Written by philosophers, cosmologists, and physicists, this collection of essays deals with causality, which is a core issue for both science and philosophy. Readers will learn about different types of causality in complex systems and about new perspectives on this issue based on physical and cosmological considerations. In addition, the book includes essays pertaining to the problem of causality in ancient Greek philosophy, and to the problem of God's relation to the causal structures of nature viewed in the light of (...) contemporary physics and cosmology. [Subject: Philosophy, Cosmology, Physics, Religious Studies]. (shrink)

Das Buch von den Ursachen, eine im 9. Jhdt. bei Bagdad entstandene, im 12. Jhdt. ins Lateinische ubersetzte und zunachst Aristoteles zugeschriebene neuplatonische Schrift, gehort zu den zentralen philosophischen Texten, die an den Universitaten des 13. Jhdts. gelesen werden. Ihr anonymer Autor entwickelt darin eine an Proklos angelehnte, jedoch zugunsten der Schopfungstheologie der monotheistischen Religionen abgewandelte Ontologie. Der Kommentar bildet eine wichtige Quelle fur Erkenntnisse zu Entstehung und Inhalt des Buches. Auch zeigt er die Arbeitsweise eines der grossten Denker des (...) lateinischen Mittelalters und ist ein wichtiger Baustein fur das Verstandnis des philosophischen und theologischen Werkes Thomas von Aquins, in dem er immer wieder auf das Buch von den Ursachen zuruckgreift. (shrink)

Tolstoy was a frame of reference in the work of Lukács twice, during 1914–16 and 1935–6 respectively. His first-time encounter with Tolstoy was presented in the chapter of The Theory of the Novel involving both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but the former was given more credit and reckoned as the prophet of a new world. It was not until the 1930s that Lukács’ taste changed, and his top priority went to Tolstoy instead. Yet, with due respect to the vicissitudes of his (...) life throughout the 1910s until the 1930s, Lukács remained faithful to his philosophy of history in terms of aesthetic judgment. His preference for the grand artworks was not new as his admiration for Homer showed, but his belief in the resurrection of grand art as realism was rooted in a new and false illusion. Still, his essays on Tolstoy of the 1930s are rich in aesthetic analysis, such as the different aspects of temporality. (shrink)

This article argues that popular revolution was closely tied to the establishment of capitalism. Contrary to the revisionist George V. Taylor’s view that the Revolution had nothing to do with the advance of capitalism because financial and productive capital were divided from one another, this article contends that the Revolution played a critical role in tying them together. Prior to the Revolution financiers began to make limited investments in wholesale trade, manufacturing and mining. But during the revolutionary crisis the sans-culottes (...) pushed the Jacobins to create a national money and to curb speculation in order to foster production and exchange and reduce unemployment. With speculative activity blocked by popular resistance and state interference, bankers and other capitalists increasingly turned to productive investments and forged a link between financial and productive capital which proved crucial to further capitalist accumulation. (shrink)

Although contemporary historical novels share a number of features with the traditional historical novel, as analysed by Lukács (1981), they display a fundamental change in the perception of history, evident in the disappearance of the omniscient narrator, in their choice of significant and representative figures, and scepticism regarding teleology of history or the world-historical role of war and violence. On the one hand, history has become a riddle, and this is reflected in the preference for the form of the detective (...) novel, for which the model is The Name of the Rose (Eco 1983). On the other hand, there is a clear preference for two historical periods: the collapse of the ancient world and the birth of the modern from the Renaissance to the 18th century. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] edited volume is based on the proceedings of an international workshop held in 2009 on the theme of ‘Material Evidence and Narrative Sources’ during the fourteenth annual gathering of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, focused on ‘Interdisciplinary Studies of the History of Islamic Societies’. Fifteen articles seek to integrate (...) material and textual evidence for the medieval and modern Middle East, deliberately adhering to a trend of interdisciplinarity that began in the 1970s, exemplified in the approach of specific studies by Michael Cook, Leor Halevi, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar, and Jacob Lassner, as well as in the recent publications of the editors, D. J. Talmon-Geller’s Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids... (shrink)

Agnes Heller died in 2019 at the age of 90, after a long career as a prolific writer broadly in the tradition of critical theory. She was born and educated in Hungary, witnessing and writing about...

In 'Four-Dimensional Objects' Peter van Inwagen gives two arguments for the claim that proponents of four-dimensionalism have to be counterpart theorists. Recently Jack Copeland, Heather Dyke, and Diane Proudfoot, echoing in part points made by Mark Heller in this journal in 1993, have sought to rebut one of van Inwagen's arguments. In this paper I shall criticize their discussion and by implication certain points made by Heller. In so doing I shall also rebut a possible objection to van (...) Inwagen's second argument. While I shall conclude that Copeland et al . fail to make their case, I nevertheless argue that van Inwagen's argument can be resisted, provided that the four-dimensionalist is willing to adopt a certain conception of transworld identity. Moreover, I shall argue that to the extent that van Inwagen's paper highlights something problematic for four-dimensionalism in this particular conception of transworld identity, the paper highlights something equally problematic for three-dimensionalism. (shrink)

Translation of "Von der Armut am Geiste; ein Dialog des jungen Lukács," by Ágnes Heller. This translation originally appeared in The Philosophical Forum, Spring-Summer 1972.

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)

A wide-ranging collection of philosophical essays in honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer.

We publish here the letters between Gadamer and Ricoeur, as they are found in the Archives of the two philosophers (Gadamer-Archiv in Marbach and Fonds Ricoeur in Paris). Starting from February 1964 and ending on October 2000, the thirty-five letters reproduced here cannot give a complete picture of their much richer correspondence and relations, because it seems that neither Ricoeur, nor Gadamer kept all the letters they received from one another. But altogether, they document their common concerns, their mutual respect, (...) even their intellectual solidarity and finally the particular context that brought them to write to one another, i.e. Ricoeur’s intention to publish a translation of Gadamer’s book, Truth and Method, in a new series he edited for the Seuil Publisher. This publishing and translation project will mark their entire correspondence. (shrink)

-- Bd. 22. Exzerpte und Notizen (1809-1831) -- Bd. 23. Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaft der Logik -- Bd. 24. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Natur <1-3> -- Bd. 25. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes ; Anhang -- Bd. 26. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des Rechts (4 v.) -- Bd. 27. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte -- Bd. 28. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst -- Bd. 29. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie (...) der Religion und Vorlesungen über die Beweise vom Dasein Gottes -- Bd. 30. Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie -- Bd. 31. Katalog der Bibliothek Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels (2 v.). (shrink)

Georg Simmel developed a "form" method for the newly revived field of sociology, drawing on the subjectivity/objectivity dialectic. While his book's organization differs from that of contemporary texts, his method remains implicit in the field to this day.

Georg Simmel: an introduction by K. P. Etzkorn.--The conflict in modern culture.--On the concept and tragedy of culture.--A chapter in the philosophy of value.--Sociological aesthetics.--On aesthetic quantities.--On the third dimension in art.--The dramatic actor and reality.--Psychological and ethnological studies on music.

Dans cet ouvrage, Gadamer (1900-2002) nous confie un veritable testament philosophique. Abordant des questions centrales de la pensee contemporaine, le maitre de l'hermeneutique livre ici ses dernieres reflexions sur des themes qui lui tiennent a coeur: l'art et la poesie, la reconnaissance et l'humanisme, l'amitie et l'ecoute. L'hermeneutique, selon Gadamer, est la theorie selon laquelle nous devons apprendre a ecouter.

Band 10 der Gesammelten Schriften Sulzers enthalt den gesamten Briefwechsel zwischen J. G. Sulzer (1720-1779) und J. J. Bodmer (1698-1783), der hier zum ersten Mal vollstandig nach den Handschriften transkribiert und kommentiert wird. Fur die Edition von Sulzers Schriften ist dieser Briefwechsel geradezu fundamental: Mit seinen 453 Briefen, die in 35 Jahren (1744-1779) entstanden sind, zahlt er zu den umfangreichsten Korrespondenzen Sulzers und liefert zahlreiche neue Informationen zu zentralen Themenfeldern der europaischen Aufklarung, zur Genese von Sulzers und Bodmers Schriften, zu (...) ihrem Netzwerk, insbesondere in Preuaen und in der Schweiz, sowie zu Aspekten ihres Privatlebens. Damit erweist sich dieser Briefwechsel als eine unumgangliche Quelle, will man die Formierung des literarischen und akademischen Feldes in der Aufklarungsepoche untersuchen. (shrink)

The relationship of Marxist thought to the phenomena of everyday life and utopia, both separately and in terms of their intersection, is a complex and often ambiguous one. In this article, I seek to trace some of the theoretical filiations of a critical Marxist approach to their convergence (as stemming mainly from a Central European tradition), in order to tease out some of the more significant ambivalences and semantic shifts involved in its theorization. This lineage originates in the work of (...) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then stretches to Georg Lukács and the so-called ‘Gnostic Marxism’ of Walter Benjamin (as mediated by the important figure of Georg Simmel), and culminating most recently in the work of Agnes Heller. Such a Marxist theory is inseparable from a political project that seeks to unveil and critique what it takes to be the debased, routinized and ideological qualities of daily existence under the auspices of modern capitalist society, but also attempts to locate certain emancipatory tendencies within this selfsame terrain, an orientation that can be summed up in the phrase ‘everyday utopianism’. Although there are occasional lapses into dualistic modes of thinking in the work of these writers, the key insight they present to us is the need to overcome the pervasive dichotomy between the everyday/immanent and the utopian/transcendental, of a sort that has bedevilled the work of many other theorists and intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Critical Theories and the Budapest Schoolbrings together new perspectives on the Budapest School in the context of contemporary developments in critical theory. Engaging with the work of the prominent group of figures associated with Georg Lukács, this book sheds new light on the unique and nuanced critiques of modernity offered by this school, informed as its members' insights have been by first-hand experiences of Nazism, Soviet-type societies, and the liberal-democratic West. With studies of topics central to contemporary critical theory, (...) such as the political and historical consciousness of modernity, the importance of bio-politics, the complexity of the human condition, and the relevance of comedy and friendship to developing critical perspectives, the authors draw on the works of Ágnes Heller, Maria Márkus, György Márkus, and Ferenc Fehér, demonstrating their enduring relevance to critical theory today and the ways in which these philosophers can inform new perspectives on culture and politics. An innovative reassessment of the Budapest School and the importance of its legacy, this book opens a much-needed and neglected dialogue with other schools and traditions of critical theorizing that will be of interest to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and social theory. n inform new perspectives on culture and politics. An innovative reassessment of the Budapest School and the importance of its legacy, this book opens a much-needed and neglected dialogue with other schools and traditions of critical theorizing that will be of interest to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and social theory. (shrink)

This text was first published as ‘De nova methodo naturam ac motum fluidi electrici investigandi’ in Novi Commentarrii Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis. Commentationes physicae et mathematicae classis 8 (Göttingen 1778: 168–80). It also appeared in a printing by Joann Christian Dieterich in Göttingen in 1778. Lichtenberg delivered this talk personally to the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen on 21 February 1778. Although Lichtenberg was not present, he had already informed the Royal Society of Lichtenberg’s discovery of the electrical figures (...) at a meeting on 3 May 1777. The present German version was first published in Lichtenberg’s Vermischte Schriften, vol. 9 (Physikalische und mathematische Schriften, vol. 4) (Göttingen, 1806) pp. 49–80. Wolgang Promies suggests that the German translation was likely done by Friedrich Christian Kries, who was a co-editor of the Vermischte Schriften and Lichtenberg’s student (see Georg Christoph Lichtenberg [1974], Schriften und Briefe, [ed. Wolfgang Promies (K II: Kommentar zu Band III)], Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, p. 11). Lichtenberg was the first to propose the use of + and – to designate electricity in this article. (shrink)

This novel approach plunges the reader into the depths of our own brain.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God’s purpose. At the beginning of this masterwork, Hegel writes: “What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the (...) highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.” In his introduction to this Bison Book edition, Frederick C. Beiser notes the complex and controversial history of Hegel’s text. He makes a case that this English-language translation by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson is still the most reliable one. (shrink)

Social Facts and Collective Intentionality is a combination of terms that refers to a new field of basic research. Written mainly in the mood and by means of analytical philosophy, at the very heart of this new approach is conceptual explication of all the various versions of social facts and collective intentionality and its ramifications. This approach tackles the topics of traditional social philosophy using new conceptual methods, including techniques of formal logic, computer simulations, and artificial intelligence. Such research also (...) addresses careful research relating to ontological, epistemological, normative and--last but not least-- methodological questions. This volume represents the state of the art in this new field. The volume and its contributors tackle a series of vexing issues in the social sciences: (1) the sense of affiliation to large in contrast to small groups, (2) whether collective membership is the same as common knowledge, (3) the worth of information exchange based on faulty data, (4) the difference between standards of information and transfer of information, and (5) whether reliability is grounded in personal experience or as members in epistemic communities or networks. Contributors to this volume have a strong commitment to the social or collective character and mutual interplay of scientific information. "Collective Intentionality" is the term chosen by researchers working in this cross-disciplinary field. The group is currently conducting research in areas such as artificial intelligence, linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Its work is distinguished by issues of collective behavior such as jointness, groupness, we and us. The present volume covers the state of the art of collective analysis, while fully appreciating that it is a stepping stone, albeit an important one, in redirecting the attention of basic philosophy away from the individual to the collective mode of exact analysis. Georg Meggle is professor for philosophical foundations of anthropology and of cognitive sciences at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He is a key contributor to Realism in Action with a study of Common Belief and Common Knowledge, and author of an earlier study of theoretical foundations of semantics. (shrink)

Ensayo de Georg Simmel “Böcklins Landschaften” en su lengua original, publicado en 1885 en el semanario Die Zukunft. ARK: ark:/s18537960/ioe402sw2.

Enth.: "Platone scopritore dell'ermeneutica" : intervista di Giovanni Reale a Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie by Georg Simmel. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1892 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

In this article I give an overall interpretation of the development of the Budapest School in Australia as political emigres, who initially worked and wrote in Melbourne and Sydney until the final years when Heller and Feher moved on to New York in the mid-1980s and then back to Budapest in 1993. The translation of How Is Critical Economic Theory Possible? has allowed us to better grasp the motivations and theoretical innovations of the Budapest School, to appreciate their internal (...) disputes and to recognise fundamental continuities and difference in these two key thinkers. This book was a gallant retrieval of democratic potentials in Marx. It excavated Marx’s own appreciation of needs produced by, and critical of, the alienations of the capitalist system. Ultimately, this early work was unable to realise its ambition to educate the diverse progressive movements of the times. I will show later that the retrieval of progressive potentials took a more social democratic form in the work of Maria Márkus on needs as she encountered them later in the Hawke Labor Government of Australia from 1983. Introducing the world media to the Budapest School in The Times Literary Supplement on 15 February 1971, Lukács described Márkus as ‘75% mensch’. When Lukács first met him, George already had his own philosophical interests, which he would bring with him when he became a key figure in ‘the Budapest School’. Márkus had studied in Moscow where he wrote his dissertation on the topic History and Consciousness and met his Polish wife, Maria. George used to modestly say that he was an expert only on the works of Karl Marx. That was despite that he had taught the history of modern philosophy at Eotvös Loránd University to Hungary’s most promising philosophers for a decade and later to philosophy students at Sydney University for the next 20 years. In the early 1970s, George invited Janos Kis and György Bence to work on his next project that would become the Hungarian version of Überhaupt, which was to become How Is Critical Economic Theory Possible? The new English translation published by Brill this year opens this important rethinking of the work of Marx to an international readership. (shrink)

How is art both distinct and different from the rest of human life, while also mattering in and for it? This central yet overlooked question in contemporary philosophy of art is at the heart of Georg Bertram's new aesthetic. Drawing on the resources of diverse philosophical traditions – analytic philosophy, French philosophy, and German post-Kantian philosophy – his book offers a systematic account of art as a human practice. One that remains connected to the whole of life.

Zu einem Kapitel der jüngsten Philosophiegeschichte / Ingeborg Bachmann -- Bildnis eines Philosophen / Maurice Cranston -- Wittgenstein oder die Destruktion / José Ferrater Mora -- Ludwig Wittgenstein / Paul Feyerabend -- Unphilosophische Betrachtungen / Erich Heller -- Vorwort zum Tractatus logico-philosophicus / Bertrand Russell -- Biographische Betrachtung / George Henrik von Wright.

Tysk, kulturkritisk reaktionær livsfilosof. Til hans pantheon af inspirationertæller særligt Goethe, Nietzsche og Bachofen. Som ung blev Klages kendt som psykologisk og grafologisk teoretiker og var centralt medlem af den litterære og kunstneriske kreds omkring digteren Stefan Georges i München. Han havde studeret kemi og fysik i Leipzig og tog i München en doktorgrad i kemi, men komaldrig til at arbejde som kemiker. En akademisk karriere inden for psykologi eller filosofi forfulgte han heller ikke. I 1915 flyttede han til (...) Schweiz i afsmag for militarismen, krigen og den moderne måde at være tysk på, og blev der resten af sine dage. Berygtet er Klages’ antisemitisme, som ikke var racebiologisk, men en åndskritisk antijudaisme. I manges øjne bragte den ham ideologisk i betænkelignærhed af nazismen, om end nazisternes chefideolog Alfred Rosenberg i 1938 tordnede imod Klages’ filosofi. Hovedværket fra 1929, Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele, udtrykker Klages’ grundtanke om sjælen og ånden som modsatrettede magter, hvorfra alle hans naturog kulturanalyser kan afledes. Hans indflydelse på en kulturkritiker som Walter Benjamin, der læses meget på danske universiteter, erunægtelig, men lidet erkendt herhjemme. (shrink)

ABSTRACT David Roberts’ History of the Present asks what comes after the grand narratives of European modernity. Progress is over, but without a past and with no assured future, the present remains in conceptual limbo. For Roberts, we are entering a new stage of a global cultural modernity marked by the end of European modernism. Taking a fresh look at the contested endings of the modern, Roberts suggests that an extended concept of contemporaneity might replace the problematic dualism of past (...) and present, modernity and post-modernity at the end of the twentieth century. This review article discusses Roberts’ argument with reference to the work of Budapest School members, Ágnes Heller and György Markus, with reference more broadly to seminal theorists such as Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Alain Touraine and Guy Debord, and to writers including Marcel Proust, Heinrich Mann, Aldous Huxley and Michel Houellebecq, in relation to the questions of cultural modernity. (shrink)