19th Century Philosophy

This article develops a hermeneutic study of Heidegger’s text The Word of Nietzsche: “God is Dead”. We attempt to read Heidegger’s remarks in the context of the “period of transition” that, according to Nietzsche, is occurring in the history of western thought and culture. This essay unfolds in the following manner: beginning with Heidegger’s contention that Nietzsche’s philosophy is the “fulfilment” of Platonism, we go over the problem of nihilism in relation to the metaphysics of the will to power, which (...) for Heidegger requires revising Cartesian subjectivity in search of a new ontology. Heidegger’s critique of modernity encompasses a narrative that goes from “Plato” to “Nietzsche”, leading to a reconsideration of the notions of art and truth. Finally, we attempt to interpret the meaning of the “madman’s lament” voicing the passing of God. (shrink)

This paper explores how Charles Peirce’s habit-based epistemology leads him to theorise perception. I show how Peirce’s triadic semiotic analysis of perceptual judgment renders his theory of perception neither a representationalism nor a relationism /direct realism, but an interesting hybrid of the two. His view is also extremely interesting, I argue, in the way that by analysing symbols as habits it refuses the common assumption that perception is an affair best understood synchronically, as a ‘language-entry event’. Relatedly, I extend previous (...) work (Legg 2008) which argues that Peirce’s epistemology counts as a ‘hyperinferentialism’ in Robert Brandom’s terms, but this does not mean that Peirce’s theory of perception cannot accommodate unmediated contact with reality - what Peirce called ‘the outward clash’. (shrink)

El artículo analiza el tratamiento hegeliano del concepto de voluntad general de Rousseau en la Fenomenología del espíritu. Se teje una trama conceptual que enfatiza en: (i) la necesariedad del concepto de voluntad general de Rousseau en el entramado conceptual hegeliano; (ii) las implicancias de este concepto en la estructura política y social, en términos de una ausencia de instituciones de representación política en una sociedad ética; (iii) las consecuencias violentas y nihilistas de la extrapolación práctica de la voluntad general (...) como axioma teórico. (shrink)

The problem of the status of metaphysics -- what it is and what it is for, what use it is - has been with us for millennia, at least since Plato took issue with the Sophists, and continues to the present day. Here I attempt an intervention in this perennial dispute, with the aim of providing some kind of rapprochement between the factions. This intervention is based on how Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) understood metaphysics and the position presented here is (...) thus called `Peircean realism'. The basic idea is that everyone has a metaphysics and has to have one, just to get by in everyday life, and this is no different for scientific inquirers in their professional work. The subject matter of metaphysics is thus presuppositions, whether it is what we rely on to go shopping or to discover the Higgs boson. We rely on these in our activities and expect them to have an effect on outcomes, so when our expectations are frustrated, doubt may be thrown on our presuppositions. We would thus like the ability to inquire into our presuppositions so as not to repeat mistakes, but our instinctive, evolved capacity for reasoning may not be up the job, since it is entwined with what we take for granted. Instead, Peirce develops a science of good reasoning that includes a theory of inquiry, which would allow us to scrutinise our presuppositions, to perform metaphysical inquiry. The starting point for this science of good reasoning is basic principles of combination and organisation, because these are involved in all activity, and these are Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. This is also where I start in the exposition of and argument for Peircean realism as a scientific -- that is, truth-directed -- metaphysics that provides the best possible general presuppositions to the natural and human sciences, the special sciences that deal with matters in their particularity; that Peircean realism is a viable metaphysics for those sciences. This exposition and argument comprises the first part of this thesis. In the second part, the case for Peircean realism is further bolstered by turning a critical eye on positions that are deficient from the Peircean point of view, in that they lack one or other category and thus starve the special sciences of the resources they need, or that they try to ignore metaphysics entirely. All this is meant to demonstrate that metaphysics is unavoidable, that we need all three of Peirce's categories for a viable metaphysics for the special sciences, and that Peircean realism is just such a metaphysics. (shrink)

The thesis aims at covering two paths that can be found within the XX Century's continental philosophy. On one hand, the analysis will focus on what M. Theunissen called Heidegger's "Being and Time"'s 'social ontology'. On the other, the work will delve into young Herbert Marcuse's so-called 'heideggerian marxism' via questioning his works located between 1928 and 1933.

Conspiracy theories pose a serious threat to our society these days. People often dismiss conspiracy theory believers as at best gullible, or more often unintelligent. However, there are cases in which individuals end up believing conspiracy theories out of no epistemic fault of their own. In this paper, I want to offer a diagnosis of the problem by focusing on the genealogy of the conspiracy theory beliefs. Drawing on a novel interpretation of Nietzsche’s use of genealogies, I argue that the (...) problem of belief in conspiracy theories is best understood as a broadly political one regarding the oppressive, dominating, and exploitative world in which conspiracy theory believers find themselves in. I, then, draw on the work of the feminist philosopher, María Lugones, to offer an approach to addressing the problem of belief in conspiracy theories which recommends radical humility and playfulness. (shrink)

A deeply personal reckoning with family, mental illness, and suicide, Dana Trusso captures the meaning of Nietzsche's armor fati--to love one's fate--through her surreal imagery and longing to heal intergenerational wounds. Lines are drawn from Lars von Trier's Melancholia, Sonic Youth's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, and lines she read from her aunt's journals as a child. -/- The photo is a sculpture of an earth goddess by Jean-Philippe Richard located in the botanical gardens of Èze, France. Nearby (...) is Le Chemin de Nietzsche, a steep hike from the seaside to mountainous ruins that is said to have inspired Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (shrink)

Engels explained his admiration for Balzac by pointing to an apparent discrepancy between Balzac’s literature and his politics. Despite his sympathies for the French nobility, Balzac’s realism “compelled” him to portray this class in unflattering terms. In this article, I challenge Engels’s reading, arguing that Marx’s scattered remarks on Balzac take us in a different direction. Specifically, I argue that in his remark on Balzac’s The Peasants Marx pinpointed the author’s preoccupation with the spread of bourgeois ideology into the nobility. (...) Building on this remark, I analyze several of Balzac’s works showing that insofar as Balzac lambasted the nobles, his critique was primarily directed towards nobles who had adopted bourgeois ways. In this light, and against Engels’s observation, Balzac’s critique of the nobles appears to stem from his sympathy to aristocratic values rather than conflicting with them. In showing that affinities between Balzac, Marx and Engels did not depend on Balzac expressing anti-noble sentiment, I argue that the admiration the fathers of communism had for the monarchist’s prose exemplifies a partial, yet typical convergence between socialists and conservatives in their critique of modern bourgeois society. (shrink)

In this paper I raise three questions regarding the status and function of Absolute Knowing in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. First, can Hegel’s Absolute Knowing be understood as an epiphany? Secondly, how does epiphany make sense of the teleological elements that activate and mobilise the movement towards Absolute Knowing? And thirdly, how does such an interpretation shift the focus from a closed reading of Hegel’s text – that views Absolute Knowing as consummately realised – to an open reading that keeps (...) the Absolute within its purview, but also seeks to foreground its aporias? I pursue these questions through an examination of the key constituents of knowledge: the subject of knowledge, its object, and the process through which knowledge is attained. (shrink)

Hegel's Philosophy of Nature constitutes the second part of his mature philosophical system presented in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and covers an exceptionally broad spectrum of themes and issues, as Hegel considers the content and structure of how humanity approaches nature and how nature is understood by humanity. The essays in this volume bring together various perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, emphasizing its functional role within the Encyclopaedia and its importance for understanding the complexity of Hegel's philosophical (...) project. Together they illuminate the core ideas which form Hegel's philosophical framework in the realm of nature. (shrink)

Review of Kerkmann, J. (2024). Unendliches Bewusstsein. Berkeleys Idealismus und dessen kritische Weiterentwicklung bei Kant und Schopenhauer. Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s writing, which is distinguished by a wide variety of forms and ongoing beginnings, bears an unmistakable imprint of Plato’s writing-in-becoming. The work begins with the area of correspondence, primarily from the philologist Erwin Rohde’s recognition of Plato as a model for Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but also from Nietzsche’s testimony that his Zarathustra is platonizing, the work points to the motif of death as a place where Plato’s and (...) Nietzsche’s poetics meet, given their transformations of the Homeric idea of the hero’s fate. The illuminating power of the atmosphere of death also points to Aesop’s character as a foundation upon which Plato bases his Socrates, which directs this paper toward demonstrating that Nietzsche’s assessment of Plato’s writing as an “infinitely accentuated Aesopian fable” turns out to be a self-assessment. (shrink)

Die Abschaffung der Sklaverei, die Einführung sozialer Sicherungssysteme, die Sanktionierung von Vergewaltigung in der Ehe gelten gemeinhin als gesellschaftlicher Fortschritt – als ein Wandel zum Besseren. Dennoch hat die Idee einer generellen Fortschrittsbewegung ihren alten Glanz verloren, ja, sie ruft sogar Skepsis hervor. In aller Munde ist hingegen die Diagnose der Regression. Sie wird diversen Zeiterscheinungen gestellt, vom rechtsautoritären Populismus bis zur Demokratiemüdigkeit. -/- Rahel Jaeggi verteidigt in ihrem Buch das Begriffspaar Fortschritt und Regression als unverzichtbares sozialphilosophisches Werkzeug für die (...) Kritik unserer Zeit. Als fortschrittlich oder regressiv versteht sie nicht nur das Resultat, sondern vor allem die Gestalt gesellschaftlicher Transformationen selbst. Indem sie nach den Erfahrungsblockaden fragt, die regressiven Tendenzen Vorschub leisten, entwickelt sie einen Begriff des Fortschritts, der eurozentrische Verzerrungen ebenso vermeidet wie die Vorstellung einer zwangsläufigen Entwicklungstendenz. Fortschritt, so zeigt sie, ist nicht der Vorlauf zu einem bereits bekannten Ziel, sondern der nie abgeschlossene Prozess der Emanzipation. (shrink)

The writings of John Stuart Mill have become the cornerstone of political liberalism. Collected for the first time in this volume are Mill’s three seminal and most widely read works: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Utilitarianism. A brilliant defense of individual rights versus the power of the state, On Liberty is essential reading for anyone interested in political thought and theory. As Bertrand Russell reflected, “On Liberty remains a classic... the present world would be better than it is, (...) if [Mill’s] principles were more respected.” This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes newly commissioned endnotes and commentary by Dale E. Miller, and an index. (shrink)

Ernst Mach’s and Bertrand Russell’s philosophical outlooks contributed to shaping the philosophy of science of the 20th century. Mach is a philosophical interpreter of science, a positivist, and a historian, considering the general principles of science as condensed economic descriptions of observed facts. Russell held a view of the nature and relation of philosophy to science and to logic that can be described as essentially consistent. In this article, the aim is to explore how both Mach and Russell defended the (...) classical version of “Neutral Monism”. Since it was developed as a reaction to the mechanical philosophy of nature, Neural Monism also emerged along with scientific psychology in the late 19th century. The attempt in this article is to examine their versions of neutral monism and emphasize their differences and convergences. (shrink)

How is Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality relevant to his revaluation of values? I consider and reject three accounts: contingency accounts, pedigree accounts, and unmasking accounts. I then propose an alternative account. On this view, Nietzsche provides a ‘deconstructive genealogy’ that indicates whether and where we should expect to find unity in our current moral practices. Moreover, Nietzsche’s history contributes to a critique of contemporary morality because it reveals that morality is unlikely to have the kind of unity required by many (...) of its defenders. After explaining and defending this account of genealogical critique in GM, I show how it can be generalized to domains besides morality. (shrink)

A pesquisa trata de uma introdução à lógica da medida de Hegel. O objetivo é fornecer uma visão geral da terceira seção da Lógica do Ser: a Lógica da Medida. O problema é entender o porquê a unidade subjacente do ser é denominada de indiferença absoluta e como ela se diferencia da indiferença do ser puro? Em outras palavras, a indiferença absoluta é descrita como relação quantitativa inversa dos fatores de duas determinações qualitativas. Então, como essa contradição é dissolvida e, (...) ao mesmo tempo, possibilita a passagem para a essência? Para explicitar esse problema, primeiramente, reconstruímos o desenvolvimento lógico da categoria da medida na terceira seção da Lógica do Ser; descrevemos a contradição da indiferença absoluta de duas qualidades como uma relação quantitativa inversa entre seus fatores. Depois, apresentamos a categoria da medida segundo a Enciclopédia. Há uma dupla transição na Lógica do Ser a partir da lógica da medida: da quantidade para a qualidade e da qualidade para a quantidade. A transição da medida para o sem medida e, deste, para a indiferença absoluta explicita a suprassunção de todas as determinidades qualitativas e quantitativas do ser. (shrink)

들뢰즈는 헤겔 변증법을 동일성의 철학 또는 재현의 철학으로 이해하고, 이 변증법의 핵심 개념인 부정성을 자신의 차이 개념에 비해 단지 이차적인 것으로 파악하면서 동일성을 산출하기 위한 단순한 매개수단으로 이해하고 비판한다. 이러한 비판에 대해 헤겔적인 관점에서 반비판이 제기될 수 있는데, 여기에서 문제가 되는 것은 부정성과 차이 사이에서 제기되는 우위성의 문제라기보다는, 오히려 이 개념들이 지니는 자기관계성 또는 자기적용의 문제이다. 그래서 헤겔 변증법은 들뢰즈가 생각하듯이 동일성의 철학도 재현의 철학도 아니며, 또한 부정성은 자기관계하는 것으로서 차이에 비해 단지 이차적인 매개수단도 아니고, 이 자기관계하는 부정성에 근거해서 파악되는 (...) 개념들은 단순히 재현의 논리에 근거한 외적반성의 범주들도 아니며, 오히려 세계를 내재적으로 이해하는데 있어서 핵심적인 역할을 담당하는 관계존재론적 범주들로 이해된다. 이를 통해서 세계와 이 세계 안에 존재하는 모든 것들 각각은 다른 것들과 관계하면서도 자기관계하는 살아있는 실체이고 자기-생산적인 구조를 자체 내에 지니는 것으로 이해된다. (shrink)

이 논문은 「인간학」에서 개진된 광기(Verrücktheit)에 대한 헤겔의 논의를 자연에서 정신으로의 이행이라는 관점에서 해명한다. 「인간학」에서 헤겔은 광기를 의 두 번째 단계 ‘자기느낌(Selbstgefühl)’에서 주제화하는데, 논자는 자기느낌이 어떤 점에서 자기의식과 달리 자연적 주체성인지, 자연적 주체성은 또 어떤 의미에서 광기라는 현상을 낳는지, 헤겔에게 광기는 무엇을 의미하는지, 그리고 그것이 「인간학」에서 이루어지는 정신(Geist)의 전개에 어떤 역할을 하는지를 상세히 분석하여 보여주고자 한다. 논자는 (1) 헤겔 「인간학」의 해석과 관련하여 자기느낌 개념에 주목해야 하는 철학사적이고 연구사적인 이유를 간략히 살피고, (2) 헤겔 철학에서 자기느낌 개념의 의미 그리고 「인간학」에서 주제화되는 자기느낌의 문제가 (...) 무엇인지를 정리한 후, (3) 「인간학」에서 개진된 헤겔의 광기 개념 및 광기 분류를 상세히 살필 것이다. 그리고 이를 토대로 (4) 헤겔이 광기의 원인으로 개념화하는 신체성은 영혼과 세계 사이의 관계에 대한 헤겔 특유의 존재론적 사유를 전제로 이해할 수 있다는 점을 논증하고, 이를 토대로 (5) 광기의 필연성이 정신의 부정성을 나타내는 여러 의미를 고찰할 것이다. (shrink)