This paper critically examines the metaphorical use of medical terms in philosophy. Three examples selected from distinct philosophical contexts demonstrate that such terms have been employed as metaphors both to describe the practice of philosophising and historically to diagnose philosophical positions. The selected examples are (i) the title of Avicenna’s main philosophical work, The Book of Healing, (ii) the criticism of medical metaphors in Enlightenment philosophy, and (iii) recent historical diagnoses in philosophy. The underlying epistemological assumptions of all three contexts (...) are reconstructed to critically analyse the medical metaphors. Through this tripartite synopsis, I arrive at a normative conclusions medical metaphors, such as the “healing of the soul” or “pathology of reason”, do not stand up to the critique of Enlightenment and are obsolete against the theoretical background of my reference texts. (shrink)

In An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger asserted that “it wasnot German idealism that collapsed; rather, the age was no longer strong enough to sustain the greatness, breadth, and originality of that spiritual world, i.e., truly to realize it”. He was at this point launchinginto one of the major themes of his later work: the “darkening of the world” in the form of the materialism and “demonism” typified by the antitheses of the USSR and the USA, a polarity of seeming opposites (...) obscuring an underlying fundamental similarity. This was the modernist faith of both cultures in the power of science to solve all of the problems that have plagued humanity for untold centuries, a faith in the power of science to tell us the absolute truth about the nature of reality. In 1955 Heidegger also characterized science and technology in “The Question Concerning Technology” as an “enframing”, a particular dominant interpretation of reality dependent on the interest of control and which conceals far more than it reveals. For one thing, “the essence of technology isin a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth”. Although enframing “lets man endure,” only art as the successor of philosophy transcends techne by allowing us to see that “the essence of technologyis nothing technological”. Much earlier, in Being and Time, he gave his first sustained account of science as the interpretationof reality driven by technological interests, and spoke of Being as the “transcendens” lying beyond “every possible character which an entity can possess” [p. 38]. It remains debatable whether this characterization of Being survived into Heidegger's later period, but despite his nostalgia for the spirituality of the early nineteenth century, the role of Beingin these earlier works might best be explained as some kind of realism. (shrink)

Philosophers commonly distinguish emotions from other feelings. For example, Anthony Kenny distinguishes emotions from both sensations and perceptions. Perceptions are connected with a specific organ or part of the body and sensations such as hunger or thirst are sometimes characteristically located in parts of the body. Emotions, however, are neither connected with organs nor characteristically felt in specific parts of the body. Kenny rightly points out that emotions and sensations are alike in one important respect, namely they are both linked (...) to characteristic forms of expression. He then says “ … the existence of characteristic expre5sions of emotion itself provides a further link between emotion and sensations: for the expression characteristic of each emotion—e.g., weeping—is itself felt, and this feeling is a genuine sensation”. (shrink)

Discussion of recent analyses of Being and Time, concentrating on that of Hubert Dreyfus, in which Heidegger’s philosophy of science is claimed to be a form of realism. Surveying other views, those of William Blattner, Barry Allen, Charles Guignon, and Richard Rorty, I argue that Heidegger should not be anachronistically classified because, similar to Subject/Object, he considers the Realism/Idealism debate to belong to another era.

Hubert Dreyfus's commentary on Being and Time has been a long time in preparation but it has also been worth the wait. Dreyfus limits his account to the first division of Part I of Being and Time with some passages from Division II brought into the discussion. For Dreyfus, the first 230 pages of Being and Time comprise Heidegger's most important metaphysical innovations, while Division II, the “existentialist” side of Heidegger, contains discussions of death, guilt, resoluteness and Angst rarely, if (...) ever, mentioned in any other works. (shrink)

The Australian Labor Party has, until recent years, exercised almost unchallenged hegemony over Australian Left and working-class politics. Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn have ambitiously crafted the first Marxist history of the party in over 50 years, deploying an analysis of its material constitution as a ‘capitalist workers’ party’ to underpin arguments for a revolutionary socialist alternative. From its emergence in class struggles of the late nineteenth century, to its early electoral successes, to multiple internal crises and splits, and its (...) more recent role in driving neoliberal restructuring, the party’s contradictory character is analysed with clarity. However, despite containing much suggestive material, key issues – including the party’s unparalleled success despite its betrayals, failures and crises; radical challenges from within and without the party; the nature of its appeal to reformist consciousness; the shape of Marxist and Left debates about thealp; and the party’s centrality to a wider sphere of politics in capitalist society – remain thinly theorised, thereby inadvertently weakening the authors’ case for a revolutionary alternative. (shrink)

This article investigates the meaning and the historical implications of the term praetor maximus quoted by Livy from an early republican law. In modern scholarship it has mostly been interpreted as a technical term for the supreme magistrate. Instead of taking praetor maximus as an official title, though, I suggest to follow Mommsen who understands the term as a generic expression. Going further from this general idea and given the meticulous observance of rituals in Roman religion, the law seems to (...) have used a generic term denoting any person who happened to be in charge of the community, which extended to matters touching on relations to the gods. Other than in Mommsen's interpretation, the term is here argued to belong to the immediate aftermath of the monarchic stage of the Roman community. In a period of great insecurity, when the republic had probably just barely been established, praetor maximus referred to the possibility of a rex as much as to any republican office. Thus, this term does not allow for any conclusions about the emergence of the supreme magistracy in Rome, but rather gives testimony to royal support still active in Rome after the expulsion oft he Tarquins. (shrink)

Wagner's epic Ring of the Niebelungs stands as a focal point of nineteenth-century German art. Redemption or Annihilation? discusses the unusual structure of The Ring and major critical viewpoints, such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor Adorno. An interpretation is presented in which Nietzsche's criticisms form the basis of a positive reading of The Ring, whose significance, structure, and meaning are still enthusiastically debated today.