•  153
    Hegel on Habit
    The Owl of Minerva 21 (2): 155-165. 1990.
    “Die Gewohnheit” is given as title for two paragraphs in the section of the 1830 Philosophy of Mind on “Subjective Spirit,” but the word itself occurs in only one of them. A more cursory treatment of the topic is thus formally impossible, and Hegel seems to follow what he calls the tendency, in “scientific” treatments of Spirit, either to speak condescendingly of habit or to pass it over altogether. But Hegel does not share the grounds for that tendency, which according to him are two: Either th…Read more
  •  81
    Scientific Progress and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
    Idealistic Studies 13 (1): 1-10. 1983.
    A vast amount of attention has traditionally been paid to the relation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to the system of “science” which complements it in his thought. Recently, Errol Harris has suggested that the Phenomenology is also related to “science” as we understand it today, and this view has been worked out in some detail by Paul Thagard. The approach seems of interest for the philosophy of science because of the increasing contemporary awareness that empirical science is not based si…Read more
  •  80
    In _Time in the Ditch, _John McCumber explores the effect of McCarthyism on American philosophy in the 1940s and 1950s. The possibility that the political pressures of the McCarthy era might have skewed the development of the discipline has rarely been addressed in the subsequent half century. Why was silence maintained for so long? And what happens, McCumber asks, when political events and pressures go beyond interfering with individual careers to influence the nature of a discipline itself?
  •  63
    Substance and Reciprocity in Hegel
    The Owl of Minerva 35 (1-2): 1-24. 2003.
    This paper explores how an earlier stage of Hegel’s system structures later stages. Starting with the section on “substance” in the Logic, I argue that substance for Hegel is a “dialectical” or narrative structure, one whose nature is to unfold over time. In the Logic, substance unfolds into causality and reciprocity in turn. This established, I then show how this narrative structure can be found in Hegel’s treatments of three phases of objective spirit: marriage, family, and state. Objective sp…Read more
  •  54
    Endings: questions of memory in Hegel and Heidegger (edited book)
    Northwestern University Press. 1999.
    Introduction: Transforming Thought John McCumber The Story of Things According to an ancient story which (because of Hegel and Heidegger) we are now able to ...
  •  54
    The temporal turn in German idealism: Hegel and after
    Research in Phenomenology 32 (1): 44-59. 2002.
    Hegel's rejection of the Kantian thing-in-itself makes the "an sich" an ingredient in experience—that about a thing which is not yet present to us is what it is "an sich." Hegel bars thus any philosophical appeal to anything construed as atemporal, a path which I argue was also taken by Nietzsche, Foucault, Rorty, and Habermas. Unlike them, however, Hegel pursues a project of systematic philosophy, which now consists in showing how temporal things mutually support one another. The recent Contine…Read more
  •  52
    Hegel, Heidegger and the Ground of History (review)
    The Owl of Minerva 18 (1): 68-70. 1986.
    The question of the ground of history, according to Gillespie, is the question of what history is. German Idealism’s attempt to construe history as a source of value was the “fullest and perhaps the most profound” attempt to answer this question, and culminated in Hegel’s vindication of history as a rational process. The twentieth century, with its wars and holocausts, has made it impossible to affirm history as a rational process or a source of value, and Heidegger’s account of history as an in…Read more
  •  48
    Hegel’s Circular Epistemology (review)
    The Owl of Minerva 20 (2): 205-207. 1989.
    That Hegel had an “epistemology” at all is only one of the preliminary points argued in this demanding, but extremely rewarding book. Rockmore argues that, though Hegel abandoned the traditional epistemological standpoint of an isolated subject seeking a foundation for knowledge, he was clearly concerned throughout his career with the more general issue of the justification of knowledge claims überhaupt. Moreover, Rockmore shows that Hegel’s views are strikingly relevant to contemporary philosop…Read more
  •  45
    Funny foreigners
    The Philosophers' Magazine 39 (39): 43-45. 2007.
  •  43
    Book Notes (review)
    with Kevin A. Ameriks, Tad R. Brennan, Ann E. Cudd, Kirk A. Greer, Bart Gruzalski, David P. McCabe, Richard Sherlock, and Ira J. Singer
    Ethics 114 (1): 205-212. 2003.
  •  42
    Anamnesis as Memory of Intelligibles in Plotinus
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 60 (2): 160-167. 1978.
  •  40
    Hegel’s Anarchistic Utopia
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 203-210. 1984.
  •  39
    Back from Syracuse?
    with Hans-Georg Gadamer
    Critical Inquiry 15 (2): 427-430. 1989.
    It has been claimed, out of admiration for the great thinker, that his political errors have nothing to do with his philosophy. If only we could be content with that! Wholly unnoticed was how damaging such a “defense” of so important a thinker really is. And how could it be made consistent with the fact that the same man, in the fifties, saw and said things about the industrial revolution and technology that today are still truly astonishing for their foresight?In any case: no surprise should be…Read more
  •  39
    A Closed Intellectual Community: The Policing of American Philosophy
    Studies in Practical Philosophy 2 (2): 125-137. 2000.
  •  36
    John McCumber; The Threshold of Bio-Ethics: Philosophical Warrant in the Thought of Stephen Erickson, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Mor.
  •  35
    Heidegger and Modernity (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 23 (3): 109-110. 1991.
  •  33
    From the perspective of a contemporary German reader, one consideration is particularly important from the start. Illumination of the political conduct of Martin Heidegger cannot and should not serve the purpose of a global depreciation of his thought. As a personality of recent history, Heidegger comes, like every other such personality, under the judgment of the historian. In Farias’ book as well, actions and courses of conduct are presented that suggest a detached evaluation of Heidegger’s ch…Read more
  •  32
    Absolute Knowledge (review)
    The Owl of Minerva 16 (1): 83-86. 1984.
    The ultimate purpose of Alan White’s careful and detailed confrontation of Hegel with Schelling is to rehabilitate first philosophy itself. In this effort, White argues two subtheses: that first philosophy is possible as “Hegelian transcendental ontology”; and that Hegel’s thought makes sense only as “transcendental ontology.” Defending Hegel against Schelling is crucial in two senses: first, Schelling’s Hegel-critique contains, “in at least rudimentary form, all of the fundamental criticisms th…Read more
  •  31
    Pierre Kerszberg, critique and totality
    Continental Philosophy Review 34 (1): 112-119. 2001.
  •  29
    Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism (review)
    Philosophical Studies (Dublin) 30 340-341. 1984.
  •  29
    Reflection and Emancipation in Habermas
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 22 (1): 71-81. 2010.
  •  27
    Poetic interaction: language, freedom, reason
    University of Chicago Press. 1989.
    Poetic Interaction presents an original approach to the history of philosophy in order to elaborate a fresh theory that accounts for the place freedom in the Western philosophical tradition. In his thorough analysis of the aesthetic theories of Hegel, Heidegger, and Kant, John McCumber shows that the interactionist perspective recently put forth by Jürgen Habermas was in fact already present in some form in the German Enlightenment and in Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. McCumber's histori…Read more
  •  25
    Is a post-Hegelian ethics possible?
    Research in Phenomenology 18 (1): 125-147. 1988.
  •  24
    Review of John Russon, Reading Hegel's Phenomenology (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (6). 2005.
  •  24
    Letters to the Editor
    with W. F. Vallicella, Virginia Held, John Davenport, John J. Stuhr, Celia Wolf-Devine, Albert Cinelli, Henry Simoni-Wastila, Eugene Kelly, and Brian Leiter
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 71 (2). 1997.
  •  23
    Hegel's Epistemology: A philosophical introduction to the 'phenomenology of spirit' (review)
    Continental Philosophy Review 37 (3): 367-381. 2004.
  •  22
    Infectious humours: David Krell's contagion
    Research in Phenomenology 30 (1): 260-264. 2000.