•  49
    This book addresses the breach within contemporary philosophy with a newly conceived foundationalism. It shows that dramatic discord has arisen between its two dominant branches. The Anglo-American branch generally takes its departure from logic and from natural science, while the Continental branch generally takes its departure from art and from the great traditional questions. However, they share this common negative feature: each side denies the view that philosophy issues from a central foun…Read more
  •  138
    Book reviews (review)
    with Renate Holub, Johann P. Sommerville, Peter Burke, Babette E. Babich, Jolanta T. Pekacz, Sabine Wichert, Paul Douglas, Richard J. Aldrich, Alan Ford, Vincent Geoghegan, Keith Bradley, Lucia M. Palmer, Donald J. Dietrich, John L. Stanley, John Cottingham, Benjamin F. Martin, Grace Seiberling, Gerasimos Santas, John E. Weakland, Ilana Krausman Ben‐Amos, Charles Senn Taylor, Claire Honess, Jos J. L. Gommans, Ceri Crossley, Hans Derxs, Alexander Ulanov, Georges Denis Zimmermann, David Boonin‐Vail, Ellen O'Gorman, Robert M. Burns, Fredric S. Zuckerman, James A. Aho, Harvey Chisick, Stuart Rowland, Gabriel P. Weisberg, David W. Cohen, Michael Goodich, Ignazio Corsaro, Greg Walker, Keith D. White, Henry Wasser, Noel Gray, Henk de Weerd, Steven Nadler, Joseph P. Ward, Susan Rosa, David J. Parent, and Paul Lawrence Färber
    The European Legacy 1 (8): 2290-2352. 1996.
    Gramsci and the Italian State. By Richard Bellamy and Darrow Schecter (Manchester and New York Manchester University Press, 1993), xvi + 203 pp. Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–1588. By Wallace MacCaffrey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), x + 530 pp. Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588–1603. By Wallace MacCaffrey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), xvi + 592 pp. Figures on the Horizon. Edited by Jerrold Seigel (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1993…Read more
  •  20
    A dark history of modern philosophy
    Indiana University Press. 2017.
    This provocative reassessment of modern philosophy explores its nonrational dimensions and connection to ancient mysteries. Delving beneath the principal discourses of philosophyfrom Descartes through Kant, Bernard Freydberg plumbs the previously concealed dark forces that ignite the inner power of modern thought. He contends that reason itself issues from an implicit and unconscious suppression of the nonrational. Even the modern philosophical concerns of nature and limits are undergirded by a …Read more
  •  74
    The Socratic Method, Once and for All
    Comparative and Continental Philosophy 12 (3): 240-244. 2020.
    ABSTRACT The “Socratic method” seems to be well understood in general to mean some sort of “question and answer” procedure as distinguished from “lecturing.” Law schools are familiar sites for its so-called practice, and the Platonic dialogues are believed to provide models of it. However, Socrates himself never speaks of having a method except in one place in the Phaedo – where it has nothing to do with “question and answer.” The Greeks had a clear word for method, “methodos,” and Socrates appl…Read more
  •  102
    The vastly underrated Plutus receives at least some of its due in this paper. At its beginning, I attempt to locate Plutus within both the Hegelian discourse on comedy and within Hume's poetical and philosophical fictions. Employing the same method of close textual analysis that I employed in Philosophy and Comedy: Aristophanes, Logos, and Eros, I focus upon the thoroughgoing materialism of the poor farmer Chremylus who laments the unjust distribution of wealth, and who seeks to restore the god'…Read more
  •  56
    Kant and the irrational
    History of European Ideas 20 (4-6): 945-949. 1995.
  •  51
    Nietzsche in Derrida'sspurs: Deconstruction as deracination
    History of European Ideas 11 (1-6): 685-692. 1989.
  •  58
    Kant's transcendental psychology
    History of European Ideas 22 (2): 151-152. 1996.
  •  79
    The Cambridge Companion to Kant (review)
    History of European Ideas 21 (1): 75-80. 1995.
    The fundamental task of philosophy since the seventeenth century has been to determine whether the essential principles of both knowledge and action can be discovered by human beings unaided by an external agency. No one philosopher contributed more to this enterprise than Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason (1781) shook the very foundations of the intellectual world. Kant argued that the basic principles of the natural science are imposed on reality by human sensibility and understanding, and t…Read more
  •  121
  •  109
    Nous and play
    The European Legacy 2 (2): 350-355. 1997.
    No abstract
  •  139
    Hearkening to Thalia: Toward the Rebirth of Comedy in Continental Philosophy
    Research in Phenomenology 39 (3): 401-415. 2009.
    This paper discloses and furthers the rebirth of comedy in Continental philosophy in three stages. The first treats Greek comedy, bringing forth the comic contours in Plato and exploring the philosophical content of Aristophanic comedy. The second examines certain German encounters with comedy, from the staid Wieland translations of Aristophanes through the thoughtful discussions of Schiller, Hegel, and Nietzsche. The third investigates twentieth-century American comedy and its connection to Ame…Read more
  •  170
    On hölderlin's "andenken": Heidegger, Gadamer and henrich—a decision?
    Research in Phenomenology 34 (1): 181-197. 2004.
    Often, respectable scholars attack the soundness of Heidegger's "violent" interpretations of Hölderlin (and others). In this case, Dieter Henrich offers a particularly harsh assessment of Heidegger's interpretation of " Andenken." Hans-Georg Gadamer, student of Heidegger and teacher of Henrich, attempts to bring harmony where none seems possible. A study of the three interpretations indicates that scholarship alone is sufficient to reach a decision on the strength of the interpretations.
  •  67
    John Sallis's Recent Contributions to Continental Aesthetics
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (1): 135-141. 2014.
    In a sustained and protracted meditation on imagination and art, John Sallis has more than challenged the traditional metaphysical distinction between sensible and intelligible that has governed much of aesthetic discourse. In his Sense of Imagination , he excised that philosophical marker altogether in favor of a language of sense in which intelligibility occurs as a secondary function—if at all. Praising Hegel’s celebration of color, he disputes the latter’s declaration that “art is dead” in f…Read more
  •  64
    David Hume: Platonic Philosopher, Continental Ancestor
    State University of New York Press. 2012.
    In the first book of its kind, Bernard Freydberg places David Hume firmly in the tradition of the Platonic dialogues, and regards him as a proper ancestor of contemporary continental philosophy. Although Hume is largely confined to his historical context within British Empiricism, his skepticism resonates with the Socratic Ignorance expressed by Plato, and his account of experience points toward very contemporary concerns in continental thought. Through close readings of An Enquiry Concerning th…Read more
  •  184
    What becomes of science in "the future of phenomenology"?
    Research in Phenomenology 32 (1): 219-229. 2002.
    A recent issue of Research in Phenomenology contains a section on "The Future of Phenomenology," but none of the articles contained therein deals with a future engagement of phenomenology with science, especially mathematical natural science. In this paper, I discuss this engagement that was once so central to phenomenology and suggest lines along which its revival can fruitfully occur. Toward this end, I trace the contours of the Heisenberg-Heidegger exchange and show how recent readings of the…Read more
  •  125
    Sallis, Brann, and the problem of imagination
    Research in Phenomenology 29 (1): 106-118. 1999.
  •  75
    Nietzsche on the Socratic morality as decadence
    with Allen W. Larsen
    The European Legacy 2 (2): 320-325. 1997.
  •  24
    Imagination and Depth in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
    Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. 1994.
    The Kerygma of the Wilderness Traditions in the Hebrew Bible examines biblical writers' use of the wilderness traditions in the books of Exodus and Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Prophets, and the Writings to express their beliefs in God and their understandings of the community's relationship to God. Kerygma is the proclamation of God's actions with the purpose of affirming faith/or appealing to an obedient response from the community. The experiences of the wilderness community, who rebelled and re…Read more
  •  65
    Book Reviews (review)
    The European Legacy 3 (5): 117-161. 1998.
    Mind and World. By John McDowell. 191 pp. n.p.g. Art and the French Commune: Imagining Paris after War and Revolution. By Albert Boime The Princeton Series in Nineteenth‐Century Art, Culture and Society xv + 234 pp. $19.95, £14.95 paper. Individual Choice and the Structures of History: Alexis de Tocqueville as Historian Reappraised. By Harvey Mitchell 290 pp. $54.95, £35.00 cloth. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. By Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, 2d ed.. 190pp., $12.95 paper. The European Comm…Read more
  •  30
    Play resides at the heart of the Platonic dialogues, shaping their insights as well as informing their style. "The Play of the Platonic Dialogues" traces the prominent role of play, both as a general philosophical characteristic and as influencing the treatment of key issues. The nature of the forms, of the city, of virtue, of the soul and its immortality - these and others have been shaped by play. This book shows how Platonic playfulness is joined with the deepest seriousness throughout the di…Read more
  •  99
    Reveals comedy's contributions to the philosophical enterprise
  •  143