У статті аналізуються можливості застосування поняття «ексцепціоналізм» в рамках досліджень історії української політичної думки. Окреслюється загальне поняття «ексцепціоналізм», здійснено короткий екскурс в історію цього поняття в контекстах дослідження історії американської політичної думки і культури, громадянської релігії, а також в більш глобалізованому контексті. Зокрема, розглянуто застосування цього терміну в рамках русистики і визначення російської політики як «гібридного ексцепціоналізму», а також роль Сталіна в формуванні американського ексцепціоналістичного дискурсу. На підставі огляду сучасної західної наукової літератури з цієї тематики окреслено загальне поняття «ексцепціоналізм» та (...) визначено його індикатори. Зроблено попередню спробу застосувати ці індикатори до української інтелектуальної історії в ХІХ столітті та виокремлено два явища, де спостерігаються ексцепціоналістичні маркери: польське українофільство та доробок Кирило-Мефодіївського братства. Зазначено, що історія українського ексцепціоналізму в ХХ – ХХІ ст. є досить обширною, втім дослідження перших етапів формування української модерності є дуже важливими, як з наукового, так і з політичного огляду. (shrink)

The nineteenth century is a period of stunning philosophical originality, characterised by radical engagement with the emerging human sciences. Often overshadowed by twentieth century philosophy which sought to reject some of its central tenets, the philosophers of the nineteenth century have re-emerged as profoundly important figures. The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy is an outstanding survey and assessment of the century as a whole. Divided into seven parts and including thirty chapters (...) written by leading international scholars, the _Companion_ examines and assesses the central topics, themes, and philosophers of the nineteenth century, presenting the first comprehensive picture of the period in a single volume: German Idealism philosophy as political action, including young Hegelians, Marx and Tocqueville philosophy and subjectivity, including Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche scientific naturalism, including Darwinism, philosophy of race, experimental psychology and Neo-Kantianism utilitarianism and British Idealism American Idealism and Pragmatism new directions in Mind and Logic, including Brentano, Frege and Husserl. The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy is essential reading for students of philosophy, and for anyone interested in this period in related disciplines such as politics, history, literature and religion. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of (...) a series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

The second half of the 19th Century saw a revolution in both European politics and philosophy. Philosophical fervour reflected political fervour. Five great critics dominated the European intellectual scene: Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Friedrich Nietzsche. "Nineteenth-Century Philosophy" assesses the response of each of these leading figures to Hegelian philosophy - the dominant paradigm of the time - to the shifting political landscape of Europe and the United States, and also to (...) the emerging critique of modernity itself. Both individually and collectively, these thinkers succeeded in revolutionizing theology, philosophy, psychology, and politics. The period also saw the emergence of new schools of thought and new disciplinary thinking. The volume covers the birth of sociology and the social sciences, the development of French spiritualism, the beginning of American pragmatism, the rise of science and mathematics, and the maturation of hermeneutics and phenomenology. (shrink)

The second half of the 19th Century saw a revolution in both European politics and philosophy. Philosophical fervour reflected political fervour. Five great critics dominated the European intellectual scene: Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Friedrich Nietzsche. "Nineteenth-Century Philosophy" assesses the response of each of these leading figures to Hegelian philosophy - the dominant paradigm of the time - to the shifting political landscape of Europe and the United States, and also to (...) the emerging critique of modernity itself. Both individually and collectively, these thinkers succeeded in revolutionizing theology, philosophy, psychology, and politics. The period also saw the emergence of new schools of thought and new disciplinary thinking. The volume covers the birth of sociology and the social sciences, the development of French spiritualism, the beginning of American pragmatism, the rise of science and mathematics, and the maturation of hermeneutics and phenomenology. (shrink)

Interest in the study of Marx’s thought has shown a revival in recent years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences, and journals dedicated to discussing his thought. This book brings together distinguished and up-and-coming scholars to provide a major re-evaluation of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx’s ideas with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx’s relationship to his philosophical predecessors—including Hegel, the young Hegelians, (...) and the utopian socialists—his concept of recognition, his critique of liberalism, and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Ukrainian science and its terminology in the nineteenth century experienced a number of twists and turns. Divided between two empires, it lacked institutions, scholars pursuing it, and a unified literary language. One could even say that until the late nineteenth century there was a possibility for two communities with two literary languages to emerge – Ruthenian (Habsburg Empire) and Ukrainian (Russian Empire). Eventually, both communities and languages merged. This article tracks the meanderings of (...) this process, arguing that scholarly publications played a crucial role in shaping the standard for the scientific language. The article follows the biography of the naturalist Ivan Verhrats’kyi (1846–1919), the author of the first dictionaries of naturalist terminology in Ruthenian in 1860, a translator and author of textbooks, and the head of the Mathematical–Naturalist–Medical Section of the Shevchenko Society in L’viv. He thus shaped many Ruthenian, and then Ruthenian–Ukrainian scholarly projects. Initially successful with his approach to making the Ruthenian scientific language vernacular, in the 1890s his approach was losing ground to the internationalization of vocabulary and to the growing pressure toward the unification of Ruthenian and Ukrainian. Finally, in the beginning of the twentieth century, Verhrats’kyi became marginalized within the Ukrainian scholarly community. By discussing the history of a minority language within imperial structures, I argue that the media in which scholarly work was published requires special attention. In the Ruthenin–Ukrainian case, they determined the standard for scientific language. Lacking professional journals, Ruthenian scholars published in the 1860s–late 1880s in popular newspapers and in school textbooks, requiring them to use a language that was near to the spoken tongue of the Habsburg province. Once the political situation changed, favoring Ruthenian–Ukrainian unification, and scholarly journals appeared and transgressed the imperial boundary, the favored language had to be transimperial, ousting out the vernacular. (shrink)

This volume is the first systematic study of the style of reasoning specific to the field of philosophy in nineteenth-century France. The chapters analyze the often dispersed responses to the fundamental question of the division of the sciences based on the reciprocal relationships of inclusion or exclusion, of adversity or sorority, between metaphysics and the positive sciences. In line with the arrhythmic progress of the different forms of knowledge, these responses renew the Condillacian criticisms of the Cartesian order (...) of the relationships between metaphysics and physics. Between a pronounced divorce and a successful marriage, this volume traces the philosophical history of the various attempts at divorce or union, which, as the century progressed, resulted in original hybridizations that aspired to define a new and ever-problematic "French philosophy.". (shrink)

The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This explains the close attention of Russian culture to the philosophical system of the French thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also allows us to hypothesize about the possible influence of the ideas of Russian philosophers of the late nineteenth (...) century on Bergson. Bergson’s most original idea is the recognition of the metaphysical primacy of the subjective, inner time of the human in relation to physical time. In physical time, only the moment of the present has real existence; in internal time, designated by Bergson as duration, all moments of the past are preserved as real, and this is expressed by memory. Internal time turns out to be the spiritual Absolute from which the entire material world originates. A very similar metaphysical concept is presented in Pyotr Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters. According to Chaadaev, each person is directly involved in the spiritual Absolute, which has the characteristic of integral time. In this time, all moments are in unity, and there is no division into the past, present, and future; this division arises only in the time intrinsic to the material reality that originates from the spiritual Absolute. In the religious teaching of Leo Tolstoy, personality is defined as the appearance of God within the limits of material existence, so a person is simultaneously involved in the earthly physical time and absolute time, which manifests itself through memory. The article concludes that Bergson’s ideas determined the most important features of Russian avant-garde culture of the twentieth century; in particular, thanks to them, the opposite trends of Russian thought were brought to unity: metaphysics of pan-unity and personalism. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, (...) Henry James, Willa Cather, Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, (...) Henry James, Willa Cather, Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them. (shrink)

This article brings to light discourses that constituted the education of Asian-American children in California in the second half of the nineteenth century. Guided by Foucaultian ideas and critical race theory, I analyze California public school laws, speeches of a governor-elect and a superintendent, and a report of the board of supervisors, from the 1860s to the 1880s. During this targeted period, the images and narratives of Asian-American children were inscribed with racism. Racializing politics rendered them (...) to be disqualified from attending public schools. Segregated schooling for them was legally ordered and therefore unquestioned. It was a discursive practice implemented on their bodies by dint of a mechanism of a spatial division. This article reveals the shifting dominancy of discourses regarding Asian-American children. Rather than accepting the given historical facts, I intend to reread historical texts in order to rethink the education of Asian-American children through a Foucaultian encounter with critical race theory. Acknowledging different interpretations of the past events is a way of rethinking them and interrogating the history through the revelation of different histories in the education for Asian-American children. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Generational Timescapes and Biotic Kinship in Omar El Akkad's American WarMichael Boyden (bio)References to future generations and how they might be impacted by decisions in the present abound in climate change communication—from scholarship dealing with the energy transition and climate control, to international agreements, and to public debates in civil society generally. One oft-noted reason why generational views are so frequently invoked in such contexts is that they (...) serve to make tangible otherwise intractable problems so vast in proportion that they tend to confound conventional ways of allocating ethical responsibilities and considerability. Conjuring the ways in which our choices and actions affect the quality of life of concrete individuals to whom we are connected by means of kinship ties awakens the present generation's sense of obligation toward the future.As a number of scholars have noted, however, generational views might also hamper our ability to work toward the kind of sustained transformation of the global economy that is required to ensure that Earth remains inhabitable in the future. In philosophy, political science, and adjacent fields, critiques of generational discourse have revolved around the limitations of governing models of ethics, as in discussions of Derek Parfit's "repugnant conclusion" (388) and in efforts to find new models of distributive justice that depart from utilitarian and contractualist approaches.1 In turn, scholars working in the interdisciplinary frameworks of critical posthumanism and queer feminism have attempted to rethink notions of kinship in ways that consider the ethical value of the nonhuman world and identities not grounded in biological kinship.2In this article, I argue that climate change fiction has the potential to [End Page 11] dramatize the conflicting valences of generational discourse—in ways that less layered, nonfictional narratives often fail to do—and in doing so points up the possibility of conceiving of environmental ethics in a different, less kinship-based fashion. Using Omar El Akkad's American War (2017) as my tutor text, I will argue that this novel presents a potent critique of the kind of generational discourse prevalent in debates about global warming today.My analysis is meant to show how El Akkad's novel, which adopts a markedly transcultural perspective that questions Western exceptionalism, brings out the limitations of—and visualizes alternatives to—the generational schemes through which the consequences of anthropogenic climate change are rendered intelligible. At the same time, I suggest, the novel offers pathways toward conceiving an ecocentric ethical framework that does not reproduce the anthropocentric assumptions of generational discourse.Climate Change and Generational DiscourseI start by defining more closely what we mean when we talk about generations. Political scientist Jonathan White has usefully distinguished three strands of generational views that tend to blend into each other in recent debates on climate change but that deserve to be kept analytically separate. The first of these is the genealogical understanding of generations, which pertains to familial "relations between individuals in their specificity" (765). This genealogical conception of generations has been with us for a long time. It is present, for instance, in biblical texts and classical historiography, which invoke family bonds to justify a given social order. Genealogical views are equally present, however, in modern evolutionary thinking and in the ordinary understanding of the generations of a family. The second strand identified by White is the sociological understanding of generations, which refers to "social groups defined by an apparent unity of ideas and attributes, irrespective of personal ties" (765). Sociological generations convey differences between young and old, or progressive and backward-looking forces, in times of societal transformation. Scholars trace this sociological conception of generations back to the nineteenth century, when the forces of industrialism and nationalism [End Page 12] magnified experiential divergences among social groups. Finally, White considers philosophical generations, which refer to "a society at different moments of existence" (765). Here, we may think of postrevolutionary contexts, when the clock is figuratively turned to zero and a new understanding of the social order emerges. Contrary to genealogical and sociological schemes, such philosophical generations are not grounded in a specific empirical formation; rather, they constitute a conceptual formula for organizing the (long-term) future.What makes generational... (shrink)

This biography of Emil du Bois-Reymond, the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century, received an Honorable Mention for History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the 2013 PROSE Awards, was shortlisted for the 2014 John Pickstone Prize (Britain's most prestigious award for the best scholarly book in the history of science), and was named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science as one of the Best Books of 2014. -/- In his own time (...) (1818–1896) du Bois-Reymond grew famous for his groundbreaking research in neuroscience and his provocative addresses on politics and culture. His discovery of the electrical transmission of nerve signals, his innovations in laboratory instrumentation, and his reductionist methodology all helped lay the foundations of modern neuroscience. -/- In addition to describing the pioneering experiments that earned du Bois-Reymond a seat in the Prussian Academy of Sciences and a professorship at the University of Berlin, this book also recounts du Bois-Reymond’s family origins, private life, public service, and lasting influence. In talks that touched on science, philosophy, history, and literature, du Bois-Reymond introduced Darwin to German students (triggering two days of debate in the Prussian parliament), asked on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War whether France had forfeited its right to exist, and proclaimed the mystery of consciousness, heralding the age of doubt. The first modern biography in any language, "Emil du Bois-Reymond" recovers an important chapter in the history of science, the history of ideas, and the history of Germany. (shrink)

This is a translation of another volume of the monumental history of philosophy published in the 1930s by Bréhier. The bibliography is brought up to date by the translator with help from Wesley Piersol. Bréhier writes history of philosophy in the broad sense, showing the social, literary, and political forms taken by philosophical trends of the period. Many of the writings treated in this volume will be unknown to students trained in the Anglo-American tradition. There are only fifteen (...) pages on Scottish realism and British utilitarianism, and a page or so each on Kierkegaard and Emerson. In the substantial chapters on Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and the trends in German thought following Hegel, one can find summaries of the positions of such philosophers as von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Herbart, Feuerbach, Stirner, and others. There is a rich section of over a hundred pages on French social philosophy: Fourier, Saint-Simon, Comte, and Proudhon. Early work of Engels and Marx is mentioned, but fuller treatment belongs to the next volume. A chapter on Italian idealism is also included. This period saw the flowering of vast constructive systems. A sense of history and development transformed philosophical problems, and faith in the rational, reflective initiative of human wills was replaced by faith in a mysterious historical force, an immanent law which makes sport of efforts to resist it. The difference in substance is reflected in differences of style. The clarity and naturalness with which eighteenth-century men of action wrote for a general educated public was replaced by constraint, effort, conventionality, and above all, a prophetic and apocalyptic tone in the works of this time.--M. B. M. (shrink)

In Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Hsuan L. Hsu examines how literature represents different kinds of spaces ranging from the single-family home to the globe. He focuses on authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett, who drew on literary tools such as rhetoric, setting, and point of view to mediate between individuals and different kinds of spaces. These authors used forms such as the regional (...) sketch, the domestic novel, and the detective story to re-examine how local spaces and communities would change when incorporated into global economic and political networks. Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature is valuable reading for American literature scholars, and for all concerned with intersections between literature and geography"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The essays in this collection investigate two political traditions and their critical interactions. The first series of essays deals with the development of natural rights individualism, some examining its origins in the thought of the seminal political theorist, John Locke, and the influential constitutional theorist, Montesquieu, others the impact of their theories on intellectual leaders during the American Revolution and the Founding era, and still others the culmination of this tradition in the writings of nineteenth-century (...) individualists such as Lysander Spooner. The second series of essays focuses on the Progressive repudiation of natural rights individualism and its far-reaching effect on American politics and public policy. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass (1817?–1875) is a monumental American figure. As a runaway slave and leading black thinker, speaker, and writer in the abolitionist movement and during Reconstruction and its tragic collapse, his legacy in American history is singular. His ideals and scorching criticisms have marked American political thought about democracy, religion, race, racism, liberty, and equality. American political parties claim him, especially the Republican Party, with which he has an early connection and which has used (...) his figure as cover for their less than egalitarian projects, as do different ideological camps. One can find accounts of Douglass as an existentialist, revolutionary, proto-libertarian, liberal, civic republican thinker. His North Star continues to guide those who welcome its light, although it may lead them down different political-ideological paths.In all of this, one can imagine that those not familiar with the details of Douglass’s narratives and deeds might, in the context of all of that national hagiography, lose track of the fact that he was a black man. Frederick Douglass was a black man born into slavery, survived that brutal regime for twenty-one years, and then escaped and became a principal leader of the American abolition movement and leading black political thinker. Shortly after escaping slavery, he wrote his first famous autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and subsequently two more, in addition to volumes of speeches, articles, and a novel. It is as if his monumentality, like marble, alabaster, or bronze—the stuff of civic memorials—would obscure that irreducible fact in its grand monotones.Nick Brommell’s The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass reminds readers that that irreducible fact is a nontrivial, essential element of Douglass’s life and work. Bromell argues that this includes the political theory, a product of Douglass’s black political philosophy that runs through it all. He contends that Douglass argued for an inclusive conception of personhood and active citizenship, which America’s founding public philosophy, distorted by white supremacy, purposefully did not. Its elements include a defense of the moral personhood of blacks and their full and equal citizenship and a view of political community enlivened by group solidarities and active citizenship in defense of justice.In the course of his analysis, Bromell, a literary theorist, draws on an assortment of contemporary philosophical, rhetorical, and political theories, all of which have a critical theoretical bent, to explicate Douglass’s ideas. This method bears fruit in an instructive analysis of the rhetorical structure of Douglass’ his arguments. Brommell’s analysis of Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom usefully explains how it stands out, not only in terms of updated autobiographical details, but also style and analytical and argumentative intent. This is a reading that other scholars have pioneered, but his rhetorical analysis fleshes out, for example, the role of moral sentiments, care, and intimate and social relations in Douglass’s narrative.A central feature of Bromell’s analysis is that Douglass employs what he and others call a “fugitive rhetoric” that comprises an emphasis on the perspective of his and other black Americans’ standpoints, the holding of opposite ideas in tension, and the use of the rhetorical technique “chiasmus,” where a statement is repeated in reverse order in successive phrases or clauses. It is an illuminating analysis, but Bromell goes further by claiming that Douglass was committed to the tenets of contemporary standpoint epistemology. Douglass certainly referenced and employed his experience and viewpoint as a black man and former slave in his work, just as he directly addressed the viewpoints and interests of black Americans. However, whether this means that Douglass was committed to the set of ideas that we now call standpoint epistemology is another matter. This concern applies to Bromell’s reading of Douglass’s method of holding seemingly contrasting ideas in tension and his use of chiasmus. Contemporary philosophical theories of chiasmus carry particular metaphysical and epistemological implications, and those theories might shed light on Douglass’s political projects. However, their incidental utility does not mean they definitively describe Douglass’s intent or public philosophy. This is a specifically important point because those theories lead to subjective conceptions of truth, especially relating to ethics and politics, while Douglass, as Bromell recognizes, repeatedly and emphatically endorsed what he took to be universal normative truths.In the same vein, Bromell makes several additional claims regarding the conceptual distinctiveness of Douglass’s view of power, dignity, rights, and citizenship. Douglass employed conceptions of each and other important ideas specific to his style, approach, and ends. As other black political thinkers did before him, he used these concepts to condemn slavery, racism, and the hypocrisy of American Republicanism and Christianity to assert the equal moral personhood and dignity of blacks and demand equal rights and citizenship. Bromell rightly emphasizes the role of “power,“ as an individual capability, in Douglass’s view of natural rights, moral dignity, and citizenship. It is an emphasis that is in keeping with both Douglass’s personal narrative and his national political projects. Douglass did not think that Americans—that Black Americans or abolitionists—should passively wait for deliverance from either God or national political leadership. Likewise, Bromell is correct to push back on reductions of Douglass’s views to Lockean, Rousseauian, or Kantian interpretations. Douglass is more than an incarnation of standard deontological, liberal, or civic republican philosophy. As a nineteenth-century black radical thinker, he stood in relation and contributed to those moral and political philosophical traditions. However, Bromell’s claim that Douglass’s conceptions of power, natural rights, and citizenship are conceptually distinct from the large host of major philosophical, theological, and political theoretical accounts that preceded him and influenced those ideas in his time is suggestive but not decisive.Like other writers and theorists before him, Bromell offers us another Douglass—as a black critical political theorist. This is a testament to the fecundity of Douglass’s black political-philosophical legacy. It is a legacy that leads to competing interpretations of him; all the same and for all their differences, his scorching prophetic vision of liberty, equality, citizenship, and progress unites them all. (shrink)

Spanning a critical period--from the turbulent era of the American and French Revolutions through to the calmer waters of the nineteenth centuries, this book will help all students of political ideas to gain a fuller appreciation of the great works which form the foundation of the subject. Seven classic texts have been chosen for analysis: Hamilton's The Federalist, Sieyes' What is the Third Estate?, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Hegel's The Philosophy of Right, de Tocqueville's (...) Democracy in America, Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, and Mill's On Liberty. Together they illustrate and express the main themes of the period. The most prominent of these is the growing distinction between the state and society and the problems that this brings in its train. Other themes embrace the interplay of revolution and reaction, the growth of representative government, and the challenge posed by democracy. The clear analysis and explanation contained in each essay will enable the reader to return to the original texts with a new understanding and insight. (shrink)

Recent controversy over whether the Vienna Circle can provide a model for today’s political turn in the philosophy of science indicates the need to clarify just what is meant by the term political philosophy of science. This paper finds fourteen different meanings of the term, including both descriptive and normative usages, having to do with the roles of political values in the sciences, the political consequences and significance of the sciences and scientific modes of thought, and (...) political processes within the sciences. These different senses are exemplified by the history of nineteenth century French philosophy of science, including Comte and Renouvier, as well as twentieth century logical positivists such as Neurath and more recent philosophers of science such as Kitcher and Longino. The paper also addresses the issue of how there could be a positivist political philosophy of science, given positivisms’ questioning of values, and considers Renouvier’s social contract approach to a political philosophy of science more promising than either Comte’s naturalism or the logical positivists’ non-cognitivism. (shrink)

Contemporary Russian philosophical traditions cannot be reduced to Marxist works and research in religious philosophy. Russian philosophers developed philosophy and methodology of social sciences and humanities as early as at the end of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, S.N. Bulgakov’s social philosophy of science is closely related to European thinkers’ works and ideas. Problems of social determinism in scientific cognition are among them. These problems are topical now (...) as seen in the well-known discussion about the nature and meaning of various forms of determinism in which different stands are taken by R. Thomas, E. Morin and I. Prigogine. A new level of research of social determinism is presented in Russia in the second-half of the twentieth century. The identification of determination with causality is overcome. Necessary and contingent, dynamic and statistical determination, self-determination, and so on, come under examination. In the 1970s mechanistic and objectivistic determination is overcome and human factors, such as the will and systems of values, are taken into account. S.L. Frank turns to the methodology of social sciences in 1922 and continues his studies in 1930 in Europe. Frank creates a holistic, fully secular doctrine of social philosophy, sociology, philosophy of law and history. The changing situation in Russia at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century allows us to re-evaluate ideas and works of Russian thinkers who studied mainly rationalist themes, including philosophy and methodology of science, its hermeneutic and semiotic aspects. Russian and European philosophies are used and essentially enriched. G.G. Shpet’s ideas are examined. Studying the sphere of language and meaning, recognizing the essential importance of hermeneutics for knowledge in the humanities, he brings forward a semiotic conception of ethnic psychology to precede, in particular, American anthropologist and ethnographer C. Geertz’s theory of culture. Russian philosophers are quite aware that any reconstruction of real cognition cannot limit itself to the transcendental epistemological agent or “consciousness in general”. It is necessary to change the level of abstraction of the subject matter of the non-classical—social, cultural and historical—epistemology to draw closer to the real manifestations of cognitive activity. (shrink)

The paper describes the historical and intellectual foundations on which the European political system was built after the Second World War; this system pursued the goal to prevent any war in Europe, but proved unable to prevent the russian-Ukrainian war. The paper shows that this system was built not only because of the trauma of the First and Second World Wars, but also in accord- ance with the liberal attitude to war, which M. Vatter called «war with (...) “war”»; at the same time, such a clear attitude does not refer to real wars, but to an imaginary «war of all against all». Based on the analysis of the principles and results of the research project “War and Society” under the direction of J. Baechler, the author outlines the principles of liberal Realpolitik as the implementation of the mentioned attitude in the realm of wars: it consists in their rationalization both at the level of goals and at the level of means of warfare; such a rationalization finally makes war irrational and unacceptable. From the point of view of such Realpolitik, war is only an extraordinary means of politics, and the russian-Ukrainian war is only an excess of violence, while in the opinion of the author, it is an inevitable consequence of the irrational and violent russian-Ukrainian extrapolitical conflict, whose stakes is the existence self of Ukraine. The author believes that one of the reasons for the inability of the European political system to prevent the russian-Ukrainian war is the belief that with the end of the Cold War, the “century of total war” in Europe also ended, and that the economic and cultural integration of post-communist countries into the European space makes such conflicts impossible. The author refers to the description of the own logic of wars of the 20th century, proposed in R. Aron’s book «The century of total war», and suggests considering the russian-Ukrainian war as a continuation of these wars. In the perspective pro- posed by R. Aron, the mentioned «century of total war» can be considered as a «long 20th century», which continues to this day. (shrink)

Crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, written before and during the Bolshevik Revolution by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest (...) in its visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism was developed by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov in the late nineteenth century; he believed that humans had an ethical obligation not only to care for the sick but to cure death using science and technology; outer space was the territory of both immortal life and infinite resources. After the revolution, a new generation pursued Fedorov's vision. Cosmist ideas inspired visual artists, poets, filmmakers, theater directors, novelists (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky read Fedorov's writings), architects, and composers, and influenced Soviet politics and technology. In the 1930s, Stalin quashed Cosmism, jailing or executing many members of the movement. Today, when the philosophical imagination has again become entangled with scientific and technological imagination, the works of the Russian Cosmists seem newly relevant. Contributors Alexander Bogdanov, Alexander Chizhevsky, Nikolai Fedorov, Boris Groys, Valerian Muravyev, Alexander Svyatogor, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood A copublication with e-flux, New York. (shrink)

The author of the article, based on a study of the writings of intellectuals from the Ukrainian diaspora in interwar Czechoslovakia, primarily professors at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (1921-1945), formulates some ideas and trends and defines the Prague period of Ukrainian political philosophy. This period is determined by the formation of a powerful centre of Ukrainian intellectual life in Prague, a kind of "Noah's Ark" of Ukrainian emigration. The Prague period of the (...) history of Ukrainian thought in exile is characterised by intellectual freedom of ideas and discussions, which is different from the situation in the postwar period. Among the main topics of discussion are the problems of philosophy of history and nation-building (national mentality, consciousness, national philosophy), problems of philosophy and theory of law, and discussions between modern ideologies. From the perspective of the history of ideas, the Prague period was a continuation of the history of Ukrainian centrism, the 19th-century Ukrainophile discourse that largely continued Drahomanov's ideas of "Hromadivstvo", combining classical liberal notions with an awareness of the importance of both Ukrainian national struggle and social emancipation. This calls into question the linear progressivist scheme of Ukrainian intellectual history, in which the period of "narodnytstvo/populism" is "dialectically sublated" by the modernist period, and "federalism" cedes ground to "independence" (according to I. Lysiak-Rudnytskyi), thus, the "Ukrainophile" stage of the development of the philosophy of the Ukrainian national idea has been fulfilled (in the terms of V. Horsky), and the Drahomanov's worldview had to logically surrender to the ideas of integral nationalism. The article challenges these evolutionist schemes and emphasises that the Prague period of Ukrainian intellectual history contains many useful ideas for the history of Ukrainian liberalism and centrism in general. (shrink)

The settler-colonial and republican principles of early U.S. politics tend to be studied as paradoxical ambitions of American nation-building. This article argues that early republican thought in the United States developed through what I call ‘ideological code-switching’, a vernacular practice that allowed popular actors to strategically vacillate between anti-colonial and neo-colonial discourses as complementary principles of revolutionary change. I illustrate these claims by tracing a genealogy of anti- and neo-colonial thought from the founding of the United States to its (...) transnational emergence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I demonstrate that ideological code-switching first appeared as a rhetorical strategy among the Federalist debates, where Publius argued for the feasibility of expansionist republics via a hemispheric account of American exceptionalism. These appeals to hemispheric unity remained salient into the nineteenth century among groups like the ‘Republicans of ‘Nacogdoches’, a militia comprised of Indigenous, Mestizo, and White actors that mobilized an attack on Spain and founded the Republic of Texas in April of 1813. Drawing on archival research, I turn to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as an example of the way marginalized groups instrumentalized links between anti- and neo-colonial politics to envision their position in the rapidly evolving landscapes of transnational revolution. (shrink)

The first book of a projected two-volume set which construes the diverse tendencies of contemporary political thought within the tradition of classical political philosophy. In two very closely argued sections, Brecht examines the degree to which modern logic and scientific method may be said to necessitate "scientific value relativism," and the actual rise of relativism among Europeans and Americans of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final section, "At the Borderline of Metaphysics,"- is an eloquent argument (...) designed to demonstrate the relevance of belief in God to the question of universal values. Brecht's challenging thesis is developed with unusual care and vast scholarship.--K. R. D. (shrink)

This publication aims to analyze the economic, social, and cultural phenomena that first appeared in the "era of revolutions" that occurred in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The modern European trend toward tolerance, which is the basis of current social and cultural changes, including in our country, has specific intellectual grounds. The subject of the study was the ideosphere of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including philosophical, economic, and psychological concepts that gave rise to modern trends (...) in these areas. The result of this study was the determination of the reasons that caused the change of the ideological paradigm in Europe. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, the intellectual foundations of the formation of tolerance as an actual socio-cultural phenomenon are analyzed. This article consistently proves that among the first such grounds, it is possible to determine the emergence of machine production and, as a result, the appearance of a mass person with a culture corresponding to them, performing a compensatory and entertaining function. The most important cultural foundation is mainly the intellectual "background" created by the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. The ideas of Anglo-American pragmatism played a significant role in forming a new morality, which included the denial of religion and its values, giving it a utilitarian character. During the subsequent historical period and at present, these views have become the basis for the creation of the so-called "individual faith," in which religion ceases to be the guide of human life but only serves the needs of the individual. The desacralization of religion leads to the study of different aspects of sexuality, which opens up the possibility for modern thinking about gender. The concept of "natural law" should also be attributed to the intellectual factors of the formation of modern European tolerance. (shrink)

This is a greatly expanded version of my article "Anarchism and the Beats," which was published in the book, The Philosophy of the Beats, by the University Press of Kentucky in 2012. It is both an historical and a philosophical analysis of the postwar American counterculture. It charts the historical origins of the postwar American counterculture from the anarchists and romantic poets of the early nineteenth century to a complex network of beat poets and pacifist anarchists (...) in the early decades after World War II. The beat poets understood themselves to be religious prophets of a new form of liberated consciousness. Poetry was both a means to achieve this new form of consciousness and a means to express that consciousness once it was achieved by other means including travel, psychedelic drugs, sex or meditation. The transformation of consciousness sought by the beats was therefore primarily religious in nature, not political or ideological. However, that does not mean that the beats believed that the transformation of consciousness they sought had no political or social implications. On the contrary, the beats were almost all anarchists. It merely means that, for them, political ideology follows consciousness, not the reverse. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The article is dedicated to the research of Lesia Ukrainka’s correspondence, journalistic and literary-critical articles concerning the problem of national identity as a factor in overcoming the "Russian Ukrainians" dichotomy. Achieving this purpose involves solving the following tasks: 1) to reveal the poetess’s views on the essence and social manifestations of worldview fluctuations in the life activities of the Ukrainian elite at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries; 2) outline her strategy for overcoming cultural "inter-words" (...) in the individual and society. _Theoretical basis._ The author applies the existential discourse of Foreignness by G. Marcel, criticism of Christianity by F. Nietzche, the theory of the nation by F. Meineke, typology of patriotism by A. Valitsky, the phenomenology of the relationship between the Self and the Other by J. Kristeva, the typology of the Stranger by B. Waldenfels, the ideas of D. Dontsov, O. Zabuzhko, S. Varetska, S. Matsenka, D. Melnyk, Y. Tarasiuk. _Originality._ The author proves that Lesia Ukrainka is one of the first among Ukrainian thinkers who critically considers the issue of dichotomy in the worldview and life world of "Russian Ukrainians" of the early twentieth century – One’s own and Others’, stopping in the uncertainty of one’s belonging to Russian or Ukrainian culture, rejection of national self-identification. _Conclusions._ The ways to overcome this dichotomy, alienation from the values of Ukrainian culture, betrayal, and collaborationism, Lesia Ukrainka sees, firstly, awareness of the cultural difference of Ukrainians, that is, the spiritual and psychological incompatibility of the Ukrainian national identity with the Russian one. Secondly, the need for an effective volitional separation from others and the political struggle for unification into the Ukrainian nation as a social and culturally self-sufficient collective self, worthy of a free dignified existence and recognition by other nations of the world. (shrink)

Here at last is an American counterpart to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The eminent historian Bruce Kuklick tells the fascinating story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the USA, in the context of the intellectual and social changes of the times. Kuklick sketches the genesis of these intellectual practices in New England Calvinism and the writing of Jonathan Edwards. He discusses theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the origins of collegiate philosophy in the (...) early part of the nineteenth century. We see the development of secular preconceptions and the emergence, after Darwin's writings of the mid-late nineteenth century, of forms of thought hostile to religion. Philosophy is situated in a variety of cultural contexts - the ministry, the growing system of higher learning, the conflict between philosophers and theologians and between amateur and professional thinkers, the suspicion of European ideas, and worries about the relevance of philosophy to public and political life. Kuklick's narrative portrays such great thinkers as Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, W. V. Quine, and Richard Rorty, and assesses their contributions to philosophy. He brings us right up to date with the first historical treatment of the period after pragmatism, and the fragmentation of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Kuklick steers a controversial course between the divergent views that historians and philosophers take of the significance of philosophy in recent years. Anyone interested in American intellectual history, or in how philosophy got where it is today, will enjoy this book. (shrink)

The revival of Anglo-American political philosophy began in the 1970s with the publication of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Wittgenstein and Justice by Hanna Pitkin. This revival was facilitated by the turbulent political processes occurring after the Second World War that required philosophical understanding, but the long-dominant utilitarian approach could not fully meet this task. Traditionally, the main issue in political philosophy has been the question of power, spe- cifically its political organization (...) and legitimacy. Rawls demonstrated that the political organiza- tion of power is derived from how we understand ethical norms and what norms (rules) we follow in social interaction. Thus, the main question of political philosophy is not power but justice. He also demonstrated that political freedom is closely linked to equality. Rawls’s theory had a deci- sive influence on the political philosophy of the twentieth century, the development of which was largely based on criticism or reception of his ideas. Today, we are witnessing the beginning of a break with tradition, which was expressed by Rawls and suggested that the political is based on the possibility of consensus and ethical agree- ment. The current developments in political philosophy are closely connected with the rethink- ing of Rawls’s legacy, and we see this in the development of non-ideal political theories. (shrink)

This is a review of an interdisciplinary work of intellectual history on the Moscow philosophical-mathematical school. The author, Ilona Svetlikova, is primarily interested in the thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century mathematician and philosopher Nikolai Bugaev, of his son Boris Bugaev — better known under his nom de plume Andrei Belyi —, of Nikolai Bugaev’s student Pavel Nekrasov, and of other disciples of Bugaev, especially Vissarion Alekseev, the Baron Mikhail Taube, and Pavel Florensky. The book explores (...) the views of these thinkers, all of whom were more or less closely associated with the Moscow Mathematical Society, on issues at the crossroads of mathematics, philosophy, literature, religion, and political ideology. Since he was the originator and pillar of the Moscow philosophico-mathematical circle, my critical comments focus on Nikolai Bugaev. (shrink)

The nineteenth century was one of the most remarkable periods in the history of philosophy and a period of great intellectual, social and scientific change. Challenging philosophical thought of earlier centuries, it caused shock waves that lasted well into the twentieth century. The Nineteenth Century Philosophy Reader is an outstanding anthology of the great philosophical texts of the period and the first of its kind for many years. In presenting many of the major ideas expounded (...) by philosophers of the nineteenth century themselves, it provides the reader with a comprehensive account of this extremely important and fertile period. Carefully selected extracts from the following philosophers are included, providing a solid introduction to the most fundamental arguments and insights of each thinker: Kant Fichte Schelling Hegel British Idealism Schopenhauer Marx and Engels Kierkegaard Nietzsche William James. In addition to an introduction by the editor, a key feature of the reader is a specially commissioned introduction to each part by leading scholars in the field, placing the extracts in philosophical and historical context. The Nineteenth Century Philosophy Reader is an ideal anthology for anyone seeking to engage with and learn about this important period. As well as students of nineteenth-century philosophy it will also be of interest to those in related fields such as literature, religion and social and political theory. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Edward Wilmot Blyden and Alexander Crummell James Africanus Beale Horton John Mensah Sarbah and Joseph Casely Hayford.

The emergence of independent Chile in the early nineteenth century fostered debate over the appropriate model and function for historical study within the new nation. One school of thought, represented by Andres Bello, shunned all foreign historiographical models as inapplicable, and held that since Chilean historical knowledge was incomplete, priority ought to be given to close study of the facts. José Lastarria argued that the historian must be a philosopher of history, searching out the meaning of historical facts (...) in order to draw lessons for the present. In contrast to Bello, Lastarria believed the historical work should serve an active political function and offer judgments on both past and present. (shrink)

_Explores the relationship between philosophy and politics in the work of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx._.

SummaryBoth Iberian and Spanish American liberals in the early decades of the nineteenth century based their political stances upon a particular vision of Spanish history. This vision, nourished by the stereotypes of the so-called ‘black legend’, correspond to an extremely gloomy picture of the main events and processes that had been taking place in the Hispanic monarchy since the late fifteenth century, such as the discovery and conquest of America and the outcome of the Comunidades (...) of Castile war. This essay shows how those first Hispanic liberals, many of whom spent several years in exile, hoping to make sense of that period of uncertainty and revolutionary crisis, sought inspiration in the philosophies of history which were beginning to spread from Northern Europe regarding the decisive role of Protestantism in the origins of modernity. In endorsing such a derogatory vision of the history of their own countries, which included an evaluation of Catholicism as a retrograde factor, those liberal writers and politicians bequeathed to their descendants an interpretative framework that would prove to be very long lasting. In fact, much of the political and intellectual historiography on the Iberian world would be conditioned for a long time by a paradigm which described its past as an anomaly in the Euroamerican context, and assumed the subordinate and peripheral position of the region, portrayed as a kind of ‘interior Orient’—that is, as an aberration of Western civilisation. (shrink)

Prompted by recent recognitions of the omnipresence of horizontal gene transfer among microbial species and the associated emphasis on exchange, rather than isolation, as the driving force of evolution, this essay will reflect on hybridization as one of the central concerns of nineteenth-century biology. I will argue that an emphasis on horizontal exchange was already endorsed by ‘biology’ when it came into being around 1800 and was brought to full fruition with the emergence of genetics in 1900. The (...) true revolution in nineteenth-century life sciences, I maintain, consisted in a fundamental shift in ontology, which eroded the boundaries between individual and species, and allowed biologists to move up and down the scale of organic complexity. Life became a property extending both ‘downwards’, to the parts that organisms were composed of, as well as ‘upwards’, to the collective entities constituted by the relations of exchange and interaction that organisms engage in to reproduce. This mode of thinking was crystallized by Gregor Mendel and consolidated in the late nineteenth-century conjunction of biochemistry, microbiology and breeding in agro-industrial settings. This conjunction and its implications are especially exemplified by Wilhelm Johannsen’s and Martinus Beijerinck’s work on pure lines and cultures. An understanding of the subsequent constraints imposed by the evolutionary synthesis of the twentieth century on models of genetic systems may require us to rethink the history of biology and displace Darwin’s theory of natural selection from that history’s centre. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third RenaissanceFilipp SapienzaAlthough Mikhail Bakhtin figures centrally in multiculturalism, community, pedagogy, and rhetoric (Bruffee 1986; Welch 1993; Zebroski 1994; Zappen, Gurak, and Doheney-Farina 1997; Mutnick 1996; Halasek 2001, 182; see also Bialostosky 1986) many of his major ideas remain enigmatic and controversial. The elusive aspects of Bakhtin's theories exist in part because rhetoricians know little about Bakhtin's (...) own rhetorical culture. Theorists recognize this problem and call for a reworking of Bakhtin more on his own terms. This call has been made to resolve concerns about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric. Since Bakhtin disliked rhetoric, any use of Bakhtin in rhetorical theory is largely a hybrid synthesis of his distinct ideas on poetics, prose, satire, the epic, the novel, and so forth. John Murphy proposes a reconception of Bakhtin closely built around his ambivalence and guided by the question, "what do we [rhetoricians] mean by the concept of a rhetorical tradition?" (2001, 259). The suggestion encourages rhetoricians to take Bakhtin more on his own terms than has been done in the past. Unfortunately, as the word "we" indicates, Murphy reworks Bakhtin primarily in terms of Western ideas about rhetoric. Slavists and "Bakhtinologists" in Russia argue that when talking about Bakhtin, "we" has often meant Western, obscuring the Russian cultural roots of his theories (Kozhinov 1993; Miller and Platter 1993, 118). The privileging of Western perspectives has also been criticized by scholars of other discourse cultures. Discussing American Indian rhetoric, Malea Powell argues that "we" means a Rhetorical Tradition that begins "with the Greeks, goes Roman, briefly sojourns in Italy, then shows up in England and Scotland, hops the ocean to America and settles in" (2002, 397). Differences in interpreting Bakhtin also proceed from translation difficulties between Russian and English. The Russian reader views Bakhtin in more essentialist ways as opposed to the "post-modern give-and-take" theorist of many Western [End Page 123] interpretations (Emerson 1990, 113). Read in the Russian language and from that cultural context, Bakhtin's vocabulary contains "conspicuous" elements of Orthodox Christianity and Slavic nationalist ideas (Kozhinov 1993; Mihailovic 1997) that reveal a Russian theological subtext to his ideas about community and dialogue.In this essay, I provide a reading of Bakhtin against the background of his own rhetorical culture. More specifically, I offer an analysis of an intertextual dialogue about language and community between Bakhtin and the symbolist writer Vyacheslav Ivanov. Scholars identify Ivanov as a poet, philosopher, and teacher who profoundly impacted Bakhtin (Mal'chukova 1992, 55). The Russian symbolists upheld strong nationalist ideals and a linguistic theory rooted in metaphysics (Mirsky 1972, 188). Many Slavists and Russian readers of Bakhtin suspect that Ivanov strongly influenced Bakhtin's rhetoric even though, for reasons unknown but that are suspected to be political, Bakhtin understates his debt to him (Ivanov 2001, 3). Bakhtin was not unlike his contemporaries in sharing an interest and vocabulary that addressed the major threads of symbolism. Read side by side with Ivanov's essays in Russian, Bakhtin's rhetoric displays a mixture of the European, Slavic, and Christian ideals that were in parlance among many Russian theorists in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin and Ivanov give us a glimpse of this rhetorical culture. More specifically, they help us to better understand our appropriations of Bakhtin based on an elucidation of the meaning of specific terms as they existed among Bakhtin's contemporaries.The method that I use requires translation of specific Russian passages into English. Terms and phrases are interpreted against the usage background of others in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin's Slavic-theological connections become evident through the elucidation of these intertextual references. Through this method, a common and accepted practice in Slavic literary studies, the use of key words and phrases are traced in and among texts to identify a discourse among authors and explicate its meaning.1 As Steven Mailloux points out, a "rhetorical hermeneutics" focuses on "the historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth" that give meaning to rhetoric (1988, 15-16). The approach is necessary due to the unique political and artistic circumstances during the early... (shrink)

If there is an age in which philosophy seemed to experience a demise it is the nineteenth century, and yet this was not due to a lack of philosophy nor to the fact that there prevailed an attitude of estrangement from philosophy. Rather, what appeared to be a de-emphasis was merely a replacement of writings by "philosophers" with those by the natural scientist and the humanist. Tatarkiewicz divides his period into three phases distinguishing the era with their peculiar (...) disciplines: 1830-60 marked by positivism, empiricism, naturalism, and dialectical materialism; 1860-80 in which the minimalistic philosophy of positivism reached full bloom; 1880-1900 dominated by minimalism, positivism, scientism and in addition the appearance of opposing doctrines. Although such familiar names as Comte, Mill, Marx, Engels, Spencer, Brentano and Nietzsche find their way into Tatarkiewicz’ book, of greater significance is the manifold of less familiar figures who play a determining role in this period of philosophy. Yet it is not the author’s intent to expound individual doctrines in reference to anything but philosophical currents of the day. Tatarkiewicz focuses on times not men. A very good summary is presented at the end of the book mapping out the social, economic, political, geographic, and religious climate prevalent in the nineteenth century, thus concluding a helpful survey of a period that has been somewhat neglected in the history of philosophy.—K.R.M. (shrink)

Drawing on recent publications on studies in historiography of philosophy in French-, English-, and German-speaking philosophy, the author clarifies the subject matter and tasks of studies in historiography of philosophy as a historico-philosophical approach, in particular, counting among such subjects the images of philosophy's past constructed by histories of philosophy, as well as the historiographical attitudes of historians of philosophy and the contexts and factors that determine these historiographical attitudes. The article analyses the conceptions and implementations of three projects of (...) studies in historiography of philosophy that have taken place in Ukraine in recent decades: the project of “History of Historico-philosophical Science”, led by Yu. Kushakov in the 1980s and 2000s and dedicated to the study of historico-philosophical conceptions of German and Russian philosophers of the 19th and early 20th; S. Rudenko's study of post-Soviet methodological approaches to the history of Ukrainian philosophy (2012); and the Ukrainian part of the bilateral project “Philosophy in the system of national culture: comparative analysis of historico-philosophical studies in Belarus and Ukraine” (2011-2012), led by V. Yevarousky and S. Yosypenko. Based on the results of the latter project and on his more recent research, the author outlines the socio-political, general philosophical and institutional context in which the historiography of Ukrainian philosophy was formed and functioned during the 20th century; analyses the images of the history of Ukrainian philosophy created by D. Tschižewskij and V. Horskyi, which embody two extreme points in the development of the historiography of Ukrainian philosophy in the 20th century; and points out the changes in the general philosophical and institutional context of historico-philosophical research in independent Ukraine and the consequences of these changes for the further development of the historiography of Ukrainian philosophy. (shrink)

The literature on race/racism and modern Euro-American philosophy obscures a category of continental African thinkers who not only embraced modernity and its core tenets but used them as the metric for judging their societies and self-making. Their embrace of modernity led them to share certain assumptions about their societies’ past like those that ground the racism of modern Euro-American philosophy. The literature has not attended to their ideas. The obscuring arises from racializing the discourse of philosophy and race/racism (...) within a black-white/white-nonwhite schema. We, instead, historicize the discourse and show how, in embracing modernity, Africans managed, simultaneously, to repudiate modern philosophy’s racism. African thinkers never saw modernity as white or quintessentially European: it is the latest iteration of the human march to a better life for the species; they historicized it. The paper concludes with an exegesis of one such thinker from nineteenth century West Africa, James Africanus Beale Horton. (shrink)

The past which the present acknowledges tends to be deceptively simple. Attention is most frequently paid to those of its aspects which appear to have anticipated the present, or to those which contrast with what the present takes to be most uniquely its own. Consequently, the past in which the present takes an interest tends to change, and it is unlikely that successive generations will assign equal significance to precisely the same aspects of what occurred in the past. This need (...) not lead to distorted views of those particular features on which attention is focused, but it can lead to a neglect of whatever aspects of the past are not of pressing present concern. Consequently, the context in which any generation views the past may easily become too narrow, and a sense of the past’s complexity will be lost. For reasons that I have elsewhere suggested, this situation is more likely to obtain in the field of cultural history than in studies of political and institutional change. When previous views as to what is most important in literature, or in philosophy, or in the arts undergo change, the whole history of these forms of endeavor will reflect that change. In what follows, I wish to call attention to some of the ways in which our own philosophic preconceptions have led to a neglect of important facets of nineteenth-century thought. (shrink)

The article deals with the peculiarities of the formation of the concept of freedom of human in the philosophy of history of Russian thinker at the beginning of the nineteenth century P. Chaadayev. Formation of spirituality and general worldview-philosophical principles in Russian philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century had their own peculiarities and differences from Western philosophy. Rationalism and individualism, as specific characteristics of Western philosophy did not satisfy the representatives of philosophical (...) thought in Russia.The dominant principles in philosophical culture are community, catholicity, versatility, reflecting the distinctive character of socio-political development. Representatives of Russian philosophy assumed that the next stage in the historical development of mankind should not be social separation, but reunification in a qualitatively new social unity. P. Chaadaev was the first in early nineteenth century, who conducted a complex philosophical analysis of the specifics of worldview and historical development of the people, forming the general foundations of the philosophy of history. Problems of historical development, morality, and religion determine the cognitive process and the synthetic interdependence of freedom of the will man’s will and necessity. Freedom of will is determined by cognitive abilities and spiritual and practical activities that bring it closer to «higher law», the syncretism of God’s wisdom. (shrink)