Johann Georg Hamann, a contemporary of Kant and Herder, was an important German philosopher of the 18th century, whose significance, however, is not sufficiently recognized today. His cryptic and short writings full of allusions and deep scholarship do not make him an easily accessible writer. He was a sharp critic of sophistry maskerading as philosophy, thus taking over the role of Socrates for his time, connecting a defense of Christian beliefs with a radical re-interpretation of enlightenment, thereby trying to enlighten (...) enlightenment about itself. Hamann's concept of reason as language is an important contribution to the understanding of human nature as such, stressing the concreteness and historicality of human reason. Contrary to earlier interpretations, though, Hamann is no irrationalist, but a thinker who ridicules the absurdities of enlightenment rationalism and proved to be an important source of inspiration for writers like Sören Kierkegaard and Ernst Jünger. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is rightly considered one of the most interesting authors in the field of intellectual pursuits. This vague formulation also indicates that Rorty’s thinking and writing cannot simply be classified as philosophy, although by and large they seem to be part and parcel of the pragmatist tradition. For Rorty clearly confronts a number of traditional problems of philosophy, even when he suggest getting rid of the problem by redescribing the issue or changing the perspective. There is...

The Canadian thinker George Grant offers a critique of modernity that tries to come to terms with the challenge of Heidegger to Plato. Against philosophical approaches which claim that any kind of metaphyics is obsolete and should be overcome, Grant attempted to think through what the rejection of metaphysics by important modern forms of philosophy means. Grant’s thought looked back to Plato for a conception of justice that he felt was endangered in the modern world. In particular, his philosophical thinking (...) could be said to engage the various forms of pragmatism that he regarded as emblematic of modernity’s emphasis on making and creating in contrast to the older virtue of contemplation. However, the ontological concern about the priority of conetmplation over action was, forGrant, also connected to problem of justice. Could one defend an understanding of justice that gives to man what is his due while accepting the pragmatism of modern philosophy? And does pragmatism succeed in eliminiating the question conerning God from the concerns of the philosopher? (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of mass migration and the conditions of hybridization for early 21st century Western societies in texts dealing with migrantexperiences. The novel Goodbye Lucille (2007) by the Afro-cosmopolitan writer Segun Afolabi will be explored with respect to the crucial problem of an ethics and politics of belonging, related to the recent controversies surrounding multiculturalism and issues of migration. This text deals with the “in-between world” of migrants and negotiates questions of identity, alienation and belonging in a (...) so-called transcultural/transnational context. The issues raised in Segun Afolabi's fiction are addressed by employing the ways of thinking developed in political philosophy, including recent phenomenological attempts to theorize the notion of “home” and “belonging” (e.g., by Karen Joisten, but also Martin Heidegger) in order to deal with the complexities of the issue. The question, “What constitutes the good life for the individual and the political community?”, needs to be considered by taking into account the current plurality of approaches to forging identitiesin the political sphere as well. The subtlety of literary accounts of this phenomenon – literature may indeed be one of the best diagnostic instrument for studying a society – sheds light, I suggest, on the conditions of politically relevant identity formations. A close reading of literary texts such as those by Afolabi offers an important contribution to a realistic, and therefore complex and complicating, account of our overall situation in the Western world with respect to the politics of belonging. (shrink)

The Canadian thinker George Grant offers a critique of modernity that tries to come to terms with the challenge of Heidegger to Plato. Against philosophical approaches which claim that any kind of metaphyics is obsolete and should be overcome, Grant attempted to think through what the rejection of metaphysics by important modern forms of philosophy means. Grant’s thought looked back to Plato for a conception of justice that he felt was endangered in the modern world. In particular, his philosophical thinking (...) could be said to engage the various forms of pragmatism that he regarded as emblematic of modernity’s emphasis on making and creating in contrast to the older virtue of contemplation. However, the ontological concern about the priority of conetmplation over action was, forGrant, also connected to problem of justice. Could one defend an understanding of justice that gives to man what is his due while accepting the pragmatism of modern philosophy? And does pragmatism succeed in eliminiating the question conerning God from the concerns of the philosopher? (shrink)