The point of departure in this work is a defense against that view which would hold Hegel to be a glorifier of the Prussian state, a reactionary, and an enemy of freedom. Hegel, as the work illustrates, recognized that the French Revolution only annihilated what was already in itself destroyed; and he saluted it with "rapture" as the coming of a "new dawn" in the preface of the Encyclopaedia. He continued to celebrate its anniversary even while at the same time (...) and with no less intensity holding before himself an awareness of the dangers and horrors which it occasioned. In fact, Ritter submits that one might well understand the idea of freedom brandished by the Revolution to be the fundamental element of Hegel’s entire philosophy. Hegel disengages the notion of freedom from all previous connections which, over the centuries, have distorted it, and recovers the classic definition of Aristotle : "free is the man who is for himself and not for another." Political order must guarantee this possibility. The problem posited by the Revolution is: how? Hegel, the supposed "reactionary," in all his writings, both public and private, was consistently opposed, and occasionally with passion, to any political restoration. Yet one should also take notice of Hegel’s extreme and profound antipathy for the associations of students and demagogical movements, which he saw had no rapport with the real political and historical events of the time. Both the romantic liberal and the romantic conservative united in "hatred against the law." They were concerned not with freedom as such, but with political activity which pretended to be in its service, spewing platitudes which would renounce all searching knowledge and make truth an affair of the heart, the soul, or enthusiasm. Hegel alone, with perhaps the exception of Goethe, perceived the profound danger of anarchy revealed in these movements, a danger menacing to all, when one elevates pure subjectivity and sentiment to the rank of norm for political structures. The Revolution was accompanied by the dissolution of all the representations, concepts, and norms of the previous world as if they had been the fabric of dreams. In the face of this event, along with that of the constant danger of anarchy, philosophy must furnish the ideas which can determine that which can be conserved and that which can no longer survive. For both the advocates of restoration and the revolutionaries the Revolution was understood to be the end of previous history, the severing of man from his past: one wanted merely to recover it, the other to bury it. This scission, together with the real power which it has exerted on man and his conscience, is the fundamental structure of the new age. The remainder of the current study pursues the development of this scission, revealing the inner contradiction of the poles when taken alone: the scission itself to be the unity of historic existence in the form of subjectivity and objectivity; and the scission to find its objective expression in modern civil society. There is an on-going enrichment in the notion of freedom until it finds its fulfillment in the modern State, which assures freedom by providing the structures through which it can exist. Most of what should be said is said, although Ritter’s presentation occasionally harbors some confusion, a common and probably inescapable fate when one cuts in on the dialectic to forage for an isolated topic. Still, the book achieves its goal with admirable success, and is certainly a valuable tract on Hegel vis-à-vis the notion of political freedom. The main work is a translation from the German original; it is followed by an address which develops the material in the Philosophy of Right, § 34-81; and the book concludes with a rather amazing fifty-page bibliography citing the influence exercised by Hegel’s political theory throughout the nineteenth century.—R. J. G. (shrink)

A careful, often meticulous, analysis of Kant's key terms, method, and major doctrines in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic. De Coninck argues that Kant's transcendental method is essentially analytic, assuming only a conception of human knowledge or "experience" and the principle of non-contradiction. A further volume is promised, in which the author will make his own evaluation of the Critical Philosophy.--R. H.

Ever since the publication of L'Etre et le Néant in 1942, the intellectual world has awaited the promised publication of Sartre's ethics and political philosophy. During this period Sartre became deeply involved in politics and has moved closer to the Communist line. Now we have this massive volume which is designed to pave the way toward a reconciliation of Existentialism and Marxism. In a manner reminiscent of Hegel, Sartre traces the dialectical passage from the individual through the series --"a plurality (...) of solitudes"---to the dynamic group. Throughout, Sartre's psychological insight is evident, but the attempted union of Existentialism and Marxism seems both desperate and forced.--R. J. B. (shrink)

In this volume are collected sixteen previously-published essays dealing with sociology's peculiarity as a science, and with such general problems in sociological thinking as ideology, technology, culture, and the search for community. Ferrarotti's guiding principle is that truth is "intersubjective reality," and his goal is "to accept the other man as man" and thus to "guarantee the opening towards existential involvement with the truth-truth as participation."--R. C. D.

Section Philosophique, No. 39. Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1955. 227 pp. 245 fr. B.--A Thomistic defense of Plato against Gilson's criticism of "essentialism." The first of the book's two sections, that dealing with "ascending" dialectic, argues that 1) Being or intelligible Form is not merely essence, but is considered as existent, 2) Plato proves the existence of a transcendent and supreme Being, and 3) the supreme Being whose existence is proven in the Republic is identical with the primary object of (...) the intellect defined in the Symposium. The second section, on "descending" dialectic, treats the problems of participation, and attempts to derive the world of becoming from the world of Forms, without, however, accepting a neo-Platonic account of emanations. An interesting, but highly controversial interpretation of Plato. --A. R. (shrink)

A revised edition of a selection of paragraphs and sayings from the writings of Santayana. The present edition is brought up to date by including selections from Dominations and Powers and My Host the World. While the selections are too brief to reveal the structure and development of Santayana's thought, they wet one's intellectual appetite for a more serious study of Santayana's writings.—R. J. B.

In this brief essay Vanhoutte treats the complex structure of the Gorgias with remarkable care. Freedom and constraint in human responses and in the form of discussion are the key strands he separates.--R. P.

En su Tratado sobre los principios del conocimiento humano, George Berkeley ofrece una serie de argumentos cuyo objetivo es criticar la tesis materialista. Mi propósito en este artículo es reconstruir y analizar en detalle estos argumentos. Dado que la crítica de Berkeley al materialismo es, fundamentalmente, una crítica al materialismo representacionalista de John Locke, empezaré este artículo explicando cuáles son las ideas básicas de la propuesta de Locke.

(2005). George R. Lucas, Jr. & W. Rick Rubel's (Eds) Ethics and the Military Profession: The Moral Foundations of Leadership and Case Studies in Military Ethics. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 214-219. doi: 10.1080/15027570500197453.

In this essay I will try to show that there are what would appear to be some unnoticed consequences of the doctrine of divine foreknowledge. For the purposes of this discussion I will simply assume that future events are possible objects of knowledge and, hence, that foreknowledge is possible. Accordingly, I will not be concerned with discussing such questions as the status of truth-values for future contingent propositions or whether knowledge is justified true belief. Furthermore, I will not be concerned (...) with the issues involved in the claim that the doctrine of divine foreknowledge conflicts with doctrines concerning the properties of created beings, e.g., the doctrine of voluntary human action. (shrink)

There are two quite common views which appear to be embraced by a large number of aestheticians as well as a large number of nonaestheticians. It is quite commonly believed by many of both groups that God is omniscient with respect to the future, that is, that God knows everything that will ever occur. I refer to this belief as the doctrine of divine omniprescience. It is also quite common to many of both groups to believe that literary authorship is (...) creative in the sense that by means of his composing activity an author is an agent who brings about the existence of some thing which did not exist prior to the composing activity of that agent and which would not exist without the composing activity of that agent or some similar agent. I shall call this belief the doctrine of literary creativity. What does not appear to be recognized is that these two doctrines cannot both be consistently endorsed. I argue that the two doctrines jointly entail a contradiction and I will point out some of the logical consequences of trying to avoid that contradiction. (shrink)

Cet article traite de la mise en place de l’organisation par projet dans une unité de R & D du secteur de l’énergie. Il montre que l’un des principaux effets de cette politique de « modernisation » est d’avoir transformé les contraintes temporelles qui pèsent sur le travail des chercheurs et ce, à au moins trois niveaux. D’abord, la composante administrative du travail de recherche s’est accrue au détriment du temps consacré à la production scientifique. Ensuite, le projet d’intensification du (...) travail auquel renvoie l’instauration du multiprojets génère des « coûts de coordination » et un phénomène de dispersion dans le travail, peu propices à la concentration intellectuelle que nécessitent les activités de recherche, au point que certaines tâches, comme la lecture ou l’écriture, sont réalisées à contretemps, dans la sphère hors travail et sur des temps de récupération. Quant à l’ajustement des activités aux demandes des clients, il donne lieu à une sorte d’ingénieurisation de la recherche. Tandis que les projets les plus éloignés des préoccupations des directions opérationnelles souffrent d’un manque de crédit, au double sens du terme, ceux commandités par les directions les plus proches du marché et du consommateur final, eux, s’apparentent de plus en plus à des études, court-termistes et directement opératoires. (shrink)

La educación cívica se encuentra en la misma base de la democracia . T odo sistema democrático que prescinda de esta necesidad acabará haciendo de s v anecerse la racionalidad democrática de sus instituciones. La democracia liberal es un buen ejemplo de este debilitamiento pr o g res i v o de las estructuras democráticas. Benjamin R. Barber no tarda en referirse a ella como "democracia débil". La democracia carece de plenitud sin ciudadanos fo r mados cívicamente. Educación y democracia (...) están indisol u b lemente unidas. P or eso, para este autor la r e generación de la democracia, con sus contenidos reales de pa r ticipación política, pasa necesariamente por la educación. Enseñar democracia es se r vir a la comuni dad. (shrink)

En el presente ensayo, el autor, partiendo del libro de John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, estudia la ontología social del último Searle poniendo en evidencia las novedades respecto a la teoría de los hechos institucionales formulada por el propio Searle en los años sesenta. Es así novedosa la cuestión que se plantea sobre la fundación de la realidad institucional: ¿Cómo pueden existir objetos institucionales en un mundo que se compone totalmente de partículas físicas en campos de fuerza? (...) Es novedosa también la delimitación trazada por Searle entre dos de los rasgos de las entidades institucionales: la socialidad y la simbolicidad. Es novedosa la definición que da Searle de las "reglas constitutivas", no como reglas que constituyen el objeto del cual son regla, sino como reglas que adscriben funciones. Y es finalmente novedosa la postura de Searle sobre el nexo entre los performativos y los estados de cosas institucionales, y en concreto la consideración de los estados de cosas producidos por performativos como estados de cosas institucionales. El ensayo termina con una crítica a la tesis de Searle sobre la exhaustividad del paradigma bruto vs. institucional. (shrink)

C.S. Peirce considera la abducción como una de las tres inferencias, que junto con la deducción y la inducción, son necesarias para la obtención del conocimiento científico. El presente artículo tiene como fin establecer la evolución del concepto de abducción, su lógica y su psicología, así como las críticas realizadas por R.N. Hanson a este concepto y a la apagogé aristotélica.

This article examines the distinction between judicial reasoning flawed by errors on questions of law, properly addressed on appeal, and errors that constitute judicial misconduct and are grounds for removal from the bench. Examples analysed are from the transcripts and reasons for decision in R v George SKQB (2015), appealed to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal (2016) and the Supreme Court of Canada (2017), and from the sentencing decision rendered by the same judge more than a decade earlier in (...) R v Edmondson SKQB (2003). Both were sexual assault cases. In George a thirty-five year old woman with five children was tried and ultimately acquitted of sexual assault and sexual interference after she was assaulted in her home by a fourteen year old male. Striking similarities between the reasoning and language in the trial decision in George and the sentencing decision in Edmondson demonstrate entrenched antipathy for sexual assault law and the fundamental principles of justice, equality, and impartiality. This is arguably judicial misconduct, persisting despite access in the interim to many years of judicial education programming, not merely legal error. The problem does not lie with the judge alone, however. A toxic mix of misogyny and blindly zealous enforcement of the law appears to have undermined the administration of justice in George from the outset at all levels. The problems are systemic. Were this not the case, it is likely that Barbara George would not have been charged. (shrink)

Peut-on réduire la formation ŕ l’enseignement? Peut-on assimiler la formation ŕ l’éducation? De Fichte et Schleiermacher ŕ Habermas, en passant par Nietzsche et Jaspers, ces questions ont été constamment sur le tapis dans le contexte de l’enseignement. Le rappel de l’histoire de ce débat est instructif dans la mesure oů les discussions actuelles sur la réforme de l’enseignement et des universités représentent essentiellement une actualisation des problčmes irrésolus, surtout ceux soulevés dans les années 1950, oů des avertissements méritant réflexion furent (...) lancés contre la subordination de la politique scientifique ŕ la politique économique. (shrink)

Con el presente artículo perseguimos un doble objetivo. Por una parte analizaremos las características de la magia seiðr y de sus practicantes desde el punto de vista de su importancia en el entramado social y mitológico de la cultura nórdica antigua. Por otra, y mediante el análisis de algunas escenas de la Saga de Gísli Súrsson, intentaremos demostrar que la inclusión de ciertos motivos mágico-religiosos de origen precristiano en las Sagas de islandeses respondía al triple intento de crear un modelo (...) explicativo de la realidad, de servir para elevar el tono trágico del relato y de caracterizar de manera negativa a los que tenían que ver con su uso. (shrink)

Hans-Georg GADAMER, Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze ; Pascal MICHON, Poétique d’une anti-anthropologie: l’herméneutique deGadamer ; Robert J. DOSTAL, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer ; Denis SERON, Le problème de la métaphysique. Recherches sur l’interprétation heideggerienne de Platon et d’Aristote ; Henry MALDINEY, Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu ; Dominique JANICAUD, Heidegger en France, I. Récit; II. Entretiens ; Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Fenomenologia percepţiei ; Trish GLAZEBROOK, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science ; Richard WOLIN, Heidegger’s Children. Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas (...) and Herbert Marcuse ; Ivo DEGENNARO, Logos – Heidegger liest Heraklit ; O. K. WIEGAND, R. J. DOSTAL, L. EMBREE, J. KOCKELMANS and J. N. MOHANTY, Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic ; James FAULCONER and Mark WRATHALL, Appropriating Heidegger. (shrink)

L’article se focalise sur la vision pragmatique de l’expérimentalisme démocratique de R. M. Unger et sur sa mise en application possible dans le domaine de la philosophie interculturelle contemporaine. Le champ de la pensée politique et sociale dans le pragmatisme américain est mis en relation avec des questions importantes de la philosophie interculturelle contemporaine. Dans la deuxième partie, la philosophie de Unger est mise en dialogue avec la philosophie de Luce Irigaray, ouvrant ainsi une nouvelle plate-forme pour une vision éthico-politique (...) à l’ère de la globalisation. L’analyse de l’expérimentalisme démocratique se pose ainsi comme un projet alternatif d’éthique politique et comme le projet d’expérimentalisme démocratique de Unger et de Irigaray à l’ère de la globalisation. (shrink)

En este trabajo se aborda la perspectiva elaborada por George Lukács en Historia y consciencia de clase, con el fin de llevar a cabo una apropiación de aquellos elementos metódicos y conceptuales que contengan una potente actualidad para la formulación de una teoría crítica de la sociedad tardo-moderna. Con esta intención se indaga la función metódica y epistémica que la noción de totalidad tiene en la perspectiva dialéctica por él elaborada. Para lo cual se lleva adelante un trabajo de (...) lectura que permite distinguir analíticamente dos formas distintas en que Lukács concibe la relación sujeto-objeto desde el punto de vista de la totalidad, ambas imbricadas en su obra, sin separación alguna, donde cada una de ellas conlleva maneras diferentes de captar el particular entrelazamiento entre la estructura social objetiva y el modo de pensamiento y acción subjetivo, impactando, por tanto, en toda la estructuración metódica de la perspectiva crítica que tenga a una u otra por fundamento. Sobre esta base, se aborda un segundo objetivo: aprehender un punto ciego al que se enfrenta la labor crítica, producto del doble rechazo tanto de los intentos por fundarla normativamente, así como de aquellas perspectivas que la dejan sin fundamento alguno.This paper analyses the George Lukács’s perspective developed in his History and class conscience, with the main objective of doing an appropriation of those methodical and conceptual elements, which are particularly productive for a critical theory of the late-modern society. For that reason, this article investigates the methodical and epistemic function that the notion of totality has in the lukacsianan’s dialectical point of view. This is done asking what makes possible an analytic distinction between two different conceptions of the subject-object relationship from the totality’s point of view, both of them overlap in his thought, without any dissociation. Each one of these conceptions implies a different way of understanding the particular entwinement between the objective social structure and the subject’s mode of thought and action. And this impacts in the complete methodical structuration of the critical perspective. Based on this problematic the paper studies a second objective: to grasp a blind point, that generated by the rejection of the perspectives that based on a normative reason, as well as the ones that leave it without any fundament. (shrink)

William Dwyer responds to the comments of George Lyons and Tibor R. Machan on his review of Machan's Initiative (Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 2001). Dwyer reiterates points in his initial review, stressing the need to understand choice within a larger causal context.

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate the philosophical tools developed in George Steiner’s marvelous body of work. In his writings, he carries on a lucid observation and description of human spirit’s linguistic creation and formulation. His observations do not deviate from the way of a strict ethics inherited from ilustrated spiritual Judaism. His legacy about thought on language and his role as a contemporary culture’s critic leads us to a reflection on our continent and history. As an (...) anthropological work, it aims at a practical comprehension of gregariousness and to a psychic and physiological elucidation of the human phenomena. (shrink)

Frente a la ciencia tradicional o positivista que se coloca fuera de la historia, de la cultura y del lenguaje, el autor presenta el pensamiento de Sarkar, quien no argumenta por una posición anti-ciencia, anti-tecnología ni cae en una ciencia que existe fuera de lo social y lo político, sino contextualizada, abogando por una nueva ciencia de la sociedad. El trabajo plantea relevantes preguntas como: ¿En qué dirección se moverán luego las ciencias sociales: hacia la empatía e interpretación o hacia (...) el desinterés y distancia? ¿Estamos nosotros cerca de perder los universales ya que el poder y el conocimiento son localizados y relativizados? ¿O es un nuevo modelo de lo real cercano de llegar a ser dominante que reformula estas categorías de "ciencia", "local" y "universal"? (shrink)

Despite Hunsberger’s apology for Newbigen’s use of Polanyi, Newbigen in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society reverses Polanyi’s essential elements of heuristic passion and universal intent. The outcome is a misunderstanding of the common ground and differences between science and theology and a stifling and narrowing theology of cultural plurality. In contrast, Charles McCoy’s federal theology and understanding of Polanyi shows an approach of openness yet grounding in the biblical God present in the believed-in realities of global life.