From 1930 onwards, György Lukács considers ‘uneven development’ the typical relational form between economic progress and the corresponding evolution of other fields of human activity. In the early thirties Lukács focuses on the problem of elaborating an independent Marxist aesthetics, but then necessarily find himself having to deal with the general configuration of Marx’s alleged philosophy. The general theory illustrated in The Ontology of Social Being is where this philosophy, considered as a Weltanschauung, is given its final framework. His (...) reflection on the ‘specificity’ of the aesthetic experience, as part of the broader framework of the main fields of art, science and everyday life, is the theoretical medium Lukács used in the fifties and sixties to fine-tune the need that had arisen decades earlier to attribute Marxism with genuine philosophical universality. (shrink)

Georg Lukács wrote The Theory of the Novel in 1914-1915, a period that also saw the conception of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Letters, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Spengler's Decline of the West, and Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia. Like many of Lukács's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and (...) Husserl.The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukács's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, writer, and literary critic who shaped mainstream European Communist thought. Soul and Form was his first book, published in 1910, and it established his reputation, treating questions of linguistic expressivity and literary style in the works of Plato, Kierkegaard, Novalis, Sterne, and others. By isolating the formal techniques these thinkers developed, Lukács laid the groundwork for his later work in Marxist aesthetics, a field that introduced the historical and political implications of text. For (...) this centennial edition, John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis add a dialogue entitled "On Poverty of Spirit," which Lukács wrote at the time of Soul and Form, and an introduction by Judith Butler, which compares Lukács's key claims to his later work and subsequent movements in literary theory and criticism. In an afterword, Terezakis continues to trace the Lukácsian system within his writing and other fields. These essays explore problems of alienation and isolation and the curative quality of aesthetic form, which communicates both individuality and a shared human condition. They investigate the elements that give rise to form, the history that form implies, and the historicity that form embodies. Taken together, they showcase the breakdown, in modern times, of an objective aesthetics, and the rise of a new art born from lived experience. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukacs, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in (...) the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and " The Phenomenology of Mind."" Lukacs completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work.". (shrink)

The acquisition of complex motor, cognitive, and social skills, like playing a musical instrument or mastering sports or a language, is generally associated with implicit skill learning . Although it is a general view that SL is most effective in childhood, and such skills are best acquired if learning starts early, this idea has rarely been tested by systematic empirical studies on the developmental pathways of SL from childhood to old age. In this paper, we challenge the view that (...) childhood and early school years are the prime time for skill learning by tracking age-related changes in performance in three different paradigms of SL. We collected data from participants between 7 and 87 years for a Serial Reaction Time Task testing the learning of motor sequences, an Artificial Grammar Learning task testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences, and Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather Prediction task , a non-sequential categorization task. Results on all three tasks show that adolescence and adulthood are the most efficient periods for skill learning, since instead of becoming less and less effective with age, SL improves from childhood into adulthood and then later declines with aging. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in (...) the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and The Phenomenology of Mind." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

An introduction to Georg Lukacs's work as a whole and in particular to his later philosophical writings.

Originally published in the 1930s, these essays on realism, expressionism, and modernism in literature present Lukacs's side of the controversy among Marxist writers and critics now known as the Lukacs-Brecht debate. The book also includes an exchange of letters between Lukács, writing in exile in the Soviet Union, and the German Communist novelist, Anna Seghers, in which they discuss realism, the European literary heritage, and the situation of the artist in capitalist culture.

At the end of his life György Lukács described his intellectual career as ‘my way to Marx’ [mein Weg zu Marx]. By this he meant that his professional life can be interpreted as an attempt to get to the real Marx. In this paper I use this expression in a narrower and more direct meaning: I attempt to present the road at the end of which the young Lukács arrived at a Marxist standpoint.

Georg Lukács wrote The Theory of the Novel in 1914-1915, a period that also saw the conception of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Letters, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Spengler's Decline of the West, and Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia. Like many of Lukács's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and (...) Husserl. The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukács's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

In what is likely to be the final word from one of the most accomplished historians of our time, History and the Human Condition presents John Lukacs's profound reflections on the very nature of history, the role of the historian, the limits of knowledge, and more. Guiding us on a quest for knowledge, Lukacs ranges far and wide over the past two centuries. The pursuit takes us from Alexis de Tocqueville to the atomic bomb, from the American frontier to the (...) Cold War, from Hitler to Heisenberg. As an added bonus, this book features a complete bibliography of Lukacs's writings.Readers of History and the Human Condition will cherish this fascinating work by the man the Washington Times calls "one of the more incisive historians of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Originally published in the 1930s, these essays on realism, expressionism, and modernism in literature present Lukacs's side of the controversy among Marxist writers and critics now known as the Lukacs-Brecht debate. The book also includes an exchange of letters between Lukács, writing in exile in the Soviet Union, and the German Communist novelist, Anna Seghers, in which they discuss realism, the European literary heritage, and the situation of the artist in capitalist culture.

György Lukács’s Marxist phase is usually associated with his passage from neo-Kantianism to Hegelianism. Nonetheless, Nietzschean influences have been covertly present in Lukács’s philosophical development, particularly in his uncompromising distaste for the bourgeois society and the mediocrity of its quotidian values. A closer glance at Lukács’s corpus discloses that the influence of Nietzsche has been eclipsed by the Hegelian turn in his thought. Lukács hardly ever mentions the weight of Nietzsche on his early thinking, an influence (...) that makes cameo appearances throughout his lifetime writings. During the period of his adherence to a Stalinist approach to communism, his new subjectivity seems to be re-constituted through a disavowal of his earlier romantic anti-capitalism. Implicit in Lukács’s attack on Nietzsche in the Destruction of Reason (1952) is an acerbic reaction to the mute presence of the latter in his earlier thought. Apart from his ignorance of the unreliability of the collection of the Will to Power edited by Peter Gast and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his battle against the anti-proletariat Nietzsche in the Destruction is waged on a metaphysical, non-historical plain. Lukács’s pre-Marxist works (Soul and Form, On Poverty of Spirit, and The Theory of the Novel) in a sense betray the instance of a writer who writes most of someone where he omits his name. Thus perceived, Lukács’s early corpus lends itself to a symptomatic reading. -/- This essay seeks to extract the Nietzschean undercurrents of Lukács’s work through a reflection on the romantic anti-capitalist tendencies that the young Lukács shared with Nietzsche. For although it may appear that Nietzsche lacked a clear politics, his criticism of the bourgeois ethos as a structure based on debt/guilt [Schuld], and his critique of modern value-system and nihilism paved the way for the emergence of Lukács’s theory of reification. Nietzsche’s category of 'transvaluation of values’ suggests a total transfiguration of reality, a radical rupture with the ordinary state of things, and as such carries within itself a revolutionary promise. Drawing a distinction between political romanticism and romantic politics, I argue that romantic anti-capitalism contains a potential for the latter. The essay further traces the link between Lukács’s ‘romantic politics’ and the persistence of a thought of the tragic (a ‘tragic vision’) in his texts that, despite its temporary decline during his realist period, is undismissable in different constellations of his thought. (shrink)

Lukacs participation in the establishment and running of the Theater Company Thalia will reflect on his reflection on the modern drama in his first book (History of the evolution of modern drama". Our study is based on the correspondence between Lukacs and his companions and analysis of the early writings of Lukács, usually in Hungarian.

This book offers a detailed account of the importance of psychoanalysis in Derrida's thought. Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, it sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida's response to a number of key questions. These questions range from the psyche's relationship to technology to the role of fiction and metaphor in scientific discourse, from the relationship between memory and the archive to (...) the status of the political in deconstruction. Focusing on Freud but proposing new readings of texts by Lacan, Torok and Abraham, Laplanche and Pontalis, amongst other seminal figures in contemporary French thought, the book argues that Derrida's writings on psychoanalysis can also provide an important bridge between deconstruction and the recent materialist turn in the humanities. Challenging a still prevalent 'textualist' reading of Derrida's work, it explores the ongoing contribution of deconstruction and psychoanalysis to pressing issues in critical thought today, from the localizing models of the neurosciences and the omnipresence of digital technology to the politics of affect in an age of terror. (shrink)

The main purpose of this book is to offer a comparative evaluation of the early works of Marx and Lukács, "these two most important texts of 'unorthodox' Marxism". Feenberg refers here to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts on the one hand, and History and Class Consciousness on the other. At a somewhat more general level, Feenberg writes in defense of, or more accurately in preparation for a new stage in, the philosophy of praxis. To proceed directly to his conclusion, (...) Feenberg's analyses culminate in the recommendation of a synthesis between Marx's concept of the internal relation between subject and object, or their participatory identity, and Lukács' mediation-theory of rationality, according to which reification is an intrinsic element at the dialectical level of reason, which is thus a mediation of nature on the one hand, and the subject-object relation on the other. In less complex terms, Feenberg recommends the development, from elements of Marxist and Lukácsian doctrines, of a "non-creationist concept of practice", i.e., one in which nature is not created by man, a concept that is also not pure objectivism, i.e., that prevents a complete identity of subject and object. Feenberg thus perceives the central problem in the early Marx and Lukács as one that links them more intimately with Absolute Idealism than his own analysis makes explicit. The "fundamental flaw in the philosophies of practice of Marx and Lukács" is, to put it as briefly and clearly as possible, that in these doctrines, man is still a creator-god. (shrink)

Zitta once attended a course given by Lukács in Budapest. He has prepared an impressive partial bibliography of Lukács' pre-1958 writings, and he liberally scatters the sometimes erratic, often interesting notes of an undisciplined but voracious reader throughout his text. The book-beautifully printed, promising insight into a great but much-neglected thinker, its title replete with four of the most emotion-charged words in contemporary philosophical vocabularies—appears on the surface to emanate intellectual respectability. In fact, it is a clearer candidate than (...) most of those chosen by Lukacs himself to illustrate "die Zerstörung der Vernunft." Zitta's method takes its cue from an early phase in Harold Lasswell's thought, in which literary psychoanalysis was regarded as the key to scholarship concerning political writers. Zitta concentrates almost exclusively on Lukács' works through 1923, and devotes much of this "analysis" to expressing his profound personal contempt for his subject. In short, this book abounds with bad grammar and worse scholarship.—W. L. M. (shrink)

There are few books in any language which attempt to survey the whole range of Lukács' work. English readers may, therefore, consider themselves fortunate to have available the present volume and, doubly fortunate, to have forthcoming in late 1970 or early 1971 yet another book by one of the present contributors, István Mészáros, titled the Life and Work of Georg Lukács. The work under review is based on a series of lectures in 1968 at the Graduate School of Contemporary (...) European Studies at the University of Reading. The Introduction by Parkinson is largely expository and concentrates on Lukacs' celebrated Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. The individual essays which follow are critical examinations of Lukács' views in the fields of philosophy, sociology, and literary criticism. The essays are generally of a high caliber and the differences which the authors express in relation to various aspects of Lukács are themselves testimony to the complexity and depth of his thought. The most comprehensive, and, in many ways, the most interesting approach to Lukács is in the lead-off essay by Mészáros which, in the context of dealing with his concept of the dialectic, seeks to disclose the basic structure of Lukács' thought and to establish its continuity from the young Lukács to the mature Lukács. Mészáros finds from the very beginning not only a revolutionary turn in Lukács' structure of thought, but along with it--or within it--or perhaps even conditioning it--a complex and far-ranging "ought". The "ought-ridden" character of Lukács' thought, Mészáros claims, is both the source of some of his great intellectual achievements and of some of his great failures, particularly when he substitutes ideology and moral postulates for mediated, concrete reality. Those interested in the development of the concept of the dialectic from Hegel to Marx and from Marx to the present will find Mészáros' discussion of Lukács' categories of "totality" and "mediation" informative and thought-provoking. H. A. Hodges examines Lukács' critique of philosophical irrationalism and singles out for special study his comments on the degree to which Dilthey and Mannheim contributed toward this trend. Parkinson, in addition to writing the introduction, has an essay on the nature of Besonderheit, the central category of Lukács' aesthetics. He translates Besonderheit as "speciality" or "the special." Roy Pascal digs into Lukács' concept of totality as developed in the Ästhetik and as applied in his critique of Walter Scott and of Kafka. In addition, there is an essay by David Craig on how, in Lukács' view, history molds literature, and another essay by Stanley Mitchell on Lukács' concept of the "beautiful." All in all, while the book does not represent a definitive or inclusive introduction to the work of Lukács, it does constitute an important landmark in presenting many important dimensions of his thought, as well as some highly critical appraisals of its validity and importance.--H. B. (shrink)

This book makes available to the English reader nearly all of the shorter philosophical works, published or unpublished, that Husserl produced on the way to the phenomenological breakthrough recorded in his Logical Investigations of 1900-1901. Here one sees Husserl's method emerging step by step, and such crucial substantive conclusions as that concerning the nature of Ideal entities and the status the intentional `relation' and its `objects'. Husserl's literary encounters with many of the leading thinkers of his day illuminates both the (...) context and the content of his thought. Many of the groundbreaking analyses provided in these texts were never again to be given the thorough expositions found in these early writings. Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics is essential reading for students of Husserl and all those who enquire into the nature of mathematical and logical knowledge. (shrink)

Marx was barely 25 when he produced this astonishing rich body of work-including economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and On the Jewish Question.

Presents the early published writings of the distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss, available here for the first time in English. “Zank places at the reader’s disposal the young Strauss’s passionate advocacy of political Zionism and his early confrontations with Spinoza, consideration of whom helped lead Strauss to formulate his teaching on ‘the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.’” — National Review.

The first publication of seminal early writing by Louis Althusser. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Louis Althusser enjoyed virtually unrivalled status as the foremost living Marxist philosopher. Today, he is remembered as the scourge and severest critic of "humanist" or Hegelian Marxism, as the proponent of rigorously scientific socialism, and as the theorist who posited a sharp rupture—an epistemological break—between the early and the late Marx. This collection of texts from the period 1945-1953 turns these interpretations of Althusser (...) on their head: we discover that there was a "young Althusser" as well as the "mature Althusser" we are already familiar with. In his fascinating Master's thesis, "On Content in the Thought of G.W.F. Hegel" (1947), Althusser developed a position which he was later to attack ferociously: namely, that the revolutionary potential of the Hegelian dialectic could be defended against Hegel's own political conservatism. We see Althusser still wrestling with the spectres of Hegel and of Catholicism in another long text, his letter to Jean Lacroix, and, finally, we see his own "epistemological break" in the piece "On Marxism" from 1953. Other texts included are his critique of Alexander KojÅve (whose interpretation Francis Fukoyama has recently revived) and his attack on the French Church's teachings on women, sex and the family. Widely recognized as an intellectual giant of the late twentieth century, Althusser has left a towering legacy. This collection not only gives a unique insight into the formation of such a personality, but will also restore the "unknown Althusser" to the centre of the history of Marxism and of philosophy since the Second World War. (shrink)

In his new book, Carlos Alberto Torres, an internationally renowned critical theorist of education, explores the early writings of Paulo Freire whose ideas have had a tremendous and long-lasting impact on the world of pedagogy and politics. Torres analyzes Freire's works, from the 1960s and 1970s, before Freire gained worldwide recognition for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Offering an in-depth look into the formative thinking of Freire, Torres identifies how his ideas produced frameworks for educating global citizens, building (...) community and mutual respect, creating social responsibility, instilling an appreciation for diversity, promoting multiple literacies, and social justice education. This volume is the result of more than 3 decades of research with access to Freire's personal library and the archives of the Paulo Freire Institute, as well as the author's extensive conversations with Paulo Freire over two decades--Dr. Torres was Freire's adviser during his tenure as Secretary of Education in the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, 1989-1991. (shrink)

It is commonly presumed that the earliest recoverable writing of the New Zealand born Philosopher Arthur N. Prior is that published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy and Psychology in 1937. Yet Prior was an extremely active writer as both an undergraduate and as a recent graduate, in a variety of publications. This paper recovers the unknown early Prior and discusses the importance of neo–orthodox Christian theology upon the life and thought of the early Arthur Prior. During the (...) 1930s Prior was primarily a theologian–philosopher and in these early writings there can be discerned important influences upon his thinking. This paper traces Prior’s writings from an early unpublished manuscript through his theological writings and the development of his neo–orthodox thinking to a point where preparatory work for his influential 1942 article ‘Can Religion be Discussed?’ occurs. It ends where Prior bibliographies begin, with a theologian–philosopher remaking himself as a philosopher theologian. Yet to understand the later Prior we need to understand his early life, thought and writing. This paper is an attempt to recover Prior’s early life and note his influences and talent in areas apart from tense logic. (shrink)

_Presents the early published writings of the distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss, available here for the first time in English. “Zank places at the reader’s disposal the young Strauss’s passionate advocacy of political Zionism and his early confrontations with Spinoza, consideration of whom helped lead Strauss to formulate his teaching on ‘the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.’” — National Review_.

Presents the early published writings of the distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss, available here for the first time in English. “Zank places at the reader’s disposal the young Strauss’s passionate advocacy of political Zionism and his early confrontations with Spinoza, consideration of whom helped lead Strauss to formulate his teaching on ‘the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.’” — National Review.

The aim of this book is to consider what reasonably follows from the hypothesis that the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ can be interpreted from a mystical point of view. Atkinson intends to elucidate Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the mystical in his early writings as they pertain to a number of topics such as, God, the meaning of life, reality, the eternal and the solipsistic self.

The aim of this book is to consider what reasonably follows from the hypothesis that the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ can be interpreted from a mystical point of view. Atkinson intends to elucidate Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the mystical in his early writings as they pertain to a number of topics such as, God, the meaning of life, reality, the eternal and the solipsistic self.

The collection of Edmund Husserl's sketches on time-consciousness from the years 1893-1917, edited by Rudolf Boehm and published as Volume X in the Husserliana series, affords significant new material for the study of the evolution of Husserl's thought. Specifically, the sketches suggest that in the course of analyzing the consciousness of temporal objects Husserl became convinced that a distinction must be drawn between an ultimate or absolute flow of consciousness and the immanent temporal objects or contents -- sense-data, appearances of (...) external things, acts of wishing, judging, etc. -- constituted or known within that flow. Further, the texts indicate that the emergence of the absolute dimension was connected with the development during this period of two distinct interpretations of the constitution of time-consciousness. Husserl apparently worked out the first of these during the years 1901-1907, and only towards the end of this period did the notion of an absolute consciousness, absent in earlier texts, make its appearance. And no sooner did it emerge than Husserl undertook a critique of his first interpretation which ultimately culminated in its rejection. In the new position which then appeared, around 1909, the absolute flow of time-constituting consciousness, and its distinction from temporal objects both immanent and transcendent, was unequivocally affirmed. We propose now to discuss this evolution and the emergence and nature of the absolute flow of consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

This first volume of The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap includes Carnap’s published writings from 1921 when he submitted his dissertation Der Raum (Space) in Jena to Bruno Bauch to 1926 the year he completed his habilitation in Vienna under Moritz Schlick. It thereby documents Carnap’s early writings during his formative years that culminated in his first major publication Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) which appeared in 1928 and will be included (...) in the second volume. Fourteen volumes are planned in total. In his foreword Richard Creath, the general editor, states that the series will include “all of the books and papers Carnap authorized for publication in his lifetime.” (viii). (shrink)

For St. Maximos the Confessor, the seventh century Byzantine theologian, deification was the ultimate goal of the monk and an event that required action both on the parts of God and the individual. While God originally bestowed upon humanity his image and likeness, as a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve that takes place in the garden, humankind loses its ‘likeness’ to God. According to the Confessor, by following the commandments found in the Christian Gospel, one is able (...) to regain the likeness to God and, by doing so, one moves closer and closer to God, ultimately experiencing deification. This study will focus on the Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer but will also reference the Ascetical Life and the Centuries on Charity. For Maximos, deification will not take place without becoming ‘like’ God. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Part I -- 1. Portrait of the psychiatrist as a young man 1927-1960 -- 2. Portrait of the psychiatrist as an intellectual. Laing's early, notebooks, personal library, essays, papers, and talks -- 3. Laing and psychiatric theory -- 4. Laing and existential-phenomenology -- 5. Laing and Religion -- 6. Laing and the Arts -- Part II -- 7. Laing in the Army -- 8. Gartnavel Hospital and the 'Rumpus Room' -- 9. Individual patients at (...) Gartnavel -- 10. Laing at the Southern General Hospital -- 11. Laing in London -- 12. The Divided Self. (shrink)

SummaryThe early writings of Barry Barnes, as the co‐founder of the Edinburgh School of sociology of scientific knowledge, are explored to bring out and to evaluate his main presuppositions and arguments. Barnes is highly critical of anthropologists' conception of scientific knowledge, rationality, truth, and their asymmetrical explanatory approach towards different belief‐systems. Likewise he rejects the prevalent View of science among sociologists of knowledge, and also their approach to explanation of knowledge or belief‐adoption. His proposal is based on a (...) Kuhnian model of science, and offers his own socio‐causal explanatory scheme applicable to all beliefs and knowledge‐claims. I have challenged the basis of his model of science and have tried to show that his use of Kuhn's concepts of normal practice and paradigm is problematic, and that his idea of social causation of beliefs is highly problematic.“new paradigms may gain support not because of any demonstrable superiority over the old but simply because scientists welcome the opportunity of a new try at explanation” Barry Barnes “all belief‐systems, scientific or preliterate, ‘true’ or ‘erroneous’, are most profitably compared and understood within a single framework” Barry Barnes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Verum-factum and Practical Wisdom in the Early Writings of Giambattista VicoRobert C. MinerAs several contemporary writers have noted, Giambattista Vico defends the idea of practical knowledge, a type of knowledge that cannot be fully expressed by propositions and defies reductions to method. 1 The defense of practical knowledge, against Descartes and the rise of objectifying science, is most clearly articulated in a group of Vico’s early (...) writings: the oration De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709), the metaphysical book De antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda (1710), and two rejoinders (Prima and Seconda risposte) to critics of the De antiquissima. In these texts Vico criticizes Cartesian method in terms that remind us of Aristotle, or at least the Aristotle of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. “If you were to import the geometrical method into practical life, you would do no more than exhaust yourself in becoming a rational lunatic” (A 7.5). 2This comment and many others like it seem to suggest that Vico is an “Aristotelian,” but any simple classification is problematic. In the same text in which Vico defends the Aristotelian topos he also announces that “the true and the made are convertible” (verum et factum convertuntur). The emphasis on the [End Page 53] role of “making” in truth seems incompatible with the Aristotelian idea of phronesis, whose knowledge is associated with praxis and cannot be reduced to techne. It would be simpler if Vico distinguished between a realm in which the verum-factum principle applied and one in which prudentia was supreme. However, Vico not only situates mathematics and experimental science within the metaphysical framework governed by verum-factum, but also implies strong connections between making and ethics. The prominence Vico assigns to making in all areas of human endeavor gives him a distinctly modern appearance in the fashion of Bacon, Galileo, and Hobbes.This gives rise to both hermeneutical and philosophical problems. Is Vico simply hesitating between the old and new? Does he coherently balance an Aristotelian perspective with the “modern” emphasis on artifice? 3 Perhaps Vico is caught in the middle of the querelle des anciens et modernes, somewhat like John Dunn’s version of Locke, a “tragic figure” who cannot reconcile his epistemological discoveries with a noninstrumentalist view of practical reason. 4 The purpose of this essay is to provide a sympathetic interpretation of Vico’s early writings on prudentia and its links to both verum-factum and rhetoric.Vico contra Rule-based EthicsThe denial that ethics is well understood as a matter of following or justifying general rules has become a commonplace among contemporary Aris-totelians and Wittgensteinians. 5 Against the Enlightenment ambition to construct a universally valid moral science, recent virtue ethics has emphasized the irreducibly contingent aspects of human life, aspects which resist the clutches of “method.” Although Descartes wrote little about morals directly, his influence can be detected in the ethical writings of Hobbes, Kant, Mill, and Sidgwick. These examples of modern moral philosophy presuppose the correctness of the Cartesian diagnosis of ancient and medieval writing on virtue. In the Discourse on Method Descartes compares previous moral teaching to “the most proud and magnificent palaces built on nothing but sand or mud.” 6 Descartes himself did not provide a rational justification of ethics, but he has had no shortage of successors who have tried to complete his foundational project. Jusnaturalism, Kantian deontology, and utilitarianism, as different as they are from one another, share the desire to ground ethics in principles as universal and certain as [End Page 54] those of mathematics. Each of these variants of post-Cartesian ethics claim to have discovered and justified such a principle or set of principles. Maxims deduced from the principle, if not the principle itself, will arguably enable moral agents to discover the right course of action in a particular situation.Vico did not live to witness the most articulate expressions of a Cartesian approach to ethics, but he did apprehend the shift in focus from prudence to method. In the De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, an oration delivered at the University of Naples in 1708 and published the following year, Vico criticizes approaches that locate... (shrink)

Volume 1 of the Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke presents Burke's early literary writings up to 1765, and before he became a key political figure. It is the first fully annotated and critical edition, with comprehensive notes and an authoritative introduction. The writings published here introduce readers to Burke's early attempts at a public voice. They demonstrate in a variety of ways how determined he was to become involved in the social and intellectual life (...) of his times. The one work of Burke's early life which has long been recognized as having prime critical significance, the Sublime and the Beautiful, is naturally found here. In addition the volume includes the first fully edited version of other works which have been neglected, notably the Vindication of Natural Society, a substantial satire on current philosophical and religious thought, the Abridgement of English History and the Hints for an Essay on the Drama. The volume also prints reliable texts of his early poems and prose `characters' as well as the first complete text of The Reformer since it was first published in 1748. This was a weekly paper devoted principally to the Dublin cultural scene and was edited by Burke shortly after he graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. (shrink)

This paper aims at reconstructing the ethical issues raised by Spinoza's early Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Specifically, I argue that Spinoza takes issue with Descartes’ epistemology in order to support a form of “ethical intellectualism” in which knowledge is envisaged as both necessary and sufficient to reach the supreme good. First, I reconstruct how Descartes exploits the distinction between truth and certainty in his Discourse on the Method. On the one hand, this distinction acts as the (...) basis for Descartes’ epistemological rules while, on the other hand, it implies a “morale par provision” in which adequate knowledge is not strictly necessary to practice virtue. Second, I show that Spinoza rejects the distinction between truth and certainty and thus the methodological doubt. This move leads Spinoza to substitute the Cartesian Cogito with the idea of God as the only adequate standard of knowledge, through which the mind can attain the rules to reach the supreme good. Third, I demonstrate that in the Short Treatise Spinoza develops this view by equating intellect and will and thus maintaining that only adequate knowledge can help to contrast affects. However, I also insist that Spinoza's early epistemology is unable to explain why human beings drop conceive of the idea of God inadequately. Thus, I suggest that in his later writings Spinoza accounts for the insufficiency of adequate knowledge in opposing the power of the imagination and passions by reconnecting the nature of ideas with the mind's conatus. (shrink)

This article seeks to reconstruct the early writings of George Herbert Mead in order to explore the significance of his work for the development of an intersubjective conception of education. The reconstruction takes its point of departure in Mead's claim that reflective consciousness has a social situation as its precondition. In a mainly chronological account of Mead's writings on psychology and philosophy from the period 1900–1925, it is shown how Mead explains the social origin of conscious reflection (...) and self-consciousness. It is further shown, how Mead redefines the social in terms of meaningful, creative, radically undetermined, but not yet conscious, interaction. Mead's position thereby implies a reversal of the traditional way in which the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is conceived. The article ends with an outline of the main implications of this reversal for our understanding of education. (shrink)