Showing papers on "Eudaimonia published in 1992"

Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos

Abstract: "Put together one of the world's best science writers with one of the universe's most fascinating subjects and you are bound to produce a wonderful book. . . . The subject of complexity is vital and controversial. This book is important and beautifully done." Stephen Jay Gould "[Complexity] is that curious mix of complication and organization that we find throughout the natural and human worlds: the workings of a cell, the structure of the brain, the behavior of the stock market, the shifts of political power. . . . It is time science . . . thinks about meaning as well as counting information. . . . This is the core of the complexity manifesto. Read it, think about it . . . but don't ignore it." Ian Stewart, "Nature" This second edition has been brought up to date with an essay entitled "On the Edge in the Business World" and an interview with John Holland, author of "Emergence: From Chaos to Order." "

We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – And the World's Getting Worse

Abstract: Jarring contemporary notions of psychology and politics, and pushing beyond them to offer the beginnings of new paradigms, this book examines the legacy of psychotherapy. It exposes psychology as an ideology that collaborates with traditional notions of individualism - notions that are no longer tenable. James Hillman is the author of "A Blue Fire", "Interviews", "The Dream and the Underworld", "The Myth of Analysis" and "Re-visioning Psychology". Michael Ventura is the author of "Shadow Dancing in the U.S.A.".

The genesis of Kant's critique of judgment

Abstract: In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of "The Critique of Judgment" and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the "Sturm und Drang" movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason" to the appearance of the "Critique of Judgment.""-John W. Burbidge, "Review of Metaphysics" "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's "Critique of Judgment"; Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."-Frederick Beiser, "Times Literary Supplement"

Acts of Faith

Abstract: This is the story of three young people struggling to reconcile their religious beliefs with the pressures of the modern world and the demands of their own aspirations and passions. The author also wrote "Love Story", "Oliver's Story", "Man, Woman and Child", "The Class" and "Doctors".

Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion

Abstract: Elizabeth Belfiore offers an interpretation of Aristotle's "Poetics" by situating the work within the Aristotelian corpus and in the context of Greek culture in general. In Aristotle's "Rhetoric", the "Politics" and the ethical, psychological, logical, physical and bilogical works, Belfiore finds extremely important but largely neglected sources for understanding the elliptical statements in the "Poetics". The author argues that these Aristotelian texts and those of other ancient writers, call into question the traditional view that katharsis in the "Poetics" is a homeopathic process - one in which pity and fear affect emotions like themselves. She maintains, instead, that Aristotle considered katharsis to be an allopathic process in which pity and fear purge the soul of shameless, antisocial and aggressive emotions. While exploring katharsis, "Tragic Pleasures" analyzes the closely related question of how the "Poetics" treats the issue of plot structure. In fact, Belfiore's wide-ranging work eventually discusses every central concept in the "Poetics", including imitation, pity and fear, necessity and probability, character and kinship relations.

Special Delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction

Abstract: Though letter writing is almost a lost art, twentieth-century writers have mimed the epistolary mode as a means of reevaluating the theme of love. In "Special Delivery," Linda S. Kauffman places the narrative treatment of love in historical context, showing how politics, economics, and commodity culture have shaped the meaning of desire. Kauffman first considers male writers whose works, testing the boundaries of genre and gender, imitate love letters: Viktor Shklovsky's Zoo, Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," Roland Barthes's" A Lover's Discourse," and Jacques Derrida's "The Post Card." She then turns to three novels by women who are more preoccupied with politics than passion: Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook," Alice Walker's "The Color Purple," and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." By juxtaposing these "women's productions" with the men's "production of Woman," "Special Delivery" dismantles the polarities between male and female, theory and fiction, high and low culture, male critical theory, and feminist literary criticism. Kauffman demonstrates how all seven texts mercilessly expose the ideology of individualism and romantic love; each presents alternate paradigms of desire, wrested from Oedipus, grounded in history and politics, giving epistolarity a distinctively postmodern stamp.

Truth and Existence

Abstract: "Truth and Existence," written in response to Martin Heidegger's "Essence of Truth," is a product of the years when Sartre was reaching full stature as a philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, and political activist. This concise and engaging text not only presents Sartre's ontology of truth but also addresses the key moral questions of freedom, action, and bad faith. "Truth and Existence" is introduced by an extended biographical, historical, and analytical essay by Ronald Aronson. ""Truth and Existence" is another important element in the recently published links between Sartre's existentialist ontology and his later ethical, political, and literary concerns. . . . The excellent introduction by Aronson will help readers not experienced in reading Sartre." "Choice" "Accompanied by an excellent introduction, this dense, lucidly translated treatise reveals Sartre as a characteristically 20th-century figure." "Publishers Weekly" Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, "The Family Idiot," and "The Freud Scenario," both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press."

Postmodernism : a reader

Abstract: Part 1 Modernism and postmodernism: "Modernism and Postmodernism", Anthony Giddens "Modernism and the Aesthetics of Crisis", Alan Wilde Part 2 Postmodernism and literary history: "Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction", Irving Howe "Cross the Border - Close the Gap", Leslie Fiedler "Against Interpretation", Susan Sontag from "A Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode from "Paracriticisms", Ihab Hassan "The Detective and the Boundary - some notes on the Postmodern Literary Imagination", William Spanos Part 3 The critique of enlightened modernity - philosophical precursors: "An Answer to the question: "What is Enlightenment?", Immanuel Kant from "Twighlight of the Idols/The Antichrist", Friedrich Nietzsche Part 4 Postmodern theory - the current debate: "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?", Jean-Francois Lyotard "Postmodernism or the Consumer Logic of Late Capitalism", Fredric Jameson "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism", Terry Eagleton "Modernity - An Incomplete Project", Jurgen Habermas from "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity", Richard Rorty from "Simulations", Jean Baudrillard "Postmodernism, Modernism, Gender The view from Feminism", Patrician Waugh Part 5 Reading postmodern artefacts: from "A Poetics of Postmodernism", Linda Hutcheon from "Postmodernist Fiction", Brian McHale

Ancient ethics and modern morality

Abstract: It is no news to moral philosophers that it is extremely hard to define morality, at least convincingly. Those of us who do ancient philosophy face a further problem. When we study Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Ethics, the Stoics and Epicureans, it's not at all obvious that these famous figures in moral philosophy are talking about morality at all. They all take it for granted, for a start, that the main focus of their enquiry is the agent's happiness; and this doesn't sound much like morality. We explain at this point, of course, that they are not talking about happiness as we understand that, but about eudaimonia, and that eudaimonia is the satisfactory, well-lived life. But a little reflection shows that this doesn't help, or at least that it doesn't help as much as one might have hoped, it still doesn't sound much like morality. And this initial feeling of unease is only reinforced when we find other differences, such as that in ancient ethics the good of others enters in as part of one's own good, justice is a virtue of character rather than being introduced via the rights of others, and so on. We study the ancient theories, then, but sometimes with some doubt as to what they are theories of. We tend in fact to talk of ancient ethics, not ancient morality, and we do the same for modern theories containing elements that are prominent in the ancient ones: thus we talk of virtue ethics, not virtue morality. There is a fairly widespread attitude that ancient theories of virtue and the good life are concerned not with what we take to be morality, but with something different, an alternative which can be labelled ethics.1 Recently the issue has been sharpened by Bernard Williams.2 The ancients did indeed, Williams claims, lack our notion of morality-and were better off without it, since it is confused and in many ways objectionable. However, one need not be hostile to morality to think that ancient ethics is an alternative to modern morality, rather than part of the same endeavor. We might have taken a wrong turning, but there again we might have made

In Defense of an Alternative View of the Foundation of Aristotle's Moral Theory

Abstract: In the opening chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle identifies what he refers to as "the best good" or "the human good" with happiness (eudaimonia). He takes happiness to be some sort of ultimate end of human conduct, and on the basis of this idea, he proceeds to develop his moral theory. This much is uncontroversial. However, interpreters have despaired over the passages where Aristotle invokes this notion of an ultimate end. For it has been thought that in these passages Aristotle appears to ground his moral philosophy on a patently indefensible psychological generalization.' The psychological generalization, in its strongest form, is the proposition that every person does whatever he does with the aim of promoting his own happiness. This doctrine, which we may call "Strong Psychological Eudaimonism", is not only mistaken in its own right,2 it is also inconsistent with other views Aristotle espouses in the Ethics.' Conse-

Marx and Aristotle : nineteenth-century German social theory and classical antiquity

Abstract: Visions and vertigo - viewing modernity from the Acropolis, George E. McCarthy. Part 1 Hegel and the Greeks - remembrance of things past: Karl Marx and the influence of Greek antiquity on 18th century Germany, Horst Mews the Polis transformed - Aristotle's "Politics" and Marx's critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of right", David Depew the origins of the dialectic - Hegel's approriation of ancient skeptics, Stephen Smith. Part 2 Marx and Epicurus - materialism, ethics, and Greek physics: the Greek accent of the Marxian matrix, Michael DeGolyer Marx and Epicurus - post-Aristotelian philosophy of nature and Marx's dissertation, George E. McCarthy Karl Marx and Greek philosophy - some explorations in the themes of intellectual accommodations and moral hypocrisy, Laurence Baronovitch. Part 3 Marx and Aristotle - human capabilities and social structures: nature, function, and capability - Aristotle on political distribution, Martha Nussbaum Aristotle, Kant and the ethics of the young Marx, Philip Kain households, markets and firms, William James Booth. Part 4 Marx and Aristotle - morality and Praxis: Marx and Aristotle - a kind of consequentialism, Richard Miller Marx's moral realism - Eudaimonism and moral progress, Alan Gilbert Praxis and morality - Marx's "Species being" and Aristotle's "political animal", Joseph Margolis Marxian subjectivity, idealism and Greek philosophy, Thomas Rockmore.

William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: Why "the Vague"? Part I: Interpretations 1. "The Vague" in The Principles and "the More" in the Varieties: Some Preliminaries 2. Vagueness, God, and Actual Possibility 3. Vagueness in Science, Percepts, and Language 4. James's Metaphysics: Language as the "House of 'Pure Experience' " Part II: Conversations 5. James, Peirce, and "The Will to Believe" 6. Text, Context, and the Existential Limit: "The Will to Believe" in Dewey and Marx Part III: Applications 7. James and Modern Art: Process over Permanence 8. Vagueness and Empathy in Medicine: A Jamesian View (Non)-Conclusion: Life as a "Real Fight" Text as "Spur" Notes Index

Selected critical writings

Abstract: Includes: from Strauss's Life of Jesus Woman in France: Madame Sable from Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity from Spinoza's Ethics The Future of German Philosophy Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft Thomas Carlyle German Wit Heinrich Heine The Natural History of German Life Silly Novels by Lady Novelists How I Came to Write Fiction A Word for the Germans Notes on Form in Art

Reading Shakespeare's Characters: Rhetoric, Ethics, and Identity

Abstract: Although current theory has discredited the idea of a coherent, transcedent self, Shakespeare's characters still make themselves felt as a presence for readers and viewers alike Confronting this paradox, Christy Desmet explores the role played by rhetoric in fashioning and representing Shakespearean character She draws on classical and Renaissance texts, as well as on the work of such 20th century critics as Kenneth Burke and Paul de Man, bringing classical, Renaissance, and contemporary rhetoric shapes character within the plays and the way characters are "read" She also examines the relationship between technique and theme by considering the connections between rhetorical representation and dramatic illusion and by discussing the relevance of rhetorical criticism to issues of gender Works analysed include "Hamlet", "Cymbeline", King John", "Othello", "The Winter's Tale", King Lear", "Venus and Adonis", "Measure for Measure" and "All's Well That Ends Well"

Strategies in Architectural Thinking

Abstract: The authors of these original essays - emerging architectural and cultural critics and practitioners - are engaged in the act of writing back at architecture, heralding the prospect of new conditions, possibilities, and purposes of practice. Tying their work together is the idea that architecture and architectural thinking are inextricably cultural in construction and effect.The essayists suggest that the once supposed autonomy of architecture is an illusion, at best a suspect quality, at worst a mask on a series of transactions and false stabilities that architecture ensures in a culture. Each writer depicts certain operations of power in architecture, aiming the line of a text against it or threading the written line through architecture.The Essays: Architecture Gender Philosophy, "Ann Bergren. "Minor Architectural Possibilities, "Jennifer Bloomer. "Intimacy and Spectacle, "Beatriz Colomina. "Inscribing the Subject of Modernism: The Posthumanist Theory of Ludwig Hilbersiemer, "Michael Hays. "The Burdens of Linearity, "Catherine Ingraham. "Forms of Irrationality, "Jeffrey Kipnis. "Spatial Narratives, "Mark Rakatansky. "Frank Lloyd Wright at the Midway, "Robert Segrest. "Do You See What I Mean? "John Whiteman. "Translations of Architecture: The Production of Babel, "Mark Wigley. "Body Troubles, "Robert McAnulty. "Architectural Theory is No Disciplines, "Mark Linder. ""Being and Nothinness," Doug Graf.

The Prophetic President: Charisma in the American Political Tradition

Abstract: Presidential leadership is commonly associated with the term "charisma." Some Presidents have it; some do not. But what exactly is charisma? This article clarifies the concept by drawing upon a Biblical paradigm of leadership in which American political culture has been steeped. Presidents, the author contends, are called to be "charismatic heroes" who by their "prophetic" words "congregate" the people as a "covenanted" presence in "history." All of these words, in the Biblical tradition, are technical terms with stipulated meanings, and together they make explicit a role that is at once distinctive and creative of national solidarity, identity, and legitimacy. So conceived, the author concludes, the President's role as "tribune of the people" is the most important and powerful in American politics but also dangerously and inherently unstable.

Reading Meaning into Texts

Abstract: What can we see or acquire but what we are? You have observed a skillful man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands and read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Gilman, 1965, p. 51) * A recurrent thread in debates with those who adhere to mechanistic assumptions is that only views epistemologically different from theirs are seen as ideological" or dogmatic," never their own. Their approach to inquity, as Dixon and Carnine claim, is "empirical," and produces "reliable data" even while admitting the limitations still caused by "primitive and inadequate measures." Given their (incorrect) view that "reliable data" do exist (they don't; one can train others to see the same, but that is a different matter), their problems are presumably only methodological. It is a view that includes the meaning that its own subjectivity is objective. Gersten's opinion that "holistic approaches are not data based" (as if there is only one valid concept of data) also exemplifies this view. Griffin (1988, p. 13) calls such a view a "sacred" science badly in need of "desacralization." The ideological basis of mechanistic thought for the study of human behavior has been extensively critiqued and extends to the contemporary versions Dixon and Carnine adhere to. The critiques reflect insights from the history of science, feminist scholarship, critical pedagogy, critical pragmatism and from the "return" to interpretation (see e.g., Griffin, 1988; Keller, 1985; Lather, 1991; Skrtic, 1991; Winkler, 1985). The question is of course: whose definition of "experience" (the root meaning of "empiricism") and of "data" are we using? Gersten thinks that the time is "perfect" for inquiry combining beliefs from direct instruction and holistic traditions-by whose definitions of experience, inquiry, and criteria? See Edelsky (1990) for a similar question in relation to a similar proposal with regard to reading research. Why do Dixon and Carnine insist we need to reduce multiple views of educational reality? Exploration of likenesses is not the same as reduction to sameness as Dixon and Carnine think. The view I represented emerges in pan from the concern that established research practices reduce natural complexity and diversity to forced simplicity and sameness. Gersten observes "lower performing students" actively engaged in whole language classes in "collaborative and meaningful learning experiences-analyzing stories, evaluating characters, or freely critiquing each others' writing style. In these cases, the results are exhilarating. I doubt that a diet consisting solely of teacher-directed DI [direct instruction] will ever accomplish this" (p. 466). Perhaps I was not so far off in analyzing why the DI movement is informed by assumptions that cannot handle complexity nor personal meaning making. Or should I conclude that Gersten's observation of "exhilarating" results must be an illusion, since "holistic approaches are not data based"? Also, how do I make sense out of his reference to research (e.g., Delpit, 1988) suggesting that holistic-oriented approaches can be "'disasters' for many minority students," a finding with "direct relevance for special education" (which is a misinterpretation of the cited research) in the light of his own observation? What do "evidence ... .. data," and "empiricism" mean? How do various definitions of these concepts relate to human meaning making? Our differences in answering these questions mean we disagree on the meaning of "error" and the need to avoid student-generated ideas in teaching what Gersten calls "technical knowledge" (in his example, teaching information about oceanography). In the world of holistic education, there can never be avoidance of student-generated ideas. To "mandate" holistic education does not mean it takes place. …

Identity Crisis: The Politics of Interpretation

Abstract: "I speak in sexual drag." With these words, Mary Joe Frug announces the promise, problems and politics of the postmodern writer. Her pithy pronouncement puts firmly into play the compelling questions of identity, authority and authenticity that dominate much modern theorizing. Who is this "I" that speaks? Whose voice does she "speak" in? What is the force of "sexual"? Is there an "I" beneath the "drag"? Can the "I" ever not be in "drag"? Are there only different "drag" costumes to be fitted and later discarded? Does the "I" choose the attire of living? Is the "I" chosen by the "drag"? What would it mean for the "I" to be spoken rather than to speak? Can there be a "drag" that is not "sexual"? It is the burden of this essay to place these questions in a postmodern frame of reference and to offer some tentative and provisional answers. If recent episodes in literary and legal circles are anything to go by, there seems to be some force to the claim that the contested questions of identity, authority and authenticity are back in vogue and with a vengeance.

Perché una filosofia politica?: Elementi storici per una risposta

Abstract: Classical political philosophy is "The Ethics of the Polis", a union of ethics and politics. It had been revived in the medieval idea of the "respublica christiana". Modern political philosophy presents itself as a response to the internal contradictions of such a notion, and in reference to the concrete problems which have arisen in modern history. Through a lengthy process, the political culture of the constitutional democratic state was created. This forms the basis of a genuine political ethos which is founded upon the political concept of the Common Good as peace, liberty, and justice – an ethos that abandons the model of "The Ethics of the Polis" and constitutes the theme of political philosophy. It is understood as the fundamental political ethics, not to be substituted by doctrines on Natural Law, and is presupposed and ever implicit in the social doctrine of the Church.

Mass Media in Modern Society

Abstract: In this lively and yet scholarly book, creative artists, people who direct channels of communications, and social scientists present their numerous positions and deeply felt disagreements. Originally released thirty years ago under the rubric "Culture for the Millions, "the work discusses whether or not American culture is in a state of rise or decline; whether mass media dilutes the arts or provides more art for more people; whether cultural leaders are in touch with their audiences, and other such issues. This volume brings together outstanding artists, scholars, and media executives who present their wide-ranging and deeply felt positions and disagreements. "Mass Media in Modern Society "remains a classic, not only for what it represents as a historical document, but also because of the centrality of its discussions about the nature of cultural participation and aesthetics hi modern society. The contributions include: Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Mass Culture Today," Edward Shils, "Mass Society and Its Culture," Leo Lowenthal, "A Historical Preface to the Popular Culture" Debate," Hannah Arendt, "Society and Culture," Ernest van den Haag, "A Dissent from the Consensual Society," Oscar Handlin, "Comments on Mass and Popular Culture," Leo Rosten, "The Intellectual and the Mass Media," Frank Stanton, "Parallel Paths," James Johnson Sweeney, "The Artist and the Museum hi a Modern Society," Randall Jarrell, "A Sad Heart at the Supermarket," Arthur Asa Berger, "Notes on the Plight of the American Composer," James Baldwin, "Mass Culture and the Creative Artist," Stanley Edgar Hyman, "Ideals, Dangers, and Limitations of Mass Culture," H. Stewart Hughes, "Mass Culture and Social Criticism," Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Notes on a National Cultural Policy."

Rediscovering Eudaimonistic Teleology

Abstract: The continuing clash of ethical titans resounds with the cries of utilitarianism, virtue ethics, hedonism, rational egoism, emotivism, deon tology, universal prescriptivism, rational contractarianism, and non cogniti vism. This fray is predicated upon each combatant assuming that his truth is complete and exclusive of all others and that his predecessors have been refuted. But are these assumptions true? Is it not possible that each has indeed grasped something true: the necessity of pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number in political action; the indispensability of virtues; the ethical relevance of personal happiness; the goodness of pleasure and self-love; the priority of moral duty over inclinations; the universality of moral norms; and the importance of feelings in living the ethical life? And is it not possible that this fray is merely an historical artefact arising from the widespread?albeit uncritical?belief that Hume, Kant, and Moore de stroyed the viability of eudaimonistic teleology, especially as expressed by Aristotle and Aquinas? If these possibilities are real, perhaps the redis covery of ethical eudaimonia would include currently factional insights in such a way as to resolve on-going perplexities and provide a basis for a peaceful settlement. Such a rapprochement necessitates, however, the discovery of a non controversial starting point, such as the characteristics common to the ex pression of moral obligations: I ought to do X; Do the morally obliged X; Attain the morally obliged X; or, X ought to be done. Every such formula tion?be it consequentalistic, deontological or whatever?expresses that something ought to be done. This something is nothing other than an end that is either extrinsically or intrinsically immanent to the action. An example of the former is classical utilitarianism which obliges distributing material goods so that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is produced. An example of the latter is Kant's categorical imperative obliging action to realize a universal maxim. Either way, then, these obligations concern ends and as such are necessarily ideological. Accordingly, it behooves us to reconsider the almost 2300 year old ethics specializing in teleology, i.e., eudaimonistic teleology. This ethics not only notices the central fact that obligations concern ends but holds that ends generate obligations?as Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologiae (hereafter S. . I?II, 99, lc):

Telling New Lies: Seven Essays in Fiction, Past and Present

Abstract: Unified in an introductory essay around the theme of falsehood, these essays range from excursions into 18th-century fiction to an encounter with Thomas Pynchon's postmodern novel ""V""; from an exploration of Orwell's ""1984"" in the light of anti-Semitism to a study of Sterne's ""Tristram Shandy"" in the light of his suppressed antagonist, Bishop Warburton; and from a reading of ""A Sentimental Journey"" through the filter of Proust to a reading of ""A Tale of a Tub"" through the filter of ""The Magic Mountain"". While the idea of fabrication is inherent in most postmodern commentary, New's criticism in these essays lies to the right of the literary academy, manifesting itself as a ""contrarian"" not liberal, mode of thinking. In his introduction, he takes note of the dread of totalitarianism that defines the horizon of all post-1945 literary study, and of the reader's necessary task to distinguish lies of power from lies of art - a difficult task, he writes, since ""Power will often speak with the voice of art - is, indeed, art's best mimic, and worst."" If we cannot find the truth in our lies and the grace in our art, New asks, what do we pass on the next generation - ""what do we tell the children?"".

"Pragmatism" Be Damned: Richard Rorty's Death Wish for Feminism

Abstract: In a recent article, the American philosopher, Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, recommends that feminists adopt his version of pragmatism as a guiding philosophy. Despite his disclaimers,(1) the ideas he sets forward as 'pragmatist' can be readily associated with parts of the current wave of postmodern theory dominating contemporary Western philosophical debate. Rorty prefers the label "pragmatist," claiming John Dewey, the chief proponent of post-World War II American pragmatism, as his intellectual forbear.(2) It is important to recognise the subtleties and different emphases among postmodernists. In fact, any use of the term without such a reminder is likely to be condemned as facile and ill-informed. At the same time, it is possible to identify common themes. Jane Flax nicely summarises the subjects upon which postmodernists focus - contemporary Western culture, in particular philosophy, and the meanings of knowledge, power, subjectivity, and difference- and the positions they reject. They all reject representational and objective or rational concepts of knowledge and truth; grand, synthetic theorising meant to comprehend Reality as an unified whole; and any concept of self or subjectivity in which it is not understood as produced as an effect of discursive practices.(3) With Flax, Richard Bernstein sees the "primary rhetorical gesture" of the " 'postmodern' moment" as criticism of "Western rationality, logocentrism, humanism, the Enlightenment legacy, the centred subject, etc." He also stresses the "other side" of the postmodern message which he describes as the "questioning, undermining and deconstruction of any and all fixed standards of critique, a relentless questioning of any appeal to archai or foundations."(4) Rorty's work is definitely "anti-foundational" and hence postmodern in this sense. In his words, he drops a "representationalist account of knowledge", the "appearance-reality distinction in favour of a distinction between beliefs which serve some purpose and beliefs which serve other purposes."(5) His major contribution, according to Bernstein, has been to undermine the hegemony of the analytic establishment within philosophy and to open the way for "discussion of important cultural issues long neglected by professional philosophers." At the same time, Bernstein and others are critical of the way in which Rorty has adopted "pragmatism' and "anti-foundationalism" to a defence of, to use Rorty's words, "pluralistic 'postmodern' bourgeois liberalism."(6) Feminist theory has a somewhat ambivalent relationship with postmodernism, which is compounded by the diversity of theoretical approaches within contemporary feminism. Some feminists are overtly hostile; others see part of the postmodern message as similar in some ways to recent feminist claims, but remain suspicious of particular postmodern conclusions and the absence of a gender sensitivity in the analyses.(7) Jane Flax is a good example of the latter. She illustrates how feminist notions of self, knowledge and truth are "too contradictory to those of the Enlightenment to be contained within its categories." Yet she questions the motives of those who challenge any notion of self or subjectivity, at the very time that women are "remembering" themselves and claiming "an agentic subjectivity." Without an emphasis on justice, which itself has become a problematic concept in postmodern discourses, she fears that "these postmodernist spaces threaten to become another 'iron cage'."(8) In a recent article, Rorty has decided to silence feminist warnings about the dangers of postmodernism by suggesting that they take it on holus-bolus and become "pragmatists." For feminists, according to Rorty, this means "dropping realism and universalism, dropping the notion that the subordination of women is intrinsically abominable, dropping the claim that there is something called 'right' or 'justice' or 'humanity' which has always been on their side, making their claims true. …

Philosophy, Religion and the Spiritual Life: Philosophy and Religion in the Thought of Kierkegaard

Abstract: Kierkegaard is often regarded as a precursor of existential philosophy whose religious concerns may, for philosophical purposes, be safely ignored or, at best, regarded as an unfortunate, if unavoidable, consequence of his complicity with the very metaphysics he did so much to discredit. Kierkegaard himself, however, foresaw this appropriation of his work by philosophy. ‘The existing individual who forgets that he is an existing individual will become more and more absent-minded’, he wrote, ‘and as people sometimes embody the fruits of their leisure moments in books, so we may venture to expect as the fruits of his absent-mindedness the expected existential system—well, perhaps, not all of us, but only those who are as absent-minded as he is’ (Kierkegaard, 1968, p. 110). However, it may be rejoined here, this expectation merely shows Kierkegaard's historically unavoidable ignorance of the development of existential philosophy with its opposition to the idea of system and its emphasis upon the very existentiality of the human being. How could a form of thought which, in this way, puts at its centre the very Being of the existing individual, its existentiality, be accused of absent-mindedness? Has it not, rather, recollected that which metaphysics had forgotten? Yet the impression remains that Kierkegaard would not have been persuaded himself that such recollection could constitute remembering that one is an existing individual, for he remarks, of his own ignoring of the difference between Socrates and Plato in his Philosophical Fragments , ‘By holding Socrates down to the proposition that all knowledge is recollection, he becomes a speculative philosopher instead of an existential thinker, for whom existence is the essential thing. The recollection principle belongs to speculative philosophy, and recollection is immanence, and speculatively and eternally there is no paradox’ (Kierkegaard, 1968, p. 184n). We must ask, therefore, whether the recollection of existentiality can cure an existential absent-mindedness or remains itself a form of immanence for which there is no paradox.

Postmoderne Konflikte um den Konsensus-Begriff: Zum "Widerstreit" zwischen Lyotard und Habermas

Abstract: The starting point of the article is the controversy between French and German thought as presented by authors like, among others, Lyotard and Habermas. The ongoing debate about the status of (scientific) "knowledge", the crises of its foundations and the radical questioning of the concept of "reason" has led to the debate about "postmodernism". Substantial differences in the intentions, functions and meanings of French and German discourse are due to different theoretical approaches ,intellectual traditions and disciplinary developments. Misunderstandings and distorted perceptions of the opponent's reasoning are rooted in these different perspectives. One of the main targets of polemic criticism is the notion of "consensus" which plays an important role in Habermas' theorizing. Wishing to prepare ground for sober discussion the article deals with the various meanings and changing roles of the notion of "consensus" in Habermas' thought. The author argues that the idea of "consensus" functions in Habermas' work as an instrument to explain the meaning of the concept of "truth" (chapter 2), to elaborate a strong but specified notion of "communicative reason" (chapter 3) and to lay the foundations for a critical theory of society (chapter 4). By isolating the philosophical and sociological meanings and implications of the notion of "consensus" the article provides evidence that there is more common ground between the disputants in other areas than one might have expected.;

Wandlungen der Tugendlehre bei Platon und Aristoteles

Abstract: In modern discussions about ethics the theory of virtue is neglected. The value of that theory for systematic philosophy can be demonstrated in the work of Plato and Aristotle. (I) The foundation of ethics in Plato’s view is the theory of virtue. In his earlier dialogues virtue in general is, for Plato, knowledge. In the ‘Republic’ Plato introduces, on the basis of a new psychology, an eidetic plurality of morality within his theory of real, different virtues. (II) In the late dialogue ‘Statesman’ Plato changes this theory in part and shows a conflict between virtues, which demands new connections, and produces a new foundation of virtues with his theory of measure and mean. (III) Aristotle proceeds from this Platonic theory of measure and mean, and establishes his own theory of virtues, which is integrated into a different type of ethical system; that is, ethics principally understood as a theory of the highest good, as eudaimonia.