This chapter contains sections titled: The Term “Philosophy of History” The Terms “Philosophy” and “History” Historiographical Production Critical Theory of Historiography vs. Substantive Philosophy of History The Meaning and Function of History The Evolution of Substantive Philosophies of History The Poetics of the Substantive Philosophy of History The Arrival of the Philosophy of Historiography References Further Reading.

My dissertation examines several proleptic bases running through Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of history. After setting preliminary ground to frame Kant’s hopeful historical viewpoint, I attempt to address and answer problems such as Yirmiyahu Yovel’s notion of “the historical antinomy” by trying to bridge the gap between reason and empirical history; to extricate Kant from Arthur Danto’s inclusion of him in a group of “substantive philosophers of history,” who all share the characteristic of presenting “prophetic” accounts (...) of the future; as well as to offer an original reading of Kant’s use of Seneca’s phrase, “Ducunt volentum fata, nolentem trahunt,” as it appears in two of the socio-political essays. Ultimately, I argue that it would be a betrayal of Kantian hope to forfeit the presumption, however unknowable, that there are teleological principles operating in history, thereby resigning ourselves to the “dismal reign of chance” (trostloses Ungefähr), a caveat that humanity cannot afford to dismiss. (shrink)

Analytical philosophy abounds in tours de force [[sic]], but these are usually directed against other genres of philosophy, particularly the brand which passes under the various titles of "speculative," "systematic," or "substantive" philosophy. What distinguishes Fain's tour de force is that he turns the cutting edge of analytical philosophy on itself and, in so doing, seeks to revalidate speculative philosophy on analytical grounds. The main attack is against the stereotypes of a dichotomy between (...) class='Hi'>history and the philosophy of history, of analytical philosophy presented as the true basis of philosophy of history, and of speculative philosophy of history as some kind of pseudo-discipline which is neither philosophy nor history. At the same time, the author rejects the standard division of philosophy of history into analytical and speculative approaches. His positive arguments center around the crucial role of narration in history. It is not the historical facts which give intelligibility to history, but the story-line or plot which combines them into a coherent narrative. Narration is counterposed to the analytical philosopher's emphasis on descriptive explanation of the facts. Fain argues that narration not only does not preclude consideration of history as a science, but that science itself often requires narration for purposes of intelligibility. He downgrades the importance of the debate which has raged for the last three decades over the nature of historical explanation. Absorption with the pros and cons of the covering law model of historical explanation has tended to preempt the whole field of philosophy of history and to obscure other more basic issues such as the relationship of history to science. On the other hand, Fain could not resist the temptation to append an epilogue on Hempel's covering law model, thus denying in practice what he proclaimed in principle. The examples of speculative philosophy are drawn mainly from the works of Hegel, Marx, and Collingwood. They are expounded and criticized within the context of Fain's definition of philosophy of history as "the formulation and the critique of criteria of intelligibility of historical concepts." Although he finds shortcomings in the story-lines of all three from the standpoint of intelligibility, the author concludes with a call for historians and philosophers to debate the story-line that a history of mankind should adopt. The bibliography is informative and selective.--H. B. (shrink)

For Bernard Williams, philosophy and history are importantly connected. His work exploits this connection in a number of directions: he believes that philosophy cannot ignore its own history the way science can; that even when engaging with philosophy’s history primarily to produce history, one needs to draw on philosophy; and that when doing the history of philosophy primarily to produce philosophy, one still needs a sense of how historically distant (...) past philosophers are, because the point of reading them is to confront something different from the present. But Williams also holds that systematic philosophy itself needs to be done historically, engaging not just with its own history, but with that of the concepts it seeks to understand. To explore these different ways in which philosophy and history intertwine, this volume assembles specially commissioned contributions by A. W. Moore, Terence Irwin, Sophie-Grace Chappell, Catherine Rowett, Marcel van Ackeren, John Cottingham, Gerald Lang, Lorenzo Greco, Paul Russell, Carla Bagnoli, Peter Kail, David Owen, Giuseppina D’Oro, James Connelly, Matthieu Queloz, Nikhil Krishnan, John Marenbon, Ralph Wedgwood, Garrett Cullity, Hans-Johann Glock, Geraldine Ng, Ilaria Cozzaglio, Amanda R. Greene, and Miranda Fricker. They critically appraise Williams’s work in and on the history of philosophy as well as his historicist turn and his use of genealogy. The resulting collection uniquely combines substantive discussions of historical figures from Homer to Wittgenstein with methodological discussions of how and why the history of philosophy should be done, and how and why philosophy should draw on history. (shrink)

The theoretical problems of historiography derive chiefly from an ambiguity at the heart of the historian's task; historiography is uncertain as to its own theoretical character, that is, its character and status as a mode of knowing. On the one hand, historiography is oriented wholly toward the concrete, toward its rich and inexhaustible determination in quality; moreover, the concrete toward which it is oriented, is not statuesque, substantively plural and fixed, but fluid, dynamic, continuous. Such concretion can be fixed and (...) rendered for expression and communication only in narration, in images, therefore; as a consequence, written history appears in its own self-consciousness, that is to historiography, most immediately as art. The subsumption of history under the general concept of art as a form of knowing, however, is attended by insuperable difficulties. Chief among these is the fact that the concrete to which history, that is, written history, is addressed is the existent concrete; but the images of art, patently, are unsusceptible of the character of existence, save obliquely and typically. The forms of art, its images, are structures of pure quality, devoid of any determination of real and unreal, of any determination of existence, while the images of history are images of the real. But the character of existence cannot be intrinsic to any image, it cannot be simply a quality among qualities: it is rather the determination of quality to actuality which it does not possess simply as quality. The character of existence cannot consequently pertain to the images of history as images but must accede to them by a further theoretical act beyond that by which the image is evoked. This further act can only be logical. Existence must enjoy the status of logical predicate, not of esthetic quality. (shrink)

In recent years, even some of its own practitioners have accused analytic philosophy of lacking historical awareness. My aim is to show that analytic philosophy and history are not such a mismatch after all. Against the objection that analytic philosophers have unduly ignored the past I argue that for the most part they only resist strong versions of historicism, and for good reasons. The history of philosophy is not the whole of philosophy, as extreme (...) historicists maintain, nor is it indispensable to substantive philosophizing, as mainline historicists have it, it is merely advantageous (pragmatic historicism). Against the objection that analytic histories of philosophy are inevitably anachronistic I argue that it is possible to approach past texts with a view to substantive issues and in a critical spirit (contrary to historicist relativism and to misguided interpretations of the principle of charity). Indeed, such an analytic approach makes not just for better philosophy but also for better history. (shrink)

This essay takes Arthur Danto’s end-of-art thesis as a case in point of a substantive philosophy of history. Such philosophy explains the direction that art has taken and why that direction could not have been different. Danto never scrutinized the philosophy of history that his end-of-art thesis presumes. I aim to do that by drawing a distinction between what I refer to as the common view of history and the philosophical view of (...) class='Hi'>history, and by arguing that we need the latter if we want to properly assess the plausibility of the end-of-art thesis. (shrink)

This study argues that a much richer and more coherent account of Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy is gained by examining it in light of three customary sources for ordering human experience: human nature, religion and history. While the historical character of Oakeshott's thought has been readily recognized, too often the roles of human nature and religion have been neglected by commentators, leading to an impoverished account of his work. And even regarding history, there has been confusion concerning (...) Oakeshott's notion of the practical past. Towards this end, the study establishes that Oakeshott does have a significant concept of human nature and religion, clarifies his concept of the practical past, and argues that viewing his political thought through the prism of these three concepts significantly illuminates his understanding of, among other matters, political authority, politics, non-instrumental law, and the problem of innate human freedom versus the historical freedoms associated with Western individualism. ;Regarding human nature, Oakeshott's conception is seen to include the notions of reflective consciousness, free agency, intelligent learning, and a social character. These notions indicate a more substantial and consistent 'agent' across history than Oakeshott himself typically suggests. Regarding religion, the study argues there is a persistent if idiosyncratic religious sensibility in Oakeshott's writings, including an almost sacred understanding of human freedom tempered by an Augustinian awareness of human imperfection, that underlines the depth of conviction behind Oakeshott's philosophical and moral conclusions concerning human affairs. Regarding history, the concept of intimations operating in the practical past is explored as the primary vehicle by which moral and political practices are grounded in Oakeshott's thought. The limitations of this approach are examined as well. ;The study concludes that the substantive implications of Oakeshott's conceptions of human nature and religion are a significant aid to grasping the full significance of his political philosophy. In particular they render more coherent the force of his normative conclusions, especially his championing of individual freedom and his disdain of collectivism, clarify continued inconsistencies, such as his ambiguous gulf between reflection and practice, and suggest possible bridges between Oakeshott's thought and more foundational approaches to political philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, even some of its own practitioners have accused analytic philosophy of lacking historical awareness. My aim is to show that analytic philosophy and history are not such a mismatch after all. Against the objection that analytic philosophers have unduly ignored the past I argue that for the most part they only resist strong versions of historicism, and for good reasons. The history of philosophy is not the whole of philosophy, as extreme (...) historicists maintain, nor is it indispensable to substantive philosophizing, as mainline historicists have it, it is merely advantageous (pragmatic historicism). Against the objection that analytic histories of philosophy are inevitably anachronistic I argue that it is possible to approach past texts with a view to substantive issues and in a critical spirit (contrary to historicist relativism and to misguided interpretations of the principle of charity). Indeed, such an analytic approach makes not just for better philosophy but also for better history. (shrink)

This article critically examines the views that psychology first came into existence as a discipline ca. 1879, that philosophy and psychology were estranged in the ensuing decades, that psychology finally became scientific through the influence of logical empiricism, and that it should now disappear in favor of cognitive science and neuroscience. It argues that psychology had a natural philosophical phase (from antiquity) that waxed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that this psychology transformed into experimental psychology ca. 1900, that (...) philosophers and psychologists collaboratively discussed the subject matter and methods of psychology in the first two decades of the twentieth century, that the neobehaviorists were not substantively influenced by the Vienna Circle, that the study of perception and cognition in psychology did not disappear in the behaviorist period and so did not reemerge as a result of artificial intelligence, linguistics, and the computer analogy, that although some psychologists adopted the language-of-thought approach of traditional cognitive science, many did not, and that psychology will not go away because it contributes independently of cognitive science and neuroscience. (shrink)

Since Schleiermacher and Hegel it has been part of the tradition of German philosophy to view the history of philosophy as an essential aspect of philosophy itself. The topic of “Heidegger and the History of Philosophy” should be considered with this in mind, which means that our question is as follows: Within this general attitude towards the history of philosophy, which has dominated German philosophy since Hegel, what distinctive attitudes are to (...) be found in Heidegger? The context assumed by the question is clear: it is that created by the rise of historical consciousness. It was part of the heritage of German Romanticism that not only historical research as a whole but also the position of philosophical theories would henceforth be affected by the problem of the nature of history. Before the Romantic period there was no such thing as the history of philosophy in the sense we are concerned with here. There was only the sort of scholarship which compiles lists. Hegel’s concept of a history of philosophy was itself in the fullest sense “philosophy;” it was a special subdivision of the philosophy of history, which was itself an attempt to demonstrate the presence of reason in history. Indeed, Hegel termed the history of philosophy the very heart of world history. However, the substantive portion of the Hegelian history of philosophy—its attempt to exhibit the necessity underlying the sequence of forms of philosophical thought, and thus the “rational” character of the history of thought—did not survive the criticism of the “historical school.”. (shrink)

Published in 1821, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is considered the definitive articulation of the legal, moral, social, and political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. However, shortly before its publication, Hegel delivered a series of lectures on the subject matter of the work at the University of Berlin. These lectures are unlike any others Hegel gave on the philosophy of Right in that they do not supplement a published text but rather give a full and independent presentation (...) of his mature political thought. Yet, they are also unlike Hegel's formal treatise in that they form a smooth and flowing discourse, much like Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and history of philosophy. Substantively, these lectures contain more extensive discussions of poverty and the proletariat than are found in Hegel's published text--discussions that carry out the retreat from optimism about the present age intimated in the preface to Outlines but nowhere evident in the text itself. Translated with an introduction and notes by Alan Brudner, Hegel's 1819/20 lectures on the philosophy of Right present his complete thoughts on law and the state in a manner that is more accessible and engaging than any other Hegelian text on these subjects. (shrink)

Elizabeth Edwards, Photographs and the Practice of History: A Short Primer, 176 pp., ISBN 9781350120658. Upon receipt of your copy of Photographs and the Practice of History, I encourage you to first read the bibliographic afterword and peruse through the section titled 'Selected Reading' of the book before delving into its substantive chapters. This is because while Elizabeth Edwards refers to her publication as a short a primer, scholars of photography, visual history and visual culture will (...) recognise it as a culmination of not only her oeuvre at a theoretical level, but also a filtering, a synthesis and meditation on key debates that have characterised critical literature on photography and the philosophy of history in the recent past, presented in a most succinct fashion that is characteristic of the author's deceptive ease. Both the bibliographic afterword and the subsequent selected reading list at the end are a testament to this effort to coalesce and think through this past scholarship. In the preface, Edwards notes that while she hopes historians of photography and visual historians will find it interesting, the book 'is for students, the discipline's new generations, who are starting to think with photographs within historical studies'. Photographs and the Practice of History combines pertinent engagement with ease of access thus making it an excellent resource for such readers. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSeveral factors, including but not limited to his investments in Naturphilosophie and Spinoza, make it hard to determine the extent to which Schelling remains on track with Kant’s transcendental project. My aim here is to isolate Schelling’s conception of transcendental method in the first decade of his philosophical development, a topic that has received little direct and extended discussion. Schelling’s 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism stands out as of particular importance, but no single text can be regarded as Schelling’s definitive (...) statement of his views on the question of method in his early period, necessitating a diachronic approach. I argue that, though in important respects Schelling’s concerns diverge from those of Kant and Fichte, Schelling should not be regarded as abandoning the transcendental framework, and is best understood as attempting to work out what is involved at the original point of adoption of the transcendental standpoint. This entails, I argue, exchanging transcen... (shrink)

ABSTRACT. May scientists rely on substantive, a priori presuppositions? Quinean naturalists say "no," but Michael Friedman and others claim that such a view cannot be squared with the actual history of science. To make his case, Friedman offers Newton's universal law of gravitation and Einstein's theory of relativity as examples of admired theories that both employ presuppositions (usually of a mathematical nature), presuppositions that do not face empirical evidence directly. In fact, Friedman claims that the use of such (...) presuppositions is a hallmark of "science as we know it." But what should we say about the special sciences, which typically do not rely on the abstruse formalisms one finds in the exact sciences? I identify a type of a priori presupposition that plays an especially striking role in the development of empirical psychology. These are ontological presuppositions about the type of object a given science purports to study. I show how such presuppositions can be both a priori and rational by investigating their role in an early flap over psychology's contested status as a natural science. The flap focused on one of the field's earliest textbooks, William James's Principles of Psychology. The work was attacked precisely for its reliance on a priori presuppositions about what James had called the "mental state," psychology's (alleged) proper object. I argue that the specific presuppositions James packed into his definition of the "mental state" were not directly responsible to empirical evidence, and so in that sense were a priori; but the presuppositions were rational in that they were crafted to help overcome philosophical objections (championed by neo-Hegelians) to the very idea that there can be a genuine science of mind. Thus, my case study gives an example of substantive, a priori presuppositions being put to use—to rational use—in the special sciences. In addition to evaluating James's use of presuppositions, my paper also offers historical reflections on two different strands of pragmatist philosophy of science. One strand, tracing back through Quine to C. S. Peirce, is more naturalistic, eschewing the use of a priori elements in science. The other strand, tracing back through Kuhn and C. I. Lewis to James, is more friendly to such presuppositions, and to that extent bears affinity with the positivist tradition Friedman occupies. (shrink)

The question of "the sense of it all" is usually interpreted against the background of Christian theology of history and of its paradoxical offspring, Marxist philosophy of history. Both have proposed clear-cut and absolute interpretations of "the sense of it all." Those who reject either sort of construction tend to carry over their suspicion to any project of searching in history for sense in any sense of the term. For this reason, "substantive" philosophy of (...) history has fallen on fallow days. (shrink)

My purpose in this essay is to provide a critical survey of arguments within recent analytic philosophy regarding the so-called “mind-body problem” with a particular view toward the relationship between these arguments and the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead (and Charles Hartshorne’s closely related views).1In course, I shall argue that Whitehead’s panexperientialist physicalism avoids paradoxes and difficulties of both materialist-physicalism and Cartesian dualismas advocated by a variety of analytic philosophers. However, and I believe that this point is not often (...) sufficiently recognized, analytic philosophy of mind is no monolith, and there are those who have found some form of panexperientialism to be attractive enough to merit serious consideration or even full-fledgedacceptance (David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, Ralph Pred, William Seager, and Galen Strawson among them). A critical discussion of such thinkers should beincluded in any adequate survey of the relation between process panexperientialism and the analytic tradition. Moreover, the revisionary strain of the analyticaltradition which looks to natural science for its construction of worldviews (Broad, Russell, Bunge, Carnap, Quine, etc.) would move us in the direction of examining arguments concerning Whitehead’s view and contemporary empirical scientific considerations. (For a discussion of the basic nature of analytic philosophy and the descriptive and revisionary approaches contained within it, see my Process and Analysis, 5-9, 12-13, 57; and McHenry.) Here I shall argue that Whiteheadian panexperientialism very naturally accommodates important aspects of quantum theory, including the top-down causation involved in neuroplastic phenomena under a quantum mechanical interpretation of brain processes and in so-called Quantum Zeno Effect. The overall picture which emerges is that Whitehead’s position is (at the very least) a strongly plausible alternative in philosophy of mind.While I must confess that this essay can only represent the merest sketch—indeed an adequate treatment of the richly complex interpretive, comparative, and substantive philosophical issues here requires at the very least a monograph—I nonetheless hope to present a coherent and useful précis of major arguments and comparative conceptual relationships, especially for the reader who may not be readily familiar with this terrain. I thus hope that this essay will serve as a short expository and critical introduction to the interface between process and analytic philosophy of mind, and a presentation of the several theoretical advantages gained by listening to Whitehead’s theory as it connects with concerns of analytic philosophers.I shall proceed by first working though the main outlines of John Searle’s important and widely reaching “The Recent History of Materialism,” an essay which exposes critical flaws in a variety of materialist theories in ways which Whiteheadians should find especially fitting and congenial. I shall then examine defenses of dualism and the relation of Whitehead to such defenses, followed by a separate section on Chalmers, Nagel, and Pred. I will then consider a number ofimportant objections to process panexperientialism, including objections arising from the work of Jaegwon Kim and John Searle. I close with a discussion of thementioned empirical scientific arguments. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" begins with an argument against sense-datum epistemology. There is some question about the validity of this attack, stemming in part from the assumption that Sellars is concerned with epistemic foundationalism. This paper recontextualizes Sellars's argument in two ways: by showing how the argument of EPM relates to Sellars's 1940s work, which does not concern foundationalism at all; and by considering the view of H.H. Price, Sellars's teacher at Oxford and the only (...) classical datum theorist to receive substantive comment in EPM. Timm Triplett has claimed that Sellars's discussion simply begs the question against Price, but this depends on the mistaken assumption that Sellars's concern is with foundationalism. On the contrary, Sellars's argument concerns the assumption that the innate capacity for sensory experience counts as "thinking in presence" in the way needed for empiricist accounts of content acquisition. Price's distinction between noticing universals and being aware of them encapsulates the tensions empiricists face here. (shrink)

For Arthur Danto, historical thought is essentially a matter of retrospection insofar as the historian comments on the events, actions, and thoughts of agents in the past from a future that in turn becomes the historian–s gaze into the past. Danto–s argument against the very possibility of constructing a substantive philosophy of history begins by pointing out that what its philosophers aspire to is the construction of a narrative of the whole of history. Danto–s demonstration of (...) the limitations of the substantive philosophy of history not only clarifies his notion of historical retrospection but also dismisses the substantive philosophy of history as an acceptable philosophical approach to history. Danto refutes the eyewitness view of history by means of a thought experiment that reveals, as Oscar Wilde might say, that one should be careful what one wishes for. (shrink)

The philosophy of history ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1899. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei.".

The aim of this book is to present and analyze philosophical conceptions concerning mathematics and logic as formulated by Polish logicians, mathematicians and philosophers in the 1920s and 1930s. It was a remarkable period in the history of Polish science, in particular in the history of Polish logic and mathematics. Therefore, it is justified to ask whether and to what extent the development of logic and mathematics was accompanied by a philosophical reflection. We try to answer those questions (...) by analyzing both works of Polish logicians and mathematicians who have a philosophical temperament as well as their research practice. Works and philosophical views of the following Polish scientists will be analyzed: Wacław Sierpiński, Zygmunt Janiszewski, Stefan Mazurkiewicz, Stefan Banach Hugo Steinhaus, Eustachy Żylińsk and Leon Chwistek, Jan Łukasiewicz, Zygmunt Zawirski, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Alfred Tarski, Andrzej Mostowski and Henryk Mehlberg, Jan Sleszyński, Stanisław Zaremba and Witold Wilkosz. To indicate the background of scientists being active in the 1920s and 1930s we consider in Chapter 1 some predecessors, in particular: Jan Śniadecki, Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Samuel Dickstein and Edward Stamm. (shrink)

The project of integrated HPS has occupied philosophers of science in one form or another since at least the 1960s. Yet, despite this substantial interest in bringing together philosophical and historical reflections on the nature of science, history of science and formal philosophy of science remain as divided as ever. In this paper, I will argue that the continuing separation between historical and formal philosophy of science is ill-founded. I will argue for this in both abstract and (...) concrete terms. At the abstract level, I reconstruct two possible arguments for the incompatibility of historical and formal philosophy of science and argue that they are both wanting. At the concrete level, I discuss how historical and formal philosophy of science have been brought together in practice, namely: in the form of a largely forgotten research tradition that I will refer to here as the study of formalized macro-units. After a brief exposition, I argue that this research tradition has been unduly overlooked by historically minded philosophers of science. Bringing together these observations, I argue that the divide between historical and formal philosophy of science is not grounded in any substantive arguments, but can be primarily attributed to disciplinary happenstance. (shrink)

Is the history of life a series of accidents or a drama scripted by selfish genes? Is there an “essential” human nature, determined at birth or in a distant evolutionary past? What should we conserve—species, ecosystems, or something else? -/- Informed answers to questions like these, critical to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, require both a knowledge of biology and a philosophical framework within which to make sense of its findings. In this accessible introduction to (...) philosophy of biology, Kim Sterelny and Paul E. Griffiths present both the science and the philosophical context necessary for a critical understanding of the most exciting debates shaping biology today. The authors, both of whom have published extensively in this field, describe the range of competing views—including their own—on these fascinating topics. -/- With its clear explanations of both biological and philosophical concepts, Sex and Death will appeal not only to undergraduates, but also to the many general readers eager to think critically about the science of life. (shrink)

The history of developmental biology is interwoven with debates as to whether mechanistic explanations of development are possible or whether alternative explanatory principles or even vital forces need to be assumed. In particular, the demonstrated ability of embryonic cells to tune their developmental fate precisely to their relative position and the overall size of the embryo was once thought to be inexplicable in mechanistic terms. Taking a causal perspective, this Element examines to what extent and how developmental biology, having (...) turned molecular about four decades ago, has been able to meet the vitalist challenge. It focuses not only on the nature of explanations but also on the usefulness of causal knowledge – including the knowledge of classical experimental embryology – for further scientific discovery. It also shows how this causal perspective allows us to understand the nature and significance of some key concepts, including organizer, signal and morphogen. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The past thirty years have seen substantive debate on the nature of Robert Boyle’s self-described “Mechanical” or “Corpuscularian” philosophy, its treatment of kinds and qualities, its relation to his experimental studies, its relation to other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century matter theories, and its role in the development of chemistry. Using several different strands from this literature, Marina Banchetti-Robino aims to show how Boyle addresses issues relevant to philosophy of chemistry today: the emergent nature of chemical properties, the mereology (...) of fundamental chemical wholes, and the nonreducibility of chemistry to physics. The last issue frames the whole book, which she describes... (shrink)

'Relativism versus absolutism' is one of the fundamental oppositions that have dominated reflections about science for much of its history. Often these reflections have been inseparable from wider social-political concerns regarding the position of science in society. Where does this debate stand in the philosophy and sociology of science today? And how does the 'relativism question' relate to current concerns with 'post truth' politics? In Relativism in the Philosophy of Science, Martin Kusch examines some of the most (...) influential relativist proposals of the last fifty years, and the controversies they have triggered. He argues that defensible forms of relativism all deny that any sense can be made of a scientific result being absolutely true or justified, and that they all reject 'anything goes' – that is the thought that all scientific results are epistemically on a par. Kusch concludes by distinguishing between defensible forms of relativism and post-truth thinking. (shrink)

Historiographic debates keep returning to issues of authorial intention in the interpretation of texts. This paper offers a response to these debates by differentiating between two versions of intentionalism, termed 'substantive intentionalism' and 'formal intentionalism', according to two different senses of 'identity' in the thesis that assigned meaning is identified with authorial intention, such that these two versions of intentionalism imply different ontological commitments to what are construed as the relevant authorial intentions. These distinctions and arguments are then related (...) to the 'historical intentionalism' of Quentin Skinner and Mark Bevir. The paper argues that in practice historical intentionalism ends up reproducing the arguments of formal intentionalism, and it concludes by raising questions about the value of intentionalism for historians. (shrink)

The diverse and breathtaking intelligence of the human animal is often embodied in skills. People, throughout their lifetimes, acquire and refine a vast number of skills. And there seems to be no upper limit to the creativity and beauty expressed by them. Think, for instance, of Olympic gymnastics: the amount of strength, flexibility, and control required to perform even a simple beam routine amazes, startles, and delights. In addition to the sheer beauty of skill, performances at the pinnacle of expertise (...) often display a kind of brilliance or genius. We observe an intelligence that saturates the body. The unity of physicality and intellect, mind and body, meshed and melded. Apart from sports, people develop a host of other skills, including musical and artistic skills, linguistic and social skills, scientific and medical skills, military and political skills, engineering skills, computer skills, business skills, etc. What's more, skill acquisition and refinement occurs throughout the human lifespan. In the Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise, we introduce and contextualize the various chapters that compose the Handbook. Before providing substantive overviews of each chapter, we also discuss the topic of skill in general and its importance for various areas of philosophy. Chapters are organized into six sections: 1. Skill in the history of philosophy (East & West), 2. Skill in Epistemology, 3. Skill, Intelligence, and Agency, 4. Skill in Perception, Imagination, and Emotion, 5. Skill, Language, and Social Cognition, and 6. Skill and Expertise in Normative Philosophy. (shrink)

Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass 2007). Regretfully, it is not an uncommon view in orthodox Indology that Indian philosophers were not interested in ethics. This claim belies the fact that Indian philosophical schools were generally interested in the practical consequences of beliefs and actions. The most popular symptom of this concern is the doctrine of karma, according to which the consequences of actions have an evaluative valence. Ethics and the History of Indian (...) class='Hi'>Philosophy argues that the orthodox view in Indology concerning Indian ethics is false. The first half the book deals with theoretical issues in studying ethics: defining moral terms, understanding the subject matter of ethics so as to transcend culturally specific substantive commitments and touches upon issues of cross-cultural hermeneutics and translation. The second half consists of a systematic explication of the moral philosophical aspects of nine major Indian philosophical schools. I argue that “dharma” in its various uses in Indian philosophy is always rationally treated as a moral term—even in so called “ontological” employments of the term as seen in Buddhism and Jainism. In understanding “dharma” in this manner, the Indian philosophical tradition is replete with different versions of moral realism that fit tidily with other philosophical commitments of Indian philosophers. Pains are taken to show the breath of moral philosophical disagreement in this tradition. On a comparative note, some Indian moral philosophy resembles realist approaches of the Western tradition (such as the Non-natural realism of Neo-Platonism, or the Naturalism of Utilitarianism). Out of the major Indian philosophical schools, a slim minority are shown to be committed to moral irrealism while some are shown to regard their entire philosophical orientation as firmly planted within moral philosophy (such as Jainism, Buddhism, Purva Mimamsa and Yoga). In response to those who would argue that what Indian philosophers meant by “dharma” is very different from what moral philosophers in the West have meant by “ethical” or “good,” I argue that this is as vacuous as noting that Utilitarians have a different conception of the good from Deontologists. If philosophy is concerned with theoretical debate, as I argue it is, philosophical terms function to articulate such disagreements. The various seemingly desperate uses of “dharma” in the Indian tradition are no longer confusing or disorderly when we understand the theoretico-philosophical function of this term in Indian philosophical disputes. -/- The second edition contains an additional chapter that addresses the colonial and political context of the study of Indian Ethics. (shrink)

Political philosophy harbors two schools of thought concerning money: the liberal, which regards it as a facilitator for freedom and enterprise, and the socialist/anarchist, which condemns it. liberal accounts of money and left-wing critiques (including those of marx and simmel) are analyzed. the role of money in promoting distributive justice is discussed using four models of money-free society. it is shown that money is pivotal in facilitating social justice based on substantive equality.

The structures of history -- Early history -- The epic of history -- The homer galaxy -- The logos of history -- Memory and history -- The genealogy of history.

Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe investigates the visual imagery (in painting, photography, prints, film, and design) of race construction primarily in Scandinavia and the empires of Austro-Hungary, Germany, and Russia at a time when the disciplines of ethnography and anthropology were expanding and publications on race were debating competing theories of biological, geographic, linguistic, and cultural determinants. These regions, while on the periphery of continental Europe, largely marginalized in the scholarship of nineteenth-century art history, and ignored by (...) Edward Said (Orientalism 1978), have been central locations for theorizing white identity and for containing diverse ethnic populations that have generated substantive ethnographic study and regional conflicts since the eighteenth century. This anthology explores art that engaged with ethnography and anthropology to shape visual representations of subordinate ethnic populations and material cultures, both indigenous (Roma, Sámi, Inuit, and Celts) and migrant or colonial (Muslims and Blacks), chiefly between 1850 and 1930, but extending into the early twenty-first century. The essays in this book contribute to postcolonial research by documenting colonial-style treatment of minority groups and by seeking to qualify binary systems through explorations of anomalies, complexities, and contradictions that emerge when seen from the perspective of the fine and applied arts. This book presents a range of different artistic voices that responded to ethnographic and anthropological information by producing images or objects that adopted, altered, or critiqued that information. The authors seek to uncover instances of connections and variability, to establish the fabricated nature of ethnic identity, and to challenge the certainties of racial categorization. (shrink)

New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organism and things help to create humans in all their (...) dimensions, biological, social, and cultural."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider Collingwood’s Idea of History in the wider context of his thoughts on historical knowledge, and in the light of criticisms which have often been less than generous in giving a certain latitude to what he meant to convey. The article shows how the main doctrines, that are often taken in isolation and forensically analysed and criticized, may be defended and made more intelligible when considered as an integrated whole. Such an idea (...) as re-enactment, for example, need not be considered to lend itself to intuitionism in philosophy, nor methodological individualism in interpretation. It is possible to understand Collingwood presenting the theory of re-enactment as at once a method for the attainment of historical knowledge, which doesn’t simply come about fortuitously, while also being an ontological condition of understanding, that is, when historical knowledge is attained, something will have happened to us, that is, we will have thought exactly the same thoughts, broadly speaking, as the historical subjects themselves. (shrink)

To oversimplify quite a bit, scholars’ presentation of Hegel's teleology constitutes a continuum according to how more-or-less secured the progress towards the goal is supposed to be, which tracks roughly the nature of the end and its necessity. In this article, rather than focus on the end and progress towards it, we will focus on the means and structure of teleological relationships on Hegel's account. This focus follows from an essential feature of Hegel's discussion of teleology in the Logic, in (...) which teleology is introduced to solve a problem in the individuation of entities. It will turn out that the fullest actualization of the end is in the durable means, which is also thereby individuated. And it will turn out that the paradigmatic historical means—the state—is tensed, as it were, between the end and its realization that makes it synchronically historical. This synchronic historicity is missing in the usual progressive and thus diachronic accounts of the teleological process of history. But first we step back even farther (at least historically). We begin by taking up the two most important philosophical accounts of teleology for Hegel, namely those of Aristotle and Kant. Then we go to Hegel's Logic for his reconstruction of teleological processes against the background of the explanatory need for individuation. We focus on four aspects of Hegel's account: that teleology is a structure of reciprocal interaction, that the purpose is an immanent governing principle, that change is the price of immanence, and that the durable means is the teleological object par excellence. Finally, we trace these features through Hegel's account of world history and conclude with some brief remarks on the historicity of the state described in the Philosophy of Right. (shrink)

In Our Moral Fate, Allen Buchanan defends an account of moral change that is grounded in evolutionary biology. His account offers resources for explaining the possibility of both moral progress and moral regression, where progress and regression are a function of moral inclusion and moral exclusion, respectively. In my commentary, I first offer a brief summary of Buchanan’s argument. I then examine Buchanan’s account from the perspective of transitional justice. Transitional justice provides confirming evidence for some of Buchanan’s substantive (...) claims and challenges the validity of others. I end with a discussion of power and time. Power plays a central role in Buchanan’s account of niche construction, but the locus of power is unspecified. Time scales for moral change are profoundly different for the timeline of transitional justice versus the timeline of evolutionary biology. My discussion of power and time raises questions the nature of the normative guidance Buchanan’s account offers in the short term. (shrink)

Hegel’s many remarks that seem to imply that philosophy should proceed completely a priori pose a problem for his philosophy of nature since, on this reading, Hegel offers an a priori derivation of...

After watching the 2017 Charlottesville riots, Joan Wallach Scott began thinking about our standard views of history as progressive, and the culmination of progress in the Western European nation-state since the 18th century. The return of once-discredited ideas-Nazism, white supremacy, nationalism-poses serious threats to democratic institutions and values, and upends our commonly-used adages about "the judgment of history" or being "on the right side of history." The three chapters examine the Nuremberg Tribunal, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation (...) Commission, and the movement for reparations for slavery in the U.S. Scott examines how our association of these events with the expectation that history moves in an ever-improving linear direction. Instead, Scott forces us to reassess the history of these cases, not as an appeal to how history will ultimately judge these events, but rather as a need to perpetuate the nation-state and its claims to morality. (shrink)

The Person Vanishes argues that despite John Dewey's failure to articulate «an adequate theory of personality», his writings provide at least a theory-sketch of human personality consistent with the assumptions that framed his philosophical outlook. Recognizing the new developments in society, science, and the arts, Dewey argues for the necessity of a Copernican revolution in our understanding of the human self; from the monadic and minimalist self of the Cartesian-Newtonian modernist tradition to a relational and processual model of selfhood consonant (...) with the press of post-modernist historical experience. As a field and activity conception, Dewey's self emerges as a nexus of relational energizing, genuinely moored in a cultural surrounding in which ongoing creative reconstruction becomes the mark and criterion of the self's health and growth. What vanishes in Dewey's reconstruction is not the self as such, but only the entitative, substantive self of early modernism. Dewey's understanding of the self is grounded in the conviction that philosophy must begin its inquiry from the ordinary experience of plain men and women. The Person Vanishes examines Dewey's participatory notion of deliberation, what he calls «dramatic rehearsal», by using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study. The analysis attempts to cash out the personal and collective habits, as well as the different modalities of ends, facts, and values that diagram the existential dimensions of this problematic situation. Contrary to traditional dualistic and spectatorial accounts of deliberation, Dewey's «dramatic rehearsal» shows the complexity of decision-making when the genuine limitations of daily life are taken seriously. The attempt to march to Dewey's participatory philosophy reveals the escapist nature of all dualistic philosophical traditions and the reason for their continuous failure to resolve concrete social and personal conflicts. (shrink)

This volume contains thirteen papers that were presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques, which was held at Ryerson University in Toronto. It showcases rigorously reviewed modern scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. A series of chapters all set in the eighteenth century consider topics such (...) as John Marsh’s techniques for the computation of decimal fractions, Euler’s efforts to compute the surface area of scalene cones, a little-known work by John Playfair on the practical aspects of mathematics, and Monge’s use of descriptive geometry. After a brief stop in the nineteenth century to consider the culture of research mathematics in 1860s Prussia, the book moves into the twentieth century with an examination of the historical context within which the Axiom of Choice was developed and a paper discussing Anatoly Vlasov’s adaptation of the Boltzmann equation to ionized gases. The remaining chapters deal with the philosophy of twentieth-century mathematics through topics such as an historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits; a reexamination of Mary Leng’s defenses of mathematical fictionalism through an alternative, anti-realist approach to mathematics; and a look at the reasons that mathematicians select specific problems to pursue. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible to not only mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also anyone with a general interest in mathematics. (shrink)

We defend a realist account of history: past facts are discoveries not creations. We show how ‘moderate’ realists, who admit the critical role of perspective, while insisting on history’s metaphysical independence from historians, can accommodate Paul Roth’s arguments in favor of irrealism. Moreover, our position is consistent with a dynamic past: as history unfurls past events gain new properties. Realism is necessary, we argue, to capture substantive disputes within history. It also grounds history’s reflexivity: (...) the point of the continual re-examination of history turns in part on there being mind-independent past facts to be had. (shrink)

In 43 lively chapters Peter Adamson tells the story of philosophy from its beginnings to Plato and Aristotle. Most histories jump from one famous name to another, but Adamson shows that the people and ideas in between, usually overlooked, are fascinating and significant. Based on his popular podcasts, this is serious history with a light touch.

Because our student edition of Hume’s Treatise has appeared before publication of our critical edition of the same work, scholars using the former will find it difficult to determine how and where the text of the Treatise found there differs substantively from other editions, and from, most importantly, the widely used version of the text edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and revised by P. H. Nidditch. Fortunately, we now have this opportunity to report the substantive differences between the text (...) found in the OPT Treatise and the text found in SBN. In addition, this report allows us to focus on many of the substantive emendations we have made to the copytext and to bring to these emendations a level of attention they might not otherwise receive. (shrink)