Tom Rockmore

Given the significant attachment of the philosopher to the climate and intellectual mood of National Socialism, it would be inappropriate to criticize or exonerate his political decision in isolation from the very principles of Heideggerian philosophy itself. It is not Heidegger, who, in opting for Hitler, "misunderstood himself"; instead, those who cannot understand why he acted this way have failed to understand him. A Swiss professor regretted that Heidegger consented to compromise himself with the "everyday," as if a philosophy that explains Being from the standpoint of time and the everyday would not stand in relation to the daily historical realities that govern its origins and effects. The possibility of a Heideggerian political philosophy was not born as a result of a regrettable "miscue," but from the very conception of existence that simultaneously combats and absords the Zeitgeist.

The debate over foundationalism, the viewpoint that there exists some secure foundation upon which to build a system of knowledge, appears to have been resolved and the antifoundationalists have at least temporarily prevailed. From a firmly historical approach, the book traces the foundationalism/antifoundationalism controversy in the work of many important figures Animaxander, Aristotle and Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Hegel and Nietzsche, Habermas and Chisholm, and others throughout the history of philosophy. The contributors, Joseph Margolis, Ronald Polansky, Gary Calore, Fred and Emily Michael, William Wurzer, Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Sandra B. Rosenthal, Kathleen Wallace, and the editors present well the diversity, interest, and roots of antifoundationalism. Tom Rockmore is Professor and Chairman in the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University. Beth J. Singer is Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Plato both created the Western aesthetic tradition and rejected the artistic claim to truth. I suggest that Plato’s rejection of the view that non-philosophical art is true gave rise to a debate later traversing the entire Western aesthetic tradition. I further suggest that the post-Platonic Western aesthetic tradition can be reconstructed as an effort by many hands to come to grips with and if possible overturn the Platonic judgment. I finally suggest that Hegel, in disagreeing with both Kant and Plato, presents an interesting anti-Platonic argument for “reforging” as it were the ancient link between art and truth. For in the final analysis, art, or at least some kinds of art, is not only beautiful but also in a deep sense true.

Heidegger’s Being and Time has been accused of espousing empty decisionism and relativism. I argue, first, that in fact Being and Time’s stress on the situated character of human judgment is supplemented by a very Kantian account of being human that defi nes appropriate behavior towards all entities possessing a certain character. Its analysis of conscience and guilt attempts to uncover the existential basis for the distinction Kant draws between the phenomenal and the noumenal aspects of the self. Building on this analysis, I claim, Being and Time reaffirms the second version of Kant’s categorical imperative, which states that humanity should never be treated merely as a means, but always also as an end in itself. In the second part of the paper, however, I argue that this proximity to Kant is part of the problem with Being and Time, that some of this work’s shortcomings and dangers in relation to ethics rest precisely in its very Kantian view of what makes an entity worthy of moral concern, and what is owed to others in virtue of their being such worthy entities. As a consequence of this view, not only are all nonhuman animals excluded from moral concern, but, strangely, the intrinsic value of human well-being is itself threatened.

The purpose of this paper is to study bertram wolfe's views of marx and marxism, and in particular to call attention to his insistence on the basic ambiguity of the classical doctrines and the exploitation of that ambiguity within differing concepts of marxist orthodoxy. i suggest that the importance of wolfe's views of marx and marxism lies less in the specific theses he advances or in the details of his discussion. in opposition to the more usual approach to marxism as a unified phenomenon, wolfe stands nearly alone in the analytical form of his historical approach, in which emphasis lies less in the depiction of a synthetic vision than in the patient, historical analysis of the chronological evolution of marx's position, classical marxism, and the wider marxist tradition

At the present time, Europe, particularly eastern Europe, is still immersed in a major political transformation, the most significant such change since the Second World War, arising out of the rejection of official Marxism. This unforeseen rejection requires meditation by all those concerned with the relation of philosophy to the historical context. Marxism, that follows Marx’s insistence on the link between a theory and the context in which it arises, cannot be indifferent to the rejection of Marxist theory in practice. In respect to the usual tendency to pass rapidly over practice for a theoretical analysis of social theory, Merleau-Ponty stands out for his concern to evaluate the theoretical claims of Marx and Marxism against practice.

Este trabajo recorre el constructivismo epistemológico de Vico. Por "constructivismo" se entiende la visión de que el objeto cognitivo no es algo simplemente dado sino en cierto modo "construido" por el sujeto como una condición de conocimiento. Se piensa que en este camino Vico figura como uno de los más importantes innovadores epistemológicos de los tiempos modernos. Vico entendió que, no pudiendo nosotros conocer independientemente la realidad, las condiciones de conocimiento son entonces, de algún modo, formas de constructivismo. De esta manera anticipó cualquier forma posterior de constructivismo, entre otras: la conocida revolución copernicana de Kant.This paper is a review of Vico’s epistemological constructivism. By "constructivism" is understood the view that the congnitive object is not a simple given but rather in some way "constructed" by the subject as a condition of knowledge. It is believed that in this way Vico set the stage for one of the most important epistemological innovations in modern times. Vico grasped that, since we cannot know independent reality, the conditions of knowledge is some form of constructivism. He anticipated thus all later forms of constructivism, including inter alia: Kant’s better known Copernican revolution