100 Years Of European Philosophy Since The Great War

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, and as such promises to be of interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy around the world.

This book examines the origins, presence, and implications of scientistic thinking in psychology. Scientism embodies the claim that only knowledge attained by means of natural scientific methods counts as valid and valuable. This perspective increasingly dominates thinking and practice in psychology and is seldom acknowledged as anything other than standard scientific practice. This book seeks to make this intellectual movement explicit and to detail the very real limits in both role and reach of science in psychology. The critical chapters in this volume present an alternative perspective to the scholarly mainstreams of the discipline and will be of value to scholars and students interested in the scientific status and the philosophical bases of psychology as a discipline.

A powerful exploration of how the First World War - 'the war to end all wars' - transformed German philosophy.

This book studies how the relationship between philosophy, morality, politics, and science was conceived in the Vienna Circle and how this group of philosophers tried to position science as an antidote to totalitarianism and irrationalism. This leads to investigation of the still understudied views of the Vienna Circle on moral philosophy, meta-ethics, and the relationship between philosophy of science and politics. Including papers from an international group of scholars, The Socio-ethical Dimension of Knowledge: The Mission of Logical Empiricism addresses these topics and makes them available to scholars in the field of history of philosophy of science.

This is the first book in English to lay out the philosophical ethics and philosophy of law of Hermann Cohen, one of the leading figures in both Neo-Kantian and Jewish philosophy.

A critical and multifaceted analysis of the problems created by the politics and communicated representation of contemporary warfare.

Theologian. Conspirator. Martyr. Saint. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was killed in the waning days of World War II, having been implicated in the July 20th assassination attempt on Hitler. Since his death, Bonhoeffer’s life and writings have inspired contradictory responses. He is often seen as a model for Christian pacifist resistance, and more recently for violent direct political action. Bonhoeffer’s name has been invoked by violent anti-abortion protestors as well as political leaders calling for support on a ‘war on terror’ in the aftermath of 9/11. Petra Brown critically analyses Bonhoeffer’s writing preceding and during his conspiracy involvement, particularly his recurring concept of the ‘extraordinary.’ Brown examines this idea in light of ‘the state of exception,’ a concept coined by the one-time Nazi jurist and political theorist, Carl Schmitt. She also draws on the existentialist philosopher Sören Kierkegaard to consider what happens when discipleship is understood as obedience to a divine command. This book aims to complicate an unreflective admiration of Bonhoeffer’s decision for conspiracy, and draws attention to the potentially dangerous implications of his emerging political theology.

The question of the relation of Martin Heidegger’s thought to politics has been a subject of controversy since the 1930s, when he became an advocate of the National Socialist regime in Germany. This volume addresses this question in a unique format, as a dialogue among leading Heidegger scholars. That dialogue begins with an exchange between Gregory Fried and Emmanuel Faye about Faye’s contention that Heidegger’s work represents nothing short of “the introduction of Nazism into philosophy.” At stake are issues such as what Heidegger himself understood Nazism to be, whether a thinker’s life and actions define the meaning of his work, the enduring threat of fascism, and the nature of rationality and philosophy itself. Richard Polt, Matthew Sharpe, Dieter Thomä, William Altman, and Sidonie Kellerer join the conversation, with responses from Fried and Faye.