Online research in philosophy

In Politics, Religion, and Art: Hegelian Debates, Douglas Moggach moves the discussion past the Cold War–era dogmas that viewed the Hegelians as proto-Marxists and establishes their importance as innovators in the fields of theology, ...

Bruno Bauer’s response to Max Stirner’s Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845) is here examined closely, for the first time. In working out their concepts of freedom and self-determination, the Hegelian Left stressed different elements in the synthesis which Hegel himself had effected. Options appear that can be described as generally Fichtean or Spinozistic; each has distinct political and ethical implications. Bauer’s claim is that Stirner “Unique One” is to be understood as a version of Spinozist substance, which fails to (...) rise to the Fichtean-Hegelian standpoint of rational subjectivit y which his own thought represents. The paper endorses Bauer’s conclusion that essential differences between his republicanism and universalism, as opposed to Stirner’s anarchism and particularism, can be traced to divergent receptions of Fichte and Spinoza, as mediated through Hegel. With references to Hegel’s critiques of Spinoza, the paper reconstructs Bauer’s argumentation on the inadequacies of a merely substantial view of freedom. (shrink)

The period leading up to the Revolutions of 1848 is a seminal moment in the history of political thought, demarcating the ideological currents and defining the problems of freedom and social cohesion, which are among the key issues of modern politics. This anthology offers new research on Hegel's followers in the 1830s and 1840s. Including essays by well-known philosophers, political scientists, and historians from Europe and North America, it pays special attention to questions of state power, the economy, poverty, and (...) labor, as well as to a range of ideas about freedom. The book examines the political and social thought of Edouard Gans, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner, Bruno and Edgar Bauer, the young Engels, and Marx. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study in English of Bruno Bauer, a leading Hegelian philosopher of the 1840s. Inspired by the philosophy of Hegel, Bauer led an intellectual revolution that influenced Marx and shaped modern secular humanism. In the process he offered a republican alternative to liberalism and socialism, criticized religious and political conservatism and set out the terms for the development of modern mass and industrial society. Based on in-depth archival research this book traces the emergence of republican political (...) thought in Germany before the revolutions of 1848. Professor Moggach examines Bauer's republicanism and his concept of infinite self-consciousness. He also explores the more disturbing aspects of Bauer's critique of modernity, such as his anti-Semitism. As little else is available on Bauer even in German this book will be eagerly sought out by professionals in political philosophy, political science, and intellectual history. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science in order to explain the analogy in the doctrine of right between juridical interactions and the movement of bodies according to mechanical laws. Kant’s various formulations of the idea of reciprocal action and his concept of limit are central to the examination. A comparison with Fichte is suggested, and implications for the theory of property are indicated.

Elster's work unstably combines Leibnizian and utilitarian conceptions of action and offers various deconstructions of rationality and individuality. His method ological individualism gives an inadequate account of its privileged object, individual teleologies, and a distorted account of the relational framework of social reproduction and transformation. Elster has not properly conceptualized the relation of the teleological act to patterns of material and social causality, and his rational choice theory proves unable to accommodate the interactions of his postulated monadic individuals. His most (...) recent work dearly illustrates the limits of an individualist approach, while remaining committed to its principles. (shrink)