The problem of explaining consciousness remains a problem about the meaning of language: the ordinary language of consciousness in which we define and express our sensations, thoughts, dreams and memories. This book argues that the problem arises from a quest that has taken shape over the twentieth century, and that the analysis of history provides new resources for understanding and resolving it. Paul Livingston traces the development of the characteristic practices of analytic philosophy to problems about the relationship of experience (...) to linguistic meaning, focusing on the theories of such philosophers as Carnap, Schlick, Neurath, Husserl, Ryle, Putnam, Fodor and Wittgenstein. Clearly written and avoiding technicalities, this book will be eagerly sought out by professionals and graduate students in philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

Of all the topics in the history of philosophy, the history of different forms of thinking and contemplation is one of the most important, and yet is also relatively overlooked. What is it to think philosophically? How did different forms of thinking--reflection, contemplation, critique and analysis--emerge in different epochs? This collection offers a rich and diverse philosophical exploration of the history of contemplation, from the classical period to the twenty-first century. It covers canonical figures including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and (...) Kant, as well as debates in less well-known areas such as classical Indian and Islamic thought and the role of speculation in twentieth-century Russian philosophy. Comprising twenty-two chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is divided into five parts: - Flourishing and Thinking from Homer to Hume - The Thinking of Thinking from Augustine to Gödel - Images and Thinking from Plotinus to Unger - Bodies of Thought and Habits of Thinking from Plato to Irigaray - The Efficacy of Thinking from Sextus to Bataille Thought: A Philosophical History is the first comprehensive investigation of the history of philosophical thought and contemplation. As such, it is a landmark publication for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, and a valuable resource for those studying the subject in related fields such as literature, religion, sociology and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Though the geographic dimensions of philosophical history were always, in principle at least, the whole globe, for the last two thousand years the ...

This book offers a conceptual history of compromise that demonstrates the connection between different understandings of compromise and corresponding differences in understandings of political representation.

Investigation and analysis of the history of the concepts employed in contemporary philosophy of mind could significantly change the contemporary debate about the explainability of consciousness. Philosophical investigation of the history of the concept of qualia and the concept of scientific explanation most often presupposed in contemporary discussions of consciousness reveals the origin of both concepts in some of the most interesting philosophical debates of the twentieth century. In particular, a historical investigation of the inheritance of concepts of (...) the elements of experience and the nature of scientific explanation from C. I. Lewis and Rudolf Carnap to contemporary theorists like David Chalmers shows the profound continuity of these concepts throughout the analytic tradition, despite important changes in the dimensions of philosophical relevance and significance that have characterized the emerging debate. I argue that, despite the significant methodological shift from the foundationalist epistemology of the 1920s to today's functionalist explanations of the mind, the problem of explaining consciousness has remained the problem of analysing or describing the logical and relational structure of immediate, given experience. Appreciation of this historical continuity of form recommends a more explicit discussion of the philosophical reasons for the underlying distinction between structure and content, reasons that trace to Lewis and Carnap's influential but seldom-discussed understanding of the relationship between subjectivity, conceived as the realm of private, ineffable contents, and objectivity, understood as public, linguistic expressibility. With this historical background in mind, the contemporary debate about the explanation of consciousness can be re-interpreted as a debate about the relationship between ineffable experience and structurally conceived meaning. (shrink)

: Two recent articles described two ways of writing the history of philosophy, one analytic, the other historical, as if the history of philosophy cannot be both analytically sharp and contextually informed at the same time. I recommend the practice of "Philosophical History of Philosophy," which combines the advantages of the analytic and historical methods.

The core of Livingston’s book consists of a series of four critical studies of how twentieth-century analytic philosophy dealt with what many believe to be a hard case: consciousness. What makes it hard, the thinking goes, is a perceived dissonance that arises when analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on representing the world against a background of linguistic structure, comes face to face with pure subjective content. How can the latter be accommodated within the former without ignoring some of its fundamental (...) properties? The root problem is endlessly old and much larger than the scope of Livingston’s immediate concern. While we have pure experiences — being whacked by a golf ball or swept up by a tornado — the instant we reflect on our situation, immediacy is lost and knowledge becomes unavoidably perspectival, restricted, partial — a world structured by predication. Can the former be accommodated within the latter without doing injustice to the very qualities that distinguish it? Each philosophical generation has dealt with some version of the problem, from Plato’s insistence that real knowledge demands that the mind kick the traces of earthly existence, to more recent attempts to isolate a “given” element in experience, and thereby relate phenomenal immediacy to structured propositional knowledge. (shrink)

At the end of the eighteenth century, the new revolutionary authorities in France made history one of the most important school subjects in their central schools. In order to teach this subject, the revolutionaries prescribed all teachers to use Claude-François-Xavier Millot's Élémens d’histoire générale (1772-1773). In this article, the characteristics that molded the narrative of this textbook will be analyzed. What form did the composition of this book, especially recommended because of its ‘philosophical plan’, take? How did its historiography (...) relate to that of other enlightened historians such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Mably or Goguet? And how was it that Millot's textbook was still considered useful for history teaching almost twenty years after its publication date? (shrink)

Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, Grégoire Chamayou examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous simply for existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable. Chamayou begins in (...) ancient Greece, where young Spartans hunted and killed Helots as an initiation rite, and where Aristotle and other philosophers helped to justify raids to capture and enslave foreigners by creating the concept of natural slaves. He discusses the hunt for heretics in the Middle Ages; New World natives in the early modern period; vagrants, Jews, criminals, and runaway slaves in other eras; and illegal immigrants today. Exploring evolving ideas about the human and the subhuman, what we owe to enemies and people on the margins of society, and the supposed legitimacy of domination, Chamayou shows that the hunting of humans should not be treated ahistorically, and that manhunting has varied as widely in its justifications and aims as in its practices. He investigates the psychology of manhunting, noting that many people, from bounty hunters to Balzac, have written about the thrill of hunting when the prey is equally intelligent and cunning. An unconventional history on an unconventional subject, Manhunts is an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence. (shrink)

This book presents a chronology of thirty definitions attributed to the word, term, phrase, and concept of “documentary” between the years 1895 and 1959. The book dedicates one chapter to each of the thirty definitions, scrutinizing their idiosyncratic language games from close range while focusing on their historical roots and concealed philosophical sources of inspiration. Dan Geva's principal argument is twofold: first, that each definition is an original ethical premise of documentary; and second, that only the structured assemblage of (...) the entire set of definitions successfully depicts the true ethical nature of documentary insofar as we agree to consider its philosophical history as a reflective object of thought in a perpetual state of being-self-defined: an ethics sui generis. (shrink)

Introduction -- 1e Intermed consid -- Marx -- Simmel -- Weber -- Lukács -- 2e intermed consid -- Horkheimer -- Adorno -- 3e intermed consid -- Habermas I -- Habermas II -- Habermas III -- Conclusion -- Postscript -- Bibliography.

Beginning with Ronald Hepburn’s path-breaking essay, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,” which helped establish the modern discipline of environmental aesthetics, philosophers have provided sketches of what, after Hegel, might be called “philosophical histories of the aesthetics of nature.” These histories are remarkably similar and can easily be blended together to create a “received history” of the discipline. This history has subtly influenced work in the field. Unfortunately, it is not completely accurate and, as a (...) result, has had a misleading effect. A more accurate and expanded alternative history calls into question the received history’s view both on the origins of the field in arts-based aesthetic theories and on the nature and value of the aesthetic categories, “the picturesque” and “the sublime.” These categories were not borrowed from philosophy of art and inappropriately applied to nature, but instead were developed to appraise landscapes, which unlike natural objects could only rarely be judged beautiful since they are almost never symmetrical or ordered. (shrink)

Europe is inseparable from its history. That history has been extensively studied in terms of its political history, its economic history, its religious history, its literary and cultural history, and so on. Could there be a distinctively philosophical history of Europe? Not a history of philosophy in Europe, but a history of Europe that focuses on what, in its history and identity, ties it to philosophy. In the two volumes of Europe: A Philosophical History - The Promise of (...) Modernity and Beyond Modernity - Simon Glendinning takes up this question, telling the story of Europe's history as a philosophical history. In Part 1, The Promise of Modernity, Glendinning examines the conception of Europe that links it to ideas of rational Enlightenment and modernity. Tracking this self-understanding as it unfolds in the writings of Kant, Hegel and Marx, Glendinning explores the transition in Europe from a conception of its modernity that was philosophical and religious to one which was philosophical and scientific. While this transition profoundly altered Europe's own history, Glendinning shows how its self-confident core remained intact in this development. But not for long. This volume ends with an examination of the abrupt shattering of this confidence brought on by the first world-wide war of European origin - and the imminence of a second. The promise of modernity was in ruins. Nothing, for Europe, would ever be the same again. (shrink)

This work discusses whether Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was revolutionary. Steve Fuller argues that Kuhn held a profoundly conservative view of science and how one ought to study its history.

Professor Toynbee observes in his Study of History that as he walked down Whitehall one day in the spring of 1918, and passed the Board of Education offices which had been commandeered for a new department of the War Office, “improvised in order to make an intensive study of trench warfare,” he found himself repeating the passage from St. Matthew's Gospel.

Rethinking the philosophical grounds of police power, Melayna Lamb argues that traditional ideas of sovereignty and the law need to be radically re-evaluated. In placing police at the centre of analysis this book demonstrates the manner in which police power exists in a complex and overlapping relationship with sovereignty and law in a form which is not reducible to implementation. In doing this it argues for the centrality of order in any consideration of police and challenging a common narrative (...) whereby a dynamic, interventionist sovereign power that follows from a belief of order as 'artificial' is replaced by a liberal, limited non-interventionist sovereign power that proceeds from a 'natural' order. Moving through thinkers such as Hobbes, Hegel and Adam Smith the book argues that police power is in fact 'an-archic' in form, in a manner that makes it impossible to hold accountable through the law. Lamb adopts an interdisciplinary approach that turns to philosophy to make sense of global events that see police power at their centre. This includes the history of police brutality in the US, the structural injustices made more apparent by COVID-19 and the growing calls to abolish the police. (shrink)

The Pursuit of Justice: A Personal Philosophical History is a collection of renowned scholar and philosopher James P. Sterba’s finest works - essays spanning the full spectrum of his illustrious career along with new scholarship on the enduring struggle for justice we face as a society, and as individuals in the modern world. That struggle, or pursuit, may be ongoing, but – as this book details – it has come a long way, and that progress, however frustrating it may (...) be to obtain and secure, is a testament to the work to which scholars like Sterba have devoted their lives and careers. (shrink)

An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy (...) of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence -- and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective. (shrink)

Juliana Geran Pilon argues for a return to an egalitarian view of men and women, found in the original Genesis narrative, as reflected through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In each of these Abrahamic traditions, it was understood that man and woman were created to be soulmates in God's image-equal despite their different functions within society. Pilon writes that this original message has gradually been distorted, with disastrous effect. Any hope for an ennobling human community begins by resurrecting Eve as an (...) equal partner to Adam. Book jacket. (shrink)

SummaryIn a series of articles from the 1980s and 1990s, Michael Frede analysed the history of histories of philosophy written over the last three hundred years. According to Frede, modern scholars have degenerated into what he calls a ‘doxographical’ mode of writing the history of philosophy. Instead, he argued, these scholars should write what he called ‘philosophical’ history of philosophy, first established in the last decades of the seventeenth century but since abandoned. In the present article it is (...) argued that Frede's reconstruction of the history of histories of philosophy is historically problematic. (shrink)

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in (...) favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews,Shapes oS Philosophical History. By Frank E. Manuel. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965.Pp. 166.$1.95.) Based upon his seven Camp Lectures of 1962 at Stanford, Professor Manuel has issued this taut and recondite volume describing the forms philosophical history has taken in the West. He has performed a difficult task well, giving much scholarly substance to his theme that two archetypal shapes of speculative history-writing have dominated (...) Western thought, one an Augustinian teleological.unitary-procursus view, the other a Polybian, cyclical, Ixionlike, Stoic model. The first is broadly defined as "movement either to a fixed end, or to an indefinite end that defines itself in the course of the progression, history as novelty-creating and always variant"; the second as "circularity, eternal recurrence, return to the beginning of things, sheer reiteration or similar recapitulation." Comte and modem progressists are at the end of the first line, Nietzsehe and Spengler and other cylicists at the end of the second. However, broadly again, amalgamations of the two types are possible, syncretistic variants have often taken shape, and, Protean-hke, both lend themselves to almost infinite interpretive patterns. These typologies are psychological more than logical polarities, both emotional and intellectual alternatives, so they often stand for and serve contradictory purposes. Yet historians tend to betray their preference for one of these opposed conceptions, according to Manuel, as they "select an identity for historic man." Deliberately refraining from taking sides on the issue (thus implicitly casting some doubt on his contention that historians and others "inevitably betray their preference for one of these opposing conceptions"), Manuel addresses himself to the task of illuminating the polarity, exhibiting the multiplicity of its forms through time and focusing upon crucial moments of the debate in the West. Of these exhibits--early Christians vs. pagans, Augustine vs. Joachim, the virtual triumph of cyclicism in the Renaissance (albeit with a split developed between negative and positive, pessimist and optimist cyclicists), the ambivalence of the eighteenth-century Germans on the issue (particularly Kant and Herder), the triumphant optimism of the French perfectibilists, the vacillation of the German academists--Manuel's examination of the French and German writers stands out, although the range of his knowledge and first-hand inspection of archival sources from Augustine's time to Toynbee's demonstrates an admirable scholarship. Of the eighteenth-century Germans, Manuel well illustrates their ambivalent and paradoxical side. Herder, for example, nominally an opponent, debating against "abderite" cyclical theory and apparently concluding in favor of it; Goethe wondering whether the world "will become one great hospital in which we behave toward one another like benign male nurses" if Herder's more optimistic notions triumph; old Kant in his special language rejecting all then current models of world history (moral terrorism, abderitism and eudaemonism ) and opting for what Manuel calls a "mechanism... akin to the cunning of reason" to institute a just civil constitution and estabhsh perpetual peace, yet not really persuaded that his sanguine view of moral progress would prevail. As for the later Germans in and out of the Academy (particularly Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, HSlderlin and Hamann) while youthful enthusiasts of progress (everyone knows the story of the young Hegel and his friends planting the tree of liberty saluting the French revolution), their conceptions of history became more and more Platonic, more and more nostalgic and parochial. On the other hand Manuel's account of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century French relates their boundless energy and dedication to progressist conceptions, a development he holds as quite isolated and isolable from the German movement. Without doubt the French had the most imagination and the most confidence in developing philosophical history to an almost dizzying optimistic pitch. Manuel demonstrates a line from Voltaire through Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier and the Saint-Simonians to Auguste Comte, each building on the others in time, each theorizing "man's steady conquest of the external world, beginning in a period when he was still the member of a feeble and isolated band, and culminating in his present high estate." "The Golden Age of the human species is not behind us, it is before [171] 172 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY us," Saint-Simon... (shrink)

The classic national history narrates the formation and progress of a nation-state as a reflection of principles such as a national character, liberty, progress, and statehood. Today there appears to be a growing nostalgia for them, and with it for the role that history once played in the life of the nation. This paper argues that such nostalgia is justified insofar as it expresses skepticism about the philosophical assumptions of much social science history. In doing so, it defends the (...) use of concepts such as narrative and tradition. Yet this paper argues that such nostalgia is not justified insofar as it sides with an analysis of these concepts in terms of given principles of nationhood and statehood. Rather, the paper argues for a shift from developmental historicism to radical historicism. Radical historicism would treat traditions as pragmatically constructed and narratives as contingent. It would thus lead to denaturalizing accounts of the nations as dispersed, discontinuous, and disrupted, and arguably to histories of networks of peoples rather than nations. (shrink)

The law of God: these words conjure an image of Moses breaking the tablets at Mount Sinai, but the history of the alliance between law and divinity is so much longer, and its scope so much broader, than a single Judeo-Christian scene can possibly suggest. In his stunningly ambitious new history, Rémi Brague goes back three thousand years to trace this idea of divine law in the West from prehistoric religions to modern times—giving new depth to today’s discussions about the (...) role of God in worldly affairs. Brague masterfully describes the differing conceptions of divine law in Judaic, Islamic, and Christian traditions and illuminates these ideas with a wide range of philosophical, political, and religious sources. In conclusion, he addresses the recent break in the alliance between law and divinity—when modern societies, far from connecting the two, started to think of law simply as the rule human community gives itself. Exploring what this disconnection means for the contemporary world, Brague—powerfully expanding on the project he began with _The Wisdom of the World_—re-engages readers in a millennia-long intellectual tradition, ultimately arriving at a better comprehension of our own modernity. “Brague’s sense of intellectual adventure is what makes his work genuinely exciting to read. _The Law of God_ offers a challenge that anyone concerned with today’s religious struggles ought to take up.”—Adam Kirsch, _New York__ Sun_ __ “Scholars and students of contemporary world events, to the extent that these may be viewed as a clash of rival fundamentalisms, will have much to gain from Brague’s study. Ideally, in that case, the book seems to be both an obvious primer and launching pad for further scholarship.”—_Times Higher Education Supplement_. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with fundamental objections to the logical possibility of philosophical history. Philosophical history is a combination of two disciplines which are often conceived to be distinct. This results in the scepticism that the formulation of such a discipline is not plausible. Immanuel Kant was the most prominent philosopher who formulated the idea of a universal history. According to Kant, though, the empirical study of historical phenomena is essential to the understanding of the human past, in (...) itself it is insufficient because the plans of individuals taken on their own cannot explain the emergence of developing forms of thought and civil association. (shrink)

Ideally, in that case, the book seems to be both an obvious primer and launching pad for further scholarship.”—Times Higher Education Supplement.

Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants.

All over the globe, in both Western and Eastern traditions, philosophers have searched for answers to lifeʼs fundamental questions. Beginning with the Ancient Greeks and Chinese, through the founders of modern philosophy, to modern times, they have inspired legions of followers, some have generated fear, and many have made such an impact as to alter the course of history.\\Discover the life and work of more than 100 philosophers. Find out where and when they lived, review their accomplishments, and understand how (...) they transformed our world.\\An essential guide to 2,500 years of philosophical endeavor. \Learn about ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, the foundations of modern philosophy, philosophy in Britain and America, Continental philosophy, and Eastern philosophy. \See philosophers in the context of their times.\Includes highlights of each philosopherʼs life and work, and an analysis of their contribution and legacy. (shrink)

Introduces key Russian thinkers prior to the 1917 revolution, offering insight into regional philosophical belief systems about happiness, society, and morality that challenges popular conceptions.

Opraviti imamo s tremi zgodovinskimi stopnjami razvitja razmerja med hermenevtiko in humanistiko. Vprašanje, kako so bile te vede uspešne pri konstruiranju svojih “hermenevtičnih identitet” določa vidik moje obravnave. Članek sestoji iz treh delov. Prvi del razvije koncepcijo predzgodovine humanističnih ved. Poglavitni namen je razgrnitev korenin epistemologije semiotične interpretacije v Meierjevi »hermeneutica generalis«. Drugi del je posvečen Boeckhovemu enciklopedičnemu projektu s poudarkom na vlogi hermenevtike pri “kognitivni institucionalizaciji” humanističnih ved. Tretji del na podlagi vpogleda v Mischevo hermenevtično logiko obravnava kontroverzo med (...) interpretativno filozofijo “Geisteswissenschaften” in eksistencialno ontologijo.In this paper I argue that there are three main historical stages in the relationship between philosophical hermeneutics and the human sciences. The question of how these sciences succeed in constructing their "hermeneutic identities" provides the viewpoint of my discussion. The paper consists of three parts. Part I develops a conception of the prehistory of the human sciences. The main aim is to reveal the roots of the epistemology of semiotic interpretation in Meier's "hermeneutica generalis". Part II invokes Boeckh's encyclopedic project in giving accounts of the role hermeneutics has played in the "cognitive institutionalization" of the human sciences. Based on an inquiry into Misch's hermeneutic logic, Part III discusses the controversy between interpretative philosophy of the "Geistesewissenschaften" and existential ontology. (shrink)

"This is a study of the unlikely 'career' of anxiety in 19th and 20th century philosophy, above all. Anxiety is an affect, something more subtle, sometimes more persistent, than an emotion or a passion. It lies at the intersectiona of embodiment and cognition, sensation and emotion. But anxiety also runs like a red thread through European thought beginning from receptions of Kant's transcendental project. Like a symptom of the quest to situate and give life to the philosophical subject, like (...) a symptom of an interrogation that stove to take form in European intellectual culture, *Angst* passes through Schelling's romanticism into Schopenhauer's metaphysics, until it was approached existentially by Kierkegaard. Nietzsche situates it in the long history of producing an animal able to promise. Its returns in the 20th century allow us to grasp the connection between phenomenology's exploration of passivity, followed by interpretations of the human reality in a world and open to a call that it can hardly assume. The study thus begins with Kant; it probes late Idealism and Romanticism, the metaphysical vitalism that flickered with Schopenhauer, the aesthetics and religious senses of *Angst* in Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. It turns to three avatars of anxiety in the evolving psychoanalysis before exploring the return to rationalism and formalism in 20th century phenomenology, followed again by efforts to resituate human beings in world and body as well as, significantly, before the anxiogenic "other""--. (shrink)