Tom Rockmore

This is not an ordinary study of Hegel’s thought; it is rather an unusual effort to apply that thought to contemporary issues, in particular to that complex problem known as liberation theology. Lakeland’s approach can be loosely characterized as both right wing Hegelian, in that stress is placed on Christian elements, and as progressive Catholic as concerns the interest in liberation theology. The thesis he advances is that Hegel’s political theology is appropriate to illuminate the connection between the Christian expectation of salvation and the struggle for political liberation, two topics which are linked through the Christian concept of incarnation. Lakeland suggests that this concept is central to Hegel’s Religionsphilosophie; and he further suggests that the concept of incarnation provides the satisfactory basis for a theological view which is both a Christian anthropology and a political theology.

This is a paper about Hegelian constructivism in relation to theory of knowledge. Constructivism, which is known at least since Greek antiquity, is understood in different ways. In philosophy, epistemological constructivism is often rejected, and only occasionally studied. Kantian constructivism is examined from time to time under the heading of the Copernican revolution. Hegelian constructivism, which is best understood as a reaction to and revision of Kantian epistemology, seems never to have been discussed in detail. This paper will sketch the outlines of Hegelian constructivism in relation to the critical philosophy. Hegelian constructivism amounts to an intrinsically historical view of epistemology as a trial and error process situated in the social context. Knowledge emerges from a trial and error process in which we construct a cognitive framework to grasp objects constructed in and through this process. I suggest that the considerable interest of a historical, constructivist, phenomenological approach to knowledge, such as Hegel’s, lies in its largely unexplored possibilities for advancing the epistemological debate.

Gerald Bruns has written a fine study of the relation of language and poetry in the later Heidegger, whose final phase lies beyond the reach of philosophical comprehension, according to Bruns. Bruns offers a clear, comprehensive, sensitive account of a number of main themes in Heidegger's final view in a discussion patient to a fault and always attentive to the nuances of expression, an application if one will of Heidegger's idea of Gelassenheit to Heidegger's own texts. As Bruns sees it, it is folly even to try to follow this stage of Heidegger's thinking, although it must be said that he himself does an outstanding job of doing just what he says it would be foolish even to attempt. According to Bruns, Heidegger is finally a comic thinker, an outsider who supposedly resists integration on behalf of scandal and freedom, even in Bruns's view a philosopher of freedom. In short, Heidegger was someone who strove for authentic thought and stubbornly followed the argument wherever it might lead.

There is an obvious distinction between the philosophical meditation on politics and relevance to politics, on the one hand, and the political engagement of philosophers and even philosophy, on the other. At this late date, there can be few people interested in philosophy, and even many uninterested in this ancient discipline, unaware that Martin Heidegger turned to Nazism in the 1930s. Heidegger, who all his life subscribed to the Platonic view of the priority of philosophy over politics, later described his own political turning as “die grösste Dummheit,” in short as an error. This paper will consider recent discussion of this instance of “stupidity,” with special attention to three books: Julian Young, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism; Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias; and Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Fichte, qui s’est lui-même présenté comme kantien orthodoxe, et a même prétendu être le seul qui ait compris correctement la philosophie critique, nous a entraînés en fait dans une interprétation qui pourrait être fourvoyante. Bien qu’évidemment clairement inspiré par Kant, bien qu’il parvienne à la vie philosophique dans un climat entièrement dominé par le débat autour du criticisme, ses solutions sont entièrement différentes de celles de Kant. L’Auteur s’attache à montrer ces différences et à explorer les voies que Fichte développe contre Kant, voies qui demeurent encore actuelles et font l’objet de débats contemporains.