Tom Rockmore

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.

Aimed at specialists, as well as graduate students and select undergraduates, this study centers on Hegel's important, but neglected, theory of knowledge. Professor Rockmore interprets Hegel as reacting to the Kantian effort to reformulate epistemology in the wake of what Kant contends is the failure of earlier, dogmatic theories. Recent work has shown that Hegel's epistemology is a good deal more respectable than has usually been thought. Rockmore's aim is to continue that work in order to bring Hegel into the main discussion of knowledge. Rockmore's main argument for the relevance of Hegel's theory to the problem of knowledge is that in the absence of foundationalism, Hegel's antifoundationalist theory of knowledge as perspectival and historical supplies two items helpful to advance the epitemological discussion.

Recent discussion has seen an increase in the interest in hermeneutics. The increased interest in hermeneutics goes back at least until the appearance of Being and Time in 1927, more than sixty years ago. Thisbookis characterized by the unresolved tension between two clearly incompatible theses: the Husserlian form of absolute truth, and a post-Husserlian view of truth arising from the hermeneutical circle. More recently, the interest in hermeneutics has been strengthened by the appearance of Truth and Method in 1960, in which Gadamer, Heidegger’s most important student, developed the hermeneutical thesis of the latter’s Fundamentalontologie in a way which has influenced numerous other thinkers, notably Ricoeur and Habermas, in a wide-ranging and often confused discussion. The latter’s theory of communicative action can be seen as carrying further the Gadamerian view that knowledge results from interpretation. In Habermas’s version of the linguistic turn, which is further influenced by Kant’s view of Vernunftinteresse and Habermas’s own, peculiar reading of Peirce, speech is intrinsically aimed at potential agreement through the development of consensus.

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 been discussed in detail. This paper will sketch the outlines of Hegelian constructivism in relation to the critical philosophy. Hegelian constructivism amounts to an intrinsically historical view of epistemology as a trial and error process situated in the social context. Knowledge emerges from a trial and error process in which we construct a cognitive framework to grasp objects constructed in and through this process. I suggest that the considerable interest of a historical, constructivist, phenomenological approach to knowledge, such as Hegel’s, lies in its largely unexplored possibilities for advancing the epistemological debate.