Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture – serie

"Time and Transcendence" provides a new theory of secularization in the Catholic context, a new interpretation of the origins of modern historical science, and a new reading of Heidegger's theories of time and history. The author shows how a secular sense of the past evolved in early modern French memoirs. Memoirs uncovered a level of personal experience that was then applied as an intuitive framework for the study of history. Modern history's scientific study of sources is embedded in the imaginative sense of a personal past. 19th-century French Traditionalists countered this threat of a secular past by expanding the concept of tradition to include all of history. Neoscholasticism then canonized philosophy as Catholic tradition, turning the history of philosophy against secular culture. Heidegger's thinking developed in the contexts of both this Catholic counterattack and the "fin-de-siecle" disillusion with secular history. Against "fin-de-siecle" notions of memory as a better way of penetrating the past, Heidegger recast history as future-oriented action.Rejecting both secular culture and religious tradition, he used history as a tool for secularizing religious experiences that secular culture had ignored, such as grace, mystical experience, and death. This book shows that while religion can turn a self-conscious secular culture against itself, ultimately the religious critique of secular culture can also be turned against religion.

Much of contemporary philosophy, political theory, and social thought has been shaped directly or indirectly by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, though there is considerable disagreement about how his work should be understood. He has been described both as a metaphysician and characterized as an ironic narrator who anticipated the character of philosophy after metaphysics. His position is equally ambiguous with regard to his political thought. He has been construed both as an enemy of the liberal state and as a friend of freedom. This volume's revisionist reassessment, building on the scholarship of Klaus Hartmann, explores these ambiguities in favour of a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel's arguments. It also shows how the foundations of his political thought support a liberal democractic state. This reappraisal of Hegel's arguments resituates him as a philosopher who anticipates the difficulties of post-modernity and offers a basis for reassessing ontology, aesthetics, and revolution. Philosophers and those doing work in political theory should find this volume of interest.

Leibniz's earliest philosophy and its importance for his mature philosophy have not been examined in detail, particularly in the level of detail that one can achieve by placing Leibniz's philosophy in the context of the sources for two of the most basic concerns of his philosophical career: his metaphysics of individuals and the principle oftheir individuation. In this book I provide for the first time a detailed examination of these two Leibnizian themes and trace its implications for how we should interpret other major Leibnizian themes and for how we should read Leibniz and other philosophers of the sixteenth and later centuries as 'modem' philosophers. Leibniz began his philosophical career more than 300 years ago, a fact that shapes fundamentally my attempt in the pages that follow to come to terms now with the texts that he left us. Leibniz's did not do philosophy in a way wholly congenial to twentieth century philosophical methodologies, especially those that have enjoyed some prominence in recent Anglo-American philosophy. Moreover, as we shall see, Leibniz is not a modem philosopher, when 'modem' is understood to mean making a sharp break with medieval philosophy. Indeed, I shall argue, scholars should discard such terms as 'modem' from historical philosophical scholarship, so that old texts can be allowed to remain old - to stand on their own in and from times now long past.

Analytic philosophy has been a dominant intellectual movement in the 20th century and a reflection of the cultural pre-eminence of scientism. In response to analytic philosophy's peculiar reticence (and inability) to discuss itself, this book provides its first comprehensive history and critique. The central element in the analytic conversation has been the Enlightenment Project: the appeal to an autonomous human reason, freed of any higher authority and channeling itself through science as its privileged tool. This centrality is demonstrated by systematically examining its presence and development in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology, language, psychology, social science, ethics, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy. This journey highlights the internal logical disintegration of that project. Post-modern relativism is its natural offspring and not a viable alternative. The Enlightenment Project's conception of physical science is defective; this defective conception of physical science renders the analytic conception of social science, philosophical psychology, and epistemology defective; and that defective conception of the human condition leads to defective conceptions of both moral and political philosophy, specifically the idea of social engineering or social technology. Throughout the book, an alternative conception of philosophy is presented as a way out of the abyss of analysis, an alternative that reconnects philosophy with the mainstream of Western civilization and initiates the process of providing a coherent cultural narrative. This book will be of particular interest to any sophisticated reader concerned about the lack of a coherent cultural narrative.

Solidarity as a phenomenon lies like an erratic block in the midst of the moral landscape of our age. Until now, the geologists familiar with this landscape - ethicists and moral theorists - have taken it for granted, have circumnavigated it! in any case, they have been incapable of moving it. In the present volume, scientists from diverse disciplines discuss and examine the concept of solidarity, its history, its scope and its limits.

As a philosopher, Stephen Erickson considers himself a messenger of sorts and the message he is delivering is an important and groundbreaking one. He convincingly argues that we are entering into a new historical moment, a period which will only be properly defined and named by those who come after us, as were the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Erickson predicts a failure and eventual breakdown of traditional values and institutions resulting in a dramatic change in our understanding of human life. This he illustrates with clear examples from contemporary political, economic and religious circumstances. To lessen the impact of this dramatic changeover, which will be initially experienced as upheaval and global anxiety, Erickson argues that we must do all we can to come into this new era, which he has called The Age of Thresholding, with a better understanding of our past and present. Only then can the message our future holds be properly received and understood. Many have asked why and when our century's values came into being, and why they have been sustained in the manner in which they have. These are legitimate historical questions, and I hope to supply some answers. But other questions should be directed toward our future. Over what threshold might we be crossing and what will have been ventured? What will have been gained, and what will be left behind? from The (Coming) Age of Thresholding

This argument in favour of subsidizing the arts offers a distinctly political rationale for government support: engaging the arts helps develop the intellectual faculties of judgement. By appealing to art's instrumental ability to educate democratic citizens, the book avoids the most common criticisms of subsidy, namely that it is elitist and paternalistic. For those who oppose subsidy or are undecided, the book maps arts subsidy onto the larger landscape of political liberalism. Yet, while using political liberalism as its point of departure, the book's positive argument for subsidy draws on numerous philosophical traditions, including continental philosophy and the philosophy of art.

Despite the modem recovery of virtue theory in ethics, conceptions of temperance remain largely unexamined. In this study I offer an examination ofcertain interpretive threads oftemperance as a virtue beginning in classical philosophy and moving through early to medieval Christian conceptions. I find contemporary notions oftemperance to be sorely lacking when compared and contrasted to these historical conceptions. Aristotelian and Thomistic accounts of temperance are particularly important to the normative statement of temperance I offer here. To fully understand temperance one must recognize its place among the moral virtues, in particular phronesis or practical judgment. Though I place temperance within practical judgment, this study stops short ofoffering a full account of virtue theory and how it mayor may not relate to other theories ofthe moral life. While contemporary views of temperance occasionally note its general relevance to the experience of emotion, I elaborate upon the work of temperance as an essential part of the effort to include emotion in the moral life. In present-day studies of the psychology of emotion, cognitive theories have reasserted the classical conception of emotion as consisting of both physiological and psychological elements ofhuman personhood. Temperance is the primary virtue in the moral agent's effort to appropriately include the entirety ofthe emotional experience in moral deliberation. I find it relevant to a moral response to both the physiological and psychological elements of emotion.

This book is a work of historical critical exegesis. It aims to establish the influence ofG.W.F. Hegel's Science of Logic (SL) on the Grundrisse of Karl Marx. I demonstrate that the Hegelian logic guided Marx's doctrinal development, and that the ordering of economic categories in the Grundrisse reflects the ordering ofthe logical categories in the SL. A historical critical exegesis can establish the influences on an author only in terms of probability. The exegesis can establish a particular influence with varying degrees of probability, but rarely with certitude. Thus, historical critical exegeses are limited in scope. This fact has advantages and disadvantages. Historical critical exegesis confines us to the particular texts under consideration and avoids the complexity often associated with other forms of textual exegesis, for example, structural exegesis. It must on occasion rely on such dubious evidence as phraseology. Moreover, when one text is allegedly found in another as a subtext, the exegesis focuses on the subtext prescinding from all other content. This narrow focus poses a danger, because such an exercise is naturally reductive. It can appear to reduce the entire work under consideration to the subtext. This particular danger is heightened when the work under consideration was not published by the author, but is a series of manuscripts-a kind of laboratory. Because my exegesis focuses on the subtext, the Grundrisse appears smoother and more complete than it actually is. These manuscripts are more complete than is sometimes supposed, but they are nevertheless manuscripts.

Positive Rights in a Republic of Talk will appeal to philosophers and social scientists interested in issues of rights and social justice, and to graduate students and journalists seeking a critical survey of the field. Innumerable recent books have addressed the issues of rights and social justice, but none combines the comprehensiveness, disinterestedness, and brevity found in this work. Positive Rights in a Republic of Talk: -is unique in its critical, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may approach; -is untainted with special pleading for specific philosophical schools or social policies; -is distinctive in its range, examining the views of classical as well as contemporary thinkers and trendy as well as more established approaches; -is relentless in its confrontation of the abstract with the concrete; -discusses positive rights in such contexts as health care, education, foreign aid, homelessness, welfare, and disaster relief policies; -is distinctive in its prose, which is vivid, engaging, clear, occasionally funny, and never pompous or engorged with jargon; -can be read and enjoyed by serious non-specialists as well as specialists.

Accounts of natural law moral philosophy and theology sought principles and precepts for morality, law, and other forms of social authority, whose prescriptive force was not dependent for validity on human decision, social influence, past tradition, or cultural convention, but through natural reason itself.This volume critically explores and assesses our contemporary culture wars in terms of: the possibility of natural law moral philosophy and theology to provide a unique, content-full, canonical morality; the character and nature of moral pluralism; the limits of justifiable national and international policy seeking to produce and preserve human happiness, social justice, and the common good; the ways in which morality, moral epistemology, and social political reform must be set within the broader context of an appropriately philosophically and theologically anchored anthropology. This work will be of interest to philosophers, theologians, bioethicists, ethicists and political scientists.

The Latin root of the English word culture ties together both worship and the tilling of the soil. In each case, the focus is the same: a rightly-directed culture produces either a bountiful harvest or falls short of the mark, materially or spiritually. This volume critically explores the nature and depth of our contemporary cultural crisis: its lack of traditional orientation and moral understanding. Prime among the issues at stake are the meaning and significance of birth, copulation, suffering, and death, expressed in debates regarding human embryo-experimentation and stem cell research, the character of moral and scientific norms, as well as more fundamentally, the character of an adequate epistemology for coming to appreciate the deep nature of reality and its normative implications. Given varying background ontological, epistemological, and axiological presuppositions, different moral positions and political objections will appear as not merely morally permissible but as socially and politically obligatory.

The present work has emerged as the result of several years' involvementin various multidisciplinary research projects which have been carried out within the - search Programme in Biomedical Ethics at Uppsala University, now the Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University. I am grateful to various colleagues who have taken part, whether brie?y or at length, in discussions of the concepts of privacy and integrity. Hearty thanks must go to Gert Helgesson, Ulrik von Essen, Par Segerdahland Richard Wessman who have read the initial version of the book and provideduseful comments. I am particularlyindebted to Par for taking the trouble to read the whole manuscript a second time. Arne Ohman and his - searchgroupatthe PsychologySectionin theDepartmentofClinical Neurosciences at Karolinska Institutet read an earlier version of Chapters 3 and 4. This provided a constructive and rewarding discussion which was of particular value to me since psychologydid not form part of my own professionaltraining. Sven Danielsson and the members of his research seminar in practical philosophy at Uppsala University read Chapters 5 and 6 and offered constructivecriticism.Their critical views helped me to try to express more clearly the aim of these chapters within the framework of the book as a whole. All the readers of the book or parts of it can certainly have reason to wish for further revisions or indeed for a different presentation of the problem of understanding the role of the agent in the private sphere.

This book examines the views of Hermann Helmholtz, Hermann Cohen and Gottlob Frege in reaction to the epistemic crises induced by rapid changes in 19th century scientific practice. Besides addressing longstanding interpretive puzzles of interest to Frege scholars, the book extracts precepts for rationally responding to paradigm shifts in scientific and religious traditions. Cohen’s work in particular is held up as an example of wisely navigating epistemic and hermeneutical crises in science and religion. The book will appeal to philosophers and historians of science or religion, especially to those concerned with the epistemic challenges posed by Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

This book examines the views of Hermann Helmholtz, Hermann Cohen and Gottlob Frege in reaction to the epistemic crises induced by rapid changes in 19th century scientific practice. Besides addressing longstanding interpretive puzzles of interest to Frege scholars, the book extracts precepts for rationally responding to paradigm shifts in scientific and religious traditions. Cohen’s work in particular is held up as an example of wisely navigating epistemic and hermeneutical crises in science and religion. The book will appeal to philosophers and historians of science or religion, especially to those concerned with the epistemic challenges posed by Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

This book provides cross-cultural ethical exploration of sex robots and their social impact. What are the implications of sex robots and related technological innovations for society and culture? How should we evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men or children? Critics argue that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons and a social degradation that will increase sexual violence, objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body images, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, and pass on sexually transmitted disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human desire. They see sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography, as providing autonomy affirming companionship for the lonely and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. Some appreciate sex robots as a social evil, others as a positive good, and still others as a harmless pastime. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will have significant implications for society and the future of human relations. This book is of great interest to researchers in bioethics, human sexual behavior, AI ethics, and philosophy of sex.

This book provides cross-cultural ethical exploration of sex robots and their social impact. What are the implications of sex robots and related technological innovations for society and culture? How should we evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men or children? Critics argue that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons and a social degradation that will increase sexual violence, objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body images, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, and pass on sexually transmitted disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human desire. They see sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography, as providing autonomy affirming companionship for the lonely and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. Some appreciate sex robots as a social evil, others as a positive good, and still others as a harmless pastime. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will have significant implications for society and the future of human relations. This book is of great interest to researchers in bioethics, human sexual behavior, AI ethics, and philosophy of sex.

This book explores an undeveloped area in postmodern thought:  organizational ethics.  Ethical debates and analyses usually focus on a particular act or action, an actor, and/or how a secular society should address any of those particular persons or events. In the Post Modern age, ethical decisions and policies are characterized by moral and cultural pluralism.  However, there is a second factor that complicates ethical and policy decisions even further.  This book argues that in the postmodern age ethical decisions often need to be understood as part of the decision making of organizations and bureaucracies.  Organizational decisions often have direct bearing on the choices made by individuals.  Two areas that exemplify postmodern issue are the areas of health care and education.  For example the decision making of Admissions Officers in American higher education, are influenced by decisions that have been made by the university about the size of the class and the diversity of the class.  Health Care organizations make policy decisions that affect every aspect of a patient’s care from admission to treatment and the types of care that are or are not offered. Both education and health care are the object of the significant investment of resources, both areas are value laden in postmodern, pluralistic societies, and yet we do not have a comprehensive method to understand them or evaluate them. This book is of interest to bioethicists, physicians, nurses, health care policy students, educational policy experts, students and government regulators.

This book explores an undeveloped area in postmodern thought:  organizational ethics.  Ethical debates and analyses usually focus on a particular act or action, an actor, and/or how a secular society should address any of those particular persons or events. In the Post Modern age, ethical decisions and policies are characterized by moral and cultural pluralism.  However, there is a second factor that complicates ethical and policy decisions even further.  This book argues that in the postmodern age ethical decisions often need to be understood as part of the decision making of organizations and bureaucracies.  Organizational decisions often have direct bearing on the choices made by individuals.  Two areas that exemplify postmodern issue are the areas of health care and education.  For example the decision making of Admissions Officers in American higher education, are influenced by decisions that have been made by the university about the size of the class and the diversity of the class.  Health Care organizations make policy decisions that affect every aspect of a patient’s care from admission to treatment and the types of care that are or are not offered. Both education and health care are the object of the significant investment of resources, both areas are value laden in postmodern, pluralistic societies, and yet we do not have a comprehensive method to understand them or evaluate them. This book is of interest to bioethicists, physicians, nurses, health care policy students, educational policy experts, students and government regulators.

This book offers a timely intervention in the discourses around transhumanism, posthumanism, and phenomenology, aspiring to inaugurate a turning in Western thought in the direction of a more phenomenologically oriented consideration of what it means to be human and of what it might mean to be “posthuman.” It gathers important contributions from both established and new scholarly voices to each of the literatures on phenomenology, humanism, and posthumanism, as well as to the much scantier literature on phenomenology and posthumanism.The book treats “posthumanism(s)” primarily in terms of transhumanism and critical posthumanism but also includes consideration of alternative posthumanisms either extant or conceivable, including forms of “phenomenological posthumanism.” By “phenomenology” is primarily meant the tradition of transcendental methodology forged by Edmund Husserl and further developed by such figures as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Emmanuel Levinas, among others. In relation to each of the movements of phenomenology, humanism(s), and posthumanism(s), the chapters in this volume propose new understandings of long-discussed topics, offer alternatives to standard accounts, introduce and explicate neglected figures and movements, provide case studies of exemplary issues, and more.  The book is divided into four main parts: “Part I: Humanism(s),” “Part II: Posthumanism(s),” “Part III: Transhumanism,” and “Part IV: Humans, Nonhumans, and Posthumans.”

This book offers a new discourse-theoretical framework for understanding the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of our relationship to nature by drawing on the tradition of Critical Theory. It traces an overlooked thread in the works of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Adorno—one that shows how nonhuman beings can make normative claims on us not through language, but through visible, audible, and tactile forms of expression. By recovering this thread, this text proposes an alternative approach to recognition and agency that does not exclusively rely on linguistic mediation. In doing so, it links aesthetics and ethics in an original way, offering an important contribution to environmental political theory. The book also offers a critical response to the limitations of current communicative models—particularly those shaped by the legacy of Habermas and argues for a broader conception of communication that includes nonhuman forms of expression. Rather than treating nature as a system to be described or a resource to be managed, it explores how natural beings appear to us as expressive presences—capable of evoking care, respect, and responsibility. It is intended for scholars and graduate students in political theory, philosophy, Critical Theory, and environmental humanities. Individual chapters are suitable for advanced seminars on the philosophical foundations of ecological thought and discourse ethics.

This monograph takes a closer look at the work of Cioran in order to establish a new and revised definition of antihumanism. It has three objectives. Firstly, it establishes a new concept of antihumanism separate from that proposed by Michel Foucault. Secondly, it analyzes the mirroring of Cioran’s philosophical theory against 20th century authors such as Osamu Dazai, Thomas Bernhard, and Michel Houellebecq. Finally, Cioran’s ideas are compared to modern and contemporary Romanian poets such as Bacovia, Baconsky, Caraion, and Vlad. This text appeals to students and researchers working in and across philosophy, literature, poetry, psychology and pop culture.

Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely recognized, let alone appreciated and understood, is the relationship between his concern with belief formation and his concern with virtue. In fact, few seem to realize that Descartes regards doxastic errors as moral errors and as sins both because such errors are intrinsically vicious and because they entail notably deleterious social consequences.Reforming the Art of Living seeks to rectify this rather common oversight in two ways. First, it aims to elucidate the nature of Descartes’s account of virtuous belief formation. Second, it aims both (i) to illuminate the social significance of Descartes’s philosophical program as it relates to the understanding and practice not of science, but of religion and (ii) to develop a kind of Leibnizian critique of this aspect of his program. More specifically, it aims to show that Descartes’s project is “dangerous,” insofar as it is subversive not only of traditional Christianity but also of other traditional forms of religion, both in theory and in practice.

Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely recognized, let alone appreciated and understood, is the relationship between his concern with belief formation and his concern with virtue. In fact, few seem to realize that Descartes regards doxastic errors as moral errors and as sins both because such errors are intrinsically vicious and because they entail notably deleterious social consequences.Reforming the Art of Living seeks to rectify this rather common oversight in two ways. First, it aims to elucidate the nature of Descartes’s account of virtuous belief formation. Second, it aims both (i) to illuminate the social significance of Descartes’s philosophical program as it relates to the understanding and practice not of science, but of religion and (ii) to develop a kind of Leibnizian critique of this aspect of his program. More specifically, it aims to show that Descartes’s project is “dangerous,” insofar as it is subversive not only of traditional Christianity but also of other traditional forms of religion, both in theory and in practice.

This book is a collection of specifically commissioned articles on the key continental European philosophical movements since 1914. It shows how each of these bodies of thought has been shaped by their responses to the horrors set in train by World War I, and considers whether we are yet ‘post-post-war’. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914,set in chain a series of crises and re-configurations, which have continued to shape the world for a century: industrialized slaughter, the end of colonialism and European empires, the rise of the USA, economic crises, fascism, Soviet Marxism, the gulags and the Shoah.  Nearly all of the major movements in European thinking (phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Hegelianism, Marxism, political theology, critical theory and neoliberalism) were forged in, or shaped by, attempts to come to terms with the global trauma of the World Wars. This is the first book to describe the development of these movements after World War I, andas such promises to be of interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy around the world.

This book represents a series of incursions or philosophical forays between realms of Byzantine and Russian thought and territory long claimed by Western philosophy and theology. Beginning with thoughts inevitably rooted in the West, it seeks to penetrate as deeply as possible into Byzantine and Russian philosophical and spiritual landscapes, and to return with fresh insights. These are also incursions that move back and forth between the visible and the invisible realms, in the traditions of Plato and his successors as well as the great monastics of Eastern Christianity. Foltz argues from various perspectives that the problematic relation between transcendence and immanence finds its answer in the philosophical and theological legacy of Eastern Christian thought, which has always sought to bring together strands tenaciously held separate in the West. This book transports contemporary readers to an ancient conceptual landscape as it expertly handles both Western and Byzantine ideaswith a familiarity unusual to contemporary scholars. It is essential reading for all those wishing to engage the heart of Byzantine thought and employ its lessons to address the problems which plague Western philosophy and culture.

Western philosophy has long nurtured the hope to resolve moral controversies through reason; thereby to secure moral direction and human meaning without the need for a defining encounter with God or the transcendent. The expectation is for a moral rationality that is universal and able adequately to frame and guide the moral life. Moral and cultural unity was sought though philosophical reflection on human nature and the basic goods of a properly nurtured and virtuous life—that is, through appeal to what has come to be called the natural law.The natural law addresses permissible moral choice through objective understandings of human nature and human goods. Persons are obligated to act in ways that are compatible with creating and integrating the basic human goods into their lives and the lives of others. Such goods provide the basis for practical reasoning about virtuous choices and immediate reasons for action. The goal is the making of rational choices in the pursuit of a virtuous, flourishing, human life. Natural law theorists have argued extensively against human cloning, abortion, and same-gender marriage.Yet, whose assumptions regarding human nature should guide our understanding of the basic goods that mark the full flourishing human life? Moreover, why should nature, even human nature, be thought of as a moral boundary beyond which one must not trespass? Persons may wish actively to direct human evolution, utilizing the tools of both imagination and biotechnology. Perhaps nature is simply a challenge to be addressed, overcome, and set aside.This volume is a critical exploration of natural law theory.

Contrasting with conventional Neo-Confucian attempts to recast the Confucian heritage in light of modern Western values, this book offers a Reconstructionist Confucian project to reclaim Confucian resources to meet contemporary moral and public policy challenges. Ruiping Fan argues that popular accounts of human goods and social justice within the dominant individualist culture of the West are too insubstantial to direct a life of virtue and a proper structure of society. Instead, he demonstrates that the moral insights of Confucian thought are precisely those needed to fill the moral vacuum developing in post-communist China and to address similar problems in the West. The book has a depth of reflection on the Confucian tradition through a comparative philosophical strategy and a breadth of contemporary issues addressed unrivaled by any other work on these topics. It is the first in English to explore not only the endeavor to revive Confucianism in contemporary China, but also brings such an endeavor to bear upon the important ethical, social, and political difficulties being faced in 21st century China. The book should be of interest to any philosopher working in application of traditional Chinese philosophy to contemporary issues as well as any reader interested in comparative cultural and ethical studies.

In this study of Hegel's philosophy, Brinkmann undertakes to defend Hegel's claim to objective knowledge by bringing out the transcendental strategy underlying Hegel's argument in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Logic. Hegel's metaphysical commitments are shown to become moot through this transcendental reading. Starting with a survey of current debates about the possibility of objective knowledge, the book next turns to the original formulation of the transcendental argument in favor of a priori knowledge in Kant's First Critique. Through a close reading of Kant's Transcendental Deduction and Hegel's critique of it, Brinkmann tries to show that Hegel develops an immanent critique of Kant's position that informs his reformulation of the transcendental project in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit and the formulation of the position of 'objective thought' in the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Brinkmann takes the reader through the strategic junctures of the argument of the Phenomenology that establishes the position of objective thinking with which the Logic begins. A critical examination of the Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy shows that Hegel's metaphysical doctrine of the self-externalization of spirit need not compromise the ontological project of the Logic and thus does not burden the position of objective thought with pre-critical metaphysical claims.Brinkmann's book is a remarkable achievement. He has given us what may be the definitive version of the transcendental, categorial interpretation of Hegel. He does this in a clear approachable style punctuated with a dry wit, and he fearlessly takes on the arguments and texts that are the most problematic for this interpretation. Throughout the book, he situates Hegel firmly in his own context and that of contemporary discussion." -Terry P. Pinkard, University Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C, USA"Klaus Brinkmann’s important Hegel study reads the Phenomenology and the Logic as aspects of a single sustained effort, in turning from categories to concepts, to carry Kant’s Copernican turn beyond the critical philosophy in what constitutes a major challenge to contemporary Cartesianism."- Tom Rockmore, McAnulty College Distinguished Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA"In this compelling reconstruction of the theme of objective thought, Klaus Brinkmann takes the reader through Hegel’s dialectic with exceptional philosophical acumen.... Many aspects of this book are striking: the complete mastery of the central tenets of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophy, the admirable clarity in treating obscure texts and very difficult problems, and how Brinkmann uses his expertise for a discussion of the problems of truth, objectivity and normativity relevant to the contemporary philosophical debate. This will prove to be a very important book, one that every serious student of Kant and Hegel will have to read."- Alfredo Ferrarin, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy