It is the purpose of this paper to carry out a partial syntactical analysis of imperatives. Imperatives form a large body of linguistic expressions, appearing, e.g. in mathematical proofs be a continuous function!”), laws, moral injunctions, instruction, etc. For analytical purposes we distinguish between two forms of imperatives, the fiat and the directive. By a directive we mean an imperative which includes an indication of the agent who is to carry it out. For example, “Henry, don't forget to stop at (...) the grocery!” is a directive. By a fiat we mean an imperative which includes no reference to an agent who is to carry it out. For example, “Let there be light!” is a fiat. This is a distinction made in terms of meaning. If, however, proper symbolic devices were introduced for the formalization of imperatives, it could be made in a syntactical manner. Thus we could distinguish between imperatives which possess a certain operator—the directive operator formed by putting a name within square brackets—as “[Henry]!”, and imperatives which do not possess this operator, e.g. “Let it be the case that Henry does not forget to stop at the grocery!” In the following we pay attention only to fiats. This, of course, involves a great limitation of subject matter and excludes topics of great interest. (shrink)

The measure of man.--What philosophy is and does.--The vocation of consciousness.--The touch of art.--The voice of the dead wife.--The kin-consciousness of art.--The poem is not a symbol.--The poem is a symbol.--Being: the act of belonging.

This anthology is remarkable not only for the selections themselves, among which the Schelling and the Heidegger essays were translated especially for this volume, but also for the editors' general introduction and the introductory essays for each selection, which make this volume an invaluable aid to the study of the powerful, recurrent ideas concerning art, beauty, critical method, and the nature of representation. Because this collection makes clear the ways in which the philosophy of art relates to and is part (...) of general philosophical positions, it will be an essential sourcebook to students of philosophy, art history, and literary criticism. (shrink)

This paper interprets the Critique of Judgment as the culmination of Kant's contribution to our understanding of freedom--the human meaning of which is being-with-other-as-with-own. Central to that complex achievement and to the overarching role assigned by Kant to the aesthetic dimension (beauty, feeling, judgment, and art) is his revolutionary new way of seeing beauty and art as the expression of aesthetic ideas--a definition of them which carries him beyond formalism to illuminate also the modern and romantic search for freedom. This (...) move also brings Kant to the threshold of religious ethics as man's ultimate freedom, his being-with-the-infinitely-transcendent-as-with-own, is, in art and beauty, disclosed for imagination and made available for the life of feeling in this world. (shrink)

Heraclitus said: "Wisdom is one thing: to know the gnome, the thought, by which all things are guided through all." Heidegger has said: "To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky." Hegel portrayed the history of philosophy as the development of one single thought, which he expressed throughout a lifetime of philosophical genius: the speculative concept of self-consciousness, the identity of subject and object, of differents and (...) opposites. (shrink)

Several questions have been propounded about philosophy. Each has the form of an either-or. Is philosophy human or transcendental? Is philosophical truth dependent on or independent of man? Is the agent of thought human or transcendental?

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1973, given by Albert Hofstadter, an American philosopher.