Reading the work of Max Stirner usually it is found conditioned by the critique of Marx and Engels. His texts are however rich in theoretical subtleties and nuances. One of the guidelines developed by Stirner and not sufficiently discussed by the authors of La ideología alemana is its conceptualization around love as a key to understand the political association of Men. As part of a conceptual constellation in which notions such as interest or property play a fundamental role, love (...) appears in El Único y su propiedad as a key passion from which different types of relationships between them are explained. Stirner attempts to answer why men alienate their individuality in their own creations from an approach to the sensitive materiality of the desire of men distancing from each other. In this paper I propose to take up this dimension of analysis of Max Stirner in order to highlight the importance of a political reading of his work beyond Marx’s and Engel’s critique. (shrink)

Interest in The German Ideology has largely focused on the ‘chapter’ on Feuerbach—invariably the focus of the various abridgements in which the work is usually read. But this does not reflect the weighting of the text itself, which is dominated by Marx and Engels's critique of the radical egoist philosopher Max Stirner. Which begs the question: just why did they spend so much time and effort writing about Stirner? In this paper, I will provide an answer—which comes down to (...) three related points. The first concerns the critique of reason; the second, egoistic self-interest. On both of these two points, Stirner makes a novel contribution—contributions which Marx and Engels feel clear affinities with. However, Stirner can ultimately be seen to get these two points, as it were, the wrong way around. This then leads to the third point: Stirner's misunderstanding of the nature of Communism. To clarify the nature of Communism, then, Marx and Engels were compelled to turn Stirner on his head. (shrink)

The recent profusion of studies directed to uncovering the “Young Marx” has also provoked some renewed interest in his contemporary, Johann Caspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner. With a few exceptions, the most important being William Brazill’s The Young Hegelians, Stirner has been retained in his traditional role as Marx’s first critic, the harried “Sankt Max” of The German Ideology. This perspective, established firmly by Sidney Hook and continued by David McLellen, does cast light upon Marx’s development, but (...) it cannot be expected to do justice to Stirner, who is more than a mere anti-Marxist. (shrink)

The recent profusion of studies directed to uncovering the “Young Marx” has also provoked some renewed interest in his contemporary, Johann Caspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner. With a few exceptions, the most important being William Brazill’s The Young Hegelians, Stirner has been retained in his traditional role as Marx’s first critic, the harried “Sankt Max” of The German Ideology. This perspective, established firmly by Sidney Hook and continued by David McLellen, does cast light upon Marx’s development, but (...) it cannot be expected to do justice to Stirner, who is more than a mere anti-Marxist. (shrink)

On November 21, 1994, Werner Marx passed away peacefully in the place he loved so well, his apartment in the Schloß in Bollschweil. Professor Marx was born in 1910 in Mulheim, Germany. He studied law and philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg, and Bonn before completing his state examination and doctorate in law in 1933. In the same year, he was removed from civil service and from an apprentice judgeship by the Nazis. After this, he emigrated first to Palestine and then in (...) 1938 to New York, where he took up academic studies again. After receiving an M.A. in economics, he completed the Ph.D. in philosophy, working with Kurt Reizler and Karl Löwith at the German University in Exile, later to become the New School for Social Research, and writing a dissertation on Aristotle’s ontology. During this period, he renewed his interest in Hegel and German Idealism, and also in Heidegger’s critique of the tradition and attempts to make “another beginning” in philosophy. Marx began teaching at the New School in 1949. After the appearance of his classic study, Heidegger and the Tradition, he was named successor to the Husserl-Heidegger chair in philosophy and director of Philosophical Seminar I in Freiburg, which he held from 1964 until his retirement in 1979. He also served as Director of the Husserl-Archives in Freiburg until his death. (shrink)

Since virtually all aspects of Marx's thought have been competently scrutinized during the past decade or so, it is not surprising that most of what Love says about it is familiar and uncontroversial. The one obvious exception is Love's view that Marx does not explain history teleologically. Only those who construe teleological explanations in a naive, quasi-positivistic manner will find this unexceptionable. Fortunately, neither this point nor the familiarity of Love's views of Marx obscures what is worthwhile in this seriously (...) flawed work, its treatment of the political content and ramifications of Nietzsche's philosophy. (shrink)

The Disney vacation is iconic in American culture. Advertising promises people that a trip to Disney will bring adventure, family togetherness, and even happiness itself. To understand why someone might see Disney as “the ultimate embodiment of consumer society,” the authors can start with Karl Marx. It might be helpful to temporarily forget everything one has heard about Marx, because what counts as “Marxism” in mainstream culture is often just a caricature of an interesting and wide‐ranging philosophy. From Herbert Marcuse's (...) perspective, people could say that the American culture industry tells them via media and advertising that they need to take their families to Disney so that they can be happy. Disney's emphasis on including everyone and experiencing things together as a family challenges the alienation in relationships people so often encounter. Disney can provide an opportunity for exploring their relationships outside of their everyday alienations. (shrink)

McLellan has written a very helpful study to enable us to recreate the intellectual climate of Marx's youth. McLellan's emphasis is to present the thought of the Young Hegelians from their own perspectives. In this respect he reverses the typical approach of seeing the Young Hegelians through the eyes of Marx or later Marxism. The result is a much more balanced and informative study of the Young Hegelians and their influence on Marx's early speculations. There is a general introduction in (...) which McLellan sketches the general characteristics of the Young Hegelians and the development of their ideas. This is followed by chapters on Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner, and Moses Hess. The total effect of this fine study is to show us how much Marx borrowed from his contemporary intellectuals and how he used ideas suggested by others in his own distinctive and forceful way.--R. J. B. (shrink)

While there are many points of opposition between the political philosophies of Marx and Kant, the two can greatly benefit from one another in various ways. Bringing the ideas of Marx and Kant together offers a promising way forward for each view. Most significantly, a powerful critique of capitalism can be developed from their combined thought: Kant’s political philosophy offers a robust idea of freedom to ground this critique, while Marx provides the nuanced understanding of social and political power structures (...) under capitalism that allows this idea of freedom to be properly applied. (shrink)

An excellent window on Marx's and Nietzsche's overall theories and on the foibles of modern society. Her analysis of their views on the nature of man and their consequent theories of history is competent and probes deeply into the teachings of Marx and Nietzsche.

A collection of essays by friends, students, and colleagues on Max Wartofsky's 65th birthday. Reflecting Wartofsky's own interests, topics discussed in this text range from the arts and sciences, to ethics and history, from the Enlightenment, through the 19th century to the present day.

A new 2023 translation into American English of Marx's influential 1845 "Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume IV in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. The Holy Family is Marx's first foray into (...) building his dialectical materialism, while still attacking the modern Hegelians.The main title itself is mocking Bruno Bauer's "Pure Criticism", which Marx parodies with the nonsense "Critical Criticism". This is the first publication Engels and Marx published together, only one year after meeting in person in 1844. Here he is attacking other Hegelians and Critical Philosophy writ large, arguing against Hegel's idealistic dialectic for his own dialectal Epicurean Materialism which he began to outline in his Ph.D. Thesis "Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie" in 1841. Marx believed that Critical Philosophy in general (kritische Philosophie), which sees the most fundamental task of Philosophy as primarily judging the possibility of knowledge before asserting any claim of knowledge itself, as misguided in its Platonic Ontology. The entire work is a polemic against "The Holy Family" of young Hegelians, mocking and insulting them on every page. He uses sarcastic parody, nearly Horatian satire, specifically towards Christianity- "Criticism so loved the masses that it sent its only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". Ultimately, he declared these dilettante philosophers "false prophets" and himself the true prophet of Atheistic, Skeptical and Materialistic Humanism. Here he also argues that the only way to deal with "the Jewish problem" is by eradicating Christianity and all metaphysical beliefs because the "bourgeois morality" gets in the way of implementing a true, final solution to the muddying of pure European nationality by the existence of the Jews. Here we see the foundations of the National-Socialist movement which declared "there is no God but the German people" and started eradicating millions in the name of Humanism and Progress. (shrink)

The title of this paper is intended to evoke several connotations. Since it will doubtless fail to do so, let me confess them explicitly and artlessly. First, the trinitarian character of the title suggests my debt to the dialectical tradition, from Hegel and Marx to Peirce and Dewey. Second, the alliterative character of the title indicates my debt to Nelson Goodman, perpetrator of the most alarming alliterations allowed in contemporary philosophy. In fact, the text of my sermon can be found (...) in Goodman’s Languages of Art: “Talking does not make the world, or even pictures, but talking and pictures participate in making each other and the world as we know them.”. (shrink)

There is an intimate relation between these two aspects of the judgment: the predictive judgment is certainly not a priori. It presupposes some antecedent judgment that the sugar in the spoon does taste sweet or that it did taste sweet. This does not necessarily presuppose the antecedent direct experience of tasting the sugar, for its antecedent could be an inferred judgment, or a communicated and believed judgment. But, on the other hand, neither is the produced judgment of an experienced sweetness (...) clearly a posteriori; for to determine that what was tasted is sweet involves a subtle interplay of expectation and antecedent definition of sweetness which is of the nature of the judgment event, and which is, broadly speaking, predictive. It would be terribly neat if predictions were clearly a priori and postdictions clearly a posteriori and both logical atomism and its correlate functional form, mechanism, would be able to build unassailable causal systems on such hard "givens.". (shrink)

Perhaps I should define what I mean by "ontological status" here, since much of the ensuing argument is concerned with it. I do not mean verifiability or confirmability in any reductive sense, physicalistically or phenomenologically, although it is perfectly clear that the description of how things exist requires such criteria. But to translate such criteria into ontological proofs, of the sort "what has effects, is real" is to fall prey to circularity. The alternative to such an apparently "inferred" ontology is (...) not necessarily pure, non-ontological descriptionism. Hume's suggestion was that "whatever we conceive, we conceive to be existent." In the context of Hume's conditional view of conception, such an attribution of existence to what we conceive is always probative, hypothetical. In this sense, the criteria for verifiability or confirmability also presuppose existence, even if only as the matrix in which hypothetical objects or events either do or do not have a place. If Hume's formulation is understood reflexively, then not only is what we conceive conceived to be existent, but the conception itself is conceived to be existent, since we can conceive of the fact of conceiving. This involves, of course, a distinction of levels, and the whole range of problems of metalanguages and types. For my purposes here, I shall only point out that, over the range of levels, what we conceive is neither more nor less existent than the conception itself; the empirical concept is neither more nor less existent than its extension. Existence is not a matter of degree, whatever the distinction of levels or types. Yet, there is a certain sense to the common sense appreciation that some things seem to be "more real" than others. What does break the circle of a uniform, non-modal existentiality, and makes sense out of the vaguely intuited "more real," is the hypothesis of derivative relationships between existences, i.e., the hypothesis of genetic sequence and the emergence of qualities in this sequence. In this sense, to establish the ontological status of judgment is to establish the derivative sequence of which judgment is the final term. Yet, to establish ontological status in this way, to say things are the way they have become, is to assume that genetic sequence ends, or is abolished in some instantaneous now, outside of which it is meaningless to speak of ontological status. To press this further, every genetic sequence can be differentiated into a series of "nows" each one of which paradoxically constitutes a final term in the series. As derivation has to do with coming-to-be, and apparently ends with being, in the partial sense of being constituted, so ontological status requires the additional parameter of function, as well as derivation; it requires us to speak of effects, which lie beyond the end term in any genetic sequence; to define what is also in terms of what "it" does, or what "it" becomes, or what "it" causes, or with operationism, in terms of "goings-on," without the antecedent subject-term. (shrink)

Although natural philosophers have long been interested in individuality, it has been of interest to contemporary philosophers of biology because of its role in different aspects of evolutionary biology. These debates include whether species are individuals or classes, what counts as a unit of selection, and how transitions in individuality occur evolutionarily. Philosophical analyses are often conducted in terms of metaphysics (“what is an individual?”), rather than epistemology (“how can and do researchers conceptualize individuals so as to address some (...) of their scientific goals?”). We review several philosophical distinctions in order to shift attention from metaphysics to epistemology. Many controversies involve epistemological differences rather than metaphysical disagreement. This implies that a pluralist stance about individuality in biology is warranted and has metaphysical consequences because the pluralism emerges from the diversity of scientific interests that investigate the complexity of living phenomena. (shrink)

The fourth volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science consists mainly of papers which were contributed to our Colloquium during the past few years. The volume represents a wide range of interests in contem porary philosophy of science: issues in the philosophy of mind and of language, the neurophysiology of perceptual and linguistic behavior, philosophy of history and of the social sciences, and studies in the fun damental categories and methods of philosophy and the inter-relation ships of the (...) sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Papers on the logic and methods of the natural sciences, including biological, physical and mathematical topics appear in the fifth volume of our series. We have included in the present volume the first English translation of the classic and fundamental work on aphasia by Carl Wernicke, together with a lucid and appreciative guide to his work by Dr. Norman Geschwind. The papers were not written to form a coherent volume, nor have they been edited with such a purpose. They represent current work-in progress, both in the United States and in Europe. Although most of the authors are philosophers, it is worth noting that we have essays of philosophical significance here written by a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist, and by three neurophysiologists. We hope that collaboration among working scientists and working philosophers may develop further. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical (...) philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo) is a loose conglomeration of research programs in the life sciences with two main axes: (a) the evolution of development, or inquiry into the pattern and processes of how ontogeny varies and changes over time; and, (b) the developmental basis of evolution, or inquiry into the causal impact of ontogenetic processes on evolutionary trajectories—both in terms of constraint and facilitation. Philosophical issues are found along both axes surrounding concepts such as evolvability, novelty, and modularity. The developmental (...) basis of evolution has garnered much attention because it speaks to the possibility of revising a standard construal of evolutionary theory, but the evolution of development harbors its own conceptual questions. This article addresses the heterogeneity of Evo-devo’s conglomerate structure (including disagreements over its individuation), as well as the concepts and controversies of philosophical interest pertaining to the evolution of development and the developmental basis of evolution. Future research will benefit from a shift away from global theorizing toward the scientific practices of Evo-devo. (shrink)

The search for an ethics rooted in human experience is the crux of this deeply compassionate work, here translated from the 1983 German edition. Distinguished philosopher Werner Marx provides a close reading, critique, and Weiterdenken , or "further thinking," of Martin Heidegger's later work on death, language, and poetry, which has often been dismissed as both obscure and obscurantist. In it Marx seeks, and perhaps finds, both a measure for distinguishing between good and evil and a motive for preferring the (...) former. The poet Hölderlin posed the question, "Is there a measure on earth?" His own answer was emphatic, "There is none," for he was convinced that the measure for man was to be found only in the domain of the heavenly beings. Such metaphysical assumptions, as well as the attempt to found ethical conduct in the nature of man as a rational being, have been rejected by many contemporary thinkers, particularly Heidegger. Yet these thinkers have not been able to provide a satisfactory alternative to metaphysical foundations of the standards for responsible human conduct. Marx, therefore, goes beyond Heidegger in demonstrating how several of his most basic notions could be relevant to a secular morality in our age. It is death, Marx claims, that unsettles man and transforms his conduct toward his fellow man. the common experience of mortality nourishes ethical life--and leads to the measures of compassion, love, and recognition of one's fellow human beings. "It is only on the basis of these 'traditional virtues,'" Marx writes, "that we can find a motive for averting the impending dangers which have often enough been described so vividly and convincingly.". (shrink)

This edited collection showcases some of the best recent research in the philosophy of science. It comprises of thematically arranged papers presented at the 5th conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA15), covering a broad variety of topics within general philosophy of science, and philosophical issues pertaining to specific sciences. The collection will appeal to researchers with an interest in the philosophical underpinnings of their own discipline, and to philosophers who wish to study the latest work on (...) the themes discussed. (shrink)

Socialism has long been thought by many to be the enemy of freedom. Here, I argue that in order to understand the relationship between socialism and freedom, we must have a better idea both of what socialism is and of what it is to have a right to freedom. To start, I argue that the right to freedom is best understood as a right to direct one’s own will in the world consistently with the rights of others to do the (...) same. This Kantian conception of the right to freedom is importantly different from the ubiquitous conception of freedom as negative liberty: with this Kantian conception, one’s right to freedom is limited to directing one’s own will and does not include a right to direct the wills of others. I then argue that socialism, like the right to freedom, is often misunderstood: today, socialists often argue for robustly democratic forms of socialism that are far from the autocratic so-called “socialist” regimes of the last century. With a better understanding of both socialism and the right to freedom, we can see that the right to freedom is indeed compatible with a robustly democratic form of socialism. (shrink)

Author of "German Ideology" in the "Shengmaikesi" section and the "sole and their property" for the text to support, through Marx, Stirner, Feuerbach detailed study of the relationship between the three ideas that : First, it is Stirner on Feuerbach's materialist critique of this school, so that Marx realized that Feuerbach's doctrine of the danger, that is necessary to refute Marx's Feuerbach's humanism , but also to prevent its fall into Stirner's radical individualism; Second, it is Stirner's critique of Feuerbach (...) Marx forced to change their philosophical position, and finally turned to Marx also criticized Feuerbach criticized Stirner himself. (shrink)

Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Theory and Practice aims at a systematic investigation of a number of foundational issues in the field of molecular medicine. The volume is organized around four broad modules focusing, respectively, on the following key aspects: What are the nature, scope, and limits of molecular medicine? How does it provide explanations? How does it represent and model phenomena of interest? How does it infer new knowledge from data and experiments? The essays collected here, (...) authored by prominent scientists and philosophers of science, focus on a handful of mainstream topics in the philosophical literature, such as causation, explanation, modeling, and scientific inference. These previously unpublished contributions shed new light on these traditional topics by integrating them with problems, methods, and results from three prominent areas of contemporary biomedical science: basic research, translational and clinical research, and clinical practice. (shrink)

The Darwinian theory of evolution is itself evolving and this book presents the details of the core of modern Darwinism and its latest developmental directions. The authors present current scientific work addressing theoretical problems and challenges in four sections, beginning with the concepts of evolution theory, its processes of variation, heredity, selection, adaptation and function, and its patterns of character, species, descent and life. -/- The second part of this book scrutinizes Darwinism in the philosophy of science and its usefulness (...) in understanding ecosystems, whilst the third section deals with its application in disciplines beyond the biological sciences, including evolutionary psychology and evolutionary economics, Darwinian morality and phylolinguistics. The final section addresses anti-Darwinism, the creationist view and issues around teaching evolution in secondary schools. -/- The reader learns how current experimental biology is opening important perspectives on the sources of variation, and thus of the very power of natural selection. This work examines numerous examples of the extension of the principle of natural selection and provides the opportunity to critically reflect on a rich theory, on the methodological rigour that presides in its extensions and exportations, and on the necessity to measure its advantages and also its limits. Scholars interested in modern Darwinism and scientific research, its concepts, research programs and controversies will find this book an excellent read, and those considering how Darwinism might evolve, how it can apply to the human sciences and other disciplines beyond its origins will find it particularly valuable. Originally produced in French (Les Mondes Darwiniens), the scope and usefulness of the book have led to the production of this English text, to reach a wider audience. This book is a milestone in the impressive penetration by Francophone scholars into the world of Darwinian science, its historiography and philosophy over the last two decades. (shrink)

Developmental biology is the science that investigates how a variety of interacting processes generate an organism’s heterogeneous shapes, size, and structural features that arise on the trajectory from embryo to adult, or more generally throughout a life cycle. It represents an exemplary area of contemporary experimental biology that focuses on phenomena that have puzzled natural philosophers and scientists for more than two millennia. Philosophers of biology have shown interest in developmental biology due to the potential relevance of development for (...) understanding evolution, the theme of reductionism in genetic explanations, and via increased attention to the details of particular research programs, such as stem cell biology. Developmental biology displays a rich array of material and conceptual practices that can be analyzed to better understand the scientific reasoning exhibited in experimental life science. This entry briefly reviews some central phenomena of ontogeny and then explores four domains that represent some of the import and promise of conceptual reflection on the epistemology of developmental biology. (shrink)

At the height of Marx's admiration for Ludwig Feuerbach, he nonetheless complained that Feuerbach referred �too much to nature and too little to politics�. Marx's comment set the tone for subsequent assessments of Feuerbach's politics. For however radical Feuerbach may have been in certain spheres, the assumption remains that his political intentions were exhausted in vague evocations of �Love� as the bond of humanity. Indeed, scholars have generally believed that it was Marx who translated Feuerbach from �theology� to �politics�. I (...) intend to argue that this perspective fails to recognize not only the unity of theological and political critique in Feuerbach's work during the 1830s and early 1840s, but also the specific means by which he hoped to realize his political-theological goals. Feuerbach will emerge from this account as a social critic who was deeply troubled by the historical development of �civil society�, that sphere of social life where the rules of the market prevail and individuals pursue their self- interest. Because he repeatedly associated Christianity with civil society, he sought to overcome both in the same act of critique: Christian civil society would be replaced by atheist �human society�. Feuerbach's politics should be understood as a radical response to a problem posed by Rousseau and faced by Hegel: the question of the relationship between �citizenship, commerce, and Christianity�. Feuerbach addressed an eighteenth-century concern about the threat posed to political virtue by the egotism of both commerce and Christianity; but his answer expressed his membership in the loose constellation of intellectual forces which were beginning to challenge the industrial and political transformation of western Europe in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Tenenbaum and Griffiths's article continues three disturbing trends that typify category learning modeling: (1) modelers tend to focus on a single induction task; (2) the drive to create models that are formally elegant has resulted in a gross simplification of the phenomena of interest; (3) related research is generally ignored when doing so is expedient. [Tenenbaum & Griffiths].

Hume has a special place in justifications of claims made for rational choice theory to offer a unified language and explanatory framework for the social sciences. He is invoked in support of the assumptions characterising the instrumental rationality of agents and the constancy of their motivations across different institutional settings. This paper explores the problems with the expansionary aims of rational choice theory through criticism of these appeals to Hume. First, Hume does not assume constancy. Moreover, Hume’s sensitivity to the (...) relationships between institutional setting and individual motivation owes something to the relative transparency of the plural language of vices and virtues that he employs. Second, rational choice theory’s minimal modification of Hume’s account of the relation of reason and the passions through the introduction of constraints of consistency on preferences is unstable. (shrink)

WHEN Marx called Kant the "philosopher of the French Revolution," he did not have in mind the "jacobin" Kant who continued his enthusiastic support of the Revolution long after his freedom-loving younger contemporaries such as Schiller and Goethe had become disillusioned with its course. Marx’s image of Kant is in fact that of the "philosopher of the bourgeoisie" in its struggle for freedom from the constraints of the feudal order. The substitution of a socio-economic class for a political revolution in (...) these two phrases entails a dangerous reduction of politics to economics which typifies a caricatural Marxism. What is more, such a reduction of course distorts the object of analysis, be it the Kantian philosophy, the French Revolution, or our own contemporary socio-political context. (shrink)

Author of "German Ideology" in the "Shengmaikesi" section and the "sole and their property" for the text to support, through Marx, Stirner, Feuerbach detailed study of the relationship between the three ideas that : First, it is Stirner on Feuerbach's materialist critique of this school, so that Marx realized that Feuerbach's doctrine of the danger, that is necessary to refute Marx's Feuerbach's humanism, but also to prevent its fall into Stirner's radical individualism; Second, it is Stirner's critique of Feuerbach Marx (...) forced to change their philosophical position, and finally turned to Marx also criticized Feuerbach criticized Stirner himself. (shrink)

Summary In this paper I inquire by way of a phenomenological description whether the experience of an encounter with one's own mortality could not so transform a person's ethos that the virtues of justice, compassion and neighborly love could ensue. I will concentrate on such an encounter in and through the mood of dread. This paper, in opposition to Heidegger, is only concerned with it's effect regarding our ethical comportment. I claim that the mood of dread not only destroys the (...) mood of indifference, but also sends him on a pathway of self‐transforming moods. As to the “understanding” accompanying moods in the field of ethical comportment I try to show that it has the character of a direct non‐ratiocinative insight.RésuméJe voudrais dans cet article examiner, à l'aide d'une description phénoménologique, si l'expérience que constitue la rencontre avec la perspective de sa propre mort ne peut pas transformer l'éthique d'un homme de telle manière que les vertus de justice, de pitié et de reconnaissance de la dignité humaine puissent s'y développer. Je me limite ici à une telle rencontre avec un sentiment d'horreur. Cet article n'aborde — contrairement à la manière dont Heidegger conçoit l'angoisse — que l'effet sur le comportement éthique. Je suis d'avis que le sentiment d'horreur non seulement détruit celui d'indifférence, mais dispose l'homme à vouloir se changer lui‐me̊me. Quant à la »compréhension« des sentiments accompagnant le comportement éthique, je montre qu'elle a le caractère d'une intuition immédiate et non rationnelle.ZusammenfassungIn diesem Aufsatz möchte ich auf dem Wege einer phänomenologischen Beschreibung untersuchen, ob die Erfahrung einer Begegnung mit der eigenen Sterblichkeit das Ethos eines Menschen nicht so verwandeln kann, dass sich die Tugenden von Gerechtigkeit, Mitleid und mitmenschlicher Anerkennung entwickeln können. Ich beschränke mich dabei auf eine solche Begegnung in der und durch die Gestimmtheit des Entsetzens. Dieser Aufsatz erörtert — im Gegensatz zu Heideggers Auffassung der Angst — nur die Wirkung auf unser ethisches Verhalten. Ich bin der Auffassung, dass die Gestimmtheit des Entsetzens nicht nur die Stimmung der Gleichgültigkeit zerstört, sondern den Menschen auch auf einen Weg der selbstverändernden Gestimmtheiten sendet. Was das »Verstehen« begleitender Stimmungen im Bereich des ethischen Verhaltens betrifft, so versuche ich zu zeigen, dass dies den Charakter eines unmittelbaren, nicht‐rationalen Einsehens hat. (shrink)

Phillip Sloan has thoroughly documented the importance of Darwin's general invertebrate research program in the period from 1826 to 1836 and demonstrated how it had an impact on his conversion to transformism. Although Darwin later spent eight years of his life investigating barnacles, this period has received less treatment in studies of Darwin and the development of his thought. The most prominent question for the barnacle period that has been attended to is why Darwin "delayed" in publishing his theory of (...) evolution. A related but distinct question concerns the variety of earlier events and influences that led Darwin to the study of "Cirripedia" in 1846, apart from its role in the trajectory that led to "On the Origin of Species ". In this paper I focus on four specific episodes prior to 1846 that inform a picture of why Darwin had an antecedent interest in barnacles: the orientation to collecting strange and curious invertebrate organisms, as well as the strong affinities of Darwin's invertebrate collecting on the Beagle voyage with the work of John Vaughan Thompson; the critical role of marine invertebrate fossils in Darwin's geological reasoning aboard the Beagle and exemplified in his "Geological Observations of South America;" the strange absence of a "Zoology of the Beagle" volume on invertebrates and Darwin's original intent to publish some of the descriptions himself; and the noteworthy presence of barnacles in Darwin's transformation theorizing between 1837 and 1839. There is a wealth of support for the thesis that Darwin had a strong interest in cirripedes prior to the formal barnacle research, blunting arguments that it was psychological aversion or a feeling of inferiority about his taxonomic abilities that drove Darwin to the cirripedes. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION It is a commonplace to observe that the left-Hegelian Max Stirner is little-known.gure in the history of political and philosophical thought. However, that obscurity should not be exaggerated. The author of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum is not only familiar to certain rather specialised and largely academic circles-those with an interest in Hegelianism, for example, or in the early intellectual development of Karl Marx -he is also, and more widely, known as a member of, and in.uence upon, the (...) anarchist tradition. Stirner's best-known work is often excerpted in anthologies of anarchist writings, and his name is regularly included as part of the modern pantheon in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought. (shrink)

Faced with declining fertility rates, media in Britain are reacting with anxiety about cultural annihilation. To look at how nationalism inflects concerns over biological and cultural reproduction, the authors analyze coverage of falling fertility and rising immigration in Great Britain in major newspapers in 2000-2. They find pronatalist appeals to be commonand especially directed at women but varying in how women’s duty to the nation is framed. Appeals characterized as begging, lecturing, threatening, and bribing express different relationships between individual (...) class='Hi'>interest and the national good and offer positive and negative views of women. The political leanings of specific newspapers affect how they connect biological reproduction to the cultural threat seen in immigration. Even positive views of women as making rational reproductive choices are tainted by alarmist views of immigration as a threat to national survival. (shrink)

Todd A. Gooch - The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 667-668 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Todd Gooch Eastern Kentucky University Douglas Moggach, editor. The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 345. Cloth, $75.00. Of the thirteen essays collected in this volume, several of which discuss more (...) than one thinker, approximately three are devoted to Marx, two to Feuerbach, two to Bruno Bauer, two to Max Stirner, and one each to Eduard Gans, Edgar Bauer, and Friedrich Engels. Underlying the diversity of their individual positions, these "New Hegelians" were united by a common interest in exploiting the conceptual resources of Hegelian.. (shrink)

Historically, entities with a vested interest in a product that critics have suggested is harmful have consistently used research to back their claims that the product is safe. Prominent examples are: tobacco, lead, bisphenol A, and atrazine. Research literature indicates that about 80–90 % of studies with industry affiliation found no harm from the product, while only about 10–20 % of studies without industry affiliation found no harm. In parallel to other historical debates, recent studies examining a possible relationship (...) between mercury exposure and autism spectrum disorder show a similar dichotomy. Studies sponsored and supported by industry or entities with an apparent conflict of interest have most often shown no evidence of harm or no “consistent” evidence of harm, while studies without such affiliations report positive evidence of a Hg/autism association. The potentially causal relationship between Hg exposure and ASD differs from other toxic products since there is a broad coalition of entities for whom a conflict of interest arises. These include influential governmental public health entities, the pharmaceutical industry, and even the coal burning industry. This review includes a systematic literature search of original studies on the potential relationship between Hg and ASD from 1999 to date, finding that of the studies with public health and/or industry affiliation, 86 % reported no relationship between Hg and ASD. However, among studies without public health and/or industry affiliation, only 19 % find no relationship between Hg and ASD. The discrepancy in these results suggests a bias indicative of a conflict of interest. (shrink)

The last two decades have witnessed a modest revival of scholarly interest in the writings of Max Stirner, a contemporary of Marx and probably the most radical of the Young Hegelians. Not unpredictably, there are many different interpretations of Stirner’s ideas being offered; this diversity may, as Lawrence Stepelevich notes, “be provoked by any number of real or imagined connections with whatever or whomever is of current concern.” There are, in fact, many voices speaking out of the pages of (...) The Ego and Its Own and many subtle twistings in the complex line of inquiry that Stirner follows, so it is not altogether surprising that commentators differ on its meaning and significance. However, much of the secondary literature on Stirner has given a jaundiced view of his ideas, has been one-sided and partial, because it has failed to ask the right questions with regard to his central argument. Stirner takes his readers on a rigorous intellectual journey toward a confrontation with the most basic questions of ontology and axiology; in answer to them he offers a process theory of the self and a radically contingent view of moral choice, which have certain implications for political practice. A reconsideration of Stirner’s ideas is worthwhile in order to sort through the different voices and reconstruct the vision of the self and values that lie at the heart of his argument. (shrink)

Abe and his friend Sol are out for a walk together in a part of town they haven't been in before. Passing a Christian church, they notice a curious sign in front that says "$1,000 to anyone who will convert." "I wonder what that's about," says Abe. "I think I'll go in and have a look. I'll be back in a minute; just wait for me." Sol sits on the sidewalk bench and waits patiently for nearly half an hour. Finally, (...) Abe reappears. "Well," asks Sol, "what are they up to? Who are they trying to convert? Why do they care? Did you get the $1,000?" Indignantly Abe replies, "Money. That's all you people care about." Ted Cohen thinks that's not a bad joke. But he also doesn't think it's an easy joke. For a listener or reader to laugh at Abe's conversion, a complicated set of conditions must be met. First, a listener has to recognize that Abe and Sol are Jewish names. Second, that listener has to be familiar with the widespread idea that Jews are more interested in money than anything else. And finally, the listener needs to know this information in advance of the joke, and without anyone telling him or her. Jokes, in short, are complicated transactions in which communities are forged, intimacy is offered, and otherwise offensive stereotypes and cliches lose their sting—at least sometimes. _Jokes_ is a book of jokes and a book about them. Cohen loves a good laugh, but as a philosopher, he is also interested in how jokes work, why they work, and when they don't. The delight at the end of a joke is the result of a complex set of conditions and processes, and Cohen takes us through these conditions in a philosophical exploration of humor. He considers questions of audience, selection of joke topics, the ethnic character of jokes, and their morality, all with plenty of examples that will make you either chuckle or wince. _Jokes:_ more humorous than other philosophy books, more philosophical than other humor books. "Befitting its subject, this study of jokes is... light, funny, and thought-provoking.... [T]he method fits the material, allowing the author to pepper the book with a diversity of jokes without flattening their humor as a steamroller theory might. Such a book is only as good as its jokes, and most of his are good.... [E]ntertainment and ideas in one gossamer package."—_Kirkus Reviews_ "One of the many triumphs of Ted Cohen's Jokes-apart from the not incidental fact that the jokes are so good that he doesn't bother to compete with them-is that it never tries to sound more profound than the jokes it tells.... [H]e makes you feel he is doing an unusual kind of philosophy. As though he has managed to turn J. L. Austin into one of the Marx Brothers.... Reading Jokes makes you feel that being genial is the most profound thing we ever do-which is something jokes also make us feel-and that doing philosophy is as natural as being amused."—Adam Phillips, _London Review of Books_ "[A] lucid and jargon-free study of the remarkable fact that we divert each other with stories meant to make us laugh.... An illuminating study, replete with killer jokes."—Kevin McCardle, _The Herald_ "Cohen is an ardent joke-maker, keen to offer us a glimpse of how jokes are crafted and to have us dwell rather longer on their effects."—Barry C. Smith, _Times Literary Supplement_ "Because Ted Cohen loves jokes, we come to appreciate them more, and perhaps think further about the quality of good humor and the appropriateness of laughter in our lives."—Steve Carlson, _Christian Science Monitor_. (shrink)

The last two decades have witnessed a modest revival of scholarly interest in the writings of Max Stirner, a contemporary of Marx and probably the most radical of the Young Hegelians. Not unpredictably, there are many different interpretations of Stirner’s ideas being offered; this diversity may, as Lawrence Stepelevich notes, “be provoked by any number of real or imagined connections with whatever or whomever is of current concern.” There are, in fact, many voices speaking out of the pages of (...) The Ego and Its Own and many subtle twistings in the complex line of inquiry that Stirner follows, so it is not altogether surprising that commentators differ on its meaning and significance. However, much of the secondary literature on Stirner has given a jaundiced view of his ideas, has been one-sided and partial, because it has failed to ask the right questions with regard to his central argument. Stirner takes his readers on a rigorous intellectual journey toward a confrontation with the most basic questions of ontology and axiology; in answer to them he offers a process theory of the self and a radically contingent view of moral choice, which have certain implications for political practice. A reconsideration of Stirner’s ideas is worthwhile in order to sort through the different voices and reconstruct the vision of the self and values that lie at the heart of his argument. (shrink)

Fundamental problems of the uses of formal techniques and of natural and instrumental practices have been raised again and again these past two decades, in many quarters and from varying viewpoints. We have brought a number of quite basic studies of these issues together in this volume, not linked con ceptually nor by any rigorously defined problematic, but rather simply some of the most interesting and even provocative of recent research accomplish ments. Most of these papers are derived from the (...) Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during 1973-80, the two exceptions being those of Karel Berka (on scales of measurement) and A. A. Zinov'ev (on a non-tradi tional theory of quantifiers). Just how intriguing these results (or conjectures?) seem to us may be seen from some brief quotations: (1) Judson Webb: ".... the abstract machine concept has many of the appropriate kinds of properties for modelling living, reproducing, rule following, self-reflecting, accident-prone, and lucky creatures... the a priori logical results relevant to the abstract machine concept, above all Godel's, could not conceivably have turned out any better for the mechanist. " (2) M. L. Dalla Chiara: "... modal interpretation (of quantum logic) shows clearly that it possesses a logical meaning which is quite independent of quantum mechanics. " (3) Isaac Levi: (as against Peirce and Popper) "... infallibilism is con sistent with corrigibilism, and a view which respects avoidance of error is an important desideratum for science. (shrink)

The essays in this volume share an ambitious interest in investigating death as an individual, social, and metaphorical phenomenon that may be exemplified by themes involving burial rituals, identity, and commemoration. The disciplines represented are as diverse as art history, classics, history, music, languages and literatures, and the approaches taken reflect various aspects of contemporary death studies.