Peter Dews

Possessed by Concepts A Study of Concepts By Christopher Peacocke MIT Press, 1992. Pp. x + 266. ISBN 0–262–161338. £24.95. Morality, ethics and ‘postmetaphysical thinking: new books by Jürgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society Polity Press, 1992, Pp.300, ISBN 0–7456–1077–3. £35/11.95. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action Polity Press, 1992. Pp. 280. ISBN 0–7456–1104–4. £29.50. Postmetaphysical Thinking. Philosophical Essays Polity Press, 1992. Pp. 200. ISBN 0–7456–0734–9. £29.50. Justification and Application. Remarks on Discourse Ethics Polity Press, 1993. Pp. 192. ISBN 0–7456–0143–9. £35/11.95. Shame and Necessity By Bernard Williams University of California Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 254. ISBN 0–520–08046–7. $25.

Despite considerable recent attention, important features of Schelling’s famous work, the 1809 treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, remain under-explored. One of these is the methodological dualism which Schelling advocates at the very start of the text. Schelling aims to weld together into a coherent position a first-person phenomenology of freedom and an explanation achieved by locating freedom within a conceptual system articulating the basic structure of the world. Most interpretations of the Freiheitsschrift, however, concentrate on only one of these approaches, thus foreshortening their understanding of Schelling’s enterprise. The article explores this tendency towards one-sidedness by considering two sophisticated recent interpretations of the work, taking opposite tacks. One, by Markus Gabriel, focuses on the distinctive, self-reflexive metaphysics which Schelling proposes, while the other, by Sebastian Gardner, claims that Schelling’s ontology is extrapolated entirely from his account of our moral consciousness, a procedure pioneered by Kant. The article argues that neither of these interpretations can do full justice to Schelling’s project. Furthermore, although the Freiheitsschrift is not entirely successful, and hence points towards later developments in Schelling’s thinking, its treatment of freedom is superior to the ‘soft naturalism’ pioneered by Peter Strawson, and currently influential across various philosophical traditions.

This timely book by philosopher Peter Dews explores the idea of evil, one of the most problematic terms in the contemporary moral vocabulary. Surveys the intellectual debate on the nature of evil over the past two hundred years Engages with a broad range of discourses and thinkers, from Kant and the German Idealists, via Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to Levinas and Adorno Suggests that the concept of moral evil touches on a neuralgic point in western culture Argues that, despite the widespread abuse and political manipulation of the term ‘evil’, we cannot do without it Concludes that if we use the concept of evil, we must acknowledge its religious dimension.

In the following paper I shall be developing a critical discussion of the contemporary interpretation of Hegel proposed by a Yugoslavian, and more specifically Slovenian, philosopher named Slavoj Zizek, whose principal theoretical allegiance is to the thought of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The very existence of this body of work raises many intriguing questions about the theoretical, cultural, and political context from which it has arisen. Why, for example, should the notoriously obscure and difficult thought of a Parisian psychoanalyst be of such interest not just to Zizek, but indeed to a whole circle of Slovenian intellectuals? Furthermore, why should a Lacanian approach be considered the most promising way to unlock the?secret of Hegel?? And why should Zizek and his fellow thinkers insist on the convergence of the thought of Hegel and Lacan, even in defiance of many of Lacan's own pronouncements on the matter? In a sense, the answer to the first of these questions already provides the answers to the other two. It is necessary to bear in mind that, for the most part, Yugoslavian philosophical life since the Revolution has been dominated not by the creaking orthodoxies of Soviet-style dialectical materialism, but by the far more plausible and congenial positions of what has come to be known as the Praxis School. The Marxism of the Praxis School, whose tradition still lives on, in the form of the journal Praxis International, is much closer, indeed can be seen as part of the philosophical current known in the other half of Europe as?Western Marxism?.

This book presents and evaluates the late philosophy (Spätphilosophie) of F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854) across a wide range of issues, ranging from relation between pure thinking and being, to the philosophy of mythology and religion, to the philosophy of history, to questions concerning the philosophy of nature and freedom. Simultaneously, it discusses Hegel's treatment of similar issues, and systematically compares the two thinkers. This is the first time, in an English-language publication, that these two major German Idealists have been compared in such detail along such a broad front. The book begins with three chapters exploring the development of Schelling's thinking concerning transcendental philosophy, nature and teleology, human freedom, and the theory of history, from his earliest publications up to his middle years. Against this background, the book then presents Schelling's distinction between "positive" and "negative" philosophy, the defining mark of his late philosophy. It explores his theory of pure a priori thinking (negative philosophy), and his account of the transition from negative to positive philosophy. The major components of Schelling's positive philosophy, including his conception of "un-pre-thinkable being", and his theories of mythology and revelation, are then discussed. Throughout, a comparative assessment of Hegel's approach similar issues is sustained. Schelling emerges as a philosopher who traced his own highly distinctive path through the thicket of problems bequeathed by Kant, and whose systematic responses to these problems still merit serious consideration as alternatives to those of Hegel.

It would be an honour for any author to receive two such thoughtful and detailed responses to their published work. I feel particularly grateful because one of my aspirations, in writing Schelling's Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel, was to encourage a more in-depth discussion of the whole range of Schelling's thinking than has been common until now in the English-speaking world. In developing their critiques, both Karen Ng and Markus Gabriel provide informative accounts of some of Schelling's main concerns, helping to make clear his achievements as a thinker, and his status as a challenging interlocutor for philosophers sympathetic to one or another form of Hegelianism.