There is, perhaps, no great philosopher who presents us, with so much confidence and assurance as Spinoza does, with such stark contradictions so rigorously deduced from indubitable first principles. Our first reaction is the conviction that something must have gone wrong with the reasoning at some obscure point; but more careful examination of his system and his explicit statements reveal that there is no actual inconsistency and that the conflicts in his doctrines are only apparent. Let us first notice briefly (...) what they are. (shrink)

This is an English translation of Schelling's Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, one of the most significant works in the German tradition of philosophy of nature and early nineteenth-century philosophy of science. It stands in opposition to the Newtonian picture of matter as constituted by inert, impenetrable particles, and argues instead for matter as an equilibrium of active forces that engage in dynamic polar opposition to one another. In the revisions of 1803 Schelling incorporated this dialectical view into a (...) neo-Platonic conception of an original unity divided upon itself. The text is of more than simply historical interest: its daring and original vision of nature, philosophy, and empirical science will prove absorbing reading for all philosophers concerned with post-Kantian German idealism, for scholars of German Romanticism, and for historians of science. (shrink)

Harris offers his unique interpretation of Spinoza as a dialectical thinker and addresses other commentators' misunderstandings of some of Spinoza's primary principles. The opening chapters discuss Spinoza's metaphysics and epistemology, the problem of relating finite to infinite in his system, the infinity of the attributes of substance, human nature and the body-mind relation, politics, and religion. The latter part of the book addresses Spinoza's influence on later philosophers and their interpretations of his doctrine. In the course of his discussion, Harris (...) stresses Spinoza's holism and its implication both within and beyond Spinoza's own writings. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of the three types of logic advocated by current philosophical schools.

Errol Harris was a greatly respected and influential philosopher and public intellectual in North America, Britain and Europe in the 20th century. His autobiography provides insight into the influences that contributed to the shaping of his remarkable character and career. In these recollections Harris reveals a keen eye as he presents memories of growing up in several parts of South Africa in the early 20th century; childhood and youth in a close-knit but sometimes financially challenged Jewish family of fairly (...) strict religious observance; an account of inspiring intellectual experiences as an undergraduate and graduate at Rhodes College, Grahamstown (1925-29); teaching black South African university undergraduates at Fort Hare in 1929-30; studying philosophy at Oxford (1931-33) with many of the most celebrated figures on the Oxford faculty from that period; teaching at British public schools in the mid-1930’s; a short, unhappy, but adventure-filled stint as secretary to the Minister of Mines for Southern Rhodesia; tales of his experiences as an Education Officer for the British Colonial Service, inspecting remote village schools on horseback in Basutoland and Zanzibar in the late 1930’s, just prior to the outbreak of the war. He also recounts the religious experiences over these years that eventually led him to join the Church of England. Over the course of his long life, Errol demonstrated a serious concern for the common weal, along with a strongly-developed social conscience. Confronted with a range of historic challenges, including some of the most acute evils arising in the course of the twentieth century, he met the most serious of them head-on with a direct, resolute, and public response, calling upon all to embark on a path of sanity and reason toward a goal of mutual well-being. The book also covers his research and his writing of his fully realized and comprehensive philosophical system on the concept of mind, or consciousness, and its relation to the world. Excerpted from the Introduction. (shrink)

CHAPTER I CONTEMPORARY DESPAIR AND ITS ANTIDOTE 1. Forebodings The prevalent mood of contemporary mankind is one of despair, for never before have the ...

Harris elucidates the important philosophical implications of the Anthropic Principle. Tracing the continuous development of the principle from physics through biology and psychology, he examines the case for the thesis that intelligent life is necessarily involved from the very beginning of physical reality and that the entire process of natural evolution comes to consciousness of itself in the human mind.

"In this book, drawn from the Terry Lectures at Yale, a distinguished South African philosopher attempts once and for all to dispose of the putative conflict between religion and scientific thinking"--Book jacket.

Spinoza's writings on metaphysics, ethics, and politics have had a remarkably diverse reception in recent times and have contributed to the current dialogue among philosophers, intellectual historians, and literary theorists. Errol E. Harris has written a brief and simplified introductory presentation of the major branches of Spinoza's philosophy. Spinoza's ideas are put forward in plain language and supported by convincing argument. Technicalities are either clearly explained or entirely avoided. Professor Harris also shows the student how Spinoza succeeded in reconciling (...) the insights of both the British empiricists and the continental rationalists. (shrink)

Rozszerzona wersja wykładów Gilbert Ryle wygłoszonych na Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario w Kanadzie w 1984 roku.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

But in both these doctrines there is confusion between the temporal process and time itself, a confusion common enough but by no means permissible. For the process of change is not time, though it is what "takes time." It is sensible to ask whether it occurs slowly or quickly, but it makes no sense to ask whether time elapses more or less swiftly. We can consider how long a series of changes takes to occur but not how long a period (...) of time takes to elapse. Time itself does not take time. Our common expressions about the movement of time and its relative velocity are illegitimate and refer only to the number of distinguishable events in a series or the degree of our interest in them, so that we say time "passes" quickly when what occurs is pleasant and interesting, or when exciting events follow each other in quick succession. We say that it passes slowly when little happens which is of any importance to us, or when we are tense and expectant, over-eager for the occurrence of some anticipated climax. These are descriptions of changes in objects or in ourselves which may occur quickly or slowly, they are not descriptions of time. (shrink)

This sequel to the highly acclaimed "Cosmos and Anthropos" demonstrates the impact on social, ethical, and theological doctrines of the twentieth-century scientific revolution, particularly the Anthropic Principle. Harris reviews the main arguments put forward in the Western philosophical tradition for the existence of God, as well as the critique of those arguments, and shows that the conflict between religion and science since the seventeenth century has resulted more from the implications of the Copernican-Newtonian scientific paradigm than from any insuperable divergence (...) of dogma or ultimate aim. (shrink)

The term ‘Empiricism’ has had at least two different, though not unconnected, applications in modern thought, one to scientific method and the other to philosophical theory. My intention in this lecture is to try to show that, while these two applications of the term have a common source, their actual referents are widely divergent and in large measure even mutually incompatible.

As in Düsseldorf in 1978, so in Montreal in 1983, the Hegel Society of America held a fringe meeting. But this last time it was more ambitious and more fully organized, a session lasting throughout the day of August 24. Lawrence Stepelevich opened the proceedings with a brief report of the development of the Owl from a nestling into a full-fledged journal. He then introduced the speakers on the subject: “The Trials of the Absolute Spirit.”.

One of Kant’s major contributions to modern philosophy was the recognition that genuine knowledge is never a mere patchwork of items of information, whether gathered from empirical sources or from intellectual, whether inductively inferred or deductively derived from first principles. “If each and every single representation were completely foreign, isolated and separate from every other,” he declared, “nothing would ever arise such as knowledge, which is a whole of related and connected elements.” Of this fact, Hegel was unshakably convinced. “The (...) Truth,” he maintained, “is the whole”; but it is no undifferentiated, featureless whole, no Schellingian night in which all cows are black. “The true form in which the truth exists can only be the scientific system itself”. (shrink)

Following kant, idealists establish the transcendental unity of the subject as the prior condition of experience of objects. this is necessarily all-inclusive and the finite self becomes one of its phenomena, which cannot be identified with the transcendental ego, nor yet be wholly divorced from it. this is the basis of kant's paralogism of reason. t h green, f h bradley and edmund husserl are all victims of this paralogism, each in his own way. green fails to avoid it by (...) identifying the transcendental subject with the divine spiritual principle; bradley, admitting the problem's insolubility, propounds an incoherent theory of finite centers of experience; and husserl's device of 'mundanization' proves illegitimate and ambiguous under inspection. (shrink)

The resignation from the editorship of the Owl by Frederick Weiss is news that will be received with much regret by all members of the Hegel Society and with dismay by quite a few. Under Rick’s direction the Owl has become something more than a simple news letter. Rather, I think we may claim that it is a distinguished and much valued organ of Hegelian studies in America and elsewhere, even despite its modest dimensions. From this source we have had (...) news, not only of the Society and its members, but of everything of interest and concern to Hegelian scholarship; and not only news, but also views and opinions about current literature and translations from the foremost Hegelian shcolars. Just how important a publication the paper has become was immediately felt when Rick’s predicament that led to his resignation resulted in a back-log and delays in the appearance of the newsletter. The Society’s Treasurer was at once inundated with inquiries about, and anxious requests for, forthcoming numbers, both from Libraries and from individuals. (shrink)

Professor Errol E. Harris, past-President of The Hegel Society of America, accepted the invitation of the Philosophy Department of Villanova University to occupy their Chair of Christian Philosophy for the 1982 spring semester. The following paper was presented as his inaugural address to that department.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The need for objective standards of judgement is acutely felt in the bewilderment created by the world situation of our time, a bewilderment that is partly the result of the rapid advance of the natural sciences, with its profound effects upon metaphysical doctrines, religious beliefs and moral attitudes, and partly due to the intractable problems which have arisen in social and political fields. The progress of the sciences, while it seems to have given us secure knowledge of the world about (...) us, has, at the same time, undermined confidence in the criteria of belief and judgement in the conduct of affairs which hitherto had served to guide mankind. Bereft of these the majority of men are unable to see a clear way through the complexities of modern political and economic life and are overwhelmed by the major problems that confront them. As examples of the major perplexities with which mankind is faced today, I shall mention only three:—. (shrink)

The Encyclopädie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften contains what is rightly called the system of Hegel's philosophy, his other treatises being, in the main, more detailed developments of certain sections of the Encyclopädie. For him the body of philosophical knowledge consists of three main divisions, Logic, Nature-philosophy and the Philosophy of Spirit, forming the supreme triad of the Dialectic and continuous with each other in the dialectical movement of thought. The Philosophy of Nature, however, has been held suspect even by followers of (...) Hegel who adhere to the doctrine of Absolute Idealism; in fact, by some of his most ardent disciples. For the development of the view by both contemporary and later thinkers has led to a position according to which Hegel's excursion into Nature-philosophy appears inconsistent with his own idealism. Whether the alleged inconsistency is supposed to affect the Philosophy of Spirit also is not clear, but it does, at least, throw doubt upon the claim of the second science of the Encyclopædia to be a genuine branch of philosophy. The view which leads to this condemnation of the Naturphilosophie was first voiced by Schelling, but it follows also from what will be called, in the sequel, the 'Bradleian' version of Absolutism, though this should not be taken to imply that Bradley was responsible for the statement of it which follows or that he voiced the objection to Hegel's philosophy here considered. (shrink)