Translated from the author's unpublished manuscript. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Somewhat rambling and loosely structured in the manner of an essay about a subject matter with no fixed parameters, Modern German Philosophy succeeds in presenting a lively picture of the contemporary German philosophical scene, and not least because of the author's critical participation in it. The book's origin in a native German speaker is fairly evident despite the curiosity that the book was apparently intended, not for German publication, but solely for its English translation. The (...) expositions of Germany's major thinkers in the past few decades are clear, succinct, and fairly accurate, given the author's avowed proclivities and presuppositions. Bubner has the good sense to intersperse his expositions with critical reflections, often open-ended, and even occasionally with a précis of his own systematic thinking. The result is a never dull, very engaging introduction to contemporary German philosophy that may surprise its English-speaking readers with the level of criticism and argumentation animating the latter. An additional boon to the reader is the fairly extensive and up-to-date references in the footnotes, especially to English translations when available. (shrink)

Early Modern German Philosophy (1690-1750) makes some of the key texts of early German thought available in English, in most cases for the first time. The translations range from texts by the most important figures of the period, including Christian Thomasius, Christian Wolff, Christian August Crusius, and Georg Friedrich Meier, as well as texts by consequential but less familiar thinkers such as Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, Theodor Ludwig Lau, Friedrich Wilhelm Stosch, and Joachim Lange. The topics covered range (...) across a number of areas of theoretical philosophy, including metaphysics (the immortality of the soul, materialism and its refutation, the pre-established harmony), epistemology (the principle of sufficient reason, the limits of reason with respect to matters of faith), and logic (the role of prejudices in cognition and the doctrine of truth). (shrink)

The first book that presents key original texts from the modern German philosophical tradition to English-language students and scholars of German, with introductions, commentaries, and annotations that make them accessible.

The rich conceptual and experiential relays between music and philosophy—echoes of what Theodor W. Adorno once called _Klangfiguren_, or "sound figures"—resonate with heightened intensity during the period of modernity that extends from early German Idealism to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. This volume traces the political, historical, and philosophical trajectories of a specifically German tradition in which thinkers take recourse to music, both as an aesthetic practice and as the object of their speculative work. The contributors (...) examine the texts of such highly influential writers and thinkers as Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch, Mann, Adorno, and Lukács in relation to individual composers including Beethoven, Wagner, Schönberg, and Eisler. Their explorations of the complexities that arise in conceptualizing music as a mode of representation and philosophy as a mode of aesthetic practice thematize the ways in which the fields of music and philosophy are altered when either attempts to express itself in terms defined by the other. Contributors: Albrecht Betz, Lydia Goehr, Beatrice Hanssen, Jost Hermand, David Farrell Krell, Ludger Lütkehaus, Margaret Moore, Rebekah Pryor Paré, Gerhard Richter, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Samuel Weber. (shrink)

In this latest book, renowned philosopher and scholar Robert B. Pippin offers the thought-provoking argument that the study of historical figures is not only an interpretation and explication of their views, but can be understood as a form of philosophy itself. In doing so, he reconceives philosophical scholarship as a kind of network of philosophical interanimations, one in which major positions in the history of philosophy, when they are themselves properly understood within their own historical context, form philosophy’s lingua franca. (...) Examining a number of philosophers to explore the nature of this interanimation, he presents an illuminating assortment of especially thoughtful examples of historical commentary that powerfully enact philosophy. After opening up his territory with an initial discussion of contemporary revisionist readings of Kant’s moral theory, Pippin sets his sights on his main objects of interest: Hegel and Nietzsche. Through them, however, he offers what few others could: an astonishing synthesis of an immense and diverse set of thinkers and traditions. Deploying an almost dialogical, conversational approach, he pursues patterns of thought that both shape and, importantly, connect the major traditions: neo-Aristotelian, analytic, continental, and postmodern, bringing the likes of Heidegger, Honneth, MacIntyre, McDowell, Brandom, Strauss, Williams, and Žižek—not to mention Hegel and Nietzsche— into the same philosophical conversation. By means of these case studies, Pippin mounts an impressive argument about a relatively under discussed issue in professional philosophy—the bearing of work in the history of philosophy on philosophy itself—and thereby he argues for the controversial thesis that no strict separation between the domains is defensible. (shrink)

For centuries debates about reason and its Other have animated and informed philosophy, art, science, and politics throughout Western civilization but nowhere, arguably, as deeply and turbulently as in Germany. This book explores the myriad issues surrounding these debates.

ABSTRACTThe paper focuses on the gradual separation between materialism and mechanism in early modern German philosophy. In Germany the distinction between the two concepts, originally introduced by Leibniz, was definitively stated by Wolff who was the first to provide a definition of the new philosophical term Materialismus, and of the related philosophical sect. In the first part I describe the initial identification of mechanism and materialism in German philosophy between the last decades of the seventeenth century and (...) 1720. Mechanism is here mostly conceived within a monistic metaphysics of body, which refers mainly to Hobbes and to some interpretations of Spinoza’s pantheism. This tight connection between a mechanical explanation of nature and the Deus sive natura issue leads to a negative judgement on mechanism and its materialistic implications, both charged with a form of more or less explicit atheism. In the second part I describe the gradual emancipation in Germany of mechanism fro... (shrink)

Nietzsche is no longer a marginal figure in the study of philosophy. This collection of specially commissioned essays reflects the emergence of a serious interest amongst philosophers, sociologists and political theorists. By considering Nietzsche's ideas in the context of the modern philosophical tradition from which it emerged, his importance in contemporary thought is refined and reaffirmed. Modern German thought begins with Kant and has rarely escaped his influence. It is with respect to this Kantian heritage that this (...) volume examines Nietzsche. These essays critically consider Nietzsche's relation to Kant and the post-Kantian tradition. In broad terms it is his relation to the domains of knowledge, ethics and aesthetics, that is through the three Kantian critiques, that Nietzsche's thought is illuminated. This allows a surprising variety of areas and questions, both about Nietzsche and about philosophy to be investigated. (shrink)

Though this chapter is co-authored, I was responsible for eight of its nine sections. Rather than foreshadowing the chapters to come in this edited volume, I have attempted to synthesize and supplement them in order to present an initial picture of the significance of Stoicism for German philosophy roughly since the late 19th century. With the exception of Friedrich Nietzsche, this vast field of Stoic reception has received almost no attention before. Particularly noteworthy elements in this chapter include sections (...) on the relationship between German specialist scholarship since the 1850s and German philosophy and a long section on Karl Löwith. (shrink)

이 연구는 21세기 세계 문명의 화합과 공존이라는 시대정신에 부응하여 과거 서구의 문명강권주의 논리를 정당화해온 부정적 의미의 오리엔탈리즘을 희석시키고 다원적이고 다층적인 개념으로 재조정하기 위해 기획된 것이다. 그 대안으로 상대적으로 간과되어온 ‘긍정적 함의’를 활성화시켜 4분적 층위의 오리엔탈리즘 범주를 제시하는 한편, 이 추상적인 이론이 동서 철학 교류사 연구를 통해서 어떻게 구체화될 수 있는지를 문명 내부의 담론 측면에서 독일 계몽주의 철학자 볼프의 ‘중국 형상’을 모델로 검증해 보았다. 또한 글의 구성은 수용자의 능동적 관점을 적극 반영한다는 차원에서 간-문명적 타자상을 음각하는 유럽의 문화 인자, 즉 ‘신앙 대 (...) 이성’이라는 헤게모니적 역학 관계 속에서 다각적으로 이루어졌다. 이 제반 연구 과정 속에서 결국 서구가 신학 체계로 응집된 보수적 종교 사회를 청산하고 근대 시민 사회로 진입하는 데 유학 인문주의가 중요한 추동력이 되었다는 역사 사실을 확인할 수 있다. 18세기 볼프의 계몽 의식 속에 담지된 신앙에 대한 이성의 문화 투쟁은 유럽의 근대적 문화 이행을 위한 중국 인문주의의 원조라는 문화철학적 의미를 갖는다. 그것은 18세기 신본 신앙에 기초한 신학 보수적 경건주의의 ‘억압적 타자상’과 대비되는 인본 이성에 기초한 계몽 진보적 볼프주의의 ‘저항적 타자상’으로서 자문명 비판과 혁신을 위한 고도의 오독이 빚어낸 간-문명적 저항의 은유라고 할 수 있다. (shrink)

The Young Karl Marx is an innovative and important new study of Marx’s early writings. These writings provide the fascinating spectacle of a powerful and imaginative intellect wrestling with complex and significant issues, but they also present formidable interpretative obstacles to modern readers. David Leopold shows how an understanding of their intellectual and cultural context can illuminate the political dimension of these works. An erudite yet accessible discussion of Marx’s influences and targets frames the author’s critical engagement with Marx’s (...) account of the emergence, character, and (future) replacement of the modern state. This combination of historical and analytical approaches results in a sympathetic, but not uncritical, exploration of such fundamental themes as alienation, citizenship, community, antisemitism, and utopianism. The Young Karl Marx is a scholarly and original work which provides a radical and persuasive reinterpretation of Marx’s complex and often misunderstood views of German philosophy, modern politics, and human flourishing. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre noted that we appear to face a dilemma when engaging with the history of philosophy. Either we interpret great works “so as to make them relevant to our contemporary problems” or we read them “in their own terms, carefully preserving their idiosyncratic and specific character.” The former involves reshaping great thinkers into “what they would have been” had they been our philosophical contemporaries, and risks overlooking, downplaying, or distorting those features of their work that resist such efforts. The (...) latter approach, by contrast, threatens to resign the texts to a state such that “they cannot emerge into the present except as a set of museum pieces” (“The Relationship of Philosophy... (shrink)

David Leopold positions this work as "for a new generation of readers who no longer feel obliged to swallow Marx whole." He does not mention the more powerful and widespread pressure—to ignore or distort Marx. This is an antidotally meticulous, if somewhat Talmudic, study of the young Marx. Its first chapter is a historical introduction to the corpus of Marx's early work and its complex history of posthumous publication. Its second and third chapters situate his ideas within the German (...) philosophy of the period, spelling out its differences from Hegel and Bruno Bauer . The fourth chapter entitled "Human flourishing" is very much the most interesting. No concept is so widely incanted by contemporary philosophers and so lacking in principled ground, while no work is more suggestive here than the early Marx's. The fifth and final chapter is Leopold's "Epilogue," which usefully reviews the book's general argument.The young Marx has long inspired interest because his critique of capitalism and political economy is so dynamically emancipatory in its naturalist humanism. Leopold is not moved. To give a paradigmatic taste of his treatment, he excoriates a very famous passage of the young Marx—"Communism . . . is the. (shrink)

This article is devoted to understanding the worldview expressed in Vladimir Bibikhin’s Leo Tolstoy’s Diaries. The most important feature of this worldview is its practical nature: Bibikhin focuses on changing one’s view of things instead of trying to develop a doctrine. Practical phenomenology is extremely vulnerable to criticism because of its pre-philosophical nature. Therefore, at this stage, I try to explicate some of the features of this peculiar thought while avoiding trying to find its faults. I draw a connection between (...) Bibikhin’s ontological interpretation of the phenomenon with Heidegger’s concept of detachment (Gelassenheit) as a form of behavior, and illustrate that practical phenomenology turns out to be an ontology of contact. It thematizes the philosopher’s own being and focuses on the problems of the contact made in the “change of view,” in which thought, word, and deed converge. Bibikhin’s practical phenomenology is on the outskirts of modern academic philosophy, gravitating towards understanding philosophy as a way of life, in which the contemplative attitude takes the leading place, paradoxically combining experiment with their perception of “first things,” trust in them, and the ability to describe the indescribable, the “change of view.” This makes practical phenomenology related to the experimental phenomenology of Michel Henry. (shrink)

Platonic Production presents Prof. Stanley Rosen's Etienne Gilson Lectures, delivered at the Institut Catholique de Paris and now available in English for first time. His lectures bring Heidegger and Plato into a conversation around a basic philosophical question: Does the acquisition of truth resemble discovery or production? While Rosen undertakes a close examination of Heidegger's engagement with Plato, exposing some ways in which that engagement constitutes a misreading, the goals of his study are not exclusively critical. In arguing against the (...) claim that Plato stands at the beginning of Western metaphysical history which culminates in late modern nihilism, Rosen also points out how close Plato is to some characteristically Heideggerean themes and formulations. Heidegger is critiqued from the standpoint of Plato, but it is equally true that Platonic themes (such as the hypothesis of the Forms) are read anew in light of the questions raised by Heidegger. In keeping with the overarching theme of the Gilson Lectures, Rosen's six talks, and the introduction by the volume's editor aim to demon-strate that metaphysics is always possible, indeed inescapable, by meditating on the two philosophers whose thinking, especially where it diverges, centers on that very point. While Platonic Production takes up some of the most contentious issues in the Heidegger-Plato relationship, issues which are addressed in the always expanding scholarly literature and in Rosen's own earlier work, it is not at all intended exclusively for specialists in Plato or Heidegger. Rather, it is hoped that this volume will appeal to all who are interested in Greek and German thought and in the foundational questions which underlie the history of philosophy as a whole, both ancient and modern. (shrink)

What form can metaphysics still take in a philosophical modernity that has been decisively shaped by the impact of Kant’s critical project? This question has exercised Dieter Henrich, one of Kant’s greatest living interpreters. This paper focuses on Henrich’s intricate argument that metaphysical thinking, albeit of a new kind, remains indispensable especially in an age for which self-consciousness is a first principle. Henrich seeks a form of thought that can justify and preserve what he views as modernity’s greatest achievement, its (...) conception of the free, self-determining subject. Yet his description of this metaphysics for a new era reveals its surprisingly Platonic affinities. The paper focuses on those affinities, both in order critically to assess Henrich’s own work on subjectivity, but also because they reveal a fundamental and philosophically significant continuity that underlies all forms of comprehensive thinking, even in forms as divergent as those of Plato and Kant. (shrink)

This dataset documents results and code for the paper "Interdisciplinarity in the 17th Century? A Co-Occurrence Analysis of Early Modern German Dissertation Titles" by Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter, forthcoming in *Synthese*. The data to be processed are contained in four files, derived from a larger dataset related to German dissertations and sourced from the national bibliography of 17th century German prints *VD 17* that will be released at a later date. More information can be found in the file (...) `README.md`. (shrink)

_From Romanticism to Critical Theory_ explores the philosophical origins of literary theory via the tradition of German philosophy that began with the Romantic reaction to Kant. It traces the continuation of the Romantic tradition of Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher, in Heidegger's approaches to art and thruth, and in the Critical Theory of Benjamin and Adorno. Andrew Bowie argues, against many current assumptions, that the key aspect of literary theory is not the demonstration of how meaning can be deconstructed, (...) but rather the relevation of how questions of language and literature change modern philosophical conceptions of thruth. He shows how the dialogue between literary theory, hermeneutics and analytical philosophy can profit from a re-examination of the understanding of language, thruth and literature in modern German philosophy. _From Romanticism to Critical Theory_ will provide a vital new introduction to central theoretical questions for students of philosophy, literature, German studies, cultural and social theory. (shrink)

Provides a thorough background study of the postmodern assault on the standpoint of the subject as a foundation for philosophy, and assesses what remains today of the philosophy of subjectivity.

Alasdair MacIntyre´s criticism of Modernity essentially refers to the problem of compartmentalization, which restricts the possibility of achieving excellence in an integral lifestyle. Among other reasons, compartmentalization is especially derived from an insular valorization of the workplace based on a reductionist understanding of productivity in terms of mere efficiency. Aimed at overcoming the moral confusion derived from the overestimation of technical, skilled productivity and individualistic cooperation in private corporations, this article offers a thicker explanation of MacIntyre’s theory of productive work (...) in light of a narrative approach that opens up the possibility of achieving standards of excellence in modern production. To do so, it follows MacIntyre’s understanding of productivity in terms of craftsmanship by explaining what excellence in production is and the role it plays in achieving unity of life and excellence in modern corporations based on two criteria derived from a historical definition of production, namely, craftsmanship and collegiality. (shrink)

In _German Idealism and the Jew_, Michael Mack uncovers the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the German philosophical tradition. While many have read German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's conception of universal reason. Offering the first analytical account of the connection between anti-Semitism and philosophy, Mack begins his exploration by showing how the fundamental (...) thinkers in the German idealist tradition—Kant, Hegel, and, through them, Feuerbach and Wagner—argued that the human world should perform and enact the promises held out by a conception of an otherworldly heaven. But their respective philosophies all ran aground on the belief that the worldly proved incapable of transforming itself into this otherworldly ideal. To reconcile this incommensurability, Mack argues, philosophers created a construction of Jews as symbolic of the "worldliness" that hindered the development of a body politic and that served as a foil to Kantian autonomy and rationality. In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Franz Rosenzweig, and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and Jewish. Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees, while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened—a concept that differed substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner. By speaking the unspoken in German philosophy, this book profoundly reshapes our understanding of it. (shrink)

In this paper we examine titles of early modern German dissertations with regard to their ‘interdiscplinarity’, challenging the established consensus that interdisciplinarity evolved only in the 18th century. Based on the construction and analysis of a co-occurrence network of 909 dissertation titles published in the 17thc entury it can be shown that various dimensions of early modern interdisciplinarity should be distinguished. This concerns dissertations that connect philosophical disciplines to the ‘higher’ faculties of the early modern university (...) (theology, jurisprudence, medicine) as well as titles that connect theoretical and practical subdisciplines of philosophy itself. We also observe that the emerging disciplines of historiography and philology seem to play a prominent role in the emergence of early modern interdisciplinarity. On a structural level it seems to be misguided to construe the early modern system of knowledge as a ‘tree’. It rather seems that relations betweeen disciplines in this period exhibit both tree-like and lattice-like features. (shrink)

This paper aims to integrate the concept of autonomous and subordinated work into Aristotelian organizational theory by enhancing the epistemological framework of neo-Aristotelianism and by adding a Thomistic interpretation of organizational practical knowledge. We sustain that, in order to advance our understanding of the firm in terms of excellence and the common good, the concept of practical knowledge applied to organizational theory requires reflection on the nature of work in modern organizations. For this, we will explain how an organization (...) that aims for excellence is most appropriately defined as a community of autonomous work, how practical knowledge in organizations must be defined considering work as deliberative production and, finally, how productivity in organizations is best described when work is envisioned in terms of autonomy and subordination. (shrink)

This provocative book addresses one of the central and most controversial branches of Western thought: the philosophy of origin. In light of recent poststructuralist principles such as alterity, diffe;rance , and dissemination, the philosophy of origin seems to exemplify the repressive, reactionary tendencies of much of the Western philosophical tradition. John Pizer aims to overturn this recent antipathy to the philosophy of origin. He ably summarizes poststructuralist critiques of that earlier philosophical tradition, then turns to five German thinkers (Nietzsche, (...) Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Heidegger, and Adorno) who developed philosophies of origin that effectively anticipate and counter poststructuralist attacks. These are thinkers who, in one way or another, influenced recent generations of poststructuralist thinkers. Pizer argues, however, that rather than do away with the notion of origin altogether (as in the works of the most thoroughgoing poststructuralists), these philosophers developed theories in which origin is always “multiple and plurivalent.” In the writings of these seminal German thinkers, “origin” becomes “origins,” and “authentic origins” are “inherently plural and divergent.” A valuable, engrossing account of a wide range of thinkers and their complex relations, Pizer’s book recovers the notion of origin for an intellectual world that has come to value multiplicity, openness, and diversity. (shrink)

The article considers the issues of modern German political philosophy in accordance with its formation, institutionalization and development. Germany’s political philosophy is analyzed in terms of its interaction with social and practical philosophy. The text states that political philoso- phy belongs to both social philosophy and political science. As a political theory, it is a compo- nent of social theories institutionalized in the modern era. As a political philosophy, it appears as a metatheory of political theory. Political (...) philosophy is also part of practical philosophy, exploring the problems of interaction between ethics and politics and the moral reclamation of the political system of modern society. These issues are themed in the context of the institution- alization of this discipline in the early twentieth century, its transformation into a political reli- gion during National Socialism, the revival after World War II, as well as actualization in such areas of socio-humanitarian sciences as discourse philosophy, functional-system theory of so- ciety, etc. according to the political situation of modern Germany. (shrink)