Vanderbilt University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1973
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
  •  14
    Enlightenment and Reason
    Journal of Philosophy 84 (11): 699-701. 1987.
  •  9
    Remarks on Fichte and Realism
    Fichte-Studien 36 21-32. 2012.
  •  16
    La Métaphysique à la limite (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1): 98-99. 1984.
  •  115
    Marxianpraxis
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 5 (1): 2-15. 1978.
  •  19
    Hegel and Epistemological Constructivism
    Idealistic Studies 36 (3): 183-190. 2006.
    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 …Read more
  •  8
    The Philosophy of Interpretation (edited book)
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2000.
    This is a lively, freshly invited collection of papers by a number of well-known philosophers and other specialists who have focused very pointedly on certain central conceptual puzzles posed by the general practice of interpretation in the arts, literature, history, and the natural and human sciences. The collection gives very nearly the impression of a sustained debate.
  •  28
    On Foundationalism: A Strategy for Metaphysical Realism
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.
    In ancient times, the main approaches to metaphysical realism were intuitive. In modern times, foundationalism has replaced intuition as the main strategy to make out metaphysical realist claims to know. In On Foundationalism, Rockmore argues that foundationalism fails in all its known variants
  •  31
    Heidegger's Language, Truth and Poetry. Estrangements in the Later Writings (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 44 (1): 132-134. 1990.
    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 …Read more
  •  9
    Dilthey and historical reason
    Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 477-494. 2003.
  •  23
    Recent Discussion of Heidegger and Politics
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 21 (2): 47-67. 1999.
    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…Read more
  •  37
    Knowledge, hermeneutics, and history
    Man and World 25 (1): 79-101. 1992.
  •  16
    Fichte, éthique et philosophie transcendantale
    Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 71 (3): 343-353. 2011.
    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 …Read more
  • The God Within (review)
    Dialogue 38 (1): 182-183. 1999.
  •  9
    Book review (review)
    Man and World 13 (2): 251-260. 1980.
  •  2
    Reviews (review)
    with John D. Windhausen, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Irving H. Anellis, and Heinrich Bortis
    Studies in Soviet Thought 33 (4): 363-383. 1987.
  •  14
    Is Marx a Pragmatist?
    Pragmatism Today 7 (2): 24-32. 2016.
  •  25
  •  120
    Theory and practice again: Habermas on historical materialism
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 13 (3): 211-225. 1987.
  •  31
  •  13
    Without Guilt and Justice (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 15 (2): 238-241. 1975.
  • My topic concerns the interrelation between religion, politics and ethics in a time of terror, or at least a historical moment when the general problem of terrorism has come to occupy center stage. The frequent view that 9/11 represents a wholly new situation, a break with the past makes it difficult, perhaps impossible to understand it. I believe that it is because 9/11 does not break with but continues tendencies already underway that it occurred and we can understand it. My paper, which insis…Read more
  •  25
    Interpretation as Historical, Constructivism, and History
    Metaphilosophy 31 (1-2): 184-199. 2000.
    Interpretation is construed, here, as synonymous with hermeneutics: understood as a source of knowledge – perhaps, after the apparently irremediable decline of epistemological foundationalism, the main modern epistemological strategy. In this sense, there is no difference in principle between epistemology and interpretation; the first is a form of the second.
  •  60
    Subjectivity and the Ontology of History
    The Monist 74 (2): 187-205. 1991.
    Since history concerns change over time, an ontology of history requires a notion of subjectivity. In the modern tradition, beginning with Kant, ontology has come to be understood as epistemology. But as a result of the failure of foundationalism and the turn to a relativistic theory of knowledge, it is necessary to rethink the idea of history in terms of a conception of the historical subject.