Tom Rockmore

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.

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW CENTURY provides a good time to reflect on the most influential philosophers of this period, or those most likely to survive, or again whom we should be reading in a hundred years. The answer one gives to this type of question obviously depends on what one thinks philosophy is about. I would like to suggest that at the beginning of the new century, at the start of the new millennium, the philosopher we will and should still be reading at the end of the new century is not one of the obvious candidates, like Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Heidegger, Peirce, or Dewey, Rorty’s favorite, but the nineteenth century German thinker, G. W. F. Hegel.

For some time now I have been arguing that Fichte's theory can be read as circular, antifoundationalist, and systematic, and further arguing that it is the source of an epistemological revolution in philosophy. Fichte and most of his interpreters mainly see him as carrying forward the critical philosophy. But I see him as breaking with it in crucial ways in a profoundly innovative theory. The aim of this paper is to pull together aspects of this argument in a single place in order to describe Fichte's theory as I see it, using a wider range of texts than I have so far employed, drawing consequences that follow from my interpretation and responding to recent criticism of it. In so doing, I intend to reaffirm my conviction that the interest of Fichte's theory is not merely archival, something historians of philosophy are interested in because they cannot do philosophy, or something that philosophers might concern themselves with when they are not concerned with philosophy, but directly relevant to the contemporary discussion. But as I see it, the contemporary relevance of the Fichtean view largely depends on an unorthodox, anti-foundationalist reading of it. For if it is read in an orthodox, Cartesian, foundationalist manner, favored by most writers on Fichte, it has nothing or almost nothing to contribute to our increasingly anti-foundationalist debate on knowledge.

This volume is a collection of previously unpublished papers dealing with the neglected "phenomenological" dimension of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which it compares and contrasts to the phenomenology of his contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and to that of Edmund Husserl and his 20th century followers. Issues discussed include: phenomenological method, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, temporality, intentionality, mind and body, and the drives. In addition to Fichte, authors discussed include: Hegel, Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Ricur.

In this paper, the author reviews recent developments in twentieth century philosophy. Three important movements emerged independently, movements which for different reasons rapidly came to dominate the debate: American pragmatism, so-called continental philosophy, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Each of these tendencies has its own undeniable charms. It would be mistaken to think that one has a decisive advantage over its philosophical competition. The author argues that these three movements of the past century need to be understood against the prior historical background, above all as reactions to Kant.

The importance of Lukács’ interpretation of classical German philosophy and Marx is almost self-evident. Although Marxists are frequently content to dismiss with contempt a philosophical tradition with which they display scant acquaintance, Lukács’ knowledge of philosophy is obviously extensive. His writings contain what is perhaps the most detailed discussion of the history of philosophy from a Marxist perspective. Further, his influence on the interpretation of Marx has been unequaled over the course of more than fifty years, ever since the appearance of his epoch-making book, History and Class Consciousness. A case in point is provided by Sartre’s and Habermas’ respective attempts to reconstruct Marx’s position. Although the proposed reconstructions are vastly different, they are alike in their dependence on Lukács’ interpretation of Marx.

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.