Review of Hauskeller, M.. The Meaning of Life and Death: Ten Classic Thinkers on the Ultimate Question. London, & New York, NY: Bloomsbury.

Review of Warburton, N. (2023). A little history of philosophy. (A. Markhovska, Trans.). Kyiv: Nash Format.

Arina Oriekhova's interview with Professor Serhii Secundant, devoted to Leibniz's concept of time and space, the peculiarities of Michael Fatch's interpretation of this concept, and various historico-philosophical approaches to understanding Leibniz's philosophy as a whole.

Arina Oriekhova’s interview with Professor Serhii Secundant, devoted to Leibniz’s concept of time and space, the peculiarities of Michael Fatch’s interpretation of this concept, and various historico-philosophical approaches to understanding Leibniz’s philosophy as a whole.

The problematic of biopolitics has become increasingly important in the social sciences. Inaugurated by Michel Foucault's genealogical research on the governance of sexuality, crime and mental illness in modern Europe, the research on biopolitics has developed into a broader interdisciplinary orientation, addressing the rationalities of power over living beings in diverse spatial and temporal contexts. The development of the research on biopolitics in recent years has been characterized by two tendencies: the increasingly sophisticated theoretical engagement with the idea of power (...) over and the government of life that both elaborated and challenged the Foucauldian canon and the detailed and empirically rich investigation of the concrete aspects of the government of life in contemporary societies. Unfortunately, the two tendencies have often developed in isolation from each other, resulting in the presence of at least two debates on biopolitics: the historico-philosophical and the empirical one. This Handbook brings these two debates together, combining theoretical sophistication and empirical rigour. The volume is divided into five sections. While the first two deal with the history of the concept and contemporary theoretical debates on it, the remaining three comprise the prime sites of contemporary interdisciplinary research on biopolitics: economy, security and technology. Featuring previously unpublished articles by the leading scholars in the field, this wide-ranging and accessible companion will both serve as an introduction to the diverse research on biopolitics for undergraduate students and appeal to more advanced audiences interested in the current state of the art in biopolitics studies. (shrink)

In the domain of the Ukrainian history of philosophy one can clearly observe symptoms of eclecticism, contamination, and methodological ambiguity. Such situation is rooted in continuous insufficiency of the methodological framework of Ukrainian philosophy, split by competing ideological structures. Critical condition of humanitarian epistemology is aggravated by the urgent need to overtake foreign studies in the corresponding field, which constantly increase in number and evolve in character. The article aims at critical assessment of methodological approaches to historical philosophical analysis (...) within the light of current philosophical studies. Analysis of the relevant literature on the problem of how to identify the character of interference between the target philosophical discourse and the discourse of the historical reconstruction allowed revealing the critical lines of relativist archeology and traditional historiography. Relativist approach is averted from the dimension of concrete texts to logical anachronistic speculations over seemingly evident contextual links. Such strategy is legitimate to sustain logical descriptions of the categories exempted from the certain paradigm but it is useless to reveal factual genealogical links between the discourses of the two philosophers. Descriptive studies seem to fall prey to hermeneutic ambiguity in referring to a set of ideas forming the canon of perennial philosophy. It is proved that historiographical approach enables to objectively examine genetic relations between various corpora of philosophical texts. Nowadays the Ukrainian historico-philosophical science is going through a harsh crisis of methodology, caused by distortion of universal coordinates of scientific thinking allegedly providing the condition of the so-called methodological pluralism. Numerous discussions focus on the question about the very scientific nature of history of philosophy as a branch of knowledge. The tendency which appears to prevail in such disputes defines history of philosophy as philosophy in contrast to the opinion that history of philosophy should be rather seen as approximate to social history. (shrink)

This book contains writings that pertain to the history of the philosophy of logic and mathematics, the Lvov-Warsaw School, epistemology, and key events in the development of the analytic philosophy in the 20th century. The essays are written by Jan Wolenski, an internationally acclaimed historian of logic and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the International Institute of Philosophy.

This book provides an overview of key features of (philosophical) materialism, in historical perspective. It is, thus, a study in the history and philosophy of materialism, with a particular focus on the early modern and Enlightenment periods, leading into the 19th and 20th centuries. For it was in the 18th century that the word was first used by a philosopher (La Mettrie) to refer to himself. Prior to that, ‘materialism’ was a pejorative term, used for wicked thinkers, as a (...) near-synonym to ‘atheist’, ‘Spinozist’ or the delightful ‘Hobbist’. The book provides the different forms of materialism, particularly distinguished into claims about the material nature of the world and about the material nature of the mind, and then focus on materialist approaches to body and embodiment, selfhood, ethics, laws of nature, reductionism and determinism, and overall, its relationship to science. For materialism is often understood as a kind of philosophical facilitator of the sciences, and the author want to suggest that is not always the case. Materialism takes on different forms and guises in different historical, ideological and scientific contexts as well, and the author wants to do justice to that diversity. Figures discussed include Lucretius, Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Toland, Collins, La Mettrie, Diderot, d’Holbach and Priestley; Büchner, Bergson, J.J.C. Smart and D.M. Armstrong. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:I reflect critically on the early modern philosophical canon in light of the entrenchment and homogeneity of the lineup of seven core figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. After distinguishing three elements of a philosophical canon—a causal story, a set of core philosophical questions, and a set of distinctively philosophical works—I argue that recent efforts contextualizing the history of philosophy within the history of science subtly shift the central philosophical questions (...) and allow for a greater range of figures to be philosophically central. However, the history of science is but one context in which to situate philosophical works. Looking at the historical context of seventeenth-century philosophy of mind, one that weaves together questions of consciousness, rationality, and education, does more than shift the central questions—it brings new ones to light. It also shows that a range of genres can be properly philosophical and seamlessly diversifies the central philosophers of the period. (shrink)

The canonical image of John Locke as one of the first philosophes is so deeply engrained that we could forget that he belonged to a very different historico-political context. His influence on Enlightenment thought, not least that of his theories of political liberty, has been the subject of widespread debate. In Locke's political liberty: readings and misreadings a team of renowned international scholars re-evaluates Locke's heritage in the eighteenth century and the ways it was used. Moving beyond reductive conceptions (...) of Locke as either central or peripheral to the development of Enlightenment thought, historians and philosophers explore how his writings are invoked, exploited or distorted in eighteenth-century reflections on liberty. Analyses of his reception in England and France bring out underlying conceptual differences between the two nations, and extend an ongoing debate about the difficulty of characterising national political epistemologies. The traditional Anglocentric view of Locke and his influence is demystified, and what emerges is a new, more diverse vision of the reception of his political thinking throughout Europe. Of interest to political philosophers and historians, Locke's political liberty: readings and misreadings reveals how the issues identified by Locke recur in our own debates about difference, identity and property - his work is as resonant today as it has ever been. (shrink)

Essays on philosophy and intellectual history, focusing in particular on John Locke.

20세기뿐만 아니라 자연과학의 역사 속에서 가장 위대한 과학자라고 평가되는 알베르 트 아인슈타인(Albert Einstein, 1879-1955)은 많은 경우 ‘물리학자’였을 뿐만 아니라 ‘철 학자’였다고도 평가된다. 나는 이 논문에서, 어떤 의미에서 아인슈타인이 물리학자이자 철 학자였는지에 대한 하나의 역사철학적 해명을 제시하고자 한다. 실제로 아인슈타인의 물 리학은 그의 철학과 분리해서 생각할 수 없다. 왜냐하면 그는 학생이던 시절부터 죽기 직 전까지 조화롭고 단순한 ‘물리적 세계상’의 추구를 통해 자신을 둘러싼 온갖 개인적이고 세속적인 일들에서 벗어나 ‘지성적인 안식’을 취하고자 했기 때문이다. 만약 우리가 조화 롭고 단순한 ‘물리적 세계상’ 추구가 아인슈타인에게 (...) 가졌던 중요성을 제대로 이해하지 못 한다면, 우리는 그가 제시한 대표적인 이론인 상대성 이론의 인식적 의의뿐만 아니라 그가 일생을 거쳐 물리학을 추구했던 방식을 정확하게 파악할 수 없다. 바로 그런 의미에서 그 는 ‘철학적 물리학자’였지만, 그렇다고 그의 철학적 관점이 과학을 바라보는 유일하게 합 리적이고 타당한 관점이었다고 볼 수는 없다. 내가 볼 때 오히려 아인슈타인의 과학철학은 물리학자로서 그가 갖는 위대함의 베일을 벗고 유구한 철학적 전통 속에 편입되어 철학적 으로 재해석되고 재평가되어야 한다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Evaluation, Standards, Normalization: Historico-philosophical Formations and the Conditions of Possibility for Checklist Thought Bernadette Baker University of Wisconsin-Madison In education today a new vocabulary has emerged that is far more than just words. In the context of educational policy the setting of goals or objectives is now being subsumed under terms such as statewidestandards, child development is now being adjectivized by descriptors such as learning disability or (...) emotionally disturbed, and the evaluation ofclassroom-based performance is now being collated in aportfolio. These are more than just buzz words-at one level they are new ways of governing children and teachers, of organizing action, and of perceiving the world. What, for instance, does it tell us about ourselves when first-grade students Mikey, Enrique, Waldo, orDonal are introduced to visitors to the school by labels such as LD, ED, ADD, ADHD, and so forth, rather thanby their name? What does it tell us about ourselves when we say a curriculum or program of study is in line with the standards established somewhere else? And what story do we think is being narratedin the documentation of a child's performance in portfolio form across a semester or year? In consideringwhyterms suchasstandards, child development, or even evaluation have such contemporary currency I am necessarily drawn into a study of the timespaces in which they did not have such currency at all. This paper maps four moves into a moment that I think of as a rather long present-day-a present that is not simply this morning, yesterday, or the daybefore, but one that links the subjectivities ofthose now living in educational workto those made available about one hundred years ago. The four moves that I analyze here can be thought of as conditions of possibility for the operation of contemporary educational mies of reasoning, especially those that have formed around the resurgent popularity of"checklist thought" in reform efforts. The four moves collectively historicize how notions of standards, child development, and evaluation can pop up as commonsensical tropes through which to gather and degather action in the educational field. The first ofthese moves is that which flows from the operation ofan ideal to the operation of a norm. The second move is that which flows between the advent of statistics and the advent of eugenics. The third move is that which flows between the appearance ofnovels and fiction and the novel ficticityoffacts. And the fourth move is that which flows from the fictions of child development narratives to the stories that standards tell us. Collectively, these historico-philosophical moves will enable reconsideration of what we think evaluation, standards, and norms for child development actually narrate, lending food for thought to the specificityoftheir uptake in music education. From Ideal to Norm One way inwhichto examinethe shift from a seventeenth-century concept of the ideal to the nineteenth-century concept of the norm is by telling a story that was told in the early twentieth century. At this time when the educational field was formalizing, there was great care taken to record discussions held at conferences. When conferenceproceedings werepublished, theywere usually structured so that the presenter's paper©Philosophy ofMusic Education ReviewlO, no. 1 (Fall, 2002): 92-101. Bernadette Baker 93 was followed by a transcript of the conversation held after it. Like today, in the discussion time, audience members asked questions or made comments. Unlike today, the names of such participating audience members were typed into the proceedings and their specific questions or comments were written up as part ofreporting on the paper presented. In a discussion held at a conference in 1 905 on the topic of methods for training children labeledas feebleminded, apresenterhadspokenof the positive uses of a vegetable garden in the disciplining of feebleminded girls. The audience members relayed their own versions of experimenting with gardening and gathering, some complaining oftoo little space and others indicating the effects of having too many fields from which to gather. Dr. Dunlap was one such participant, indicatingimplicitlytheeffectsofhavingtoo many choices. In the spirit ofthe hunter/gatherer dichotomy, thegirlslabeledas feeblemindedatthe institutionwhereDr. Dunlap worked weresentout to pick com. The following story emerged. Dr. Dunlap: Our girls go out under an attendant and gather vegetables... (shrink)

Review of Mircea Flonta, The Solitary Thinker. Criticism and Practice of Philosophy in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Works, (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2008).

Review of Vozniak, T. (2024). Experiments with the Word. Lviv: Rastr-7; (2022). Art Studies Essays. Kyiv: Duh i Litera; (2016). Philosophical essays. Kyiv: Duh і Litera.

Some time ago I had a shock. I was reading, in the Mathematical Gazette for March 1931, Sir A. S. Eddington's presidential address to the Mathematical Association in 1930. And quite suddenly I came on the statement that the number of protons in the universe is either 7 or 14 with 78 noughts after it. My breath was taken away. Readers of R. L. Stevenson's story, Providence and the Guitar, will remember the maiden lady who, after hearing what the Commissary (...) said when he was woken up in the night, felt her maiden modesty so outraged that she doubted if she ranked any longer as a maiden lady. I felt just like that. I felt that my philosophic modesty had been so outraged that I doubted if I ranked any longer as a humble student of philosophy. Sir Arthur has certainly not counted them. Then how in the world does he know that they are what he says they are? (shrink)

The article discusses the original critical dialectical approach of the Soviet philosopher Valentin F. Asmus. His publications on the heritage of Western philosophical thought in the journal Pod znamenem marksizma are examples of this approach. In the 1920s and 1930s, Asmus published a number of articles analyzing a variety of the ideas developed by Western European philosophers: “An Advocate for Philosophical Intuition (Bergson and His Critique of the Intellect)” (1926); “The Alogism of William James” (1927); “The Dialectics of (...) Necessity and Freedom in Spinoza’s Ethics” (1927); “Kant’s General and Transcendental Logic” (1928); “Cosmogony and Cosmology of Descartes” (1937); “Fichte and the Vocation of Scholar” (1937); “Nicholas of Cusa. Selected Philosophical Works” (1938); and “Tommaso Campanella” (1939). These articles differed from the journal’s usual rhetoric, which was shaped in accordance with the official Soviet state ideology. Asmus, through the thinkers he examined, showed the fundamental importance of philosophy for the human personality. This article argues that Asmus, despite his closeness to dialectical materialism, adapted the official terminology and issues in his historical and philosophical articles in a way that he advanced the human right to spirituality, creative activity, and individual freedom. (shrink)

The philosophical and exegetical oeuvre, biography and legacy of the Jewish-Italian Renaissance Rabbi Obadiah Sforno (c. 1475–1550) are revisited for the first time by international scholars presenting in-depth studies on the thoughts of a man “between two worlds”.

I argue that many interpretations of Kant’s philosophy suffer from what I call “Textvergessenheit,” and that the remedy against it is what I call “kommentarische Interpretation.” By “Textvergessenheit” I mean that, despite all appearances, there are no really close, detailed, exegetical and reconstructive interpretations of Kant’s texts; and by “kommentarische Interpretation” I mean interpretations that are just this: close, detailed, exegetical and reconstructive. The main purpose of “doing history of philosophy” and thus the main purpose of interpreting philosophical texts (...) is to understand what they mean; it is not to find out whether what the text claims to be true really is true . The ultimate aim of reading a philosophical text is to understand, and this means: to reconstruct the theory and arguments put forward by its author. Once it is clear what an argument says, we can relate to it, critically or affirmatively, or whatever; but what exactly the argument really says, is never obvious. Of course, no one will argue that we should not read Kant’s text carefully. Yet, since it is a widely held belief that, contrary to what I claim, there are close readings of Kant’s text, I will provide examples that, as a matter of fact, this is not the case; Textvergessenheit is a fact of philosophical life. Key words HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to challenge the continued exclusion of Indian philosophies from the Western philosophical canon on the supposed basis that such philosophies are really religion, mysticism, and mythology. I argue that many schools of Indian philosophy, such as Advaita Vedānta, resist and problematize historically particular Euro-Western conceptions of both philosophy and religion, and the conceptual borders between them, where philosophy is understood as grounded in various substantive notions of reason and rationality, defined as a (...) purely theoretical enterprise. In addition, I question the predominant tendency to see philosophy as opposed to “religion”, which is often presumed to rest on faith in a Judeo-Christian conception of God: The singular and wholly other, creator of all souls, ex nihilo, the ultimate judge of humankind, where salvation is granted in proportion to the intrinsic value of faith. I suggest that Advaita challenges these prevailing conceptions. A part of my larger purpose is to dislodge the view that the Euro-Western philosophical enterprise constitutes the universal, neutral, and objective standard from which all other approaches to philosophy are to be judged as legitimate. My hope is to lay some of the groundwork required to re-think dominant historical and conceptual categories from a broader global perspective, with the aim of developing a deeper and more plural understanding of the diverse nature of both philosophical and religious inquiry. (shrink)

This book presents a series of case studies and reflections on the historiographical assumptions, methods, and approaches that shape the way in which philosophers construct their own past. The chapters in the volume advance discussion of the methods of historians of philosophy, while at the same time illustrating the various ways in which philosophical canons come into existence, debunking the myth of analytical philosophy's ahistoricism, and providing a deeper understanding of the roles historiographical devices play in philosophical thought. (...) More importantly, the contributors attempt to understand history of philosophy in connection with other historical and historiographical approaches: contributors engage classical history of science, sociology of knowledge, history of psychology and historiography, in dialogue with historiographical practices in philosophy more narrowly construed. Additionally, select chapters adopt a more diverse perspective, by making place for non-Western approaches and for efforts to construe new philosophical narratives that do justice to the voice of women across the centuries. Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in history of philosophy, meta-philosophy, philosophy of history, historiography, intellectual history, and sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

Georg Lukács wrote The Theory of the Novel in 1914-1915, a period that also saw the conception of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Letters, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Spengler's Decline of the West, and Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia. Like many of Lukács's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and Husserl.The (...) Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukács's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

Review of Chiappero-Martinetti, E., Osmani, S., & Qizilbash, M. (Eds.). (2020). The Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Euclidean geometry, statics, and classical mechanics, being in some sense the simplest physical theories based on a full-fledged mathematical apparatus, are well suited to a historico-philosophical analysis of the way in which a physical theory differs from a purely mathematical theory. Through a series of examples including Newton’s Principia and later forms of mechanics, we will identify the interpretive substructure that connects the mathematical apparatus of the theory to the world of experience. This substructure includes models of experiments, (...) models of measurement, and modular connections with partial theories. It evolves during the life of a theory as physicists learn how to apply it in various contexts. It should nevertheless be regarded as an integral part of a genuine physical theory since the theory would otherwise degenerate into pure mathematics. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Les éditions et traductions représentent une part très importante du travail des philosophes français du XIXe siècle. Loin d’être envisagées comme des tâches subalternes, celles-ci sont comprises par leurs auteurs comme des œuvres elles-mêmes philosophiques. Dans cet article, nous montrons que pour pouvoir les considérer comme telles, il faut pouvoir identifier les raisons qui poussent l’auteur à s’intéresser à celui qu’il édite ainsi que les effets qu’il attend de sa publication dans le champ philosophique. En nous concentrant sur le cas (...) de Blaise Pascal dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, nous mettons en évidence la manière dont la question de son intégration au « canon » de la philosophie a conduit des philosophes étrangers, voire hostiles à sa pensée, à l’éditer : Ernest Havet et Léon Brunschvicg. Alors, il ne s’agissait pas pour eux de se déclarer « contre » Pascal, mais d’intégrer, en en pensant les spécificités, une édition de ses textes à leur propre projet philosophique. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the reflection on the history of philosophy conceived as a cycle of enlightenments in the thought of Kazimierz Twardowski. In 1895 Twardowski adopts Franz Brentano’s model of the cyclical character of the history of philosophy. In the cycle of modern philosophy, the traditional Enlightenment period of the 18th century is shown critically as the one in which the original forces of the scientific revolution of the 17th century weakened, while the philosophy of (...) the beginning of modernity is to be seen as the proper Enlightenment. Critical reflections are crowned with a sharp critique of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy which is supposed to be responsible for a further weakening, or even degeneration, of 19th century philosophy. Twardowski when lecturing on the history of modern philosophy in Lvow in 1896–1923, softened the four-phase conception of the modern cycle as well as the key role played by Kant’s thought. But in 1904, in the context of the motto of the “return to Kant” and the formation of the Polish Philosophical Society, Twardowski delivered an important speech in which the figure of Kant was instrumentalized for the purposes of what we may call the third modern enlightenment, this time taking place in Polish philosophy. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper considers the establishment of the paradigmatic determinants of the understanding of crime on the basis of fundamental changes in understanding of the essence of a man in ancient, medieval, Renaissance, modern and postmodern philosophy. Theoretical basis. The author determines that the understanding of the concept of crime is possible only in the combination of historical, philosophical, legal and sociological approaches. The interpretation of the essence of this concept dynamics and relevant legal practices is based on structuralist, (...) post-structuralist and hermeneutical methodological principles. Originality. The author has proved that the concept of "crime" is not a constant but a historically variable category whose dynamics of meanings is linked to a change in philosophical anthropological paradigms. Its understanding is primarily related to the interpretation of the essence of a man and the imperatives of his behavior. This allows a new understanding of the philosophical foundations of modern criminology. Conclusions. The article establishes that in the history of Western philosophy, there are five anthropological paradigms that differ in a thorough rethinking of the essence of a man. The first cosmocentric regards man as a microcosm, his soul and actions must be in harmony with the harmony of the Cosmos. The second Theocentric considers a man the image and likeness of God, though he is at the same time burdened with original sin. In the era of early Modernism, the third paradigm, which we called cognitive-centric, becomes dominant, since the essence of a man is reduced primarily to his mind. It gradually changes to the fourth – sociocentric, which focuses on the social essence of a man. However, despite its continued existence in our time, at the end of the XX century, there is a transition to the fifth paradigm – postmodernist, which deconstructs the essence of a man, reducing it to the role of an element of power systems. These paradigms, with a certain synchronicity, create the corresponding concepts of "crime": from violation of polis-space laws to identification with sin, from non-observance of mental and moral standards to social deviance. Contemporary understandings of crime are, for the most part, relativistic and constructivist, which is consistent with the postmodern anthropological paradigm. However, the diversity of interpretations of the concept of "crime" that exists in the current scientific literature needs further comprehension. (shrink)

This book takes steps to develop a philosophy of engineering not to promote an ideology for engineering but to stimulate critical reflection among engineers and non-engineers alike about our engineering lifeworld.

Review of Landau, I. (Ed). (2022). The Oxford handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford: Oxford UP.