From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "If I Stay" Allyson Healeys life is exactly like her suitcase--packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything shes not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform (...) Allysons life. A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the "accidents" of fate, "Just One Day" shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost... and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know. The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willems story--"Just One Year"--is coming soon. (shrink)

This book begins with the assumption that no one can achieve a rational selection of values for his life-style unless he first understands the major modern and contemporary formulations of alternative moral ideals. To assist the reader in determining which values are more basic and deserve his loyalty, the author explores and evaluates the different value systems defended by a wide range of thinkers viz. James, Dewey, Ayn Rand, Hugh Hefner, Marx, Freud, Erich Fromm, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Barth, Tillich, Cox, (...) Fletcher, Bishop Robinson, Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr, Ramsey, G E Moore, A J Ayer, Toulmin and R M Hare. (shrink)

THE most prevalent interpretation of Hegel’s political philosophy charges him with a glorification and even a divinization of the Prussian State of his day at the expense of the freedom of the individual. This interpretation has its origins in the existentialist critique of Hegel. Kierkegaard, for example, in his evaluation of Hegel’s philosophy of history abhors the apparent deification of the existing State as the manifestation of the Objective Spirit since it robs the individual of his freedom, responsibility, and dignity. (...) ‘The derelict Hegelian ethics, with its desperate attempt to make the State the court of last resort, is a most unethical attempt to reduce the individual to finitude.…’ Karl Popper has helped to perpetuate this interpretation by the existentialists by claiming that according to Hegel ‘the State is everything and the individual nothing’. William Shirer has claimed that one can trace the rise of the second and third Reichs to Hegel’s ‘ringing glorification of the State as supreme in human life’. In determining the validity of this interpretation we shall examine Hegel’s statements on the nature of the ideal State, his evaluations of existing States and ancient States, and his detailed position on the rights of citizens within his ideal State. (shrink)

While concluding my research for Martin Luther King: The Making of a Mind, I learned that King had stated in a January 19, 1956 interview with The Montgomery Advertiser that Hegel was his favorite philosopher. This was especially significant for me because my dissertation was on Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel - with emphasis on how Hegelian Kierkegaard had become.

While concluding my research for Martin Luther King: The Making of a Mind, I learned that King had stated in a January 19, 1956 interview with The Montgomery Advertiser that Hegel was his favorite philosopher. This was especially significant for me because my dissertation was on Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel - with emphasis on how Hegelian Kierkegaard had become.

In introducing existentialism should one proceed by presenting a separate treatment of each existentialist or should one attempt to identify and isolate the principal themes of existentialism and interrelate the specific contributions of the major figures in the movement to the development of each theme? Professor Sanborn in this introduction inclines toward the latter method. She has organized the work according to the ontology, theory of knowledge, ethics, social philosophy, and philosophy of religion of the major existentialists. In these areas (...) she has dealt with the insights of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel and Sartre. While this method does allow the reader to consider each topic from several viewpoints, it does seem to have two serious limitations. It prevents the reader from appreciating the manner in which an existentialist’s ontology and epistemology often profoundly affects his ethics and his philosophy of religion or vice versa. The reader has to wait until chapter seven to discover how Sartre’s atheism lies at the root of his doctrine of freedom even though earlier chapters make many references to this doctrine. The basic unity of Sartre’s thought is thereby obscured whereas a separate treatment of each existentialist could preserve and disclose this unity, and still could include comparisons with other existentialists on some themes. A second limitation in this introduction is that it usually and almost necessarily because of the restrictions of space permits only a fragmentary consideration of the view of each existentialist on each theme. (shrink)

In his introduction to this selection of writings Hans Reiss makes the claim that Kant is not generally regarded in English-speaking countries as a political philosopher of any special significance. He gives several reasons for this neglect and misunderstanding by historians of philosophy and even by Kantian scholars. These historians have neglected Kant’s political writings because the philosophy of his three critiques has absorbed their attention almost entirely. Then too, they have not focused on his political philosophy because he did (...) not write a masterpiece in this field. Also, Kant’s works of critical philosophy are so formidable that they have made his political writings appear to historians of philosophy as much less weighty and have helped to encourage the mistaken assumption by these historians that the latter are not central to his thought. Furthermore, the rise of nationalism has prevented Kant’s work from being the dominant force in German political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which it might easily have been. The Romantic mode of thought instilled in German political thought an element of irrationalism which permeated almost all areas of German thinking for a century and a half between the Napoleonic wars and the end of the Second World War. (shrink)

In his introduction to this selection of writings Hans Reiss makes the claim that Kant is not generally regarded in English-speaking countries as a political philosopher of any special significance. He gives several reasons for this neglect and misunderstanding by historians of philosophy and even by Kantian scholars. These historians have neglected Kant’s political writings because the philosophy of his three critiques has absorbed their attention almost entirely. Then too, they have not focused on his political philosophy because he did (...) not write a masterpiece in this field. Also, Kant’s works of critical philosophy are so formidable that they have made his political writings appear to historians of philosophy as much less weighty and have helped to encourage the mistaken assumption by these historians that the latter are not central to his thought. Furthermore, the rise of nationalism has prevented Kant’s work from being the dominant force in German political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which it might easily have been. The Romantic mode of thought instilled in German political thought an element of irrationalism which permeated almost all areas of German thinking for a century and a half between the Napoleonic wars and the end of the Second World War. (shrink)

Originally published in 1959, this work, intended as an introduction, attempts to examine the views of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre and Marcel on a wide variety of themes without neglecting some of the influences of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Husserl on the existentialist movement. It provides an analysis of the traditions which inspired the existentialists and of the traditions which they opposed.

To prepare the reader for Schiller’s ideal of freedom, Miller devotes his first chapter to an examination of Kant’s conception of moral freedom. Miller contends that Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason was already concerned with establishing the foundation for moral freedom, and he rejects Heine’s interpretation that the Critique of Practical Reason was an afterthought, a hastily added supplement written to ease Kant’s moral conscience by compensating for the first Critique. Miller observes that it appears that Kant did (...) not hold to his beliefs because of evidence, but rather sought evidence for his beliefs—in this case evidence for his abiding belief in moral freedom. To demonstrate Kant’s intention to defend moral freedom even in the first Critique, he appeals first to Kant’s claim there that freedom cannot be saved if appearances are things-in-themselves, and then to his efforts to develop the distinction between phenomena and noumena so as to allow for the exercise of moral freedom. Thus, by referring natural causality to phenomena and free causality to noumena, Kant in the first Critique had demonstrated the possibility of moral freedom in his resolution of the third antimony. Then too, in the first Critique the failure of speculative reason to trace effects to an original cause suggested the idea of a free intelligible cause operating outside the series of cause and effect. Also, already in the first Critique Kant had introduced the idea of a ‘will’ which resists the tendency of man’s sensuous inclinations to determine his actions. Furthermore, Miller reminds us that Kant in the second Critique makes frequent references to his theory of knowledge which he regards as important also for practical reason and freedom, and that Kant in the preface to the second Critique proclaims that the idea of freedom ‘forms the keystone of the whole building of a system of pure, even of speculative reason …’. Miller endorses the notion that Kant’s consistent aim was to preserve the ‘proper dignity’ of the idea of freedom by removing it from the field of possible knowledge. (shrink)

As the Minister of Public Instruction in Berlin in 1808 Humboldt founded the University of Berlin and reorganized the Prussian Gymnasium. Later, he served in several diplomatic posts, became a Prussian envoy to the Papal court, and in 1818 was for a brief period Minister of the Interior. However, the reader should be aware that Humboldt wrote The Limits of State Action in 1791 at the age of 24 after resigning his first minor post in the Prussian administration. At that (...) time he admitted that he had found administration ‘geistlos’, and this reaction may have accounted in part for his general antipathy toward state interference on behalf of the positive welfare of citizens. His belief that the vitality of a nation arises solely from the spontaneous and diverse creative energies of its citizens clearly contributed to this antipathy. (shrink)

Most of Kierkegaard’s thought can best be understood as a series of reactions to what he regarded as the excesses of Hegelian speculation. In this work Professor Hamilton provides a stimulating and comprehensive examination of these reactions. He explains in detail how Hegel’s method of direct communication with its claim to the possession of total truth provoked Kierkegaard to imitate Socrates’ ‘maieutic art’ by employing indirect communication through the use of pseudonyms. Then too, Hegel’s preoccupation with the development of the (...) Absolute in world-history served only to cause Kierkegaard to respond with his emphasis on the significance of the individual. Furthermore, the unification of the finite with the infinite within the System seemed to Kierkegaard to be a crude form of pantheism and aroused him to affirm a gulf between the creature and the Absolute. Hegel’s preoccupation with abstraction and Reason only intensified Kierkegaard’s concern for the concrete historical moment in which the individual must struggle to make his leap of faith in the face of the Absolute Paradox. Partly because the Hegelian System viewed faith as ‘an immediate certainty’, Kierkegaard could reiterate that faith is a process and must be constantly achieved. The System’s concern for objective truth and its reduction of Christianity to a philosophical doctrine only reinforced Kierkegaard’s conviction that truth is subjectivity and cannot be learned through abstractions but must be lived with intense passion. Finally, Hegel’s emphasis on a fluid logic increased Kierkegaard’s enthusiasm for the traditional logic and his insistence that this logic should not be distorted by being used to interpret the movements of freedom. In presenting these oppositions to Hegel the work can help to provide an effective introduction to Kierkegaard. However, the work is limited since it merely assumes that Kierkegaard’s interpretations of Hegel are valid. Recent scholarship, particularly by Knox and Seeberger, would indicate that some of these interpretations are highly debatable. (shrink)

This volume is a reissue of an 1889 translation of Fichte’s third book, Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre, which first appeared in Jena in 1796. Fichte here attempts to reconcile his belief in the sacredness of the rights of the individual with his conviction that the individual is a member of a community of rational beings, and thus man develops his moral self only through relationship to others. ‘…Ego is the individual, the rational being determined as such through (...) opposition to another rational being’. His thesis is that human rights are essentially social rights and that, since the freedom of the individual implies responsibility, concrete freedom is necessarily finite. This affirmation of the limitation of a self by its relation to other selves corresponds with Fichte’s exposition of the mutual limitation of the ego and the non-ego in his theory of the intellect in his Science of Knowledge. Fichte declares that the fundamental principle of The Science of Rights is that each individual must restrict his freedom through the conception of the possibility of the freedom of the other. (shrink)