Online research in philosophy

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

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)

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)

We have a striking ability to alter our psychological access to past experiences. Consider the following case. Andrew “Nicky” Barr, OBE, MC, DFC, (1915 – 2006) was one of Australia’s most decorated World War II fighter pilots. He was the top ace of the Western Desert’s 3 Squadron, the pre-eminent fighter squadron in the Middle East, flying P-40 Kittyhawks over Africa. From October 1941, when Nicky Barr’s war began, he flew 22 missions and shot down eight enemy planes in (...) his first 35 operational hours. He was shot down three times, once 25 miles behind enemy lines while trying to rescue a downed pilot. He escaped from prisoner of war camps four times, once jumping out of a train as it travelled from Italy into Austria. His wife Dot, who he married only weeks before the war, waited for him at home. She was told on at least three occasions that he was missing in action or dead. For 50 years, Nicky Barr never spoke publicly, and rarely privately, of his war-time experiences. He was very much a forgotten and forgetting hero (for further details, see Dornan, 2002). In his first public interview in 2002 on the Australian documentary program “Australian Story”, Nicky explained his 50 year silence by saying. (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)

Isaiah Berlin is one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century, the most famous English thinker of the post-war era, and the focus of growing interest and discussion. Above all, he is one of the best modern exponents of the disappearing art of letter-writing. 'Life is not worth living unless one can be indiscreet to intimate friends,' wrote Berlin to a correspondent. This first volume inaugurates a long awaited edition of his letters that might well adopt this remark (...) as an epigraph. Berlin's life was well worth living, both for himself and for the world. Fortunately he said a great deal to his friends on paper as well as in person. Berlin's letters reveal the significant growth and development of his personality and career over the two decades covered within them. Starting with his days as an eighteen year old student at St. Paul's School in London, they cover his years at Oxford as scholar and professor and the authorship of his famous biography of Karl Marx. The letters progress to his World War II stay in the U.S. and finally, his trip to the Soviet Union in 1945-6 and return to Oxford in 1946. (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 article is concerned with a discussion of the plausibility of the claim that GM technology has the potential to provide the hungry with sufficient food for subsistence. Following a brief outline of the potential applications of GM in this context, a history of the green revolution and its impact will be discussed in relation to the current developing world agriculture situation. Following a contemporary analysis of malnutrition, the claim that GM technology has the potential to provide the hungry (...) with sufficient nourishment will be discussed within the domain of moral philosophy to determine whether there exists a moral obligation to pursue this end if and only if the technology proves to be relatively safe and effective. By using Peter Singer’s duty of moral rescue, I argue that we have a moral duty to assist the third world through the distribution of such GM plants. I conclude the paper by demonstrating that my argument can be supported by applying a version of the Precautionary Principle on the grounds that doing nothing might be worse for the current situation. (shrink)

Shepard's approach is regarded as an attempt to rescue, within an evolutionary perspective, an empiricist theory of mind. Contrary to this, I argue that the structure of perceptual representations is essentially co-determined by internal aspects and cannot be understood if we confine our attention to the physical side of perception, however appropriately we have chosen our vocabulary for describing the external world. Furthermore, I argue that Kubovy and Epstein's “more modest interpretation” of Shepard's ideas on motion perception is (...) based on unjustified assumptions. [Kubovy & Epstein; Shepard]. (shrink)

Abstract G. A. Cohen's argument against the claim that respect for self?ownership entails libertarianism features the imaginary example of ?Able and Infirm.? Richard Epstein, Tom Palmer, and Am Feallsanach criticize the example, but fail to rescue libertarianism from Cohen's attack. This is due to a misunderstanding of the role the example plays in Cohen's argument, and to a false belief that the initial ownership status of the world is important for resolving disputes in political philosophy.

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)

There is its own philosophical tradition in Russia. The traditional Russian philosophy is idealistic and religious. The basic categories of traditional Russian philosophy: "Ideal", "Sofia", "Sobornost", « Beauty, True, Kind (the Blessing)». The basic problem of Russian philosophy is to find the way of rescue mankind. One of the cardinal problems is the problem of civilization choice: East – West - Russia. According to the method of Russian philosophy it is not so analytic, but it is synthetic. Synthetic character (...) of Russian philosophy was most full embodied in V.S.Solovjev's philosophical system (1853-1900). In Russian philosophy the person, its destiny in the world was considered as a rule, globally - in universal, space scale. Russian cosmizm has formulated antropocosmik a paradigmon principles coevolution the nature and a noosphere which demands special culture. (shrink)

In this paper I will develop the argument that a cognitivist and virtue ethical approach to moral reasons is the only approach that can sustain a non-alienated relation to one’s character and ethical commitments. [Thomas, 2005] As a corollary of this claim, I will argue that moral reasons must be understood as reasonably partial. A view of this kind can, nevertheless, recognise the existence of general and positive obligations to humanity. Doing so does not undermine the view by leading to (...) a highly demanding view of morality. Indeed, it offers a defence against the view that an analogy between obligations of immediate rescue to particular individuals and general and positive obligations to humanity leads to the conclusion that morality is highly demanding. The plan of this paper is as follows. The first section sets out the main elements of a cognitivist and virtue ethical approach to moral reasons. The second applies it to the test case of an argument that claims that one way in which one seeks to lead a non-alienated ethical life, a life of integrity, is incompatible with the requirements of consequentialism given certain very general facts about the moral state of the world. [Ashford, 2000] My.. (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)

Many believe that quantum mechanics makes the world hospitable to the tensed theory of time. Quantum mechanics is said to rescue the significance of the present moment, the mutability of the future and possibly even the whoosh of time’s flow. It allegedly does so in two different ways: by making a preferred foliation of spacetime into space and time scientifically respectable, and by wavefunction collapse injecting temporal ‘becoming’ into the world. The aim of this paper is to (...) show that the reasoning underlying these claims is wishful thinking. Against the first claim I develop what I call the “coordination problem” for tensers. The upshot of this problem is that if tensers escape the threat of relativity, they do so only by embracing conflict with the branch of physics they believed saved them, quantum mechanics. I then step back from the fray and examine some methodological issues, concluding that scientific methodology will always be “against” tenses as they are currently conceived. The Appendix deals with the confused tangle of issues linking wavefunction collapse to an open future. (shrink)

In the postmodern world, the value of knowledge itself is questioned, and by extension those who claim to be authorities on that knowledge. As a result, Arnold Schwarzenegger as action hero is just as credible as Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, thus redefining the meaning of an informed citizen. If Arnold Schwarzenegger can rescue entire planets, then why can voters not assume that he will be able to save California? The blame for this theoretical shift belongs not with the (...) broader entertainment industry, but instead with the news industry itself. Such celebrities-in-politics issues are not limited to California or even the United States. This article explores the difficulties of obtaining a consensus on the central interpretation of credibility and truth in a postmodern society. (shrink)

How should we decide when to be altruistic ? who are the poor we ought to help? Empirical evidence reveals that in practice altruistic behaviour is strongly influenced by contextual factors such as the cost of helping, perceptions of the person in need, and the number of other people who are in a position to offer help. Philosophers often argue that we should discount such factors, but I claim that altruism is better understood as doing one's proper share of the (...) work of meeting nee. Three possible mechanisms for achieving this are explored: creating formal institutions to discharge our altruistic duties, imposing a legal duty of rescue on individuals, and fostering norms of responsibility that pick out individuals as salient helpers. (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)

To understand the political theory—and especially its alleged modernity—of Ogy Sorai, one of the most important philosophers of Tokugawa Japan, we need to understand the pivotal role that heaven, gods and spirits play in this theory. This is no easy task. This article will start with an analysis of the reasons of this difficulty: the numerous tensions and contradictions found in Sorai's remarks on the subject. Refusing to ignore one side of the story, refusing (...) also to reach too quickly a verdict of inconsistency, it also questions the rare attempt at a unified interpretation undertaken by Maruyama Masao. The article suggests that the solution is to understand that Sorai needs to speak from two different perspectives on the Way: the external perspective of the sages who grasp the relationships between the Way and the natural world as purveyor of the raw materials the Way is made of, and the internal perspective of commoners who must accept everything that is in a Way. This permits us to rescue the positivist interpretation of Sorai advanced by Maruyama and much criticized in recent years. (shrink)

A viable environmental ethics must confront “the silence of nature”—the fact that in our culture only humans have status as speaking subjects. Deep ecology has attempted to do so by challenging the idiom of humanism that has silenced the natural world. This approach has been criticized by those who wish to rescue the discourse of reason in environmental ethics. I give a genealogy of nature’s silence to show how various motifs of medieval and Renaissance origins have worked together (...) historically to create the fiction of “Man,” a character portrayed as sole subject, speaker, and telos of the world. I conclude that the discourse of reason, as a guide to social practice, is implicated in this fiction and, therefore, cannot break the silence of nature. Instead, environmental ethics must learn a language that leaps away from the motifs of humanism, perhaps by drawing on the discourse of ontological humility found in primal cultures, postmodern philosophy, and medieval contemplative tradition. (shrink)

In recent years, historians David S. Wyman and Deborah E. Lipstadt have contended in carefully documented books that the U.S. media provided inadequate coverage of Holocaust developments. Thus, these historians contend, American media helped create public apathy, which led to inadequate responses of the Roosevelt administration to requests for aid to Holocaust victims. Wyman believes ?several hundred thousand?; Jews might have been saved from gas chambers if the United States had insisted on determined Allied rescue action earlier than belated (...) efforts of the War Refugee Board, established in 1944. This paper examines U.S. media responses to Holocaust news and the reasons for those responses. It contends the objectivity ethic and violations of other ethical standards by U.S. media may have contributed to the magnitude of the Holocaust tragedy. (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. 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, The Rationalist Annual, pages 5-13. London, Watts & Co, 1948. A. J. Ayer. The Definition of Liberty: Jean-Paul Sartre’s Doctrine of Commitment. The Listener, 44(1135):633-634, 1950. A. J. Ayer. Jean-Paul Sartre. Encounter, 15(4):75-77, 1961. A. J. Ayer. On Existentialism. Modern Languages, 48(1):1-12, 1967. A. J. Ayer. Sartre on the Jews. The Spectator, 211(7317):394-395, 1968. A. J. Ayer. Reflections on Existentialism. In Metaphysics and Common Sense, pages 203-218. 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Zalta, editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, , 2004. M. Friedman. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago, Open Court, 2000. G. Gabriel. Carnap’s “Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language:” A Retrospective Consideration of the Relationship between Continental and Analytic Philosophy. In P. Parrini, W. C. Salmon, & M. H. Salmon, editors, Logical Empiricism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pages 30-42. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. P. Galison. Constructing Modernism: The Cultural Location of Aufbau. In R. N. Giere, A. Richardson, editors, Origins of Logical Empiricism, pages 17-44. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1996. S. Glendinning. In the Name of Phenomenology. London, Routledge, 2007. Gary Gutting. Continental Philosophy of Science. Oxford, Blackwell, 2005. M. Hammond, J. Howarth, & R. Kent. Understanding Phenomenology. Oxford, Blackwell, 1995. M. Heidegger. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. R. Taft, translator. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. M. Heidegger. Pathmarks. W. MacNeil, editor. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. J. M. Heimonet. Bataille and Sartre: The Modernity of Mysticism. Diacritics, 26(2):59-73, 1996. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/dia.1996.0016 J. Himanka. Does the Earth Move?: A Search for a Dialogue Between Two Traditions of Contemporary Philosophy. The Philosophical Forum, 31(1):57-83, 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0031-806X.00028 A. M. Hollywood. The Philosopher – Sartre – and Me. In Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference and the Demands of History, pages 25-36. Chigago, University of Chicago Press, 2002. T. E. Hulme. A Note-Book. The New Age, 18(8):186-189, 1915. T. E. Hulme. A Note-Book. The New Age, 18(10):234-236, 1916. S. P. James. Merleau-Ponty, Metaphysical Realism and the Natural World. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 15(4): 501-519, 2007. S. Käufer. Logic. In H. 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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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)

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)

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)

The first of Erich Neumann's works to be translated into English, this eloquent book draws on a full range of world mythology to show that individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as has human consciousness as a whole. Neumann, one of Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right, shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, or tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected (...) in the universal myths of the World Creation, Great Mother, Separation of the World Parents, Birth of the Hero, Slaying of the Dragon, Rescue of the Captive, and Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Throughout the sequence the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness. (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)