Most readings of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling take its account of the Abraham and Isaac story to imply fairly obviously that duty towards God is absolutely distinct from, and therefore capable of superseding, duty towards neighbor or son. This paper will argue, however, that the Akedah, or ‘binding’ of Isaac, as Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, depicts it, binds Abraham to Isaac in a revitalized neighbor relation that is not at all subordinate, in any simple way, to Abraham’s God-relation. The (...) two relations are defined by an intimate mutual tension, a dynamic of passionate inwardness that responds to the immediate demands of the neighbor as fully as the ethics that Levinas notoriously accuses Kierkegaard of having ignored. It is also the dynamic of time consciousness, which for Levinas is fundamentally ethical. I show that Kierkegaardian faith can be viewed as the dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into one’s God-relation—that is, converted into a certain religious mode of life. The ethics corresponding to this—an ethics of neighbor love superseding the ‘social morality’ that Silentio, following Hegel, calls the ‘ethical’—would then be the same dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into one’s neighbor-relation. The key to the argument is seeing the need to substitute for the spatial dichotomy ‘interior/exterior,’ which results in so much trouble when comparing Levinas and Kierkegaard, the temporal contraries ‘giving up’ and ‘getting back.’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSpiritual trial is indeed ‘spiritual’ – it is possible only in someone who is not utterly spiritless as Kierkegaard means the word – but it is not true, as Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms occasionally maintain, that it makes sense only as a religious category, unless religious is redefined in radically general terms, as Kierkegaard in fact does, along with the ideas of offense, anxiety, inwardness, and desire. Every existing individual has some minimal acquaintance with spiritual trial, if only as an anxiety about (...) a continual imminent possibility. I argue that spiritual trial, as Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms intend it – although they do not of course put it in these Levinasian terms – is inseparable from a certain phenomenology of the subject that begins with Kierkegaard and that turns spiritual trial into something essential to becoming a self, the result of one’s vulnerability to alterity, one’s anxiety to defend one’s autonomy against the experience of the other as other. Spiritual trial, in Kierkegaard’s strict sense, is therefore best understood as a special form of a very ordinary, basic experience, a kind of primordial trauma, of which Emmanuel Levinas has so far given us the most complete phenomenological description. (shrink)

Millar showed that for each n<ω, there is a complete decidable theory having precisely eighteen nonisomorphic countable models where some of these are decidable exactly in the hyperarithmetic set H. By combining ideas from Millar's proof with a technique of Peretyat'kin, the author reduces the number of countable models to five. By a theorem of Millar, this is the smallest number of countable models a decidable theory can have if some of the models are not 0″-decidable.

In Experience and the Absolute and other works, Jean-Yves Lacoste develops a phenomenology of a way of life he calls “liturgy,” in which one refuses one's being-in-the-world in favor of a more basic form of existence he calls “being-before-God.” In this essay I argue that if there is indeed such a thing as being-before-God, Lacoste has not sufficiently considered the possibility that it is characterized in part by a disturbance of one's being-in-the-world similar to, or perhaps even identical with, the (...) disruptive encounter with the human other that constitutes the self as responsible according to Levinas's unique notion of ethics. Lacoste's dismissal of Levinas, evidently based on a misunderstanding of what Levinas means by the word “ethics,” leads him to overlook the potential relevance of Levinas's ideas to his phenomenological project at a number of significant points in his work. (shrink)

The paper argues that everyday ethical expertise requires an openness to an experience of self-doubt very different from that involved in becoming expert in other skills—namely, an experience of profound vulnerability to the Other similar to that which Emmanuel Levinas has described. Since the experience bears a striking resemblance to that of undergoing cross-examination by Socrates as depicted in Plato’s early dialogues, I illustrate it through a close reading of the Euthyphro, arguing that Euthyphro’s vaunted “expertise” conceals a reluctance to (...) submit himself to the basic process of self-redefinition that results from learning the limits of one’s knowledge. I show how the dialogue itself models the disruptive experience of selfquestioning that leads to moral maturity, providing further evidence that expertise has an important non-cognitive element, as well as casting doubt on the ethical value of seeking “definitions” of the virtues. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in (...) divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)

The flowering of creative and speculative philosophy that emerged in modern Europe--particularly in Germany--is a thrilling adventure story as well as an essential chapter in the history of philosophy. In this integrative narrative, Solomon provides an accessible introduction to the major authors and movements of modern European philosophy, including the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Rousseau, German Idealism, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and the Romantics, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Max Brentano, Meinong, Frege, Dilthey, Bergson, Nietzsche, Husserl, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, hermeneutics, Sartre, Postmodernism, Structuralism, (...) Foucault, and Derrida. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Spirit was Hegel's grandest experiement, changing our vision of the world and the very nature of philosophical enterprise. In this book, Solomon captures the bold and exhilarating spirit, presenting the Phenomenology as a thoroughly personal as well as philosophical work. He begins with a historical introduction, which lays the groundwork for a section-by-section analysis of the Phenomenology. Both the initiated as well as readers unacquainted with the intricacies of German idealism will find this to be an accessible (...) and exciting introduction to this great philosopher's monumental work. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: REASON AND THE PASSIONS i. Philosophy? This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. ...

This volume is a collection of original contributions about the core knowledge in fundamental domains. It includes work on naive physics, such as formal specifications of intuitive theories of spatial relations, time causality, substance and physical objects, and on naive psychology.

The abstract structure of inquiry - the process of acquiring and changing beliefs about the world - is the focus of this book which takes the position that the "pragmatic" rather than the "linguistic" approach better solves the philosophical problems about the nature of mental representation, and better accounts for the phenomena of thought and speech. It discusses propositions and propositional attitudes (the cluster of activities that constitute inquiry) in general and takes up the way beliefs change in response to (...) potential new information, suggesting that conditional propositions should be understood as projections of epistemic policies onto the world.Robert C. Stalnaker is a professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

DO WE CHOOSE OUR EMOTIONS? Can we be held responsible for our anger? for feeling jealousy? for falling in love or succumbing to resentment or hatred? The suggestion sounds odd because emotions are typically considered occurrences that happen to us: emotions are taken to be the hallmark of the irrational and the disruptive. Controlling one’s emotion is supposed to be like the caging and taming of a wild beast, the suppression and sublimation of a Freudian "it.".

Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In (...) Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology. The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -- and we should treat its claims with skepticism. (shrink)

This volume collects thirty years worth of articles on the emotions written by the distinguished philosopher Robert Solomon. Solomon's thesis is that we are significantly responsible for our emotions, which are evaluative judgments that in effect we choose. This is the first of several volumes that document work in the emotions.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, writing over two thousand years before Wall Street, called people who engaged in activities which did not contribute to society "parasites." In his latest work, renowned scholar Robert C. Solomon asserts that though capitalism may require capital, but it does not require, much less should it be defined by the parasites it inevitably attracts. Capitalism has succeeded not with brute strength or because it has made people rich, but because it has produced responsible citizens and--however (...) unevenly--prosperous communities. It cannot tolerate a conception of business that focuses solely on income and vulgarity while ignoring traditional virtues of responsibility, community, and integrity. Many feel that there is too much lip-service and not enough understanding of the importance of cooperation and integrity in corporate life. This book rejects the myths and metaphors of war-like competition that cloud business thinking and develops an "Aristotelean" theory of business. The author's approach emphasizes several core concepts: the corporation as community, the search for excellence, the importance of integrity and sound judgment, as well as a more cooperative and humane vision of business. Solomon stresses the virtues of honesty, trust, fairness, and compassion in the competitive business world, and confronts the problem of "moral mazes" and what he posits as its solution--moral courage. (shrink)

This book sets the record straight about the greater influence of Dilthey than Husserl in Heidegger’s initial formulation of his conception of phenomenology. Scharff shows how, in Heidegger’s early lecture courses, phenomenology is presented as a genuine philosophical alternative, and explores our own current need for a phenomenological philosophy.

Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In (...) Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology. The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -- and we should treat its claims with skepticism. (shrink)

We live our lives through our emotions, writes Robert Solomon, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what moves us, what bores us--all of this defines us, gives us character, constitutes who we are. In True to Our Feelings, Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning to (...) life. Emotions have recently become a highly fashionable area of research in the sciences, with brain imaging uncovering valuable clues as to how we experience our feelings. But while Solomon provides a guide to this cutting-edge research, as well as to what others--philosophers and psychologists--have said on the subject, he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgements we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily, healthily, and well. Solomon highlights some of the dramatic ways that emotions fit into our ethics and our sense of the good life, how we can make our emotional lives more coherent with our values and be more "true to our feelings" and cultivate emotional integrity. The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way. (shrink)

As a procedure, reflective equilibrium is simply a familiar kind of standard scientific method with a new name. A theory is constructed to account for a set of observations. Recalcitrant data may be rejected as noise or explained away as the effects of interference of some sort. Recalcitrant data that cannot be plausibly dismissed force emendations in theory. What counts as a plausible dismissal depends, among other things, on the going theory, as well as on background theory and on knowledge (...) that may be relevant to under-standing the experimental design that is generating the observations, including knowledge of the apparatus and observation conditions. This sort of mutual adjustment between theory and data is a familiar feature of scientific practice. Whatever authority RE seems to have comes, I think, from a tacit or explicit recognition that it has the same form as this familiar sort of scientific inference. One way to see the rationale underlying this procedure in science is to focus on prediction. Think of prediction as a matter of projecting what is known onto uncharted territory. To do this, you need a vehicle—a theory—that captures some invariant or pattern in what is known so that you can project it onto the unknown. How convincing the projection is depends on two factors: how sure one is of the observational base, and how sure one is that the theory gets the invariants right. The two factors are not independent, of course. One's confidence in the observational base will be affected by how persuasively the theory identifies and dismisses noise; one's confidence in the theory, on the other hand, will depend on one's confidence in the observations it takes seriously. Prediction is important as a test of theory precisely because verified predictions seem to show that the theory has correctly captured the general in the particular, that it has got the drift of the observational evidence in which our confidence is ultimately grounded. (shrink)

This is a sustained critique of materialism. The contributors offer arguments from conscious experience, rational thought, the interaction of mind and body, and the unity and persisting identity of human persons, and develop a wide range of alternatives.

In the beginning, there was the DN (Deductive Nomological) model of explanation, articulated by Hempel and Oppenheim (1948). According to DN, scientific explanation is subsumption under natural law. Individual events are explained by deducing them from laws together with initial conditions (or boundary conditions), and laws are explained by deriving them from other more fundamental laws, as, for example, the simple pendulum law is derived from Newton's laws of motion.

The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way.

This book develops a framework for analysing strategic rationality, a notion central to contemporary game theory, which is the formal study of the interaction of rational agents and which has proved extremely fruitful in economics, political theory and business management. The author argues that a logical paradox lies at the root of a number of persistent puzzles in game theory, in particular those concerning rational agents who seek to establish some kind of reputation. Building on the work of Parsons, Burge, (...) Gaifman and Barwise and Etchemendy, Robert Koons constructs a context-sensitive solution to the whole family of liar-like paradoxes including, for the first time, a detailed account of how the interpretation of paradoxical statements is fixed by context. This analysis provides an understanding of how the rational agent model can account for the emergence of rules, practices and institutions. (shrink)

Thoroughly revised for its Second Edition, Foundations for Osteopathic Medicine is the only comprehensive, current osteopathic text. It provides broad, multidisciplinary coverage of osteopathic considerations in the basic sciences, behavioral sciences, family practice and primary care, and the clinical specialties and demonstrates a wide variety of osteopathic manipulative methods. This edition includes new chapters on biomechanics, microbiology and infectious diseases, health promotion and maintenance, osteopathic psychiatry, emergency medicine, neuromusculoskeletal medicine, rehabilitation, sports medicine, progressive inhibition of neuromuscular structures, visceral manipulation, A.T. (...) Still osteopathic methods, treatment of acutely ill hospital patients, somatic dysfunction, clinical research and trials, outcomes research, and biobehavioral interactions with disease and health. Compatibility: BlackBerry(R) OS 4.1 or Higher / iPhone/iPod Touch 2.0 or Higher /Palm OS 3.5 or higher / Palm Pre Classic / Symbian S60, 3rd edition (Nokia) / Windows Mobile(TM) Pocket PC (all versions) / Windows Mobile Smartphone / Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP/Vista/Tablet PC. (shrink)

The cosmological argument for God’s existence has a long history, but perhaps the most influential version of it has been the argument from contingency. This is the version that Frederick Copleston pressed upon Bertrand Russell in their famous debate about God’s existence in 1948 (printed in Russell’s 1957 Why I am not a Christian). Russell’s lodges three objections to the Thomistic argument.

The book covers a broad range of key topics, including theories of properties and particulars, the notion of truth-makers, powers and possibilities, material composition, and a variety of issues related to time and causation.

Reviews the book, Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions by Martha C. Nussbaum . Drawing from an astounding array of sources, Nussbaum argues against the common understanding of emotions as irrational and animalistic impulses disconnected from our thoughts and reason. Rather, she argues that emotions are highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance that are, therefore, suffused with intelligence and discernment. Nussbaum explores the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular, compassion and love, in (...) order to show that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of emotional experience and meaning. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics presents an extensive examination of the key topics, concepts, and guiding principles of metaphysics. Represents the most comprehensive guide to metaphysics available today Offers authoritative coverage of the full range of topics that comprise the field of metaphysics in an accessible manner while considering competing views Explores key concepts such as space, time, powers, universals, and composition with clarity and depth Articulates coherent packages of metaphysical theses that include neo-Aristotelian, Quinean, Armstrongian, (...) and neo-Humean Carefully tracks the use of common assumptions and methodological principles in metaphysics. (shrink)

The book covers a broad range of key topics, including theories of properties and particulars, the notion of truth-makers, powers and possibilities, material composition, and a variety of issues related to time and causation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 112-122 [Access article in PDF] Being in the Dry Zen Landscape Reading Zen In The Rocks — The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden, by François Berthier, trans. with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 166 pp., $20.00. The austere simplicity of Zen rock gardens is also an allusive and elusive one, as the two enjoyable essays that (...) comprise Reading Zen in the Rocks — The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden eloquently indicate. More so than the phenomena they describe, these essays appeal to a wide audience, and they read easily, invitingly, and informatively. In this textual performance, the French art-historian, François Berthier, stands side-by-side with the Scottish philosopher of comparative East-West studies, Graham Parkes, to provide a textual and visual presentation that intends, via an appropriate complementarity of content, to introduce the karesansui (dry landscape) style of Japanese garden to the general reader. Parkes — a masterful and accomplished translator — renders into English, Berthier's 1989 work, Le jardin du Ryoanji — Lire le Zen dans les pierres [The Garden of Ryoanji — Reading Zen in the Rocks], and fills some philosophical gaps with his own equal-length [End Page 112] essay, "The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape Garden." Though judiciously focused to achieve expository economy, the two essays jointly provide a handy introduction to the complicated artistic, philosophic, religious, and cultural phenomenon popularly known as the "Zen rock garden."As a distinguishing landscape-architectural feature of many Zen monasteries in Japan and abroad, the karesansui garden reinforces the contemplative religious atmosphere and, as the frequent photographs of meditating monks quietly positioned in their rock gardens tend to suggest, they guide the perceiver into the calm and earthy mentality typical of Zen Buddhism. Berthier notes, accordingly, that the gardens provide "an image of the [Buddhistically interpreted] universe in its most condensed form" in which people can discern their "true faces" (p. 6). Ideally, one could contemplate a Zen garden and, if one were equipped with the proper background in Zen training, be stimulated to experience a Zen Buddhist enlightenment.Such are the immediate expectations elicited from a book whose cover depicts a Zen monk contemplating an expanse of bare gravel, and which sets the title word "Zen" in large letters over the monk's back. It comes as a surprise, then, that there is far less pure Zen in these essays than one would anticipate from this English-language presentation of Berthier's book. In the French version, as can be seen above, the word "Zen" appears only in the book's subtitle, and the Zen-specific anticipations are more submerged as a result.It would be an overstatement to identify the phrase "Zen rock garden" as a misnomer, but Berthier and Parkes implicitly demonstrate that the karesansui style of Japanese garden is not an exclusively Zen phenomenon, but is intimately linked with Chinese Daoism, Shintoism, not to mention versions of Buddhism that historically precede, and are significantly different from, Zen Buddhism. Perhaps unintentionally, this book raises the question, "What measure of Zen, in fact, do the paradigmatic "Zen" rock gardens such as the garden at Ryoanji (c. 1500, in Kyoto, and the archetype of Japanese dry landscape gardens) embody?"We can approach this question by considering the meaning of the Japanese word, "karesansui," which Parkes translates accurately as "dry landscape." The title of the book announces that the subject is "the Japanese dry landscape garden," but it is important to recall (as one learns briefly in the final pages) the further linguistic resonances of the prefix "kare." What does not emerge through in the usual translation of "kare" as "dry," is the added association to the English term "withered," for one would translate, for instance, the Japanese terms "kare kusa," "kare ashi," "kare giku," and "kareha," as "withered grass," "withered reed," "withered chrysanthemums," and "withered leaves," respectively. The term "kareki" (bare tree), along with the others, also indicates how the prefixed "kare" suggests wintertime, withering, drying out, something that has... (shrink)

Is business ethics a contradiction in terms? Absolutely not, says Robert Solomon. In fact, he maintains that sound ethics is a necessary precondition of any long-term business enterprise, and that excellence in business must exist on the foundation of values that most of us hold dear. Drawing on twenty years of experience consulting with major corporations on ethics, Solomon clarifies the difficult ethical choices all people in business are faced with from time to time. He takes an "Aristotelian" approach (...) to ethical questions, reminding readers that a corporation--like an individual--is embedded in a community, and that corporate values such as fairness and honesty are meaningless until transformed into action. Values--coupled with action--become virtues, and virtues make possible any good business corporate relationship. Without a base of shared values, trust and mutual benefits, today's national and international business world will fall apart. In keeping with his conviction that virtue and profit must thrive together, Solomon both examines the ways in which deficient values actually destroy businesses, and debunks the pervasive myths that encourage unethical business practices. Complete with a working catalog of virtues designed to illustrate the importance of integrity in any business situation, this compelling handbook contains a goldmine of wisdom for either the small business manager or the corporate executive struggling with ethical issues. (shrink)

A discussion of a number of ways that information can be present in a computer program without being explicitly represented.

In recent decades, widespread rejection of positivism’s notorious hostility toward the philosophical tradition has led to renewed debate about the real relationship of philosophy to its history. How History Matters to Philosophy takes a fresh look at this debate. Current discussion usually starts with the question of whether philosophy’s past should matter, but Scharff argues that the very existence of the debate itself demonstrates that it already does matter. After an introductory review of the recent literature, he develops his case (...) in two parts. In Part One, he shows how history actually matters for even Plato’s Socrates, Descartes, and Comte, in spite of their apparent promotion of conspicuously ahistorical Platonic, Cartesian, and Positivistic ideals. In Part Two, Scharff argues that the real issue is not whether history matters; rather it is that we already have a history, a very distinctive and unavoidable inheritance, which paradoxically teaches us that history’s mattering is merely optional. Through interpretations of Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, he describes what thinking in a historically determinate way actually involves, and he considers how to avoid the denial of this condition that our own philosophical inheritance still seems to expect of us. In a brief conclusion, Scharff explains how this book should be read as part of his own effort to acknowledge this condition rather than deny it. (shrink)

In recent decades, widespread rejection of positivism’s notorious hostility toward the philosophical tradition has led to renewed debate about the real relationship of philosophy to its history. _How History Matters to Philosophy_ takes a fresh look at this debate. Current discussion usually starts with the question of whether philosophy’s past _should_ matter, but Scharff argues that the very existence of the debate itself demonstrates that it already _does_ matter. After an introductory review of the recent literature, he develops his case (...) in two parts. In Part One, he shows how history actually matters for even Plato’s Socrates, Descartes, and Comte, in spite of their apparent promotion of conspicuously ahistorical Platonic, Cartesian, and Positivistic ideals. In Part Two, Scharff argues that the real issue is not whether history matters; rather it is that we already have a history, a very distinctive and unavoidable inheritance, which paradoxically teaches us that history’s mattering is merely optional. Through interpretations of Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, he describes what thinking in a historically determinate way actually involves, and he considers how to avoid the denial of this condition that our own philosophical inheritance still seems to expect of us. In a brief conclusion, Scharff explains how this book should be read as part of his own effort to acknowledge this condition rather than deny it. (shrink)