Abstract:Although best known to English-speaking readers as the general editor of the Dictionary of Untranslatables, the work of French philologist and philosopher Barbara Cassin is eclectic, encompassing literary studies, ancient philosophy, rhetoric, translation theory, psychoanalysis, politics, and more. From Presocratic philosophy to more recent reflections on Big Tech and democracy, Cassin's work is rooted in "sophistics," an approach that emphasizes the primacy of language in shaping our interactions with the world. Situating this sophistical approach vis-à-vis classical philology (Bollack) (...) and the philosophical tradition (Heidegger, Derrida), this essay explores the contribution of "sophistical reading" to our understanding of philosophical and literary texts. Showing how Cassin uses rhetorical theory to problematize any simple opposition of the latter, the essay concludes with a critical evaluation of Cassin's reading of Helen, Euripides' most sophistical play. (shrink)

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 Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, it sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida's response to a number of key questions.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)

Patricia De Martelaere was a Belgian author, philosopher, and practitioner of shadowboxing. She wrote an inspiring little book on Taoism that stresses the physical, energetic, and martial aspects of its practice. This paper elaborates upon three central ideas from her work, turns them into a direction that she did not envision, and applies them to a critical-historical interpretation of the Taoist texts that she elaborates upon: an active way of non-knowing, the awareness of a shared ground, and the intellectual (...) fertility resulting from this approach. By occasionally putting aside certain assumptions from contemporary research on early Chinese Taoist philosophers - with respect to books, authors, philosophical consistency, schools, etc. - we can offer alternative accounts to the now dominant forms of interpretation. This approach does not take a position in favor of or against the existence or importance of such entities as “books‘, “philosophers‘, or “schools‘ in pre-imperial China. Nor does it promote an alternative for the dominant narratives. It simply allows for a degree of openness with respect to these narratives, thereby allowing for greater nuance that is at risk of being suffocated in the current context of academic philosophy. (shrink)

This article presents evidence supporting the claim that ethical reasoning is a skill that can be taught and assessed. We propose a working definition of ethical reasoning as 1) the ability to identify, analyze, and weigh moral aspects of a particular situation, and 2) to make decisions that are informed and warranted by the moral investigation. The evidence consists of a description of an ethical reasoning education program—Ethical Reasoning in Action —designed to increase ethical reasoning skills in a variety of (...) situations and areas of life. ERiA is housed at a public, major comprehensive U.S. university—James Madison University—and assessment of the program focuses on interventions delivered prior to and during orientation for incoming first-year students. Findings indicate that the interventions measurably enhance the ability of undergraduate students to reason ethically. ERiA’s competency-targeted program and positive student learning outcomes offers a promising model for higher education ethics programs seeking to connect classroom learning in ethics to decision-making in everyday life. (shrink)

Like many North African, Francophone, and world writers whose lives span the historic divide of independence from colonialism, Abdelkébir Khatibi’s work focuses in large part upon the idea of encounter, or, in French, “rencontre.” In this paper I focus upon the figure of the orphan in La mémoire tatouée and Le lutteur de classe à la manière taoïste, two of his earliest texts. By focusing upon the orphan as a multivalent term, and by following Khatibi’s emphasis upon language, literature, and (...) even life itself as a game or experiment, we can see how Khatibi creates an ethics of encounter that derives its meaning from recuperating a negatively connotated word and transforming it into a term of positive value. With the term “orphan,” he shows how through encountering the Other, by extending beyond into the unknown, by exceeding the circumscriptions of ancestry, identity, and national culture, the individual rises into a new status of free living. Moreover, it is equally through the practice of writing that life redounds with life; writing for Khatibi is never a mimetic representation of life per se but a space for experimenting, for discovery, and for exceeding the parochial nature of an individual’s physical placement in the world. In this sense, the orphan status of his writing shows itself through his aggressively restless, polyphonic, and ageneric writing that uses the localization of genre only as a hinge to push against in the quest to articulate a new relation to the world. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s thought is disturbing. Provocative. Scandalous even, at least for those who do not easily tolerate the unmitigated truth about the social. Nonetheless his ideas, among the most important and innovative of our time, are here to stay. This thought has taken form in the course of a career and through works on diverse subjects that have constructed a far-reaching analytical model of social life, which the author calls more readily an anthropology rather than a sociology. In their totality, (...) they constitute today an original and powerful proposal to explain human practices. In the face of criticisms commonly leveled at Bourdieu’s thought (notably the charge that it reduces everything to a single schematic model), it is important to identify the spirit of his enterprise. Early on, it is true, his thought drew on a few fundamental concepts—the trilogy habitus, field (champ), practice (pratique)—to which it constantly returned, and followed a clearly defined trajectory. At the same time, however, he continually reformulated, adapted, and refined his analytical model, depending on the operations to which he subjected new objects of inquiry. The regenerative and transformative force of his thought was supported by two convictions. First, that there being nothing more vain than theory for theory’s sake, it is preferable that theoretical production originate in the study of concrete and occasionally very specific cases. Second, that in order to escape stereotypical classifications, boundaries separating disciplines are best transgressed, thereby favoring new constructions of the object of inquiry. (shrink)

Steve Coutinho explores in detail the fundamental concepts of Daoist thought as represented in three early texts: the _Laozi_, the _Zhuangzi_, and the _Liezi_. Readers interested in philosophy yet unfamiliar with Daoism will gain a comprehensive understanding of these works from this analysis, and readers fascinated by ancient China who also wish to grasp its philosophical foundations will appreciate the clarity and depth of Coutinho's explanations. Coutinho writes a volume for all readers, whether or not they have (...) a background in philosophy or Chinese studies. A work of comparative philosophy, this volume also integrates the concepts and methods of contemporary philosophical discourse into a discussion of early Chinese thought. The resulting dialogue relates ancient Chinese thought to contemporary philosophical issues and uses modern Western ideas and approaches to throw new interpretive light on classical texts. Rather than function as historical curiosities, these works act as living philosophies in conversation with contemporary thought and experience. Coutinho respects the multiplicity of Daoist philosophies while also revealing a distinctive philosophical sensibility, and he provides clear explanations of these complex texts without resorting to oversimplification. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--the original expression of Taoist philosophy--and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes the (...) seminal text of Taoism--_Inward Training (Nei-yeh)_--not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C. (the late Warring States period in China). These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

In the past 250 years, David Hume probably had a greater impact on the field of philosophy of religion than any other single philosopher. He relentlessly attacked the standard proofs for God's existence, traditional notions of God's nature and divine governance, the connection between morality and religion, and the rationality of belief in miracles. He also advanced radical theories of the origin of religious ideas, grounding such notions in human psychology rather than in divine reality. In the last decade (...) of his life Hume wrote 'I cou'd cover the Floor of a large Room with Books and Pamphlets wrote against me'. Indeed, most of these targeted his writings on religion. This, the third part of the Early Responses to Hume series, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited, collects responses to Hume's writings on religion published during his life, namely, 'Of Miracles', 'Of a Particular Providence and a Future State', The Natural History of Religion , and the posthumously published works Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , 'Of Suicide' and 'Of the Immortality of the Soul'. The set covers a wide range of the replies Hume's writings provoked, including contributions by Philip Skelton, William Adams, Thomas Rutherforth, William Warburton, Anthony Ellys, John Douglas, John Leland, Thomas Stona, Voltaire, George Campbell, Herman Andrew Pistorius, Duncan Shaw, William Samuel Powell, Thomas Hayter, Joseph Milner, William Paley, Charles Moore, Richard Joseph Sulivan, John Hey, Samuel Vince, Lord Brougham and Thomas De Quincey. (shrink)

A common analysis of Edmund Husserl’s early works on the philosophy of logic and mathematics presents these writings as the result of a combination of two distinct strands of influence: on the one hand a mathematical influence due to his teachers is Berlin, such as Karl Weierstrass, and on the other hand a philosophical influence due to his later studies in Vienna with Franz Brentano. However, the formative influences on Husserl’s early philosophy cannot be so (...) cleanly separated into a philosophical and a mathematical pathway. Growing evidence indicates that a Brentanist philosophy of mathematics was already in place before Husserl. Rather than an original combination at the confluence of two different streams, his early writings represent an elaboration of topics and problems that were already being discussed in the School of Brentano within a pre-existing framework. The traditional account understandably neglects Brentano’s own work on the philosophy of mathematics and logic, which can be found mostly in his unpublished manuscripts and lectures, and various works by Brentano’s students on the philosophy of mathematics which have only recently emerged from obscurity. Husserl’s early works must be correctly placed in this preceding context in order to be fully understood and correctly assessed. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text -- the original expression of Taoist philosophy -- and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold (...) D. Roth exhumes the seminal text of Taoism -- _Inward Training _ -- not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C.. These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

Through reading the early work of Walter Benjamin—up to and including the Trauerspiel, author Monad Rrenban elicits a cohesive conception of the wild, inforgettable form, philosophy, as inherent in everything. This book, distinct in its analysis and depth of analysis, elaborates the wild, unforgettable form—philosophy in relation to language, the discipline and the practice of philosophy, criticism, and the politics of death.

Volume 4 of’ “The Early Works” series covers the period of Dewey’s last year and one-half at the University of Michigan and his first half-year at the University of Chicago. In addition to sixteen articles the present volume contains Dewey’s reviews of six books and three articles, verbatim reports of three oral statements made by Dewey, and a full-length book, The Study of Ethics. Like its predecessors in this series, this volume presents a “clear text,” free of interpretive (...) or reference material. Apparatus, including references, corrections, and emendations, is confined to appendix material. Fredson Bowers, the Consulting Textual Editor, has provided an essay on the textual principles and procedures, and Wayne A. R. Leys, Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, has written an Introduction discussing the relationship between Dewey’s writings of this period and his later work. That Dewey’s scholarship and writing was at an especially high level during 1893 and 1894 may be considered an index to the significance of this two-year period. (shrink)

Volume 1 of The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898 is entitled Early Essays and Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding, 1882-1888. Included here are all Dewey's earliest writings, from his first published article through his book on Leibniz. The materials in this volume provide a chronological record of Dewey's early development--beginning with the article he sent to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1881 while he was a high-school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania, (...) and closing with his widely-acclaimed work on Leibniz in the Grigg's Series of German Philosophical Classics, written when he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. During these years be-tween 1882 and 1888, Dewey's life course was established: he decided to follow a career in philosophy, completed doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University, became an Instructor at the University of Michigan, was promoted to Assistant Professor, and accepted a position as Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. With the publication of Psychology, he became well known among scholars in this country; a series of articles in the British journal Mind brought him prominence in British philosophical circles. His articles were abstracted in the Revue philosophique. None of the articles collected in this volume was reprinted during the author's lifetime. For the first time, it is now possible for Dewey scholars to study consecutively in one publication all the essays which originally appeared in many periodicals. (shrink)

Through reading the early work of Walter Benjamin—up to and including the Trauerspiel, author Monad Rrenban elicits a cohesive conception of the wild, inforgettable form, philosophy, as inherent in everything. This book, distinct in its analysis and depth of analysis, elaborates the wild, unforgettable form—philosophy in relation to language, the discipline and the practice of philosophy, criticism, and the politics of death.

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on (...) ethics. Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on (...) ethics. Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

The paper analyzes, from a perspective which is itself existential-ontological, the way in which in an early text of Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation) [1922] – which had already outlined some determinative elements of the ideas expounded in Being and Time –, the meditation on the always living and current conditions and hermeneutical situation of philosophizing expanded in fact into an inquiry about the origins, grounds, essence and sense of philosophy as such. Meditation (...) in and through which philosophy identifies itself and is founded on the one hand exactly as a mode of existence of the mortal “human Dasein” (menschliches Dasein), that is a factic mode of existence of this, philosophy, on the other hand, itself originates from and in man’s factic life exactly with the aim of being the modality through which this being – namely ourselves – returns towards the problematization of his existential possibilities even by taking upon himself the burden and “weight” of radical interrogation. Which therefore goes and must go itself and resolutely – because if this entirely “without God” and consequently a-theist – to the historical and ontological roots of a present con-temporarized (mitzeitigt) both with the past and the future existential horizons of the assumed factic possibilities. (shrink)

Explores the development of Chinese thought, highlighting its concern with questions of coherence. Providing a bracing expansion of horizons, this book displays the unsuspected range of human thinking on the most basic categories of experience. The way in which early Chinese thinkers approached concepts such as one and many, sameness and difference, self and other, and internal and external stand in stark contrast to the way parallel concepts entrenched in much of modern thinking developed in Greek and European thought. (...) Brook Ziporyn traces the distinctive and surprising philosophical journeys found in the works of the formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers back to a prevailing set of assumptions that tends to see questions of identity, value, and knowledge—the subject matter of ontology, ethics, and epistemology in other traditions—as all ultimately relating to questions about coherence in one form or another. Mere awareness of how many different ways human beings can think and have thought about these categories is itself a game changer for our own attitudes toward what is thinkable for us. The actual inhabitation and mastery of these alternative modes of thinking is an even greater adventure in intellectual and experiential expansion. Brook Ziporyn is Professor of Chinese Philosophy, Religion, and Comparative Thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. His books include The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on (...) ethics. Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse’s early essays and reviews written while under the tutelage of Martin Heidegger continue to suffer a poor reception. Even the most sympathetic of his critics widely focus on either his deviations from existing Marxist orthodoxy, or his failure to demonstrate the commensurability of Marxism and existentialism. Although both these concerns highlight important problems in Marcuse’s work, this narrow focus of Marcuse scholarship neglects essential aspects of his early thought, particularly his concern with what types of truth (...) claims inform political action, and how one might assess the validity of these claims. This article examines these overlooked facets of Marcuse’s early thought, with particular emphasis on the role of judgement. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of the early career of Martha Kneale, née Hurst, and of the five papers she published between 1934 and 1950. One on metaphysical and logical necessity, from 1938, is particularly interesting. In it she considers the metaphysics of time and offers an explanation of ‘the necessity of the past’, which has some resemblance to Kripke’s ideas about metaphysical necessities, in that it assigns an important role to experience in how we come to know (...) them. But Kneale’s view is very different from Kripke’s, depending not on doctrines about rigid designation but rather on recognition of the failure of the atomist/empiricist account of ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ concepts. That account cannot deal with such things as the relations of the determinates of a determinable like colour. A plausible corollary of this, which Kneale exploits, is that some of our experience reveals to us that there are phenomena which are intrinsically complex in having multiple distinguishable aspects, but where those aspects are inseparable. Other of the papers show Kneale to have been pursuing interesting lines of thought about McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time and on the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Did Chinese mysticism vanish after its first appearance in ancient Taoist philosophy, to surface only after a thousand years had passed, when the Chinese had adapted Buddhism to their own culture? This first integrated survey of the mystical dimension of Taoism disputes the commonly accepted idea of such a hiatus. Covering the period from the Daode jing to the end of the Tang, Livia Kohn reveals an often misunderstood Chinese mystical tradition that continued through the ages. Influenced by (...) but ultimately independent of Buddhism, it took forms more various than the quietistic withdrawal of Laozi or the sudden enlightenment of the Chan Buddhists. On the basis of a new theoretical evaluation of mysticism, this study analyzes the relationship between philosophical and religious Taoism and between Buddhism and the native Chinese tradition. Kohn shows how the quietistic and socially oriented Daode jing was combined with the ecstatic and individualistic mysticism of the Zhuangzi, with immortality beliefs and practices, and with Buddhist insight meditation, mind analysis, and doctrines of karma and retribution. She goes on to demonstrate that Chinese mysticism, a complex synthesis by the late Six Dynasties, reached its zenith in the Tang, laying the foundations for later developments in the Song traditions of Inner Alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism. (shrink)

Edith Stein’s early phenomenological texts describe community as a special unity that is fully lived through in consciousness. In her later works, unity is described in more theological terms as participation in the communal fullness and wholeness of God or Being. Can these two accounts of community or human belonging be reconciled? I argue that consciousness can bring to the fore the meaning of community, thereby conditioning our lived-experience of community, but it can also, through Heideggerian questioning, uncover (...) that which remains somewhat hidden from consciousness itself: its own ground or condition of possibility, namely, being—a being that is both one and many, unified, communalised, and very diversified. If my reading of Stein is correct, the traditional understanding of the split between Stein’s strictly Husserlian/phenomenological period and her later Christian philosophical period must be renegotiated, at least when it comes to the philosophical problem of community or human togetherness. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Potter offers a fresh and compelling portrait of the birth and first several decades of analytic philosophy, one of the most important periods in philosophy’s long history. He focuses on the period between the publication of Gottlob Frege’s _Begriffsschrift _in 1879 and Frank Ramsey’s death in 1930. Potter--one of the most influential writers on late 19 th and early 20 th century philosophy--presents a deep but accessible account of the break with Absolute (...) Idealism and Neo-Kantianism, specifically, and more generally with many of the metaphysical preoccupations of philosophy’s preceding history. Potter’s focus is on philosophical logic and philosophy of mathematics, but he also relies heavily on important issues in metaphysics and meta-ethics to complete his story. The book provides an essential starting point for any student or philosopher attempting to understand Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Ramsey as well as their interactions and their intellectual milieux. It will also be of interest to a great many philosophers today who want to illuminate the problems they work on by better knowing their origins. KEY FEATURES: 1. Discusses the interconnections of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein—founding thinkers in the history of analytic philosophy—and also brings the neglected Frank Ramsey into this conversation, providing a unique focus and depth to an introductory text 2. Increases the general awareness of the importance of the history of analytic philosophy for today’s non-historical debates, giving the book appeal in all areas of analytic philosophy 3. Written by one of the most influential philosophers of logic and writers in the history of analytic philosophy 4. Written for upper-level undergraduates, guaranteeing widespread accessibility 5. Includes coverage of topics and issues neglected in competing publications, including Russell’s _Principles_, solipsism in the _Tractatus_, and the contributions of Frank Ramsey 6. Emphasizes the chronological development of authors’ views so as to provide a better understanding of their motivation. (shrink)

Joseph Gikatilla's early works, composed during the 1270s, have been understood by many scholars as a fusion of Kabbalah and philosophy—an approach that he abandoned in his later compositions. This paper argues that Gikatilla's early works are in fact consistent with his later works, and that the differences between the two can be explained by the polemical engagement during his early period with Jewish philosophy and Christian missionizing. By subtly drawing Jewish students (...) of philosophy away from Aristotelian speculation and towards Kabbalah, Gikatilla sought in his early works to lay the foundation for an understanding of Judaism based on kabbalistic mytho-poesis and ecstatic mystical experience. (shrink)

In the last decade a great amount of literature that elaborates on Leibniz’ cultural and philosophical openness has emerged. It is therefore odd that there has not been made any direct comments on Chung-Ying Cheng interesting analyses of Leibniz’s writings on Chinese philosophy (Cheng 2000, 2002). By giving a critical review of Cheng’s work on this topic, it is the aim of this paper to integrate some problems of Sino-western philosophical encounters into the Leibniz scholarship of today. In the (...) course of analyzing Cheng’s arguments the paper points to some problems in his approach to Leibnizian philosophy and its “encounter” with Chinese classics. After challenging Cheng’s reading of Leibniz and suggesting alternative interpretations, the paper discusses whether thisunderstanding of Leibniz could designate a positive approach to Sino‐western philosophical exchange. Central to this, the question is raised whether or not it can be shown that Leibniz remained open to rethink his own philosophy in the light of his meeting with Chinese philosophy. While the paper agrees with Cheng in the judgement that Leibniz did not arrive at a complete understanding of the Chinese classic Yijing, it claims that Cheng’s analysis contradicts some of Leibniz’s other writings on China as well as Leibniz’s general ambition of supporting global philosophical exchange. (shrink)

Theo Verbeek provides the first book-length examination of the initial reception of Descartes’s written works. Drawing on his research of primary materials written in Dutch and Latin and found in libraries all over Europe, even including the Soviet Union, Theo Verbeek opens a period of Descartes’s life and of the development of Cartesian philosophy that has been virtually closed since Descartes’s death. Verbeek’s aim is to provide as complete a picture as possible of the discussions that accompanied the (...) introduction of Descartes’s philosophy into Dutch universities, especially those in Utrecht and Leiden, and to analyze some of the major problems that philosophy raised in the eyes of Aristotelian philosophers and orthodox theologians. The period covered extends from 1637, the year in which Descartes published his _Discours de la Méthode, _until his death in 1650. Verbeek demonstrates how Cartesian philosophy moved successfully into the schools and universities of Holland and how this resulted in a real evolution of Descartes’s thought beyond the somewhat dogmatic position of Descartes himself. Verbeek further argues that this progression was an essential step in the universal propagation of Cartesian philosophy throughout Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century. As he details the disputes between Cartesians and anti-Cartesians in Holland, Verbeek shows how the questions raised were related on the one hand to religious conflicts between the Remonstrants and the Orthodox Calvinists and on the other hand to political conflicts between more liberal factions fighting for the union of church and state to enhance religious control of society in general. Contending that Descartes and Cartesian philosophy were central to the development of the modern Dutch state, Verbeek illuminates the role they played in Dutch political, religious, and intellectual life. (shrink)

Until recent times, the collection of Salomon Maimons early works written in Hebrew, Hesheq Shelomo, was not included into the scientific circulation. An article of professor Gideon Freudenthal on the formation of the young Maimon, filled this lacuna, proving the importance of the analysis of philosophers early works for the comprehension of his literary heritage in general. Freudenthal had studied and published Maimons introduction to Hesheq Shelomo, and then one of the collections treatises, Maаse Livnat ha-Sаppir, (...) consecrated to the ideas and notions of kabbalah. In his analysis Freudenthal had focused on Maimons rational interpretation of kabbalah. The present article represents an attempt to expand Freudenthals research, adding an analysis of another aspect of young Maimons thought. We will try to show that kabbalah, generally understood by early Maimon as ancient Jewish knowledge, had, according to the thinker, to complete philosophy and mitigate arising in it problems. In his early works Maimon was not only criticizing widely occurring profane kabbalah, but also Maimonides philosophy. According to Maimon, it is not possible to understand the true kabbalah without philosophy, but philosophical knowledge is not complete and often erroneous without kabbalah: the true kabbalah rectifies and adjusts it. The critic of Aristotelianism and its derivate, proposed by Maimon in his early works, can add clarity to the understanding of the development of his philosophical thought in the late period. (shrink)

When discussing Wilfrid Sellars’s philosophy, very little work has been done to offer a developmental account of his systematic views. More often than not, Sellars’s complex views are presented in a systematic and holistic fashion that ignores any periodization of his work. I argue that there is a metaphilosophical shift in Sellars’s early philosophy that results in substantive changes to his conception of language, linguistic rules, and normativity. Specifically, I claim that Sellars’s shift from a formalist metaphilosophy (...) to one more closely aligned with psychology allows for the construction of a normative conception of language. My central claim is that without his abandonment of earlier metaphilosophical commitments, Sellars could not hold what I call an external conception of normativity. It is this move away from a formalist notion of philosophy that allows Sellars to construct a normative picture of language. I conclude that because this substantive shift in philosophical commitments results from changes in Sellars’s metaphilosophical views, there is insight to be found in a meticulous periodization of his work. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s elaboration of a subject faithful to an event is commonly known today in the academic world and beyond. However, his first systematic account of the subject was already published in 1982 and did not mention the ‘event’ at all. Therefore, this article aims at tracing back both the structural and the historical conditions that directed Badiou’s elaboration of the subject in the early work up until the publication of L’Être et l’Événément in 1988. On the one hand, (...) it investigates to what extent the Badiouan subject can be considered an exceptional product of the formalist project of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse as instigated by psychoanalytical discourse and a certain Marxist discourse insofar as both were centered upon a theory of the subject. On the other hand, this article examines the radical political implications of this subject insofar as Badiou has directed his philosophical aims towards the political field as a direct consequence of the events of May ’68. (shrink)

German supporters of the Kantian philosophy in the late 19th century took one of two forks in the road: the fork leading to Baden, and the Southwest School of neo-Kantian philosophy, and the fork leading to Marburg, and the Marburg School, founded by Hermann Cohen. Between 1876, when Cohen came to Marburg, and 1918, the year of Cohen's death, Cohen, with his Marburg School, had a profound influence on German academia.

Ian Hacking has defined himself as a philosopher in the analytic tradition. However, he has also recognized the profound influence that Michel Foucault had on much of his work. In this article I analyse the specific imprint of certain works by Foucault—in particular Les mots et les choses—in two of Hacking’s early works: Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? and The Emergence of Probability. I propose that these texts not only share a debt of Foucauldian thought, (...) but also are part of what I believe is Hacking’s central project: the analysis of the historical and situated conditions of possibility for the emergence of concepts and of objects, inspired also by the French philosopher’s thought. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy are increasingly likely to emphasize the extent to which their work offers a pay‐off for philosophers of un‐historical or anti‐historical inclinations; but this defence is less familiar, and often seems less than self‐evident, to intellectual historians. This article examines this tendency, arguing that such arguments for the instrumental value of historical scholarship in philosophy are often more problematic than they at first appear. Using the relatively familiar case study of René Descartes' reading of his scholastic (...) and Aristotelian contemporaries, the article attempts to problematize this notion of pay‐off from an historian's perspective. (shrink)

Because the paperback edition of Dewey’s early works places within easy reach those writings in which he was coming to terms with the foundational issues of his philosophical methodology, it should stimulate the much needed examination of the underpinnings of the later, more popular expressions of his thought. Dewey’s basic ideas grew and changed form many times over his long career, yet there are unifying themes and standpoints which are more rigorously expressed in the early works, (...) and without an understanding of which the reader of later Dewian [[sic]] epistemology is likely to be either hopelessly lost or think himself to be floating on a sea of ungrounded opinion. Two connecting themes which span the breadth of his writing career are worthy of special comment: the first since it helps to locate the center and tie together the periphery of Dewey’s many faceted work, and the second because it is a lingering and unexpressed presupposition of his later metaphysical work. (shrink)

Samuel Alexander was a central figure of the new wave of realism that swept across the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century. His Space, Time, and Deity (1920a, 1920b) was taken to be the official statement of realism as a metaphysical system. But many historians of philosophy are quick to point out the idealist streak in Alexander’s thought. After all, as a student he was trained at Oxford in the late 1870s and early 1880s as British (...) Idealism was beginning to flourish. This naturally had some effect on his philosophical outlook and it is said that his early work is overtly idealist. In this paper I examine his neglected and understudied reactions to British Idealism in the 1880s. I argue that Alexander was not an idealist during this period and should not be considered as part of the British Idealist tradition, philosophically speaking. (shrink)

According to the editors, Alfred Tarski: Early work in Poland – Geometry and Teaching has three main goals. First, to publish translations so that all of Alfred Tarski's work will be accessi...

"Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy is a selection of some of the best work being done in early modern philosophy by Anglo-American philosophers today.... The essays in this collection are historically informed and philosophically challenging. The book is a fitting tribute to Jonathan Bennett." -- Daniel Garber, University of Chicago.

This is an endeavour by an international team of scholars to present the contents of Indian Philosophical texts to a wider public than has hitherto been possible. It will provide a definitive summary of current knowledge about each of the systems of classical Indian Philosophy. Each volume will consist of an extended analytical essay together with summaries of every extant work of the system.Volume I. Bibliography (2Pts.) (3rd rev. Ed.): This volume indicates the scope of the project and provides (...) a list of sources which will be surveyed in the subsequent volumes, as well as provides a guide to secondary literature for further study of Indian Philosophy. Volume II. Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyaya Vaisesika up to Gangesa (Part One). The volume provides a detailed resume of current knowledge about the classical Indian Philosophical System of Nyaya-Vaisesika in its earlier stages.Volume III. Advaita Vedanta (Part One): This volume summarizes all that we know of early Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara`s pupils. Volume IV. Samkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy traces the history of the system from its beginnings in the third or fourth century B.C. up through the twentieth century. Volume V. The Philosophy of Grammarians: This Volume of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies is devoted to the Philosophy of the Grammarians.Volume VI. Indian Philosophical Analysis Nyaya-Vaisesika from Gangesa to Raghunatha Siromani: The present volume of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies takes up the history of Nyaya-Vaisesika where Volume Two left off, in the 14th century. Volume VII. Abhidharma Buddhism to 150 A.D.: The present volume undertakes to summarize the gist of these philosophical teachings, termed Abhidharma, from the first texts that developed after the Buddha up to and including the mammoth text called Mahavibhasa, generated from a convention held in the first or second century A.D.Other Volumes in Preparation: Yoga Philosophy, Samkhya Philosophy, Grammarian Philosophy, Jaina Philosophy, Kashmir Saiva Philosophy, Dvaita Vedanta, Abhidharma Philosophy, Madhyamika Philosophy, Yogacara Philosophy, Buddhist Logicians. (shrink)

Recently the attempt has been made to demonstrate Heidegger's relevance to the concerns of analytic philosophers. A focus for this effort has been the criticism in his early work of Cartesian ontology. While a number of important works have mapped out this area of Heidegger's thought, a crucial task has not been carried out, namely that of assessing how Heidegger can accommodate those phenomena which motivate the Cartesian to adopt his highly counter-intuitive ontology. As long as we fail (...) to examine how Heidegger's early ontology copes with the possibilities of error and of hallucination, the suspicion will remain that Heidegger is simply insensitive to those phenomena on which the Cartesian focuses. Neither Heidegger nor the Cartesian have been done any favours by commentators showing little inclination to bring the opponents into closer combat. This paper attempts to correct that omission. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is one of China's greatest literary and philosophical masterpieces, yet its complexities make it a challenging read. This English translation leads you confidently through the comic scenes and virtuoso writing style, introducing all the little stories Zhuangzi invented and unpicking its philosophy through close commentaries and helpful asides. In Graziani's translation, the co-founder of Daoism emerges as a remarkable thinker. It is a must-read for anyone coming to Chinese philosophy or the Zhuangzi for the first time, (...) and one that reminds us of the importance of thinking beyond our limited, everyday perspectives. (shrink)

The paper explores the possibility of finding radical elements of individualistic and libertarian especially left-libertarian thought in Taoist philosophy. It demonstrates that philosophical Taoism should be treated in a comprehensive way, with a particular emphasis on ethics. In connection with this, the anti-authoritarian ethico-political dimension of early Taoism is examined, and it is argued that the Taoist philosophers of ancient China had a deep respect for the equal liberty of individuals, who are all unique by nature. (...) As a result, findings suggest that Taoist anarchism in early medieval China evolved as the logical conclusion from ancient Taoist ethico-political thought since radical ideas were embodied in it. The research goal of this paper is to develop a Taoist-libertarian virtue ethics and to show its political relevance. Therefore, it is also intended to show how Taoist libertarianism avant la lettre undermines political authority despite being neither consequentialist nor deontological, unlike typical American libertarianism. (shrink)

Davidson’s 1965 paper, “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”, has invariably been interpreted, by others and by myself, as arguing that natural languages must have a compositional semantics, or at least a systematic semantics, that can be finitely specified. However, in his reply to me in the Żegleń volume, Davidson denies that compositionality is in any need of an argument. How does this add up? In this paper I consider Davidson’s first three meaning theoretic papers from this perspective. I conclude (...) that Davidson was right in his reply to me that he never took compositionality, or systematic semantics, to be in need of justification. What Davidson had been concerned with, clearly in the 1965 paper and in “Truth and Meaning” from 1967, and to some extent in his Carnap critique from 1963, is that we need a general theory of natural language meaning, that such a theory should not be in conflict with the learnability of a language, and that such a theory bring out should how knowledge of a finite number of features of a language suffices for the understanding of all the sentences of that language. (shrink)

Religion and science dialogues that orbit around rational method, knowledge, and truth are often, though not always, contentious. In this article, I suggest a different cluster of gravitational points around which religion and science dialogues might usefully travel: philosophical anthropology, ethics, and love. I propose seeing morality as a natural outgrowth of the human desire to establish and maintain social bonds so as not to experience the condition of being alone. Humans, of all animals, need to feel loved—defined as a (...) compassionate present-with in dynamic dyadic relation such that one experiences the sense of mattering—but that need has an equally natural tendency to be met by creating biased us-and-them distinctions. A “critical” natural ethics, then, is one in which we become aware of and work to undermine our tendency to reify in-group distinctions between “us” and “them.” Religious communities that work intentionally on this can be seen, to some extent, as laboratories of love—or as sites for co-creating knowledge in perilous times. (shrink)