In the medieval Islamic world, eloquent expression was an important skill for statesmen to acquire, such that many of the leading viziers were often prominent belletrists. Among the most well known of these literary figures was the Būyid vizier Ibn ʿAbbād. Drawing from a wide range of historical and literary sources, this article compiles and corroborates the many accounts relating to Ibn ʿAbbād’s political career, beginning with his family background and early education as a scribe, to his experiences in (...) the Būyid courts of Baghdad, Iṣfahān, and Rayy and his two decades as vizier to the Būyids Muʾayyid al-Dawla and Fakhr al-Dawla in western Iran. (shrink)

Contains the author's galley proofs with manuscript corrections and type-written additions.

R.W. Church was an English churchman and writer. Church was also famous for being the dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.Bacon's most famous work is his biography on Francis Bacon, the great English philosopher.

Om den engelske filosof Francis Bacon (1561-1624).

Wigner attempts to place Bacon within the perspectives of his time.

"In May 1621 Francis Bacon's political career came to an abrupt end as a consequence of his being impeached from the office of Lord Chancellor of England. Later in the same year he composed his most imaginative political testament, the History of the Reign of King Henry VII. These two events were by no means coincidental. Of his several vocations, politics was the one that mattered most to Bacon, and he did not go willingly into retirement. The History, like so (...) many of his writings, was intended to persuade James I of his redoubtable abilities as a counselor of kings. [The author] fits the story of that year into the pattern of Bacon's life, beginning with a narrative account of the impeachment, an episode testifying to weaknesses both in Bacon's political position as well as in his personal character. [The author] examines Bacon's political career during the preceding years for what they tell us about Bacon's mind. To understand Bacon in politics, [the author] believes, it must be realized how distinctive habits of intellect and sensibility permeate everything he wrote and that virtually everything he wrote was intended to serve his political ambition. Finally, [the author] analyzes the History to show that it must be read not only as a summary portrait of Bacon's civil career but as a justification of his ideas and himself. Setting the History into Bacon's life makes apparent how much of his achievement sprang from his skills as a rhetorician. Words were his greatest gift and one that he always exploited. [The author]'s study demonstrates the extent to which Bacon was also a prisoner of his talent"--. (shrink)

Modern scholars hold Bacon's philosophical works, Novum Organum, Advancement of Learning, and The New Atlantis, as his greatest achievements. Bowen's story reveals a man whose genius it was not to immerse himself in the rigor of scientific experimentation, but to realize what questions science should ask, and thereby reach beyond the status quo and appeal to the wider imagination of his generation. In his writings, Bacon challenged established social and religious orders, raised questions about the mind/body relation and the role (...) of dreams, and foresaw the development of the modern research university. It is Bacon's legacy to have gone beyond his age and, out of pure intuition, anticipate the concerns of future generations. (shrink)

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) was a major historical figure during the waning of the Middle Ages. Statesman, diplomat, courtier, and financier, he was, at the same time, a scholar of encyclopedic learning, a philosopher, an exegete, a prolific author, a mystic, and an apocalyptist. In Abravanel, B. Netanyahu suggests, two long lines of tradition met and concluded: that of medieval Jewish statesmen and that of medieval Jewish philosophers. In what is both a biography and an exploration of Abravanel's thought (...) and influence, Netanyahu describes how Abravanel illuminated the grave crisis and profound transformation experienced by the Jewish people after the Spanish expulsion. First published in 1953, Don Isaac Abravanel has been out of print for several years. This new edition includes revisions in the text, notes, and bibliography. (shrink)

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) was a major historical figure during the waning of the Middle Ages. Statesman, diplomat, courtier, and financier, he was, at the same time, a scholar of encyclopedic learning, a philosopher, an exegete, a prolific author, a mystic, and an apocalyptist. In Abravanel, B. Netanyahu suggests, two long lines of tradition met and concluded: that of medieval Jewish statesmen and that of medieval Jewish philosophers. In what is both a biography and an exploration of Abravanel's thought (...) and influence, Netanyahu describes how Abravanel illuminated the grave crisis and profound transformation experienced by the Jewish people after the Spanish expulsion. First published in 1953, Don Isaac Abravanel has been out of print for several years. This new edition includes revisions in the text, notes, and bibliography. (shrink)

Modern scholars hold Bacon's philosophical works, Novum Organum, Advancement of Learning, and The New Atlantis, as his greatest achievements. Bowen's story reveals a man whose genius it was not to immerse himself in the rigor of scientific experimentation, but to realize what questions science should ask, and thereby reach beyond the status quo and appeal to the wider imagination of his generation. In his writings, Bacon challenged established social and religious orders, raised questions about the mind/body relation and the role (...) of dreams, and foresaw the development of the modern research university. It is Bacon's legacy to have gone beyond his age and, out of pure intuition, anticipate the concerns of future generations. (shrink)

本书对近代中国社会的国内统治危机和国外资本主义的入侵作了具体分析,并介绍统治集团内部的改革人物的改革主张及学术思想等.

Philosophical influences in the personality and public life of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, consul in 147 and 134b.c., were once emphasized in scholarship. In 1892, Schmekel demonstrated the reception of Stoic philosophy in the second half of the second centuryb.c.among the philhellenic members of the governing elite in general, and statesmen like Scipio Aemilianus in particular, in what he called the ‘Roman Enlightenment’. In the 1920s and 1930s, Kaerst showed influences of Stoic philosophy on Scipio, contemporary politics and the (...) Principate to come, while Capelle and Pohlenz identified Stoic ideas in Scipio's foreign and domestic policies. Together they formed a body of scholarship which held that Scipio possessed a serious interest in philosophy which defined his character and informed his public life. In the 1960s, the challenge to this scholarship was led by Strasburger in two articles, and by Astin in his 1967 biography. Both scholars downplayed and devalued philosophical influences on Scipio and denied him the pursuit of the Greek virtuous life. They placed him within the traditions of the Roman elite, ambitious for glory and results-driven, and they have successfully formed influential views to this end, despite the critique made by Erskine. Astin remained the authoritative study of Scipio and there was much in hisRealpolitikthat scholarship found compelling, even when it allowed Scipio an attachment to Greek culture. For example, Gruen, Elvers and Badian acknowledged Scipio's interest in Greek culture and philosophy, in combination with the practices and goals of a traditional Roman aristocrat, but they placed their accent on the latter by affirming that Greek learning did not change the current of a traditional aristocratic life. The contention of this article is that the pre-Strasburger/Astin interpretation of Scipio, despite its shortcomings, was indeed correct to detect a deep current of philosophical influences on Scipio. The article argues that the evidence demonstrates that in education, character and public life Scipio was informed by the Greek moral and political tradition; that Scipio had claimed to possess the cardinal virtues, derived ultimately from Plato; and that he had acted under a moral imperative of power formulated by the Stoic philosopher Panaetius; the conclusion will address the ethical intention of Scipio. (shrink)

In my contribution to this Concise Collection on Margaret Cavendish, I focus on teaching Cavendish’s work in the context of philosophy (and, more specifically, Early Modern Philosophy). I have three aims. First, to explain why teaching women from philosophy’s history is crucially important to the discipline. Second, to outline my own reflections on teaching Cavendish’s philosophy. Third, to defend a specific claim about the benefits of teaching Cavendish to philosophy students; namely, that introducing biographical detail alongside philosophical ideas enriches the (...) learning experience. (shrink)

Foreword -- Preface -- Introductory -- What is Gaia? -- Exploring Daisyworld -- The Archean -- The middle ages -- Modern times -- The contemporary environment -- The second home -- God and Gaia -- Gaia since 1988 -- Epilog -- References -- Further Reading -- Index.

Richard Goldschmidt was one of the most controversial biologists of the mid-twentieth century. Rather than fade from view, Goldschmidt's work and reputation has persisted in the biological community long after he has. Goldschmidt's longevity is due in large part to how he was represented by Stephen J. Gould. When viewed from the perspective of the biographer, Gould's revival of Goldschmidt as an evolutionary heretic in the 1970s and 1980s represents a selective reinvention of Goldschmidt that provides a contrast to other (...) kinds of biographical commemorations by scientists. (shrink)

In the growing body of academic literature on biography that has developed in the last few decades, Virginia Woolf's essay, "The New Biography,"1 has come to occupy a central place—mentioned, discussed and quoted from, I would estimate, more often than any other piece of writing on the subject. Virginia Woolf's distinctive view of the nature and limitations of biography has thus had, and continues to have, a deep and wide-ranging influence on the way the genre is discussed by critics and (...) theorists. My aim in this essay is to present a detailed analysis of Virginia Woolf's thinking about biography in order to make clear why I believe its influence on contemporary theorising about biography is, on the whole, a misfortune. As is often pointed out, Virginia Woolf's views on biography are closely connected with—indeed, to an extent that I hope to make clear, they are simply an application of—her views on fiction. In the light of this, I have tried to trace some of the most striking features of her thinking about biography back to her earlier thoughts on fiction, as presented in both her novels and her essays. The result, I hope, will be that, while the attractions of her way of looking at fiction and biography are recognised and revealed, the manifest flaws in her thinking on these subjects are clearly exposed. (shrink)

Modes of rationality in nursing documentation: biology, biography, and the ‘voice of nursing’ This article is based on a discourse analysis of the complete nursing records of 45 patients, and concerns the modes of rationality that mediated text‐based accounts relating to patient care that nurses recorded. The analysis draws on the work of the critical theorist, Jürgen Habermas, who conceptualised rationality in the context of modernity according to two types: purposive rationality based on an instrumental logic, and value rationality based (...) on ethical considerations and moral reasoning. Our analysis revealed that purposive rationality dominated the content of nursing documentation, as evidenced by a particularly bio‐centric and modernist construction of the workings of the body within the texts. There was little reference in the documentation to central themes of contemporary nursing discourses, such as notions of partnership, autonomy, and self‐determination, which are associated with value rationality. Drawing on Habermas, we argue that this nursing documentation depicted the colonisation of the sociocultural lifeworld by the bio‐technocratic system. Where nurses recorded disagreements that patients had with medical regimes, the central struggle inherent in the project of modernity became transparent — the tension between the rational and instrumental control of people through scientific regulation and the autonomy of the subject. The article concludes by problematising communicative action within the context of nursing practice. (shrink)

Four women have been conventionally framed as wives and/or mistresses and/or sexual partners in the biographical reception of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as heterosexual men. These women were Jenny Marx, Helene Demuth, Mary Burns, and Lydia Burns. How exactly they appear in the few contemporary texts and rare images that survive is less interesting than the determination of subsequent biographers of the two “great men” to make these women fit a familiar genre, namely intellectual biography. An analysis of Marx–Engels (...) biographies shows how this masculinized genre enforces an incuriosity that makes gendered political partnerships unthinkable and therefore invisible. By contrast, a positive interest in these women, which rethinks what a gendered political partnership is or could be, results in a significantly different view of the two men. As historical figures, they shift from being individualized or paired‐with‐each‐other “great thinkers” to communist/socialist activists working in and through everyday spaces and material practices. Their pamphlets, articles, and books thus appear more as immediate political interventions and less as timeless theorizing or as the raw material for such intellectualizing reconstructions. (shrink)

Starting from the controversies surrounding Bourdieu's political involvement, this article investigates the form of ethico-political involvement consistent with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity. The argument begins by drawing the ethico-political dimensions of Bourdieu's methodology, especially his notions of socio-analysis and reflexivity. These latter emerge as the counterparts of Bourdieu's politics of the field, grounding the `conversion of the gaze' required for political action and presenting possibilities for social agents to comprehend, accept and even re-create their selves. Applying a `dispositional reading' to (...) some of Bourdieu's texts, the article proposes a new interpretation of the tense relation between Bourdieu's biography and writings, consistent with the ethico-political reading of socio-analysis and reflexivity. Bourdieu's texts can be read as an example of a socio-analysis, a rhetorical strategy devised to enlist individuals into the painful exercise of rewriting their social biographies. (shrink)

This article argues that it was not only physical borders that challenged people’s biographies in the 20th century, but also shifts in ideology, discourse and predominant languages. I shall explore the biography of a man called Cornel, a native of Bukovina who was a communist cultural official in Romania’s capital Bucharest in the 1960s and who became a priest in the 1970s. I shall show that not only obvious breaks such as the beginning and end of communist rule, but ideological (...) shifts too within Romanian communism prompted Cornel to thoroughly reassess himself. For Cornel, it was the ‘mini-cultural revolution’ of 1971 under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu that quickly convinced him to leave his job at the Romanian Ministry of Culture and reinvent himself as an Orthodox priest. But was his self-reinvention successful? A thorough analysis of his biography shows that his linguistic biography—oscillating between Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian—contains crucial elements of productive adaptation and continuity that enabled him repeatedly and successfully to circumvent borders imposed by newly emerging policies. His “third” identity as a writer has given him continuity and self-assurance. (shrink)

_Who Was Jacques Derrida?_ is the first intellectual biography of Derrida, the first full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence, and his philosophical roots. It is also the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the ambassador of "theory," the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities. Mikics lucidly and sensitively describes for the general reader Derrida's deep connection to his Jewish roots. He succinctly defines his vision of philosophy as a discipline that (...) resists psychology. While pointing out the flaws of that vision and Derrida’s betrayal of his most adamantly expounded beliefs, Mikics ultimately concludes that “Derrida was neither so brilliantly right nor so badly wrong as his enthusiasts and critics, respectively, claimed.". (shrink)

_Who Was Jacques Derrida?_ is the first intellectual biography of Derrida, the first full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence, and his philosophical roots. It is also the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the ambassador of "theory," the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities. Mikics lucidly and sensitively describes for the general reader Derrida's deep connection to his Jewish roots. He succinctly defines his vision of philosophy as a discipline that (...) resists psychology. While pointing out the flaws of that vision and Derrida’s betrayal of his most adamantly expounded beliefs, Mikics ultimately concludes that “Derrida was neither so brilliantly right nor so badly wrong as his enthusiasts and critics, respectively, claimed.". (shrink)

Pierre Elliot Trudeau was a man of deep intellect, of strongly held philosophy, and of bold - if not occasionally audacious - personality. He was no high-minded, distant philosopher-ruler however. A consummate pragmatist, Trudeau sought to be a moral man of action. This important work looks his intellectual evolution as a young man, in the years before he entered politics.Beautifully written, this biography also paints a fascinating, colourful and multilayered portrait of Trudeau. Born into a wealthy family, Trudeau's years among (...) then-Jesuits at Brébeuf College in Montreal were formative, among other reasons for what would become his long-term interaction with Catholicism. Following law school at University of Montreal, Trudeau studied at Harvard in the US, at LSE in London, England, and at Sciences Po in Paris. Mills' considers the biggest influences on Trudeau, including Harold Laski, Jacques Maritain, and Emmanuel Mounier. Mills also recounts Trudeau's travels across the world throughout the 1950s, travelling in Europe, the Near and Far East, Egypt and Sudan, the USSR, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, regions in West Africa, Israel, Vietnam, Persia and Taiwan. A chapter considers Trudeau's evolving thought on Federalism and Nationalism, both internationally and in terms of Quebec and Canada. A chapter on Trudeau's moralism highlights his belief that politics requires individuals of conscience, who have the courage to speak frankly about their beliefs. Mills' biography shows us that understanding Trudeau the thinker is key to understanding Trudeau the politician, whose life was both a practical and a theoretical one. He was a cool political thinker who believed that clear analysis of political questions was essential to good governance. (shrink)

I was a Leverhulme visiting fellow at the University of St Andrews in 2012–13 when James Harris was working on Hume: An Intellectual Biography. At the time, I expected his book to take decades to finish due to the daunting nature of the task. During those years there were periods when we sat daily discussing Hume at the National Library of Scotland and its near vicinity. As a result of those conversations, we also wrote and published an article about Hume (...) in the Scottish context.1 I look back to those days with warmth. I wanted to say this to point out that I am not impartial towards Harris, who I consider a friend, nevertheless, I am not responsible for what is advanced in James's book, and thus I can comment on... (shrink)

Dietrich von Hildebrand, widely regarded as one of the great Catholic philosophers of the 20th century, is well-known for his numerous books, but, until this present work, not much has been known of his remarkable and inspiring life. Written by his wife, Alice, also a highly respected Catholic thinker, this is a fascinating, moving and, at times, gripping account of a truly great man of the Church who suffered much for the faith. Based on a very long "letter" Dietrich wrote (...) to his wife late in his life, it tells his story from his glorious youth with a unique intellectual and cultural formation, his coversion to Catholisism, his great passion for truth and beauty, his extensive writing on Christian philosophy and theology, and his steadfast, determined opposition to Nazism that made him a marked man who miraculously escaped execution. A powerful biography of a relentless fighter against injustice, a devoted son of the Church, a man who had the "soul of a lion". Illustrated. (shrink)

During John Dewey's lifetime, one public opinion poll after another revealed that he was esteemed to be one of the ten most important thinkers in American history. His body of thought, conventionally identified by the shorthand word "Pragmatism," has been the distinctive American philosophy of the last fifty years. His work on education is famous worldwide and is still influential today, anticipating as it did the ascendance in contemporary American pedagogy of multiculturalism and independent thinking. His University of Chicago Laboratory (...) School thrives still and is a model for schools worldwide, especially in emerging democracies. But how was this lifetime of thought enmeshed in Dewey's emotional experience, in his joys and sorrows as son and brother, husband and father, and in his political activism and spirituality? Acclaimed biographer Jay Martin recaptures the unity of Dewey's life and work, tracing important themes through the philosopher's childhood years, family history, religious experience, and influential friendships. Based on original sources, notably the vast collection of unpublished papers in the Center for Dewey Studies, this book tells the full story, for the first time, of the life and times of the eminent American philosopher, pragmatist, education reformer, and man of letters. In particular, _The Education of John Dewey_ highlights the importance of the women in Dewey's life, especially his mother, wife, and daughters, but also others, including the reformer Jane Addams and the novelist Anzia Yezierska. A fitting tribute to a master thinker, Martin has rendered a tour de force portrait of a philosopher and social activist in full, seamlessly reintegrating Dewey's thought into both his personal life and the broader historical themes of his time. (shrink)

(2008). william godwin's memoirs of the author of a vindication of the rights of woman and the gender of romantic biography. Angelaki: Vol. 13, re-coupling gender and genre, pp. 17-31.

"The terrain of the self is vast," notes renowned psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig, "parts known, parts impenetrable, and parts unexplored." How do we construct a sense of ourselves? How can a self reflect upon itself or deceive itself? Is all personal identity plagiarized? Is a "true" or "authentic" self even possible? Is it possible to really "know" someone else or ourselves for that matter? To answer these and many other intriguing questions, Ludwig takes a unique approach, examining the art of biography (...) for the insights it can give us into the construction of the self. In The Biography of the Self, he takes readers on an intriguing tour of the biographer's art, revealing how much this can tell us about ourselves. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-one of our most esteemed biographers--writers such as David McCullough (the biographer of Truman and Theodore Roosevelt), Wallace Stegner (John Wesley Powell), Gloria Steinem (Marilyn Monroe), Leon Edel (Henry James), Peter Gay (Freud), Diane Middlebrook (Anne Sexton), and many others--and interweaving fascinating observations of his own practice, Ludwig takes us through the labyrinthine hall of mirrors we term the self and shows us how malleable, elusive, and paradoxical it can be. In chapters such as "The 'Real' Marilyn," "Psychoanalyzing Freud," "How Did Hitler Live With Himself?" and "What Madness Reveals," we sit in as biographers talk not only about their work, but about their subjects (Allan Bullock on Hitler and Stalin, for instance, or Arnold Rampersad on Langston Hughes) and how their subjects saw themselves. Ludwig describes how biographers must impose a narrative structure on their subjects' lives to create order out of a mass of often contradictory views, baffling behavior, and inconsistent self-representations, much in the same way that psychotherapists try to foster self-awareness and understanding in their patients. In his concluding chapter, Ludwig introduces a new concept--biographical freedom--which brilliantly reconciles free will and determinism. We can, he asserts, become biographers of ourselves. Like the biographer, we are constrained to consider all the available facts of our lives--the personal experiences, cultural forces, and predetermined scripts that shape us--but we remain free to interpret, emphasize, and fashion these givens into a cohesive and meaningful narrative of our own choosing. This thought-provoking volume offers not only a wide-ranging and informative commentary on the biographer's art, but also a highly original theory of the self. Readers interested in biography and in the lives of others will come away with a new sense of what it means to be a "person" and, in particular, who they are. (shrink)

James Harris’s new Hume biography offers, among other things, ‘a series of conjectures as to what Hume’s intentions were in writing in the particular ways that he did about human nature, politics, economics, history, and religion’. The biography is particularly novel with regard to Hume’s intentions when writing about religion, which, Harris argues, were rather benign. Harris fails to appreciate the full extent of the difficulties attaching to his series of conjectures, however.

This volume contains English translations of Frege's early writings in logic and philosophy and of relevant reviews by other leading logicians. Professor Bynum has contributed a biographical essay, introduction, and extensive bibliography.

The article reviews current historical research on the life and work of Max Weber. The completion of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) by the Mohr Siebeck publishing house not only made it possible to put a new textual basis behind the systematization of Weber’s legacy — which is key for a general theoretical grounding and self-explanation of sociology — but also elevated historical and biographical studies devoted to Weber. This has been achieved by introducing many new sources and clarifying (...) old ones. The article is based on an analysis of Weber’s most recent intellectual biography published in 2019. It was written by Gangolf Hübinger, a German academic and a member of the MWG editorial staff since 2004. Hübinger’s book presents Weber’s life as a convergence of some concentric circles that revolve around several major themes. Among them are social and cultural features of “organized modernity” as the turning point era in the history of the West; the formative years of Weber as an individual and a scholar; the intellectualization of modernity and its consequences; Weber’s invention of a new academic discipline, political sociology; the intellectual networks with which Weber was involved as a scholar and politician. An important advantage of this new biography is that it provides a detailed description of the current study of Weber’s theoretical legacy and the prospects for the development of a “Weberian paradigm” in today’s social science and humanities. (shrink)

The history of Japanese Zen 禪 Buddhism has been the object of research for several decades. HAKUIN Ekaku 白隠慧鶴, IKKYŪ Sōjun 一休宗純, and Dōgen 道元 are names that by now are well known within this history, and indeed, theirs are undoubtedly important biographies. At the same time, however, we may critically remark on a certain scholarly preoccupation with these figures, and this attitude owes much to hagiographies, especially those produced by SUZUKI Daisetsu. In order to attain at least a certain (...) degree of historical accuracy, Dōgen, Ikkyū, and Hakuin must necessarily be interpreted within their respective historical contexts. Hakuin’s intentions, for example, only become fully understandable against the backdrop of Zen’s stale and petrified institutionalism in the Edo period that was called into question by the Ōbaku 黄檗 school of YINYUAN Longqi 隠元隆琦, who had recently arrived from the Chinese mainland. Ikkyū, on his part, was the harshest critic of what he saw as an overly cultured, elitist, and therefore degraded, form of Zen that was, however, all-pervasive during the Muromachi 室町 era. Finally, when Dōgen came back from China, he claimed to have received the “pure, Song-style Chan” and made all efforts to implant it into Japanese soil. However, if near-contemporary sources such as the Buddhist Scripture of the Genkō Era are consulted, it becomes clear that Dōgen had almost no impact at all on his contemporaries. It is therefore appropriate to point out that while his writings have enjoyed a rediscovery and revival of stunning proportions, they seem to have remained unread and marginal throughout much of the Japanese history of thought. However, it is in that time, during the Kamakura period, that the biography of CHŪGAN Engetsu 中巖圓月 has its place. His career, as can be seen, is characterized by a prolonged period of studying with various Chan masters on the Chinese mainland and, in consequence, factional open-mindedness. His thought draws on a variety of religious and philosophical systems, such as the Classic of Changes, Daoism, Confucianism, canonical Buddhism, and Chan Buddhist iconoclastic rhetoric. In Chūgan, the upheavals that delineate Zen’s early phase in Japan from its later “Japanization” are personified. (shrink)

My purpose in Hume: An Intellectual Biography was to write the first comprehensive account of Hume's career as an author, beginning with what we know about his education at Edinburgh, and ending with "My Own Life," the brief autobiography that Hume wrote shortly before he died. Where Ernest Mossner, in his classic The Life of David Hume, was explicitly concerned with the man rather than with the ideas, I was concerned with the ideas, and the arguments, rather than with the (...) man. Hume's biography was of interest to me insofar as, but no further than, it shed light on Hume's intellectual development. In many respects, Mossner's achievement as a biographer remains deeply impressive, and anyone wanting to gain a full... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida KitarōThomas P. KasulisZen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarō. By Michiko Yusa. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. 482 pp.Readers of this journal know that much Buddhist-Christian dialogue over the past three decades has featured Kyōto School philosophy for the Buddhist side of the conversations. The major figures in that school known to the West are Nishida Kitarō, (...) Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, Takeuchi Yoshinori, and Ueda Shizuteru. Other philosophers not formally connected to the school but in some ways kindred spirits with it include Watsuji Tetsurō, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, and Abe Masao. Both individually and collectively these philosophers represent a formidable intellectual tradition, simultaneously challenging and inspiring their Western theological and philosophical counterparts. In surveying the Western responses to the Kyōto School, however, I often find an odd lacuna: the philosophers behind the thought are often absent or, at best, caricatured.The mischief here comes from two directions. On one hand, there are the Western theologians and philosophers who read in translation the works by Nishitani or Tanabe and are astounded by the sophistication of the thought and the way familiar Western philosophical thinkers such as Hegel, Kant, Heidegger, and Plato are interwoven in the arguments. Not being Asian specialists, these readers quite naturally focus on parts of the texts most familiar and intelligible—the interplay with Western ideas and values. This approach has helped Western thinkers discover hidden cultural assumptions in their own philosophizing and religious thinking. Missing, however, is the culturally Japanese character of the Kyōto School philosophers. At least until very recently, these philosophers did not write for a Western audience, but [End Page 268] for their Japanese compatriots. Thus, however much their philosophies might be Western in style and content, it is likely that at least some of their questions (and therefore their answers) were responses to Japanese, rather than Western, concerns. Given the upheaval that Japanese culture and society underwent in the first half of the twentieth century, it is especially important to factor into the equation such contemporaneous cultural concerns.Partly in response to this situation, there has more recently been a response from some Western intellectual historians of Japan who seek to debunk the Kyōto School as a whole, finding in it nothing more than disguised ethnocentrism, jingoism, and imperialism. In making their case, they often ignore the full philosophical systems developed by the Kyōto School thinkers and focus instead on comments from public forums or lectures. Sometimes no more than a few isolated quotations are used to support the case. What is wrong here is not necessarily the claim that Kyōto School philosophy was implicated in the political thought of the wartime years, but rather the cavalier scholarship used to support that claim. A whole school of philosophers tends to be lumped together with little concern for sorting out individual differences. For intellectual historians of this ilk, it is as if books are written by ideologies rather than individuals (or even individual ideologues). Such caricatures of the Kyōto School may even minimize the significance of the fact that some philosophers associated with the movement, Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun for example, died in prison for their leftist ideas and practices. The Kyōto School is not nearly as hegemonic as some of its critics like to claim.In short, these two commonWestern approaches to reading the Kyōto School philosophers tend either to overlook their Japaneseness or to deny their individuality. Either way, the philosopher disappears from the philosophizing. Here Yusa's book is a vital corrective. Her intellectual biography both Japanizes and humanizes Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945), the founder of the Kyōto School and the inspiration for most of Japan's modern philosophy. Her narrative gives us insight after insight into the concrete contexts in which Nishida's thought developed. Her discussion of each progression in Nishida's thought over his lifetime is framed by relevant events in his family life, his professional career, his interaction with colleagues, and the readings that were inspiring him at the time. Japanese editions of modern writers' collected works commonly... (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche was immensely influential and, counter to most expectations, also very well read. An essential new reference tool for those interested in his thinking, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context identifies the chronology and huge range of philosophical books that engaged him. Rigorously examining the scope of this reading, Thomas H. Brobjer consulted over two thousand volumes in Nietzsche’s personal library, as well as his book bills, library records, journals, letters, and publications. This meticulous investigation also considers many of the annotations in (...) his books. In arguing that Nietzsche’s reading often constituted the starting point for, or counterpoint to, much of his own thinking and writing, Brobjer’s study provides scholars with fresh insight into how Nietzsche worked and thought; to which questions and thinkers he responded; and by which of them he was influenced. The result is a new and much more contextual understanding of Nietzsche's life and thinking. (shrink)