Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

Is the essay literature or philosophy? A form of art or a form of knowledge? The contemporary essay is torn between its belletrist ancestry and its claim to philosophical legitimacy. The Spanish philosopher Eduardo Nicol captured the genre's uncertain status when he dubbed it “almost literature and almost philosophy” (Nicol 1961:207). The problem is hardly a new one. It goes back to what Plato called the “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy, and more recently to the German Romantic theorist, Friedrich (...) Schlegel, who called for a mode of criticism which would be at once philosophical and poetic. But today, when the status of critical discourse is up for grabs, reflecting the crisis of knowledge in the universities, the question of the essay takes on a new urgency. Now the predominant form of writing in the human sciences, it cannot avoid the challenge to define itself according to the prevailing standards of scientific knowledge and method. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo nos hemos propuesto la factura de una exposición sucinta en torno a la crítica contra la metafísica clásica desde la perspectiva de Eduardo Nicol. Puede decirse que, desde el punto de vista de nuestro autor, la característica básica de la metafísica ha consistido en el soterramiento del ser, es decir, la metafísica clásica, de alguna u otra manera, ha versado acerca de un ser atemporal y oculto. El ocultamiento del ser ha estado íntimamente ligado al olvido (...) del tiempo y al endiosamiento de la razón; justo por esto Nicol se propone ahora una recuperación de la visibilidad del ser en aras de un contradiscurso del método. (shrink)