Since the mid-1980s, Arthur C. Danto has been increasingly concerned with the implications of the demise of modernism. Out of the wake of modernist art, Danto discerns the emergence of a radically pluralistic art world. His essays illuminate this novel art world as well as the fate of criticism within it. As a result, Danto has crafted the most compelling philosophy of art criticism since Clement Greenberg. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn analyze the constellation of philosophical and (...) critical elements in Danto's new- Hegelian art theory. In a provocative encounter, they employ themes from Kantian aesthetics to elucidate the continuing persistence of taste in shaping even this most sophisticated philosophy of art. (shrink)

Aremarkable revival of interest in Romanticism has taken place among some philosophers in recent years. Why should this be so? Romanticism has had a bad reputation among literary critics of a variety of persuasions throughout most of the twentieth century, when it was not even a topic for analytical philosophy in the English-speaking world. The philosophical movement most associated with Romanticism—German idealism—had been shunned by the curricula of a majority of the most prestigious British and American universities by the (...) mid-twentieth century. Literary modernism and then various strains of postmodernism had a self-image of having overcome Romantic illusions. (Of course, Romanticism and Romantic philosophy... (shrink)

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943) on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the core are six essays on folktale and magic in which Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in their (...) various fields, who provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment highlights the broad range of Collingwood's intellectual engagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology. (shrink)

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the core are six essays on folktale and magic in which Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in their various (...) fields, who provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment highlights the broad range of Collingwood's intellectual engagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology. (shrink)

This paper contends thatMichael Oakeshott's analogy of conversation conveys a conception of philosophy that can be connected with 'philosophical criticism', as interpreted by British Idealists such as Andrew Seth and Edward Caird. Firstly, my claim is that Oakeshott's notion of philosophical definition is animated by a dialectical 'refutation' of current ideas, articulated in the logical study of their presuppositions. Moreover, I show that this critical idea of philosophy is expressed through a re-interpretation of the Socratic Method that (...) can be compared to that of other Idealists. By means of an examination of textual evidence, I stress the consistency of this perspective throughout all Oakeshott's career. Secondly, I consider the image of conversation as an answer to the Idealist question about the possibility of the unity of knowledge. At the outset, I highlight that Oakeshott's position can be juxtaposed to the critiques of Modern philosophy and science paradigmatically put forward by Edward Caird and R.G. Collingwood. I argue that 'conversation' is consistent with Oakeshott's conception of modality, which is a critique both of the possibility of a final synthesis between different forms of understanding and of all reductionisms. Therefore, I analyze the theoretical foundations of this conception, which I have identified with the nature of postulates, the unity ofmind, and the non-propositional character of judgments. In the conclusion, I suggest that this reading has implications for a broader understanding of Oakeshott's Idealism, of his political theory and of the debate with Analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Contains contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers and experts in philosophy-driven methods, such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and semiotics. This international body of scholars discuss the issue of method itself, as well as bring those methods to bear on some of the most prominent issues of our time in the areas of media, culture and criticism.

Structuralism as well as other methods of literary criticism, take positions analogous to ones espoused in some philosophies of science. Examples are: regarding a discipline as self-contained, having no necessary connection with the external world; taking interpretation (or the postulating of theories) as an arbitrary process, valid if it makes sense of the data, thus avoiding questions of truth; diminishing individuality by overemphasizing the learned aspects of a discipline (reading as governed by assimilated rules, research as controlled by shared (...) goals and methods and implicit agreement on fundamental questions). Interdisciplinary exchange should lead to greater awareness both of difficulties of these positions and of proposed solutions to the difficulties they raise. (shrink)

This article discusses the question whether or not Cassirer’s philosophical critique of technological use of myth in The Myth of the State implies a revision of his earlier conception and theory of myth as provided by The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. In the first part, Cassirer’s early theory of myth is compared with other approaches of his time. It is claimed that Cassirer’s early approach to myth has to be understood in terms of a transcendental philosophical approach. In consequence, (...) myth is conceived as a form of cultural consciousness which is constituted by specific symbolic processes. In the second part, the theoretical assumptions underlying Cassirer’s criticism of myth are discussed and compared with his earlier theory. It is argued that there is a strong conceptual and theoretical continuity between Cassirer’s early views on myth as a symbolic form and his later critique of technological use of myth. (shrink)

This book offers an excellent analysis of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. It has two distinct but complementary focuses. In the first part, the conception of communicative rationality at the basis of Habermas’s theory of action is confronted with the conception of instrumental rationality that is predominant in the social sciences: rational choice theory. The main focus of this analysis is to evaluate the plausibility of one central claim of Habermas’s theory, namely, that communicative rationality is irreducible to instrumental rationality (...) and thus constitutes a necessary element of a general theory of rationality. Although Heath’s analysis confirms the correctness of Habermas’s claim, it does so on the basis of a command of decision and game theory, the sophistication of which goes well beyond anything that Habermas himself (and most of his commentators) have so far actually provided. This is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of the book. For it offers the so far missing argumentative step from the intuitiveness of Habermas’s irreducibility claim to a careful demonstration of what it is exactly about linguistic communication that cannot be modeled instrumentally. Moreover, this careful demonstration includes a very interesting and equally sophisticated analysis of the implications of Habermas’s theory for the philosophy of language, which so far has received too little attention by most of Habermas’s commentators. (shrink)

Philosophers analyze the last of the great rock stars.

Every philosophical mode has a unique conceptual system. Qi has consistently been a fundamental part of ancient Chinese philosophy, and its significance is obvious. Guided by the idea of re-evaluating all values, Yan Fu, who was deeply influenced by Western philosophy and logic, used reverse analogical interpretation to present a new explanation of the traditional Chinese concept of qi. Qi thus evolved into basic physical particles. Yan’s philosophical effort has great significance: The logical ambiguity that had haunted qi (...) was overcome. However, qi gradually evolved into a particular existence as it was Westernized. It completely lost its internal flavor as indigenous Chinese philosophy. Its previous philosophical abstraction and universality diminished and at the same time it was not Westernized into the pure concept of Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

The 'death of man', the 'end of history' and even philosophy are strong and troubling currents running through contemporary debates. Yet since Nietzsche's heralding of the 'death of god', philosophy has been unable to explain the question of finitude. Very Little...Almost Nothing goes to the heart of this problem through an exploration of Blanchot's theory of literature, Stanley Cavell's interpretations of romanticism and the importance of death in the work of Samuel Beckett. Simon Critchley links these themes to (...) the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to present a powerful new picture of how we must approach the importance of death in philosophy. A compelling reading of the convergence of literature and philosophy, Very Little...Almost Nothing opens up new ways of understanding finitude, modernity and the nature of the imagination. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed (...) to a belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”. (shrink)

(2010). The Philosophy of Enchantment: Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism, and Anthropology. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 731-735.

This book engages in critical discussion of the role of reason and rationality in philosophy, the human mind, ethics, science, and the social sciences. Philosophers from Poland, Germany, and the United States examine reason in the light of emotion, doubt, absolutes, implementation, and interpretation. They throw new light on old values.

This book offers timely contributions to the process of conceptualizing a Latin American specificity and its forms of integration in larger contexts, both on the level of thought and the level of political and social praxis. To produce a critical reading of philosophy while also developing a philosophy of criticism is essential in cultures that continue to struggle for the decolonization of both thought and life. This book allows Anglophone readers access to the world of ideas of (...) some of the most relevant Latin American thinkers of our age. Through a comprehensive discussion of the works and contexts of thinkers such as of José Carlos Mariátegui, Enrique Dussel, Bolívar Echeverría, and Roger Bartra to Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Peter Sloterdijk, Mabel Moraña demonstrates that Latin American thought has not only been inseparable from Western philosophy but also from the determinants of its history and social struggles. By doing so, Mabel Moraña provides an extensive perspective on the connections between historical moments, social structures, and discursive practices. With its interdisciplinary focus, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students in Latin American studies, comparative literature, world literature, and philosophy. (shrink)

Brümmer repeatedly presents Dooyeweerd's criticism of Kant, that a critical philosophy, to be thorough, must not leave any of its presuppositions unaccounted for and that Kant's dogmatic assumption of certain positions vitiates the rest of his philosophy. Dooyeweerd opposed Kant's absolutization of logic, and presented instead a cosmological basis for the transcendental criticism of philosophical thought. Dooyeweerd's own philosophy appears to be quite complex and elaborately systematic; in principle, nothing is left out. Brümmer does show, (...) however, that some areas of Dooyeweerd's work need further elaboration, notably that of philosophical anthropology.—C. D. (shrink)

Philosophy underwent a corresponding theatrical shift in the modern era, most importantly through the work of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Against Ethical CriticismRichard A. PosnerOscar Wilde famously remarked that “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” He was echoed by Auden, who said in his poem in memory of William Butler Yeats that poetry makes nothing happen (though the poem as a whole qualifies this overstatement), by Croce, and by formalist critics such as (...) Cleanth Brooks, a doyen of the New Critics, who insisted that edification was the function of religion but not of poetry. 1 George Orwell, though himself a didactic novelist, was of this view as well, 2 and it is one that most critics adopt when the issue is censorship. I accept Wilde’s thesis—the creed of aestheticism, of art for art’s sake—if understood to mean that the moral content and consequences of a work of literature are irrelevant to its value as literature; or as the critic Helen Vendler has put it, that “treating fictions as moral pep-pills or moral emetics is repugnant to anyone who realizes the complex psychological and moral motives of a work of art.” 3 This is not to deny that reading can have consequences, including moral and political ones. Information affects people’s outlook and behavior, and reading is a source of information. Imaginative literature conveys ideas, opinions, and information, often with great power. Think of the role that novels by Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), Dostoevsky (The Possessed), Conrad (The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes), Koestler (Darkness at Noon), Orwell (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four), and, of course, Solzhenitsyn played in exposing the horrors of anarchism and communism. Of A Passage to India it has been said that “as an account of the social conditions of British India it was powerful enough to have influenced events.” 4 Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is thought to have incited federal regulation of food processing; and few doubt the effect of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) on the abolitionist cause. [End Page 1]At the core of the aesthetic tradition, which I shall be defending in this essay particularly against its opponents in the “law and literature” movement, are three theses. First, immersion in literature does not make us better citizens or better people. One might be able to pick out some works of literature that would have such an effect because of the information they convey or the emotional state they induce, but they would constitute a skewed sample of literary works. Second, we should not be put off by morally offensive views encountered in literature even when the author appears to share them. A work of literature is not to be considered maimed or even marred by expressing unacceptable moral views; by the same token, a mediocre work of literature is not redeemed by expressing moral views of which we approve. The proper criteria for evaluating literature are aesthetic rather than ethical. Third, authors’ moral qualities or opinions should not affect our valuations of their works.The insistence, in short, is on the separation of the moral from the aesthetic—but with two qualifications. Some literature has little interest or value apart from the didactic and for it the proper criticism is didactic. And the separation of moral from aesthetic values is not a rejection of the former. The aesthetic outlook is a moral outlook, one that stresses the values of openness, detachment, hedonism, curiosity, tolerance, the cultivation of the self, and the preservation of a private sphere—in short, the values of liberal individualism.The counter tradition in literary criticism to the aesthetic originates with Plato and insists upon the importance, in some versions to the near or even total exclusion of anything else, of the ethical or political content and effects of works of literature, and less commonly of the author’s own morality. Martha Nussbaum, for example, deems Greek tragedies and Anglo-American realistic novels a part of moral philosophy. 5 Reading novels, she argues, “develops moral capacities without which citizens will not succeed in making reality out of the normative conclusions of any moral or political theory, however excellent.” 6 Wayne Booth, disagreeing with his illustrious... (shrink)

The first thought that comes to mind when reading Richard Shusterman’s The Adventures of the Man in Gold is how refreshingly unorthodox its author is. Shusterman is a respected aesthetician, responsible for books such as Surface and Depth: Dialectics of Criticism and Culture, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics, and Pragmatist Aesthetic: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art —all disciplined, carefully argued contributions to the philosophy of art and/or the body. The new book steps off path. It (...) presents a different kind of philosophical intervention, one that encourages reconsidering philosophical methodology and its less-explored possibilities. You will be reading a work... (shrink)

Wordsworth and Kant and the Prosaic sublime -- Fitting infinities: Browning and Hegel -- Utter limits: Hopkins and Kierkegaard -- The echo of the poetic: Hardy and Adorno.

When the original Dutch version of this book was presented in 1971 to the University of Leiden as a thesis for the Doctorate in philosophy, I was prevented by the academic mores of that university from expressing my sincere thanks to three members of the Philosophical Faculty for their support of and interest in my pursuits. I take the liberty of doing so now, two and a half years later. First and foremost I want to thank Professor G. Nuchelmans (...) warmly for his expert guidance of my research. A number of my most im portant sources were brought to my attention by him. During the whole process of composing this book his criticism and encouragement were carried out in a truly academic spirit. He thereby provided working conditions that are a sine qua non for every author who is attempting to approach controversial matters in a scientific manner, conditions which, however, were not easily available at that time. In a later phase I also came into contact with Professors L. M. de Rijk and J. B. Ubbink, with both of whom I had highly stimulating discussions and exchanges of ideas. The present edition contains some entirely new sections, viz. 1-9, IV-29, V-9, V-20, VII-14 (iii), (iv), VII-17 (i), VIII-22, IX-17, IX-19, X-9 and XI-8. Section X-9 was inspired by a remark made by Professor A. (shrink)

The article intends to show the significance of Ch. Peirce’s ideas for the development of contemporary philosophy, to find out the main directions of his criticism of the principles of Cartesian and more broadly modern philosophy (where it comes from Descartes) and to consider the positive program of his philosophy, which he offers as an alternative to Modern philosophy. Peirce starts from a pragmatic and semiotic approach to human nature, consciousness and cognition. Thanks to this (...) approach, he managed to undermine the key ideas of the modern understanding of cognition, human, language, namely: individualism, linguistic atomism, dogmatism, dualism, representationism, nominalism, foundationalism, etc. And, instead, to propose a new theory of knowledge, a new ontology and anthropology. Peirce asserts the indirectness of human cognition by signs (linguistic, cultural, sensory), the impossibility of introspection and intuition, advocates holism, fallibilism, pragmatism, realism, synechism, inferentialism and offers a new understanding of the personality — all this makes him a relevant and contemporary thinker. Peirce’s ideas offer a fresh perspective on modern scientific practice. Peirce’s rethinking of the foundations of knowledge puts him alongside many thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The development of his ideas can be seen in modern anthropology, epistemology, research on artificial intelligence, semiotics, etc. The article is divided into four subsections, which are devoted to the main directions of Peirce’s criticism of Descartes’ philosophy: in the first — against Descartes’ skeptical methodology, Peirce puts the concept of fallibilism and the principle of belief, in the second — Peirce denies the possibility of intuition and proves the indirectness of our cognition by signs, in the third — it is about the advantages of the semiotic and communicative approach over individualism and linguistic atomism, in the fourth — Descartes’ nominalism and dualism, Peirce contrasts the realist approach and his theory of synechism, as well as semiotic anthropology. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to cultural theory and an original polemic about the purpose of criticism. What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the Culture Wars over the legacy of the 1960s, becoming entangled in national politics and leading to a new set of questions. Does a concern with race, gender, and sexuality, with unacknowledged power and privilege, with identity, (...) give present critics the right to criticize the great works of the past? If we have learned to see those works in terms of historical differences rather than universal truths, how is it that they speak to us at all? In the study of the world's cultures, there is more than one way to avoid being Eurocentric; which way should we choose? Re-examining key thinkers since 1970, including Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Hortense Spillers, Fredric Jameson, and Stuart Hall, Criticism and Politics offers both a non-specialist introduction to recent cultural theory and a strong new interpretation of how this theory applies to the everyday issue of what cultural critics do and how they should feel about what they do. (shrink)

Frank Welz's "Kritik der Lebenswelt" undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the "processual" worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the (...) presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz's charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz's discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology. (shrink)

This collection of ten papers celebrates the diversity and richness of post-positivist philosophy of science. The contributors believe that new perspectives can be developed and that philosophical criticism can make a useful contribution to the search for new and fruitful scientific paradigms.

Satire was core to the work of Thomas Hobbes although his critics also used it as a weapon to ridicule him. Condren uses Hobbes as an example to demonstrate that an examination of the persona is needed to advance our understanding of a writer's philosophy.

Philosophical interpretation of Sikh hymns.