Online research in philosophy

This book puts forward a revisionist view of Japanese wartime thinking. It seeks to explore why Japanese intellectuals, historians and philosophers of the time insisted that Japan had to turn its back on the West and attack the United States and the British Empire. Based on a close reading of the texts written by members of the highly influential Kyoto School, and revisiting the dialogue between the Kyoto School and the German philosopher Heidegger, it argues that the work of Kyoto (...) thinkers cannot be dismissed as mere fascist propaganda, and that this work, in which race is a key theme, constitutes a reasoned case for a post-White world. The author also argues that this theme is increasingly relevant at present, as demographic changes are set to transform the political and social landscape of North America and Western Europe over the next fifty years. (shrink)

Introduction This book aims at continuing a conversation. It takes for interlocutor a writer who is himself today indefatigable in engaging with the ideas ...

v. 1. Exterminative medicine in Nazi Germany and contemporary America -- v. 2. The language of exterminative medicine in Nazi Germany and contemporary America.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 comprises over sixty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period, and is designed to be accessible to non-specialists. The first part of the book traces the history of philosophy from its remarkable flowering in the 1870s through to the early years of the twentieth century. After a brief discussion of the impact of the First World War, the second part of the book describes further developments in philosophy in the (...) first half of the twentieth century. The essays concentrate on developments across the range of philosophical topics, from logic and metaphysics to political philosophy and philosophy of religion. This volume will be of critical importance not only to teachers and students of philosophy but also to scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as the history of science, the history of ideas, theology and the social sciences. (shrink)

The study of film entered a new era after World War II, as cinema became an acceptable focus for intellectual inquiry. The many ways in which cinema has been imagined, studied, and discussed in the last fifty years are the subject of this comprehensive overview of film theory in the United States and Europe since 1945. Francesco Casetti groups his essays around principal movements in film studies. In the first part of the book, he reviews the attempts at defining (...) the "essence" of cinema during the 1950s. Then he explores disciplinary approaches to cinema--psychological, sociological, semiotic, and psychoanalytic--popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, he focuses on "field" theories--cinema and politics, the critique of representation, feminist film theory, neo-disciplinary tendencies, cultural and aesthetic studies, and the new approaches to film history. Theories of Cinema was originally published in Italy, where it won the Premio Domenico Meccoli--Scrivere di cinema 1993 of the Centro dello Spettacolo in Rome. This is its first English translation. The author has revised and updated this edition to cover the years 1945-1995. (shrink)

The paper traces the role of German women into the chemistry profession from 1925 to 1945, examining their relative numbers and experience in higher education, in academic and industrial careers as well as in professional organizations such as the Verein Deutscher Chemikerinnen. The paper examines the effect of the 1930s Depression, National Socialism, and World War II on women chemists, considering both general trends as well as the experiences and achievements of several individual women in a variety of situations. (...) Finally, it considers the longterm consequences of these developments, such as the Nazi expulsion of Jewish women, destruction of women’s organizations and devaluing of women’s achievements, in limiting the recognition and participation of German women chemists after 1945. (shrink)

Nishida’s analyses of human bodily existence, anticipating Merleau-Ponty’s, led him to accomplish his own “return to the lifeworld.” The later Nishida wrote: “I have now come to regard what I used to call the world of pure experience as the world of historical reality. The world of action-intuition is none other than the world of pure experience.” But Nishida’s attempt at a radical reconstruction of philosophy seems to suffer from a metaphysical optimism deriving from his notion (...) of the “place of absolute nothingness”; in 1945, when Japan’s defeat and his own death were approaching him as if competing with each other, Nishida wrote: “A world war must be a world war which aims to negate a world war and to contribute to eternal peace.” "Our motivation for philosophizing must be, not wonder, but the deep sorrow of life"---Nishida's often-quoted metaphilosophical prescription was meant to be a critique of Western philosophy's penchant to objectify Being. It is said, however, that the "philosophy in search of peace" in the "Post-Hiroshima Age" was occasioned with "fear." By way of critical reconsideration of Nishidaphilosophy, this paper intends to search for a new philosophy of history, one prerequisite for which would be to comprehend concretely the relationships between the various “dimensions of reality.” And it would be nothing but those cardinal questions accompanied with wonder, sorrow, or fear that can bring into lightthe principal dimensions structuring the multiple-reality of our times. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive collection of readings from the work of Theodor Adorno, one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. What took place in Auschwitz revokes what Adorno termed the “Western legacy of positivity,” the innermost substance of traditional philosophy. The prime task of philosophy then remains to reflect on its own failure, its own complicity in such events. Yet in linking the question of philosophy to historical occurrence, Adorno seems not to have abandoned his paradoxical, (...) life-long hope that philosophy might not be entirely closed to the idea of redemption. He prepares for an altogether different praxis, one no longer conceived in traditionally Marxist terms but rather to be gleaned from “metaphysical experience.” In this collection, Adorno's literary executor has assembled the definitive introduction to his thinking. Its five sections anatomize the range of Adorno's concerns: “Toward a New Categorical Imperative,” “Damaged Life,” “Administered World, Reified Thought,” “Art, Memory of Suffering,” and “A Philosophy That Keeps Itself Alive.” A substantial number of Adorno’s writings included appear here in English for the first time. This collection comes with an eloquent introduction from Rolf Tiedemann, the literary executor of Adorno’s work. (shrink)

Consideration of the German philosophy and political history of the past century might well give the impression, and often does give foreign observers the impression, that liberalism, including in particular commitment to the ideal of free thought and expression, is only skin-deep in Germany. Were not Heidegger's disgust at Gerede (which of course really meant the free speech of the Weimar Republic) and Gadamer's defense of "prejudice" and "tradition" more reflective of the true instincts of German philosophy than, say, the (...) Frankfurt School's heavily Anglophone-influenced championing of free thought and expression? Were not the Kaiser and Nazism more telling of Germany's real political nature than the liberalism of the Weimar Republic (a desperate, ephemeral experiment undertaken in reaction to Germany's disastrous defeat in World War I) or the liberalism of (West) Germany since 1945 (in effect forced on the country by the victorious Allies after World War II)? (shrink)

Traditionally the domain of scientists, the history of science became an independent field of inquiry only in the twentieth century and mostly after the Second World War. This process of emancipation was accompanied by a historiographical departure from previous, 'scientistic' practices, a transformation often attributed to influences from sociology, philosophy and history. Similarly, the liberal humanists who controlled the Cambridge History of Science Committee after 1945 emphasized that their contribution lay in the special expertise they, as trained historians, brought (...) to the venture. However, the scientists who had founded the Committee in the 1930s had already advocated a sophisticated contextual approach: innovation in the history of science thus clearly came also from within the ranks of scientists who practised in the field. Moreover, unlike their scientist predecessors on the Cambridge Committee, the liberal humanists supported a positivistic protocol that has since been criticized for its failure to properly contextualize early modern science. Lastly, while celebrating the rise of modern science as an international achievement, the liberal humanists also emphasized the peculiar Englishness of the phenomenon. In this respect, too, their outlook had much in common with the practices from which they attempted to distance their project. (shrink)

The problems of the social responsibility of the scientist became a subject of public debate after the World War II in Japan, thanks to the activities and publications of Yukawa and Tomonaga. And such authors as J. Karaki, M.Taketani, Y. Murakami, and S. Fujinaga continued discussion in their books. However, many people seem to be still unaware of the most important source of these problems. As I see it, one of the most important treatments of these problems was the (...) Franck Report (June 11, 1945) submitted to the US government by James Franck (chairman) toward the end of the war. This Report contains many important ideas and suggestions as regards the responsibility of the scientist, the morality of the use of atomic bombs, the prospective nuclear armaments race, and the possibility of international control of nuclear power. However, I should like to concentrate only on the first topic in this paper. Why did Franck and his committee at Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago feel the urgent need for writing and submitting this Report? According to the Report, "in the past, scientists could disclaim direct responsibility for the use to which mankind had put their disinterested discoveries. We cannot take the same attitude now because the success which we have achieved in the development of nuclear power is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the inventions of the past." (I. Preamble) This passage seems to contain the crux of our problem: These scientists clearly recognize the "new" responsibility for them, and the ground of this responsibility is also clear enough; i.e., when a new scientific discovery or invention turns out to have grave bearings on human interests, the scientists who became aware of that are responsible for notifying people of this and advise to look for suitable means for avoiding prospective dangers. In the rest of the paper, I elaborate the reasoning behind the preceding passage, and confirm that basically the same idea and reasoning has been repeated and developed in Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955), by Pugwash Conferences (first in 1957), by Tomogana, and by Rotblat (the long-time Secretary of Pugwash, who received the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Conference in 1995). (shrink)

In his short life, Alan Turing (1912-1954) made foundational contributions to philosophy, mathematics, biology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. He, as much as anyone, invented the digital electronic computer. From September, 1939 much of his work on computation was war-driven and brutally practical. He developed high speed computing devices needed to decipher German Enigma Machine messages to and from U-boats, countering the most serious threat by far to Britain's survival during World War Two. Yet few people have an image (...) of him. (shrink)

Abstract Marcel Gauchet's theory of democracy focuses on the secularization of Western societies and the emergence of ?autonomy? in them?Weber's ?disenchantment of the world.? The nineteenth-century liberalism that resulted failed to generate a sense of collective purpose that could fill the gap left by the retreat of religion. Totalitarian ideologies achieved this by harnessing the passions unleashed by World War I, but at the cost of radicalization. Conversely, the (unexpected and lasting) post-1945 ?social state? set the groundwork for (...) modern individualism and established new legitimacy for the regulatory and protective nation-state, conceptually bonded directly with its voter-citizens. Democracy is thus impossible to disentangle from social democracy?regardless of its actual effectiveness. If Gauchet is right, the left's embrace of ?voice? over ?exit? mixes a deep insight with flawed prescriptions, as it overlooks the national nature of the experience of citizenship, whereas classical liberals favoring the ?exit? option risk undermining the core of the democratic compact. (shrink)

In his short life, <span class='Hi'>Alan</span> Turing (1912-1954) made foundational contributions to philosophy, mathematics, biology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. He, as much as anyone, invented and showed how to program the digital electronic computer. From September, 1939, his work on computation was war-driven and brutally practical. He developed high speed computing devices needed to decipher German Enigma Machine messages to and from U-boats, countering the most serious threat by far to Britain=s survival during World War Two.

In the summer of 1957 at Cornell University the first of a cavalcade of large-scale meetings partially or completely devoted to logic took place--the five-week long Summer Institute for Symbolic Logic. That meeting turned out to be a watershed event in the development of logic: it was unique in bringing together for such an extended period researchers at every level in all parts of the subject, and the synergetic connections established there would thenceforth change the face of mathematical logic both (...) qualitatively and quantitatively. Prior to the Cornell meeting there had been nothing remotely like it for logicians. Previously, with the growing importance in the twentieth century of their subject both in mathematics and philosophy, it had been natural for many of the broadly representative meetings of mathematicians and of philosophers to include lectures by logicians or even have special sections devoted to logic. Only with the establishment of the Association for Symbolic Logic in 1936 did logicians begin to meet regularly by themselves, but until the 1950s these occasions were usually relatively short in duration, never more than a day or two. Alfred Tarski was one of the principal organizers of the Cornell institute and of some of the major meetings to follow on its heels. Before the outbreak of World War II, outside of Poland Tarski had primarily been involved in several Unity of Science Congresses, including the first, in Paris in 1935, and the fifth, at Harvard in September, 1939. (It was the latter which brought him to the United States and fortuitously left him stranded there following the Nazi invasion of Poland.) Much attention had been given to logic at these congresses and to Tarski’s own work, in particular, through the deep interest in it of Carnap, Quine and others. Following the end of the war, Tarski forged new alliances, especially in the United States logical and mathematical communities. To begin with, as part of the year-long celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Princeton University, a high-level conference on the Problems of Mathematics was held there in December 1946.. (shrink)

Paul Konitzer was one of the outstanding and well-known physicians in the years after the World War II in East-Germany. The paper describes his professional way as hygienist, social medical, municipal physician and last but not least as health politician in the times of four different political regimes: the imperial era in Germany till 1918, the time of Weimarer Republic till 1933, the Nazi dictatorship till 1945 and the early years in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. The life (...) of Konitzer is a typical example of the fate of a German doctor in the first half of the 20th century. Konitzer was arrested in February 1947 by the Soviet Military Government in Berlin in connection with some political troubles and reproach with a typhus epidemic in a German camp for Russian Prisoners of War in the Nazi era. On April 22nd 1947 he died in prison of Dresden by suicide without condemnation. (shrink)

On 5 May 1957, Leopold Löwenheim passed away in a Berlin hospital following a short but severe illness, unnoticed by the community of mathematical logicians who believed that he had perished in a Nazi concentration camp in or shortly after 1940 (the year of publication in the Journal of Symbolic Logic of his last paper before the end of World War II). The 50th anniversary of his death seems an appropriate date for the posthumous publication of a paper that (...) was supposed to appear in Fundamenta Mathematicae in 1939, the galley proofs of which Löwenheim had already seen and corrected when German troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Löwenheim managed to save the proofs through the War, despite the loss of most of his possessions during the bombing of Berlin in 1943 and 1944. By another lucky chance, a copy of the proofs survived in the present author's possession, when the originals were lost during a flat clearing in Berlin as part of the estate of Johannes Teichert (1904?1994), Löwenheim's step-son, when his widow moved into a nursing-home in May 1999. Later, I will expand these short remarks slightly but seize the present opportunity to resume (and in some places add to) the extant data on Löwenheim's life and writings. (shrink)

Sir Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) is well known as a diarist, man of letters, diplomatic historian, gardener, and broadcaster. Nicolson's bestselling diaries and letters, his many biographies, including the highly acclaimed official life of King George V, and his numerous essays and broadcasts have made him, in the words of his friend and fellow MP Robert Bernays, an international figure of the 'second degree'. -/- Yet there was more to this urbane man than his finely observed diary, stylish writing, and Sissinghurst (...) Castle Garden in Kent, the joint creation of Nicolson and his wife, the writer V. Sackville-West. He also produced a rich and ambitious corpus of writing on the theory and practice of international relations. Nicolson's aristocratic background and upbringing in a diplomatic household, followed by an Oxford classical education and twenty years in diplomacy, combined to forge his distinctive philosophy of international affairs. As a young attaché in Constantinople before the Great War, and in Whitehall during the conflict, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and en poste in Persia and Germany throughout the 1920s, Nicolson was ideally placed to observe the maelstrom of international politics. As an anti-appeasement and wartime MP (1935-1945), he became a highly regarded authority on international relations. During and after World War II, he turned his mind to the issues of European integration, world government, and the ultimate possibility of global peace. Nicolson has been the subject of two fine biographies. -/- This is the first study of his contribution to international thought. He emerges from it as an important international thinker, alongside theorists as diverse as E. H. Carr and Leonard Woolf. Nicolson's international thought contains elements of realism and idealism, while retaining a distinctive character and a breadth and consistency that render it unique. (shrink)

Follow the leader: why people go against their better judgment? -- How could they do that?: understanding the many sources and faces of evil -- Silently standing by: why we do or don't come to the aid of those who need us -- Paving the way to resistance: the gift of good during the Nazi occupation 1939-1945 -- Preconditions of resistance during the Armenian and Rwandan genocides -- Nature of goodness -- The world of heroes: why we need (...) heroes -- Conclusion. (shrink)

In each decade of the nuclear age, philosophers have provided critical reflections on the nature, use, and consequences of nuclear weapons. Frequently, these reflections have addressed the morality of producing, testing, deploying, and using nuclear weapons. Already, these philosophical reflections have passed through four phases and are now entering a fifth phase. The first phase stretches from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the above ground nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. From the initial use of atomic weapons in 1945 to (...) the testing of the hydrogen bomb in 1952, the United States held a virtual monopoly. (The Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapon in 1949, and the United States progressed not only to the development of the hydrogen bomb, but also to a miniaturization of nuclear weapons that spawned even more tactical nuclear weapons than the eventual strategic arsenals of the superpowers.) During the 1950s and 1960s, the second phase shifts to a focus on the above ground testing of the hydrogen bomb, as well as the post war tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. The third phase addresses increasing shifts during the 1970s and 1980s to counterforce weapons and nuclear war fighting strategies. The fourth phase responds to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and to the problems of nuclear proliferation and nuclear deterrence in the post Cold War world, culminating with a critique of the renewal of Star Wars in 2001 under the guise of ballistic missile defense. The first decade of the twenty first century ushers in not only the purported “war against terrorism” by the United States, but also a broader and deeper philosophical response to the interconnections among violence, terrorism, and war. (shrink)

Prologue: Stormclouds : London, April 1900 -- Quantum of action: The most strenuous work of my life : Berlin, December 1900 ; Annus Mirabilis : Bern, March 1905 ; A little bit of reality : Manchester, April 1913 ; la Comédie Française : Paris, September 1923 ; A strangely beautiful interior : Helgoland, June 1925 ; The self-rotating electron : Leiden, November 1925 ; A late erotic outburst : Swiss Alps, Christmas 1925 -- Quantum interpretation: Ghost field : Oxford, August (...) 1926 ; All this damned quantum jumping : Copenhagen, October 1926 ; The uncertainty principle : Copenhagen, February 1927 ; The 'Kopenhagener geist' : Copenhagen, June 1927 ; There is no quantum world : Lake Como, September 1927 -- Quantum debate: The debate commences : Brussels, October 1927 ; An absolute wonder : Cambridge, Christmas 1927 ; The photon box : Brussels, October 1930 ; A bolt from the blue : Princeton, May 1935 ; The paradox of Schrödinger's cat : Oxford, August 1935 -- Interlude: The first war of physics : Christmas 1938-August 1945 -- Quantum fields: Shelter Island : Long Island, June 1947 ; Pictorial semi-vision thing : New York, January 1949 ; A beautiful idea : Princeton, February 1954 ; Some strangeness in the proportion : Rochester, August 1960 ; Three quarks for Muster Mark! : New York, March 1963 ; The 'God particle' : Cambridge, Massachusetts, Autumn 1967 -- Quantum particles: Deep inelastic scattering : Stanford, August 1968 ; Of charm and weak neutral currents : Harvard, February 1970 ; The magic of colour : Princeton/Harvard, April 1973 ; The November revolution : Long Island/Stanford, November 1974 ; Intermediate vector bosons : Geneva, January/June 1983 ; The standard model : Geneva, September 2003 -- Quantum reality: Hidden variable : Princeton, Spring 1951 ; Bertlmann's socks : Boston, September 1964 ; The Aspect experiments : Paris, September 1982 ; The quantum eraser : Baltimore, January 1999 ; Lab cats : Stony Brook/Delft, July 2000 ; The persistent illusion : Vienna, December 2006 -- Quantum cosmology: The wavefunction of the universe : Princeton, July 1966 ; Hawking radiation : Oxford, February 1974 ; The first superstring revolution : Aspen, August 1984 ; Quanta of space and time : Santa Barbara, February 1986 ; Crisis? What crisis? : Durham, Summer 1994 -- A quantum of solace? : Geneva, March 2010. (shrink)

The infant prodigy (1905-1917) -- Violence and counter-violence (1917-1920) -- Intellectual and emotional mastery (1920-1929) -- Melancholia: masculinity challenges (1929-1939) -- The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940): stoicism/authenticity -- Sartre's war (June 1940-1945): the individual and the collective -- Sartre and Beauvoir -- Sartre's relationships: to be or not to be intimate.

PROSPERITY AND UPHEAVAL: THE WORLD ECONOMY 1945?1980 by Herman Van der Wee translated by Robin Hogg and Max R. Hall Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. 621pp., $14.95 Van der Wee uncritically accepts that Keynesianism is responsible for post?war economic stability. Against this belief, it is argued that an analysis of the historical record shows no significant efforts at countercyclical fiscal management in the post?war era, while efforts to control the economy via monetary policy were associated with increasing instability, (...) culminating in the crisis years of the 1970s. Thus, in the American case at least, post?war stability has been the result of self?correcting market tendencies, while instability has followed government macroeconomic intervention. (shrink)

In my previous article on the benzene problem, I described how Pauling's valence bond (resonance) theory, sometimes regarded as a modernized version of Kekule's oscillation hypothesis, came to be accepted by chemists by the end of World War II. But the alternative molecular orbital theory, proposed by Mulliken, had already been developed and was regarded as quantitatively superior by many quantum chemists, though it was not as easy to visualize and did not seem to harmonize as well with traditional (...) chemical concepts. During the 1950s and 1960s, thanks to the efforts of Charles Coulson and many other theorists, the molecular orbital approach not only dominated theoretical discussions but also started to be accepted by the chemical community as a whole and became the preferred description for benzene. Possible reasons were: its greater calculational convenience when applied to large molecules; better expository methods directed toward chemists; the spectacular success of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules for pericyclic reactions and Fukui's frontier orbital theory; and the development of a general theory of aromaticity, which predicted properties of similar molecules such as cyclobutadiene (C4H4). The relative importance of these reasons is explored through a mail survey of chemists. (shrink)

Ferdinand Porsche is one of the most important European automotive pioneers. Everybody knows his famous cars like Austro Daimler ADR, Mercedes SSK, Steyr Austria, Auto Union-racing car type C or the world famous Beetle. He didn't start his career with petrol-cars. When he began working for the Royal Austrian Coach Factory Jakob Lohner & Co in 1900, he built electric and hybrid drive-cars. The Lohner-Porsche-cars had two engines in the front wheels. The electric motors were powered by batteries or (...) dynamos. After Porsche's leaving Lohner for Austro Daimler, he produced hybrid-trucks during World War I. In the World War II, he built hybrid-tanks. (shrink)

This book takes us on a fascinating journey through the world of thought of Miki Kiyoshi, one of Japan s pre-eminent philosophers before the Pacific War, and thus makes us discover the man behind the philosopher.

This is a broad survey of the chronology of the rift between continental and analytic philosophy, starting in 1899. Whereas at that time there was no discernible divide, as the twentieth century progresses we can see a gradual parting of the ways in which philosophy was done, culminating in a period of maximum separation in 1945-68, followed by some convergence. There is one substantial historical thesis proposed, and facts are adduced from the chronology to back it up: that the divide (...) was never absolute, never purely geographical, and above all that it was not inevitable, but was largely the product of accidental historical circumstances, of which the most crucial was the flourishing of totalitarianism in Europe and the disruption caused by two world wars. (shrink)

Vedanta is the philosophy of the Vedas, those Indian scriptures which are the most ancient religious writings now known to the world. ...

Im Folgenden werden die unterschiedlichen Nietzsche-Bilder der deutschen Philosophie skizziert und insbesondere wird nach ihrer Bedeutung im nationalsozialistischen Kontext gefragt. Dabei geht es nicht darum, festzustellen, ob Nietzsche ein "Wegbereiter" des Nationalsozialismus war oder nicht. In der Hauptsache sollen die wichtigsten Nietzsche- Interpretationen - aus den Jahren zwischen 1930 und 1945 - in konkreten politischen und gesellschaftlichen Lagen und Verhältnissen sichtbar gemacht werden. Daher werden die konkreten historischen Bedingungen, unter denen Nietzsches Denken gedeutet wurde, zum Ausgangspunkt gemacht. In diesem Vortrag (...) wird auf die wichtigsten Schnittstellen für die Faschisierung von Nietzsches Philosophie hingewiesen. Unter Faschisierung ist eine bestimmte Reorganisation der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft zu verstehen, bei der die Parteien und Organisationen der Arbeiterbewegung ausgeschaltet und die Instanzen der Zivilgesellschaft als Apparate des Führer-Staates refunktionalisiert werden. Als ideelle Vergesellschaftungsmacht leistete die Philosophie hier ihren Beitrag zur Stabilisierung der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft, indem sie eine zustimmende Wahrnehmung der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse organisierte. Gerade in dieser Richtung leistete die Nietzsche- Interpretation zwischen 1933 und 1945 einen wesentlichen Beitrag nicht nur zur Konstitution eines nationalsozialistischen Subjekts, sondern zugleich zur Reproduktion der Herrschaft. (shrink)

A. Two conceptions of moral legitimacy Socialism, understood as the rejection of markets based on private property in favor of comprehensive centralized economic planning, is no longer a serious political option. If the core of capitalism is the organization of the economy primarily through market competition based on private property, then capitalism has certainly defeated socialism. Markets have been accepted—and central planning abandoned—throughout most of the “third world” and the formerly Communist states. In the advanced industrial states of the (...) West, Labor and “democratic socialist” parties have rejected socialism, having deregulated markets and privatized industries, utilities, and transport. The United Kingdom Labour Party’s 1945 manifesto declared it to be a “Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.”1 Today it insists that markets are a given. (shrink)

Arguing against the dominant developmental theories (e.g., Piaget, 1945; Vygotsky, 1978) stating that pretend play is limited to early childhood, we illustrate that pretend play is an adaptive human activity of adulthood as well as childhood. We advance this argument on three levels. First, we offer an analysis of why the discipline of developmental psychology in the Western world considered play only as an activity of childhood by neglecting to explore whether or how pretend play exists during adulthood. Second, (...) we discuss the similarities between adult improvisational theater and children’s pretend play in illustrating our thesis that pretend continues to exist during adulthood. In this discussion, we focus on similarities in the definitions, psychological origins, social functions, and developmental consequences of pretend play and adult improvisation. Finally, we end the article with educational implications of conceptualizing pretend play as a life-span activity and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was (...) whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre (inherited from Carnap), Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. Amidst this tangle one finds Bataille’s statement that an ‘abyss’ separates English from French and German philosophy, the first recorded announcement of the analytic-continental divide in the twentieth century. References H. B. Acton. Philosophy in France. Philosophy, 22(82):161-166, 1947. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100025365 A. J. Ayer & T. Honderich. An Interview with A. J. Ayer. In A. P. Griffiths, editor, A.J. Ayer Memorial Essays, pages 209-226. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. A. J. Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic. London, Gollancz, 1936. A. J. Ayer. Novelist-Philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Horizon, 12(67):12–26, & 12(68):101-110, 1945. A. J. Ayer. Novelist-Philosopher, Albert Camus. Horizon, 13(75):155-168, 1946a. A. J. Ayer. Secret Session. Polemic, 2:60-63, 1946b. A. J. Ayer. Some Aspects of Existentialism. In F. Watts, editor, H. B. Acton. Philosophy in France. Philosophy, 22(82):161-166, 1947. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100025365 A. J. Ayer & T. 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Dreyfus & M. Wrathall, editors, A Companion to Heidegger, pages 141-155. Oxford, Blackwell, 2005. E. W. Knight. Literature Considered as Philosophy: The French Example. New York, Macmillan, 1958. C. A. Mace. Review of The Psychology of Sartre by Peter J. R. Dempsey. Mind, 61(243):425-427, 1952. B. Magee. Men of Ideas: Some Creators of Contemporary Philosophy. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982. A. R. Manser. Sartre and "Le Néant." Philosophy, 36(137):177-187, 1961. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100058022 M. Martin. Sensible Appearances. In T. Baldwin, editor, The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1870-1945, pages 521-532. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521591041.044 PMid:14585038 F. Maubert. Francis Bacon, sa dernière interview: “Je poursois le peinture car je sais qu’il n’est pas possible de l’arreter.” Paris-Match, 2242:92-93, 1992. J. M. E. McTaggart. The Unreality of Time. Mind, 17:457-474, 1908. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/XVII.4.457 M. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. C. Smith, translator. London, Routledge, 2002. M. Merleau-Ponty. Texts and Dialogues: On Philosophy, Politics, and Culture. H. J. Silverman, editor (M. B. Smith, et al., translators). New York: Humanity Books, 2005. M. Merleau-Ponty & T. Baldwin. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. London, Routledge, 2004. H. Meyerhoff. Emotive and Existentialist Theories of Ethics. The Journal of Philosophy, 48(25):769-783, 1951. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2021208 I. Murdoch. Sartre, Romantic Rationalist. Cambridge, Bowes and Bowes, 1953. I. Murdoch. The Idea of Perfection. In The Sovereignty of Good, pages 1-44. London, Routledge, 2001. A. Oliver. A Few More Remarks on Logical Form. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 99:247-272, 1999. A. Plantinga. An Existentialist’s Ethics. Review of Metaphysics, 12(2):235-56, 1958. S. Priest. Merleau-Ponty. New York, Routledge, 2003. W. V. Quine. Word and Object. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1960. A. Quinton. Which Philosophy is Modernistic? In Thoughts and Thinkers, pages 39-51. New York, Holmes and Meier, 1982. J. Rée. English Philosophy in the Fifties. Radical Philosophy, 65:3-21, 1993. S. Richmond. Sartre and Bergson: A Disagreement about Nothingness. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 15(1):77-95, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672550601143201 B. Rogers. Ayer: A Life. New York, Grove Press, 2002. K. Romdenh-Romluc. Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception. London, Routledge, 2009. G. E. Rosado Haddock. The Young Carnap’s Unknown Master: Husserl's Influence on Der Raum and Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008. B. Russell. Nightmares of Eminent Persons And Other Stories. London, The Bodley Head, 1954. G. Ryle, H. A. Hodges, & H. B. Acton. Symposium: Phenomenology. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11:68-115, 1932. G. Ryle. Phenomenology vs. The Concept of Mind. In Collected Papers: Critical Essays, Vol. 1, pages 179-196. London, Hutchinson, 1971. J. P. Sartre. Un nouveau mystique. In Critiques littéraires (Situations I), pages 174-229. Paris, Gallimard, 1975. J. Skorupski. The Presidential Address: The Legacy of Modernism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 91:1-19, 1990. A. Stone. Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics. In S. Mulhall editor, Martin Heidegger, pages 217-244. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006. M. Surya, K.Fijalkowski, & M. Richardson. Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography. K. Fijalkowski & M. Richardson, translators. London, Verso, 2002. C. Taylor, & Alfred J. Ayer. Symposium: Phenomenology and Linguistic Analysis. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 33:93-124, 1959. N. Trakakis. Meta-philosophy of Religion: The Analytic-Continental Divide in Philosophy of Religion. Ars Disputandi, 7, 2007. J. Wahl. The Pluralist Philosophies of England and America. F. Rothwell, translator. 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Thanks to his unsurpassed eye and his fearless willingness to take a stand, Clement Greenberg (1909 1994) became one of the giants of 20th century art criticism a writer who set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays Avant Garde and Kitsch (1939) and Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940). In this work, which gathers previously uncollected essays and a series of seminars delivered at Bennington in 1971, Greenberg provides his most (...) expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art, arguing for an esthetic that flies in the face of current art world fashions. Greenberg insists despite the attempts from Marcel Duchamp onwards to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged that taste is inexorable. He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. (shrink)

Victor Klemperer, German philologist and Professor at the University of Dresden, bears testimony to his survival during the Nazi years in his Diaries (1933–1945). Progressively excluded from all social life because of his Jewish religion, Klemperer is forced to recognize himself as a non-subject by the end of the war, calling himself “Nobody” in reference to Ulysses with Polyphemus, the Cyclops. Our article aims to show the mental — cognitive and corporal — process underlying this recognition. Our study will explore (...) the two-pronged thrust of this process: faced with the inexorable destruction of his self, Klemperer has to acknowledge the limits of his analytical capacities. But this extreme experience will enable him to create somatic knowledge destined to recognize what he calls “thought of extinction”. To conclude, we show how this reasoning is based upon action language which consists in naming the body. (shrink)

Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics has been criticized as incoherent and opportunistic, and based on doubtful philosophical premises. If so Bohr's influence, in the pre-war period of 1927-1939, is the harder to explain, and the acceptance of his approach to quantum mechanics over de Broglie's had no reasonable foundation. But Bohr's interpretation changed little from the time of its first appearance, and stood independent of any philosophical presuppositions. The principle of complementarity is itself best read as a conjecture of unusually (...) wide scope, on the nature and future course of explanations in the sciences (and not only the physical sciences). If it must be judged a failure today, it is not because of any internal inconsistency. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Derrida Post-Existentialist: 1. Humanist pretensions: Catholics, Communists and Sartre's struggle for existentialism in post-war France; 2. Derrida's 'Christian' existentialism; 3. Normalization: the École Normale Supe;rieure and Derrida's turn to Husserl; 4. Genesis as a problem: Derrida reading Husserl; 5. The God of mathematics: Derrida and the origin of geometry; Part II. Between Phenomenology and Structuralism: 6. A history of diffe;rance; 7. L'ambiguite; du concours: the deconstruction of commentary and interpretation in Speech and Phenomena; (...) 8. The ends of man: reading and writing at the ENS; Epilogue. (shrink)

This 1945 “Preface” is intended to answer the question “What is phenomenology?” and to justify it as the methodology of the long work of philosophical psychology to follow. Merleau-Ponty approaches this task by first setting out the apparent paradoxes and contradictory claims that have been advanced by phenomenology, in a long and eloquent survey section that is built on a series of “X, but also Y” rhetorical devices. He then surveys four prominent themes of phenomenology. Just as he does in (...) the introductory section of the essay “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” Merleau-Ponty here presents himself as the chief interpreter and champion of Husserl's later philosophy. The first major theme considered is that phenomenology is a matter of describing the field of perception. This sets it in contrast to the prevalent explanatory methodologies of a) scientific empiricism and b) metaphysical idealism. Empirical science (such as mathematical physics) begins with observation, but then abstracts entirely from lived experience to consider idealized schematic cases (such as motion across a frictionless surface) that may reveal universal laws. Such a methodology is obviously fruitful in important respects, but is nonetheless naïve and dishonest in its renunciation of the specifics of observed events. The metaphysical idealism of Kant or Descartes likewise abstracts from the experienced particularity of perception to posit an “inner man” that constitutes the world according to 2 internal, transcendental principles. Merleau-Ponty's criticism is the same, whether these principles are “reason” of Rationalism, “the categories of understanding” of Critical Rationalism, or the rules governing the “association of ideas” posited by Empiricism. Phenomenology indicates that perception is not an act but a fact; the world is not an object but rather the unified setting of perception; and the inner man is a myth, along with his allegedly privileged access to univocal truth. The second theme is the technique of “phenomenological reduction,” the suspension of belief in the assemblage of everyday assumptions known as the “natural attitude.” Husserl's understanding of the reduction long led him to an idealist position: that all particular consciousnesses are united in a transcendental ego.. (shrink)

In his short life, Alan Turing (1912-1954) made foundational contributions to philosophy, mathematics, biology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. He, as much as anyone, invented and showed how to program the digital electronic computer. From September, 1939, his work on computation was war-driven and brutally practical. He developed high speed computing devices needed to decipher German Enigma Machine messages to and from U-boats, countering the most serious threat by far to Britain..

Abstract In spite of the officially secular character of public institutional life, including education, religion is a pervasive undercurrent which affects moral education, both at home and in school. In different ways Buddhism, Shinto, Confucian traditions and new religious movements (including Christian elements) are all influential. The nationalist emphasis, which became prominent in the period 1872?1945, was replaced by a deliberately secular social studies or citizenship in keeping with the spirit of the war settlement. Latterly patriotic features have been re?introduced (...) alongside a stated priority for international understanding. Significantly, however, Western thought is nominated alongside Buddhism and Confucianism in government decrees on the curriculum as now integral to Japanese tradition. (shrink)

Abstract This paper clarifies the relationship between Merleau-Ponty?s Phenomenology of Perception and Fink?s Sixth Cartesian Meditation with regard to ?the idea of a transcendental theory of method?. Although Fink?s text played a singularly important role in the development of Merleau-Ponty?s postwar thought, contrary to recent claims made by Ronald Bruzina this influence was not positive. Reconstructing the basic methodological claims of each text, in particular with regard to the being of the phenomenologist, the nature of the productivity that makes phenomenology (...) possible, and the problem of methodological self-reference, I show that Phenomenology of Perception is premised on a decisive rejection of the main theses affirmed in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation. In contrast to Fink?s speculative reinterpretation of phenomenology as an absolute science, Merleau-Ponty viewed it as participating in the historical realization of the world, and hence as ultimately based on a practical faith. Albeit with a Marxian inflection, Merleau-Ponty thus related phenomenology much more closely to Kant. This may not be a better philosophical position, but circa 1945 it was Merleau-Ponty?s, whose work must be approached accordingly. (shrink)

by Alonzo L Hamby Noam Chomsky The Guardian, March 8, 1996 Harry Truman is a marvellous subject for a serious biography and after decades of 'scholarly engagement' with the subject, Alonzo Hamby is well qualified to write one. As he says, Truman was a 'man of the people,' whose life 'exemplifies' many aspects of 'the American experience'. In April 1945, 'knowing little more about diplomatic arrangements and military progress than what one would read in a good newspaper, he suddenly found (...) himself responsible for overseeing the end of the war and the establishment of a new global order'. 'You, more than any other man, have saved western civilisation,' Churchill informed him. It was a 'nearvisionary achievement,' in Hamby's judgment. (shrink)

The article deals with the development of the philosophy of France Veber (1890–1975), the pupil of Meinong and a main Slovene philosopher. One of the most important threads of Veber’s philosophy is the consideration of knowledge and factuality, which may be seen as a driving force of its development. Veber’s philosophical development is usually divided into three phases: the object theory phase, the phase when he created his philosophy of a person as a creature at the crossing of the (...) natural and the spiritual world, who as an active, not merely passive subject possesses her own causal powers, and the third phase, when he supplemented his earlier philosophy with the theory of a special side of our experience which he called hitting-upon-reality. It is a direct experience of reality, a special kind of intentionality, which is however fundamentally different from presentational intentionality, which alone is taken into account by object theory or phenomenology. The questions of knowledge and factuality are closely connected in Veber’s philosophy since, pace Veber, knowledge is a kind of, we may say, justified experience the object of which is a factual entity. Hence, if we want to understand what knowledge is, we must face the challenge of comprehending factuality. There are five stages to be noted in the development of his epistemology. The first two belong to his object theory phase, the third to his person phase, the fourth is characterised by his distinguishing and exploring truth and validity with regard to the thought about God, and the basis of the fifth phase lies in his theory of hitting-upon-reality. In Introduction to Philosophy and The System of Philosophy , that is in the year 1921, Veber believed that factuality (“truth,”) was a property of the object, which we do present, but we do not present the factuality of this factuality (that is why he distinguishes between the merely objective truths and truths that are in addition transcendental truths). In 1923, in The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy and in the work Science and Religion , he already rejected such a view. There is something that makes things factual, but that is a complete unknown X. Therefore we cannot even say what kind of an entity this factuality is. Some people would probably demand the following formulation: if X is an ultimate mystery, we should not claim even that it is an entity. In The Problems of Presentation Production (1928) Veber claimed that factuality is not a property since this would lead to a regressum ad infinitum. Philosophy (1930) related internally correct experience to personal will. In T he Book about God (1934) he developed the thesis that factuality depends on the act of God. In The Question of Reality (1939) he importantly modified, developed and enriched the thesis that we do not present reality with his theory of immediate experience of (hitting upon) factuality. (shrink)

According to Friedrich Engels (Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy) the so?called ?Thesen über Feuerbach? are ?the brilliant germ of the new world conception?. For Karl Korsch ('Review of Vernon Venable?, Journal of Philosophy 42 [1945], no. 26) there are ?magnificently summed up? in them the ?texts of Marx and Engels's first (Hegelian and post?Hegelian) period?. Even given the important distinction between the ?young? and the ?mature? Marx these two opinions are not incompatible. The present paper's (...) concern, however, is with the relationship of the ?Thesen? to the materialist conception of history. Once the ?Thesen? are read as a consistent whole it is clear that they are incompatible with any non?social (non?human) nature; hence with the ontological independence of nature from man; hence with any materialism, historical or otherwise. Furthermore, taken as a whole the ?Thesen? form an attempted solution to the problem of the justification of ideals, a solution both activist and dogmatist. Since the attitude expressed in the ?Thesen? underlies both Marx's ?theory of alienation? and his ?critique of political economy? neither of these can lay claim to the status of knowledge. (shrink)

The Philosopher and the Moviemaker.Merleau-Ponty and the Thinking of CinemaAs its subtitle indicates, the present article is devoted to the relations between Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and the thinking of cinema. The first section focuses on two topics, each underlying the lecture on cinema given by Merleau-Ponty in 1945. On the one hand, we find the reflection about the peculiarities of expression in film and cinematic image; on the other, we see the convergence between the inspiration of cinema and that of (...) philosophy, which Merleau-Ponty sees as a significant characteristic of his time. This is a convergence in which the nouvelle vague’s cinema will recognise itself and which Christian Metz will retrospectively confirm. Moreover, by developing both of these topics, the author finds a way to interpret Merleau-Ponty’s lecture as an undeclared polemical response to Henri Bergson’s famous negative judgement on cinema. The second section focuses on the question of movement in cinema, putting together further references to cinema made by Merleau-Ponty in posthumous or unpublished writings such as the notes for the 1952-53 course on “The Sensible World and the World of Expression.” The third section focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s later reflection about vision and images. This section shows how the peculiar noveltyof cinema is more and more understood by Merleau-Ponty not only as historically convergent with a new way of conceiving philosophy, but as a symptom of the new ontology he was trying to formulate philosophically.Il filosofo e il cineasta.Merleau-Ponty e il pensiero del cinemaCome sottolinea il suo sottotitolo, il presente articolo è dedicato alle relazioni fra la filosofi a di Maurice Merleau-Ponty e il pensiero del cinema. La prima sezione si concentra su due argomenti, ognuno ravvisabile nella conferenza sul cinema tenuta da Merleau-Ponty nel 1945. Da una parte, troviamo la riflessione sulle peculiarità dell’espressione filmica e dell’immagine cinematografica; dall’altra, la convergenza fra l’ispirazione del cinema e quella della filosofia, che Merleau-Ponty vede come una significativa caratteristica del proprio tempo: una convergenza in cui il cinema della nouvelle vague riconoscerà se stesso e che Christian Metz retrospettivamente confermerà. Inoltre, sviluppando entrambi gli argomenti, l’autore trova modo di interpretare la conferenza di Merleau-Ponty come una non dichiarata risposta polemica al celebre giudizio negativo sul cinema formulato da Henri Bergson. La seconda sezione si concentra sulla questione del movimento nel cinema, riunendo ulteriori riferimenti di Merleau-Ponty al cinema in scritti postumi o inediti, come le note per il corso del 1952-1953 su “Il mondo sensibile e il mondo dell’espressione”. La terza sezione si concentra sulla riflessione dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty sulla visione e le immagini. Ciò mostra come la peculiare novità del cinema sia sempre più compresa da Merleau-Ponty non solo come storicamente convergente con un nuovo modo di concepire la filosofia, ma come un sintomo della nuova ontologia che egli stava cercando di formulare filosoficamente. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological account of the writing of a young woman diagnosed with schizophrenia. The method of interpretation is to put ourselves in the place of the author drawing upon a combination of sympathy, reason, common-sense, experience, and an intersubjective world, common to us all (Schutz, 1945: 536). The result is the recognition of the person as also capable of putting herself in the place of others so as to understand their behavior. This role-taking success identifies the (...) limits of the current sociological understanding of insanity's significance in social interaction as an instance of role-taking failure (Rosenberg, 1992).The very appearance of a piece of writing often permits one to recognize the presence of schizophrenia. The use of space may be quite bizarre. The varying margins betray the writer's changing mood. The letter may start at the bottom or side of the paper or very close to the top .. (shrink)

Dr. J. van Ginneken S.J., whose death occurred on the 20th of October 1945, was the author of the well-known "Principes de Linguistique psychologique". In the above article the writer commemorates Dr. van Ginneken particularly as a significist. During the years 1919-1924 the writer was privileged -- together with his friends L. E. J. Brouwer and Fred. van Eeden -- to collaborate with Dr. van Ginneken on the subject of significs. This collaboration has always been a precious memory to him. (...) It proved moreover, that profound differences in conception about life and world need not prevent a fertile exchange of thoughts, provided the participants are actuated by the serious will to fathom to the depth each other's mentality. (shrink)