In a blurb on the dust jacket, Hilary Putnam describes Barry Allen'sTruth in Philosophyas “a good, provocative, and important book” discussing issues of “common concern to both analytic and continental philosophers.” Yet Putnam admits that Allen's views “are ones that I myself am committed to combating and … I am certain most analytic philosophers will want to combat.” All the more reason to read this book, of course: know your enemy. Since Rorty clarified recent European philosophy for us in the (...) 1980s, we have seen the continuing political transformation of what used to be an abstract, purely academic domain. Indeed, in his last chapter, Allen connects truth with politics in his discussion of Foucault:The production and circulation of truth is as capable of complicity with tyranny, and all the more so with tutelage, as any instrument of government, and its products do not have tobe falseto have this effect.… Truth is inextricably situated amid all the major asymmetries of social power, (p. 173)Foucault challenges the assumption of many that in liberal democracies (of which Putnam, after his youthful excesses, must consider himself a defender) truth and freedom need each other. (shrink)

Translating Religion advances thinking about translation as a critical category in religious studies, combining theoretical reflection about processes of translation in religion with focused case studies that are international, interdisciplinary, and interreligious. By operating with broad conceptions of both religion and translation, this volume makes clear that processes of translation, broadly construed, are everywhere in both religious life and the study of religion; at the same time, the theory and practice of translation and the advancement of translation studies as a (...) field has developed in the context of concerns about the possibility and propriety of translating religious texts. The nature of religions as living historical traditions depends on the translation of religion from the past into the present. Interreligious dialogue and the comparative study of religion require the translation of religion from one tradition to another. Understanding the historical diffusion of the world's religions requires coming to terms with the success and failure of translating a religion from one cultural context into another. Contributors ask what it means to translate religion, both textually and conceptually, and how the translation of religious content might differ from the translation of other aspects of human culture. This volume proposes that questions on the nature of translation find particularly acute expression in the domains of religion, and argues that theoretical approaches from translation studies can be fruitfully brought to bear on contemporary religious studies. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the metaphorical use of medical terms in philosophy. Three examples selected from distinct philosophical contexts demonstrate that such terms have been employed as metaphors both to describe the practice of philosophising and historically to diagnose philosophical positions. The selected examples are (i) the title of Avicenna’s main philosophical work, The Book of Healing, (ii) the criticism of medical metaphors in Enlightenment philosophy, and (iii) recent historical diagnoses in philosophy. The underlying epistemological assumptions of all three contexts (...) are reconstructed to critically analyse the medical metaphors. Through this tripartite synopsis, I arrive at a normative conclusions medical metaphors, such as the “healing of the soul” or “pathology of reason”, do not stand up to the critique of Enlightenment and are obsolete against the theoretical background of my reference texts. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus's commentary on Being and Time has been a long time in preparation but it has also been worth the wait. Dreyfus limits his account to the first division of Part I of Being and Time with some passages from Division II brought into the discussion. For Dreyfus, the first 230 pages of Being and Time comprise Heidegger's most important metaphysical innovations, while Division II, the “existentialist” side of Heidegger, contains discussions of death, guilt, resoluteness and Angst rarely, if (...) ever, mentioned in any other works. (shrink)

The Australian Labor Party has, until recent years, exercised almost unchallenged hegemony over Australian Left and working-class politics. Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn have ambitiously crafted the first Marxist history of the party in over 50 years, deploying an analysis of its material constitution as a ‘capitalist workers’ party’ to underpin arguments for a revolutionary socialist alternative. From its emergence in class struggles of the late nineteenth century, to its early electoral successes, to multiple internal crises and splits, and its (...) more recent role in driving neoliberal restructuring, the party’s contradictory character is analysed with clarity. However, despite containing much suggestive material, key issues – including the party’s unparalleled success despite its betrayals, failures and crises; radical challenges from within and without the party; the nature of its appeal to reformist consciousness; the shape of Marxist and Left debates about thealp; and the party’s centrality to a wider sphere of politics in capitalist society – remain thinly theorised, thereby inadvertently weakening the authors’ case for a revolutionary alternative. (shrink)

Wagner's epic Ring of the Niebelungs stands as a focal point of nineteenth-century German art. Redemption or Annihilation? discusses the unusual structure of The Ring and major critical viewpoints, such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor Adorno. An interpretation is presented in which Nietzsche's criticisms form the basis of a positive reading of The Ring, whose significance, structure, and meaning are still enthusiastically debated today.

In An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger asserted that “it wasnot German idealism that collapsed; rather, the age was no longer strong enough to sustain the greatness, breadth, and originality of that spiritual world, i.e., truly to realize it”. He was at this point launchinginto one of the major themes of his later work: the “darkening of the world” in the form of the materialism and “demonism” typified by the antitheses of the USSR and the USA, a polarity of seeming opposites (...) obscuring an underlying fundamental similarity. This was the modernist faith of both cultures in the power of science to solve all of the problems that have plagued humanity for untold centuries, a faith in the power of science to tell us the absolute truth about the nature of reality. In 1955 Heidegger also characterized science and technology in “The Question Concerning Technology” as an “enframing”, a particular dominant interpretation of reality dependent on the interest of control and which conceals far more than it reveals. For one thing, “the essence of technology isin a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth”. Although enframing “lets man endure,” only art as the successor of philosophy transcends techne by allowing us to see that “the essence of technologyis nothing technological”. Much earlier, in Being and Time, he gave his first sustained account of science as the interpretationof reality driven by technological interests, and spoke of Being as the “transcendens” lying beyond “every possible character which an entity can possess” [p. 38]. It remains debatable whether this characterization of Being survived into Heidegger's later period, but despite his nostalgia for the spirituality of the early nineteenth century, the role of Beingin these earlier works might best be explained as some kind of realism. (shrink)

Discussion of recent analyses of Being and Time, concentrating on that of Hubert Dreyfus, in which Heidegger’s philosophy of science is claimed to be a form of realism. Surveying other views, those of William Blattner, Barry Allen, Charles Guignon, and Richard Rorty, I argue that Heidegger should not be anachronistically classified because, similar to Subject/Object, he considers the Realism/Idealism debate to belong to another era.

This article investigates the meaning and the historical implications of the term praetor maximus quoted by Livy from an early republican law. In modern scholarship it has mostly been interpreted as a technical term for the supreme magistrate. Instead of taking praetor maximus as an official title, though, I suggest to follow Mommsen who understands the term as a generic expression. Going further from this general idea and given the meticulous observance of rituals in Roman religion, the law seems to (...) have used a generic term denoting any person who happened to be in charge of the community, which extended to matters touching on relations to the gods. Other than in Mommsen's interpretation, the term is here argued to belong to the immediate aftermath of the monarchic stage of the Roman community. In a period of great insecurity, when the republic had probably just barely been established, praetor maximus referred to the possibility of a rex as much as to any republican office. Thus, this term does not allow for any conclusions about the emergence of the supreme magistracy in Rome, but rather gives testimony to royal support still active in Rome after the expulsion oft he Tarquins. (shrink)

The book is divided into two parts: Pragmatism and Realism, with brief introductions to each. In the Pragmatism section, the authors include Hilary Putnam himself, who gave the conference keynote address, Ruth Ann Putnam, Richard Warner, Robert Brandom, and Nicholas Rescher. The Realism section includes John Haldane, Tadeusz Szubka, John Heil, Wolfgang Künne, Gary Ebbs, and Charles Travis. Putnam replies, sometimes at length, to each one, and this is one of the more valuable features of the collection. The paper by (...) Putnam summarizes his current views and his latest version of realism. Missing in action, but discussed briefly by Putnam and some contributors, Richard Rorty has written quite a bit about Putnam, Putnam not as much on Rorty, and as these two eminent philosophers approach the end of their extensive careers, this would have been an excellent occasion for them to comment on their similarities and differences. Is Rorty really “the Evil Putnam”? Further, because Putnam has always been interested in the history and philosophy of science, it is ironic and regrettable that Kuhn gets only one brief mention, by Putnam in his reply to Rescher. He believes that Kuhn misinterprets “the significance of paradigm-change in a relativistic way,” and of course such a comment deserves defense. Both Kuhn and Rorty are directly relevant to Putnam’s arguments about the disconnect between metaphysics and physical law and it would good to have a more detailed account of his views on their historicism and “relativism.”. (shrink)

Phänomenologie und sprachanalytische Philosophie, die erstere mit den Namen Husserl und Heidegger verbunden, die letztere mit Wittgenstein, waren die beiden dominierenden philosophischen Strömungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Phänomenologie und Sprachanalyse ergibt sich auf dem Hintergrund ihrer gemeinsamen Problembestände, vornehmlich in der Philosophie des Geistes, der Philosophie der Wahrnehmung und der Bedeutungstheorie. Konvergenzen sind erst im letzten Drittel des Jahrhunderts sichtbar geworden, wobei die Rezeption phänomenologischen Gedankenguts durch analytische Philosophen (Chisholm, Searle, Føllesdal, Danto, Evans, Tugendhat) intensiver war als die (...) in umgekehrter Richtung. Die Konvergenzen betreffen die neuen Theorien der Intentionalität, die Renaissance des Themas „Bewusstsein” und die Debatte um die Qualia. Der Band versammelt zwölf Beiträge einschlägig ausgewiesener Philosophen aus Deutschland, Schweden, Norwegen, der Schweiz und den USA. (shrink)