This paper revisits the issue of whether responsibility is essentially historical. Roughly, the leading question here is this: Do ways in which we can acquire pertinent antecedents of action, such as beliefs, desires, and values, have an essential bearing on whether we are responsible for actions that are suitably related to these antecedents? I argue, first, that Michael McKenna’s interesting case for nonhistoricism is indecisive, and, second, his brand of modest historicism, while highly insightful, yields results concerning responsibility that (...) ought to be resisted. I conclude by motivating a hybrid view: it implies that responsibility does not require that one have a past, but should one have a past, it must be a past of a certain sort. (shrink)

This article seeks to reconcile a historicist sensitivity to how intellectually virtuous behavior is shaped by historical contexts with a non-relativist account of historical scholarship. To that end, it distinguishes between hierarchies of intellectual virtues and hierarchies of intellectual goods . The first hierarchy rejects a one-size-fits-all model of historical virtuousness in favor of a model that allows for significant varieties between the relative weight that historians must assign to intellectual virtues in order to acquire justified historical understanding. It grounds (...) such differences, not on the historians’ interests or preferences, but on their historiographical situations, so that hierarchies of virtues are a function of the demands that historiographical situations (defined as interplays of genre, research question, and state of scholarship) make upon historians. Likewise, the second hierarchy allows for the pursuit of various intellectual goods, but banishes the specter of relativism by treating historical understanding as an intellectual good that is constitutive of historical scholarship and therefore deserves priority over alternative goods. The position that emerges from this is classified as a form of weak historicism. (shrink)

Unlike the radical historicist and the radical logicist, the moderate historicist in the philosophy of science adopts the position that neither purely a priori (i.e., logical or philosophical) nor purely historical considerations alone determine the acceptability of a philosophical analysis of science. A dilemma arising from the nature of this position is first described and then it is argued that what is perhaps the most plausible way of avoiding this dilemma is doomed to failure. A particular example of this attempt (...) at escaping the dilemma is considered in some detail, and along the way evidence is amassed in support of the view that no non-trivial statement of moderate historicism will be coherent. (shrink)

Hidden in Historicism considers how the nineteenth-century philosophy of historicism depicts three "forgotten time regimes": a time of rise and fall, an ambiguous time of synchronicity of the non-synchronous, and a time in which decisive moments dominate. Before the eighteenth century, time was past-oriented. This inversed in the Enlightenment, when the future became dominating. Today, this time of progress continues to be embraced as a "time of the modern". Yet, inequality, increasing violence and climate change lead to doubts (...) over a bright future. In this book, Harry Jansen moves away from the heritage of Reinhart Koselleck and his single time of the modern towards a historicist, threefold temporal approach to history writing. In the time regime of the twenty-first century past, present and future coexist. It is a heterogeneous time that takeson the three forms of historicism. Jansen's study shows how all three times exist together in current historiography and contribute to a better understanding of the world today. Based on the idea that an incarnated time rules everything that happens it reality, the book offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing discussion about time and time regimes in contemporary philosophy and theory of history for students and scholars, both time specialists and the non-specialist. (shrink)

Enlightenment thought and its contemporary followers usually support two contradictory principles simultaneously. The first is universality. Truth is universal because it is truth for all. Claims to universality are made in logic and science, but also in areas that are culturally or politically controversial. Recently, universalism has become a key term to express a fundamental critique of identity politics. For much of European history, Christianity provided such a universal truth. But with the decline of its cultural hegemony and the rise (...) of particular nation-states, conflicting truth claims became weapons in violent conflicts, leading Hobbes to argue that dangerous truth claims must be neutralized by robust political power. In the eighteenth century, rationalism became more optimistic, interpreting universalism as cosmopolitanism based on universal reason and progress through history. The second principle is historicism, which is the self-reflexive look at the historical origins of universal claims and theories. Historicism emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to the application of rationalism to history. It challenged the universal claims of the French Revolution, emphasizing instead the unique value of each historical entity. This revealed a fundamental paradox: when universalism becomes self-reflexive, it recognizes that it has non-universal historical origins, thereby undermining itself. After the devastation of World War II and the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) represented a significant effort toward a new universalism. It sought to establish human rights as universal principles for the emerging world order. But history repeated itself: Historicism once again weakened confidence in human rights. The enemies of human rights take advantage of this weakness. We therefore have to live with the paradox that universalism is necessary because humanity shares a single world, but that historical self-reflection is also unavoidable. In other words, the Enlightenment principle of universalism must accept historicism as an integral part of itself. (shrink)

This paper seeks to clarify the precise sense in which Collingwood's “metaphysics without ontology” is a descriptive metaphysics. It locates Collingwood's metaphysics against the background of Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics and then defends it against the claim that Collingwood reduced metaphysics to a form of cultural anthropology. Collingwood's metaphysics is descriptive not because it is some sort of historicised psychology that describes temporally parochial and historically shifting assumptions, but because it is a high level form of conceptual (...) analysis premised on the claim that ontological questions are actually internal ones and that metaphysics, understood as an attempt to answer external questions, is not a possible philosophical enterprise. This non-historicist reading of what it means to take the ontology out of metaphysics has broader implications which go beyond a scholarly debate in so far as it shows that it is possible to maintain objectivity in the absence of strong ontological underpinnings. (shrink)

In this paper I shall argue on Rortyan grounds that the two prima facie conflicting trends in contemporary philosophy, i.e. socialising and naturalising the mind should go hand in hand. First, I shall discuss socialising and naturalising tendencies as anti-sceptical strategies. Then I shall challenge both approaches and sketch out that they can be used together to solve some of their central problems. I shall recall how socially minded philosophers tend to ignore the non-social and argue that a naturalistic explanation (...) of the genesis of social practices is a suitable way for them to connect the social to the physical. Then I shall argue, in return, that naturalism could be supported by socio-historical approaches where two phenomena that are hard to naturalise are concerned: the first-person perspective on one hand, and normativity on the other. For these reasons, cooperation rather than ignorance and/or conflict between naturalists and socio-historicists would be desirable.My aim is not to develop an anti-Cartesian argument. That has been done by the authors I directly or indirectly refer to. Neither is my aim to show that naturalism or socio-historicism alone could not do the job. They probably could. My point is twofold, consisting of a descriptive and a normative claim: first, to demonstrate convergences between two recent, prima facie conflicting trends in recent history of philosophy ; and second, to argue that it is more efficient and more economical for these trends to cooperate because one can easily support the weaknesses of the other. Hence, my suggestion that naturalism and socio-historicism should act as allies in the face of their common enemy, rather than as one another’s enemies. (shrink)

Mark Bevir raises the question of how genealogy, understood as a technique-based radical historicism, and the notion of the contingency of ideas, ground “critique.” His problem is to avoid the relativism of radical historicism in a way that allows for “critique” without appealing to non-radical historicist absolutisms of the kind that ground the notion of false consciousness. He does so by appealing to the notion of motivated irrationality, which he claims avoids the problem of relativism and the problems (...) of “false consciousness.” The genealogies of Nietzsche and Foucault, however, do not ground “critique.” The relevant normative judgments, of nobility in Nietzsche, for example, are presupposed. (shrink)

It is fashionable nowadays to characterize necessity or necessary truth in a Leibnizian manner as what is true in all possible worlds. But the brilliance of this heuristic device ought not blind us to the fact that, unlike God, we cannot suppose ourselves able to individuate all possible worlds. The sense of the notion of necessity is that, whatever we may suppose possible worlds to be, nothing we conceive as forming a compossible world could falsify a truth we rightly tendered (...) as a necessary truth. Since to conceive or imagine a “particular” compossible world is to conceive or imagine a determinate state of affairs the details of which do not entail incompatible ascriptions among those details, there is reason to think that, whatever may be alleged to be the status of the formal principle of non-contradiction, conceptual compossibility is parasitic on the semantically rich natural languages with which in various ways we entertain possibilities relative to the actual world. If this much be conceded, then it is a very small step to grasp that if what we suppose to be possible relative to the actual world can be specified only within the scope of the particular conceptual schemes and theories that enable us to imagine determinate states of affairs of this sort or that, then: different conceptual schemes will permit us to entertain different and different ranges of compossible worlds; confined, within a given historical interval, to a particular conceptual scheme that does not yet feature or even know how to feature distinctions that are to become cognitively accessible at a later time, we cannot make sense of our ever being able to formulate in principle all possibilities with regard to the actual world—nor, therefore, all compossible worlds; and it would not be surprising that human investigators working in real-time terms with competing paradigms should find their paradigms at least provisionally incommensurable, as relating to differently conceived problems, differently conceived ways of construing events, and the like. (shrink)

Michael Warner, a literary critic with a keen sense of history, wrote in 1987 that “New Historicism is a label that historians don't like very much because they understand something different by historicism. But nobody's asking historians….” This essay is an answer to questions nobody asked me, questions about interdisciplinarity and the differences between literary critical and historical practices. A return to historically informed literary criticism, which many critics still consider a dominant trend in the profession, emerged in (...) the early 1980s following the publication of Stephen Greenblatt's acclaimed Renaissance Self-Fashioning . Reacting as it did against the decontextualized abstractions of New Criticism and Deconstruction, the movement soon labeled New Historicism sought to breathe new life into canonical texts by relating them to non-literary texts and social practices of their day. This historicist inclination should have formed the basis for a coming together of the movement's practitioners with historians interested in literary representations. But no such merger has occurred: New Historicists evince little interest in the systematic, archivally based study of history, and historians have at best shown indifference to the work of Greenblatt and his followers. (shrink)

This article engages with the philosophical reflections of the French historian of science Hélène Metzger (1886–1944) in order to develop a vocabulary for understanding the rise of non-reductive Continental naturalism in the contemporary humanities. The bibliography of current naturalist approaches in the arts and the human sciences is still in the making, but it is altogether clear that the trend is not scientist or historicist or relativist. This epistemological diagnosis refers us to Metzger, who found herself surrounded with the logical (...) positivism of the Wiener Kreis, on the one hand, and the historicism of her French colleagues, on the other, as well as with the infiltration of the history of science by a chronological empiricism. In this article I will take the most recent book of Vicki Kirby – Quantum Anthropologies: Life at Large from 2011 – as an exemplary case of non-reductive Continental naturalist scholarship in the humanities today and by reading it through the concepts of Metzger, I will demonstrate how this type of research leads to refreshing insights in what constitutes positive humanities knowledge and what is the role of the a priori in the field. (shrink)

This essay tries to develop a thoroughly critical method of evaluating religious beliefs presented to us in classic texts, illustrating this method by critical interpretation of the Dao of the Daodejing and the God of the Gospel of Mark. -/- The essay treats religious beliefs "theologically," that is, as views about what finally matters in life. In its emphasis on critical reason, it departs from the dogmatism usually associated with theology. It is also historicist and pluralist, departing from the usual (...) association of theology with a focus on absolute truths transcending all culture. -/- In the first part, I trace modern difficulties in subjecting religious faith to rational critique, to the cognitive "imperialism" of traditional religious thought -- the tendency of believers to allow their religious beliefs to govern knowledge in many other areas we now recognize as non-religious, due to the modern development of physical and cultural sciences. This tendency has misled modern thinkers into regarding religious claims about literal facts and universal truths as the epistemological basis of religious faith, and therefore the claims that should be the focus of rational critique. I offer instead a pragmatist view, which focuses on the pragmatic implications believers draw from their beliefs, and tries to correlate these implications with contextually conditioned perceptions believers might plausibly have had that might support these implications. -/- The second part of the essay proposes a very revisionist version of Plato’s "Socratic" reasoning, as one way of subjecting theological beliefs to rational critique. This model of Socratic reasoning is broadly empiricist, regarding direct perceptions of what is admirable, illustrated in unproblematic concrete narratives, as the epistemological basis for moral knowledge. Platonic "Ideas" are the result of extracting the essence of what is admirable from these concrete perceptions, and gradually refining them through sustained questioning. This account differs fundamentally from "Platonism" as it is traditionally conceived, especially in that it allows for the existence of a very great many ways of leading a great human life, exemplified today in the many different cultures we have gained an appreciative awareness of. The multiplicity of these different ways prevents any one small set of concepts from being regarded as a singularly and exclusively authoritative norm for judging all people everywhere. At the same time, this approach to moral reasoning avoids nihilist relativism by providing a procedural way of distinguishing rationally between the essence of what is admirable, and mere concrete appearances that often accompany what is admirable, but which can exist separately and so mislead people into a focus on things that do not finally matter. -/- The final part of the article applies this approach to a critical interpretation of the Dao of the Daodejing and the God of the Gospel of Mark. In the case of Dao, for example, we must attend to the way that aphorisms in the Daodejing evoke life experiences in which we ourselves can perceive specific contrasts between what is admirable and what is not. Dao in the Daodejing should then be interpreted, following suggestions given in the Daodejing itself, as a summary reference to this kind of admirability in its most pure form, conceived of in contrast to accompanying appearances. Similarly, in the case of the Gospel of Mark, we must attend to the way that episodes in Mark’s Jesus-story evoke life experiences in which we can perceive specific contrasts between what is admirable and what is not. Mark’s God is a focus for personal commitment to this kind of admirability in its most pure form, conceived of in contrast to accompanying appearances. The historicist character of this critical method is evident in the fact that in the Daodejing the particular contrasts defining what is admirable differ so radically from the particular contrasts defining what devotion to God means in the Gospel of Mark. (shrink)

Christopher Framarin has spent many years analyzing the problem of niṣkama karma or desireless action in Indian philosophy as evidenced by his many papers on the topic. The results of these papers are gathered into his book, Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy, which presents a sustained defense of the doctrine from multiple perspectives. Its philosophical depth and sophisticated argument notwithstanding, Framarin's work is lucid, persuasive, and well-executed. Framarin sets up the basic problem in the introduction and then proceeds to (...) test various interpretive responses. As he develops the book, he shows why each of these responses fails before presenting his own solution. The inquiry into non-viable .. (shrink)

In his recent book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Evan Thompson argues that inter-tradition or cross-cultural philosophical dialogue ought to be governed by cosmopolitan conversational norms that do not subsume any one tradition’s deep commitments under those of any other tradition, but rather bring those commitments into the discussion so that they can be challenged and defended. He argues on this basis for the application of a deeply contextualist and historicist interpretive methodology to Buddhist texts, concepts, and theories in (...) dialogue with philosophy and contemporary cognitive sciences. Buddhist modernism, in eschewing that deeply contextualist and historicist methodology, falls short of those cosmopolitan commitments. We argue that Thompson’s cosmopolitan commitments do not mandate the deeply contextualist and historicist methodology he recommends. As an alternative, we propose a creolizing methodology that finds value in mixing, reinterpreting, and reinventing cultural traditions and other forms of belonging to address the complex problems the world faces. We suggest that such a creolizing methodology can be found in other forms of Buddhist modernism than those Thompson criticizes. We provide, as two examples, the thought of the Chinese monk Taixu and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. (shrink)

This paper discusses the non-historicist structural ownership condition on moral responsibility forwarded by Benjamin Matheson. The structural ownership condition requires that a morally relevant action be grounded or partly grounded in psychological states that are generally coherent. While Matheson does not mean to settle the debate on historicism vs. non-historicism, he does mean to secure the position of the ownership condition against the problems that structuralist theories have faced in the past. This paper will focus on how the (...) ownership condition handles cases of ambivalent agents. Intuitively, ambivalent agents should be responsible for what they do as long as what they do is expressive of their cares or commitments, or their authentic character. At a first glance it appears that the ownership condition follows intuitions about ambivalence, but with a closer look we can see that Matheson has provided a potential counter example to this position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-RealismS. R. SahaAdvaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism. By Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. Pp. xii + 274. Hardcover $75.00.Chakrabarthi Ram-Prasad deserves praise for Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism, a book on the core area of Advaita Vedānta philosophy, written in an analytical and comparative style, choosing contemporary Western philosophy as his canvas. (...) George Thibaut's translations of Vedānta commentaries were supplemented by the writings of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and others, who followed the style of history of philosophy in their works. But the brand of Western philosophy that served as the background for them was perhaps limited to Hegelian and Neo-Hegelian philosophy. Many later philosophers, notably Krish-nachandra Bhattacharya, Rashbihary Das, G. R. Malkani, T.R.V. Murti, and T.M.P. Mahadevan, followed an interpretive style in their writings on Vedānta, mostly confining themselves to systems of Indian philosophy. After India achieved independence, a new era began for analytical research in Indian philosophy, led by Daniel Ingalls, J. N. Mohanty, Bimal Krishna Matilal, and Arindam Chakrabarti, although their work is mostly confined to Nyāya, Buddhism, and Vedānta. Following their model many others in India and abroad have been doing important work mainly in the areas of Nyāya and Buddhism but rarely in Vedānta. The credit goes to Chakra-barthi Ram-Prasad to have been able to produce a full-length book on Advaita Vedānta written in a thoroughly analytical style that transcends geographical barriers in philosophy.The book contains an Introduction and four sections. In the Introduction we get an idea of the project Ram-Prasad has undertaken. By "Advaita" he means the philosophy that Ś an.kara argues for in his commentaries on various Upaniṣads and on Bādarāyaṇa's Vedāntasūtras. It is not Ram-Prasad's aim to give an exposition of this philosophy in the style of historicist-philological exegesis, but rather to give an innovative reconstruction of Advaita on the basis of the views of three philosophers of the school interpreted in the light of the views of prominent philosophers of the West, although the book is firmly anchored in the Indian tradition. A distinction is made in Advaita between soteriology and philosophy. The Upaniṣads declare that brahman is the ultimate reality. Brahman is, however, identical with ātman, and ātman is again identical with ji¯va. That there is a self cannot be denied, for one who denies is the self itself. This self is undeniable because it is reflexive in nature. Self, understood in this sense, is identical with brahman. ji¯va, which is conceived as suffering consciousness, is only a particular exemplification of this brahman-ātman. Every ji¯va is thus individuated ātman. The goal of liberation for an individual is nothing other than the attainment of the de-individuated state. Not only ji¯va but also the [End Page 264] world, according to Advaita, is ultimately brahman, although the world is independent of ji¯va and its cognitional states. The de-individuation of ji¯va and the reducibility of the world to brahman do not get ready acceptance in human consciousness. On the matter of such a realization, s´ravaṇa or teachings from the texts stand in need of aid from manana or philosophical reflection. Ram-Prasad has argued for a philosophy of Advaita that is not incompatible with its soteriological goal, although his interest in developing this philosophy is autonomous in character.Ram-Prasad calls the brand of philosophy that he develops in this book "non-realism." It holds that the object of experience is not what it appears to be. The object appears in experience as an "other" to cognition. According to realism, the object is really so and is elementary to reality. But according to anti-realism the object is not elementary and is reducible to cognition and hence is only a construct. Advaita metaphysics is neither realistic nor anti-realistic. Ram-Prasad argues for this philosophical position on the basis of his interpretation of some leading philosophers of... (shrink)

Analytic aesthetics has had little to say about academic schools of criticism, such as Freudian, Marxist, feminist, or postcolonial perspectives. Historicists typically view their interpretations as anachronistic; non-historicists assess all interpretations according to formalist criteria. Insofar as these strategies treat these interpretations as on a par, however, they are inadequate. For the theories that ground the interpretations differ in the claims they make about the world. I argue that the interpretations of different critical schools can be evaluated according to the (...) truth or epistemic merit of these claims. (shrink)

The two most common names to invoke for a perceptualist aesthetics are Rudolf Arnheim and E. H. Gombrich. But the similaritied and differences between them have never been explicitly drawn. This paper undertakes such an analysis based on the three categories of representation, expression and historical objectivity. Arnheim's less stringent solutions to the problems of representation and expression are applauded but Gombrich's unique attempt to ground both of these categories in a form amenable to non-historicist approach to history are also (...) praised. Gombrich's anti-historicism derives from Karl Popper and Arnheim is fleshed out with the theories of Maurice Mandelbaum. The parallel comparison of Popper-Mandelbaum helps to underscore differences and show an alternative to Gombrich and Popper's nominalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend a structural ownership condition on moral responsibility. According to the condition I propose, an agent owns a mental item if and only if it is part of or is partly grounded by a coherent set of psychological states. As I discuss, other theorists have proposed or alluded to conditions like psychological coherence, but each proposal is unsatisfactory in some way. My account appeals to narrative explanation to elucidate the relevant sense of psychological coherence.

Are judgments of praise for moral behavior modulated by knowledge of an agent's past suffering at the hands of others, and if so, in what direction? Drawing on multiple lines of research in experimental social psychology, we identify three hypotheses about the psychology of praise — typecasting, handicapping, and non-historicism — each of which supports a different answer to the question above. Typecasting predicts that information about past suffering will augment perceived patiency and thereby diminish perceived agency, making altruistic (...) actions seem less praiseworthy; handicapping predicts that this information will make altruistic actions seem more effortful, and hence more praiseworthy; and non-historicism predicts that judgments of praise will be insensitive to information about an agent's experiential history. We report the results of two studies suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to attract more praise when the experiential history of the agent involves coping with adversity in childhood rather than enjoying prosperity (Study 1, N = 348, p = .03, d = 0.45; Study 2, N = 400, p = .02, d = 0.39), as well as the results of a third study suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to be evaluated more favorably when the experiential history of the agent includes coping with adversity than in the absence of information about the agent's past experience (N = 226, p = .002). This pattern of results, we argue, is more consistent with handicapping than typecasting or non-historicism. (shrink)

This essay poses a critical response to Strauss’ political philosophy that takes as its primary object Strauss’ philosophy of Law. It does this by drawing on recent theoretical work in psychoanalytic theory, conceived after Jacques Lacan as another, avowedly non-historicist theory of Law and its relation to eros. The paper has four parts. Part I, ‘The Philosopher’s Desire: Making an Exception, or “The Thing Is...’’’, recounts Strauss’ central account of the complex relationship between philosophy and ‘the city’. Strauss’ Platonic conception (...) of philosophy as the highest species of eros is stressed, which is that aspect of his work which brings it into striking proximity with the Lacanian-psychoanalytic account of the dialectic of desire and the Law. Part II, ‘Of Prophecy and Law’, examines Strauss’ analysis of Law as first presented in his 1935 book, Philosophy and Law, and central to his later ‘rebirth of classical political philosophy’. Part III, ‘Primordial Repression and Primitive Platonism’, is the central part of the paper. Lacan’s psychoanalytic understanding of Law is brought critically to bear upon Strauss’ philosophy of Law. The stake of the position is ultimately how, for Lacanian psychoanalysis, the Law is transcendental to subjectivity, and has a founding symbolic force, which mitigates against speaking of it solely or primarily in terms of more or less inequitable ‘rules of thumb’, as Plato did. Part IV, ‘Is the Law the Thing?’ then asks the question of what eros might underlie Strauss’ paradoxical defense of esoteric writing in the age of ‘permissive’ modern liberalism – that is, outside of the ‘closed’ social conditions which he, above all, alerts us to as the decisive justification for this ancient practice. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to introduce a Merleau-Pontyan reading of the Four Theses of Dipesh Chakrabarty. In the first part of this article, we identify the theoretical problems that undergird Chakrabarty’s claims by connecting them to an attempt to rethink the concept of history in a non-historicist manner in light of the questions raised by the Anthropocene and by anthropogenic climate change. Our hypothesis, which we explore in the second part of the article, is that the idea of (...) history developed by Merleau-Ponty, which finds in the concepts of “institution” and “transcendental geology” its fundamental theoretical articulations, can provide the framework for a rereading of the Four Theses. In the last section, we attempt to provide an interpretation of Chakrabarty’s proposition by reading the problem of the relationship between geological history, life history, and human history as a relationship of institution. In conclusion, we indicate some potential developments for this proposition that move in the direction of a narrower intersection between philosophy and earth system science. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility essentially historical, or does an agent's moral responsibility for an action depend only on their psychological structure at that time? In previous work, I have argued that the two main (non‐skeptical) views on moral responsibility and agents’ histories—historicism and standard structuralism—are vulnerable to objections that are avoided by a third option, namely history‐sensitive structuralism. In this paper, I develop this view in greater detail and evaluate the view by comparing it with its three dialectical rivals: skepticism (...) about moral responsibility, historicism, and standard structuralism. Each comparison includes discussion of new work on moral responsibility and agents’ histories, and along the way I offer new arguments for preferring history‐sensitive structuralism, paying special attention to the view's explanatory power. (shrink)

Using the work of Józef Bocheski as apositive example, this paper sets out the casefor a balanced use of historical knowledge indoing analytic philosophy. Between the twoextremes of relativizing historicism, whichdenies absolute truth, and arrogant scientism,which denies any constructive role for thehistory of ideas in philosophy, lies a viamedia in which historical reflection onconcepts and their history is placed at theservice of the system of cognitive philosophy.Knowledge of the history of philosophy, whilenot a sine qua non, can empower analyticphilosophy (...) to push forward to new and moresatisfactory solutions to old and new problems.Examples are adduced from Bocheski's oeuvreand from the author's own experience. (shrink)

This book is an account of the philosophical movement named Lebensphilosophie, which flourished at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. There many philosophers who participated in the movement, but this book concentrates on the three most important: Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel. The movement was called Lebensphilosophie—literally, philosophy of life—because its main interest was not life as a biological phenomenon but life as it is lived by human beings. They regarded human life (...) and experience as the fundamental reality, the basis of all knowledge and value, and disputed the relevance of any supernatural realm transcending human experience. The purpose of life was therefore life itself. Lebensphilosophie was the first modern philosophical movement in the Western tradition. It was “modern” in the sense that it was entirely humanist and secular, deriving all values from a non-religious perspective. Nietzsche, Dilthey and Simmel were either atheists or agnostics; they denied the relevance of any transcendent reality or being for human life. They abjured the traditional Christian concern with salvation and immortality. They also disputed the existence of natural law, teleology or a providential order; human beings created their own values and they did not conform to any made by nature. In anticipation of later existentialism, the Lebensphilosophen maintained that human beings are the makers of their own fate. Contrary to pessimism, they affirmed the great value of life while still acknowledging its frequent tragedy. The Lebensphilosophen were champions of an individualist ethics, which maintained that the highest good for a human being was self-realization, the development of a persons’s unique individuality. Their ethics was neither utilitarian nor de-ontological: it was not utilitarian because it did not regard the highest good as pleasure; self-realization could be a very unpleasant experience; and it was not de-ontological because it grounded moral norms upon the facts of human development and experience. The Lebensphilosophen were major advocates of historicism. They believed that human experience is formed by history, and that its horizons and limits are historical. Just as it was impossible to transcend human experience, so it was impossible to transcend history. All values and norms were therefore historical. In attempting to describe historical experience, the Lebensphilosophen developed the discipline of hermeneutics. They refused to accept mechanical explanation as a paradigm of explanation. This book attempts to describe and analyze the fundamental aspects of Lebensphilosophie by looking in detail at the views of its three leading figures. It examines their ethics, their religious background, their responses to pessimism and relativism, and their contributions to hermeneutics and historicism. (shrink)

Dans un court article rarement discuté intitulé « Note sur la situation faite en France à la philosophie biologique » (publié en 1947 dans la Revue de métaphysique et de morale ), Canguilhem dénonce la « situation » de ce qu’il appelle la philosophie biologique en France, par rapport à une tradition germanique plus développée. Il explique que la réflexion française sur les questions biologiques est à l’arrêt, à la fois en raison de son héritage cartésien et d’une sorte de (...) crainte inavouée à l’égard de la tradition romantique « lebensphilosophisch » allemande et de ses traductions politiques. Cette position est inhabituelle dans un texte paru peu après la guerre, et dont l’auteur fut un résistant actif. Mais plutôt que d’examiner la conjoncture socio-historique et les influences qui ont pu conduire à cette « Note », l’article en examine les assertions. Que serait une telle philosophie biologique? Une philosophie de la vie germanique traduite en français? En un sens, l’accueil très enthousiaste que Canguilhem a réservé à l’œuvre de Kurt Goldstein (qu’il a faite traduire en français avec Merleau-Ponty) relève d’une telle translatio. Mais en un autre sens, tous ses travaux ne relèvent pas de ce programme : d’une certaine façon, Le normal et le pathologique (1943, revu et augmenté en 1966) y correspond, mais non les essais réunis dans La Connaissance de la vie (1952, augmentée en 1965), notamment en raison de leur orientation plus historiciste. Ce dernier cas est particulièrement clair : une épistémologie historique des sciences de la vie est un projet tout à fait différent d’une « philosophie biologique » (ou philosophie de la vie) d’inspiration romantique. L’article conclut sur les perspectives d’une philosophie biologique aujourd’hui. (shrink)

This paper motivates and defends “Rortian realism,” a position that is Rortian in respect of its underlying philosophical theses but non-Rortian in terms of the lessons it draws from these for cultural politics. The philosophical theses amount to what the paper calls Rorty's “anti-representationalism”, arguing that AR is robust to critique as being anti-realist, relativist, or sceptical, invoking Rorty's historicism/ethnocentrism as part of the defence. The latter, however, creates problems for Rorty in so far as his reformative views on (...) the nature of philosophical and academic activity are meant to be foisted on an academy that ex hypothesi holds views different from these. The paper suggests we can motivate a different conception of the consequences of AR more amenable to the academy: Rortian realism, a view that makes greater concessions to realism and a kind of scientific naturalism than Rorty would like, but that for those very reasons is more likely to allow AR to prevail. (shrink)

The idea of representation is a fundamental factor of the social privilege for any social institution that lies in a desire to establish the firmly true descriptions of the world, set facts and objective truths. Yet, it should be noted that assertions based on representation are not only the prerogative of science, philosophy, religion, art and politics, but also the immediate reality of social life. A denial of representationalism inevitably leads to the relativism as the abruption of a language from (...) reality. Since then, a language can assert anything about the reality without accordance to the reality proper, and thus, distort the reality to its substitute - a new artistic reality. Post-analytical philosophy covers the issues under the term anti-representationalism, i.e. reject representation as a productive notion or a concept. Representatives of new historicism, on the contrary, understand representation as a productive notion through which cultural creativity can be studied in performative aspects. Research of representation as fine art is an integrated part of social processes of separation, withdrawal, acceptance and domination, and is generally a social expression of power-strength processes. Post-analytical philosophy in the concept of anti-representationalism does not thematise artistic and non-artistic signs specifics. A language is claimed not to reflect passively autonomous objects in the world like a mirror, but constitutes them as technical artistic texts in a fundamental sense. Theory of language representation in the post-analytical philosophy progresses into language instrumentalism - a language is understood as an important tool with the help of which the humankind aligns with the reality. (shrink)

Sheila Davaney’s Pragmatic Historicism provides yet another opportunity for us to discuss disagreements between two kinds of pragmatism. One, which I espouse, is a non-metaphysical pragmatism. It is rooted in James’s and Dewey’s appropriation of Darwinian biology for philosophical purposes and, more recently, Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language. Richard Rorty is its most influential contemporary spokesman. The other is a metaphysical pragmatism. It is rooted in James’s radical empiricism and Whitehead’s process philosophy. In the Highlands Institute, William Dean and (...) now Davaney, among others, advocate versions of metaphysical pragmatism. (shrink)

Aesthetic properties figure prominently in our daily lives, our conversations and many actions we take. Yet theoretical disagreement prevails over their nature, their variety, their epistemic and metaphysical status. This overview highlights the heterogeneity of aesthetic properties and examines repercussions for explanation. Aesthetic properties belong to natural objects or scenes, to artworks in any medium, to artefacts and built environments across historical eras; and they draw a wide variety of responses such as our perceptions, emotions or imaginative thought. Historicism (...) about artworks carries over to at least some aesthetic properties that depend on facts of their broader historical context just as works do. One issue is whether aesthetic properties can be demarcated solely in terms of non-aesthetic properties. If not, explanations of aesthetic properties need to draw on other aesthetic notions such as aesthetic experience, attention, judgement or value. The paper examines several accounts of aesthetic value to show how they extend to aesthetic properties. The paper concludes with an overview of the current metaphysical debate between realists and non-realists about aesthetic properties. (shrink)

This article advances a non-reductionist theorization of Europe as ‘multiplicity’. As an object and category of political reality, Europe is made (and re-made) within specific spatio-temporal configurations. For this reason, the first section argues that Europe should be approached as an instance of ‘historical ontology’. This counters a reductionist tendency to ‘fix’ Europe with definitive political and cultural characteristics or historical trajectories. The second and third sections of the article interrogate a few of the ontological ‘lines of flight’ taken by (...) contemporary Europe. The article discusses Europe’s multiplicity through its fields, imaginaries and ways of being in the world. Such a preliminary sketch of European multiplicity is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it suggests a new ethos in the study of European politics that privileges historicism, practice, and Europe’s recursive relationship to the world/globe. (shrink)

The traditional views of science as the possessor of a special method, and as the epitome or apex of rationality, have come under severe challenges for a variety of historical, psychological, sociological, political, and philosophical reasons. As a result, many philosophers are either denying science its claim to rationality, or else casting about for a new account of its rationality. In this paper a defense of the traditional view is offered. It is argued that contemporary philosophical discussion regarding the rationality (...) of science is plagued by a failure to distinguish among three different questions, all taken to be "the" question of the rationality of science. Once these questions are delineated, it becomes possible to answer one of them in such a way that the traditional link between science's rationality and its method is reestablished--although the scientific method is itself given a non-traditional rendering. In short, it is argued that there is a feature of science which is appropriately characterized as its method; that this method does in fact secure science's rationality; and that science is therefore correctly construed as preeminently rational. It is suggested in addition that the philosophy of science is itself best seen as a primarily epistemological activity, and consequently that a correction from the excessively historicist conception of recent philosophy of science is in order. (shrink)

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to debates concerning general scientific methodology and theory choice, the demarcation of science from non-science, the nature of probability and quantum mechanics, and the methodology of the social sciences. His work is notable for its wide influence both within the philosophy of science, within science itself, and within a broader social context. Popper’s early work attempts to solve the problem of (...) demarcation and offer a clear criterion that distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological claims. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival or by maintaining the theory as is and changing an auxiliary hypothesis. In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. While Popper recognizes that scientists can and do hold onto theories in the face of failed predictions when there are no predictively superior rivals to turn to. He holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific. Among other things, Popper argues that his falsificationist proposal allows for a solution of the problem of induction, since inductive reasoning plays no role in his account of theory choice. Along with his general proposals regarding falsification and scientific methodology, Popper is notable for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences. Popper defends a propensity theory of probability, according to which probabilities are interpreted as objective, mind-independent properties of experimental setups. Popper then uses this theory to provide a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, though its applicability goes beyond this specific case. With respect to the social sciences, Popper argued against the historicist attempt to formulate universal laws covering the whole of human history and instead argued in favor of methodological individualism and situational logic. Table of Contents 1. Background 2. Falsification and the Criterion of Demarcation a. Popper on Physics and Psychoanalysis b. Auxiliary and Ad Hoc Hypotheses c. Basic Sentences and the Role of Convention d. Induction, Corroboration, and Verisimilitude 3. Criticisms of Falsificationism 4. Realism, Quantum Mechanics, and Probability 5. Methodology in the Social Sciences 6. Popper’s Legacy 7. References and Further Reading a. Primary Sources b. Secondary Sources -/- . (shrink)

This book provides a diverse contextualization of Popper’s critical rationalism concerning knowledge and his generalized attitude of criticism on appropriate social and political reforms in contemporary Africa. The book evaluates how best to address contemporary political problems, especially in politically very troubled parts of the world. To address these contemporary problems, especially as it relates to Africa, the authors found the political philosophy of Popper as suitable. The discussion of Popper’s political philosophy engages us directly with all the particularities of (...) socio-economic and political problems within contemporary Africa. In other words, it presents the truth of the present socio-political reality in Africa where the question of what kinds of political ideas and concepts can be offered as appropriate to a political environment, which so greatly faces facets of developmental issues. Although the issues and events that informed the writings of Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism as well as The Open Society and Its Enemies, were among others, the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, the inventiveness of this work is how happily scholars in non-liberal societies, such as in Africa, can pick up Popper’s insights and usefully work with them to offer appropriate social reforms for their society. This volume is a critical juxtaposition of Popper’s ideas in a bid to make good sense of social and intellectual conditions in Africa, particularly as it relates to the scale and speed of social change that is needed in most African nations that are often ridden by corruption. The book is suitable for studies in political philosophy, economic and development studies, African Studies and Indigenous Knowledge systems. (shrink)

Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His criticism of induction and his falsifiability criterion of demarcation between science and non-science were major contributions to the philosophy of science. Popper's broader philosophy of critical rationalism comprised a distinctive philosophy of social science and political theory. His critique of historicism and advocacy of the open society marked him out as a significant philosopher of freedom and reason. This book sets out the historical and intellectual (...) contexts in which Popper worked, and offers an overview and diverse criticisms of his central ideas. The volume brings together contributors with expertise on Popper's work, including people personally associated with Popper, specialists on the topics treated, and scholars with special interests in aspects of Popper's work. (shrink)

Goldin thus begins the book by asking the basic question "What are we reading?" while also considering why it has been so rarely asked. Yet far from denigrating Chinese philosophy, he argues that liberating these texts from the mythic idea that they are the product of a single great mind only improves our understanding and appreciation. By no means does a text require single and undisputed authorship to be meaningful; nor is historicism the only legitimate interpretive stance. The first (...) chapter takes up a hallmark of Chinese philosophy that demands a Western reader's cognizance: its preference for non-deductive argumentation. Chinese philosophy is an art he demonstrates, more than it is a rigorous logical method. Then comes the core of the book, eight chapters devoted to the eight philosophical texts divided into three parts: Philosophy of Heaven, Philosophy of the Way, and Two Titans at the End of an Age.. (shrink)

The story of eternity is not as simple as a secularization narrative implies. Instead it follows something like the trajectory of reversal in Kant’s practical proof for the existence of god. In that proof, god emerges not as an object of theoretical investigation, but as a postulate required by our practical engagement with the world; so, similarly, the eternal is not just secularized out of existence, but becomes understood as an entailment of, and somehow imbricated in, the conditions of our (...) practical existence. -/- The sections that follow discuss some of those central figures in modern European philosophy whose views prominently feature some consideration of eternity. I start with Kant in section I. Kant’s critique of speculative theology is well-known, and this hostility would appear to make it unlikely that the eternal, with all its theological baggage, would feature prominently in Kant’s critical philosophy. But in fact Kant’s transcendental idealism endorses no fewer than three different concepts of the eternal, including what turns out to be the most historically influential idea: that practical reason involves a kind of eternal, non-temporal action. Kant shifts this notion of a non-temporal act from its original theological context of god’s actus purus to a practical context, setting the stage for Schelling’s and Kierkegaard’s later development of this theme. Before detailing this trajectory however, section II is devoted to Hegel, the philosopher whose radical historicism is perhaps more than any other thinker responsible for making “the nineteenth century preeminently the historical century.”4 Hegel is not fertile soil for the concept of the eternal, but his historicism does turn out, at a crucial moment in the philosophy of nature, to presuppose a certain conception of eternity as an eternal present. Perhaps more importantly for the further development of eternity in nineteenth century thought however is that both Schelling and Kierkegaard situate their views of the eternal in the context of a collective rejection of Hegel. Section III discusses Schelling, who returns to Kant’s conception of non-temporal choice, seeing human capacities for free eternal self-creation as rivaling god’s. Such powers are required, Schelling argues, to resist the sublimation of the individual human person into the blankness of the Absolute. Section IV briefly consider Schopenhauer’s view that the in-itself of everything is an endlessly striving will. Section V concerns Kierkegaard who is strongly committed to the eternal, and indeed criticizes Hegel for compromising his conception of the eternal by thinking it temporally; but he is obsessed by the paradoxical question of our practical “access” to the eternal within a particular temporal moment: the decisive moment, imbued with significance that can turn life around and create a new person, pushing Schelling’s concerns even further. The remaining, shorter sections, present briefer accounts of more recent figures who make important use of some conception of the eternal: Nietzsche’s eternal return (section VI), Agamben’s (1942-) theory of sovereignty (section VII) and finally Alain Badiou’s unapologetic attempt to resuscitate eternity as the condition of revolutionary political change (Section VIII). I end with a concluding meditation (Section IX). (shrink)

L’herméneutique coranique de Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988) repose sur la recherche méthodique du sens objectif du texte. Inspiré par l’herméneutique romantique, telle qu’on peut la trouver chez E. Betti et qui nécessite pour le lecteur d’établir un lien intérieur avec l’esprit de l’auteur, Rahman considère que c’est l’intention divine qui est garante de l’objectivité du sens du Coran. L’empathie avec l’auteur est rendue possible par une conception historique de la révélation, selon laquelle la parole, qui est amenée par un Esprit intérieur (...) et immatériel, passe par le filtre de la conscience prophétique. La méthode historiciste d’interprétation de Rahman, qu’il appelle herméneutique du « double mouvement », repose sur les deux critères d’objectivité que sont le contexte historique de la révélation et la prise en compte de la totalité du livre sacré. Ainsi, l’interprète doit, dans un premier temps, aller à la période de révélation pour, à partir des circonstances particulières, comprendre les finalités objectives du texte, identifiées à l’intention divine. Puis, il doit appliquer ces principes, qui sont moraux et non juridiques, au présent en s’éloignant du sens littéral. Rahman illustre son propos en essayant de montrer que le souci de l’intention divine permet de voir que le Coran s’oppose à la polygamie et à l’esclavage, qui vont contre le principe moral d’une société juste et égalitaire. (shrink)

L’herméneutique coranique de Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988) repose sur la recherche méthodique du sens objectif du texte. Inspiré par l’herméneutique romantique, telle qu’on peut la trouver chez E. Betti et qui nécessite pour le lecteur d’établir un lien intérieur avec l’esprit de l’auteur, Rahman considère que c’est l’intention divine qui est garante de l’objectivité du sens du Coran. L’empathie avec l’auteur est rendue possible par une conception historique de la révélation, selon laquelle la parole, qui est amenée par un Esprit intérieur (...) et immatériel, passe par le filtre de la conscience prophétique. La méthode historiciste d’interprétation de Rahman, qu’il appelle herméneutique du « double mouvement », repose sur les deux critères d’objectivité que sont le contexte historique de la révélation et la prise en compte de la totalité du livre sacré. Ainsi, l’interprète doit, dans un premier temps, aller à la période de révélation pour, à partir des circonstances particulières, comprendre les finalités objectives du texte, identifiées à l’intention divine. Puis, il doit appliquer ces principes, qui sont moraux et non juridiques, au présent en s’éloignant du sens littéral. Rahman illustre son propos en essayant de montrer que le souci de l’intention divine permet de voir que le Coran s’oppose à la polygamie et à l’esclavage, qui vont contre le principe moral d’une société juste et égalitaire. (shrink)

This dissertation advances the thesis that modern political freedom has an aporetical relation to the possibility of its own foundation. In the first volume, I examine how Machiavelli establishes the internal relation between political freedom and historical contingency that gives rise to the non-foundational concept of political freedom in early modernity. Far from reducing politics to the activity of providing secure foundations for the state, Machiavelli elaborates a conception of politics torn by the antinomical tasks of giving political freedom its (...) reality in the "form" of the state, and of restoring the anti-realist character of this ungroundable freedom in the "event" of the republic. These two irreducible poles of modern political life correspond to the basic political difference between the process of securing rule and the affirmation of a space of no-rule, where a common political existence is led in the absence of domination. ;The second volume illustrates how the historicist and anti-foundational character of modern political freedom can illuminate the situation of late modernity, viewed politically. The first trait of this situation is revealed by the problematic, yet inescapable, synthesis of political philosophy and philosophy of history. By exploring the reasons for, and the limits of, this synthesis I provide a new interpretation of the complementary ideas that freedom has a history and that history is the history of freedom in view of elaborating a postmetaphysical concept of political freedom. The second trait of the situation of modernity consists in the permanent possibility of situating politically the validity of norms, thereby putting into question the link between morality and metaphysically consolidated principles. Focusing on the contemporary debate over the tension between the validity of a norm and its application to a given situation, I argue that the erosion of metaphysical grounds for the determination of what is right corresponds to the priority assigned to political freedom over justice. This priority is manifest by the fact that, in the situation of modernity, the very difference between fact and norm is drawn on the site of politics conceived as an uncircumventable conflict of interpretations. (shrink)

Portée par une histoire mouvementée, la notion d’historisme (historicisme) constitue une voie d’entrée privilégiée pour éclairer la réflexivité nouvelle qui affecte en profondeur la philosophie et, plus généralement, les sciences humaines au cours des deux derniers siècles. Au fil d’une histoire conceptuelle retraçant son émergence et ses différents transferts – en jurisprudence, histoire, théologie, économie, sociologie – cet ouvrage vise à éclairer la réception philosophique de l’historisme, de Nietzsche, Dilthey à Husserl, en passant par le néo-kantisme (Windelband, Simmel, Rickert, Weber, (...) Troeltsch). Cette relecture de l’histoire intellectuelle allemande offre non seulement une clarification indispensable du concept d’historisme, mais également une source incontournable pour aborder la question plus contemporaine du relativisme politique ou culturel. (shrink)

This article extends Georg Lukács’s theorization pertaining to historical fiction by considering a novel written in response to colonial conditions. It treats Abdulhalim Sharar’s Urdu Malik al-‘Aziz and Virginia (1888) as a case where a fictional version of the encounter between Muslims and Christians during the crusades in the twelfth century is used to counter the colonial Indian present in the nineteenth century. I suggest that novels such as Sharar’s exemplify a vein of global thought since the nineteenth century that (...) resisted historicism but without abandoning the notion that the past was real. Deploying a genre that came to the fore in colonial conditions, Sharar imagines an alternative future by narrating the past otherwise via fiction. (shrink)

Looking at the emergence recently of a New Hegelianism (Badiou, Bhaskar, Jameson, Žižek), in which Hegel’s dialectic is variously reassessed for its political and philosophical resistance to the prevailing ‘weak nihilisms’ of left and right, I argue with Žižek and Jameson against Badiou and Bhaskar for Hegel as, essentially, a philosopher of the ‘productive return’ and failure. In this sense, what emerges is a picture of Hegel as a profoundly nonlinear historical thinker, in which loss, dissolution, breakdown and the excremental (...) prevail. This means that the received notion of Hegel as a crude historicist is deeply problematic. But, more importantly, it means that Hegelian dialectic can find a renewed anti-teleological and non-synchronistic identity within the Marxist tradition. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 72-98 Authors John Roberts, University of Wolverhampton Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 12 Journal Issue Volume 12, Number 1 / 2013. (shrink)

El autor propone nuevamente a discusión el “problema Vico”, integrando en su examen el recorrido del “senso commune”, que ubica en la base de la reflexión viquiana como un gran descubrimiento gnoseológico, cuya génesis se encuentra en el De nostri y profundizada en el De antiquissima. La necesidad de superar el abismo entre hombre y Dios, a través del principio verumfactum, centra en la ecuación de scire-facere el tema del “orden” y de una concepción no teleológica de la historia que (...) nos lleva al Diritto Universale, a la Scienza nuova, y a la vindicación del sentido del “certo”. Se explica así el paso en la obra magna del plano inductivo al historicista, y de la metafísica a la “metafísica del género humano”. El historicismo viquiano nace del original descubrimiento de los “límites de la razón”, que no son otros que los límites de la historia; un historicismo reforzado tras el descubirmiento del concepto de “eventualidad”, y que es ubicable en los orígenes del historicismo crítico y problemático .PALABRAS CLAVE: Vico, sentido común, teología de la historia, historicismo, F. Tessitore, A. Pagliaro, G. Capograssi, P. Piovani.The author reassesses “Vico’s problem”, by considering the path of “senso commune” that he places at the basis of Vichian reflection, as a huge gnoseological discovery, whose genesis is in De Nostri, and whose development can be found in De antiquissima. The need to overcome the abyss between man and God, through the verum-factum principle, centers on the scire-facere equation the issue of “order”, and of a non teleological —and therefore assumable by the viquian “theology of history”— conception of history, that leads us to the Diritto Universale and the Scienza Nuova, as well as to the vindication of the meaning of the “certo”. The transit accomplished in this major work from the inductive to the historicist level, and from metaphysics to the “metaphysics of the human race” is thus explained. Vichian historicism stems from the original discovery of the “limits of reason”, which are just the limits of history; a kind of historicism strengthen by the discovery of the concept of “eventuality”, and which is to be found in the origins of critical and problematic historicismo .KEYWORDS: Vico, common sense, theleology of history, historicism, F. Tessitore, A. Pagliaro, G. Capograssi, P. Piovani. (shrink)

Traditional logical empiricist and more recent historicist positions on the logic of discovery are briefly reviewed and both are found wanting. None have examined the historical detail now available from recent research on Darwin, from which there is evidence for gradual transition in descriptive and explanatory concepts. This episode also shows that revolutionary research can be directed by borrowed metascientific objectives and heuristics from other disciplines. Darwin's own revolutionary research took place within an ontological context borrowed from non evolutionary predecessors (...) with methodological objectives borrowed from and justified by their success in Newton's physics. The logic of discovery is not a special form of inference from observation to theory, but rather a theory of the rationality of research, including principles bearing upon the rational choice of problems, or epistemic objectives, and heuristic, or means to solving the problems. Such choices can be justified only locally in the context of a relatively stable background ontology and substantive epistemology, not globally for all science. (shrink)

This is a follow-up article of Strauss 2011. In order to transcend the shortcomings present in the dialectical legacy regarding normativity, this article further explores key elements within the dialectical tradition focused on the basic motive of nature and freedom and the effect it had on modern social contract theories which aimed at reconstructing human society from its “atoms,” the individuals . The transition to an alternative approach commences with a discussion of the distinction between conditions and what is conditioned. (...) It concerns a correlation found within all aspects of reality, namely that between the law side or norm side on the one hand and the factual side on the other. The basic assumption of this alternative view is found in the idea of ontic normativity which is rooted in a non-reductionist ontology. Against this broader background shortcomings in Kelsen’s theory of law are briefly traced to the dialectic of the causal and non-causal , before a positive characterization of the concept of a principle is given. It turned out that it is a compound basic concept in which terms from different modal aspects of reality are encapsulated at once. The recognition of ontic normativity therefore also enables a distinct methodology, the transcendental-empirical method, which makes it possible to distinguish between the pre-positive nature of a principle, as a universal and constant starting-point for human action, and the historically varying ways in which such a principle can be made valid, ( enforced ) through a competent organ disposing over an accountable will and capable to interpret the unique historical circumstances in which the principle has to be positivized (given a positive form or shape ). The nature of modal norms is highlighted in terms of various examples, such as jural, historical, logical and aesthetic principles, with special reference to Derrida’s understanding of credit as economic trust or economic faith. In order to make this transcendental-empirical method understandable a more detailed account of the nature of modal aspects is given. The emphasis on ontic normativity also helps us to steer clear of conceptions of natural law , historicism and the shortcomings present in the idea of a social construction of the world . The guiding perspective flowing from this analysis is that modal norms can be articulated through an analysis of analogical structural moments on the law sides of the normative aspects. The last part of this article briefly introduces the distinction between modal and typical norms without entering into a discussion of the latter. (shrink)

This is a follow-up article of Strauss 2011. In order to transcend the shortcomings present in the dialectical legacy regarding normativity, this article further explores key elements within the dialectical tradition focused on the basic motive of nature and freedom and the effect it had on modern social contract theories which aimed at reconstructing human society from its “atoms,” the individuals. The transition to an alternative approach commences with a discussion of the distinction between conditions and what is conditioned. It (...) concerns a correlation found within all aspects of reality, namely that between the law side or norm side on the one hand and the factual side on the other. The basic assumption of this alternative view is found in the idea of ontic normativity which is rooted in a non-reductionist ontology. Against this broader background shortcomings in Kelsen’s theory of law are briefly traced to the dialectic of the causal and non-causal, before a positive characterization of the concept of a principle is given. It turned out that it is a compound basic concept in which terms from different modal aspects of reality are encapsulated at once. The recognition of ontic normativity therefore also enables a distinct methodology, the transcendental-empirical method, which makes it possible to distinguish between the pre-positive nature of a principle, as a universal and constant starting-point for human action, and the historically varying ways in which such a principle can be made valid, through a competent organ disposing over an accountable will and capable to interpret the unique historical circumstances in which the principle has to be positivized . The nature of modal norms is highlighted in terms of various examples, such as jural, historical, logical and aesthetic principles, with special reference to Derrida’s understanding of credit as economic trust or economic faith. In order to make this transcendental-empirical method understandable a more detailed account of the nature of modal aspects is given. The emphasis on ontic normativity also helps us to steer clear of conceptions of natural law, historicism and the shortcomings present in the idea of a social construction of the world. The guiding perspective flowing from this analysis is that modal norms can be articulated through an analysis of analogical structural moments on the law sides of the normative aspects. The last part of this article briefly introduces the distinction between modal and typical norms without entering into a discussion of the latter. (shrink)

I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. -/- 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: there are at least (...) some judgments which are valid inter-culturally Absolutism: there are at least some particular prescriptions which are valid without exception everywhere and always -/- 2. The traditional proof of prescriptive moral relativism: the argument from variability: Judgments, rules, and shared values are de facto variable in time and space. The traditional counter-proof: examples of variability do not prove what skeptics contend. -/- 3. Pre-history of the doctrine -Ancient sophists: either immoralist or contractualist -Modern moral scepticism (xvii c.): variability as an historical and ethnographic fact supports a sceptical conclusion more moderate than sheer immoralism. - Voltaire, Kant, Reid counter-attack pointing at a universally shared moral sense - Romantics and idealists stage an even more moderate reformulation: instead of universally shared moral sense they point at the Spirit of a People which is: a)alternative to abstract and universal philosophical systems as far as it is lived ‘culture’; b) indivisible unity with an inner harmony and a source of normative standards; c) dynamic, in so far as it is a manifestation of the Spirit through the becoming of National cultures. -/- 4. The birth of Cultural Relativism and its ethical implications 4.1. The 18th c. doctrine was the noble savage (a non-historical doctrine: state of nature vs. social state) 4.2 Edward Tylor (1832-1817) and ethnocentric historicism Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far and weaker than ours. 4.3 Boas and Malinowski and an holistic reaction to ethnocentric historicism -/- Franz Boas (1858-1942): a) Development of civilizations is not ruled by technical progress nor does it follow a one-way path; instead there are parallel developments (for ex. Agriculture does not follow stock-raising); b) racial characters have no relevance in development of civilization; c) we are not yet in a position to compare externally identical kinds of behaviour till we have not yet understood beliefs and intentions laying at their roots (for ex.: “From an ethnological point of view murder cannot be considered as a single phenomenon”; d) we should distinguish among different practices which are only superficially similar (fro ex. practices traditionally classified under the label “tabù”); e) there is as a fact just one normative ethic, constant in its contents but varying in its extension; f) the implication is not that we cannot judge behavior by members of other groups; it is only a recommendation of caution. -/- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): a) against Tylor’s and Frazer’s “magpie” methodology, field-work is required, a culture as a whole should be observed from inside; individual elements are incomprehensible; b) a culture is an organic whole; c) its elements are accounted for by their function (economy), avoiding non-observables (empio-criticism). -/- Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovitz identify Boas’s approach with “cultural relativism”. Benedict: what is normal and abnormal is to be judged on a culture’s own standards, not on our own (“Anthropology and the Abnormal”). Herskovits: “Boas adumbrates what we have come to call cultural relativism” (The Mind, p. 10); “Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Man and his Works). -/- 4. How analytic philosophy understood and misunderstood the discussion 4.1. At the beginning of the 20th c., the new view in ethics was non-cognitivism (emotivist and subjectivist). Eric Westermark combines this view with an old-style ethnographic approach in support of relativity of moralities. Moralities are codes, or systems of emotive ‘disinterested’ reactions selected by evolution on their usefulness in terms of survival value for the society that is the carrier of such systems or codes. The moral relativity thesis: there are cases of disagreement that cannot be settled even after agreement about facts. 4.2 Anti-realists Brandt, Mackie, Gilbert, Harman adopt Westermark’s approach in a more sophisticated version: a) moralities are codes with an overall function and may be appraised only as wholes; b) variability is an argument for moral subjectivism; c) apparent legitimacy of deriving shift from ought is legitimized only within one institution d) morality should not be described but instead made, and existing moralities may be improved. Is it ‘real’ relativism? It is clearly subjectivism (a metaethical thesis). The normative thesis is that there better and worse codes, and survival values is the normative standard. -/- 4.3 Particularists MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Wiggins, McDowell ‘Wittgensteinian’ prospectivist arguments bent to support weak-relativist claims MacIntyre: there is ‘incommensurability’ between different theoretical systems in both science and ethics. No argument is possible through different systems Different traditions may coexist for a long time without being able to bring their conflicts to a rational solution. -/- 4.4 Kantian universalists Baier, Gewirth, Rawls, Apel, Habermas Shared claim: justice concerns the right and is universal in so far as it may be based on minimal assumptions Other virtues are relative to context in so far as they are related to comprehensive views of the good - O’Neill criticism: a) it is an assumption shared by both alignments; b) after an alleged crisis brought about by alleged loss of metaphysical certainties, theories of justice have dropped demanding assumptions and kept universalism, virtue theories have kept demanding assumptions and dropped universalism; c) the opposition of virtue and justice has arisen in an unjustified way. O’Neill’s positive proposal: ‘constructive’ procedures may be adopted both (i) concerning all the range of virtues and (ii) across cultures once we abandon idealization and confine ourselves to abstraction from real-world cases. -/- 4.5 A metaethical relativist and anti-relativist normative ethicists: Bernard Williams Williams: vulgar relativism may be assumed to claim that: a) 'just' means 'just in a given society'; b) 'just in a given society' is to be understood in functionalist sense; c) it is wrong for one society’s members to condemn another society’s values. It is inconsistent since in (c) uses ‘just’ in a non-relative way that has been excluded in (a). William’s positive proposal: i) keep a number of substantive or thick ethical concepts that will be different in space and time; ii) admit that public choices are to be legitimized through recourse to more abstract procedures and relying on more thin ethical concepts. -/- 5. Critical remarks 5.1 The only real relativism available is ‘vulgar’ relativism (Westermark?) 5.2. Descriptive universalism (or absolutism) has a long pedigree, from Cicero on, reaching Boas himself but it is useless as an answer to normative questions 5.3. Twentieth-century philosophical discussion seems to discuss an ad hoc doctrine reconstructed by assembling obsolete philosophical ideas but ignoring the real theory of cultural relativism as formulated by anthropologists. -/- 6. A distinction between ethoi and ethical theories as a way out of confusions a)There are systems of conventions de facto existing. These may be studies from outside as phenomena or facts. b)There is moral argument and this, when studies from outside, is a fact, but this does not influence in any degree the possible validity of claims advanced. c) the difference between the above claims and Mackie’s criticism to Searle’s argument of the promising game is that promises, arguments etc. are also phenomena, but they are also communicative phenomena with a logical and pragmatic structure. -/- 7.Conclusions: a) cultural relativism, as a name for Boas’s methodology is a valuable discovery, and in this sense we are all relativists; b) ethical relativism, as an alleged implication of cultural relativism, has been argued in a philosophically quite unsophisticated way by Benedict and Herskovits; philosophers apparently discussed ethical relativism in the basis of a rather faint impression of what cultural relativism had been. c) a full-fledged ethical relativism has hardly been defended by anybody among philosophers; virtually no modern philosopher really argued a prescriptive version of the thesis; d) we may accept the grain of truth in ethical relativism by including relativist critique to ethical absolutism into a universalist normative doctrine that be careful in separating open-textured formulations of universal claims from culturally conditioned particular prescriptions. -/- . 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Jürgen Habermas' view that Adorno's thinking is characterized by a commitment to a philosophy of consciousness, and that therefore the only alternative to identitarian reason is to appeal to an intuitive competence operating beyond the range of conceptual thought, it is arged (1) that Adorno conceptualizes the modern epistemic subject (the subject of a philosophy of consciousness) as based on a reification, and (2) that he denies the possibility of a concept-transcendent (foundationalist) constraint on judgments. In seeking to demonstrate against (...) versions of subjective idealism and foundationalism how thought can be responsive to a non-identical (mind-independent) reality, Adorno defends an intersubjectivist and historicist view of knowledge according to which the operative and yet anamnetic aspiration of knowledge is to know reflectively the object as it is in itself. The conclusion is that although Adorno questions the modern (Kantian) stress on epistemic autonomy, he does not take leave of modernity in the sense ascribed to him by Habermas. (shrink)