orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

At this stage of evolution of our discipline, philosophy of science, there seems no single great theme that has attracted the attention of most practitioners in the field. Rather, scholarly works in the field are quite diffused. Traditional topics, such as reductionism and the unity of science, remain to be carefully examined from various perspectives. The debate over realism versus instrumentalism, although dismissed by some as uninteresting and unproductive, is still taken by many active scholars as vital in our understanding (...) of the nature of scientific theories and in our appraisal of scientific enterprise. Of course, the new spirit of our times has also shown itself, sometimes in the discussion of some major theses in the post-empiricist philosophy of science, such as incommensurability, underdetermination and constructivism, on the basis of detailed examination of scientific materials, other times in the shift of the attention from static aspects of science, such as theory justification and the nature of explanation, to more dynamic aspects, such as negotiations within a scientific community and its function and role in the development of science. Even more to the point in this regard is the great attention paid to the place science has occupied in modernity, the defect of modernist understanding of science and its possible remedy. Not surprisingly, this current state of affairs in our field has also manifested in the essays collected in this volume of contributions to the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Thus, an inspection of these essays, although it will not provide us with a focus of the discipline, may give us some sense as to what is going on in the field. (shrink)

Part of the bafflement over expressions like “contemporary” and “postmodern” in philosophy can be traced to a flood of nineteenth-century historians of philosophy who dubbed the so-called “post-medieval” era from Bacon and Descartes to Mill and Nietzsche the “Philosophie der Neuzeit,” “L’époque moderne,” and “modern philosophy.” Even the philosophers mentioned suffice to indicate that these labels are often only placeholders for views of thinkers linked by little more than a birth after the onset of the Reformation and a death before (...) the Curies’ discovery of polonium. Nevertheless, philosophers in the twentieth century and their historians were faced with the dilemma of either subsuming their work under this broadly conceived moniker, thereby signaling nolens volens a lack of significant innovation, or coming up with some appropriately distinctive term. (shrink)

One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all (...) too quickly could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all (...) too quickly could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all (...) too quickly could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The history of epistemology has always been closely linked with the tradition of skepticism. Indeed, the earliest philosophical efforts to describe the nature and limits of our knowledge were largely motivated by the skeptical suggestion that things may not be as they appear to us. Every attempt to find an adequate response to these early doubts about the reliability of our knowledge met new and powerful skeptical criticisms which in turn engendered new attempts to justify the conviction that we are (...) capable to achieving at least some degree of truth about ourselves and our world. At a time when the latest swing of the pendulum has taken philosophy from excessive confidence in our cognitive powers to an equally excessive tendency to reduce of all truth claims to pleasing or powerful illusions, the essays collected in this volume offer some balanced and attractive alternatives to these extreme positions. (shrink)

The Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy was held in Boston in August 1998. Twice in this century has there been a philosophy world congress in the United States, both times in Boston. Congresses have long been held every five years, but mostly in France, Germany, Russia, England, and other European countries. Aside from the two in this country, only one had previously been held in the Americas, in Mexico. The organization responsible for holding such congresses is, (...) and has long been, the Federation International de Societes de Philosophie. (shrink)

In a response to John Rawls’s 1993 article entitled, “The Law of Peoples,” Karl-Otto Apel argues that the concept of “overlapping consensus” is not sufficient for a basis or foundation for global justice. Apel makes the claim that when Rawls transfers the problem of justification from a general moral conception of justice to overlapping consensus the “weight of justification” is transferred to a “freestanding” conception of justice. To the extent that it does this, Rawls’s theory fails to show why a (...) freestanding conception of justice ought to be acceptable. In order to do so, Apel believes that, since citizens’ reason must be addressed, the weight of justification for a freestanding view must be based on a philosophical consensus theory. This would not mean that the need of a factual consensus would be dispensed with. Rather, it would mean that a freestanding view would be grounded philosophically “by a conception of an ideal consensus that serves as a regulative principle for searching and also for questioning an overlapping consensus.”. (shrink)

The three HSA panels which President Donald P. Verene asked me to convene in the framework of the XIX World Congress of Philosophy in Moscow were a distinct success. Ten substantial papers were presented; each of them stirred up lively and constructive discussion. The audiences, which were truly international, ranged from about a dozen to nearly twenty people. The panels were made up as follows.

The Hegel Society of America sponsored two sessions at the recent World Congress in Boston. The first, chaired by Riccardo Pozzo, consisted of three papers on the theme of "Hegel and Paideia," reflecting the general theme of the Congress. The second, chaired by Allen Speight, was a "Book Session" on Hegel's Ladder by Henry Harris - formally speaking, a critical discussion of the work; informally speaking, a public celebration of the appearance of this long-awaited masterwork.

One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all (...) too quickly could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

One truly significant development in scholarship in recent decades has been the maturing of intercultural studies. Intercultural studies in philosophy have their origins in the comparative study of religions that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneering practitioners include Max Müller, E. B. Tylor, and James Frazer among others. By the second half of the twentieth century, these traditions were further refined and extended by such notable figures as Gerardus van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade. However, acceptance (...) of what is now called “intercultural philosophy” was not immediately forthcoming. In 1962, Edward Conze observed that the “rapid growth of communications has brought Eastern and Western cultures face to face. So far European, and particularly British, philosophers have reacted by becoming more provincial than ever before.” Although Conze believed philosophers could not remain provincial forever, he allowed that in his day the omens were “most unpropitious.” His point was not that Western philosophy should simply include non-Western philosophers in the conversion but, rather, that non-Western philosophies, beyond their own intrinsic worth, would provide a valuable service to Western philosophy by exposing its “latent presuppositions” to sustained examination and questioning. Put differently, if the activity of philosophy is understood as public discourse in a community of inquiry, then the philosophical conversation of mankind could only be enriched by inclusion of other voices. (shrink)

Thirty-five years ago the editor of a collection entitled Philosophy of Mind could plausibly claim that his selection of a dozen articles was representative of the wide range and vitality of contemporary inquiries. There was no need to categorize; he had chosen articles on the basis of merit, whether or not, in the aggregate, they encompassed the major problems or topics that are the special province of the philosophical study of mind. A 1991 text, on the other hand, offers five (...) major categories, some requiring as many as four subdivisions—obviously in the interest of careful analysis. Yet it is not clear why, for example, “Consciousness, Self and Personhood” should constitute a subset of “The Nature of Mind,” when “Self and Other” occurs as a major category two hundred pages earlier. I am only pointing out the vicissitudes of classification, too little in one case, in the other seemingly too much of a good thing. With these and other collections in mind, one might well conclude that the subject matter of philosophy of mind is too diffuse to allow precise organization and definition. (shrink)

It can be little disputed that modern philosophy, as it is generally understood, stands under the broader tradition of the Enlightenment—and, for the most part, consciously and vigorously so! Despite the nuances and important distinctions of style and substance found in the great thinkers of this tradition, one can see clearly a general commitment to the fostering of the natural capacity of human beings to know their world and to interact with it and with other rational creatures in increasingly (...) productive ways. Even if such figures were also critical of some of the tradition’s excesses, they were in an important sense united in their confidence in the successful use of those faculties that passed the critical test of reason. Certainly, Horaces’s words, “Sapere aude!” rang true throughout the modern period, as Kant insists in his essay, What is Enlightenment? Though Kant’s vigorously positive response might not have been fully affirmed in every detail by all Enlightenment philosophers, his central affirmation that humanity was moving from the age of its minority to that of its majority resonates throughout the thought of this era. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy, a dominant tradition of twentieth-century philosophy, can be informatively cast as the outgrowth of the investigations of logic and language of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and in the next generation, of Rudolf Carnap and W.V. Quine. As such, it is a specific historical development, one that featured subtle dialectical interactions among its propounders, interactions that have been reflected or reenacted in later developments. Whatever its heritage, contemporary analytic philosophy continues to use investigations of language and (...) thought to get at fundamental issues at the heart of philosophy: truth, meaning, and knowledge. (shrink)

Where might one start? Of “education,” the Latinate etymology is evocative: to draw out, draw away from, draw forth. The echoes are linear. Ex tenebras lux, from the shadows of ignorance to the luminosity of knowing, a path towards experience out of innocence. That path has its symbolic origin in the library of third and second century B.C. Alexandria, where Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace first coined the word canon, as the mark of a standard of excellence. In (...) that library we would have found the Aristotelian texts summoning the human race to immortality, through an education that alone can lead us from the conditions of bestiality to those of divinity. Political order rests on an education in harmony with the constitutional structure of the city state; ultimately however eudaimonia, the highest joy known to man, lies in the educated exercise of the soul’s faculties in conformity with the most perfect virtue through philosophical contemplation. Here is the telos of the pedagogic journey. (shrink)

As in Düsseldorf in 1978, so in Montreal in 1983, the Hegel Society of America held a fringe meeting. But this last time it was more ambitious and more fully organized, a session lasting throughout the day of August 24. Lawrence Stepelevich opened the proceedings with a brief report of the development of the Owl from a nestling into a full-fledged journal. He then introduced the speakers on the subject: “The Trials of the Absolute Spirit.”.