This chapter contains sections titled: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism:Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’sAccount of the Structure and Content ofConceptual NormsRobert B. BrandomThis paper could equally well have been titled ‘Some Idealist Themes in Hegel’sPragmatism’. Both idealism and pragmatism are capacious concepts, encompassingmany distinguishable theses. I will focus on one pragmatist thesis and one ideal-ist thesis (though we will come within sight of some others). The pragmatistthesis (what I will call ‘the semantic pragmatist thesis’) is that the use of conceptsdetermines (...) their content, that is, that concepts can have no content apart from thatconferred on them by their use. The idealist thesis is that the structure and unityof the concept is the same as the structure and unity of the self. The semantic prag-matist thesis is a commonplace of our Wittgensteinean philosophical world. Theidealist thesis is, to say the least, not. I don’t believe there is any serious contem-porary semantic thinker who is pursuing the thought that concepts might best beunderstood by modelling them on selves. Indeed, from the point of view ofcontemporary semantics it is hard to know even what one could mean by such athought: what relatively unproblematic features of selves are supposed to illumi-nate what relatively problematic features of concepts? Why should we think thatunderstanding something about, say, personal identity would help us under-stand issues concerning the identity and individuation of concepts? From acontemporary point of view, the idealist semantic thesis is bound to appearinitially as something between unpromising and crazy.My interpretive claim here will be that the idealist thesis is Hegel’s way of makingthe pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of several other commitments andinsights. My philosophical claim here will be that we actually have a lot to learn fromthis strategy about contemporary semantic issues that we by no means see our wayto the bottom of otherwise. In the space of this essay, I cannot properly justify thefirst claim textually, nor the second argumentatively. I will confine myself of neces-sity to sketching the outlines and motivations for the complex, sophisticated, andinteresting view on the topic I find Hegel putting forward. (shrink)

To readers of the Science of Logic, “mode” signifies the externality of the absolute, and its proper place within the text is at the level of the determinations of reflection, within the Doctrine of Essence. Let us take a look at the third section of the Doctrine of Essence: “Actuality”. In its broadest meaning, this signifies “reflected absoluteness,” that is to say, the unity of essence and existence; therefore, it is not a purely immediate existence, but “the immediate unity of (...) form between inner and outer.” Through this definition, a new kind of logical process is made possible - that of the actual totality’s self-manifestation. In the opening chapter of this section, headed “The Absolute,” the determination of the absolute is carried through from its initial unity to truly absolute identity by means of the complex play of reflection. Hegel’s treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of this paper; but if, at the initial stage of its dialectical cycle, reflection is external to the absolute - instead of being the proper determination of it - then it can at least be observed that in the third subdivision of the chapter what is under consideration is the negative return of the absolute into itself, and that this return is accomplished in such a way that “mode” is both the externality of the absolute and its reflection into itself: its being into itself and for itself. As one of the recent commentators on the Science of Logic has pointed out: “Le mode est ‘1’apparance comme apparance’: avec lui se profile un type d’extériorité qui ne sera plus en dette à l’egard d’une interiorité … la manifestation de l’absolu n’est pas une sortie de soi, mais plutôt sa constitution dans l’exteriorité des modes, puis des modalités de l’effectivité.”. (shrink)

Chronic and current epistemological controversies, with particular attention to the development of pragmatist/historicist/constructivist reconceptions of knowledge and science in the 20th century and the scandalized responses to them by defenders of more traditional rationalist/objectivist/realist conceptions. Individual chapters deal with complex and confused relations among epistemic skepticism, relativism, and constructivist epistemology ; 20th-century "postmodern" relativism and anti-relativism; Ludwik Fleck and constructivist views of truth, science, and knowledge; attacks on and disavowals of constructivism and/or relativism by established and feminist philosophers; the (...) Science Wars and fraught relations between the humanities and the sciences; the problematic claims of Evolutionary Psychology; and chronic problems and contemporary views of animal-human relations. (shrink)

_John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work (...) of Friedrich Nietzsche to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. This unique volume includes discussions comparing and contrasting Dewey with the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer on such topics as phenomenology, naturalism, organicism, contextualism, and poetry. Others investigate a series of connections between Dewey and contemporary French philosophy, including the notions of subjectivity, education, and the critique of modernity in Michel Foucault; language and politics in Jacques Derrida; and the concept of experience in Gilles Deleuze. Also discussed is the question of whether we can identify traces of _Bildung_ in Dewey’s writings on education, and pragmatism’s complex relation to twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, including the problematic question of whether Heidegger was a pragmatist in any meaningful sense. Presented in intriguing pairings, these thirteen essays offer different approaches to the material that will leave readers with much to deliberate. _ John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ demonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey’s pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nature and Freedom, Purity and Impurity in Reconsidering the Life of PowerJames Garrison (bio)My book Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy is not so much about providing a systematic account of what it means to be a self-monitoring, self-regulating subject, the branches of which might resolve down to some single root, despite its clear debt to Judith Butler's 1997 The (...) Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection.1 My book is instead more self-consciously rhizomatic in the [End Page 833] manner of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.2 Describing my rhizomatic approach in this book, Joseph Harroff observes in his preceding article that:Instead of thinking about thinking as being conducive to the construction of totalizing systems, final vocabularies, or epistemic closure, Garrison connects our embodied reflection in the interstices of habit to the always changing life of power—that is, the conditions for the possibility of becoming a thinking, feeling, body-subject—to the dynamic and amorphous nature of the multitudinous processes by which we are constantly being rendered subjectival in daily life by forces working relatively synchronically in the present as "subjectivation" and relatively diachronically in cultural traditions as so many forms of "subjectality"3This is a very nuanced way of saying that my efforts to present subject life as being (1) relational, (2) bodily, (3) discursive, and (4) ritually philosophy. Indeed, thoughmpelled have led to a book that sprawls.4 This sprawl is thus like that of a rhizome (think of ginger), not proceeding from a single source of growth with a single, clear arche. Do I revel in the imprecision? Yes, but only when it is justified by the investigation itself. And in the case of this inquiry—which spans what Judith Butler captures regarding ritual performativity by drawing on figures like Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault and the complex approaches to ritual seen in classical and contemporary Rú 儒 philosophy (Confucianism)—the rhizomatic approach very much is.With my book having hopefully earned its own rhizomatic badge of honor, my response to the thoughtful questions posed by Kelly Coble and Joseph Harroff likewise takes up this spirit and cuts its own course through what has been presented in their articles. Hence, I will proceed in a non-linear fashion that draws links between ideas capriciously and unapologetically.That said, my way of looking at Reconsidering the Life of Power and what I immodestly call its insights is far from the only perspective. I hold a copyright on the book (fact check: ctually, it's SUNY Press), but in the marketplace of ideas, I hold no monopoly, even over what I have authored. Therefore, while I feel a degree of ownership over the ideas presented here, I am delighted to see my thinking challenged and extended by people like Kelly Coble and Joseph Harroff in this forum and by others (like Michael J. Ardoline in the article "Building a Way: Becoming Active in One's Own Subjectivation through Deleuze and Xunzi" from the journal Philosophies),5 all of whom see so much present in the text beyond what I, even in its conception, was able.To wit, Joseph Harroff's characterization of my efforts to reclaim and redefine the term "liberal arts" captures so much of what I tried to convey so much more succinctly and with so much more in the way of provocative connection to a wealth of texts of a decidedly European lineage on the connection between freedom, the arts, and self-cultivation.6 However, as he well identifies, whereas classical European conceptions of liberal arts tend to [End Page 834] be more about self-cultivation of an atomic individual, what I am offering is more about finding freedom while taking the "self" in question to be deeply and constitutively relational along the lines that he very effectively links to the pragmatism of John Dewey and also in Rú, philosophy. Indeed, though not much of this specific pragmatist thread made it directly into this book, the influence of Roger T. Ames from my time at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa pervades Reconsidering the Life... (shrink)

This paper argues that there can be, For each individual mental state, Some identifiable neural "embodiment" only if the brain operates in accord with a hegelian teleological model. "embodiments" are neural configurations which do, Or would, Produce all the behaviors connected with the mental state. The argument hinges on how these behaviors are described: if under predicates of neurophysics only, Then only under wildly disjunctive predicates, Which cannot be projected for any candidate configuration; if under "teleological" predicates, Then under predicates (...) projectible for teleological hardware. Hegel's logic provides for a teleology consistent with modern science. (shrink)

Jon Stewart's study is a major re-evaluation of the complex relations between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Hegel. The standard view on the subject is that Kierkegaard defined himself as explicitly anti-Hegelian, indeed that he viewed Hegel's philosophy with disdain. Jon Stewart shows convincingly that Kierkegaard's criticism was not of Hegel but of a number of contemporary Danish Hegelians. Kierkegaard's own view of Hegel was in fact much more positive to the point where he (...) was directly influenced by some of Hegel's work. Any scholar working in the tradition of Continental philosophy will find this an insightful and provocative book with implications for the subsequent history of philosophy in the twentieth century. The book will also appeal to scholars in religious studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most important thinkers of this century. His work has been highly influential not only in philosophy, but particularly in the fields of politics, sociology and law. This is the first collection that explores the connections between his body of work and North America's biggest philosophical movement, pragmatism. Habermas and Pragmatism investigates the influences of pragmatism on Habermas' thought in a collection of stellar essays with contributions by Habermas himself, leading representatives (...) of pragmatism, as well as critical and legal theorists. The essays cover a range of subjects including philosophy of language, democracy, nature of rationality and social theory as well as the relation of major figures such as Hegel, Pierce, Mead and Dewey to Habermas and pragmatism. (shrink)

In this paper, making reference to Robert Brandom's philosophical proposal - and against the background of Brandom's debate with Jürgen Habermas - I shall endeavor, first, to define the relation between recognition and normativity and then between recognition and criticism; in the final part of the paper I shall suggest a perspective that approaches recognition in terms of capacities. On this basis I attempt to see the critical attitude as something that is founded more on individual potentials (...) than on formal criteria and that is essentially connected with a power of redescription: a dialectical anthropology of recognition is thus the most promising base to account for that which substantiates our critical powers. (shrink)

This work examines the complex relationship between two influential modern thinkers, G.W.F. Hegel and Ernst Troeltsch, one of Hegel's interpreters and a figure who has not received the attention he deserves.

This paper considers the relation between the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce and the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel . While Peirce engaged with Hegel’s thought quite extensively, his often critical comments on the latter have made it hard to see any genuine common ground between the two; recent ways of reading Hegel, however, suggest how this might be possible, where the connections between their respective metaphysical positions and views of the categories (...) are explored here. Issues relating to their epistemology and philosophies of languages are considered in a companion article. (shrink)

Hegel has had a remarkable, yet largely unremarked, role in Canada's intellectual development. In the last half of the twentieth-century, as Canada was coming to define itself in the wake of World War Two, some of Canada's most thoughtful scholars turned to the work of G.W.F. Hegel for insight. Hegel and Canada is a collection of essays that analyses the real, but under-recognized, role Hegel has played in the intellectual and political development of Canada. The volume (...) focuses on the generation of Canadian scholars who emerged after World War Two: James Doull, Emil Fackenheim, George Grant, Henry S. Harris, and Charles Taylor. These thinkers offer a uniquely Canadian view of Hegel's writings, and, correspondingly, of possible relations between situated community and rational law. Hegel provided a unique intellectual resource for thinking through the complex and opposing aspects that characterize Canada. The volume brings together key scholars from each of these five schools of Canadian Hegel studies and provides a richly nuanced account of the intellectually significant connection of Hegel and Canada. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the Hegelianism of contemporary neo-pragmatism and the Hegelianism of classical pragmatism as it has been reassessed in contemporary Deweyan scholarship. Drawing on Dewey’s interpretation of Hegel, this paper argues that Hegel’s theory of the spirit is in many aspects more akin to Dewey’s pragmatism than Brandom’s. The first part compares Dewey’s pragmatism with Hegel’s conceptions of experience and the theory/practice relation. The second part compares Dewey’s naturalism with Hegel’s (...) theory of the relation between nature and spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel’s “Two Souls, Alas, Reside within My Breast”: Reflections on German and American Music Education Regarding the Internationalization of Music EducationPhilosophy of Music Education Review, 21, no.1 (Spring 2013): 52–65Leonard TanAs a Singaporean who, like Kertz-Welzel, spent four years residing in the United States, I read the article with great interest. Born to traditional Chinese parents, I was raised steeped in Confucian values, savored Chinese operas, (...) and spoke Mandarin as a child. When I went to school in postcolonial Singapore, however, the medium of instruction was primarily English. I read Enid Blyton in primary school, Shakespeare in secondary school, and Chaucer in Junior College. My university studies in music were Western-centric. All seemed fine until my doctoral studies in the United States when I was inspired by my music education professor to revisit my cultural roots and to read Chinese philosophy. It was [End Page 113] no easy task reading the original texts—they were written on bamboo slips more than two thousand years ago in classical Chinese, and I needed tuition from my mother. Nevertheless, as I worked my way slowly but surely through each character, one thing became unmistakably clear: although I had read more Western than Asian philosophy, many ideas in the ancient Chinese texts resonate with the innermost recesses of my being and are unmistakably a part of who I am as a Chinese Singaporean, albeit one schooled in Western ways.Two souls, alas, have been residing within my breast! Like Kertz-Welzel, I had to find a way to reconcile my two scholarly identities. How may one negotiate the seeming chasm between the Chinese and Western philosophical worlds? In this paper, I sketch some insights gleaned from my journey into the world of comparative philosophy, specifically, classical Chinese philosophy and American pragmatism. In particular, I address two obstacles to the internationalization of music education identified by Kertz-Welzel, namely, the tendency for researchers to know only one scholarly tradition well, and the use of English as an international language. I then proffer Dewey’s metaphor of “friendship” as a way of charting a new “silk road”—one that blends Eastern and Western ideas—for the philosophy of music education.As noted by Kertz-Welzel, many researchers only know one scholarly tradition well. Dangers lurk when scholars have limited knowledge of foreign philosophical enterprises. To begin with, one may fall into the trap of stereotypical preconceptions. For example, I have been asked if it were methodologically sound to juxtapose Chinese philosophical aphorisms with the closely argued texts of the American pragmatists. The basis of this critique is understandable: think Confucius and aphoristic phrases that teach humans how to lead moral lives immediately spring to mind; think Dewey and one is reminded of the depth and breadth of his philosophical arguments. Chinese philosophical texts, however, are by no means mere aphorisms. While the Analects of Confucius may, prima facie, appear as if it were a random collection of brief sayings, many passages relate to one another and cohere as a philosophy. The rich commentarial tradition that spans over two thousand years further augment the range of insights embedded in the Analects. Post Confucius, Xunzi, the philosopher best known for his argument that human nature is evil and ought to be cultivated through ritual (li 禮) and music (yue 乐), articulated his philosophy through thirty-two books that rival Dewey in richness and complexity.1 For two souls to reside within one breast, one has to remain vigilant against potential stereotypes.The tendency to know only one scholarly tradition well may also inadvertently cause one to judge a foreign philosophical tradition using the standards of the familiar one. When encountering Confucius for the first time, scholars schooled in European philosophy may, as Hegel did, criticize him for being a [End Page 114] shallow moralizer obsessed with rituals (li 禮) rather than a speculative philosopher concerned with theoretical matters.2 Such a judgment is misguided as it ignores the fact that the Chinese philosophical tradition was founded on a set of metaphysical assumptions that differed from its Greek counterpart. Seeing the cosmos in discrete, quantitative, and unchanging terms, the ancient... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Ideal Form of Mutual Recognition Hegel's State of Nature De Facto Authority De Jure Authority Legitimate Authority Constitutional Authority Conclusion Notes References.

ABSTRACT In this paper I will provide a reading of the relation between nature and spirit starting from an analysis of the movement of positing and presupposing, discussed by Hegel in the "Science of Logic" in his discussion of the transition between Being and Essence. 1) I will offer an analysis of the logical context within which this dialectical movement emerges. 2) I will show the role played by this dialectical movement in determining the relation (...) between the spheres of nature and spirit in Hegelʼs "Encyclopedia". 3) I will then claim that a difficulty related to this movement arises in the "Logic", and that this difficulty reverberates in the relation between nature and spirit in Hegel's system. In particular, 4) an ambiguity arising at a logical level generates two different configurations of this movement, depending on whether the latter is meant to describe the relation of 4.1) the finite or of 4.2) the infinite spirit to nature. 5) I will finally focus on some problems deriving from my reconstruction and I will try to suggest - in very general and programmatic terms - in what sense the internal analysis of the relation between nature and spirit in Hegelʼs system can be fruitfully discussed against the dominant framework of the contemporary debate, i.e. naturalism. However, this suggestion does not necessarily imply an endorsement of Hegel's position. RESUMO Neste artigo, proponho-me a fornecer uma leitura da relação entre natureza e espírito a partir de uma análise do movimento de pôr e pressupor descrito por Hegel na "Ciência da Lógica", na passagem do Ser à Essência. 1) Analisarei o contexto lógico dentro do qual surge o movimento de pôr e pressupor. 2) Mostrarei o papel deste movimento dialético na determinação da relação entre as esferas da natureza e do espírito na "Enciclopédia" de Hegel. 3) Destacarei uma dificuldade que emerge na "Lógica" e mostrarei como esta dificuldade tem repercussões sobre a relação entre natureza e espírito no sistema de Hegel. Em particular, 4) uma ambiguidade que emerge no nível lógico gera duas diferentes configurações deste movimento, dependendo de se ele descreve 4.1) a relação do espírito finito ou 4.2) a relação do espírito infinito com a natureza. 5) Na última parte, mostrarei alguns problemas que derivam de minha reconstrução e tentarei sugerir - em termos gerais e programáticos - em que sentido uma análise interna da relação entre natureza e espírito em Hegel pode ser proficuamente discutida com respeito ao paradigma dominante do debate contemporâneo, isto é, o naturalismo. (shrink)

"Schelling has undergone his philosophical education before the public" - so G. W. F. Hegel in criticism of the novel systematic projects which his philosophical ally and later rival F. W. J. Schelling successively made public. Today, however, Hegel's derisive judgment can be seen not to hold: Instead, it is much rather the case that Schelling's productivity expresses the genuine continuity of his thought. Moreover, his thought is attractive precisely because it embodies an inconclusive - perhaps the never-ending (...) - search for an abiding philosophical orientation in an ever more complex world. The title both emphasizes the singularity of Schelling's thought and recognizes its profound relation to that of his contemporaries. This volume, which connects the latest work in Fichte-, Hegel- and Schelling-studies, contains original contributions in English and German on Schelling's philosophy from international group of researchers. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing, in Hegel’s writings, between the subject-matter of the science of logic, and the science of logic itself. I then argue for an interpretation of the subject-matter of logic in terms drawn from the ancient Greek discussions of logos, discussions which Hegel himself exposits at length and applauds in his lectures on the history of philosophy, and which Hegel directly alludes to, at key moments, in the course of presenting the subject-matter of logic (...) in his own voice. Drawing on the fact that logos, in this tradition, is at once ontologically pervasive while also something which in itself does not involve consciousness or self-consciousness (and so is not essentially ‘psychological’ or ‘spiritual’, in Hegel’s sense of these terms), I argue against recent attempts to cast Hegel’s logic as about something which is first, foremost, and essentially self-conscious (‘apperceptive’), and in favor of a more straightforwardly metaphysical interpretation of logic, one according to which logic treats its subject-matter (logos) in a way that is ‘neutral’ with respect to whether it is realized in spirit or in nature. I conclude by returning to the significance of distinction between logos itself and the philosophical science of this subject-matter for Hegel’s broader system. (shrink)

In order to illuminate the very complex relationship between ethics and politics in the thought of Jacques Derrida, this paper stages the (dis)encounter between Hegel's and Derrida's notion of forgiveness. It will be shown how for these two authors forgiveness is closely related both with certain ‘impossibility’, and with the disclosure of a condition for rethinking the ethico-political realm. Both Hegel and Derrida seem to suggest that forgiveness opens up a realm in which something must (...) remain ‘absolute’, that is to say, ‘intact, inaccessible to law, to politics, even to morals’. And, for both, it seems to be precisely there, where something arrives at the verge of politics, that a thinking (and a re-thinking) of the ‘political’ becomes possible. The paper explores what kind of impossibility is staged in each case, and how can each one bring into light the risks and limits, but also the scope and significance of the other. (shrink)

In this paper, which is the second in a series, I continue to consider the relation between the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce and the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. This article focuses on their views of epistemology and inquiry, and their accounts of the relation between language and thought. As with the earlier paper, it is argued that fruitful similarities between their positions on these issues can be found.

The essays collected in this volume and authored by Sami Pihlström emphasize that our relation to the world we live in and seek to represent and get to know better through our practices of conceptualization and inquiry is irreducibly valuational. There is no way of even approaching, let alone resolving, the philosophical issue of realism without drawing due attention to the ways in which human values are inextricably entangled with even the most purely “factual” projects of inquiry we engage (...) in. This entanglement of the factual and the normative is, as explicitly argued in Chapter 7 but implicitly suggested in all the other chapters as well, both pragmatic (practice-embedded and practice-involving) and transcendental (operating at the level of the necessary conditions for the possibility of our representing and cognizing the world in general). The author claims we need to carefully examine the complex relations of realism, value, and transcendental arguments at the intersection of pragmatism and analytic philosophy. This book does so by offering case-studies of various important neopragmatists and philosophers close to the pragmatist tradition, including Hilary Putnam, Nicholas Rescher, Joseph Margolis, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It appeals to scholars and advanced graduate students focusing on pragmatism and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This book explores the complexity of two philosophical traditions, extending from their origins to the current developments in neopragmatism. Chapters deal with the first encounters of these traditions and beyond, looking at metaphysics and the Vienna circle as well as semantics and the principle of tolerance. There is a general consensus that North-American (neo-)pragmatism and European Logical Empiricism were converging philosophical traditions, especially after the forced migration of the European Philosophers. But readers will discover a pluralist image of this (...) relation and interaction with an obvious family resemblance. This work clarifies and specifies the common features and differences of these currents since the beginning of their mutual scientific communication in the 19th century. The book draws on collaboration between authors and philosophers from Vienna, Tübingen, and Helsinki, and their networks. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars in the history of philosophy, philosophers of science, pragmatists and beyond. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy by Trevor PearceAlexander KleinTrevor Pearce. Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 384. Paperback, $35.00.Pragmatist pioneers were young lions in the days of Darwin. Evolutionary-biological thinking infused this philosophical movement from the start. And yet the last time a major monograph appeared on classic pragmatism and evolutionary biology—Philip (...) Wiener's Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1949)—the author could personally thank Ralph Barton Perry, William James's junior colleague and eventual biographer. John Dewey himself wrote the foreword.Almost seventy-five years later, we have Trevor Pearce's painstakingly researched Pragmatism's Evolution. The author has graduate training in both biology and philosophy and is a former student of William Wimsatt and Robert Richards's (343). The book offers an intricate portrait of how debates about evolutionary biology informed the thinking of a loose-knit group of pragmatists between the years 1860 and 1910. While a remarkable variety of figures are discussed, ten pragmatists command the most attention: Chauncey Wright, C. S. Peirce, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, John Fiske, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, Jane Addams, G. H. Mead, and W. E. B. Du Bois (18). Call them "the American Ten."Without downplaying Darwin, an overarching theme is the special significance of Herbert Spencer. Despite many specific disagreements with him (see e.g. 74, 207–8, 253–54, 281), the American Ten all accepted something more fundamental from Spencer: an intellectual framework that explains mind and morality in terms of functional relationships between organism and environment.After an introduction outlining what Pearce identifies as four chronological "cohorts" of pragmatists (more on this concept below), he examines the 1860s and 1870s reception of Darwin (chapter 1) and Spencer (chapter 2), showing how senior pragmatists like Wright, Peirce, and James defended evolution during this period. In chapter 2, we meet the Metaphysical Club's arch Spencerian, John Fiske, and we get a reading of James's critique of Spencer's psychology and sociology. Chapter 3 gives a highly detailed, reference-work-like portrait of the second cohort's training in evolutionary biology during the 1880s—chiefly Royce, Dewey, Addams, Mead, and Du Bois. In chapter 4, we learn that in the 1880s and 1890s, idealists like Edward Caird, Samuel Alexander, David George Ritchie, and Josiah Royce all co-opted ideas from evolutionary biology, which they apparently thought compatible with Hegelian dialectics. Chapter 5 shows that central planks of Peirce's metaphysics and Dewey's ethics are responsive to an 1890s dispute over the causes of the biological variation upon which selection acts (the so-called "factors" debate). The final two chapters show how pragmatist ethics (chapter 6) and epistemology (chapter 7) were infused with substantive ideas about evolution and about scientific experiment more generally.The depth and use of historical scholarship on offer here are both remarkable. On depth, Pearce draws from nineteen special collections and archives housed at institutions from California to Manchester, UK. The reference list (published on Pearce's website) runs [End Page 160] to 118 pages and was apparently too long for inclusion in the book. Archival research and lengthy bibliographies are to be expected in today's history of philosophy. But the sheer range of sources Pearce draws from is, by any measure, impressive.The use to which he puts those sources is provocative. Close reading, and in particular argument reconstruction, is usually the stock in trade for historians of philosophy. Pearce takes a different approach (7), seeking interpretive insight through a kind of philosophical network analysis. The nodes are mainly philosophers, scientists, and social critics. Unlike digital network analyses, Pearce connects his nodes by hand, via a great multiplicity of social, educational, and intellectual relations. We learn who studied evolution where, with whom, and when; what specific texts were assigned in classes taken, in classes taught; who attacked whom, who sided with whom; and so on.The resulting networks are rich, though they can be difficult to track due to their complexity. At its best, the book uses networks to produce genuine insights that... (shrink)

Abstract:It is difficult to approach a phenomenon as complex as the renaissance of pragmatism without considering the contemporary significance of pragmatist aesthetics. At the same time, however, one ought to note that pragmatist aesthetics has not yet reached its full potential. This is primarily due to the legacy of John Dewey's aesthetics. In pragmatist studies, the problematic consequences of Dewey's idealism in aesthetics have been insufficiently criticized. In order to confront this desideratum, pragmatist aesthetics ought to establish a (...) dialogue with continental aesthetics. This essay advances the argument that pragmatist aesthetics will profit from considering Nietzsche's radical insights and far-reaching suggestions. Concentrating on a comparison between Dewey and Nietzsche, the essay discusses three aspects: the relation between art and life; the question of art's noncognitivism; and the question of aesthetic form and its significance for modern art. (shrink)

The celebrated author of _Gender Trouble_ here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler's new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship -- and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change. Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles's _Oedipus,_ has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that (...) she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life. Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone -- the "postoedipal" subject -- rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be. (shrink)

This paper explores the complex relation between Hegel and Habermas. Centring the discussion around the key themes of philosophy, modernity and political philosophy, it argues for a gradual re-approachment of Habermas towards Hegel. In the final section on critical theory, it takes up the question of the spirit of this theory to offer a more trenchant critique of Habermas' theoretical short-coming from this perspective.

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a (...) series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the problematic reception of Pragmatism in Europe, especially Germany, in the early twentieth century. It examines the important role played by American Pragmatism, especially Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, in the development of the sociology of knowledge and reflects on what lessons one might learn from such an historical investigation for social constructivist thought today. It looks into Max Scheler's complex reaction to the works of Peirce and James as their versions of (...) class='Hi'>Pragmatism relate to Scheler's own sociology of knowledge. The chapter discusses some of the reasons German scholars have been slow to engage Dewey's ideas, and demonstrates some of the ways in which problems of translation still affect international studies in Pragmatism. (shrink)

Robert B. Brandom’s From Empiricism to Expressivism ranges widely over fundamental issues in metaphysics, with occasional forays into epistemology as well. The centerpiece is what Brandom calls ‘the Kant-Sellars thesis about modality’. This is ‘[t]he claim that in being able to use ordinary empirical descriptive vocabulary, one already knows how to do everything that one needs to know how to do, in principle, to use alethic modal vocabulary – in particular subjunctive conditionals’. Despite claiming descent from Sellars, Brandom defends here (...) a version of modal realism and tries hard to limit Sellarsian nominalism, all in the service of elaborating Brandom’s own version of pragmatism. The range of issues Brandom addresses defies adequate consideration in a critical notice, so I confine myself here to a single issue: What is.. (shrink)

Ünal and Papafragou examine what one might call learning “really hard” meanings, that is, evidentials, which linguistically mark the source of information associated with use of a given verb. They explore the relationship between children’s mastery of the relevant nonlinguistic conceptual underpinnings and the linguistic marking of evidentials, and find that the two kinds of mastery show different developmental trajectories, with the relationship far from one‐to‐one. This case study points to the complex and nuanced relationships between language (...) learning and nonlinguistic understanding in the same domain. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukacs, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian (...) antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and " The Phenomenology of Mind."" Lukacs completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work.". (shrink)

헤겔은 독특하게도 철학의 이념 안에 시간을 적용한다. 게다가 꼬제브는 헤겔의 ‘개념은 시간이다.’라고까지 주장한다. 이 글은 꼬제브의 주장에 반대하여 ‘개념은 시간이 아니다’라는 점을 논증한다. 이를 위해 헤겔 철학의 이념을 철학사와 논리학의 관계를 통해 살펴보고, 철학은 시대 제약성을 지니는 철학사와 동근원적임을 밝힌다. 그리고 ‘자연철학’과 ‘철학사’에서 ‘개념은 영원하다.’라는 전거를 제시한다. 헤겔에게 철학사의 세계 정신과 철학의 이념은 영원하다. 그러나 그것들은 자신을 시간화하며 시간을 근절하여 영원을 정립한다는 독특성을 지닌다. 영원한 이념이 자기를 시간화하고 근절하듯이, 헤겔의 시간관 자체도 이념처럼 독특하다. 헤겔에게 사물은 시간 안에 존재하는 것이 아니라 (...) 사물 자체가 시간적이며 그래서 시간 자체도 사물처럼 생성, 소멸하기 때문이다. 그리고 헤겔이 정신현상학에서 제시한 시간 개념은 개념처럼 영원하다. 개념과 시간은 비동일적이지만, 여기에서 시간과 개념의 유사성이 드러나며 ‘시간은 개념과 동일하다.’라는 주장을 야기한다. 헤겔에게 개념은 영원하다. 그러나 이 주장은 ‘개념은 시간이 아니다.’와 ‘시간은 개념과 유사하다.’라는 점을 동시에 적용할 때만 파악 가능하다. 정신현상학과 ‘자연철학’의 논의 속에서 개념과 시간은 비동일성과 동일성을 동시에 지닌다. (shrink)

Relations between discrete and continuous complexity models are considered. The present paper is devoted to combine both models. In particular we analyze the 3-Satisfiability problem. The existence of fast decision procedures for this problem over the reals is examined based on certain conditions on the discrete setting. Moreover we study the behaviour of exponential time computations over the reals depending on the real complexity of 3-Satisfiability. This will be done using tools from complexity theory over the integers.

The paper discusses the relation of philosophical pragmatism to empiricism as the backdrop to understanding human being. The crux of the problem is the relation between language and experience. The author argues that pragmatist empiricism is based on the concept that human practices are transactions, which includes both non-linguistic as well as linguistic practices. Within pragmatist anthropological philosophy, experience is a complex of transactions between humans and reality. Humans are both natural/physical and cultural/linguistic beings, (...) whose living experience involves transactions with both the natural and the sociocultural environment. The dualism between language and experience is false and should be abandoned. (shrink)

Cet article examine la relation entre deux thèses de Hegel : une thèse pragmatiste et une thèse idéaliste. La thèse pragmatiste est que l'usage des concepts en détermine le contenu, ou autrement dit, que les concepts n'ont pas d'autre contenu que celui qui leur est conféré par l'usage. La thèse idéaliste est que la structure et l'unité du concept sont identiques à la structure et à l'unité du Soi. La thèse principale de cet article est que la thèse (...) idéaliste est pour Hegel une manière de rendre la thèse pragmatiste acceptable, dans le contexte de son usage du modèle de la reconnaissance réciproque pour articuler une conception de l'autonomie qu'on peut faire remonter à Rousseau et Kant. Des moments réciproques d'indépendance et de dépendance sont reliés selon le modèle sous-jacent de la synthèse de la substance sociale et des Sois conscients-de-soi par la reconnaissance mutuelle, et interagissent dans trois dimensions : sociale, inférentielle et historique.The paper discusses the relationship between one pragmatist thesis and one idealist thesis in Hegel's thought. The pragmatist thesis is that the use of concepts determines their content, that is, that concepts can have no content apart from that conferred on them by their use. The idealist thesis is that the structure and unity of the concept is the same as the structure and unity of the self. The main claim of the paper is that the idealist thesis is Hegel's way of making the pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of his use of the model of reciprocal recognition to articulate a conception of autonomy that is recognizably a descendent of Rousseau's and Kant's. Reciprocal moments of independence and dependence , related as in the underlying model of the synthesis of social substance and self-conscious selves by mutual recognition, interact along three dimensions: social, inferential, and historical. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions (...) of the visible: the essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

Recent work in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza and Hegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenment thought. Yet, for many philosophers and political theorists today, one must choose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretation maintains, Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern "cults of death," while Spinoza embodies an irrepressible "appetite for living." Hegel is the figure of negation, while Spinoza is the thinker of "pure affirmation". Yet, (...) between Hegel and Spinoza there is not only opposition. This collection of essays seeks to find the suppressed kinship between Hegel and Spinoza. Both philosophers offer vigorous and profound alternatives to the methodological individualism of classical liberalism. Likewise, they sketch portraits of reason that are context-responsive and emotionally contoured, offering an especially rich appreciation of our embodied and historical existence. The authors of this collection carefully lay the groundwork for a complex and delicate alliance between these two great iconoclasts, both within and against the Enlightenment tradition. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian (...) antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and _ The Phenomenology of Mind_." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of marital love as a complex recognitive relation, which I articulate by juxtaposing it against other recognitive relations that figure in Hegel's theory of modern civil society (i.e., respect and esteem). Drawing on Hegel's early writings, I argue that, if love is to provide its unique sort of recognition, it must obtain between “living beings who are equal in power”—a peculiar form of equality that I name (drawing on Stanley Cavell's (...) work) “dynamic equality.” I conclude that it is by Hegel's own lights that we should reject his notorious conception of the sexual difference. However, I also offer reasons why, from Hegel's early 19th century perspective, he could consider the following two conditions as compatible: (1) equality within marriage and (2) sexual hierarchy outside marriage, namely, in civil society. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Terry Pinkard's account of the relation between Deweyian pragmatism and Hegelian idealism. Instead of thinking that their affinity concerns the issue of normative authority, as Pinkard does, I argue that we should trace their affinity to Dewey's appropriation of Hegel's naturalism, especially his theory of habits. Pinkard is not in a position to appreciate this affinity because he misreads Dewey as an instrumentalist, and his social-constructivist account of Hegel – (...) which he shares with Pippin and Brandom, is not able to correctly take the measure of Hegel's naturalism. On my reading, Dewey's philosophy is concerned above all with understanding and making objective the proper relation between reason and habit, with our achieving an equipoise in which thought is informed by intelligent habits and where habits are instituted by past thought and inquiry. In achieving this equipoise, one's bodily nature becomes a form in which subjects can realize their freedom. I claim.. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between colonialism and the sovereignty of peoples through a dialogue between Hegel and the thought of the French Revolution. These two sides are relevant to each other not only because of their historical proximity, but also because of the connections that can be established when we approach the topic of colonialism through these two manifestations. Hegel is explicit that his philosophy of history and his philosophy of right are supposed to (...) be philosophies of freedom. Yet despite the importance that he lends to freedom, Hegel also explicitly defends, in the very same text, colonial domination when he deals with the relation between peoples. A similar problem had arisen in the course of the French Revolution. Following the declarations of war, France is confronted on various occasions with the question of how to deal with other peoples and countries. With the foundation of the Republic in 1792, the relation with other peoples becomes central in the revolutionary debates. The topic of colonialism is part of the constituting debates, and not only because of the uprisings in then Saint Domingue leading to the Haitian Revolution. This article is a part of a larger research project that attempts to reassess the relations between Hegel and the French Revolution, and deals with the question of how we can re-read Hegel's interpretation of the French Revolution based on the evolving historiography of the Revolution. After an introduction of both sides of this dialogue, the paper discusses how Hegel's political philosophy can be applied to understand the debates about the emancipation of colonies that take place during the French Revolution. The next part further analyses some issues, such as the notion of sovereignty and, in the concluding remarks, I summarize my discussion and point to some avenues for further research. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian (...) antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and The Phenomenology of Mind." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

Against the background of the Deweyan tradition of Democracy and Education, we discuss problems of complexity and reductionism in education and educational philosophy. First, we investigate some of Dewey’s own criticisms of reductionist tendencies in the educational traditions, theories, and practices of his time. Secondly, we explore some important cases of reductionism in the educational debates of our own day and argue that a similar criticism in behalf of democracy and education is appropriate and can easily be based on Deweyan (...) terms. Thirdly, we draw some more general conclusions about complexity and reductionism as challenges for democracy and education. Among other things, we argue that powerful social tendencies of capitalist competition and social Darwinism support reductionisms in education and put the democratic project at risk. The tensional relation between democracy and capitalism constitutes a major challenge for educational philosophy in our own time as much as in Dewey’s. (shrink)

Relations between perceiving and knowing are well-worn problems that become visceral encounters with doubt and ambiguity in ‘mixed-reality’ environments. Locative narrative situates participants within stories where existent places function as the setting. Experiential confusion, between what is talked of as real and as imagined, is an often-reported phenomenon. Classical pragmatisms, and more broadly the writings of William James, understand the functioning of the body to be for the production of action, from which flows a naturalistic epistemology. for James, (...) a thought’s reference to an object occurs in the medium of an ‘experienceable environment’ and is a condition of it being known; what something is known-as is how it functions in a particular context and the consequences that follow. Contemporary pragmatists express varying positions on the function of representation in perception at different levels of cognitive awareness, and the extent to which intentionality is derivative of linguistic norms. In the locative narrative iOS application The Lost Index No.1 – Landscape with Figures strategies of directing participant attention, movement, cognitive tasks and propositional content are used to guide the interpretation of events. The complex environment that is created plays with the multi-stability of perception and the ‘multi-stability meaning’ between terms, resulting in ambiguity and an enhanced flexibility of interpretation. (shrink)

In the post-War decades political science in the United States has been animated by two seemingly incompatible aims. On the one hand, the discipline is committed to scientific inquiry interpreted in largely positivist terms. On the other hand, the discipline aspires to generate knowledge that might improve democratic politics. I start by sketching pragmatist interpretations of social and political inquiry, of democratic politics, and of how the two are related. Problems of complexity and visibility emerge as central to those interpretations. (...) I then indicate how Edward Tufte’s theoretical analysis of data graphics and the visual politics of the aids activist group ACT UP offer examples of how it is possible to envision complex social and political phenomena in ways that might sustain a democratic relation between inquiry and politics. (shrink)

Bipolar soft set is formulated by two soft sets; one of them provides us the positive information and the other provides us the negative information. The philosophy of bipolarity is that human judgment is based on two sides, positive and negative, and we choose the one which is stronger. In this paper, we introduce novel belong and nonbelong relations between a bipolar soft set and an ordinary point. These relations are considered as one of the unique characteristics of bipolar (...) soft sets which are somewhat expression of the degrees of membership and nonmembership of an element. We discuss essential properties and derive the sufficient conditions of some equivalence of these relations. We also define the concept of soft mappings between two classes of bipolar soft sets and study the behaviors of an ordinary point under these soft mappings with respect to all relations introduced herein. Then, we apply bipolar soft sets to build an optimal choice application. We give an algorithm of this application and show the method for implementing this algorithm by an illustrative example. In conclusion, it can be noted that the relations defined herein give another viewpoint to explore the concepts of bipolar soft topology, in particular, soft separation axioms and soft covers. (shrink)