Studies in Historical Philosophy – serie

Dustin Peone argues that memory is the foundation of philosophical thought. This may seem strange to the contemporary reader, but it is something that philosophers themselves have known since before Socrates. Peone advocates a doctrine of “memory as philosophy” that ties philosophical recollection back to the wisdom of the Muses, daughters of Memory, who sing of “what was, is, and shall be.” Part One draws on the work of philosophers from Cicero to Vico to Bergson to articulate the meaning and significance of memory. Peone understands memory not merely in its psychological sense, but as the key to metaphysical and moral thinking. Part Two takes up the philosophical history of memory. Peone gives an overview of its role as both a speculative and technical instrument from ancient Greece through Renaissance Europe. Then with the rise of modernity and the critical philosophy of Descartes, the memory tradition falls into disrepute. Why did this happen? Was it accidental? Is a philosophical system grounded in memory possible after Descartes? In the final chapters, Montaigne and Hegel are analyzed as practitioners of “memory as philosophy” in the modern world.

Theories about the nature and function of philosophical imagination depend on our understanding of what kind of universe we inhabit. Some theories are compelling if the universe is meaningful as a whole, but they make no sense if it is not. Raymond C. Barfield discusses conditions that would be necessary if the universe is meaningful as a whole, and then develops a theory of philosophical imagination in light of that starting place. The theory moves toward the conclusion that if the universe is meaningful as a whole, the concept of the analogia entis, the analogy of being, illuminates philosophical imagination in a way that changes our understanding of its function and potential, along with the value of its discoveries through the things it creates.

Vanessa Freerks analyzes how Baudrillard re-actualizes Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, investigating how themes and approaches in Baudrillard’s Consumer Society, Simulacra and Simulations and Symbolic Exchange and Death resonate with Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. This book fills a gap in the limited literature available on the relation between Baudrillard’s thought to that of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Baudrillard with Nietzsche and Heidegger: A Contrastive Analysis is essential reading for students and scholars of continental philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory.

In a review of the work of Karl Jaspers composed several years before the publication of his book Being and Time, Martin Heidegger suggested that the philosophical orientations of his period had made a wrong turn and skirted by the fundamental path of thought. He suggested that instead of taking up a heritage of original questions, his contemporaries had become preoccupied with secondary issues, accepting as fundamental what was in fact only incidental. In the years that followed, Heidegger’s promise to reorient philosophy in terms of the Seinsfrage, the question of Being, exercised a well-known influence on successive generations of thinkers on a global scale. The present book delves into the philosophical sources of this influence and raises the question whether Heidegger indeed made good on the promise to reveal for thought what is truly fundamental. In proposing this investigation, the author assumes that it is not sufficient to take Heidegger at his word, but that it is necessary to scrutinize what is posited as fundamental in light of its broader implications–above all for ethico-political judgment and for historical reflection. After addressing this question in the first part of the book, the second part examines the significance of Heidegger's reorientation of philosophy through the prism of its critical reception in the thought of Hannah Arendt, Ernst Cassirer, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricœur.

Philosophical Ideas: A Historical Study invites the reader to consider central ideas from Plato, Hegel, Vico, and Cassirer from points of view that have not been fully articulated in the most frequently encountered interpretations of their works. It is an examination of the ideas of poetics, dialectics, science, and symbol as they function in their works with focus on the problem of knowledge as present in each of them. The history of philosophy, approached in this way, is a treasure house of ideas that constitutes the subject matter of the contemplative life.

The Orphic I: A Philosophical Approach to Musical Collaboration starts from the premise that music is a realm of intersubjective human experience. Drawing on ideas common to both hermeneutic and pragmatic aesthetics, it examines forms of collaboration involving those who create, perform, and listen to music. A new interpretation of the Orpheus myth suggests a model for thinking about creative interactions where composer and performer adopt each other’s perspectives. This imaginative transfer of self—the Orphic I—has significant implications, both for the listener’s perception of authenticity in musical performance, and for the interactions of performers within a musical ensemble. Empathy and entrainment emerge as seminal animating forces in group music-making, providing a non-verbal basis for ethical decision-making among group members. The originality of The Orphic I is due in part to its truly unique, first-person illustrations of the theoretical theses. But Dean’s real innovation is in the specificity of his philosophical approach. His book is a clear example of the applicability of philosophical knowledge, of how ideas that too often remain solely in the realm of academic discourse can actually “work” in the discussion of cultural phenomena. —Dr Pravda Spasova,Professor of Philosophy, National Art Academy, Sofia

The philosophic spirit has persisted as part of the human spirit and human culture for over twenty-five centuries. This book presents examples of this spirit from its beginnings in Greek thought through the modern age. Among these examples are an account of Empedocles jumping into the volcano of Mt. Etna to join the gods, Plato’s quarrel with the poets, St. Anselm’s famous argument for the existence of God, Descartes’s Archimedean proof of his own existence, and Kant’s description of the perfect island of the Understanding. Attention is also given to Cassirer’s concept of symbolic forms and Whitehead’s theory of actual entities. The volume concludes with a discussion, based on the thought of Giambattista Vico, of a way to approach philosophy through a balance between the Ancient and the Moderns.

The image of the medieval and Renaissance demon attracts the interest of historians, philosophers, anthropologists, and many other scholars because of its huge impact on significant social and political phenomena and because of its relation to many philosophical and intellectual movements. Nevertheless, such researches are focused predominantly on the Western evil spirit. Its Byzantine ‘colleague’, on the other hand, has been somehow neglected, even though Byzantinology is at least a century-old field of research. This book attempts to shed light on a subject which has not been previously in the focus of such exhaustive research. The image of the demon will be presented in a very different and much more obscure epoque, for which the main sources are numerous, but not so well-known. The so-called Byzantine ‘Dark centuries’ are marked by political and social instability and theological crises. Nevertheless, during these troubled centuries one literary genre flourished. The Lives of the Saints, unlike the works of the 10th century humanists and encyclopedists, do not shine with the archaic light of the Hermogenean style or with the well-built reasoning of Procopius; they are vivid reflections of the real life, of the beliefs and the superstitions of ordinary people. The Evil and the demons are constantly present in this world and they deserve their own history and ‘archaeology’ “The combination of precision, accuracy, and stylistic elegance makes this this serious and erudite book both profound and pleasant reading.” —Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Professor of Philosophy, University of Sofia