethics, external factors, and peer-pressure are some of the factors that play an important role in the ethical behavior of an undergraduate student. The present study is an attempt to understand the student behavior in a three year old technical Institute in India. At a time when the higher technical education sector in India is rapidly expanding, the study (...) presents trends in undergraduate students regarding academic ethics. The study highlights the factors that are most important in governing ethical behavior of students, and allow for corrective measures at a formative stage in the Institute’s life. (shrink)