Towards A Transformation Of Philosophy

In his preface to the English edition, Apel (identified with critical theory) explains that the title of his two-volume German collection connotes both a reconstruction of the process of hermeneutic transformation in recent philosophy and the author's semiotical transformation of transcendental logic. The emphasis here is on the latter with discussions of the a priori nature of language per Wittgenstein, Peirce, and Chomsky, and its implications for a rational foundation for ethics in modern science. Includes a new foreword. Name index only. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Traditionally, religious belief has in the philosophy of religion been understood along more or less epistemological lines. Love of a God of Love develops another understanding of belief, where the moral concept of love is central. In this context, what is distinctive about the concept of love is that it is both the "what" and the "how" of belief: for the one who loves a God of love, the concept of love characterizes both the content side and the act side of the belief. In that respect, this understanding of religious belief makes it possible to avoid certain formalist difficulties, arising when the "what" and the "how" of belief are sharply distinguished.

After Philosophy provides an excellent framework for understanding the most important strains of current philosophical work in North America, England, France, and Germany. The selections from the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approaches being pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarify this proliferation of views and to spell out today's basic options for doing, or not doing, philosophy today. With a general introduction delineating what is in dispute between the different parties to the end-of-philosophy debates, brief introductions to the thought of each author, and suggestions for further reading following each selection, After Philosophy is ideally suited for use in any course that includes an overview of the bewildering variety of contemporary approaches to philosophy.The major sections and contributors are: I. The End of Philosophy. Richard Rorty Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida. II. The Transformation of Philosophy: Systematic Proposals. Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas. III. The Transformation of Philosophy: Hermeneutics, Narrative, Rhetoric. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair Maclntyre, Hans Blumenberg, Charles Taylor.Kenneth Baynes is currently doing postgraduate research at the University of Frankfurt. James Bohman lectures in philosophy at Boston University, and Thomas McCarthy is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and the editor of the MIT Press series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.

Leading contemporary philosopher Johann Michel offers an innovative reflection on the human being. The book presents an interdisciplinary study that engages philosophy, sociology and anthropology, offering a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of interpretation.

This book, first published in 2001, provides a truly general account of Francis Bacon as a philosopher.

This volume offers one of the first systematic analyses of the rise of modern social science. Contrary to the standard accounts of various social science disciplines, the essays in this volume demonstrate that modern social science actually emerged during the critical period between 1750 and 1850. It is shown that the social sciences were a crucial element in the conceptual and epistemic revolution, which parallelled and partly underpinned the political and economic transformations of the modern world. From a consistently comparative perspective, a group of internationally leading scholars takes up fundamental issues such as the role of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the shaping of the social sciences, the changing relationships between political theory and moral discourse, the profound transformation of philosophy, and the constitution of political economy and statistics.

The Platonic Form is often presented as an instrument of explanation and as a cause in ontology, epistemology, and ethics. As such, it is usually approached from the perspective of its relations to the particulars of the sensible world. Frederic Schroeder contends that Plotinus argues for the sovereignty of the Platonic Form both as a ground of being and as an intrinsically valuable object of intellective and spiritual vision. These two aspects coalesce in the thought of Plotinus, for whom the Form is, apart from its philosophical uses, an object of enjoyment. Schroeder argues also that the particular must be seen as having an intrinsic character, distinct from its relationship to the Form or to other particulars. The particular thus becomes a window on the world of Form. In the course of his exploration of the sovereignty of Form, Schroeder examines the themes of illumination, silence, language, and love. He undertakes an immanent interpretation of the Plotinian text, showing how Plotinian vocabulary displays intricate internal connections and genetic relationships. Schroeder shows that Plotinus' thought is not susceptible to organization into a closed, linear synthesis but has its own order, centred on the conviction that Form is of intrinsic value and that it is only from the perspective of this intrinsic value that we can understand its uses and significance in explanation and causation. Rather than trying to construct such a synthesis, Schroeder, starting from this basic insight into Plotinus' understanding of the Platonic Form, leads the reader to a greater understanding of Plotinus' manner of philosophizing.