I discuss the way in which the cleavage between the Continental and the Anglo-American philosophies originated, the images of both philosophical worlds, the converging rediscoveries from the Seventies, as well as recent ecumenical or anti-ecumenical strategies. I argue that pragmatism provides an important counterinstance to both the familiar self-images and to fashionable ecumenical or anti-ecumenical strategies. My conclusions are: Continental philosophy does not exist; less obviously, also analytic philosophy does not exist, or does not exist any longer as (...) a current or a paradigm; what does exist is, on the one hand, philosophy of language and, on the other, philosophy of mind, that is, two disciplines; the dissolution of analytic philosophy as a school has been extremely fruitful, precisely in so far as it has left room for disciplines and research programmes; what is left, of the Anglo-American/Continental cleavage is primarily differences in styles, depending partly on intellectual traditions, partly owing to sociology, history, institutional frameworks; these differences should not be blurred by rash ecumenical; besides, theoretical differences are alive as ever, but within both camps; finally, there is indeed a lag in the appropriation of intellectual techniques by most schools of ‘Continental’ philosophy, and this should be overcome through appropriation of what the best ‘analytic’ philosophers have produced. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as (...) horizonal, aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

Philosophy is often divided into two traditions: analytic and continental philosophy. Characterizing the analytic-continental divide, however, is no easy task. Some philosophers explain the divide in terms of the place of argument in these traditions. This raises the following questions: Is analytic philosophy rife with arguments while continental philosophy is devoid of arguments? Or can different types of arguments be found in analytic and continental philosophy? This paper presents the results of an empirical study of a (...) large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (n = 53,260) designed to find patterns of argumentation by type. Overall, the results suggest that there are no significant differences between the types of arguments advanced in analytic and continental philosophy journal articles. The findings, therefore, provide no empirical support to the hypothesis that the divide between analytic and continental philosophy has to do with the place of argument in these traditions. (shrink)

Marc Champagne argues that the supposedly ’professional’ style of the analytic tradition does not ensure professionalism, nor indeed, clear-mindedness.

Although Symons' recent book, On Dennett (Wadsworth, 2002), provides scientists with ahelpful, general introduction to Dennett'sthought, it presents a skewed version of the history of the philosophy of mind. In particular, the continental tradition is almost entirely ignored, if not glibly dismissed. As aresult, the unwary reader of this book wouldnever realize that Dilthey, Sartre and Husserl,like Dennett, offer a ``middle ground'' between naturalistic realism and naturalistic eliminativism. However, unlike Dennett, the respective positions of Dilthey, Sartre and Husserl (...) are not ontologically indifferent, but instead, present a non-naturalistic form of realism that does not simultaneously invoke Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

Abstract – In this paper I reconstruct the nature, origins and survivals of the divide between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ tradition—the famous dualism which affected the development of philosophy in the second half of the XX century. I also present a theory of it, stressing that its intra-philosophical causes are to be found in the mutual resistance between critical (transcendental) and semantic (logical) approaches in philosophy. I conclude by noting that good philosophers (more or less knowingly) are and have (...) always been sensitive to the transcendental and logical aspects of the philosophical work. (shrink)

Ian James has carved a rigorous analysis of four philosophers—Jean-Luc Nancy, François Laruelle, Catherine Malabou and Bernard Stiegler—who not only engage with the limits of thought through variegated, albeit embedded, disciplinary tendencies but have also, arguably, spearheaded a critical reorientation of continental philosophy, slowly opening the doors for transcending the traditional terms of the analytic-continental divide by engaging with a pluralized understanding of the sciences. A parallel plexus of American naturalist philosophy accompanies James’ analysis, as he stakes the (...) claim that these four thinkers engage with pluralist ontologies and the limit-conditions of the real to stoke a proximal entanglement between philosophy and science. However, The Technique of Thought is by no means a synoptic account of Nancy, Laruelle, Malabou and Stiegler, as James surveys discourses in philosophy of mind, quantum gravity, causality and biosemiology to index various recent horizons of thought and their developments. The rigor and deft with which James approaches scientific-realist perspectives produce a rich picture of post-metaphysical thinking. (shrink)

In his recent article, titled ‘Royaumont Revisited’, Overgaard challenges Dummett's view that one needs to go as far back as the late nineteenth century in order to discover examples of genuine dialogue between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy. Instead, Overgaard argues that in the 1958 Royaumont colloquium, generally judged as a failed attempt at communication between the two camps, one can find some elements which may be utilized towards re-establishing a dialogue between these two sides. Yet, emphasising this image of (...) Royaumont as a kind of battleground between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy obscures the plurality of philosophical approaches involved. Royaumont was the meeting point of more than two philosophical traditions, as can be shown by the divergent interests of its participants. Thus, though the potential for rapprochement between Oxford ‘linguistic philosophy’ and a certain strand of phenomenological thought may indeed be found among the discussions that took place during the colloquium, one should keep in mind that such rapprochement took place in the context of a meeting between, among others: continental ‘analytics’, Anglophone non-‘analytics’, French historians of philosophy, ‘analytic’ opponents of Oxford philosophy, Franciscan phenomenologists, and Oxonians who called their work ‘phenomenology’. (shrink)

The crucial distinction for ethics is between the good and the apparent good, between being and seeming. Tradition is useful for developing our ability to make this distinction and to live ethically or in self-responsibility, but it is also threatening to this ability. The phenomenology of Husserl and of others in the Husserlian tradition, especially Robert Sokolowski, are helpful in spelling out how tradition works; how the difference between the apparent good and the good is bridged in (...) the experience of moral truth but also a permanent, challenging feature of human life; what ethics requires regarding self-responsibility or authenticity; and what the proper voice of tradition is in the ethical or moral life. (shrink)

The global scale of contemporary human life and activity places us in a generic conflict between our identity as individuals and our awareness of the individual's global responsibilities. We face a conflict between the reassuring condition of living according to tradition and the unsettling condition of living in the "new continent" where human self-constitution has global implications. The cohesive set of shared traditional values and ideals is effectively overwritten by the possibility and necessity of innovation in response to global (...) demands. Many paths between the ideal of universahsm and the individual's instantiation in tradition have been contemplated by philosophers and social activists. Given the current dynamics of change, most of these projects, while of good intendon, are nevertheless profoundly naïve in their fundamental assumptions. We are at a crossroads in which we experience a condition of instability that precedes any fundamental bifurcation. But in contrast to the dominant view that instability is by definition negative, we are witnessing an extraordinary explosion of creativity. (shrink)

Disciplinary issues -- Field studies -- Appendix: Theory of law : legal ethnography, or, the theoretical fruits of the inquiries into folkways. /// Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1995 to 2008 /// DISCIPLINARY ISSUES -- LAW AS CULTURE? [2002] 9–14 // TRENDS IN COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES [2002] 15–17 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES: ATTEMPTS AT CONCEPTUALISATION [1997] 19–28: 1. Legal Culture in a Cultural-anthropological Approach 19 / 2. Legal Culture in a Sociological Approach 21 / 3. Timely Issues of (...) Central and Eastern Europe 24 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES? [2001] 29–48: 1. Legal Comparativism Challenged 29 / 2. Comparative Legal Cultures versus Comparative Law 34 / 3. Contrasting Fields 40 [a) The Historical Understanding of Socialist Law 42 / b) Convergence of Civil Law and Common Law 44] 4. Concluding Remarks 46 // THEATRUM LEGALE MUNDI: ON LEGAL SYSTEMS CLASSIFIED [2005] 49–75: 1. Preliminaries 49 / 2. Proposals 50 / 3. Impossible Taxonomy, or the Moment of Practicality in Legal Mapping 69 / 4. Diversity as a Fundamental Quality of Human Existence 74 // LEGAL TRADITIONS? IN SEARCH FOR FAMILIES AND CULTURES IN LAW [2004] 77–97: 1. Comparative Law and the Comparative Study of Legal Traditions 78 / 2. ‘System’, ‘Family’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Tradition’ in the Classification of Law 80 / 3. Different Traditions, Differing Ways of Thinking 85 / 4. Different Expectations, Differings Institutionalisations in Law 88 / 5. Different “Rationalities”, Differing “Logics” 92 / 6. Mentality in Foundation of the Law 94 / 7. Defining a Subject for Theoretical Research in Law 96 // SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD IN THE EUROPEAN IDENTITY OF LAW? [1995] 99–102 --- FIELD STUDIES -- MEETING POINTS BETWEEN THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH–AMERICAN COMMON LAW AND CONTINENTAL-FRENCH CIVIL LAW: DEVELOPMENTS AND EXPERIENCE OF POSTMODERNITY IN CANADA [2002] 105–130: I. Canadian Law in General 105 / II. Canadian Legal Developments in Particular [1. The Transformation of the Role of Precedents 112 / 2. The Transformation of Law-application into a Collective, Multicultural and Multifactorial Search for a Solution 116 / 3. Practical Trends of Dissolving the Law’s Positivity 120 / 4. New Prerogatives Acquired by Courts 125 {a) Unfolding the Statutory Provisons in Principles 126 / b) Constitutionalisation of Issues 127 / c) The Supreme Court as the Nation’s Supreme Moral Authority 129}] // MAN ELEVATING HIMSELF? DILEMMAS OF RATIONALITY IN OUR AGE [2000] 131–163: I. Reason and its Adventures 1. Progress and Advance Questioned 131 / 2. The Human Search for Safety Objectified 133 / 3. Knowledge Separated from Wisdom 135 / 4. Pure Intellectuality thereby Born 137 / II. The Will-Element Formalised in Law 5. Mere Voluntas in the Foundation of Legal Positivism 141 / 6. Formalism with Operations Fragmented 145 / III. The State of America Exemplified 7. “Slouching into Gomorrah” 147 / IV. Consequences 8. Utopianism-cum-Voluntarism 154 / 9. With Logic in Posterior Control of Human Formulations Only 159 / V. Perspectives 10. And a Final Resolution Dreamed about 161 // RULE OF LAW? MANIA OF LAW? ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND ANARCHY IN AMERICA [2002] 165–180: {Transformation of American Law and Legal Mentality 165 / With Repercussions on the Underlying Ethos 168 / Legislation through Processualisation 170 / With Hyperrationalism Added 172 / Example: Finding Lost Property 172 / Practicalness Veiled by Verbal Magic 173 / Ending in Jurispathy 175 / Transubstantiating the Self-interest of the Legal Profession 178 / Post-modernity, Substituting for Primitiveness 178} // TRANSFERS OF LAW: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS [2003] 181–207: 1. Terms 182 / 2. Technicality 190 / 3. Contrasts in Transfers of Law 200 {Contrasts 200 / Criticisms 202 / Alternatives205} 4. Conclusions 206 // THE DANGERS FOR THE SELF OF BEING SELF-CENTRED: ON STANDARDS AND VALUES [2002] 209–212 --- APPENDIX -- THEORY OF LAW – LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY, OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF THE INQUIRIES INTO FOLKWAYS [2008] 213–234 1. Encounters 213 / 2. Disciplines 218 / 3. The Lawyerly Interest 223 / 4. Law and/or Laws 226 / 5. Conclusion 233 --- Index of Subjects 235 / Index of Normative Materials 242 / Index 244 . (shrink)

I examine mystical experience through the history of European religious thought, its modern state, and different spiritual practices of the Patristic epoch. The survey gives some definitions: mystical experience is situated in the field of spirituality along with practices of its acquisition -- ascetics; and the fruits of it -- theology and doctrine. The second part of the article is devoted to a wide field of Christian texts as a representative example of the same experience of the crystallization of mystical (...) experience in ancient tradition, providing a few general types. Reading of religious texts is related very closely with the spiritual condition of the reader and supposes that he/she changes radically in the process of reading, being involved in some existential-hermeneutic circle. (shrink)

If the continental tradition from Nietzsche to Foucault has emphasized the critical and destabilizing implications of the genealogical method, analytical approaches have shown that it can also offer support to its own objects of investigation: behavioral norms, practices, concepts and so on. A genealogical account, for instance, is said to have a justificatory character when it identifies a necessary instrumental relationship between the concept or practice under consideration and human needs fundamental enough to be recognized as such by (...) all. The question I want to address concerns the supposed justifying capabilities of this type of genealogical explanations. To what extent do they really modify – to use Wittgenstein's expression – the space of reasons? I here argue that their normative and evaluative scope is variable and that examining some borderline cases helps to demonstrate this. More specifically, I believe that in some cases the reasons offered through these explanations are reasons not so much to justify the use of certain concepts or practices, but reasons to excuse those who live by them. (shrink)

(Bonus material: a critique of the genesis myth of Western philosophy as well as of the exclusions and policing practices of both analytic and continental traditions).

A new book by Manuel DeLanda and Graham Harman, The Rise of Realism, is reviewed. The Rise of Realism is an introductory text that aims to clarify the difficulties that surround the philosophical concepts of realism and materialism (as well as their antitheses). This primer intended to introduce students and interested scholars to the concepts and literature on realism and its place in the continental tradition of philosophy and related social theory. The book’s core methodology is to outline (...) the various appropriations of the terms realism and materialism currently discussed in different sub-disciplines of philosophy as well as provide the reader with the authors’ own unique positions on realism. The book dialogue prose is stylistically engaging, lucid and academically current, providing both novice readers and seasoned scholars with an easy-to-read exploration of current continental thought that also has far-reaching implications for other disciplines such as critical theory, social theory and science and technology studies. (shrink)

The article focuses on the history of the conflict between analytic and continental tradition, which dominated the philosophy of the 20th century. Although both traditions originated from the same intellectual environment and were heavily influenced by Neo-Kantianism, their mutual lack of understanding progressed over time and, on several occasions, the situation grew into open hostility. The article describes the ten most serious conflicts: Russell vs. Bergson, Schlick vs. Husserl, Carnap vs. Heidegger, Ryle vs. Heidegger, Popper's critique of pseudoscience, (...) conference in Royaumont, Searle vs. Derrida, the revelation of Heidegger's Nazi past, Derrida's Honorary Doctorate from Cambridge, and Sokal's scam. At the beginning of the 21st century it turns out that the conflict between analytic and continental philosophy has been exhausted. What is more substantial is the dispute over the philosophical methodology, which is reflected in the division into naturalistic and anti-naturalistic thinkers. (shrink)

Róisín Lally’s Sustainability in the Anthropocene provides a wealth of essays on the philosophical meanings and implications of renewable technologies, as well as glimpses of novel ways toward a sustainable future that integrate deeply meaningful ways of being for humans. The edited collection features some of the most reputable thinkers in the philosophy of technology, such as Don Ihde, Babette Babich, and Trish Glazebrook, as well as some newcomers with novel perspectives that need to be taken into consideration not only (...) for fellow philosophers, but for anyone interested in the future of our increasingly vulnerable planet. The book is divided into four parts: defining sustainability, exploring the relationship between sustainability and particular renewable technologies, investigating sustainability and design, and finally examining sustainability and ethics. The authors engage in applications of various philosophers from the Continental tradition, most prominently the work of Martin Heidegger. I provide a brief summary of the various sections and highlight key arguments while providing some commentary with an aim to keep the conversation going. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that Pap’s The Functional A Priori of Physical Theory (Pap 1946, henceforth FAP) and Cassirer’s Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (Cassirer 1937, henceforth DI) may be conceived as two kindred accounts of a late Neo-Kantian philosophy of science. They elucidate and clarify each other mutually by elaborating conceptual possibilities and pointing out affinities of neo-Kantian ideas with other currents of 20th century’s philosophy of science, namely, pragmatism, conventionalism, and logical empiricism. Taking into (...) account these facts, it seems not too far fetched to conjecture that under more favorable circumstances Pap could have served as a mediator between the “analytic” and “continental” tradition thereby overcoming the dogmatic dualism of these two philosophical currents that has characterized philosophy in the second half the 20th century. (shrink)

An unparalleled collection of original essays on Benedict de Spinoza's contributions to philosophy and his enduring legacy A Companion to Spinoza presents a panoramic view of contemporary Spinoza studies in Europe and across the Anglo-American world. Designed to stimulate fresh dialogue between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy, this extraordinary volume brings together 53 original essays that explore Spinoza's contributions to Western philosophy and intellectual history. A diverse team of established and emerging international scholars discuss new themes and (...) classic topics to provide a uniquely comprehensive picture of one of the most influential metaphysicians of all time. Rather than simply summarizing the body of existing scholarship, the Companion develops new ideas, examines cutting-edge scholarship, and suggests directions for future research. The text is structured around six thematically-organized sections, exploring Spinoza's life and background, his contributions to metaphysics and natural philosophy, his epistemology, politics, ethics, and aesthetics, the reception of Spinoza in the work of philosophers such as Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, and more. This unparalleled research collection combines a timely overview of the current state of research with deep coverage of Spinoza's philosophy, legacy, and influence. Part of the celebrated Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Spinoza is an ideal text for advanced courses in modern philosophy, intellectual history, and the history of metaphysics, and an indispensable reference for researchers and scholars in Spinoza studies. (shrink)

Presentation given at the PACT 2023 Conference (14th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition) centered around the theme of "Home and Homeless.".

This article analyzes the historical development of the philosophical logic syntax from the standpoint of the unity of historical and logical methods. According to this perspective, there are three types of logical syntax: the elementary subject-predicate, the modified definitivespecificative, and the standard propositional-functional. These types are generalized in the grammatical and mathematical styles of logical syntax. The main attention is paid to two scientific revolutions in elementary subject-predicate syntax, which led to the emergence of modified definitive-specific and standard propositional-functional syntaxes (...) and created the syntactic conditions for the development of contemporary philosophical logic. The specifics of contemporary philosophical logic and the methodological possibilities of its application to philosophical discourse are studied. The article aims to reevaluate the undeservedly forgotten systems of philosophical logic of the continental tradition, created by such prominent representatives as Aristotle, G.W.F. Hegel, and E. Husserl, and to actualize these logics in the context of contemporary philosophical culture. The potential of the above-mentioned logics is not fully involved in the philosophical discourse of modernity, primarily because they primarily used an imperfect elementary subject-predicate syntax and modified definitive-specificative syntax as its slightly improved version. Both syntaxes have one thing in common: the grammatical style of sentence structure. Nevertheless, they also have one common flaw – a high dependence on grammar formalism. As a result, the interaction between these syntaxes and Frege’s standard propositional-functional syntax is impossible, because the latter is based on mathematical formalism, which operates on the philosophical logic of the analytic tradition. The article substantiates the way to solve this problem by constructing a modified subject-predicate syntax of contemporary philosophical logic. This syntax provides information interaction between Aristotle’s elementary subject-predicate syntax, and Frege’s standard propositional-functional syntax based on Hegel’s modified definitive-specificative syntax. The proposed solution to this problem can create new opportunities for complementarity and mutual enrichment between the philosophical logic of continental and analytical traditions. The theoretical basis for the construction and study of contemporary philosophical logic is a functional analysis of contemporary symbolic logic, which improves the grammatical analysis of traditional formal logic. Functional-grammatical analysis is a way to rehabilitate the philosophical logic of the continental tradition. The novelty of this paper lies in the substantiation of the modified subjectpredicate syntax of contemporary philosophical logic. It makes it possible to establish a dialogue between continental and analytical traditions, which is designed to promote the further development of philosophy. (shrink)

The article presents the main trends in the analytical epistemology of religious belief. Their interrelations and mutual influences are shown. The author argues that epistemology of religious belief has risen as one of the possible answers to the Gettier- problems. Therefore different trends in religious epistemology are bounded not only with each other, but also with trends in general epistemology. As a result of the analysis of all major trends in epistemology of religious belief (reformed epistemology, social epistemology, virtue epistemology, (...) problem of the epistemic authority) the author concludes that the core of each trend is an attempt of defining the phenomenon of religion itself. Hence it is possible to consider epistemology of religious belief as the next step in the history of such attempts. Since finding appropriate definition of the phenomenon of religion is a special task of philosophy of religion (both in analytic and continental traditions), the author argues that epistemology of religious belief is the essential part of philosophy of religion as a scholar discipline. (shrink)

I present argument for different than traditional continental classification of epistemological issues. Paper has two parts, first concerned with K. Ajdukiewicz and J. Woleński conception of epistemology and its branches and with different methods of epistemological inquiry based on different task posed for epistemology. Second part discuss main important topics of current postgettieral analytic epistemology like virtue epistemology, ethics of belief, problems of epistemic value, epistemic value monism and pluralism, metaepistemology and concludes that in traditional continental classification the (...) issues of a truth and the issues of nature of knowledge should be united in broaden set of topics concerned with valuable cognition and knowledge, which has descriptive, normative, and regulative subparts. (shrink)

What are the ontological commitments in Hegel and Heidegger’s discussion of the self? In this essay I approach these continental thinkers with a question from analytic philosophy, to see how they might respond. In different ways Hegel and Heidegger try to locate the question within a prior discourse about the conditions of the possibility of any local ontological commitments. The priority they claim can be clarified by distinguishing conditions of possibility from conditions of actuality.

Wittgenstein comes up with his model simply through starting with the assumption that language can be an accurate picture of the world, and realizing the failings of that idea. This makes him a rather odd outsider in the sociology and politics of modern philosophy. He’s a trained engineer. A soldier. An architect. A logician (including being the guy who invented Truth tables for logic). In other words, a total geek. He’s still part of the analytic tradition, dismissed and rejected (...) by many in the continental tradition. But he ends up saying the kind of things that drive your average conservative culture warrior harrumphing about \"post-modernism\" and \"relativism\" up the wall. Simply because he’s thought about it a lot. -/- The other thing that’s striking is how much he is an \"anti-philosopher\". Always running away from philosophy to do other things in his life. And his work is often intended as \"therapeutic\" not trying to \"solve\" philosophical problems so much as \"cure\" us of worrying about them. He emphasizes that philosophical \"problems\" are often just misuses and misunderstandings of words rather than deeper issues. In his first philosophy, many problems come from us not understanding the meaning of the words well enough. If only we could pin them down better, the problems would disappear. In his second, the fact that we have a word for something doesn’t mean that the world really has that thing. And many philosophical problems, he asserts, are nothing but trying to take words that have a \"function\" in a particular context and abstract them out and using them in a different context where they have no useful function. (shrink)

The speech-act approach to rules is commonplace in both Anglo-American and continental traditions of legal philosophy. Despite its pervasiveness, I argue in this paper that the approach is misguided and therefore intrinsically flawed. My critique identifies how speech-act theory provides an inadequate theoretical framework for the analysis of written discourse, a case in point being legal text. Two main misconceptions resulting from this misguided approach are the fallacy of synchronicity and the fallacy of a-discursivity. The former consists of treating (...) legal rules as if they were uttered and received in the same context, the latter consists of treating legal rules as relatively short, isolated sentences. Among the consequences of these fallacies are an excessive focus on the lawmakers’ semantic intentions and the neglect of the semantic and pragmatic complexity of rules as sets of utterances (discourses) -/- To redress these flaws, I propose analysing legal rules through the prism of complex text-acts. My paper presents the consequences of this revised approach for legal interpretation, supporting Joseph Raz's idea of minimal legislative intent. (shrink)

While naturalism is used in positive senses by the tradition of analytical philosophy, with Ludwig Wittgenstein its best example, and by the tradition of phenomenology, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty its best exemplar, it also has an extremely negative sense on both of these fronts. Hence, both Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein in their basic thrusts adamantly reject reductionistic naturalism. Although Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology rejects the naturalism Husserl rejects, he early on found a place for the “truth of naturalism.” In a parallel way, (...) Wittgenstein accepts a certain positive sense of naturalism, while rejecting Quine’s kind of naturalism. It is the aim of this paper to investigate the common ground in the views of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty regarding the naturalism that they each espouse and that which they each reject. (shrink)

Preface -/- This volume was published in 2000 by Jaca Book under the title Ethics of Reason. La filosofia dell'uomo nell'epoca del nichilismo e del confronto interculturale (The Philosophy of Man in the Age of Nihilism and Intercultural Confrontation) and is now long out of print. I gladly republish it online because, for the most part, I still recognize myself in what was written. The book had required considerable work and had been prepared by many years of study at a (...) time when I had the opportunity to study intensively and continuously. It benefited from the encounter that took place for me in those years between the continental tradition (with particular attention, in addition to the classics, to twentieth-century Christian thought of Thomasian and Augustinian inspiration) and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Exceeding 350 printed pages and dealing with various themes, albeit interrelated, and much metaphysics, it was certainly not a work suited to the new cultural trends. I have subsequently deepened and modified individual aspects in other publications, but the overall itinerary in the volume remains valid for me. Even the title is for me still valid, although today I would prefer Ethics of Rationality. The challenges of nihilism and interculturalism (to which the subtitle refers) remain valid, albeit in new forms, even if they are generally talked about less than they once were and take on new configurations. But the fact that something is talked about less or should be talked about less does not mean that the problem does not exist or has been philosophically overcome. To these can be added other challenges such as the ecological issue or the application of technology to mankind with biotechnology, challenges that have long been present in our culture. Some in-depth examinations of individual anthropological and ethical themes as well as philosophy of religion can be found in the volume L'uomo. Lineamenti di antropologia filosofica (Rubbettino 2013) and in the essays collected in the two volumes entitled L'esperienza integrale. Philosophy of Man, Morals and Religion (Orthotes 2016). In particular, the themes of Virtue ethics and Natural law have been re-proposed and explored in more recent essays (some of which are present in this collection). Certain themes such as those present in the central chapter precisely on the Ethics of Reason (where ample space is devoted to John Henry Newman) and other more exquisitely metaphysical ones such as those present in Chapter IV devoted to the classical transcendentals (ens, unum, verum, bonum, etc.) are only to be found in this volume. The volume, in fact, defends a realist conception of rationality that is inspired by Thomas Aquinas' conception of being, taken up with an existential accentuation, and which opposes the rationalist, immanentist and scientist turn of part of modern thought that according to many 20th century authors (such as Heidegger, but also Gilson and Fabro) would logically lead to nihilism. For this realist accentuation, too, it seems to me useful to republish the volume online. I therefore republish it with a few minor modifications and a few caveats. The overall itinerary of the volume was recently reproposed in a more summary and fragmentary form in the volume Etica del filosofare. Frammenti ironici, Il Melangolo 2020 and in my afterword to Virtù, legge e fioritura umana. Essays in honour of Angelo Campodonico, Mimesis 2022. First of all, in the new text that I am reproposing here, I have changed the term integrity (principio d'integrità) to integralità (principle of wholeness), which in the Italian language seems to me to be more in keeping with what is meant, even if it is more used and abused especially in the past decades in certain contexts. This was the reason why I had avoided using it. The last two chapters, concerning the theme of God, would deserve revision, although I agree with the general structure. Perhaps today I would always stress the centrality of theological personalism (the great contemporary alternative between theism and evolutionary Spinozism), but in a more relational key and open to Trinitarian theology. -/- Angelo Campodonico Chiavari, 25 August 2022 . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mother-Daughter Relations and the Maternal in Irigaray and ChodorowAlison StoneGod the Father and Jesus the Son; Abraham and Isaac; Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus; Zeus and Dionysus; Hamlet and his father; Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons—representations of and fantasies about father-son relationships are central to Western culture and philosophy. Within philosophy, one thinks of Hegel’s conception of the dialectic in terms of the divine trinity, Nietzsche’s preoccupation with Christ (...) and Dionysus, or Kierkegaard’s meditations on Abraham’s near-murder of Isaac. In contrast, mother-daughter relationships have been shrouded in near-universal silence—much more so than representations of either mothers and sons (Oedipus and Jocasta; Mary and Jesus) or fathers and daughters (Agamemnon and Iphigenia; Lear and Cordelia). Female and feminist theorists, writers, and artists have done much to bring mother-daughter relationships into representation and to reimagine the maternal beyond its traditional subservience to father-son dynasties.Amongst continental feminists, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva have, of course, made major contributions to this task. Within Anglophone feminism, too, feminist psychoanalytic thinkers have sought to rectify Freud’s overemphasis on the paternal and on father-son relations. Nancy Chodorow’s important work in this area paints a portrait of contemporary mother-daughter relations which seems, at first sight, strikingly similar to Irigaray’s. Both thinkers suggest that mothers and their infant daughters experience a unique level of mutual identification. But under patriarchy—specifically, given exclusively female childrearing for Chodorow and given the absence of any symbolization of female subjectivity for Irigaray—daughters are forced to turn to the father [End Page 45] to achieve any psychical independence from their mothers. The independence that daughters thus attain coexists with ongoing psychical identification with their mothers, so that women oscillate endlessly between separation from and mergence with their mothers. If the dominant template for father-son relations involves violent rivalry followed by guilt-ridden father-worship as the cement of fraternal society, as Freud described in Totem and Taboo (Freud 2001), the template for mother-daughter relations involves hostile separation constantly undone by ongoing fusion. This difference in templates maps the social-symbolic difference between the paternal position of power/authority/law and the maternal position of powerlessness/silence/body.However, the manifest similarities between Irigaray’s and Chodorow’s pictures are embedded in deep theoretical differences. The details of their descriptions of mother-daughter relations differ, and they give different explanations for why these relations follow a logic of separation and fusion: female mothering for Chodorow, the paternal symbolic order for Irigaray. They make different proposals for how to change these relations: shared parenting for Chodorow versus symbolic transformation for Irigaray. They hold conflicting conceptions of the self and of language, reflecting their heterogeneous psychoanalytic backgrounds in Anglo-American object relations versus French Lacanianism and poststructuralism. These deep differences raise questions about whether Chodorow and Irigaray are discussing mother-daughter relations in the same sense at all.Bringing Irigaray and Chodorow together across their different intellectual contexts, this article compares and partially synthesizes their visions of the maternal and of mother-daughter relations. By integrating their perspectives, we can move beyond the “impasse” between Lacanian and object-relations feminisms that dominated psychoanalytic feminist debates in the 1980s and 1990s (Brennan 1991)—debates that have crucially shaped continental feminists’ orientation towards questions of sexual difference, language and representation, and the embodied psyche.The impasse in question has at least two strands. First, for object-relations feminists such as Chodorow, our pre-Oedipal relations with our mothers shape us so that we acquire “core” selves with a fairly stable gender. This approach elevates the mother in importance (compared to classical psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the father), but it loses sight of psychic and gender instability. This can make Chodorow’s views seem rather dated given the impact of Judith Butler’s work and her emphasis on the unstable, shifting nature of gender. Lacanian feminists such as Jacquelyn Rose (Rose 1986) reemphasize psychic instability, but they do so by stressing that the subject is split between paternal language and the pre-Oedipal maternal realm, which means that these theorists also... (shrink)

Within continental philosophy of biology the work of Michel Serres has not received a lot of attention. Nonetheless, this chapter wants to argue that Serres was part of a group of thinkers – together with Jacques Monod and Henri Atlan – that started to think about biology in terms of second-order cybernetics and information theory. Therefore, this chapter aims to do four things. First of all, it maps the relation between Serres and Canguilhem, one that was mediated by authors (...) such as Louis Althusser or Jacques Monod. Secondly, it fleshes out Serres’s own ‘biophilosophy’. I label this alternative tradition as a ‘biophilosophy without a subject’. Finally, this chapter explores the consequences of this alternative biophilosophy through a brief examination of two authors whose work lies in the line of this tradition: René Girard and Bruno Latour. Though at first sight different, they both draw inspiration from this biophilosophy to develop a framework that, paradoxically, ‘jumps over’ the subject. Hence, the reason why biology is neither a prominent theme in Girard’s nor in Latour’s work. This is not because of a lack of biophilosophy, but because of an implicit one: a biophilosophy without a subject. (shrink)

● Sergio Cremaschi, The non-existing Island. I discuss the way in which the cleavage between the Continental and the Anglo-American philosophies originated, the (self-)images of both philosophical worlds, the converging rediscoveries from the Seventies, as well as recent ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. I argue that pragmatism provides an important counter-instance to both the familiar self-images and to the fashionable ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. My conclusions are: (i) the only place where Continental philosophy exists (as Euro-Communism one decade ago) (...) is America; (ii) less obviously, also analytic philosophy does not exist, or does no more exist as a current or a paradigm; what does exist is, on the one hand, philosophy of language and, on the other, philosophy of mind, that is, two disciplines; (iii) the dissolution of analytic philosophy as a school has been extremely fruitful, precisely in so far as it has left room for disciplines and research programmes; (iv) what is left, of the Anglo-American/Continental cleavage is primarily differences in styles, depending partly on intellectual traditions, partly owing to sociology, history, institutional frameworks; these differences should not be blurred by rash ecumenism; besides, theoretical differences are alive as ever, but within both camps; finally, there is indeed a lag (not a difference) in the appropriation of intellectual techniques by most schools of 'Continental' philosophy, and this should be overcome through appropriation of what the best 'analytic' philosophers have produced. ● Michael Strauss, Language and sense-perception: an aspect of analytic philosophy. To test an assertion about one fact by comparing it with perceived reality seems quite unproblematic. But the very possibility of such a procedure is incompatible with the intellectualistic basis of logical positivism and atomism (as it is for example to be found in Russell's Analysis of Mind). According to the intellectualistic approach pure sensation is meaningless. Sensation receives its meaning and order from the intellect through interpretation, which is performed with the help of linguistic tools, i.e. words and sentences. Before being interpreted, sensation is not a picture or a representation, it is neither true nor false, neither an illusion nor knowledge; it does not tell us anything; it is a lifeless and order-less matter. But how can a thought (or a proposition) be compared with such a lifeless matter? This difficulty confronts the intellectualist, if on the one hand he admits the necessity of comparing thought with sense-perception, and on the other hand presupposes that we possess only intellectual and no immediate perceptual understanding of what we see and hear. In this paper I give a critical exposition of three attempts, made by Russell, Neurath and Wittgenstein, to solve this problem. The first attempt adheres to strict conventionalism, the second tends to naturalism and the third leads to an amended, very moderate version of conventionalism. This amended conventionalism looks at sense impressions as being a peculiar language, which includes primary symbols, i.e. symbols not founded on convention and not being in need of interpretation. ● Ernst Tugendhat, Phenomenology and language analysis. The paper, first published in German in 1970, by which Tugendhat gave a start to the German rediscovery of analytic philosophy. The author stages a confrontation between phenomenology and language analysis. He argues that language analysis does not differ from phenomenology as far as the topics dealt with are concerned; instead, both currents are quite different in method. The author argues that language-analytic philosophy does not simply lay out of the mainstream of transcendental philosophy, but that instead it challenges this tradition on the very level of foundations. The author criticizes the linguistic-analytic approach centred on the subject as well as any object-centred approach, while proposing inter-subjective understanding through language as the new universal framework. This is, when construed in so general terms, the same program of hermeneutics, though in a more basic version. ● Jürgen Habermas, Language game, intention and meaning. On a few suggestions by Sellars and Wittgenstein. The paper, first published in German in 1975, in which Habermas announces his own linguistic turn through a discovery of speech acts. In this essay the author wants to work out a categorical framework for a communicative theory of society; he takes Wittgenstein's concept of language game as a Leitfade and, besides, he takes advantage also of Wilfried Sellars's quasi-transcendental account of the genesis of intentionality. His goal is to single out the problems connected with a theory of consciousness oriented in a logical-linguistic sense. ● Zvie Bar-On, Isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. This essay presents the problem of the formal relationship between speech acts and intentional states as an essential part of the perennial philosophical question of the relation between language and thought. I attempt to show how this problem had been dealt with by two prominent philosophers of different camps in our century, Edmund Husserl and John Searle. Both of them wrote extensively about the theory of intentionality. I point out an interesting, as it were unintended, continuity of their work on that theory. Searle started where Husserl left off 80 years earlier. Their meeting point could be used as the first clue in our search. They both adopted in effect the same distinction between two basic aspects of the intentional experience: its content or matter, and its quality or mode. Husserl did not yet have the concept of a speech act as contradistinguished from an intentional state. The working hypothesis, however, which he suggested, could be used as a second clue for the further elaboration of the theory. The relationship of the two levels, the mental and the linguistic, which remained for Husserl in the background only, became the cornerstone of Searle' s inquiry. He employed the speech act as the model and analysed the intentional experience by means of the conceptual apparatus of his own theory of speech acts. This procedure enabled him to mark out a number of parallelisms and correlations between the two levels. This procedure explains the phenomenon of the partial isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. ● Roberta de Monticelli, Ontology. A dialogue among the linguistic philosopher, the naturalist, and the phenomenological philosopher. This paper proposes a comparison between two main ways of conceiving the role and scope of that fundamental part of philosophy (or of "first" philosophy) which is traditionally called "ontology". One way, originated within the analytic tradition, consists of two main streams, namely philosophy of language and (contemporary) philosophy of mind, the former yielding "reduced ontology" and the latter "neo-Aristotelian ontology". The other way of conceiving ontology is exemplified by "phenomenological ontology" (more precisely, the Husserlian, not the Heideggerian version). Ontology as a theory of reference ("reduced" ontology, or ontology as depending on semantics) is presented and justified on the basis of some classical thesis of traditional philosophy of language (from Frege to Quine). "Reduced ontology" is shown to be identifiable with one level of a traditional, Aristotelian ontology, namely the one which corresponds to one of the four "senses of being" listed in Aristotle's Metaphysics: "being" as "being true". This identification is justified on the basis of Franz Brentano's "rules for translation" of the Aristotelian table of judgements in terms of (positive and negative) existential judgments such as are easily translatable into sentences of first order predicate logic. The second part of the paper is concerned with "neo-Aristotelian ontology", i.e. with naturalism and physicalism as the main ontological options underlying most of contemporary discussion in the philosophy of mind. The qualification of such options as "neo-Aristotelian" is justified; the relationships between "neo-Aristotelian ontology" and "reduced ontology" are discussed. In the third part the fundamental tenet of "phenomenological ontology" is identified by the thesis that a logical theory of existence and being does capture a sense of "existing" and "being" which, even though not the basic one, is grounded in the basic one. An attempt is done of further clarifying this "more basic" sense of "being". An argument making use of this supposedly "more basic" sense is advanced in favour of a "phenomenological ontology". ● Kuno Lorenz, Analytic Roots in Dialogic Constructivism. Both in the Vienna Circle ad in Russell's early philosophy the division of knowledge into two kinds (or two levels), perceptual and conceptual, plays a vital role. Constructivism in philosophy, in trying to provide a pragmatic foundation - a knowing-how - to perceptual as well as conceptual competences, discovered that this is dependent on semiotic tools. Therefore, the "principle of method" had to be amended by the "principle of dialogue". Analytic philosophy being an heir of classical empiricism, conceptually grasping the "given", and constructive philosophy being an heir of classical rationalism, perceptually providing the "constructed", merge into dialogical constructivism, a contemporary development of ideas derived especially from the works of Charles S. Peirce (his pragmatic maxim as a means of giving meaning to signs) and of Ludwig Wittgenstein (his language games as tools of comparison for understanding ways of life). 7. Albrecht Wellmer, "Autonomy of meaning" and "principle of charity" from the viewpoint of the pragmatics of language. In this essay I present an interpretation of the principle of the autonomy of meaning and of the principle of charity, the two main principles of Davidson's semantic view of truth, showing how both principles may fit in a perspective dictated by the pragmatics of language. I argue that (I) the principle of the autonomy of meaning may be thoroughly reformulated in terms of the pragmatics of language, (ii) the principle of charity needs a supplement in terms of pragmatics of language in order to become really enlightening as a principle of interpretation. Besides, I argue that: (i) on the one hand, the fundamental thesis of Habermas on the pragmatic theory of meaning ("we understand a speech act when we know what makes it admissible") is correlated with the seemingly intentionalist thesis according to which we understand a speech act when we know what a speaker means; (ii) on the other hand, to say that the meaning competence of a competent speaker is basically a competence about a potential of reasons (or also of possible justifications) which is inherently connected with the meaning of statements, or with their use in utterances. ● Rüdiger Bubner, The convergence of analytic and hermeneutic philosophy This paper argues that the analytic philosophy does not exist, at least as understood by its original programs. Differences in the analytic camp have always been bigger than they were believed to be. Now these differences are coming to the fore thanks to a process of dissolution of dogmatism. Philosophical analysis is led by its own inner logic towards questions that may be fairly qualified as hermeneutic. Recent developments in analytic philosophy, e.g. Davidson, seem to indicate a growing convergence of themes between philosophical analysis and hermeneutics; thus, the familiar opposition of Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy might soon belong to history. The fact of an ongoing appropriation of analytical techniques by present-day German philosophers may provide a basis for a powerful argument for the unity of philosophizing, beyond its strained images privileging one technique of thinking and rejecting the remainder. Actual philosophical practice should take the dialogue between the two camps more seriously; in fact, the processes described so far are no danger to philosophical work. They may be a danger for parochial approaches to philosophizing; indeed, contrary to what happens in the natural sciences, Thomas Kuhn's "normal science" developing within the framework of one fixed paradigm is not typical for philosophical thinking. And in philosophy innovating revolutions are symptoms more of vitality than of crisis. ● Karl-Otto Apel, The impact of analytic philosophy on my intellectual biography. In my paper I try to reconstruct the history of my Auseinandersetzung mit - as I called it - "language-analytical" philosophy (including even Peircean semiotics) since the late Fifties. The heuristics of my study was predetermined by two main motives of my beginnings: the hermeneutic turn of phenomenology and the transformation of "transcendental philosophy" in the light of the "language a priori". Thus, I took issue with the early and the later Wittgenstein, logical positivism, and post-Wittgensteinian and post-empiricist philosophy of science (i.e. G.H. von Wright and the renewal of the "explanation vs understanding controversy" as well as the debate between Th. Kuhn and Popper/Lakatos); besides, with speech act theory and the debate about "transcendental arguments" since Strawson. The "pragmatic turn", started already by C.L. Morris and the later Carnap, led me to study also the relationship between Wittgensteinian "use" theory of meaning and of truth. This resulted on my side in something like a program of "transcendental semiotics", i.e. "transcendental pragmatics" and "transcendental hermeneutics". ● Ben-Ami Scharfstein, A doubt on both their houses: the blindness to non-western philosophies. The burden of my criticism is that contemporary European philosophers of all kinds have continued to think as if there were no true philosophy but that of the West. For the most part, the existentialists have been oblivious of their Eastern congeners; the hermeneuticians have yet to stretch their horizons beyond the most familiar ones; and the analysts remain unaware of the analyses and linguistic sensitivities of the ancient non-European philosophers. Briefly, ignorance still blinds almost all contemporary Western philosophers to the rich, variegated philosophical traditions outside of their familiar orbit. Both Continental and Anglo-Americans have lost the breadth of view that once characterized such thinkers as Herder and the Humboldts. The blindness that has resulted is not simply that of individual Western philosophers but of our whole, still parochial philosophical culture. (shrink)

This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability (...) to undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science. (shrink)

The paper seeks to indicate ways in which the crude distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy may have to be amended in light of recent developments in Eastern Europe. As is well known, the philosophy of science is to no small part a product of the universities of the Habsburg Empire (in Vienna, Prague, Lemberg/Lwow, etc.). Logic, too, has played a more significant role in Eastern Europe (not least in Poland) than in the philosophical cultures of Germany or France. (...) For these and other reasons, a shift in the center of gravity of Continental philosophy is currently being realized, as younger Eastern European philosophers in newly liberalized institutions begin to return to their roots in their native pre-Communist intellectual traditions. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s account of “totalitarianism” in light of the climate catastrophe and the apparent inability of our political-economic system to respond to it adequately. In the last two chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt focuses on the “ideology” of totalitarian regimes: a pathological denial of reality, a privileging of the ideological system over empirical evidence, and a simultaneous feeling of total impotence and total omnipotence—an analysis that maps remarkably well onto the climate zeitgeist. Thus, while Arendt (...) used the concept of “totalitarianism” to foreclose alternatives to liberal capitalist democracy, the climate impasse suggests that the totalitarian label more properly belongs to the prevailing system itself. (shrink)

(Selection) In her provocative introduction to the interdisciplinary collection Extinction, Claire Colebrook diagnoses posthumanism as “delusional,” “symptomatic,” and “psychotic.” Now that we live in what geologists informally call the “anthropocene” – a new epoch in which a preponderance of the earth’s systems are irreversibly altered by human activity – she claims that it is dangerous, insane even, to imagine that the traditional, “Cartesian” idea of man as master of nature is invalid. The declaration of the death of man betrays a (...) willful denial of humanity’s destructive capacity. The dream that man is disappearing like a “face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea” is a symptom of a psychosis that protects us from the truth of man’s irretrievable imprint: eroding coral reefs, melting glaciers, gaping ozone, thousands of extinct species, and so much more. Colebrook’s is not only an indictment of French post-structuralism. She issues no less a challenge to feminist posthumanisms, which have launched influential assaults against the Cartesian figure of the self-possessed subject (who, we must admit, has few defenders in Continental philosophy generally). Does the heralding of the anthropocene demand a critical revival of Cartesian humanism? Must we affirm that humans are exceptional after all? (shrink)

The paper aims at analyzing the inner development of self-identity from its pre-reflective level to the full awareness one. The recent findings of neurosciences and cognitive studies suggest focusing attention on the complex relation between self as consciousness and self as subjectivity, both with regard to their interdependency and to their reference to a shared context. Phenomenology, thanks to the careful consideration of the issues regarding the constitution of mental life articulated by its classic researches and current inquires, offers a (...) valuable opportunity to set the scientific outcomes in an authentically philosophical perspective. (shrink)

The chapter titled “The Body” in Being and Nothingness offers a groundbreaking, if somewhat neglected, philosophical analysis of embodiment. As part of his “es- say on phenomenological ontology,” he is proposing a new multi-dimensional ontological approach to the body. Sartre’s chapter offers a radical approach to the body and to the ‘flesh’. However, it has not been fully appreciated. Sartre offers three ontological dimensions to embodiment. The first “ontological dimension” addresses the way, as Sartre puts it, “I exist my body.” (...) The second dimension is the manner in which my body is experienced and utilized by the other. This includes my ready-to-hand equipmental engagement with the world and my body as the “tool of tools.” The third dimension is the manner in which “I exist for myself as a body known by the other.” In this paper, I explore Sartre’s original analysis and suggest comparisons with Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment. I shall suggest that Sartre offers more discussion on intercorporeality than Merleau-Ponty. -/- . (shrink)

Both continental and analytic traditions have tended to associate Hegel’s idealism with metaphysics and therefore as divorced from and even pernicious to reality. Hence, contemporary Hegel studies have tended to concentrate on discrete elements of his philosophy while attempting to avoid its metaphysical dimensions and their systematic pretensions. I seek to show that rather than dwelling in abstraction, Hegel’s metaphysics, as presented in his Logics, recount the thought determinations through which being comes to be grounded and thus, scientifically knowable (...) as nature. Such categorical determining is essentially linguistic, taking place through the grammatical forms of judgment (Urteil) and their outcome in the syllogism. The centrality of these grammatical forms reveals the anthropological goal of Hegel’s metaphysics, where the fully determined copula of judgment presents itself as the object of natural science, for us. (shrink)

This essay seeks to finalize a personal conception of the method of philosophizing. It aims to argue that works of philosophy are to be considered as well-informed expressions of belief. It does this by first introducing the topic, considering the broad views of the analytic, continental, and pragmatic traditions, and then presenting an exposition of passages on the topic. Finally, a novel contribution is presented in consideration of those passages before ending in concluding remarks.

Analytic philosophers have until recently been reluctant to pursue historical investigations into the Central European roots of their own philosophical tradition. The most recent book by Michael Dummett, however, entitled Origins of Analytic Philosophy, shows how fruitful such investigations can be, not only as a means of coming to see familiar philosophical problems in a new light, but also as a means of clarifying what, precisely, ‘analytic philosophy’ might mean. As Dummett points out, the newly fashionable habit of referring (...) to analytic philosophy as ‘Anglo-American’ leads to a ‘grave historical distortion’. If, he says, we take into account the historical context in which analytic philosophy developed, then such philosophy ‘could at least as well be called "Anglo-Austrian"’ (p. 7). We here show the implications of this assertion for a more adequate understanding of the relations between analytic and Continental philosophy. (shrink)

Both Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin borrow from Freudian theory in their analyses of fetishism’s relation to the contemporary reception of cultural products. I will argue that both authors have confused the Marxian and Freudian theories of fetishism, resulting in mistaken conclusions about artistic reception. By disentangling the Marxian and Freudian elements in both authors’ positions, I want to show that 1) Adorno’s characterization of regressive listening implies, contrary to his intentions, that the current reception of artwork is in fact (...) antagonistic to fetishism, and that 2) his criticism of Benjamin’s optimism toward “reception in distraction” is nevertheless justified. If I am correct, it may be necessary to reassess Adorno’s demand for asceticism in advanced art. The current danger may not be “fetishism” at all, but rather the troublesome consequences of fetishism’s decline. (shrink)

This article draws in particular on existential-phenomenological notions of “witnessing.” Witnessing, often conceived in the context of testimony, obviously involves epistemological concerns, such as how we come to know through the experiences and reports of others. I shall argue, however, that witnessing as a mode of intersubjectivity offers understandings that involve questions about how people come to be. More specifically, I want to consider the positive potential of “witnessing” to disrupt intersubjective completeness or closure, particularly as this relates to work (...) on organizing subjectivities, as well as, in the field of organization studies. (shrink)

By moving beyond the overly emphasized image of a “fusion of horizons” and focusing on Gadamer’s concept of “play,” this paper aims to rehabilitate the dynamic and multi-vocal character of understanding as Gadamer conceives it, and to argue that “difference” is the life-blood of understanding against the recurring charge that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is fundamentally antagonistic to otherness.