Am 26. Juni 1956 wiederholte sich zum hundertsten Male der Todestag Max Stirners. Durch das Erscheinen seines Werkes "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum", in dem er seine Zeit, die nachhegelianische Epoche, schonungslos kritisierte, war er bei den einen berühmt, bei anderen berüchtigt geworden. In neuerer Zeit lenkte er die allgemeine Aufmerksamkeit vor allem durch Nietzsche und durch die posthum erschienene Kritik Marxens an seinem Werk wieder auf sich, die letzterer 1845/46 gemeinsam mit Engels verfaßte, der Zeitumstände wegen aber "der nagenden (...) Kritik der Mäuse überlassen" mußte. Sie erschien erstmals unter dem Titel "Die deutsche Ideologie" in der Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, 1932, I. Abt., 5. Band. (shrink)

It is frequently noted that a “crisis in language” accompanied the profound changes in human consciousness everywhere evident near the turn of the century. As the nature of reality itself became problematic—or at least suspect, distrusted for its imposition of limits upon individual imagination—so, necessarily, did the relationship of language to reality. Thus in the later nineteenth century, the adequacy of an essentially standardized form of “classical” writing was increasingly questioned as an effective vehicle for artistic expression: even though often (...) in “elevated” form, such writing bore too close a connection to ordinary discourse. Indeed, it was precisely the mutually shared, conventional aspects of language that came to be most deeply distrusted for their failure to mirror the more subjective, obscure, and improbable manifestations of a transcendent reality or, rather, realities—the plural reflecting an insistence upon the optional and provisional nature of human experience. Language in its normal manifestations—with its conventionalized vocabulary and standardized rules for syntactical combination—proved inadequate for an artistic sensibility demanding, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, “a world of abnormally drawn perspectives.”This dissatisfaction with “normal” language received its classic statement through Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos. Writing in 1902, Hofmannsthal conveys through the figure of the aristocratic Chandos the loss of an encompassing framework within which the various objects of external reality are connected with one another and integrated with the internal reality of human feelings. Chandos’ world has become one of disparate, disconnected fragments, resistant to the abstractions of ordinary language. It is a world characterized by “a sort of feverish thought, but thought in a material that is more immediate, more fluid, and more intense than that of language.” Chandos longs for a new language in which not a single word is known to me, a language in which mute objects speak to me and in which perhaps one day, in the grave, I will give account of myself before an unknown judge.”2 The content and forms of art thus shifted away from exterior reality, which no longer provided a stable, “given” material, toward language itself—to “pure” language in a sense closely related to the symbolists’ “pure” poetry. “No artist tolerates reality,” Nietzsche proclaimed.3 And Gustave Flaubert’s farsighted advice to himself was that he should write “a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style.”4 2. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief,” Gesammelte Werke, ed. Bernd Schoeller with Rudolf Hirsch, 10 vols. , 7:471-72; my translation. All further translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.3. Friedrich Nitzsche, Complete Works, ed. Oscar Levy, 18 vols. , vol. 15, The Will to Power, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, p. 74.4. Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert to Louise Colet, 16 Jan. 1852, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, ed. and trans. Francis Steegmuller , p. 154. Other passages in this letter are equally remarkable for their “modernist” tone. Flaubert argues that from the standpoint of l’Art pur, “one might almost establish the axiom that there is no such thing as subject—style in itself being an absolute manner of seeing things” . Further:The finest works are those that contain the least matter; the closer expression comes to thought, the closer language comes to coinciding and merging with it, the finer the result. I believe the future of Art lies in this direction. I see it, as it has developed from its beginnings, growing progressively more ethereal …. Form, in becoming more skillful, becomes attenuated, it leaves behind all liturgy, rule, measure; the epic is discarded in favor of the novel, verse in favor of prose; there is no longer any orthodoxy, and form is as free as the will of its creator. This progressive shedding of the burden of tradition can be observed everywhere: governments have gone through similar evolution, from oriental despotisms to the socialisms of the future. [P. 154] Robert P. Morgan, professor of music at the University of Chicago, is currently writing a history of twentieth-century music and working on a study of form in nineteenth-century music. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “On the Analysis of Recent Music” and “Musical Time/Musical Space”. (shrink)

This chapter treats in roughly chronological order ten Lutheran theologians other than Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, who were examined in the previous chapter. All of these figures can be discussed in relation to their reception of Søren Kierkegaard's writings, even though the level of appropriation of Kierkegaard varies significantly. They include German national Lutheran theologians Karl Holl, Friedrich Gogarten, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch, Scandinavian Lutheran theologians Anders Nygren, Knud Løgstrup, Regin Prenter, and Gustaf Wingren, and contemporary (...) German Lutheran theologians Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel. The chapter attempts to identify distinctive characteristics of each thinker and their connections to Kierkegaard. (shrink)

Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.

My focus here will be Rudolf Carnap’s views on ontology, as these are presented in the seminal “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950). I will first describe how I think Carnap’s distinction between external and internal questions is best understood. Then I will turn to broader issues regarding Carnap’s views on ontology. With certain reservations, I will ascribe to Carnap an ontological pluralist position roughly similar to the positions of Eli Hirsch and the later Hilary Putnam. Then I turn (...) to some interrelated arguments against the pluralist view. The arguments are not demonstrative. Some possible escape routes for the pluralist are outlined. But I think the arguments constitute a formidable challenge. There should be serious doubt as to whether the pluralist view, as it emerges after discussion of these arguments, will be worth defending. Moreover, there is an alternative ontological view which equally well subserves the motivations underlying ontological pluralism. (shrink)

Es scheint, als wären wir ein halbes Jahrhundert lang an einem Denker vorbeigegangen, der uns zur Wissens- und Wissenschaftsproblematik mehr zu sagen hatte als mancher, den wir feiern. Gemeint ist der russische Philosoph Semen Ljudvigovic Frank. Auf der Basis seiner Forschungen versucht diese Studie systematisch-kritisch einen Neuansatz, der zu ungewohnten Konsequenzen vor allem in Wissenschaftstheorie, Anthropologie und Religionsphilosophie führt.

A portrait of scholastic approaches to a qualified disagreement of opinions, focusing on the antagonism of scholastic probabilism and anti-probabilism in the early modern era.

Metaontology – the study of the nature of ontological issues – has flourished in recent years. The focus of this summary will be on some views and arguments that are central to today’s debate. One theme will be that of how seriously to take ontology: whether there is reason to take a skeptical or deflationary attitude toward ontological claims, as theorists like Rudolf Carnap, Hilary Putnam, and Eli Hirsch in different ways have urged. The other theme will be (...) that of the viability of the Fregean and Quinean approaches to ontology that have been and still are central to analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This volume provides Dilthey's most mature and best formulation of his Critique of Historical Reason. It begins with three "Studies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," in which Dilthey refashions Husserlian concepts to describe the basic structures of consciousness relevant to historical understanding.The volume next presents the major 1910 work The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Here Dilthey considers the degree to which carriers of history--individuals, cultures, institutions, and communities--can be articulated as productive systems capable (...) of generating value and meaning and of realizing purposes. Hegel's idea of objective spirit is reconceived in a more empirical form to designate the medium of commonality in which historical beings are immersed. Any universal claims about history need to be framed within the specific productive systems analyzed by the various human sciences. Dilthey's drafts for the Continuation of the Formation contain extensive discussions of the categories most important for our knowledge of historical life: meaning, value, purpose, time, and development. He also examines the contributions of autobiography to historical understanding and of biography to scientific history. The finest summary of Dilthey's views on hermeneutics can be found in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life." Here, Dilthey differentiates understanding relative to three kinds of manifestations of life. After giving his analysis of elementary understanding, he examines the role of induction in higher understanding and interpretation, and the relevance of transposition and re-experiencing for grasping individuality. (shrink)

I. Geschichte und philosophie. Die transzendentale wurzel der geschichtsphilosophie. Rickers logik der historie. Vom historischen zusammenhang. Über entwicklung als kulturhistorischer grundbegriff. Zum problem der weltgeschichte.--II. Zum problem der historischen kausalität. Über das verhältnis der geschichte zur psychologie. Der begriff der kultur und die gliederung der geschichtsphilosophie.

[Revised translation of a manuscript originally published in German in Zeitschrift fur Naturforschung 54a, 2--10 (1999) and dedicated to Georg Sussmann on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.] We discuss an ontological model suggested by quantum physics, in which the notion of events is of central significance. The conventional objects are considered as causal links between events. Localization in space-time refers primarily to events, not to objects. The intrinsic indeterminacy forces us to consider both possibilities and facts, corresponding to the (...) distinction between future and past. In presently existing theories, the definition of individual events and their localization properties depends on asymptotic arguments adapted to prevailing situations. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to reconcile the disturbing contradiction between the striving for order in nature and in man and the principle of entropy implicit in the second law of thermodynamics - between the tendency toward greater organization and the general trend of the material universe toward death and disorder.

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Josef von / Polarität.

Hegels Philosophie ist die wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung unserer Zeit, so lautet die These, d.h. Ausdruck einer selbst zur Ideologie entarteten Idee von Wissen, in die unser Zeitalter, als das „Zeitalter der Wissenschaft”, alle Hoffnung der Menschheit setzt. Es ist die der klassischen griechischen Philosophie entstammende Idee, daß wahres Wissen, und mithin grundlegend auch für jede erfolgversprechende Praxis, allein rein theoretisches Wissen sei. Dieses Wissen fordert Objektivität, weil es für das einzig Wirkliche das in sich und an sich Bestimmte hält und Wahrheit (...) nur in der Anpassung an das an sich so Seiende erblickt. Die Neuzeit ist das Zeitalter, in dem Philosophie und Wissenschaft diese überkommene Idee einerseits praktisch, andererseits auch selbst erst theoretisch zu verwirklichen unternehmen. Die bald rasch sich aufhäufenden praktischen Erfolge der modernen Wisenschaft sind bekannt. Die Versuche zu einer streng wissenschaftlichen Begründung rein theoretischen Wissens im Sinne der Idee dieses Wissens selbst, welche die Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit von Descartes bis Fichte ausfüllen, führen indessen zu einer unwiderstehlich zunehmenden Einsicht in die Wirklichkeitsfremdheit der Idee rein theoretischen Wissens. Fichte zuerst sah zwischen Wissenim Sinne dieser Idee - und Realität eine unüberwindliche Kluft sich auftun. Angesichts dessen hat sich Hegel, um diese Idee zu retten, auf die verzweifelte Auskunft verlegt, dieses Wissen absolut zu setzen. Damit konnte er jederlei Bedenken, welches sich vom absoluten Standpunkt des Wissens entfernte und auf die Realität verweisen wollte, den Weg verlegen. Die Aufhebung aller Realität im absolut gesetzten Wissen aber, behauptete Hegel, bewahre in Wahrheit das Ganze, welches an ihr allein das Wahre sei. Dies nachzuweisen, diente ihm das Mittel der „Dialektik”, welche auf einer systematischen Verwechslung von notwendigen Möglichkeitsbedingungen und zureichenden Gründen beruht. Indem jedoch Hegel die Idee rein theoretischen Wissens absolut setzte und somit der Forderung entzog, sie ihren eigenen theoretischen Ansprüchen gemäß streng wissenschaftlich zu begründen und zu verwirklichen, machte er das Wissen selbst zum bloßen Glaubensgegenstande einer Weltanschauung. Husserl andererseits teilte zwar diesen Glauben, doch erneuerte er unter der Losung „Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” jene Forderung, damit aber jenen seit den Cartesianischen Meditationen eingeleiteten kritischen Prozeß, der nunmehr scheint, das Urteil aufzunötigen: Rein theoretisches Wissen ist selbst nur praktisch zu verwirklichen auf den Boden einer Weltanschauung, welche als solche im Widerspruch steht zu den Forderungen des Wissens selber. Der Versuch einer selbst streng wissenschaftlichen Verwirklichung der Idee rein theoretischen Wissens hingegen, den zuletzt Husserl unternahm, zwang die phänomenologische Philosophie zu einer Umwertung der Idee des Wissens. In Wirklichkeit ist theoretisches Wissen nicht Wissen, sojern und weil es rein theoretisches ist, sondern sofern es das nicht und wiewohl es nur theoretisches ist. (shrink)