My purpose in this paper is to challenge the continued exclusion of Indian philosophies from the Western philosophical canon on the supposed basis that such philosophies are really religion, mysticism, and mythology. I argue that many schools of Indian philosophy, such as Advaita Vedānta, resist and problematize historically particular Euro-Western conceptions of both philosophy and religion, and the conceptual borders between them, where philosophy is understood as grounded in various substantive notions of reason and rationality, (...) defined as a purely theoretical enterprise. In addition, I question the predominant tendency to see philosophy as opposed to “religion”, which is often presumed to rest on faith in a Judeo-Christian conception of God: The singular and wholly other, creator of all souls, ex nihilo, the ultimate judge of humankind, where salvation is granted in proportion to the intrinsic value of faith. I suggest that Advaita challenges these prevailing conceptions. A part of my larger purpose is to dislodge the view that the Euro-Western philosophical enterprise constitutes the universal, neutral, and objective standard from which all other approaches to philosophy are to be judged as legitimate. My hope is to lay some of the groundwork required to re-think dominant historical and conceptual categories from a broader global perspective, with the aim of developing a deeper and more plural understanding of the diverse nature of both philosophical and religious inquiry. (shrink)

The influence of East on West - of Eastern ideas on Western thought - has become an increasingly vexed issue in recent times. Opinion is divided between two main schools: those who believe that Oriental ideas have exercised a considerable influence on Western thought, and those who, for a variety of reasons, believe that such influence has remained negligible.In this Reader A. L. Macfie suggests that the reality lies somewhere between these two extremes, and that the interest taken (...) by Western thinkers in Eastern thought in the modern period has moved from one of passing interest, through serious attention, to some level of assimilation and acceptance.Eastern Influences on Western Philosophy explores the extent of Oriental influence on European thought, primarily in the period of the Enlightenment and the nineteenth-century period of doubt and scepticism that followed it. As such it is the first Reader to bring together in one place a series of specific historical and textual studies of Oriental influence upon European thinkers. Starting with Malebranche and ending with Heidegger, other Western thinkers considered include Leibniz, Voltaire, Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Jung and Buber.To accompany the readings the editor's introduction explores the idea of influence in the context of the chosen readings, and at the same time raises the question of how far Edwards Said's thesis regarding Orientalism actually applies to Western thought.Key Features:* Reflects increasing interest in relationship between Eastern and Western Philosophy* Covers major European figures from the 18th and 19th centuries and the way Eastern thought influenced them* Substantial editorial introduction places readings in context and explores the influence of the East on the West* Previous work by editor praised for its accessibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nishida and Western PhilosophyAmos YongNishida and Western Philosophy. By Robert Wilkinson. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009. vii + 175 pp.Robert Wilkinson is a comparative philosopher who teaches at Open University in Edinburgh and has worked for years in the areas of comparative philosophy of mind and comparative aesthetics. This book should be read as part of a larger discussion of the philosophy of Nishida (...) Kitarō (1870–1945), which began with Keiji Nishitani (Nishida Kitarō, trans. S. Yamamoto and J. W. Heisig, University of California Press, 1991) and continues with Robert E. Carter (The Nothingness Beyond God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro, Paragon House, 1997) and Robert J.Wargo (The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), among others. Going beyond his predecessors, however—even though it is unfortunate that Wilkinson does not interact much with them explicitly—Nishida and Western Philosophy prosecutes a clear even if perhaps controversial thesis: that in the end, Nishida’s philosophy of self-contradictory identity was, as a natural outgrowth of his Buddhist and Zen experience of satori (awakening), fundamentally incommensurable with the philosophy of identity that has characterized the major trajectory of the Western philosophical tradition.There are four chapters to the book (besides the introduction and then the summary and conclusions). The first focuses on Nishida’s starting point, the Zen Buddhist experience of enlightenment regarding the ultimate emptiness (mu), which albeit a difficult term to translate can be understood at least in part as referring to the nonduality, or even the interrelatedness, of all reality. Nishida’s work can be seen as a lifelong quest to formalize this experiential insight systematically in dialogue with the Western philosophical tradition. In a sense, this can be understood as a spirituality in search of a metaphysic, and given the emergence of Japan on the world stage at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is not surprising that up-and-coming Japanese philosophers like Nishida sought to legitimate their own insights in the Western idiom. But precisely for the same reason, however, Nishida rarely appealed to Asian sources, even within the Buddhist tradition, especially in his earlier work.Chapter 2 explicates Nishida’s early philosophy of pure experience, particularly as summarized in his Inquiry into the Good (1911; English translation: Yale University Press, 1990). The major dialogue partner at this point was William James and his notion of radical empiricism, which provided Nishida with Western conceptual resources to think through the primordial base from out of which conscious experience emerged. Thus did pure experience point to the nondual dimension of consciousness before the split between subject and object. Nishida never repudiated his Jamesian connection, although his ongoing work pushed him further and deeper into the metaphysical and ontological dimensions of consciousness that eventually left behind James’s more psychologically driven formulations.Next Wilkinson turns to Nishida’s second major book, Intuition and Reflection in [End Page 231] Self-Consciousness (1917; English translation: State University of New York Press, 1987), and focuses primarily on the Japanese philosopher’s interactions with the Neo-Kantian school of philosophy, Fichte, and Bergson. Each of these provided specific resources for this stage of Nishida’s philosophical project. The Neo-Kantians helped him to think about how the noumena-phenomena and fact-value distinctions contrasted with his own philosophical intuitions regarding their primordial unity in historicity. Fichte enabled the forging of a philosophy of action-consciousness, which promised to go beyond the subject-object distinction, even if in the end (for Nishida), the Fichtean ego remained “trapped” within the logic of identity rather than becoming “delivered” by or within the Zen logic of no-thingness. Bergson, meanwhile, was attractive precisely because of his dynamic (rather than static) philosophy of elan vital or conscious becoming even if Nishida was already discerning at this time that the Bergsonian elan both presumed an ontological togetherness that succumbed to the Western logic of identity on the one hand, and was not sufficiently attentive to the contrary of becoming—death, or the lapsing back into no-thingness—which was a prominent feature of historical reality on the other hand. Yet these Western interlocutors... (shrink)

Philosophy and Philosophers is an important introduction to Western philosophy aimed at those who are unfamiliar with the nature of philosophy and its history. It is organized around the main schools of philosophical thought and ranges from ancient Greece, through the explosion of ideas in the seventeenth century, to the Enlightenment and the challenge of twentieth-century philosophy. In each chapter John Shand assesses the contribution of a single philosopher, paying particular attention to the key (...) areas of the theory of knowledge, the nature of reality, and the nature of philosophy itself. An extensive annotated bibliography serves as a helpful guide to works by and about the philosophers discussed. Accessible and clearly written, this survey of the ideas of the major thinkers of the western world will be invaluable as a reference source. (shrink)

The West has long had an ambivalent attitude toward the philosophical traditions of the East. Voltaire claimed that the East is the civilization "to which the West owes everything", yet C.S. Peirce was contemptuous of the "monstrous mysticism of the East". And despite the current trend toward globalizations, there is still a reluctance to take seriously the intellectual inheritance of South and East Asia. Oriental Enlightenment challenges this Eurocentric prejudice. J. J. Clarke examines the role played by the ideas (...) of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism in the intellectual life of the West and how these ideas, far more than exotic distractions, or even instruments of colonial domination, have been the means towards serious self-questioning and self-renewal, used to dispute and even to undermine Western orthodoxies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"What Is Philosophy?"The Status of World Philosophy in the ProfessionRobert C. SolomonThe question "What is philosophy?" is both one of the most virtuously self-effacing and one of the most obnoxious that philosophers today tend to ask. It is virtuously self-effacing insofar as it questions, with some misgivings, its own behavior, the worth of the questions it asks, and the significance of the enterprise itself. It is (...) obnoxious when it refuses to question its own behavior but instead takes that same behavior as the exclusive standard to delegitimize any other activity that dares to call itself "philosophy." Thus, for most of this century, Anglo-American and most European philosophers have simply ignored the rich philosophical traditions of Africa, Asia, Latin and Native America, and the rest of the world. Some leading African American and African European philosophers have dismissed "ethnophilosophy" as "not philosophy," presumably to protect their own analytic credentials. Universities as far flung as Singapore, Sierra Leone, and New Delhi have prided themselves on their fidelity to Oxbridge philosophy. It seems that the globalization of free market economics goes with the globalization of one brief moment in philosophy, with similarly devastating effects on local cultures and the rich varieties of human experience.Philosophy might be thought of as made up of two components: critical thinking and passionate vision. But "critical thinking" does not necessarily imply the hermeneutics of suspicion, skepticism, or intellectual paranoia—all too often the trademarks of the bright young professional philosopher. One can be "critical," that is, reflective, while at the same time be committed, even devoted, to an idea or a way of thinking. The emphasis on passionate vision, however, is just as essential, and any philosophy that doesn't include both components just isn't worthy of the name. Without passionate vision, we get that utterly eviscerated focus on forms of argumentation—philosophia minimalia—devoid of "empirical" content (that is to say, content) and, as far as most people are concerned, devoid of any interest. Without critical reflection, we get gullibility and the worst of New Age philosophy, accepting of any kind of nonsense, just because it stirs the passions. But simply to assume that philosophy must be as rigorously self-questioning as modern European and Anglo-American philosophy is a subtle form of ethnic chauvinism. It eliminates from the realm of philosophy not only African ethnophilosophy and Latin and Native American and South Pacific mythology but a good deal of the philosophy of religion, the basis (for better or worse) of the development of Western philosophy over much of the past two thousand years. [End Page 100]I have just withdrawn from a recent dispute, in a respectable and supposedly eclectic philosophy journal, in which my worst fears in this regard were rather bluntly confirmed. I had made the point mentioned above—rather matter-of-factly, I thought—that if (analytic) philosophy dismisses or ignores modes of thinking that are not obviously self-critical and are presented poetically instead of by way of positions to be argued for, then a good deal of the world's philosophy, including a good deal of Western philosophy, would be left out of the arena. The journal's board reacted indignantly, to put it mildly, to the suggestion that anything should count as "philosophy" that was not sufficiently self-critical in just this sense. But what about the millennium or so of religious philosophy in the West? Does anyone believe that thinkers like Anselm, or Alvin Plantiga for that matter, are seriously skeptical of the truth of Christianity, as they go through their admittedly brilliant argumentative routines? For that matter, to what extent is the emphasis on logical form and argument subjected to scrutiny in contemporary analytic philosophy? (As one of the foremost practitioners of that art commented, "Metaphilosophy makes me sick.")Some of the hostility to world philosophy, to be sure, turns on the conflict between philosophy and religion, which may have its origins in ancient and medieval philosophy but emerges full-blown with the Enlightenment and its campaign against "superstition." But many people and a good many cultures do not distinguish between philosophy and religion. If we consider the word "philosophy... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"What Is Philosophy?"The Status of World Philosophy in the ProfessionRobert C. SolomonThe question "What is philosophy?" is both one of the most virtuously self-effacing and one of the most obnoxious that philosophers today tend to ask. It is virtuously self-effacing insofar as it questions, with some misgivings, its own behavior, the worth of the questions it asks, and the significance of the enterprise itself. It is (...) obnoxious when it refuses to question its own behavior but instead takes that same behavior as the exclusive standard to delegitimize any other activity that dares to call itself "philosophy." Thus, for most of this century, Anglo-American and most European philosophers have simply ignored the rich philosophical traditions of Africa, Asia, Latin and Native America, and the rest of the world. Some leading African American and African European philosophers have dismissed "ethnophilosophy" as "not philosophy," presumably to protect their own analytic credentials. Universities as far flung as Singapore, Sierra Leone, and New Delhi have prided themselves on their fidelity to Oxbridge philosophy. It seems that the globalization of free market economics goes with the globalization of one brief moment in philosophy, with similarly devastating effects on local cultures and the rich varieties of human experience.Philosophy might be thought of as made up of two components: critical thinking and passionate vision. But "critical thinking" does not necessarily imply the hermeneutics of suspicion, skepticism, or intellectual paranoia—all too often the trademarks of the bright young professional philosopher. One can be "critical," that is, reflective, while at the same time be committed, even devoted, to an idea or a way of thinking. The emphasis on passionate vision, however, is just as essential, and any philosophy that doesn't include both components just isn't worthy of the name. Without passionate vision, we get that utterly eviscerated focus on forms of argumentation—philosophia minimalia—devoid of "empirical" content (that is to say, content) and, as far as most people are concerned, devoid of any interest. Without critical reflection, we get gullibility and the worst of New Age philosophy, accepting of any kind of nonsense, just because it stirs the passions. But simply to assume that philosophy must be as rigorously self-questioning as modern European and Anglo-American philosophy is a subtle form of ethnic chauvinism. It eliminates from the realm of philosophy not only African ethnophilosophy and Latin and Native American and South Pacific mythology but a good deal of the philosophy of religion, the basis (for better or worse) of the development of Western philosophy over much of the past two thousand years. [End Page 100]I have just withdrawn from a recent dispute, in a respectable and supposedly eclectic philosophy journal, in which my worst fears in this regard were rather bluntly confirmed. I had made the point mentioned above—rather matter-of-factly, I thought—that if (analytic) philosophy dismisses or ignores modes of thinking that are not obviously self-critical and are presented poetically instead of by way of positions to be argued for, then a good deal of the world's philosophy, including a good deal of Western philosophy, would be left out of the arena. The journal's board reacted indignantly, to put it mildly, to the suggestion that anything should count as "philosophy" that was not sufficiently self-critical in just this sense. But what about the millennium or so of religious philosophy in the West? Does anyone believe that thinkers like Anselm, or Alvin Plantiga for that matter, are seriously skeptical of the truth of Christianity, as they go through their admittedly brilliant argumentative routines? For that matter, to what extent is the emphasis on logical form and argument subjected to scrutiny in contemporary analytic philosophy? (As one of the foremost practitioners of that art commented, "Metaphilosophy makes me sick.")Some of the hostility to world philosophy, to be sure, turns on the conflict between philosophy and religion, which may have its origins in ancient and medieval philosophy but emerges full-blown with the Enlightenment and its campaign against "superstition." But many people and a good many cultures do not distinguish between philosophy and religion. If we consider the word "philosophy... (shrink)

They examine the currents of thought behind some of the most significant works in Western philosophy, including those by John Locke and David Hume.

To date no comprehensive treatment of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism has yet appeared. However, we are beginning to see the regular publication of more specialised studies, and Frederick Whelan’s interesting book is a noteworthy entry in this genre.

The dissertation project is a study of the rhetoric of "enlightenment" and the philosophy of modernity. It addresses two seemingly unrelated questions: "what is enlightenment?" and "what is May Fourth?" The investigation of these two questions is located in the contexts of Kant-Foucault-Habermas's dialogue on "what is enlightenment?" and Western sinology's re-presentation of Chinese modernity. One of the objectives of the present study is to critique modern sinology's re-presentation of Chinese modernity, which has reduced the (...) latter into a latent statement of the Enlightenment and a derivative language of Reason, and hence, to seek to determine the conditions of possibility to address the question of "what is May Fourth?" ;The study attempts to identify the problematics in the Kant-Foucault-Habermas context, in which enlightenment was treated as an enterprise to bridge the gap between theoretical reason and practical intelligence, reason and unreason, and expert knowledge and everyday praxis. The study suggests that mediation of hermeneutic understanding of text/tradition with political commitment to organize an enlightened society was treated differently in Confucian and modern Chinese political philosophy and historiographical discourse. Examination of that treatment, the study points out, may help provide a framework to further reflect upon some unresolved problems and anticipate some pratical difficulties in the Western genealogy of enlightenment. (shrink)

The article concerns the main lines of reception of the philosophical ideas of B. Spinoza. Estimates of the work of this thinker, his role and importance have undergone significant changes in the course of the development of Western European and Russian philosophical thought. It focuses on the study of the transformations occurred in the approach and nature of evaluations of the main philosophical ideas of Spinoza in the Western European philosophical space, primarily in Germany and France. At the (...) same time, we can state that the peak of interest in the philosophy of Spinoza in these national traditions seriously diverges in time. Initially, we can talk about the predominance of interest in Spinoza’s philosophy on the part of German-speaking thinkers. For a long time, Spinoza’s philosophy was characterized as atheistic and, in connection with this, was subjected to fierce criticism. It is the German enlighteners who are credited with reviving interest in Spinoza’s philosophy at a new level. At the same time, the philosophical views of this thinker not only cease to be assessed as atheistic, but are sometimes perceived in the exact opposite way - as imbued with genuine religious faith. F. Schleiermacher can be considered here as a striking example of such an approach to Spinoza’s philosophy. In the future, interest in Spinoza’s philosophy was maintained in the German-speaking philosophical space due to the reception of his ideas by Hegel, Feuerbach, and Neo-Kantians. In French-language philosophy, interest in Spinoza wakes up much later - in the middle-second half of the 20th century, which is associated primarily with such name as Deleuze. However, this “French Renaissance” of Spinoza’s philosophy can be considered as no less significant than the Renaissance of the age of German Enlightenment. It was “French Spinozism” that brought the study of Spinoza’s philosophy to the international level, significantly expanding their conceptual framework. (shrink)

Does the Center Hold? is an entertaining, topically-organized introductory text with more than 500 original illustrations. The ideas and issues typically covered in introductory courses are presented here in a remarkably accessible and enjoyable manner. The author demonstrates that serious philosophical inquiry may be perplexing but is ultimately enlightening and liberating.

Presents an illuminating interpretation of key 18th- and 19th-century European political thinkers' accounts and assessments of the societies and political institutes of the non-Western world. This book is of interest to students and scholars of both political philosophy and thought as well as historians of this important period of history.

The first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in Radical Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel now focuses on the first half of the eighteenth century. He traces to their roots the core principles of Western modernity: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression.

In tracing historically the development of Filipino philosophy as traditionally conceived, the author discovered that the early Filipino philosophers were Enlightenment thinkers. This was the direct consequence of the Filipino colonial experience and the explanation why the trajectory of Filipino philosophy is basically Western in orientation.

David Garland's The Culture of Control provides a powerful analysis of trends in crime and criminal justice policy over the last 30 years. This note re?examines two parts of the Garland thesis. First, it argues that punitive criminal justice policy is rooted in an authoritarian neoconservative politics that shares little with free?market ideology. Second, research on the collateral consequences of incarceration suggests that the penal system, at least in America, has become a significant influence on, rather than just a product (...) of, the social structure of late modernity. (shrink)

This important book charts the development of philosophical thinking about history over the past 250 years, combining extracts from key texts with new explanatory and critical discussion. The book is designed to make the work of thinkers such as Hume, Herder, Hegel, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault accessible to students with no prior knowledge of Western philosophy. An introductory section is followed by nine further chapters exploring contrasting schools of thought. The volume reveals the origins of contemporary trends (...) in the discipline and relates wider philosophical reflections to the study of history itself. It also points to connections between philosophy of history and literary and cultural theory which have developed in recent decades. (shrink)

This new book by Michael Slote argues that Western philosophy on the whole has overemphasized rational control and autonomy at the expense of the important countervailing value and virtue of receptivity. Recently the ideas of caring and empathy have received a great deal of philosophical and public attention, but both these notions rest on the deeper and broader value of receptivity, and in From Enlightenment to Receptivity, Slote seeks to show that we need to focus more on (...) receptivity if we are to attain a more balanced sense and understanding of what is important to us. -/- Beginning with a critique of Enlightenment thinking that calls into question its denial of any central role to considerations of emotion and empathy, he goes on to show how a greater emphasis on these factors and on the receptivity that underlies them can give us a more realistic, balanced, and sensitive understanding of our core ethical and epistemological values. This means rejecting post-modernism's blanket rejection of reason and of compelling real values and recognizing, rather, that receptivity should play a major role in how we lead our lives as individuals, in how we relate to nature, in how we acquire knowledge about the world, and in how we relate morally and politically with others. (shrink)

A history of western philosophy from Descartes to the French Revolution.

Jonathan Israel presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he returns to the original sources to offer a groundbreaking new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought. Israel traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the (...) social, political, and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dual character of the Enlightenment, and the bitter struggle between on the one hand a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and 'materialist' radical fringe. He also contends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.A work of dazzling and highly accessible scholarship, Enlightenment Contested will be the definitive reference point for historians, philosophers, and anyone engaged with this fascinating period of human development. (shrink)

This paper attempts to present, both historically and analytically, the way philosophy had been exercised and developed in Modern Greece from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century in connection with its culture and history. It aims to introduce the reader to Neohellenic philosophy and its distinctive characteristics, and to acquaint her with the endeavours of many outstanding Greek intellectuals to continue the Hellenic philosophical and cultural tradition, going back to Greek Antiquity (...) that had been transmitted through the Byzantine learning, while, at the same time, to incorporate into their thinking Western philosophical traditions. My exegesis starts from the fifteenth century, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and the Greek intellectuals went into exile in the West. Dealing with issues of educational reforms and with philosophical and linguistic controversies (seventeenth–nineteenth centuries), I shall examine, systematically and selectively, the Western influences that made possible the revival of traditional philosophy in Greek thought as well as the renewal of Greek cultural identity that led to the Greek War of Independence (1821–1827) and into the modern period of Greek history and intellectual thought. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the subsequent (...) history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 (2002) 399-400 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 Jonathan I. Israel. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xx + 810. Cloth, $45.00. Jonathan Israel's goal in this excellent book is to show that we cannot fully understand the high (...) Enlightenment—the age of the philosophes and the French Revolution—without looking at the work and influence of that "most unusual and loneliest thinker" (to borrow a phrase from a later admirer): Spinoza. Israel gives us a detailed and nuanced account of the history of ideas in early modern Europe, focusing especially on the generations before Voltaire and Rousseau. Not only does Israel describe the general struggle between Enlightenment ideas and the status quo ante, he also discusses in depth the tensions between "mainstream" Enlightenment and its "radical" wing. More precisely and importantly, Israel argues that the high Enlightenment ought to be seen as the outcome of "a four-way conflict between Newtonians, neo-Cartesians, Leibnitio-Wolffians, and radicals" (715), a conflict that took place across Europe and whose dust had essentially settled by 1740. Thus, Israel is arguing against the view that the French philosophes were the dominant force in the intellectual world that led to the Revolution, against the view that Newton and Locke played a dominant role throughout Europe, and against the view that there were several distinct enlightenments with different national characters.What is meant by the term "radical Enlightenment"? According to Israel, radical Enlightenment comprises several views and tendencies in the realms of science, theology, and politics: in scientific matters, it embraces naturalism, mechanism, and materialism; in theological matters, it denies a moral order to the universe, a providential god, the Judeo-Christian(-Islamic) account of creation, miracles, and reward and punishment in an afterlife, and is critical of the idea of the divine inspiration of religious texts; in political matters, it unequivocally supports republicanism, even democracy; and, in all matters, it argues for the necessity of toleration and the "freedom to philosophize." For those who know Spinoza's philosophy, this ought to sound familiar.Israel's book is divided into five parts. In the first, he sketches the general intellectual milieu of early seventeenth-century Western Europe. The second part describes Spinoza and his circle and the philosophy of the Ethics and Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In Parts III and IV, Israel discusses the immediate reactions to Spinozism, the varieties of radical Enlightenment made possible by Spinoza, and the "intellectual counter-offensive" to naturalism, materialism, atheism, and republicanism. Part V concerns the "clandestine progress" of Spinozism and radical ideas in different countries after the banning and censorship of so many radical works, and, in a brief epilogue, Israel argues that it is Rousseau who effectively reconciled mainstream Enlightenment thought with its radical relative. This is a lot of territory to cover, and Israel covers it admirably, offering illuminating discussions of other key figures of the time: Leibniz, Malebranche, Bossuet, Locke, Bayle, Wolff, Vico, Diderot, and La Mettrie. Another strength of Israel's book is, however, the extent to which he portrays thinkers (some radicals, some reactionaries) and works that are less familiar to most working in the field today. We learn not only about such figures as Bredenburg, Fontenelle, Le Clerc, Leenhof, and Boulainvilliers, but also, in a charming but unfortunately short chapter, about Spinozistic novels from the eighteenth century.As someone trained in a philosophy department to work on the history of philosophy, I felt uneasy in one respect with this book. While Israel emphasizes the battles between philosophies and ideas, he does not concern himself so much with the process of doing philosophy. That is, if there is a failing in this book, it is that we are presented with descriptions of philosophical views without always being given an adequate account of why such views were held by individual thinkers or how the theses of the radical Enlightenment, say, are related to each... (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin was recognized as Britain's most distinguished historian of ideas. Berlin is particularly associated with the concept of the 'Counter-Enlightenment', comprising those thinkers who in Berlin's view reacted against the Enlightenment's naïve rationalism, scientism and progressivism. Berlin's 'Counter-Enlightenment' has received critical attention, but no-one has yet analysed the understanding of the Enlightenment on which it rests. Isaiah Berlin and the Enlightenment explores the development of Berlin's conception of the Enlightenment, noting its curious narrowness, (...) its ambivalence, and its indebtedness to a specific German intellectual tradition. Contributors to the book examine his comments on individual writers, showing how they were inflected by his questionable assumptions, and arguing that some of the writers he assigned to the 'Counter-Enlightenment' have closer affinities to the Enlightenment than he recognized. By locating Berlin in the history of Enlightenment studies, this book also makes a contribution to defining the historical place of his work and to evaluating his intellectual legacy. (shrink)

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique (...) of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory. (shrink)

The perception of intellectual life in Greek antiquity by the representatives of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century favoured the establishment of the cult of reason. Myth as a potential source of knowledge was disregarded: instead, the monopoly of truth-finding through pure rationalisation was asserted. This tendency, positing, as it did, reason in opposition to myth, did a signal disservice to the realities of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. Nevertheless, these distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned (...) our approach to education and have led to our privileging of reason as a mode of enquiry right up to the present day. The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the early historiographers, philosophers of the classical age) did not set myth (mythos) and reason (logos) in opposition to each other. In fact, they benefited from both as differing modes of enquiry, each in its own right and possessing its own value. Plato, in his reasoning, was much concerned with the proper use of mythical narrative. In one of his dialogues, he even coined a new term for explaining how mythical topics and motifs should be exploited as a source of knowledge. This term is mythologia, and it first occurs in Plato's Republic (394b). The present study aims to offer a corrective to traditional cliches and received wisdom about intellectual life in ancient Greece. The work proposes, and aims to reconstruct, a mental landscape in which myth and reason connect and vividly interact, and in which the concepts of mythos and logos are intertwined in the terminological network of the ancient Greek language. (shrink)

The underlying theme of the inquiry is the real and possible relevance of the Enlightenment tradition to contemporary Western society.

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full book-length study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy. He argues that the Enquiry is not, as so often assumed, (...) a mere collection of watered-down extracts from the earlier work. It is, rather, a coherent work with a unified argument; and, when this argument is grasped as a whole, the Enquiry shows itself to be the best introduction to the lineaments of its author's general philosophy. Buckle offers a careful guide through the argument and structure of the work. He shows how the central sections of the Enquiry offer a critique of the dogmatic empiricisms of the ancient world, and set in place an alternative conception of human powers based on the sceptical principles of habit and probability. These principles are then put to work, to rule out philosophy's metaphysical ambitions and their consequences: religious systems and their attendant conception of human beings as semi-divine rational animals. Hume's scepticism, experimentalism, and naturalism are thus shown to be different aspects of the one unified philosophy - a sceptical version of the Enlightenment vision. (shrink)

This history of Russian thought was first published in Polish in 1973 and subsequently appeared 2005 in a revised and expanded publication. The current volume begins with Enlightenment thought and Westernization in Russia in the 17<SUP>th century and moves to the religious-philosophical renaissance of first decade of the 20<SUP>th century. This book provides readers with an exhaustive account of relationships between various Russian thinkers with an examination of how those thinkers relate to a number of figures and trends in (...) Western philosophy and in the broader history of ideas. (shrink)

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full book-length study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy. He argues that the Enquiry is not, as so often assumed, (...) a mere collection of watered-down extracts from the earlier work. It is, rather, a coherent work with a unified argument; and, when this argument is grasped as a whole, the Enquiry shows itself to be the best introduction to the lineaments of its author's general philosophy. Buckle offers a careful guide through the argument and structure of the work. He shows how the central sections of the Enquiry offer a critique of the dogmatic empiricisms of the ancient world, and set in place an alternative conception of human powers based on the sceptical principles of habit and probability. These principles are then put to work, to rule out philosophy's metaphysical ambitions and their consequences: religious systems and their attendant conception of human beings as semi-divine rational animals. Hume's scepticism, experimentalism, and naturalism are thus shown to be different aspects of the one unified philosophy - a sceptical version of the Enlightenment vision. (shrink)

This book is the first English translation of the classic philosophical treatise Kantadarsaner Tatparyya . Bhattacharyya combines the basic tenets of Kant to present it in terms of Indian philosophical traditions. The introduction discusses the need for the translation, the challenges involved, and the context of Bhattacharyya's interpretations and thought. The detailed notes and annotations to the translation guide the reader through a variety of concepts in Western and Indian philosophy, as well as comments on the Bengali text. (...) This book will be of considerable interest to scholars, teachers, and students of Western and Indian philosophy. (shrink)

This celebrated work is the keystone of the thought of the Frankfurt School. It is a wide-ranging philosophical and psychological critique of the Western categories of reason and nature, from Homer to Nietzsche.

Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin (...) Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West. (shrink)

A whirlwind tour through the utopias of modernity The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a brilliant fictional excursion through Western political philosophy from one of our most original thinkers. Professor Caritat, a middle-aged Candide, walks naively from his native land to the neighbouring countries of Utilitaria, Communitaria, and Libertaria on a quest to find the best of all possible worlds. Freed from the confines of his ivory tower, this wandering intellectual is made to confront the perplexed (...) state of modern thinking in a dazzling comedy of ideas. (shrink)

***Translated a Korean-language book to English with Dr. Chang-Seong Hong*** Venerable Hyun-Eung's Enlightenment and History is the first book of Buddhist philosophy of history published in South Korea; possibly the first of its kind in the world. In this book of telling points and clear visions, Hyun-Eung discusses East Asian Buddhist traditions in light of Western-philosophical perspectives and presents his views on the theory and praxis in contemporary Buddhism in a way that Western readers can easily (...) understand. East Asian Buddhist philosophy has had little introduction to English-speaking societies compared with the philosophies of other traditions in Buddhism. This book provides penetrating insight into such major issues of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism as enlightenment, compassion, emptiness, and sudden enlightenment in the Zen traditions. Hyun-Eung s approach is creative, clear, logical, and methodologically modernized. Hyun-Eung s Buddhist philosophy of history is not a mere product of armchair philosophy. He wrote most essays in this book during the 1980 s while South Korea was undergoing serious political turmoil as it tried to overthrow a government backed by military generals. This book presents a philosophy that evolved from his contemplations on the real issues of South Korean society. Defining the ideal form of life as the life of bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, Hyun-Eung summarizes the theme of this book as follows: My book Enlightenment and History is a collection of essays that interpret Buddhist doctrines under a new light. In particular, this book interprets bodhisattva as the combination of bodhi (enlightenment) and sattva (life, history), and defines the life of bodhisattva as enlightenment s becoming history and history s becoming enlightenment. This is the representative of all the new interpretations in this book. Also, I classify the issue of fact judgments on how to understand facts and phenomena as the area of bodhi (enlightenment) and the issue of value judgments on how to live life as the area of sattva (history), and thereby I make their logical differences clear. However, at the same time, I claim that harmonizing these two areas into one area of life is the model of a nice and practical life, which is the bodhisattva that Mahayana Buddhism praises. From Introduction. (shrink)

It is usually acknowledged that the core contribution of the Enlightenment is primarily twofold: the first being the introduction of reason and science as judgmental principles, and the second being the belief in the future progress of humankind as a shared destiny for humanity. This ‘modern’ reason—an exclusively human prerogative among creatures—could be applied to create a better society from the political, civil, educational, scientific, and religious points of view. What is usually less known is that for most of (...) the Enlightenment thinkers, this philosophical and cultural step was the prerogative of European or Western-educated thinkers, which implied a gradual exclusion of extra-European civilizations from human progress as a natural phenomenon. Thus, with the exception of a few French libertines, the creation of a better society was due to reason and critical thinking absent in other civilizations, who could, at most, inherit this ‘rational power’ from Western education. This exclusion, which is usually attributed to the violence of the colonialist period, is already implied in the arguments of several Enlightenment thinkers. Our investigation will follow three steps: an exposition of the three Western historical paradigms in which Eastern civilizations were inserted between the 17th and 18th century; a comparison between the attitude toward China and Buddhism of two very distant philosophers of the Enlightenment—i.e. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) and Johann Jacob Brucker (1696–1770)—and a brief reflection on the Enlightenment from an ‘external/exotic’ point of view that will suggest the necessity of a ‘new skeptical Enlightenment’ for inducing actual intercultural dialogue. (shrink)

Kant's Master Work Published in 1797, The Philosophy of Law [Rechtslehre] stands as one of the most significant late works by the great Prussian philosopher. Though he lived in an atmosphere of political and social repression, it is evident that Kant was sensitive to the revolutionary spirit that was spreading throughout Europe in the wake of Napoleon's armies. Claiming that man is born with reason and an innate desire for freedom, he argued that the union of these natural gifts (...) could bring about a new sense of order and harmony in future generations. This edition also reprints Kant's later Supplementary Explanations (1797), which was added to the second edition (1798). Immanuel Kant [1724-1804] was the foremost thinker of the late Enlightenment and one of the greatest figures in the history of Western philosophy. Concerned principally with epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, his work synthesized trends initiated by Rationalism and Empiricism; it has been a significant influence in the subsequent development of philosophy, religion and law. (shrink)

This book examines the importance of the Enlightenment for understanding the secular outlook of contemporary Western societies. It shows the new ways of thinking about religion that emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries and have had a great impact on how we address problems related to religion in the public sphere today. Based on the assumption that political concepts are rooted in historical realities, this collection combines the perspective of political philosophy with the perspective of the (...) history of ideas. Does secularism imply that individuals are not free to manifest their beliefs in public? Is secularization the same as rejecting faith in the absolute? Can there be a universal rational core in every religion? Does freedom of expression always go hand in hand with freedom of conscience? Is secularism an invention of the predominantly Christian West, which cannot be applied in other contexts, specifically that of Muslim cultures? Answers to these and related questions are sought not only in current theories and debates in political philosophy, but also in the writings of Immanuel Kant, Benedict Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Collins, Adriaan Koerbagh, Abbé Claude Yvon, Giovanni Paolo Marana, and others. -/- . (shrink)

"Sweeping through the history of Western philosophy of law, [the author] deals with the metaphysical idea of potency as defined by Spinoza and Nietzsche, upsetting entrenched theories of jurisprudence. [The author] first addresses how the idea of potency can change the meaning of the power ascribed to an omnipotent God. This brings together classical Greek philosophy with Jewish biblical exegesis, which [the author] links through the juncture of Christianity. He then relates potency to the classical philosophical tradition (...) in Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' and its Arabic interpretations, particularly those of Ibn Rushd (Averroës). This leads [the reader] to the genesis of natural law theory in Western philosophy, from Augustine to Aquinas and from Duns Scotus to Ockham... [The author] examines the inherently problematic concept of political theology, pitting Spinozan-Nietzschean potency against Kant and Enlightenment natural law to reveal the weakness inherent in the Enlightenment system. Finally, [the author] applies the theories of Carl Schmitt to the philosophical rationalism of the Western tradition, showing [the reader] how it has failed to contain absolute power in a juridical sense."--. (shrink)

The purpose of the text is to engage in a well thought critique of the Enlightenment project carried out by Nicholas Maxwell and to reflect upon the proposal of its reconstruction. Maxwell’s intellectual position is not at all obvious: he is neither a radical rationalist, nor a defender of scientific rationality, nor a postmodern and social constructivist. Postmodernists and social constructivists opposed the very idea of reason and rational inquiry, and have been thoroughly critical of what knowledge-inquiry represents. Indeed, (...) such criticisms could not be further from Maxwell’s position. According to Maxwell, what is wrong with knowledge-inquiry is not its embodiment of reason but, to the contrary, its gross and damaging irrationality. From Maxwell’s point of view we suffer not that much from the excess of rationality, but its deficit. Maxwell does not share open criticism of anti-Enlightenment thinkers from Nietzsche to Foucault, but more so he escapes the beliefs of a scientifically focused group of philosophers who see the main force of emancipation of humanity in a narrowly understood science followed by physics, the methodology of verification, and naturalism as a basic ideology. The author of the text thus poses the question: what can save our culture if it is neither sciencenor the rejection of science? Does the replacement of the category of knowledgeinquiry with wisdom-inquiry—which Maxwell converts us to—bring us any closer to a solution in our consideration of knowledge and life, science and politics, facts and values, nature and society? In Western culture wisdom has always been an object of desire, and it was so, inter alia, because unlike knowledge it has never been precisely defined and further specified. Philosophers developed a warm feeling towards wisdom and sought for wisdom, but had they lived by wisdom? Finally, the author challenges the most difficult question: can we rationally excuse our hopes for wisdom and hope that it may one day be embodied in the work of institutions and the actions of individuals? (shrink)

Since the time of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, discussions of faith and reason have often pitted the believer against the skeptic, the theist against the atheist, and the person of one faith against the person of no professed faith. But the relation of reason to faith has been a matter of debate among believers as well. There are those who hold that religious faith can be proven or supported by rational argument. Others say that to try to (...) give reasons and arguments does violence to religious faith, or opens it to misunderstanding and doubt, or trivializes it. Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community is a dialogue between Hendrik Hart and William Sweet, two philosophers who identify themselves as Christians, and who seek to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment and its legacy. The authors approach the relation of faith to reason, however, in very different ways: Hart from the perspective of the Calvinian tradition and postmodern philosophy, Sweet from the Catholic tradition and analytic philosophy. Among the topics discussed are the nature of religious faith and of reason, liberalism and orthodoxy in religion, the relation of religious experience and rationality, and building community in a religiously and culturally pluralistic world. This exchange presents two distinctive perspectives to some of the major challenges of the reason to religious belief, but seeks to find common ground between them. (shrink)

In a work of astonishing intellectual range, James Engell traces the evolution of the creative imagination, from its emergence in British empirical thought through its flowering in Romantic art and literature. The notion of a creative imagination, Engell shows, was the most powerful and important development of the eighteenth century. It grew simultaneously in literature, criticism, philosophy, psychology, religion, and science, attracting such diverse minds as Hobbes, Addison, Gerard, Goethe, Kant, and Coleridge. Indeed, rather than discussing merely the abstract (...) notion of the imagination, Engell examines the community of thinkers, especially in England and Germany, who joined to pursue and develop what became the most fascinating and suggestive concept of modern Western thought. For as the imagination became the dominant subject of literature, its meanings multiplied. Finally it came to be seen as the crown of artistic creation and as the mediator in the ongoing dialectic between matter and spirit, materialism and transcendentalism. (shrink)

Walter Kaufmann's monumental study of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, Nietzsche:Philosopher,Psychologist,Antichrist (1950) dramatically transformed Nietzsche interpretations in the postwar United States and rendered Kaufmann himself a dominant figure in transatlantic Nietzsche studies from 1950 until his death in 1980. While the longevity of Kaufmann's hegemony over postwar American Nietzsche interpretations in particular is remarkable, even more so is the fact that he revitalized the career of such a radical thinker in the conservative intellectual climate of the 1950s. Philosophers and historians typically (...) credit Kaufmann with rescuing Nietzsche from the Nazis, but argue that he did so by denaturing Nietzsche's philosophy of power and narrowly transforming him into an existentialist. By contrast, this essay argues that Kaufmann took a much more dramatic step by extending the scope of Nietzsche's philosophy, demonstrating how his ideas resonated with but also transcended the dominant philosophies of the day. Kaufmann presented Nietzsche as a philosopher uniquely poised to bridge the increasing mid-century rift between continental and analytic philosophies, as well as between the increasingly distinct moral worlds of academic philosophers and general readers. At a time when philosophical discourses within the university and beyond were pulling apart, Kaufmann put Nietzsche to work to bring them back together. By emphasizing Nietzsche's harmony with the range of scholarly and popular philosophical concerns of mid-century, he also established, for the first time in the United States, Nietzsche's role as a canonical thinker in the Western tradition. (shrink)