In this study I will present the intellectual development of Schelling, Holderlin and Hegel during their formative years. Because of their similar social origins, the early thought of these young Swabians, during the 1790's, should be treated as a unit. Their experience as roommates at the Stift in Tiibingen and their close intellectual fellowship throughout the nineties made each extremely responsive to the others ideas. As mem bers of the political elite in Wiirttemberg, their intellectual assumptions were profoundly affected (...) by the crisis of Wiirttemberg and German political society and by the events of the French Revolution in a way ex plicable only in the light of their Swabian heritage. So, for example, seen in the context of HOlderlin's and Schelling's thinking, the genesis of Hegel's earliest mature philosophical assumptions appears to be not so much an event in the history of philosophy as a specific solution to the problems raised by the crisis of his society. The crucial role of Holderlin in the history of German Idealism should also become apparent as a result of this study. For reasons developed in the following, Holderlin's thinking bridged the gap not only between Kantianism and the new philosophy, which was to come to fruition in Hegel's mature thought, but also between the republican and the natio nalist phase in the history of German political thought. (shrink)

CHAPTER I SETTING Hegel, perhaps the most self-questioning of all philosophers, was well aware that his thought was a response to intense social dislocation ...

there can be little doubt that in its influence on the development of post-Kantian German Idealism, Spinoza’s philosophy is second only to Kant’s. Important strands of philosophical debate within the idealist movement go back to the famous dispute on Spinozism that is triggered by Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza. Idealists like Maimon, Schelling, and Hegel thoroughly engaged with Spinoza’s writings, and Schelling himself even adopts a version of Spinozism at some stages of his career. Yet, while a (...) substantive amount of scholarship has been devoted to Spinoza’s influence on the idealist movement,1 there is surprisingly little discussion in the literature about the idealists’ views on one of the most crucial... (shrink)

Ce premier tome de Essais et conférences de Franz Brentano comporte seize études qui, pour la plupart, paraissent pour la première fois en traduction française. Ces textes sont regroupés dans quatre sections qui portent respectivement sur l'état de la philosophie et ses principes, sa philosophie de l'histoire et sa théorie des quatre phases, ses réflexions sur les philosophes Auguste Comte, Plotin, Schelling et Thomas d'Aquin, et finalement son débat avec Édouard Zeller, l'auteur de La philosophie des Grecs, autour (...) de l'interprétation de la philosophie d'Aristote. Ce volume comprend en outre une introduction substantielle visant à contextualiser chacune des contributions du philosophe viennois. (shrink)

This book’s goal is to give an intellectual context for the following manuscript. -/- Includes bibliographical references and an index. Pages 1-123. 1). Philosophy. 2). Metaphysics. 3). Philosophy, German. 4). Philosophy, German -- 18th century. 5). Philosophy, German and Greek Influences Metaphysics. I. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich -- 1770-1831 -- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus. II. Rosenzweig, Franz, -- 1886-1929. III. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, -- 1775-1854. IV. Hölderlin, Friedrich, -- 1770-1843. V. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-. (...) [Translation from German into English of the-- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus.]. -/- Note: the manuscript is in the handwriting of G.W.F. Hegel, but the actual authorship is disputed. No date is given. Franz Rosenzweig made up the title as it is known today. He published the text in 1917. At that time, F. Rosenzweig thought F.W.J. Schelling was the author. No one has read this book for errors. As always, any errors, mistakes or oversights etc. are mine alone. Given a couple more years, I could improve this book. This is a philosophical translation and not a philological translation. Martin Luther who did the famous early translation of the Bible into German wrote in a letter, “If anyone does not like my translation, they can ignore it… (September 15, 1530)”. There are no ‘correct’ translations. Some are just better than other translations. -/- The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism. The German title is: Das Älteste Systemprogramm Des Deutschen Idealismus. This title was made up by Franz Rosenzweig in 1917, when he first published the manuscript. He found the manuscript in the Royal Library in Berlin in 1913. The manuscript suggested date is around 1796 and was done by handwriting research. However, the manuscript is not dated. The Prussian State Library auctioned in March 1913 from the auction of the house Liepmannssohn in Berlin a single sheet on the front and back with Hegel's cursive handwriting. The manuscript was lost during WWII. But Dieter Henrich found it again in 1979 in the “Biblioteka Jagiellonska” in Krakow (Poland), where it is today. Address: Jagiellonian Library, Jagiellonian University, al. Mickiewicza 22, 30-059 Cracow, Poland. Later research suggests that manuscript had come from the estate of Hegel’s student Friedrich Christoph Förster (1791-1868). He was one of the editors of Hegel’s posthumous works and most likely had access to a number of Hegel’s manuscripts. This text actually being one of them. Hegel traveled around Bohemia with Marie and Friedrich Christoph Förster around the year 1820-21 (see Klaus Vieweg). -/- Philosophical mystery -- who is the author or authors of this text? -/- Take a plunge into the deep and cold waters. Maybe a quagmire or quandary, but decidedly interesting. This project is to contextualize an old handwritten manuscript which is about 225 years old. The actual author is a mystery. I offer my own assessment. You can make your own assessments. The mystery has continued to unfold since 1917. There is plenty to read. Otherwise, think about the authorship and read more of the German philosophers and authors from this period and enjoy the depth of thinking and philosophizing. On one hand, there is just the sheer fun in the puzzle of the authorship questions; and on the other hand, these are the alluring thoughts that lead to the nascent stage of German Idealism and our intellectual heritage. There is no end to the accolades for this group of philosophers. A heritage that we still hear in in our attempts to move forward into our future. -/- Do your own astute exegesis (ἐξήγησις) as all paths are still open. Let your thought take to the wings of what is called thinking with this text. Critical encounters (Auseinandersetzung, or a Gegenüberstellung) with at least: Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) --- starts here! German Idealism. We are not going to study this situation endlessly, instead we make some broad strokes and provide you a general context. You are allowed to read between the lines too. Goal: to understand the overall affinity and differences between the intellectuals of this period in German history; and to come to grips with this demanding text within its large scholarly context in the last 100 years. There are no final answers. (shrink)

When Emmanuel Levinas writes that Franz Rosenzweig’s Stern der Erlösung is “a work too often present in this book to be cited,” he effectively names his debt to F. W. J. Schelling as well, for Rosenzweig’s work was a sustained attempt to carry to completion Schelling’s great philosophical fragment, the Weltalter. Scholars of Levinas have explored Levinas’s relationship to Schelling, but I confess that, as a Schelling scholar, I knew nothing of this connection until rather (...) recently. I credit above all the energetic work of Jason Wirth for helping me see its importance — and more generally the importance of reading Schelling in the context of recent work in continental philosophy. None of this has been easy. The very thing that Schelling and Levinas have in common, their resistance to the implicit solipsism of overcoming mystery with clarity, make them poor candidates for quick appropriation and comparison. Indeed, Schelling anticipated Nietzsche by openly mocking the scholars who make it their business to “appropriate and compare.” Mockery and ridicule is, ofcourse, not Levinas’s way of going about things. Even so, he too is so relentless in his polemic against the totalizing desire to know that he forces his reader to pause and question just what a proper scholarly response to his work might be. As such, the very first result of taking up the question of Schelling and Levinas might be that we are forced to set aside the scholarly mask, testimony of one’s acquiescence to the order of the same, in order to step forth as the human beings that we are. Whether this is an act of humility or of arrogance is not at all clear. Dispensing with the pretense of knowledge takes a kind of boldness on our part — for what but knowledge might give us a claim to the attention of others? (shrink)

When Emmanuel Levinas writes (in the preface of Totality and Infinity) that Franz Rosenzweig’s Stern der Erlösung is “a work too often present in this book to be cited,” he effectively names his debt to F. W. J. Schelling as well, for Rosenzweig’s work was a sustained attempt to carry to completion Schelling’s great philosophical fragment, the Weltalter. Scholars of Levinas have explored Levinas’s relationship to Schelling, but I confess that, as a Schelling scholar, I (...) knew nothing of this connection until rather recently. I credit above all the energetic work of Jason Wirth for helping me see its importance — and more generally the importance of reading Schelling in the context of recent work in continental philosophy. None of this has been easy. The very thing that Schelling and Levinas have in common, their resistance to the implicit solipsism of overcoming mystery with clarity, make them poor candidates for quick appropriation and comparison. Indeed, Schelling anticipated Nietzsche by openly mocking the scholars who make it their business to “appropriate and compare.” Mockery and ridicule is, ofcourse, not Levinas’s way of going about things. Even so, he too is so relentless in his polemic against the totalizing desire to know that he forces his reader to pause and question just what a proper scholarly response to his work might be. As such, the very first result of taking up the question of Schelling and Levinas might be that we are forced to set aside the scholarly mask, testimony of one’s acquiescence to the order of the same, in order to step forth as the human beings that we are. Whether this is an act of humility or of arrogance is not at all clear. Dispensing with the pretense of knowledge takes a kind of boldness on our part — for what but knowledge might give us a claim to the attention of others? (shrink)

Although peer review provides the primary mechamism for allocating research funds, very few people have undertaken any serious study of the issue. Most of the literature surrounding peer review comes from individuals who have experienced specific problems with the system. The one detail that does stand out is that though policy makers and researchers seem to view peer review as a specific process, no single form exists. In fact, almost agency and foundation has its own unique process. This presentation will (...) explore the concept of peer review and highlight its strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

Mysticism played an important role in the works of Schelling, not only after 1806, that is not only after he went to Munich and came into contact with Franz von Baader, but already at the beginning of his literary career in the 1790s. It seems that he already knows Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons in 1795, namely as he writes the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, because he uses the concepts ‘grundlos’ and ‘unmittelbar’ in a way we also (...) find in Eckhart’s works. The Mystical thought is crucial to understand not only Schelling’s Identity philosophy, but even his reception of Kant, Spinoza and Fichte’s Doctrine of Science. Yet, these conclusions do not show that Eckhart’s mysticism had paved the way for modern thought, but rather that German Idealism means an attempt at redefinition of modernity, which has his roots in mystical thought. (shrink)

This paper examines the controversy between Franz von Baader and Schelling as it takes place in Schelling’s lecture course Das System der Weltalter. This particular instance of their disagreement involves Schelling criticising Baader for his notion of the biblical Elohim as divine proxies. The paper first provides a background to Baader-Schelling philosophical feud before examining Schelling’s remarks against Baader in the System der Weltalter. Then, Baader’s writings on Elohim are looked into in the light (...) of their connection to Baader’s conception of creation as falling-away and Baader’s source for interpreting Elohim as proxies, including Saint Martin and Kabbalah. Thereafter, Schelling’s criticism of Baader is analysed and interpreted in the context of the System der Weltalter. The paper aims to achieve several things: to show the presence of distorted kabbalistic influence in Baader and its discussion in Schelling; to revise Koslowski’s view on Baader’s creation narrative by pointing out how Baader’s Elohim/divine proxies function to form a rather dualistic relation between God and creation; and to interpret Schelling’s convoluted and difficult reply to Baader displaying that at stake between the two thinkers were questions of God’s ineffability and freedom as well as God’s involvement into creation. (shrink)

Saitya Brata Das rigorously examines Schelling's theologico-political works and sets his thought against his more dominant contemporary, Hegel. Das argues that Schelling inaugurates a new thinking outside of Occidental metaphysics, by a paradoxical manner of exit, which prepares for the post-metaphysical philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida. This new reflection, outside of the Universal world-historical politics of modernity, is achieved by re-thinking religion as eschatology. Intervening in contemporary debates on post-secularism and the return to (...) religion, Das shows that religion, in an essential sense, always opens up infinitude from the heart of finitude, to an irreducible outside of the profane order of worldly hegemonies. Religion here assumes a negative political theology of exception without sovereign power. (shrink)

As is well known, the renowned Hegel scholar, Franz Rosenzweig, had a dramatic break with Hegel in particular and German Idealism more broadly, as strikingly evidenced in his magnum opus, The Star of Redemption. In the third or 1815 draft of Die Weltalter, Schelling writes that while “all thinking must begin the dialectic, it cannot end in the dialectic.” Schelling continued his turn toward what he called “positive philosophy,” which emerges “toto caelo” differently than from the “universality” (...) and “indeterminacy” of negative thought. What is this new mode of thought, born—both for Schelling and for his unexpected admirer Rosenzweig—from the limitations of negative thought? How does one characterize this rupture within Idealism itself? (shrink)

In this article, the authors explore how technology has helped erode society’s conceptions of justice. Law, via juridification, has replaced the concept of justice with one of efficiency. The authors argue that this has been largely a result of the destruction of society’s common story or vision and the introduction of the computer and the Internet as tools enabling technique to replace that story. They offer a perspective on how justice operated in traditional societies, using the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Finally, (...) the authors ask what might be done to recover the best features of what has been lost and create a new common story to help guide society’s conception of justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Controversy Between Schelling and Jacobi LEWIS S. FORD SCHELLING, ALONGWITH FICHTE, has suffered the fate of being labelled one of tIegel's predecessors. Richard Kroner provides the classic expression of this viewpoint in his monumental study, Von Kant bis Hegel, which examines Schelling's thought primarily for its contribution to Hegel's final synthesis.I In English we have Josiah Royce's sympathetic and lively account of Schelling's early (...) romantic exuberance, regarded as a transitional stage in the development of German idealism. 2 But this emphasis on the early ScheUing has led to an unfortunate neglect of his work subsequent to the break with Hegel in 1807. Schelling's romanticism, so ably documented by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., 3 can only be regarded as one phase in the total sweep of his thought, for, after the break with Hegel, Schelling produced at least three major works: the essay •ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit,4 wrestling with the problem of evil and human freedom, the fragmentary Weltalter, 5 which in scope and dialectical intricacy should be compared with Hegel's Logic, and the Philosophie der Mythologie und Offenbarung, 6 furnishing a fundamental critique of the whole dialectical enterprise. Save for the essay on human freedom, however, none of these works were published during his lifetinm, as Schelling withdrew from the public eye after his controversies with Hegel and Jacobi. Thus the publishing histories of Schelling and Hegel are exactly reverse. Schelling rushed into print his early speculative gropings, while Hegel suppressed his/making the Ph~nomenologic des Geistes his first major publication. Then while Hegel's Logic and Encyclopedia were being publicly acclaimed, Schelling remained silent. This accident of history is largely responsible for the illusion that Schelling is the older of the two x (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1921-24),2 vols. 2The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892), Lecture VI, 164-189. Wordsworth and ScheUing, A Typological Study of Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960),Yale Studies in English, Vol. CXLV. 4Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph yon Sehelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen i~berdas Wesen der menschlichen Freyheit und die damit zusaramenhdngenden Gegenstdnde, 1809. Reprinted in the Sdmmtliche Werke, Erste Abtheilung, VII. Band (Stuttgart und Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856), 331-416. English translation by James Gutmann: Of Human Freedom (Chicago: Open Court, 1936). 5Three fragmentary versions of the Weltalter have been published. The Urfassungen of 1811 and 1813were edited by Manfrcd SehrSter and published as a separate Naehlassband to the M~nchener Jubildumsausgabe of the collected works: Die Weltalter, Fragmente (Munich: Biederstein, Leibniz, 1946). A later version is published in S.W. I: 8, pp. 195-344,which has been translated by Frederick de Wolfe Bolman, Jr. : The Ages of the World (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1942). 6Philosophie der Mythologie is published in S.W. II: 1-2; Philosophie der Offenbarung in S.W. II: 3-4. These essays were first collected and published by Herman Nohl in Hegels theologische Jugendschriften (Tiibingen: 1907).T. M. Knox translated them into English, with an introduction by Richard Kroner: GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Early Theological Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). [75] 76 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thinkers (actually he was five years Hegel's junior), who retired from the philosophical scene after making his contribution to the Hegelian synthesis. Paul Tillich's doctoral dissertations s and Ernst Cassirer's studies in post-Kantian thought 9 made serious inroads on this conception, yet the iIInsion persisted. Their insistence on the importance of the later Schelling has been brilliantly sustained by two recent studies: Horst Fuhrmans's Schellings Philosophie der Weltalter1~and Walter Schulz's Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spdtphilosophie Schellings, ~ and we may hope that the conventional estimate of Schelling will be drastically revised. Fuhrmans has demonstrated that the split between the early and the later Schelling must be placed in the year 1806 when he came in contact with Franz yon Bander in Munich, who encouraged him to delve deeper into the theological and cosmological ramifications of Jacob Boehme's thought. TM The reorientation this caused is apparent in the essay on human freedom, published in 1809, but it was not fully exploited until the... (shrink)

Il concetto di nulla viene assunto come chiave ermeneutica per accostare la proposta teoretica di uno dei maggiori rappresentanti del pensiero ebraico contemporaneo: Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929). Attraverso l'analisi dei luoghi, delle accezioni e delle valenze con cui il nulla si presenta nelle pagine della "Stella della redenzione", si evidenzia come ai diversi significati attribuiti da Rosenzweig a questo concetto corrispondano differenti modi di intendere la filosofia. I temi della filosofia del nulla, della creatio ex nihilo e della morte intesa (...) come nulla esistenziale scandiscono la lettura dell'opus maius di Rosenzweig e mostrano come egli, nel teorizzare un "nuovo pensiero" che vuole rendere conto dell'esperienza religiosa attraverso categorie alternative a quelle onnicomprensive della tradizione filosofica, rimanga per certi versi ancora legato all'idealismo critico. (shrink)

Public reason as a political ideal aims to reconcile reasonable disagreement; however, is public reason itself the object of reasonable disagreement? Jonathan Quong, David Estlund, Andrew Lister, and some other philosophers maintain that public reason is beyond reasonable disagreement. I argue this view is untenable. In addition, I consider briefly whether or not two main versions of the public reason principle, namely, the consensus version and the convergence version, need to satisfy their own requirements. My discussion has several important implications (...) for the debate on public reason. (shrink)

Much of contemporary political philosophy revolves around debates over perfectionism, which is the view that the state may, or should, promote valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are worthless or bad. Collis Tahzib has recently proposed a unique theory of perfectionism. I examine two central aspects of his theory: the amalgamation of public reason and perfectionism, and the employment of the Rawlsian lexical priority. I argue that Tahzib’s idea of perfectionist public reason has certain serious problems. (...) Additionally, Tahzib, like many other perfectionists, has neglected that many excellences are at once personal and civic. I sketch a perfectionist account of civic virtue, with the hope of opening up space for defending and justifying perfectionism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Common Sense and Theological 9 9 Exper_,ence on the Bas s o,f Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy NATHAN ROTENSTREICH The position of Franz Rosenzweig's thinking within the framework of presentday philosophy is difficult to ascertain. Though he was deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition, his chief work, The Star o] Redemption (Der Stern der Erlgsung, 1921), was conceived outside the main discussions of the philosophical controversy in the twenties. (...) He formulated his ideas side by side with the trends of German philosophy, but not by way of keeping pace with these trends. Yet his polemic against traditional philosophy in general, and against idealism in particular brings Rosenzweig close to the character of the rebellion represented by Existenz-Philosophie. 1 I The question of grounding a philosophical system or a set of philosophical ideas with an objective toward faith clearly poses the difficulty, in terms of the ultimate authority, of maintaining the validity of such a system of ideas. Could that authority be reason, which as a source of ideas and confirmation is outside faith while having consequences or expressions within the scope of faith? Or is faith, asserting the existence of God and his relations to world and man, an independent source? In case faith is an independent source, does it have the guarantee of its validity in its own boundaries, or does it still point to a source of validity which is outside faith and yet is not reason? It seems that Franz Rosenzweig was willy-nilly in his concern with this question. As said before the first approach would have been to construct a system along rational lines. This, however, would have done violence to a basic anti-rationalistic trait in Rosenzweig's thinking that can be clearly discerned in his The Star o] Redemption, in his Kleinere Schri]ten and in his small book, Understanding the Sick and Healthy, published until now in English only. Rosenzweig's criticism of rationalism may be summed up as follows: a) Reason strives for a unified conception of the world; and in support of this monistic fiction its assimilative energy is ready to seize upon all arguments that militate against the doctrines and practices of faith. b) Reason tends to ignore the existence of the individual which it regards as 1On the relation between Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger, see Karl LSwith, "M. Heideggerand F. Rosenzweigor Temporality and Eternity," Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch,III (Sept., 1942),53-77. [353] 354 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY merely one of the variations of an all-inclusive unity. The question of the relation of the particular to the general or of the individual to the whole, which has engrossed philosophers since time immemorial, has no place in rationalistic systems. c) Since reason places the understanding above the things to be understood (and hence also above the data of religious experience, including the existence of God), we find that from a speculative and historical point of view rationalism has a strong bias against religion or theology. The other way open to Rosenzweig was to rely on the principle of Revelation, but he could not adopt this principle as the basis of his system for the following reasons" a) The first reason can be understood from Schelling's paradox: He who adheres to Revelation does not philosophize, and he who philosophizes finds Revelation inadequate for his purposes. Since Rosenzweig was basically a philosopher --despite his protestations to the contrary--he was precluded by that very fact from appealing to the evidence furnished by Revelation. On the contrary, he sought to find a non-rational basis for Revelation itself. b) The second reason that precluded Rosenzweig from taking the traditional course of relying on Revelation is implicit in that principle itself as Rosenzweig understood it. Revelation in his system has no enlightening or cognitive significance, or what is called in Christian theology Kerygma, instructive knowledge. In Revelation, he says, God reveals only revelation; He reveals himself to man and to man alone.2 In his view, then, Revelation does not transmit informative content and hence has no dogmatic significance. It is a dialogue that posits the existence of the participants, the existence of God, and (highly important for... (shrink)

This book is a survey of the most important developments in Austrian philosophy in its classical period from the 1870s to the Anschluss in 1938. Thus it is intended as a contribution to the history of philosophy. But I hope that it will be seen also as a contribution to philosophy in its own right as an attempt to philosophize in the spirit of those, above all Roderick Chisholm, Rudolf Haller, Kevin Mulligan and Peter Simons, who have done so much (...) to demonstrate the continued fertility of the ideas and methods of the Austrian philosophers in our own day. For some time now, historians of philosophy have been gradually coming to terms with the idea that post-Kantian philosophy in the German-speaking world ought properly to be divided into two distinct traditions which we might refer to as the German and Austrian traditions, respectively. The main line of the first consists in a list of personages beginning with Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Schelling and ending with Heidegger, Adorno and Bloch. The main line of the second may be picked out similarly by means of a list beginning with Bolzano, Mach and Meinong, and ending with Wittgenstein, Neurath and Popper. As should be clear, it is the Austrian tradition that has contributed most to the contemporary mainstream of philosophical thinking in the Anglo-Saxon world. For while there are of course German thinkers who have made crucial contributions to the development of exact or analytic philosophy, such thinkers were outsiders when seen from the perspective of native German philosophical culture, and in fact a number of them found their philosophical home precisely in Vienna. When, in contrast, we examine the influence of the Austrian line, we encounter a whole series of familiar and unfamiliar links to the characteristic concerns of more recent philosophy of the analytic sort. As Michael Dummett points out in his Origins of Analytic Philosophy, the newly fashionable habit of referring to analytic philosophy as "Anglo-American" is in this light a "grave historical distortion". If, he says, we take into account the historical context in which analytic philosophy developed, then such philosophy "could at least as well be called "Anglo-Austrian" (1988, p. 7). Much valuable scholarly work has been done on the thinking of Husserl and Wittgenstein, Mach and the Vienna Circle. The central axis of Austrian philosophy, however, which as I hope to show in what follows is constituted by the work of Brentano and his school, is still rather poorly understood. Work on Meinong or Twardowski by contemporary philosophers still standardly rests upon simplified and often confused renderings of a few favoured theses taken out of context. Little attention is paid to original sources, and little effort is devoted to establishing what the problems were by which the Austrian philosophers in general were exercised -- in spite of the fact that many of these same problems have once more become important as a result of the contemporary burgeoning of interest on the part of philosophers in problems in the field of cognitive science. (shrink)

Some Confucian scholars have recently claimed that Confucian political meritocracy is superior to Western democracy. I have great reservations about such a view. . . .

Author of a short study on Franz von Baader Klaus, Hemmerle presents us now with a longer study on the last philosophy of Schelling. The book sets out to be an exercise in Mitdenken. Instead of accumulating footnotes and going through the usual painstaking ways of a scholarly exegesis of texts, Hemmerle tries to think with Schelling, along the lines of Schelling's thought; and he does this a rather original way. Motivated by a genuine enthusiasm for (...) Schelling, Hemmerle paraphrases and comments on the difficult notions of the so-often enigmatic Spätphilosophie in a freely flowing, dynamic and truly suggestive language. He manages to keep the abstractions fascinating and the difficult arguments attractive. Yet in his admiration for his chosen author he becomes somewhat less than critical, expounding the most questionable constructs of the old Schelling as self-evident products of human thinking; and he does all this without any attempt at situating the teacher of the negative and positive philosophies in the general framework of the history of philosophy--or even in that of his own previous systems. The central theme of the book is God, the God to whom philosophy cannot reach out by itself but who descends to the philosophical thinking. How this God still remains a God for philosophy is the central problem of the late Schelling. Visibly inspired by the provocative studies of W. Schulz yet displaying a real originality, this book seems to us a rather unusual contribution to the growing literature on the late Schelling.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1933 but prevented from distribution in Nazi Germany, serves as an introduction to a German philosopher who, together with Martin Buber, attempted to rethink the central motifs of existentialist philosophy from the perspective of Jewish faith and tradition. The author provides an outline of the over-all content of this philosophy. In particular she stresses Rosenzweig's debt to the later Schelling and the main themes of his major work, The Star of Salvation.--D. D. O.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Il y a and the UngrundLevinas and the Russian Existentialists Berdyaev and ShestovJames McLachlan (bio)Western philosophy coincides with the disclosure of the other where the other, in manifesting itself as a being, loses its alterity. From its infancy philosophy has been struck with a horror of the other than remains other — with an insurmountable allergy. It is for this reason that it is essentially a philosophy of (...) being, that the comprehension of being is its last word, and the fundamental structure of man.... The God of the philosophers... is a god adequate to reason, a comprehended god who could not trouble the autonomy of consciousness, which finds itself again in all its adventures, returning home to itself like Ulysses, who through all his peregrinations is only on the way to his native island.— Emmanuel Levinas, “The Trace of the Other”Levinas is well known for his assault of the history of Western ontology and its allergy to otherness. In seeing all in terms of Being, philosophy subordinates ethics to ontology by reducing the other to an object of knowledge within Being. Recent work by Fiona Steinkamp, Joseph Lawrence, and Drew Dalton has called attention to a possible [End Page 213] dialogue between Schelling (especially the middle Schelling of Philosophical Investigation into the Essence of Human Freedom and The Ages of the World) and Levinas.1 Joseph Lawrence shows both Schelling and Levinas struggle with the difficulty of thinking the Good beyond being. Schelling thought that the very quest for reality forces us to philosophize from the point of view of practical rather than theoretical reason. He thought there is no adequate theoretical refutation of solipsism but there is a perfectly good practical refutation: to the extent that I treat others as real they reveal themselves as real to me. Lawrence points to Schelling’s claim in Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, “This is the secret of love, that it unites such beings as could each exist in itself, and nonetheless neither is nor can be without the other.”2The parallels between Schelling and Levinas are rooted in the latter’s appreciation of Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption. In the introduction to Totality and Infinity, Levinas famously notes that Rosenzweig’s masterpiece was “too often present in this book to be cited” (TI 28). Rosenzweig’s debt to Schelling is well documented. He carried The Ages of the World to the front with him in World War One and refers to it in correspondence. He even wrote, “It’s a great book to the last, had it been completed nobody except the Jews would give two hoots for the Star.”3 This is, without doubt, the correct historical stream to follow in connection with the relation between Schelling and Levinas and the proper way to see the connections between such Levinasian notions as the “there is” and hypostasis and the Schellingian conceptions that reflect similar ideas as the Ungrund, the emergence of the personal from the impersonal ground, and, above all, the importance of the practical ethical move beyond ontology.But there were also contemporaries holding such philosophical views in the Paris of the 1930s, and they can be seen to reinforce such positions. What is more striking is they come from Levinas’s fellow émigrés: Lev Shestov, Nicolas Berdyaev, and Alexandre Koyré. In one way or another, each either championed positions that emphasized the emergence of the particular from the general, rejected ontology, [End Page 214] or attacked the entire Western metaphysical tradition stemming from Parmenides for reasons similar to those held by Levinas. Levinas’s appreciation of Dostoevsky is also an important in connection to some of the ideas shared by Levinas, his fellow émigrés, and Schelling.4The Russian émigrés Shestov and Berdyaev were both Dostoevsky disciples; each offered major and influential studies on Dostoevsky and each viewed the novelist in quite different ways through the lens of each one’s philosophical position that had, in part, been formed by each thinker’s reading of Dostoevsky.5 Levinas’s friend, a student of Edmund Husserl, the philosopher of science Alexandre Koyré’s 1929 dissertation later... (shrink)

The interesting target article by Morsella et al. addresses critical issues that impact our understanding of consciousness. It is surprising, however, to see no treatment of the relationship between attention and consciousness, particularly given available models. Whether olfaction is most suitable as a model system to study consciousness for action also seems questionable. These issues are elaborated in the present commentary.

Something in the world tears away, jumps out, approaches... A world that approaches is a world that is alive and vivid. This applies not only to the existing natural world, but also to what humans create, which, in form the form of artifacts - from the hand-held ax to linguistic theory - also approaches design in terms of both object and challenge.

The move to patient-centered medical practice is important for providing relevant and sustainable health care. Narrative medicine, for example, suggests that patients should be involved significantly in diagnosis and treatment. In order to understand the meaning of symptoms and interventions, therefore, physicians must enter the life worlds of patients. But physicians face high patient loads and limited time for extended consultations. In current medical practice, then, is narrative medicine possible? We argue that engaging patient perspectives in the medical visit does (...) not necessarily require a lengthy interview. Instead, a new orientation to this process that emphasizes dialogue between practitioners and patients should be considered. In this new model, the purpose of the visit is to communicate successfully and develop a mutual understanding of illness and care. (shrink)

The Politics of the Soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience includes eight essays examining one of the most profound studies of religious experience to appear in the last century: that of the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. Voegelin is increasingly recognized as a political theorist of exceptional scope and erudition and the most important philosopher of his time since Toynbee, and his treatment of religious experience is a crucial part of his overall analysis of existence and history. This collection of essays (...) by prominenet Voegelin scholars is the first book to explore the relevance of that analysis to the contemporary understanding of political theory, theology, history, and philosophy of consciousness, and as such it constitutes a significant contribution not only to Voegelin scholarship but to the current quest for theoretical foundations. (shrink)

Support for the proposed dorsal-ventral distinction for the somatosensory system is not yet convincing, nor is the anatomical segregation of its pathways as clearly defined as the visual pathways. Consideration of alternative organizational principles might reveal critical differences across sensory processing systems. The role of attention and manipulations that modulate functional systems might also be worth considering.