Daniel Dahlstrom

For much of contemporary ethical theory, the universalizability of the motive of a contemplated action forms a necessary part of the basis of the action’s moral character, legitimacy, or worth. Considering the possibility of resentment springing from the performance of an action also serves as a means of determining the morality of an action. However, considerations of universalizability and resentment are plainly inconsistent with the performance of some unselfish moral actions. I argue that the sphere of the moral adequacy of considerations of universalizability and resentment is limited. I profile key elements of “conformist” or “consensus-driven” ethical thinking modelled on Nagel’s ethical theory. Then, I elaborate the measure of validity of the profiled ethical thinking as well as its limitation, suggesting that its proper domain is located in an ethics of honor, delimited by an ethics of love and friendship.

The aim of this crisply written study is to elaborate and criticize the basic direction of the third section of the first part of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, the unfinished but, as it were, systematic center of the entire project. Köhler undertakes this ambitious project with the help of lectures held right after the completion of Sein und Zeit as well as the lectures of the winter semester of 1925/26. In these lectures the works of Scheler and Kant figure significantly and Köhler, accordingly, devotes the first four chapters of the book to the way in which the use of schemata by these two thinkers is reworked by Heidegger in an attempt to schematize the sense of 'to be'. The first and second chapters of the book lucidly detail affinities and disaffinities [[sic]] between Scheler's analysis of the environment and Heidegger's analysis of Dasein. Scheler's more dynamic, but also more restricted, use of the concept of schema is indicated as are several crucial differences between the two thinkers.

This volume of essays by internationally prominent scholars interprets the full range of Heidegger's thought and major critical interpretations of it. It explores such central themes as hermeneutics, facticity and Ereignis, conscience in Being and Time, freedom in the writings of his period of transition from fundamental ontology, and his mature criticisms of metaphysics and ontotheology. The volume also examines Heidegger's interpretations of other authors, the philosophers Aristotle, Kant and Nietzsche and the poets Rilke, Trakl and George. A final group of essays interprets the critical reception of Heidegger's thought, both in the analytic tradition and in France. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to all who are interested in the themes, the development and the context of Heidegger's philosophical thought.

To criticize a philosopher’s views properly a primary requirement is an accurate understanding of the questions he raises, the problems he acknowledges, and the procedures he follows. In the following study I attempt to identify the specific question of truth which Hegel addresses, the basis of the sort of skepticism posing a serious threat to its resolution, and finally a strategy he adopts. The specific question of truth for Hegel is a question of metaphysical truth or, in the Cartesian terms which Hegel willingly employed, the question of the objectivity of thoughts. The sort of skepticism he has in mind is one which, based on certain purported conditions of human knowing, rejects the possibility of metaphysical truth. While Hegel’s strategy is to analyze those various conditions in an encyclopedic fashion, my concern in this paper is his analysis of the logical conditions of human knowing.

Challenging art historians' scientific pretensions as well as their neglect of theoretical questions, the author traces art history's development from the turn of the century by critically reviewing the early and lesser known writings of Erwin Panofsky, "the most influential art historian in the twentieth century." In a brief sketch of art history's nineteenth century roots, the first chapter reviews what is retained and what is discarded in Hegel's, Burckhardt's, and Dilthey's successive conceptions of historiography. The march of the Hegelian absolute through history may have been decried a fiction, but not the effort to construe history culturally and contextually.

Hegel's Encyclopaedia Logic constitutes the foundation of the system of philosophy presented in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Together with his Science of Logic, it contains the most explicit formulation of his enduringly influential dialectical method and of the categorical system underlying his thought. It offers a more compact presentation of his dialectical method than is found elsewhere, and also incorporates changes that he would have made to the second edition of the Science of Logic if he had lived to do so. This volume presents it in a new translation with a helpful introduction and notes. It will be a valuable reference work for scholars and students of Hegel and German idealism, as well as for those who are interested in the post-Hegelian character of contemporary philosophy.

Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, published in 1761, bring the metaphysical tradition to bear on the topic of 'sentiments'. Mendelssohn offers a nuanced defence of Leibniz's theodicy and conception of freedom, an examination of the ethics of suicide, an account of the 'mixed sentiments' so central to the tragic genre, a hypothesis about weakness of will, an elaboration of the main principles and types of art, a definition of sublimity and analysis of its basic forms, and, lastly, a brief tract on probability theory, aimed at rebutting Hume's scepticism. This volume also includes the essay 'On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences', selected in 1763 by the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences over all other submitted essays, including one by Kant, as the best answer to the question of whether metaphysical sciences are capable of the same sort and degree of evidence as mathematics.

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.

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

This well-informed and perceptive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy aims at presenting "how Kant thought that transcendental philosophy can be established, and how he in fact tried to accomplish his task". After indicating the metaphilosophical motivations underlying the study, the author focuses primarily on the transcendental deduction as presented in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. The study itself is divided into three parts. In the first part Kant's philosophical motives, assumptions, and method are unpacked. The author properly takes issue with the tendency to read the transcendental deduction as an answer to the sort of skepticism engendered by attributing primacy to mental states. As the author points out, Kant disavows any such attribution and his concern is rather with specifying what the necessary conditions of empirical cognition are and what follows from them.. Another anachronistic tendency to which the author rightly objects is that of construing Kant's assumptions about the analytic-synthetic distinction in terms of modern notions of analyticity and syntheticity. Relying heavily on the distinction Kant makes in the Methodology between mathematical and philosophical methods, the author also argues quite trenchantly that "deduction" does not signify any kind of deductive proof but rather a kind of nontechnical justification, and that the transcendental deduction is to not be equated with a transcendental proof but is, instead, only a preliminary step in accomplishing such a proof.

This meeting of the Hegel-Gesellschaft featured forty-six papers, including those presented during the two plenary sessions, covering a wide range of topics within the theme of the congress. The congress was ably administered and hosted by Dr. Wolfgang Sünkel at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Nürnberg. As usual, the congress was heavily represented by scholars from Eastern Europe and by scholars working at the Hegel-Archiv in Bochum. The contingent from the United States included Howard Kainz, Thomas Rockmore, Lawrence Stepelevich and myself.