Tom Rockmore

Martin Heidegger's impact on contemporary thought is important and controversial. However in France, the influence of this German philosopher is such that contemporary French thought cannot be properly understood without reference to Heidegger and his extraordinary influence. Tom Rockmore examines the reception of Heidegger's thought in France. He argues that in the period after the Second World War, due to the peculiar nature of the humanist French Philosophical tradition, Heidegger became the master thinker of French philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, he contends that this reception - first as philosophical anthropology and later as postmetaphysical humanism - is systematically mistaken

The aim of this informal paper is to direct (or redirect) attention to the importance of Croce’s historicism. Though he is sometimes described as the best known Italian intellectual since Galileo, and though his influence remains strong in Italy, his impact outside Italy is not as important as it should be. Other than through Collingwood, his only well known English-language disciple, Croce has had very little influence on those writing in English. His theories, including his historicism, on which I will be focusing here, are only infrequently discussed in English, especially by philosophers.Historicism is a doctrine which receives almost no attention in English-speaking lands but looms very large in Italian thought.For purposes of this paper, I will treat Croce’s historicism as arising out of his readings of three very different thinkers, different from himself and from each other, who are committed to varying forms of epistemological historicism, and who are important for the development of his own position, Vico, Hegel and Marx. Croce studies these thinkers early in his very long career in inverse chronological order, beginning with Marx (1900), turning next to Hegel (1907), and then concerning himself later with Vico (1911). In considering Croce’s interpretation of three other historicists, it will be useful to keep in mind that, as an original thinker, he is never only an interpreter of other theories, always in the process of thinking for himself with and against whatever ideas he is interpreting. In each case, he made important contributions to our understanding of these thinkers while continuing to work out his own view.

It has sometimes erroneously been thought that theory of knowledge worthy of the name, or even epistemology as such comes to an end with Kant. This view is an error, since there are profound views of knowledge in the post-Kantian philosophical tradition, including that in Hegel’s thought. Now epistemology is a wide topic that includes a variety of themes. One of the main themes in the theory of knowledge in modern philosophy, especially in recent years, has been the issue of foundationalism. The idea of foundationalism has been understood in different ways. But for purposes of this discussion, I will understand “foundationalism” to mean “some form of the Cartesian approach to philosophy through a self-justifying first principle.” In this paper, I will provide a brief, critical study of the theme of foundationalism in the Science of Logic. The aim of my discussion is to point to an unresolved tension between Hegel’s general commitment to epistemological circularity as the appropriate strategy for knowledge and the linear form of argument in this book.

These original essays, never published before, suggest the breadth and richness of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's philosophy and are signs of the contemporary effort to explore the relationship between his system of thought and current philosophical debates. Some of the issues discussed included the relationship between "theoretical" and "practical" reason; the philosophy of language; antifoundationalism; the juridical status of women; duties toward natural beings; and the political implications of the Wissenschaftslehre. In addition, the volume includes an introduciton that surveys the history of Fichte interpretation in the English-speaking world and assesses the current state of Fichte studies.

A great deal of attention has been devoted to Marxian man in recent years as a result of the increased interest in the early Marx. A complete list of all those who have considered this problem cannot be given here, but Lukács, Fromm, Popitz, Petrovic, and Schaff, and among more recent contributors Avineri, Mészáros, Sève and Hartmann should be mentioned. The result of all this attention has been, as could be expected, somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, progress has been made in several areas. For one thing, it has become increasingly apparent that there are at least strong indications of a view of the human individual in Marx’s thought, especially in the early writings, although the intrinsic significance of that view, for Marx’s position and in general, is a matter of debate. On the other hand, a controversy has arisen in the literature. This controversy is basically three-cornered. It roughly divides those who consider Marx’s early so-called humanism as a phase that was definitely superseded in his mature work. The principal representatives of this view are Althusser and his school. Against this, Sartre has argued that Marx in fact has no theory of the individual and his position is hence in danger of collapse because of this lack. Schaff has countered that there is a view of man implicit in Marx’s position, a view which needs to be reconstructed and further developed.