Daniel Dahlstrom

Abstract:Whereas research on Moses Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours has largely focused on the proofs for the existence of God and the elaboration of a purified pantheism in the Second Part of the text, scholars have paid far less attention to the First Part where Mendelssohn details his mature epistemology and conceptions of truth. In an attempt to contribute to remedying this situation, the present article critically examines his account, in the First Part, of different types of truth, different types of knowledge, and the case against idealism. The examination stresses potential but overlooked strengths of his account (e. g., a conception of immediate knowledge that is both far broader than the sensory field and distinctive for having change as its object), questions of ambiguity if not inconsistency in his concepts of existence and substance, and the potential import of these questions for the role he assigns to common sense.

Kant's philosophical achievements have long overshadowed those of his German contemporaries, often to the point of concealing his contemporaries' influence upon him. This volume of new essays draws on recent research into the rich complexity of eighteenth-century German thought, examining key figures in the development of aesthetics and art history, the philosophy of history and education, political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. The essays range over numerous thinkers including Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Meyer, Winckelmann, Herder, Schiller, Hamann and Fichte, showing how they variously influenced, challenged, and revised Kant's philosophy, at times moving it in novel directions unacceptable to the magister himself. The volume will be valuable for all who are interested in this distinctive period of German philosophy.

The jumble of themes contained in Feuerbach’s Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit testify to the youthfulness of a work published when its author was a mere 26. These “thoughts” contain a scathing polemic against the veiled egoism of pietism and rationalism, an off-beat blend of Jacob Boehme’s theosophical mysticism with Lucretius’ arguments against personal immortality, and unique renditions of Hegel’s conceptions of nature, history, and God. There is even a somewhat tedious attempt to disprove the possibility of extraterrestial living beings! Yet these Todesgedanken were enormously significant in Feuerbach’s own life and intellectual development and in the development of Hegel’s philosophy after the latter’s death. The easy discovery of their authorship cost Feuerbach his academic career but they also helped him crystallize an idea of human beings’ true destiny which prompted his decision to become a writer. That destiny is death or, better, the genuine courage and love and earthly immortality that death alone makes possible. “True religion, true humility, true and complete surrender to and submersion in God is possible only when the human being recognizes death as true, real, and entire”. The appeal and importance of Feuerbach’s Todesgedanken lie in its impassioned, non-theist testimony to this speculative significance of death.

Hegel’s account of conscience at the conclusion to the chapter on morality in the Philosophy of Right has had more than its share of detractors. Theunissen tries to explain why the account is “so meager,” Findlay deems it “thoroughly scandalous,” and Tugendhat goes so far as to label it the pinnacle of a “no longer merely conceptual, but rather moral perversion.” Even commentators committed to rescuing Hegel’s discussion of conscience from such extreme reproaches agree that it is “one-sided” and “problematic.” The source of this widespread conclusion about Hegel’s political incorrectness is not difficult to discern. In the wake of the nationalistic excesses and horrors of the last two centuries, there is an understandable suspicion about the motivations underlying claims that “the state cannot recognize conscience in its distinctive. form, that is, as subjective knowing”. When Hegel declares that the “formal subjectivity” of conscience, as the final achievement of morality, is “on the verge of turning into something evil”, he seems clearly out of step with the reigning liberal political traditions, traditions that regard the individual’s freedom to abide by his or her conscience as both an unassailable right and an inherent good.

After reviewing basic features of language, this paper reviews a central debate among twentieth-century philosophers over the proper analysis of linguisticmeaning. While some center the analysis of meaning in language’s capacity to be true, others locate meaning in the communicative intentions of the users of thelanguage. As a means of addressing this impasse and suggesting its unfounded character, the paper draws on recent studies of language acquisition and relates them to existential dimensions of language.

From a phenomenological point of view, others present themselves as unities within my intentional life as a whole, constituted ‘for’ me even while maintaining a certain reserve. This ‘reserve’ is meant to indicate that the consciousness of alter egos involves the consciousness of a breach that does not obtain between consciousness and its other ‘objects’. Indeed, there is an obvious sense in which this very consciousness requires a considerable modification of the phenomenological understanding of the ego itself and the way in which intentional life is constituted. As a means of accounting for intersubjectivity without reducing it to the ego or vice versa, the author of this short, but densely written volume focuses on the body as the place in which the above mentioned breach is constituted and countenanced in tandem with a transformed conception of the ego. The rationale for this strategy is outlined in chapter one, “Alterity and Otherness: The Problem of the Body in the Cartesian Meditations,” where the author observes, to begin with, that “the reduced ownness” cannot be defined as ‘nonalien’ since it is embodied and, as such, includes its “own inescapable otherness... thus indicating that the ‘inside’ of the ‘I’ is ordered in such a way that the experience of alterity is possible.” While providing some important clues, this observation does not explain how alterity in fact is experienced. The beginning of an explanation, Dodd suggests, is to be found in the passive synthesis of my body and another’s and, on the basis of that pairing, the interpretation of the other’s body in analogy with the way the ego mundanely expresses itself in its body. Thus, the most basic answer to the question of how another ego-life can be constituted in its alterity yet in my consciousness is provided by “expression” as a mundane and mutual modification of my life and others, in short, by their encounter, not as transcendental subjects, but as living bodies. The remainder of the book accordingly focuses on the body as “the basic element of the encounter between two lives”, based upon Husserl’s account of the three essential features of a “physical thing”: extendedness, materiality, and temporality.

This engaging work explores how Hegel's philosophy both entails and is entailed by a certain conception of Christianity. What distinguishes Burbidge's exploration is the emphasis that he places on an interpretation of Hegel's logic, in which a central role is assigned to the understanding. The first set of essays elaborates the operation of the understanding in relation to the operations of dialectic and speculative reason in Hegel's logic. The first essay concentrates on Hegel's attempt to display the universal movement of pure thought in terms of all three operations. Complementing his earlier work, On Hegel's Logic, Burbidge argues that, given the appropriate interpretation of these operations, the absolute difference between "being" and "nothing" can be said to be sustained, even as these concepts are held together in "becoming," which in turn disappears into "a being". Burbidge's second essay presents an interpretive sketch of Hegel's logic as a whole, based upon a consistent, thorough, and self-referential application of the understanding. The essay's title "Transition or Reflection" refers to the distinction, characteristic of dialectical development, between inherent and posited concepts. The movement of thought between members of the first set of concepts is immediate and hence a "transition," while that between members of the second set is mediated by "reflection." Burbidge argues that the logic of concepts in Part 3 of Hegel's logic, construed as the understanding applied to itself, specifies within itself these two contradictory moments. The same theme informs Burbidge's third essay as he identifies the understanding, not as the beginning, but as the culmination of Hegel's logic, holding together in the disjunctive judgment of the logic of concepts both the dialectic emphasized by the left wing of Hegel scholars and the speculation championed by the right wing. Burbidge argues for what might be called the ironic interpretation of Hegel's claim to an absolute method, namely, the understanding that "no immediate transition, no comprehensive vision, and no philosophical wisdom will ever be the last word". The final essay of this first part discussed the necessity of contingency in the context of Hegel's logic.

BOOK REVIEWS 473 Chapter 4 concerns Peirce's "pragmatic metaphysics" and is the culmination of the development of Rosenthal's pluralism thesis. Together with the observation that the categories are categories of process, and through a close examination of the category of Firstness, she emphasizes the importance of sense-qualities that are inseparable from negative and positive possibilities Cmay-bes" and "would-bes") and their relevance to the controversies over whether Peirce is a realist, an idealist, or a phenomenalist. She says that Peirce did not see that the language he had available from the tradition was not adequate; thus, he proposed that objective idealism is the best answer to the question of whether the universe is mind or matter, even though he in fact repudiated objective idealism. In considering Peirce's cosmology, Rosenthal draws on Peirce's discussions of the law of mind, considering the ineradicable place of spontaneity in the emergence of new intelligibility or the evolution of laws. She concludes with a reiteration of the point that although knowledge involves convergence, convergences are always within a common world that inquirers partially but continually remake. Rosenthal's book is far too rich to do it justice in this short space. It challenges the reader to see why Peirce's thought is particularly relevant to contemporary debates, not only over how to interpret Peirce but, more importantly, about how his philosophy may help..

The aim of this paper is to revisit Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Rilke with a view to eliciting its implications for our future and that of phenomenology. The paper focuses on how Heidegger, despite regarding Rilke as a much-needed poet in these destitute times, criticises the metaphysical and Nietzschean underpinnings of his poetic account of the open and animal existence within it. In addition to shedding considerable light on Heidegger’s own conception of the open and human existence within it, focusing on this criticism unde rscores how the sort of phenomenological thinking exemplified in Heidegger’s reading of Rilke essentially and uniquely provides an opening of the future.

This paper elaborates four asymmetrical, developmental stages of the phenomenon of human freedom, starting with a rudimentary sort of freedom, thebasic experience of a relatively unencumbered power to act in alternative ways. The paper argues that structural elements of this rudimentary form of freedomare demonstrable in three distinct, supervening forms of freedom: instrumental freedom, the experience of the self-reflective ability to pursue certain aims, perfectionist freedom, the experience of the capacity to master oneself according to some ideal, and, finally, interpersonal freedom, the experience of empowerment and alternatives only available through commitments to others.

This essay takes a critical look at a specific altruistic interpretation of the moral nature, legitimacy, and value of unselfish actions. The aim of the essay is to raise questions about this altruistic attitude toward the morality of unselfish actions by focussing on certain assumptions that inform that attitude. It is argued that, among those assumptions, the most counterintuitive and deleterious is the notion that the morality of an unselfish action can and should be established by appeal to the possibility of resentment springing from the performance or non-performance of the action. After a short presentation and explanation of these assumptions and their questionableness, the essay investigates the extent to which an altruistic attitude animates contemporary discussion of the moral character of unselfish actions. This investigation is limited to a sketch of a particular development of contemporary ethical theory, from Thomas Nagel's initial attempt to explain the possibility of pure altruism to his revisions of his early theory into a concept of a revised altruism, and culminating in the intersubjective altruism, elaborated by Christine Korsgaard as a consequence of her critique of Nagel's moral theory. In conclusion, after iterating the fundamental inadequacy of appeals to possibilities of resentment, an explanation for the altruistic attitude is ventured. This explanation tries to secure the measure of validity of the assumptions of the altruistic attitude as well as its limitations by suggesting its grounding in an ethics of honor, delimited by an ethics of love and friendship.

Challenging twentieth-century skepticism regarding the notion of subjectivity, the author sets for himself the task of elaborating several models of self-consciousness, each differentiated by an advancing degree of complexity. Düsing’s book is accordingly both critical and constructive; its aim is to construct a viable theory of subjectivity and a clear foundation for scientific research, thereby forestalling the naive practice, common among researchers of neural processes, of assuming an arbitrary conception of consciousness and self-consciousness. At the same time, Düsing creatively appropriates theories of subjectivity produced in the period from Kant to Hegel and distinguished by a sophisticated differentiation and combination of concepts of pure self-consciousness and a concrete self.