Tom Rockmore

This article examines two views about the capitalism that lies at the heart of modern industrial society. We owe to Marx and Piketty two large-scale, hugely important, but very different studies of the nature of modern industrial capitalism. In Capital, Marx provides a complex analysis of the anatomy of modern industrial capitalism, which he regards not as stable but rather as over time unstable and tending toward internal collapse on several grounds, of which the most important is apparently the so-called tendency of the falling rate of profit. The falling rate of profit supposedly threatens its continued existence. Piketty criticizes the latter view in the context of his theory of contemporary capitalism. The article suggests, first, that Marx's view of the falling rate of interest is empirically implausible but Piketty's rival claim is empirically plausible. Second, a successful transition from capitalism to communism on Marxian grounds is unlikely in practice. And finally, despite Marx's intentions, it is unlikely to realize itself in practice, and is in this respect a traditional theory.

For Martin Heidegger the "fall" of philosophy into metaphysics begins with Plato. Thus, the relationship between the two philosophers is crucial to an understanding of Heidegger--and, perhaps, even to the whole plausibility of postmodern critiques of metaphysics. It is also, as the essays in this volume attest, highly complex, and possibly founded on a questionable understanding of Plato. As editors Catalin Partenie and Tom Rockmore remark, a simple way to describe Heidegger's reading of Plato might be to say that what began as an attempt to appropriate Plato (and through him a large portion of Western philosophy) finally ended in an estrangement from both Plato and Western philosophy. The authors of this volume consider Heidegger's thought in relation to Plato before and after the " Kehre " or turn. In doing so, they take up various central issues in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) and thereafter, and the questions of hermeneutics, truth, and language. The result is a subtle and multifaceted reinterpretation of Heidegger's position in the tradition of philosophy, and of Plato's role in determining that position.

9/11 represents less a tear in the fabric of history, or a break with the past, than an inflection in ongoing historical processes, such as the continued expansion of capitalism that at some recent time has supposedly attained a level of globalization. This paper considers the relation of war and politics with respect to three instances arising in the wake of 9/11, including the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and finally the global war on terror (GWT). I argue that these wars are superficially dissimilar, but that on a deeper level they all relate to a single ideological position that is an important motivation in current US foreign policy, and that this position is further related to capitalism.

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.

A systematic and historical study of the rela­tion of the positions of Fichte and Marx within the context of nineteenth-century German philosophy as well as the wider his­tory of philosophy. Rockmore’s thesis is that there is a little noticed, less often studied, but nevertheless profound structural parallel between the two positions that can be shown to be mediated through the development of the nineteenth-century German philosophical tradition. Both positions understand man in anti-Car­tesian fashion, not as a spectator, but as an active being. Rockmore demonstrates that there is similarity of the two views of activity in terms of the Aristotelian concept __,_ _then indicates the further parallel be­tween the respective concepts of man that fol­low from Fichte’s and Marx’s views of activity. Turning to the history of philosophy, Rockmore directs the reader to solid textual evidence supporting the influence of Fichte, not only on Marx’s Young Hegelian contem­poraries but on Marx as well. He argues that the Hegelian impact on the interpretation of the nineteenth-century philosophical tradi­tion has served to obscure the parallel be­tween the positions of Fichte and Marx, but that the concept of man as an active being can be used to reinterpret this segment of the history of philosophy and to modify the fre­quently held view of the classical German tradition as a collection of rather disparate thinkers. Finally, he provides a discussion of the intrinsic value of the anti-Cartesian ap­proach to man as such

The recent concern with hermeneutics, which stems above all from Truth and Method, should not be allowed to obscure the fact, to which Gadamer certainly is sensitive, that this topic has a long philosophical lineage, extending back into the tradition at least to Aristotle. In particular, it seems rarely to have been noticed that although their thought is notoriously difficult, the major members of the German idealist tradition provided not only the positions themselves, but a theory of their interpretation. The latter point is important since, if evaluation is to be fair, positions must be measured against standards which are their own and not against extrinsic criteria. Yet for idealism this has rarely been done, in part because little attention has so far been directed to the idealist view of how theory is to be interpreted. Accordingly, my task in this paper will be twofold: to discuss the idealist theory of hermeneutics, and to test that theory in the interpretation of one of the major idealist positions. In consequence, the paper will come full circle, since the idealist theory of hermeneutics will be both expounded and put to the test provided by the hermeneutics of idealism.

It is hardly surprising, since for Hegel philosophers are children of their times, that French Hegelianism differs from Hegelianism in other languages and literatures. At least the following aspects typify the French approach to Hegel's theory. To begin with, Hegel, like a few others, is a master thinker in the French discussion, one of the few intellectual figures around whom the discussion tends to take shape. Second, in the wake of the major impetus provided to French Hegel studies by Kojève's work, there has long been a tendency to conflate the views of Hegel, the great philosopher, and Kojève, one of his most brilliant expositors. Third, since the 1940s when Hyppolite emerged as a major Hegel interpreter, French Hegelianism has been the theater of an ongoing struggle between the two, Hegelian unorthodoxy, represented by Kojève, and Hegelian orthodoxy, represented by Hyppolite, that now seems to have been resolved in favor of the latter. The French Hegel discussion, which was once highly unorthodox by virtue of Kojève's influence, seems now to have become more orthodox but perhaps less interesting. Fourth, as a result of Kojève's influence, there is a link, peculiar to the French discussion, between Hegel and Heidegger that has further led to the tendency, also peculiar to the French debate, to see Husserl and Hegel as sharing the same method.

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.