In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed.

In this illuminating study of Kant's theory of imagination and its role in interpretation, Rudolf A. Makkreel argues against the commonly held notion that Kant's transcendental philosophy is incompatible with hermeneutics. The charge that Kant's foundational philosophy is inadequate to the task of interpretation can be rebutted, explains Makkreel, if we fully understand the role of imagination in his work. In identifying this role, Makkreel also reevaluates the relationship among Kant's discussions of the feeling of life, common (...) sense, and the purposiveness of history. (shrink)

Kant’s efforts to replace psychology as a theoretical natural science with anthropology as a pragmatic science are examined on the basis of his anthropology lectures. For Kant, psychology posits the soul as a distinct substance, but his pragmatic anthropology makes no such metaphysical assumption. It can succeed by limiting itself to providing historical rather than rational cognition, being descriptive rather than explanative, and having a worldly rather than an academic perspective. Kant’s reflections on culture in the Critique of Judgment are (...) claimed to account for certain final changes in the anthropology that was published in 1798. (shrink)

Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, this book focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to the various meaning contexts that can frame their interpretation. It assesses what such thinkers as Kant, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas and others can contribute to the problems of multicultural understanding, and reconceives hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions (...) of understanding and interpretation. (shrink)

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Rudolf Makkreel interprets Dilthey's philosophy and provides a guide to its complex development. Against the tendency to divorce Dilthey's early psychological writings from his later hermeneutical and historical works, Makkreel argues for their essential continuity.

These essays bring Neo-Kantianism back into contemporary philosophical discourse.

This paper attempts to reassess the role of judgment in hermeneutics. Beyond considering the different modes of judgment involved in interpretation, a topology of contexts that can orient understanding is proposed, starting with the way Kant distinguishes among a field, a territory and a domain. Other relevant contexts are also considered. One of the main tasks of hermeneutics is to be able to coordinate various interdisciplinary contexts.

The place of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911)in the history of hermeneutics has been subject to considerable misinterpretation. He is rightly regarded as having expanded the scope of hermeneutics by adding human actions to the kinds of texts that can be interpreted, but is wrongly dismissed as having overlooked the full significance of this move. His distinction between understanding and explanation has been stereotyped as a mere methodological distinction relevant for his theory of the human sciences. His reflections on interpretation have been (...) relegated to the domain of traditional philological hermeneutics and excluded from philosophical hermeneutics. Heidegger's ontical‐ontological distinction has been used to drive a wedge between the two and place Dilthey on the ontical side of a divide that cannot be fully justified. On the basis of newly available writings, a more adequate account dealing with the philosophical content of Dilthey's hermeneutic contributions can now be given. (shrink)

A close link between empathy and understanding has often been attributed to Dilthey, but in fact one seldom finds the German word for empathy—Einfühlung— in his writings. For this and other reasons one should be reluctant to reduce Dilthey’s theory of Verstehen to a form of empathy.1 The relation between Einfühlung and Verstehen is much more explicit in Husserl. By working out what this relation is for Husserl in Book Two of Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie and (...) in some other late writings, we can see how phenomenology transformed the aesthetic meaning of Einfühlung, which had been originally established by the psychologist Theodor Lipps. In addition to distinguishing several senses of empathy, I will compare them to a range of related phenomena such as sympathy and pity, divination and transposition, appreciative understanding and critical understanding. (shrink)

Review of: Rudolph A. Makkreel, Kant’s Worldview. How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension, Chicago, Northwestern University Press, 2021, 288 p. ISBN: 9780810144316.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Craig Walton 1934-2007Rudolf A. Makkreel and Gerald A. PressThe Journal of the History of Philosophy is saddened to report that Craig Walton died on October 11th, 2007. Professor Walton served the Journal for many years. He was involved with it from its inception in 1963 and knew personally many of the founding philosophers, who had been at the Claremont Graduate Center. He was the Book Review Editor from (...) 1975 until 1981 and was a member of the Board of Directors from 1978 until 2004, where he promoted the study of the history of philosophy in many ways and maintained our institutional memory. For instance, it was Craig who remembered the important roles Salih Alich and Oskar Piest played in our early history. From 2001–03, he was the Treasurer of the Board. He believed strongly in the cosmopolitan nature of scholarship, and, as Book Review Editor, he was tireless in his efforts to review books on the history of philosophy written in languages other than English.Craig was born on December 6, 1934, in Los Angeles and earned his doctorate in philosophy at Claremont Graduate University in 1965. His dissertation, De la recherche du bien: A Study of Malebranche's Science of Ethics, was approved in 1964 by a doctoral committee that included Theodore Waldman, Herbert Schneider, and Philip Merlan, though he also worked with Richard Popkin, the founder of the Journal. He taught at the University of Southern California, Northern Illinois University and Emory University before moving to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1972. Craig was Chair of the Philosophy Department there from 1986 to 1989 and became the Director of the Institute for Ethics and Policy at UNLV in 1987. He held this post until his retirement in 2004. After his early work on Malebranche, for much of his career he was a scholar of David Hume and Thomas Hobbes; but he spent the last decade of his life urging that ethical issues be studied across the curriculum. Upon retiring from teaching, Craig extended his work in ethics by founding the Nevada Center for Public Ethics. The Chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education praised Craig as the voice of ethics in Nevada.As members of the Board of Directors of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, we remember Craig Walton for his enthusiasm for the history of philosophy and his warmth as a human being.Copyright © 2007 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason stresses the limits of what our finite intellect can understand directly about our experience of nature. This raises the question of what role the more indirect process of interpretation can have in his overall system. Because religious interpretation is approached from the perspective of morality, this chapter considers it in relation to Critique of Practical Reason. Systematic interpretation falls within the province of theoretical reason and is considered in relation to Critique of Pure Reason. The (...) third sense of interpretation still to be developed is oriented by Critique of the Power of Judgment. The figurative use of interpretation in relation to theoretical reason is found most explicitly in Kant's Reflections on Metaphysics: “for nature is our task, the text of our interpretation” Whereas determinant judgment is externally directed, reflective judgment can be called self‐orienting in searching for what else is worth knowing. (shrink)

Die Geisteswissenschaften zu verstehen, was sie sind und was sie erreichen konnen, ist heute, hundert Jahre nach Diltheys Tod, eine genauso wichtige Aufgabe wie zu dessen Lebzeiten. Diltheys Argumente und seine Position einer umfassenden philosophischen Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften sind auch heute noch von Bedeutung. Seine Verteidigung der Autonomie der geistigen Welt angesichts der positivistischen Herrschaftsanspruche liefert wichtige Gesichtspunkte fur die Evaluierung geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung. Zum 100. Todestag Diltheys zeigen zehn renommierte Forscher anhand zweier Themengebiete - 'Dilthey and Kant' sowie 'Dilthey and (...) Hermeneutics' - auf, wie Dilthey fur heutige Fragestellungen fruchtbar gemacht werden kann. Die deutsch- und englischsprachigen Beitrage sollen insbesondere jenen Wissenschaftlern dienen, die sich der methodischen Erneuerung der intellectual history, der Philosophie- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte sowie der Begriffsgeschichte verpflichtet haben. - Mit Beitragen von Benjamin D. Crowe, Annette Hilt, Theodore Kisiel, Rudolf A. Makkreel, Massimo Mezzanzanica, Jared A. Millson, Eric Sean Nelson, Frithjof Rodi, Maja Soboleva und Denis Thouard. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:196 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in 1943, was to write an Epilogue to Julian Marias' History o] Philosophy. In early 1944, the Epilogue was conceived as a volume of 400 pages, and later of 700. In 1945 a part of the Epilogue was to be detached and given the title The Origin ol Philosophy. Then one completed part of that was published in 1953 as an essay in a Festschrift (...) for Karl Jaspers. That, and other sections, have been put together here. The first part of the book treats philosophy as a cumulative enterprise in which each man rethinks and thinks further what other men have thought. Even when past thought has reached an end, or taken a direction we will not follow, it is only for the reason that it has already happened that we do not have to do it ourselves. This is not because history is rational but because thought is historical, rooted in ideas we did not ourselves create and based on methods we have acquired and sometimes altered. The second part of the book deals with the origin of philosophy--and the origin of "philosophy" for Ortega is concerned throughout with language and etymology. The word "philosophy" is not one Ortega likes; he prefers the word "aletheia," which was used by Parmenides and his contemporaries. In popular language, aletheia meant discovery, exposure, denudation, revelation. For the thinker, "aletheia" is "truth" as a verb, the activity of uncovering reality, which is concealed under the robes of appearance or falsehood. Philosophy, for Ortega, begins with Parmenides and Heraclitus; "proto-philosophers" he calls them. The Ionians had been scientists; their attempts at natural explanation upset religion and tradition, and prepared the way for philosophy. In a remarkably subtle and complex analysis for so short a space, Ortega argues that skepticism, atheism, wealth, and knowledge of nature created a freedom based on a need to create or choose one's own beliefs in a world in which relative abundance demands choice, since in poverty "an individual is never in the position of being able to choose; for choice assumes that the circle of one's possibilities is notably greater than that of one's needs" (p. 98). The social need to define the thinker and so grant him professional status that might minimize the hostility of the tradition-ridden and reactionary populace, especially in Athens, led to the name "sophist," which became disreputable to a hostile citizenry, and then to "philosopher." Socrates was, unfortunately, the only philosopher, the man who liked, had a taste for, or loved wisdom, but made no pretense that he had any, saying only he sought it. But the name persisted, and helped institutionalize the new profession. I haven't even intimated the delight of Ortega's incidental insights. He was probably justified in believing that his stature as a thinker was much greater than his reputation. A first-rate, full-scale study of Ortega in English would help, but what we need most is a collection and translation of his complete works. RSLPH ROSS ~cripps College Discourse on Thinking. By Martin Heidegger. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. (New York: Harper and Row, 1966. Pp. 93. $3.50.) This is a translation of a speech and conversation originally published under the thematic title Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Giinther Neske, 1959). Heidegger uses this unusual German word to remind us that there is another way of thinking than the calculative and dialectical modes made prominent by the mathematical sciences and modem cultural philosophy respectively. We have forgotten a less busy mode of thinking, a thinking released from all desire to control reality. Gelassenheit is rendered throughout as "releasement" in this translation. But Gelassenheit does not just mean letting go, or freedom from, as "releasement" may suggest. It also has the more positive sense of composure and a patient letting things be. In the context of Heidegger's attempts to define a mode of thinking not concerned with dominating reality, Gelassenheit comes to mean the freedom to be open to reality. BOOK REVIEWS 197 Heidegger stresses the ability to wait for insight, which is not, however, a mere passive waiting for something fixed. It would be... (shrink)

The Journal of the History of Philosophy is saddened to report that Professor Edward P. Mahoney died on January 8, 2009. Professor Mahoney served on the Journal's Board of Directors from 1984 until the spring of 2008, when he retired due to illness. Ed also served on the Journal's Book Review Advisory Board since 1990. He was a tireless advocate of scholarly rigor.Edward Mahoney was born in 1932 in New York City. Ed received his BA at Cathedral College, an MA (...) in Philosophy at St. John's University and an MA in Political Science, and in 1966 a PhD in Philosophy at Columbia University. He wrote his dissertation, The Early Psychology of Augustino Nifo, under the direction of Paul Oskar Kristeller, the noted scholar of medieval and Renaissance thought. Ed went on to become. (shrink)

Interpretation becomes important when direct understanding is either lacking or inadequate. Observational understanding is geared to the world conceived on the model of nature outside of us and is directed by the goals of the natural sciences. Reflective understanding by contrast conceives the world as a sphere in which we participate and is more in line with how the human sciences, which include all the humanities and some of the more critically oriented social sciences, approach their subject matter. This chapter (...) aligns observational understanding with the intellectual faculty of Verstand and reflective understanding with the power of Verstehen. To attain critical hermeneutics, we must be able to account for both kinds of understanding by considering them as part of a more full‐fledged theory of judgment. We can initiate this by developing what Kant has to say about a range of judgments and prejudgments whereby we orient ourselves to the world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

My purpose is to examine Kant's views on interpreting nature and history and to attempt to see them as coherent by relating them to his theory of reflective judgment. With this reconstruction of a kantian conception of interpretation it is possible to shed new light on kant's approach to political history. I propose that reflective judgments as defined in the "critique of judgment" be conceived primarily as interpretive and only derivatively as either aesthetic or teleological. This approach to reflective judgments (...) creates a spectrum of them ranging from the noncognitive to the cognitive and from the aesthetic to the practical. (shrink)