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H.A. Prichard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._A._Prichard

Harold Arthur Prichard (30 October 1871 – 29 December 1947) was an English philosopher. He was born in London in 1871, the eldest child of Walter Stennett Prichard (a solicitor) and his wife Lucy. Harold Prichard was a scholar of Clifton College from where he won a scholarship to New College, Oxford, to study mathematics. But after taking first-class honours in mathematical moderations (preliminary examinations) in 1891, he studied Greats (ancient history and philosophy) taking first-class honours in 1894. He also played tennis for Oxford against Cambridge. On leaving Oxford he spent a brief period working for a firm of solicitors in London, before returning to Oxford where he spent the rest of his life, first as Fellow of Hertford College (1895–98) and then of Trinity College (1898–1924). He took early retirement from Trinity in 1924 on grounds of ill health, but recovered and was elected White's Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1928 and became a fellow of Corpus Christi College. He retired in 1937. == Philosophical work == Prichard gave an influential defence of ethical intuitionism in his "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" (1912), wherein he contended that moral philosophy rested chiefly on the desire to provide arguments, starting from non-normative premises, for the principles of obligation that we pre-philosophically accept, such as the principle that one ought to keep one's promises or that one ought not steal. This is a mistake, he argued, both because it is impossible to derive any statement about what one ought to do from statements not concerning obligation (even statements about what is good), and because there is no need to do so since common sense principles of moral obligation are self-evident. The essay laid a groundwork for ethical intuitionism and provided inspiration for some of the most influential moral philosophers, such as John Rawls. === Criticism of Utilitarianism === Prichard attacks Utilitarianism as not being capable of forming obligation. He states that one cannot justify an obligation by pointing to the consequences of the obligated action because pointing to the consequences only shows that the action is desirable or advisable, not that it is obligatory. In other words, he claims that, while Utilitarianism may encourage people to do actions which a moral person would do, it cannot create a moral obligation to do those actions. === Deriving moral obligation === H. A. Prichard is an ethical intuitionist, meaning he believed that it is through our moral intuitions that we come to know right and wrong. Further, while he believes that moral obligations are justified by reasons, he does not believe that the reasons are external to the obligation itself. For instance, if a person is asked why he ought not torture chipmunks, the only satisfying answer that could be given is that he ought not torture chipmunks.Prichard, along with other intuitionists, adopts a foundationalist approach to morality. Foundationalism is a theory of epistemology which states that there are certain fundamental principles which are the basis for all other knowledge. In the case of ethics, foundationalists hold that certain fundamental moral rules are their own justification. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong explains: The deepest challenge in moral epistemology, as in general epistemology, is raised by a skeptical regress argument: Someone is justified in believing something only if the believer has a reason that is expressible in an inference with premises that the believer is already justified in believing. This requires a chain of inferences that must continue infinitely, close into a circle, or stop arbitrarily. Academic skeptics reject all three options and conclude that there is no way for anyone to be justified in believing anything. The same regress arises for moral beliefs . . . The simplest way to stop this regress is simply to stop. If a believer can work back to a premise that the believer is justified in believing without being able to infer that premise from anything else, then there is no new premise to justify, so the regress goes no further. That is how foundationalists stop the regress in general epistemology. Moral intuitionists apply foundationalism to moral beliefs as a way to stop the skeptical regress regarding moral beliefs. Therefore, Prichard concludes that just as observation of other people necessitates that other people exist, the observation of a moral obligation necessitates that the obligation exists. Prichard finishes his essay by answering a few obvious problems. Most notably, he explains how people should guarantee the accuracy of their moral intuitions. Clearly, observations can be misleading. For instance, if someone sees a pencil in water, he may conclude that the object in the water is bent. However, when he pulls the pencil from the water, he sees that it is straight. The same can occur with moral intuition. If one begins to doubt one's intuition, one should try to imagine oneself in the moral dilemma related to the decision. If the intuition persists, then the intuition is accurate. Prichard further supports these claims by pointing out how it is illegitimate to doubt previously believed moral intuitions: With these considerations in mind, consider the parallel which, as it seems to me, is presented though with certain differences by Moral Philosophy. The sense that we ought to do certain things arises in our unreflective consciousness, being an activity of moral thinking occasioned by the various situations in which we find ourselves. At this stage our attitude to these obligations is one of unquestioning confidence. But inevitably the appreciation of the degree to which the execution of these obligations is contrary to our interest raises the doubt whether after all these obligations are, really obligatory, i.e., whether our sense that we ought not to do certain things is not illusion. We then want to have it proved to us that we ought to do so, i.e., to be convinced of this by a process which, as an argument, is different in kind from our original and unreflective appreciation of it. This demand IS, as I have argued, illegitimate. Hence in the first place, if, as is almost universally the case, by Moral Philosophy is meant the knowledge which would satisfy this demand, there is no such knowledge, and all attempts to attain it are doomed to failure because they rest on a mistake, the mistake of supposing the possibility of proving what can only be apprehended directly by an act of moral thinking. == Writings == Kant's Theory of Knowledge (1909) "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" Mind 21 (1912): 21–37. Reprinted in Moral Obligation. Moral Obligation (London, 1949; 1968) Knowledge and Perception, Essays and Lectures (London, 1950) == Private life == Prichard married in 1899 to a lecturer Mabel Henrietta Ross who had been born in India in 1875. She helped form St Anne's College and lived until 1965. == Notes == == References == Jim McAdam, "Introduction", Moral Writings by H.A. Prichard, (Volume 3 of British moral philosophers), Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-925019-7, pp.xiv–xv. William J. O'Brien, "H.A. Prichard's Moral Epistemology" Doctoral Dissertation, University of Iowa, 1988. H.H. Price, "Harold Arthur Prichard", Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXIII, 1947. == External links == Reflections on Harold Prichard, paper about Prichard's theory of ethics. Works by Harold Arthur Prichard at Project Gutenberg Works by or about H. A. Prichard at Internet Archive

Bertrand Russell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic (see Logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".Russell was a pacifist who championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I, but also saw the war against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany as a necessary "lesser of two evils". In the wake of World War II, he welcomed American global hegemony in favour of either Soviet hegemony or no (or ineffective) world leadership, even if it were to come at the cost of using their nuclear weapons. He would later criticise Stalinist totalitarianism, condemn the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War and become an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought". He was also the recipient of the De Morgan Medal (1932), Sylvester Medal (1934), Kalinga Prize (1957), and Jerusalem Prize (1963). == Biography == === Early life and background === Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, United Kingdom, on 18 May 1872, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy. His parents, Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. Lord Amberley was a deist, and even asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather. Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russell's life. His paternal grandfather, Lord John Russell, later 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878), had twice been prime minister in the 1840s and 1860s. A member of Parliament since the early 1810s, he met with Napoleon Bonaparte in Elba. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty (see: Duke of Bedford). They established themselves as one of the leading Whig families and participated in every great political event from the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536–1540 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–1689 and the Great Reform Act in 1832.Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. Russell often feared the ridicule of his maternal grandmother, one of the campaigners for education of women. === Childhood and adolescence === Russell had two siblings: brother Frank (nearly seven years older than Bertrand), and sister Rachel (four years older). In June 1874, Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis after a long period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents, who lived at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. His grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth.The Countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas (accepting Darwinism and supporting Irish Home Rule), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life. Her favourite Bible verse, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil", became his motto. The atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression and formality; Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings. Russell's adolescence was lonely and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests in "nature and books and (later) mathematics saved me from complete despondency;" only his wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide. He was educated at home by a series of tutors. When Russell was eleven years old, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which he described in his autobiography as "one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love".During these formative years he also discovered the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Russell wrote: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much sympathy." Russell claimed that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, which he found unconvincing. At this age, he came to the conclusion that there is no free will and, two years later, that there is no life after death. Finally, at the age of 18, after reading Mill's Autobiography, he abandoned the "First Cause" argument and became an atheist.He travelled to the continent in 1890 with an American friend, Edward FitzGerald, and with FitzGerald's family he visited the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and climbed the Eiffel Tower soon after it was completed. === University and first marriage === Russell won a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and began his studies there in 1890, taking as coach Robert Rumsey Webb. He became acquainted with the younger George Edward Moore and came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead, who recommended him to the Cambridge Apostles. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy, graduating as seventh Wrangler in the former in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895.Russell was 17 years old in the summer of 1889 when he met the family of Alys Pearsall Smith, an American Quaker five years older, who was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. He became a friend of the Pearsall Smith family. They knew him primarily as "Lord John's grandson" and enjoyed showing him off.He soon fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, and contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while cycling, that he no longer loved her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he did not. Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. A lengthy period of separation began in 1911 with Russell's affair with Lady Ottoline Morrell, and he and Alys finally divorced in 1921 to enable Russell to remarry.During his years of separation from Alys, Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Morrell and the actress Lady Constance Malleson. Some have suggested that at this point he had an affair with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the English governess and writer, and first wife of T. S. Eliot. === Early career === Russell began his published work in 1896 with German Social Democracy, a study in politics that was an early indication of a lifelong interest in political and social theory. In 1896 he taught German social democracy at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.He now started an intensive study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity. In 1897, he wrote An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (submitted at the Fellowship Examination of Trinity College) which discussed the Cayley–Klein metrics used for non-Euclidean geometry. He attended the First International Congress of Philosophy in Paris in 1900 where he met Giuseppe Peano and Alessandro Padoa. The Italians had responded to Georg Cantor, making a science of set theory; they gave Russell their literature including the Formulario mathematico. Russell was impressed by the precision of Peano's arguments at the Congress, read the literature upon returning to England, and came upon Russell's paradox. In 1903 he published The Principles of Mathematics, a work on foundations of mathematics. It advanced a thesis of logicism, that mathematics and logic are one and the same.At the age of 29, in February 1901, Russell underwent what he called a "sort of mystic illumination", after witnessing Whitehead's wife's acute suffering in an angina attack. "I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty... and with a desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make human life endurable", Russell would later recall. "At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person."In 1905, he wrote the essay "On Denoting", which was published in the philosophical journal Mind. Russell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1908. The three-volume Principia Mathematica, written with Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. This, along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, soon made Russell world-famous in his field. In 1910, he became a University of Cambridge lecturer at Trinity College, where he had studied. He was considered for a Fellowship, which would give him a vote in the college government and protect him from being fired for his opinions, but was passed over because he was "anti-clerical", essentially because he was agnostic. He was approached by the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russell viewed Wittgenstein as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1922. Russell delivered his lectures on logical atomism, his version of these ideas, in 1918, before the end of World War I. Wittgenstein was, at that time, serving in the Austrian Army and subsequently spent nine months in an Italian prisoner of war camp at the end of the conflict. === First World War === During World War I, Russell was one of the few people to engage in active pacifist activities. In 1916, because of his lack of a Fellowship, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. He later described this, in Free Thought and Official Propaganda, as an illegitimate means the state used to violate freedom of expression. Russell championed the case of Eric Chappelow, a poet jailed and abused as a conscientious objector. Russell played a significant part in the Leeds Convention in June 1917, a historic event which saw well over a thousand "anti-war socialists" gather; many being delegates from the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Party, united in their pacifist beliefs and advocating a peace settlement. The international press reported that Russell appeared with a number of Labour Members of Parliament (MPs), including Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, as well as former Liberal MP and anti-conscription campaigner, Professor Arnold Lupton. After the event, Russell told Lady Ottoline Morrell that, "to my surprise, when I got up to speak, I was given the greatest ovation that was possible to give anybody".His conviction in 1916 resulted in Russell being fined £100 (equivalent to £6,000 in 2021), which he refused to pay in hope that he would be sent to prison, but his books were sold at auction to raise the money. The books were bought by friends; he later treasured his copy of the King James Bible that was stamped "Confiscated by Cambridge Police". A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the United States to enter the war on the United Kingdom's side resulted in six months' imprisonment in Brixton Prison (see Bertrand Russell's political views) in 1918. He later said of his imprisonment: I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy"... and began the work for "The Analysis of Mind". I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence as was shown by their having been caught. While he was reading Strachey's Eminent Victorians chapter about Gordon he laughed out loud in his cell prompting the warder to intervene and reminding him that "prison was a place of punishment".Russell was reinstated to Trinity in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944 until 1949.In 1924, Russell again gained press attention when attending a "banquet" in the House of Commons with well-known campaigners, including Arnold Lupton, who had been an MP and had also endured imprisonment for "passive resistance to military or naval service". === G. H. Hardy on the Trinity controversy === In 1941, G. H. Hardy wrote a 61-page pamphlet titled Bertrand Russell and Trinity – published later as a book by Cambridge University Press with a foreword by C. D. Broad—in which he gave an authoritative account of Russell's 1916 dismissal from Trinity College, explaining that a reconciliation between the college and Russell had later taken place and gave details about Russell's personal life. Hardy writes that Russell's dismissal had created a scandal since the vast majority of the Fellows of the College opposed the decision. The ensuing pressure from the Fellows induced the Council to reinstate Russell. In January 1920, it was announced that Russell had accepted the reinstatement offer from Trinity and would begin lecturing from October. In July 1920, Russell applied for a one year leave of absence; this was approved. He spent the year giving lectures in China and Japan. In January 1921, it was announced by Trinity that Russell had resigned and his resignation had been accepted. This resignation, Hardy explains, was completely voluntary and was not the result of another altercation. The reason for the resignation, according to Hardy, was that Russell was going through a tumultuous time in his personal life with a divorce and subsequent remarriage. Russell contemplated asking Trinity for another one-year leave of absence but decided against it, since this would have been an "unusual application" and the situation had the potential to snowball into another controversy. Although Russell did the right thing, in Hardy's opinion, the reputation of the College suffered with Russell's resignation, since the 'world of learning' knew about Russell's altercation with Trinity but not that the rift had healed. In 1925, Russell was asked by the Council of Trinity College to give the Tarner Lectures on the Philosophy of the Sciences; these would later be the basis for one of Russell's best-received books according to Hardy: The Analysis of Matter, published in 1927. In the preface to the Trinity pamphlet, Hardy wrote: I wish to make it plain that Russell himself is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for the writing of the pamphlet.... I wrote it without his knowledge and, when I sent him the typescript and asked for his permission to print it, I suggested that, unless it contained misstatement of fact, he should make no comment on it. He agreed to this... no word has been changed as the result of any suggestion from him. === Between the wars === In August 1920, Russell travelled to Soviet Russia as part of an official delegation sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the Russian Revolution. He wrote a four-part series of articles, titled "Soviet Russia—1920", for the magazine The Nation. He met Vladimir Lenin and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found Lenin disappointing, sensing an "impish cruelty" in him and comparing him to "an opinionated professor". He cruised down the Volga on a steamship. His experiences destroyed his previous tentative support for the revolution. He subsequently wrote a book, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, about his experiences on this trip, taken with a group of 24 others from the UK, all of whom came home thinking well of the Soviet regime, despite Russell's attempts to change their minds. For example, he told them that he had heard shots fired in the middle of the night and was sure that these were clandestine executions, but the others maintained that it was only cars backfiring. Russell's lover Dora Black, a British author, feminist and socialist campaigner, visited Soviet Russia independently at the same time; in contrast to his reaction, she was enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution.The following year, Russell, accompanied by Dora, visited Peking (as Beijing was then known outside of China) to lecture on philosophy for a year. He went with optimism and hope, seeing China as then being on a new path. Other scholars present in China at the time included John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel-laureate poet. Before leaving China, Russell became gravely ill with pneumonia, and incorrect reports of his death were published in the Japanese press. When the couple visited Japan on their return journey, Dora took on the role of spurning the local press by handing out notices reading "Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists". Apparently they found this harsh and reacted resentfully.Dora was six months pregnant when the couple returned to England on 26 August 1921. Russell arranged a hasty divorce from Alys, marrying Dora six days after the divorce was finalised, on 27 September 1921. Russell's children with Dora were John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell, born on 16 November 1921, and Katharine Jane Russell (now Lady Katharine Tait), born on 29 December 1923. Russell supported his family during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics, and education to the layman. From 1922 to 1927 the Russells divided their time between London and Cornwall, spending summers in Porthcurno. In the 1922 and 1923 general elections Russell stood as a Labour Party candidate in the Chelsea constituency, but only on the basis that he knew he was extremely unlikely to be elected in such a safe Conservative seat, and he was unsuccessful on both occasions. After the birth of his two children, he became interested in education, especially early childhood education. He was not satisfied with the old traditional education and thought that progressive education also had some flaws; as a result, together with Dora, Russell founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927. The school was run from a succession of different locations, including its original premises at the Russells' residence, Telegraph House, near Harting, West Sussex. During this time, he published "On Education, Especially in Early Childhood". On 8 July 1930 Dora gave birth to her third child Harriet Ruth. After he left the school in 1932, Dora continued it until 1943.In 1927 Russell met Barry Fox (later Barry Stevens), who became a well-known Gestalt therapist and writer in later years. They developed an intensive relationship, and in Fox's words: "... for three years we were very close." Fox sent her daughter Judith to Beacon Hill School. From 1927 to 1932 Russell wrote 34 letters to Fox. Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell. Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her having two children with an American journalist, Griffin Barry. They separated in 1932 and finally divorced. On 18 January 1936, Russell married his third wife, an Oxford undergraduate named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, who had been his children's governess since 1930. Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democrat party.Russell returned in 1937 to the London School of Economics to lecture on the science of power. During the 1930s, Russell became a friend and collaborator of V. K. Krishna Menon, then President of the India League, the foremost lobby in the United Kingdom for Indian independence. Russell chaired the India League from 1932 to 1939. === Second World War === Russell's political views changed over time, mostly about war. He opposed rearmament against Nazi Germany. In 1937, he wrote in a personal letter: "If the Germans succeed in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters and invite the commander and chief to dine with the prime minister." In 1940, he changed his appeasement view that avoiding a full-scale world war was more important than defeating Hitler. He concluded that Adolf Hitler taking over all of Europe would be a permanent threat to democracy. In 1943, he adopted a stance toward large-scale warfare called "relative political pacifism": "War was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils."Before World War II, Russell taught at the University of Chicago, later moving on to Los Angeles to lecture at the UCLA Department of Philosophy. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1940, but after a public outcry the appointment was annulled by a court judgment that pronounced him "morally unfit" to teach at the college because of his opinions, especially those relating to sexual morality, detailed in Marriage and Morals (1929). The matter was however taken to the New York Supreme Court by Jean Kay who was afraid that her daughter would be harmed by the appointment, though her daughter was not a student at CCNY. Many intellectuals, led by John Dewey, protested at his treatment. Albert Einstein's oft-quoted aphorism that "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" originated in his open letter, dated 19 March 1940, to Morris Raphael Cohen, a professor emeritus at CCNY, supporting Russell's appointment. Dewey and Horace M. Kallen edited a collection of articles on the CCNY affair in The Bertrand Russell Case. Russell soon joined the Barnes Foundation, lecturing to a varied audience on the history of philosophy; these lectures formed the basis of A History of Western Philosophy. His relationship with the eccentric Albert C. Barnes soon soured, and he returned to the UK in 1944 to rejoin the faculty of Trinity College. === Later life === Russell participated in many broadcasts over the BBC, particularly The Brains Trust and for the Third Programme, on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was world-famous outside academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and was called upon to offer opinions on a wide variety of subjects, even mundane ones. En route to one of his lectures in Trondheim, Russell was one of 24 survivors (among a total of 43 passengers) of an aeroplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane. A History of Western Philosophy (1945) became a best-seller and provided Russell with a steady income for the remainder of his life. In 1942, Russell argued in favour of a moderate socialism, capable of overcoming its metaphysical principles. In an inquiry on dialectical materialism, launched by the Austrian artist and philosopher Wolfgang Paalen in his journal DYN, Russell said: "I think the metaphysics of both Hegel and Marx plain nonsense—Marx's claim to be 'science' is no more justified than Mary Baker Eddy's. This does not mean that I am opposed to socialism."In 1943, Russell expressed support for Zionism: "I have come gradually to see that, in a dangerous and largely hostile world, it is essential to Jews to have some country which is theirs, some region where they are not suspected aliens, some state which embodies what is distinctive in their culture".In a speech in 1948, Russell said that if the USSR's aggression continued, it would be morally worse to go to war after the USSR possessed an atomic bomb than before it possessed one, because if the USSR had no bomb the West's victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if there were atomic bombs on both sides. At that time, only the United States possessed an atomic bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an extremely aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern Europe which were being absorbed into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Many understood Russell's comments to mean that Russell approved of a first strike in a war with the USSR, including Nigel Lawson, who was present when Russell spoke of such matters. Others, including Griffin, who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was merely explaining the usefulness of America's atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of Eastern Europe.Just after the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russell wrote letters, and published articles in newspapers from 1945 to 1948, stating clearly that it was morally justified and better to go to war against the USSR using atomic bombs while the United States possessed them and before the USSR did. In September 1949, one week after the USSR tested its first A-bomb, but before this became known, Russell wrote that USSR would be unable to develop nuclear weapons because following Stalin's purges only science based on Marxist principles would be practised in the Soviet Union. After it became known that the USSR had carried out its nuclear bomb tests, Russell declared his position advocating the total abolition of atomic weapons.In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural Reith Lectures—what was to become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts, titled Authority and the Individual, explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell continued to write about philosophy. He wrote a foreword to Words and Things by Ernest Gellner, which was highly critical of the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and of ordinary language philosophy. Gilbert Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind, which caused Russell to respond via The Times. The result was a month-long correspondence in The Times between the supporters and detractors of ordinary language philosophy, which was only ended when the paper published an editorial critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of ordinary language philosophy.In the King's Birthday Honours of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. When he was given the Order of Merit, George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying, "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted". Russell merely smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply "That's right, just like your brother" immediately came to mind. In 1950, Russell attended the inaugural conference for the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-funded anti-communist organisation committed to the deployment of culture as a weapon during the Cold War. Russell was one of the best-known patrons of the Congress, until he resigned in 1956.In 1952, Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy. Conrad, Russell's son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother). Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952. They had known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, sharing a house for 20 years with Russell's old friend Lucy Donnelly. Edith remained with him until his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell's eldest son John suffered from serious mental illness, which was the source of ongoing disputes between Russell and his former wife Dora.In September 1961, at the age of 89, Russell was jailed for seven days in Brixton Prison for a "breach of the peace" after taking part in an anti-nuclear demonstration in London. The magistrate offered to exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I won't."In 1962 Russell played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis: in an exchange of telegrams with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be reckless. Russell sent this telegram to President Kennedy: YOUR ACTION DESPERATE. THREAT TO HUMAN SURVIVAL. NO CONCEIVABLE JUSTIFICATION. CIVILIZED MAN CONDEMNS IT. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER. ULTIMATUM MEANS WAR... END THIS MADNESS. According to historian Peter Knight, after JFK's assassination, Russell, "prompted by the emerging work of the lawyer Mark Lane in the US ... rallied support from other noteworthy and left-leaning compatriots to form a Who Killed Kennedy Committee in June 1964, members of which included Michael Foot MP, Caroline Benn, the publisher Victor Gollancz, the writers John Arden and J. B. Priestley, and the Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper." Russell published a highly critical article weeks before the Warren Commission Report was published, setting forth 16 Questions on the Assassination and equating the Oswald case with the Dreyfus affair of late 19th-century France, in which the state convicted an innocent man. Russell also criticised the American press for failing to heed any voices critical of the official version. === Political causes === Bertrand Russell was opposed to war from a young age; his opposition to World War I being used as grounds for his dismissal from Trinity College at Cambridge. This incident fused two of his most controversial causes, as he had failed to be granted Fellow status which would have protected him from firing, because he was not willing to either pretend to be a devout Christian, or at least avoid admitting he was agnostic. He later described the resolution of these issues as essential to freedom of thought and expression, citing the incident in Free Thought and Official Propaganda, where he explained that the expression of any idea, even the most obviously "bad", must be protected not only from direct State intervention, but also economic leveraging and other means of being silenced: The opinions which are still persecuted strike the majority as so monstrous and immoral that the general principle of toleration cannot be held to apply to them. But this is exactly the same view as that which made possible the tortures of the Inquisition. Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in political causes primarily related to nuclear disarmament and opposing the Vietnam War. The 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto was a document calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by eleven of the most prominent nuclear physicists and intellectuals of the time. In 1966–1967, Russell worked with Jean-Paul Sartre and many other intellectual figures to form the Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal to investigate the conduct of the United States in Vietnam. He wrote a great many letters to world leaders during this period. Early in his life Russell supported eugenicist policies. He proposed in 1894 that the state issue certificates of health to prospective parents and withhold public benefits from those considered unfit. In 1929 he wrote that people deemed "mentally defective" and "feebleminded" should be sexually sterilised because they "are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly useless to the community." Russell was also an advocate of population control:The nations which at present increase rapidly should be encouraged to adopt the methods by which, in the West, the increase of population has been checked. Educational propaganda, with government help, could achieve this result in a generation. There are, however, two powerful forces opposed to such a policy: one is religion, the other is nationalism. I think it is the duty of all to proclaim that opposition to the spread of birth is appalling depth of misery and degradation, and that within another fifty years or so. I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer. War, as I remarked a moment ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the whole world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. On 20 November 1948, in a public speech at Westminster School, addressing a gathering arranged by the New Commonwealth, Russell shocked some observers by suggesting that a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union was justified. Russell argued that war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable, so it would be a humanitarian gesture to get it over with quickly and have the United States in the dominant position. Currently, Russell argued, humanity could survive such a war, whereas a full nuclear war after both sides had manufactured large stockpiles of more destructive weapons was likely to result in the extinction of the human race. Russell later relented from this stance, instead arguing for mutual disarmament by the nuclear powers. In 1956, immediately before and during the Suez Crisis, Russell expressed his opposition to European imperialism in the Middle East. He viewed the crisis as another reminder of the pressing need for a more effective mechanism for international governance, and to restrict national sovereignty to places such as the Suez Canal area "where general interest is involved". At the same time the Suez Crisis was taking place, the world was also captivated by the Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent crushing of the revolt by intervening Soviet forces. Russell attracted criticism for speaking out fervently against the Suez war while ignoring Soviet repression in Hungary, to which he responded that he did not criticise the Soviets "because there was no need. Most of the so-called Western World was fulminating". Although he later feigned a lack of concern, at the time he was disgusted by the brutal Soviet response, and on 16 November 1956, he expressed approval for a declaration of support for Hungarian scholars which Michael Polanyi had cabled to the Soviet embassy in London twelve days previously, shortly after Soviet troops had entered Budapest.In November 1957 Russell wrote an article addressing US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, urging a summit to consider "the conditions of co-existence". Khrushchev responded that peace could be served by such a meeting. In January 1958 Russell elaborated his views in The Observer, proposing a cessation of all nuclear weapons production, with the UK taking the first step by unilaterally suspending its own nuclear-weapons program if necessary, and with Germany "freed from all alien armed forces and pledged to neutrality in any conflict between East and West". US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles replied for Eisenhower. The exchange of letters was published as The Vital Letters of Russell, Khrushchev, and Dulles.Russell was asked by The New Republic, a liberal American magazine, to elaborate his views on world peace. He urged that all nuclear weapons testing and flights by planes armed with nuclear weapons be halted immediately, and negotiations be opened for the destruction of all hydrogen bombs, with the number of conventional nuclear devices limited to ensure a balance of power. He proposed that Germany be reunified and accept the Oder-Neisse line as its border, and that a neutral zone be established in Central Europe, consisting at the minimum of Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, with each of these countries being free of foreign troops and influence, and prohibited from forming alliances with countries outside the zone. In the Middle East, Russell suggested that the West avoid opposing Arab nationalism, and proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to guard Israel's frontiers to ensure that Israel was prevented from committing aggression and protected from it. He also suggested Western recognition of the People's Republic of China, and that it be admitted to the UN with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.He was in contact with Lionel Rogosin while the latter was filming his anti-war film Good Times, Wonderful Times in the 1960s. He became a hero to many of the youthful members of the New Left. In early 1963, Russell became increasingly vocal in his disapproval of the Vietnam War, and felt that the US government's policies there were near-genocidal. In 1963 he became the inaugural recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society. In 1964 he was one of eleven world figures who issued an appeal to Israel and the Arab countries to accept an arms embargo and international supervision of nuclear plants and rocket weaponry. In October 1965 he tore up his Labour Party card because he suspected Harold Wilson's Labour government was going to send troops to support the United States in Vietnam. === Final years, death and legacy === In June 1955, Russell had leased Plas Penrhyn in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales and on 5 July of the following year it became his and Edith's principal residence. Russell published his three-volume autobiography in 1967, 1968, and 1969. He made a cameo appearance playing himself in the anti-war Hindi film Aman, by Mohan Kumar, which was released in India in 1967. This was Russell's only appearance in a feature film.On 23 November 1969, he wrote to The Times newspaper saying that the preparation for show trials in Czechoslovakia was "highly alarming". The same month, he appealed to Secretary General U Thant of the United Nations to support an international war crimes commission to investigate alleged torture and genocide by the United States in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The following month, he protested to Alexei Kosygin over the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union of Writers. On 31 January 1970, Russell issued a statement condemning "Israel's aggression in the Middle East", and in particular, Israeli bombing raids being carried out deep in Egyptian territory as part of the War of Attrition, which he compared to German bombing raids in the Battle of Britain and the US bombing of Vietnam. He called for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-Six-Day War borders. This was Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death.Russell died of influenza, just after 8 pm on 2 February 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, aged 97. His body was cremated in Colwyn Bay on 5 February 1970 with five people present. In accordance with his will, there was no religious ceremony but one minute's silence; his ashes were later scattered over the Welsh mountains. Although he was born in Monmouthshire, and died in Penrhyndeudraeth in Wales, Russell identified as English. Later in 1970, on 23 October, his will was published showing he had left an estate valued at £69,423 (equivalent to £1.1 million in 2021). In 1980, a memorial to Russell was commissioned by a committee including the philosopher A. J. Ayer. It consists of a bust of Russell in Red Lion Square in London sculpted by Marcelle Quinton.Lady Katharine Jane Tait, Russell's daughter, founded the Bertrand Russell Society in 1974 to preserve and understand his work. It publishes the Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin, holds meetings and awards prizes for scholarship, including the Bertrand Russell Society Award. She also authored several essays about her father; as well as a book, My Father, Bertrand Russell, which was published in 1975. All members receive Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies. For the sesquicentennial of his birth, in May 2022, McMaster University's Bertrand Russell Archive, the university's largest and most heavily used research collection, organised both a physical and virtual exhibition on Russell's anti-nuclear stance in the post-war era, Scientists for Peace: the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and the Pugwash Conference, which included the earliest version of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto. The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation held a commemoration at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, London, on 18 May, the anniversary of his birth. For its part, on the same day, La Estrella de Panamá published a biographical sketch by Francisco Díaz Montilla, who commented that "[if he] had to characterize Russell's work in one sentence [he] would say: criticism and rejection of dogmatism."Bangladesh's first leader, Mujibur Rahman, named his youngest son Sheikh Russel in honour of Bertrand Russell. ==== Marriages and issue ==== Russell first married Alys Whitall Smith (died 1951) in 1894. The marriage was dissolved in 1921 with no issue. His second marriage was to Dora Winifred Black MBE (died 1986), daughter of Sir Frederick Black, in 1921. This was dissolved in 1935, having produced two children: John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell (1921–1987) Lady Katharine Jane Russell (1923–2021), who married Rev. Charles Tait in 1948 and had issueRussell's third marriage was to Patricia Helen Spence (died 2004) in 1936, with the marriage producing one child: Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell (1937–2004)Russell's third marriage ended in divorce in 1952. He married Edith Finch in the same year. Finch survived Russell, dying in 1978. === Titles and honours from birth === Russell held throughout his life the following styles and honours: from birth until 1908: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell from 1908 until 1931: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, FRS from 1931 until 1949: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, FRS from 1949 until death: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, OM, FRS == Views == === Philosophy === Russell is generally credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophy. He was deeply impressed by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), and wrote on every major area of philosophy except aesthetics. He was particularly prolific in the fields of metaphysics, logic and the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, ethics and epistemology. When Brand Blanshard asked Russell why he did not write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he did not know anything about it, though he hastened to add "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me from writing on other subjects".On ethics, Russell wrote that he was a utilitarian in his youth, yet he later distanced himself from this view.For the advancement of science and protection of liberty of expression, Russell advocated The Will to Doubt, the recognition that all human knowledge is at most a best guess, that one should always remember: None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practised in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge. Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men's attitude is tentative and full of doubt. === Religion === Russell described himself in 1947 as an agnostic or an atheist: he found it difficult to determine which term to adopt, saying:Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line. For most of his adult life, Russell maintained religion to be little more than superstition and, despite any positive effects, largely harmful to people. He believed that religion and the religious outlook serve to impede knowledge and foster fear and dependency, and to be responsible for much of our world's wars, oppression, and misery. He was a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association and President of Cardiff Humanists until his death. === Society === Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his life. Russell remained politically active almost to the end of his life, writing to and exhorting world leaders and lending his name to various causes. He was a prominent campaigner against Western intervention into the Vietnam War in the 1960s, writing essays, books, attending demonstrations, and even organising Russell Tribunal in 1966 alongside other prominent philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, which fed into his 1967 book War Crimes in Vietnam.Russell argued for a "scientific society", where war would be abolished, population growth would be limited, and prosperity would be shared. He suggested the establishment of a "single supreme world government" able to enforce peace, claiming that "the only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation". He was one of the signatories of the Agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth. Russell also expressed support for guild socialism, and commented positively on several socialist thinkers and activists. According to Jean Bricmont and Normand Baillargeon, "Russell was both a liberal and a socialist, a combination that was perfectly comprehensible in his time, but which has become almost unthinkable today. He was a liberal in that he opposed concentrations of power in all its manifestations, military, governmental, or religious, as well as the superstitious or nationalist ideas that usually serve as its justification. But he was also a socialist, even as an extension of his liberalism, because he was equally opposed to the concentrations of power stemming from the private ownership of the major means of production, which therefore needed to be put under social control (which does not mean state control)."Russell was an active supporter of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, being one of the signatories of A. E. Dyson's 1958 letter to The Times calling for a change in the law regarding male homosexual practices, which were partly legalised in 1967, when Russell was still alive.He expressed sympathy and support for the Palestinian people and was strongly critical of Israel's actions. He wrote in 1960 that, "I think it was a mistake to establish a Jewish State in Palestine, but it would be a still greater mistake to try to get rid of it now that it exists." In his final written document, read aloud in Cairo three days after his death on January 31, 1970, he condemned Israel as an aggressive imperialist power, which "wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression." In regards to the Palestinian people and refugees, he wrote that, "No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East."Russell advocated – and was one of the first people in the UK to suggest – a universal basic income. In his 1918 book Roads to Freedom, Russell wrote that "Anarchism has the advantage as regards liberty, Socialism as regards the inducement to work. Can we not find a method of combining these two advantages? It seems to me that we can. [...] Stated in more familiar terms, the plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income – as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced – should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful...When education is finished, no one should be compelled to work, and those who choose not to work should receive a bare livelihood and be left completely free."In "Reflections on My Eightieth Birthday" ("Postscript" in his Autobiography), Russell wrote: "I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken". === Freedom of opinion and expression === Russell was a champion of freedom of opinion and an opponent of both censorship and indoctrination. In 1928, he wrote: "The fundamental argument for freedom of opinion is the doubtfulness of all our belief... when the State intervenes to ensure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favour of that doctrine ... It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to make a living". In 1957, he wrote: "'Free thought' means thinking freely ... to be worthy of the name freethinker he must be free of two things: the force of tradition and the tyranny of his own passions." === Education === Russell has presented ideas on the possible means of control of education in case of scientific dictatorship governments, of the kind of this excerpt taken from chapter II "General Effects of Scientific Technique" of "The Impact of Science on society". This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark grey. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician's paradise. The social effects of scientific technique have already been many and important, and are likely to be even more noteworthy in the future. Some of these effects depend upon the political and economic character of the country concerned; others are inevitable, whatever this character may be. He pushed his visionary scenarios even further into details, in the chapter III "Scientific Technique in an Oligarchy" of the same book, stating as an example In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so. == Selected works == Below are selected Russell's works in English, sorted by year of first publication: 1896. German Social Democracy. London: Longmans, Green 1897. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1900. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1903. The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge University Press 1903. A Free man's worship, and other essays. 1905. On Denoting, Mind, Vol. 14. ISSN 0026-4423. Basil Blackwell 1910. Philosophical Essays. London: Longmans, Green 1910–1913. Principia Mathematica. (with Alfred North Whitehead). 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1912. The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams and Norgate 1914. Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing. 1916. Principles of Social Reconstruction. London, George Allen and Unwin 1916. Why Men Fight. New York: The Century Co 1916. The Policy of the Entente, 1904–1914 : a reply to Professor Gilbert Murray. Manchester: The National Labour Press 1916. Justice in War-time. Chicago: Open Court 1917. Political Ideals. New York: The Century Co. 1918. Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1918. Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism. London: George Allen & Unwin 1919. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. (ISBN 0-415-09604-9 for Routledge paperback) 1920. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. London: George Allen & Unwin 1921. The Analysis of Mind. London: George Allen & Unwin 1922. The Problem of China. London: George Allen & Unwin 1922. Free Thought and Official Propaganda, delivered at South Place Institute 1923. The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, in collaboration with Dora Russell. London: George Allen & Unwin 1923. The ABC of Atoms, London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner 1924. Icarus; or, The Future of Science. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1925. The ABC of Relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner (revised and edited by Felix Pirani) 1925. What I Believe. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1926. On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. London: George Allen & Unwin 1927. The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1927. An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin 1927. Why I Am Not a Christian. London: Watts 1927. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell. New York: Modern Library 1928. Sceptical Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1929. Marriage and Morals. London: George Allen & Unwin 1930. The Conquest of Happiness. London: George Allen & Unwin 1931. The Scientific Outlook, London: George Allen & Unwin 1932. Education and the Social Order, London: George Allen & Unwin 1934. Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. London: George Allen & Unwin 1935. In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1935. Religion and Science. London: Thornton Butterworth 1936. Which Way to Peace?. London: Jonathan Cape 1937. The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley, with Patricia Russell, 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press; reprinted (1966) as The Amberley Papers. Bertrand Russell's Family Background, 2 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin 1938. Power: A New Social Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin 1940. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 1945. The Bomb and Civilisation. Published in the Glasgow Forward on 18 August 1945 1945. A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day New York: Simon and Schuster 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. London: George Allen & Unwin 1949. Authority and the Individual. London: George Allen & Unwin 1950. Unpopular Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1951. New Hopes for a Changing World. London: George Allen & Unwin 1952. The Impact of Science on Society. London: George Allen & Unwin 1953. Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin 1954. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. London: George Allen & Unwin 1954. Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin 1956. Portraits from Memory and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin 1956. Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, edited by Robert C. Marsh. London: George Allen & Unwin 1957. Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, edited by Paul Edwards. London: George Allen & Unwin 1958. Understanding History and Other Essays. New York: Philosophical Library 1958. The Will to Doubt. New York: Philosophical Library 1959. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare. London: George Allen & Unwin 1959. My Philosophical Development. London: George Allen & Unwin 1959. Wisdom of the West: A Historical Survey of Western Philosophy in Its Social and Political Setting, edited by Paul Foulkes. London: Macdonald 1960. Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company 1961. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by R. E. Egner and L. E. Denonn. London: George Allen & Unwin 1961. Fact and Fiction. London: George Allen & Unwin 1961. Has Man a Future? London: George Allen & Unwin 1963. Essays in Skepticism. New York: Philosophical Library 1963. Unarmed Victory. London: George Allen & Unwin 1965. Legitimacy Versus Industrialism, 1814–1848. London: George Allen & Unwin (first published as Parts I and II of Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914, 1934) 1965. On the Philosophy of Science, edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr. Indianapolis: The Bobbs–Merrill Company 1966. The ABC of Relativity. London: George Allen & Unwin 1967. Russell's Peace Appeals, edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka. Japan: Eichosha's New Current Books 1967. War Crimes in Vietnam. London: George Allen & Unwin 1951–1969. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin. Vol. 2, 1956 1969. Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950–1968, edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils. London: George Allen and UnwinRussell was the author of more than sixty books and over two thousand articles. Additionally, he wrote many pamphlets, introductions, and letters to the editor. One pamphlet titled, I Appeal unto Caesar': The Case of the Conscientious Objectors, ghostwritten for Margaret Hobhouse, the mother of imprisoned peace activist Stephen Hobhouse, allegedly helped secure the release from prison of hundreds of conscientious objectors.His works can be found in anthologies and collections, including The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. By March 2017 this collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works included 18 volumes, and several more are in progress. A bibliography in three additional volumes catalogues his publications. The Russell Archives held by McMaster's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections possess over 40,000 of his letters. == See also == == Notes == == References == === Citations === === Sources === Primary sources 1900, Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries, Rivista di matematica 7: 115–148. 1901, On the Notion of Order, Mind (n.s.) 10: 35–51. 1902, (with Alfred North Whitehead), On Cardinal Numbers, American Journal of Mathematics 24: 367–384. 1948, BBC Reith Lectures: Authority and the Individual A series of six radio lectures broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1948.Secondary sources John Newsome Crossley. A Note on Cantor's Theorem and Russell's Paradox, Australian Journal of Philosophy 51, 1973, 70–71. Ivor Grattan-Guinness. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Alan Ryan. Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. == Further reading == Books about Russell's philosophyAlfred Julius Ayer. Russell, London: Fontana, 1972. ISBN 0-00-632965-9. A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought. Elizabeth Ramsden Eames. Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969. OCLC 488496910. A clear description of Russell's philosophical development. Celia Green. The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem, Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003. ISBN 0-9536772-1-4 Contains a sympathetic analysis of Russell's views on causality. A. C. Grayling. Russell: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2002. Nicholas Griffin. Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. A. D. Irvine, ed. Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers. Michael K. Potter. Bertrand Russell's Ethics, Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006. A clear and accessible explanation of Russell's moral philosophy. P. A. Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944. John Slater. Bertrand Russell, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994.Biographical booksA. J. Ayer. Bertrand Russell, New York: Viking Press, 1972, reprint ed. London: University of Chicago Press, 1988, ISBN 0-226-03343-0 Andrew Brink. Bertrand Russell: A Psychobiography of a Moralist, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989, ISBN 0-391-03600-9 Ronald W. Clark. The Life of Bertrand Russell, London: Jonathan Cape, 1975, ISBN 0-394-49059-2 Ronald W. Clark. Bertrand Russell and His World, London: Thames & Hudson, 1981, ISBN 0-500-13070-1 Rupert Crawshay-Williams. Russell Remembered, London: Oxford University Press, 1970. Written by a close friend of Russell's John Lewis. Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist, London: Lawerence & Wishart, 1968 Ray Monk. Bertrand Russell: Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares, London: Phoenix, 1997, ISBN 0-7538-0190-6 Ray Monk. Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872–1920 Vol. I, New York: Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-09-973131-2 Ray Monk. Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921–1970 Vol. II, New York: Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-09-927275-X Caroline Moorehead. Bertrand Russell: A Life, New York: Viking, 1993, ISBN 0-670-85008-X George Santayana. "Bertrand Russell", in Selected Writings of George Santayana, Norman Henfrey (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I, 1968, pp. 326–329 Peter Stone et al. Bertrand Russell's Life and Legacy. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2017. Katharine Tait. My Father Bertrand Russell, New York: Thoemmes Press, 1975 Alan Wood. Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Sceptic, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957. == External links == "Bertrand Russell's Ethics". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Bertrand Russell's Logic". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Works by Bertrand Russell at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Bertrand Russell at Internet Archive Works by Bertrand Russell at Open Library Works by Bertrand Russell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Bertrand Russell – media on YouTube The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University The Bertrand Russell Society O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Bertrand Russell", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews BBC Face to Face interview with Bertrand Russell and John Freeman, broadcast 4 March 1959 Bertrand Russell on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1950 "What Desires Are Politically Important?" Interview with Ray Monk at Today, 18 May 2022 (from 2:58:35)

A.O. Lovejoy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Oncken_Lovejoy

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873 – December 30, 1962) was an American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the discipline known as the history of ideas with his book The Great Chain of Being (1936), on the topic of that name, which is regarded as 'probably the single most influential work in the history of ideas in the United States during the last half century'. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1932. In 1940, he founded the Journal of the History of Ideas. == Life == Lovejoy was born in Berlin, Germany, while his father was doing medical research there. Eighteen months later, his mother, a daughter of Johann Gerhard Oncken, committed suicide, whereupon his father gave up medicine and became a clergyman. Lovejoy studied philosophy, first at the University of California at Berkeley, then at Harvard under William James and Josiah Royce. He did not earn a Ph.D. In 1901, he resigned from his first job, at Stanford University, to protest the dismissal of a colleague who had offended a trustee. The President of Harvard then vetoed hiring Lovejoy on the grounds that he was a known troublemaker. Over the subsequent decade, he taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia University, and the University of Missouri. He never married.As a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University from 1910 to 1938, Lovejoy founded and long presided over that university's History of Ideas Club, where many prominent and budding intellectual and social historians, as well as literary critics, gathered. In 1940 he co-founded the Journal of the History of Ideas with Philip P. Wiener. Lovejoy insisted that the history of ideas should focus on "unit ideas," single concepts (namely simple concepts sharing an abstract name with other concepts that were to be conceptually distinguished). Lovejoy was active in the public arena. He helped found the American Association of University Professors and the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. However, he qualified his belief in civil liberties to exclude what he considered threats to a free system. Thus, at the height of the McCarthy Era (in the February 14, 1952, edition of the Journal of Philosophy) Lovejoy stated that, since it was a "matter of empirical fact" that membership in the Communist Party contributed "to the triumph of a world-wide organization" which was opposed to "freedom of inquiry, of opinion and of teaching," membership in the party constituted grounds for dismissal from academic positions. He also published numerous opinion pieces in the Baltimore press. He died in Baltimore on December 30, 1962. == Philosophy == In the domain of epistemology, Lovejoy is remembered for an influential critique of the pragmatic movement, especially in the essay "The Thirteen Pragmatisms", written in 1908.Abstract nouns like 'pragmatism' 'idealism', 'rationalism' and the like were, in Lovejoy's view, constituted by distinct, analytically separate ideas, which the historian of the genealogy of ideas had to thresh out, and show how the basic unit ideas combine and recombine with each other over time. The idea has, according to Simo Knuuttila, exercised a greater attraction on literary critics than on philosophers. Lovejoy was also an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. In 1930, he published a paper criticizing Einstein's relativistic concept of simultaneity as arbitrary. == Legacy == William F. Bynum, looking back at Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being after 40 years, describes it as "a familiar feature of the intellectual landscape", indicating its great influence and "brisk" ongoing sales. Bynum argues that much more research is needed into how the concept of the great chain of being was replaced, but he agrees that Lovejoy was right that the crucial period was the end of the 18th century when "the Enlightenment's chain of being was dismantled". == Works == Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, (1935). (with George Boas). Johns Hopkins U. Press. 1997 edition: ISBN 0-8018-5611-6 The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936). Harvard University Press. Reprinted by Harper & Row, ISBN 0-674-36150-4, 2005 paperback: ISBN 0-674-36153-9. Essays in the History of Ideas (1948). Johns Hopkins U. Press. The Revolt Against Dualism (1960). Open Court Publishing. ISBN 0-87548-107-8 The Reason, the Understanding, and Time (1961). Johns Hopkins U. Press. ISBN 0-8018-0393-4 Reflections on Human Nature (1961). Johns Hopkins U. Press. ISBN 0-8018-0395-0 The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays (1963). Johns Hopkins U. Press. ISBN 0-8018-0396-9 === Articles === "The Entangling Alliance of Religion and History," The Hibbert Journal, Vol. V, October 1906/ July 1907. "The Desires of the Self-Conscious," The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 4, No. 2, Jan. 17, 1907. "The Place of Linnaeus in the History of Science," The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXI, 1907. "The Origins of Ethical Inwardness in Jewish Thought," The American Journal of Theology, Vol. XI, 1907. "Kant and the English Platonists." In Essays, Philosophical and Psychological, Longmans, Green & Co., 1908. "Pragmatism and Theology," The American Journal of Theology, Vol. XII, 1908. "The Theory of a Pre-Christian Cult of Jesus," The Monist, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, October 1908. "The Thirteen Pragmatisms," The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. V, January/December, 1908. "The Argument for Organic Evolution Before the 'Origin of Species'," Part II, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXV, July/December, 1909. "Schopenhauer as an Evolutionist," The Monist, Vol. XXI, 1911. "Kant and Evolution," Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXVII, 1910; Part II, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXVIII, 1911. "The Problem of Time in Recent French Philosophy," Part II, Part III, The Philosophical Review, Vol. XXI, 1912. "Relativity, Reality, and Contradiction", The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1914. "Pragmatism Versus the Pragmatist." In: Essays in Critical Realism. London: Macmillan & Co., 1920. "Professional Ethics and Social Progress," The North American Review, March 1924. "The Dialectical Argument Against Absolute Simultaneity", The Journal of Philosophy, 1930. "Plans for the Future," Free World, November 1943. === Miscellany === "Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr Von," A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. by Paul Monroe, The Macmillan Company, 1911. "The Unity of Science," The University of Missouri Bulletin: Science Series, Vol. I, N°. 1, January 1912. Bergson & Romantic Evolutionism; Two Lectures Delivered Before the Union, September 5 & 12, 1913, University of California Press, 1914. == References == == Further reading == Campbell, James, "Arthur Lovejoy and the Progress of Philosophy,", in: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 39, No. 4, Fall, 2003. Diggins, John P., "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual History,", in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 67, Number 1, January 2006. Duffin, Kathleen E. "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Emergence of Novelty," in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 41, No. 2, Apr./Jun., 1980. Feuer, Lewis S., "The Philosophical Method of Arthur O. Lovejoy: Critical Realism and Psychoanalytical Realism," in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 23, No. 4, Jun., 1963. Feuer, Lewis S. "Arthur O. Lovejoy," in: The American Scholar, Vol. 46, No. 3, Summer 1977. Mandelbaum, Maurice. "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Theory of Historiography," in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 9, No. 4, Oct., 1948. Moran, Seán Farrell, "A.O. Lovejoy", in: Kelly Boyd, ed., The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Routledge, 1999. Randall, Jr., John Herman, "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the History of Ideas," in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research"', Vol. 23, No. 4, Jun., 1963. Wilson, Daniel J., Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Quest for Intelligibility, University of North Carolina Press, 1980. == External links == Works by Arthur O. Lovejoy at JSTOR. Dictionary of the History of Ideas article on the Great Chain of Being. Lovejoy Papers at Johns Hopkins University. Includes a short biography. Dale Keiger, Tussling with the Idea Man "The Chinese Origin of Romanticism", in: Essays in the History of Ideas, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948. Works by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Nikolai Berdyaev

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (; Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев; 18 March [O.S. 6 March] 1874 – 24 March 1948) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialist who emphasized the existential spiritual significance of human freedom and the human person. Alternative historical spellings of his surname in English include "Berdiaev" and "Berdiaeff", and of his given name "Nicolas" and "Nicholas". Russian paleontologist and Christian apologist Alexander V. Khramov (Borissiak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D. from Moscow University) attributes his ideas about an atemporal human fall to Berdyaev and Evgenii Nikolaevitch Troubetzkoy. == Biography == Nikolai Berdyaev was born near Kiev in 1874 to an aristocratic military family. His father, Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev, came from a long line of Russian nobility. Almost all of Alexander Mikhailovich's ancestors served as high-ranking military officers, but he resigned from the army quite early and became active in the social life of the aristocracy. Nikolai's mother, Alina Sergeevna Berdyaeva, was half-French and came from the top levels of both French and Russian nobility. He also had Polish and Tatar origins. Berdyaev decided on an intellectual career and entered the Kiev University in 1894. It was a time of revolutionary fervor among the students and the intelligentsia. He became a Marxist for a period and was arrested in a student demonstration and expelled from the university. His involvement in illegal activities led in 1897 to three years of internal exile to Vologda in northern Russia.: 28 A fiery 1913 article, entitled "Quenchers of the Spirit", criticising the rough purging of Imiaslavie Russian monks on Mount Athos by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church using tsarist troops, caused him to be charged with the crime of blasphemy, the punishment for which was exile to Siberia for life. The World War and the Bolshevik Revolution prevented the matter coming to trial.Berdyaev's disaffection culminated, in 1919, with the foundation of his own private academy, the "Free Academy of Spiritual Culture". It was primarily a forum for him to lecture on the hot topics of the day and to present them from a Christian point of view. He also presented his opinions in public lectures, and every Tuesday, the academy hosted a meeting at his home because official Soviet anti-religious activity was intense at the time and the official policy of the Bolshevik government, with its Soviet anti-religious legislation, strongly promoted state atheism.In 1920, Berdiaev became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. In the same year, he was accused of participating in a conspiracy against the government; he was arrested and jailed. The feared head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, came in person to interrogate him,: 130  and he gave his interrogator a solid dressing down on the problems with Bolshevism.: 32  Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago recounts the incident as follows: [Berdyaev] was arrested twice; he was taken in 1922 for a midnight interrogation with Dzerjinsky; Kamenev was also there.... But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself, he did not beg, he firmly professed the moral and religious principles by virtue of which he did not adhere to the party in power; and not only did they judge that there was no point in putting him on trial, but he was freed. Now there is a man who had a "point of view"! After being expelled from Russia, Berdyaev and other émigrés went to Berlin, where he founded an academy of philosophy and religion, but economic and political conditions in the Weimar Republic caused him and his wife to move to Paris in 1923. He transferred his academy there, and taught, lectured and wrote, working for an exchange of ideas with the French and European intellectual community, and participated in a number of international conferences. == Philosophical work == According to Marko Markovic, Berdyaev "was an ardent man, rebellious to all authority, an independent and "negative" spirit. He could assert himself only in negation and could not hear any assertion without immediately negating it, to such an extent that he would even be able to contradict himself and to attack people who shared his own prior opinions". According to Marina Makienko, Anna Panamaryova, and Andrey Gurban, Berdyaev's works are "emotional, controversial, bombastic, affective and dogmatic".: 20  They summarise that, according to Berdyaev, "man unites two worlds – the world of the divine and the natural world. ... Through the freedom and creativity the two natures must unite... To overcome the dualism of existence is possible only through creativity.: 20 David Bonner Richardson described Berdyaev's philosophy as Christian existentialism and personalism. Other authors, such as political theologian Tsoncho Tsonchev, interpret Berdyaev as "communitarian personalist" and Slavophile. According to Tsonchev, Berdyaev's philosophical thought rests on four "pillars": freedom, creativity, person, and communion.One of the central themes of Berdyaev's work was philosophy of love.: 11  At first he systematically developed his theory of love in a special article published in the journal Pereval (Russian: Перевал) in 1907. Then he gave gender issues a notable place in his book The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916). According to him, 1) erotic energy is an eternal source of creativity, 2) eroticism is linked to beauty, and eros means search for the beautiful.: 11 He also published works about Russian history and the Russian national character. In particular, he wrote about Russian nationalism: The Russian people did not achieve their ancient dream of Moscow, the Third Rome. The ecclesiastical schism of the seventeenth century revealed that the muscovite tsardom is not the third Rome. The messianic idea of the Russian people assumed either an apocalyptic form or a revolutionary; and then there occurred an amazing event in the destiny of the Russian people. Instead of the Third Rome in Russia, the Third International was achieved, and many of the features of the Third Rome pass over to the Third International. The Third International is also a Holy Empire, and it also is founded on an Orthodox faith. The Third International is not international, but a Russian national idea. Berdyaev espoused Christian anarchism. == Theology and relations with Russian Orthodox Church == Berdyaev was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church,: pp. 111–112 : p. 8  and believed Orthodoxy was the religious tradition closest to early Christianity.: at unk. Nicholas Berdyaev was an Orthodox Christian, however, it must be said that he was an independent and somewhat a "liberal" kind. Berdyaev also criticized the Russian Orthodox Church and described his views as anticlerical. Yet he considered himself closer to Orthodoxy than either Catholicism or Protestantism. According to him, "I can not call myself a typical Orthodox of any kind; but Orthodoxy was near to me (and I hope I am nearer to Orthodoxy) than either Catholicism or Protestantism. I never severed my link with the Orthodox Church, although confessional self-satisfaction and exclusiveness are alien to me."Berdyaev is frequently presented as one of the important Russian Orthodox thinkers of the 20th century. However, neopatristic scholars such as Florovsky have questioned whether his philosophy is essentially Orthodox in character, and emphasize his western influences. But Florovsky was savaged in a 1937 Journal Put' article by Berdyaev. Paul Valliere has pointed out the sociological factors and global trends which have shaped the Neopatristic movement, and questions their claim that Berdyaev and Vladimir Solovyov are somehow less authentically Orthodox.Berdyaev affirmed universal salvation, as did several other important Orthodox theologians of the 20th century. Along with Sergei Bulgakov, he was instrumental in bringing renewed attention to the Orthodox doctrine of apokatastasis, which had largely been neglected since it was expounded by Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century, although he rejected Origen's articulation of this doctrine.The aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, along with Soviet interference, caused the Russian Orthodox émigré diaspora to splinter into three Russian Church jurisdictions: the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (separated from Moscow Patriarchate until 2007), the parishes under Metropolitan Eulogius (Georgiyevsky) that went under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and parishes that remained under the Moscow Patriarchate. Berdyaev was among those that chose to remain under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarchate. He is mentioned by name on the Korsun/Chersonese Diocesan history as among those noted figures who supported the Moscow Patriarchate West-European Eparchy (in France now Korsun eparchy).Currently, the house in Clamart in which Berdyaev lived, now comprises a small "Berdiaev-museum" and attached Chapel in name of the Holy Spirit, under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarchate. On 24 March 2018, the 70th anniversary of Berdyaev's death, the priest of the Chapel served panikhida-memorial prayer at the Diocesan cathedral for eternal memory of Berdyaev, and later that day the Diocesan bishop Nestor (Sirotenko) presided over prayer at the grave of Berdyaev. == Works == In 1901 Berdyaev opened his literary career so to speak by work on Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy. In it, he analyzed a movement then beginning in Imperial Russia that "at the beginning of the twentieth-century Russian Marxism split up; the more cultured Russian Marxists went through a spiritual crisis and became founders of an idealist and religious movement, while the majority began to prepare the advent of Communism". He wrote "over twenty books and dozens of articles."The first date is of the Russian edition, the second date is of the first English edition Subjectivism and Individualism in Societal Philosophy (1901) The New Religious Consciousness and Society (1907) (Russian: Новое религиозное сознание и общественность, romanized: Novoe religioznoe coznanie i obschestvennost, includes chapter VI "The Metaphysics of Sex and Love") Sub specie aeternitatis: Articles Philosophic, Social and Literary (1900-1906) (1907; 2019) ISBN 9780999197929 ISBN 9780999197936 Vekhi - Landmarks (1909; 1994) ISBN 9781563243912 The Spiritual Crisis of the Intelligentsia (1910; 2014) ISBN 978-0-9963992-1-0 The Philosophy of Freedom (1911; 2020) ISBN 9780999197943 ISBN 9780999197950 Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov (1912; 2017) ISBN 9780996399258 ISBN 9780999197912 "Quenchers of the Spirit" (1913; 1999) The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916; 1955) ISBN 978-15973126-2-2 The Crisis of Art (1918; 2018) ISBN 9780996399296 ISBN 9780999197905 The Fate of Russia (1918; 2016) ISBN 9780996399241 Dostoevsky: An Interpretation (1921; 1934) ISBN 978-15973126-1-5 Oswald Spengler and the Decline of Europe (1922) The Meaning of History (1923; 1936) ISBN 978-14128049-7-4 The Philosophy of Inequality (1923; 2015) ISBN 978-0-9963992-0-3 The End of Our Time [a.k.a. The New Middle Ages] (1924; 1933) ISBN 978-15973126-5-3 Leontiev (1926; 1940) Freedom and the Spirit (1927–8; 1935) ISBN 978-15973126-0-8 The Russian Revolution (1931; anthology) The Destiny of Man (1931; translated by Natalie Duddington 1937) ISBN 978-15973125-6-1 Lev Shestov and Kierkegaard N. A. Beryaev 1936 Christianity and Class War (1931; 1933) The Fate of Man in the Modern World (1934; 1935) Solitude and Society (1934; 1938) ISBN 978-15973125-5-4 The Bourgeois Mind (1934; anthology) The Origin of Russian Communism (1937; 1955) Christianity and Anti-semitism (1938; 1952) Slavery and Freedom (1939) ISBN 978-15973126-6-0 The Russian Idea (1946; 1947) Spirit and Reality (1946; 1957) ISBN 978-15973125-4-7 The Beginning and the End (1947; 1952) ISBN 978-15973126-4-6 Towards a New Epoch" (1949; anthology) Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (1949; 1950) alternate title: Self-Knowledge: An Essay in Autobiography ISBN 978-15973125-8-5 The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar (1949; 1952) Divine and the Human (1949; 1952) ISBN 978-15973125-9-2 "The Truth of Orthodoxy", Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate, translated by A.S. III, Paris, 1952, retrieved 27 September 2017 Truth and Revelation (n.p.; 1953) Astride the Abyss of War and Revolutions: Articles 1914-1922 (n.p.; 2017) ISBN 9780996399272 ISBN 9780996399289Sources'"Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Nicolas Berdiaev" établie par Tamara Klépinine' published by the Institut d'études Slaves, Paris 1978 Berdyaev Bibliography on www.cherbucto.net By-Berdyaev Online Articles Index == See also == == References == == Sources == "Berdyaev, Orthodox religious philosopher, dies in Paris". The Living Church. Vol. 116. Morehouse-Gorham Company. 1948. Retrieved 27 September 2017. Blowers, Paul M. (2008). "Apokatastasis". In Benedetto, R.; Duke, J.O. (eds.). The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History: The early, medieval, and Reformation eras. New Westminster Dictionary Series. Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 36–37. ISBN 978-0-664-22416-5. Clarke, Oliver Fielding (1950). Introduction to Berdyaev. Bles. Cunningham, M.B.; Theokritoff, E. (2008). The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521864848. Deak, Esteban (1977). Apokatastasis: The Problem Of Universal Salvation In Twentieth Century Theology (Thesis). Toronto, Canada: University of St. Michael's College. ISBN 9780315454330. Florovsky, George (1950). "Book review: Introduction to Berdyaev By Clarke. Nicolas Berdyaev: Captive of freedom by Spinka". Church History. 19 (4): 305–306. doi:10.2307/3161171. JSTOR 3161171. S2CID 162966900. Kirwan, Michael; Hidden, Sheelah Treflé (2016). Mimesis and Atonement: René Girard and the Doctrine of Salvation. Violence, Desire, and the Sacred. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5013-2544-1. Donald A. Lowrie. Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nicolai Berdyaev. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1960. Noble, Ivana (2015). "Three Orthodox visions of ecumenism: Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Lossky". Communio Viatorum. 57 (2): 113–140. ISSN 0010-3713. M. A. Vallon. An apostle of freedom: Life and teachings of Nicolas Berdyaev. Philosophical Library, New York, 1960. Lesley Chamberlain. Lenin's Private War: The Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of the Intelligentsia. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2007. Marko Marković, La Philosophie de l'inégalité et les idées politiques de Nicolas Berdiaev (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1978). Valliere, Paul (2006). "Introduction to the Modern Orthodox Tradition". In Witte, John Jr.; Alexander, Frank S. (eds.). The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 503–532. Witte, John; Alexander, Frank S. (2007). The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14265-6. == Further reading == Lossky, N.O. (1951). "Н.А. Бердяев" [N. Berdyaev]. История российской Философии [History of Russian Philosophy]. New York: International Universities Press Inc. ISBN 978-0-8236-8074-0. Nucho, Fuad (1967). Berdyaev's Philosophy: The existential paradox of freedom and necessity (1st ed.). London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. Atterbury, Lyn (October 1978). "Nicholas Berdyaev, Orthodox nonconformist". Third Way. Toward a Biblical World View: 13–15. Retrieved 2013-01-30. Griffith, Jeremy (2013). Freedom Book 1. Vol. Part 4:7: Nikolai Berdyaev’s admission of the involvement of our moral instincts and corrupting intellect in producing the upset state of the human condition and attempt to explain how those elements produced that upset psychosis. WTM Publishing & Communications. ISBN 978-1-74129-011-0. Retrieved 2013-03-28. Men', Fr. Aleksandr (2015). Russian Religious Philosophy: 1989-1990 Lectures [Русская религиозная философия: Лекции]. frsj Publications. ISBN 9780996399227. Sergeev, Mikhail (1994). "Post-Modern Themes in the Philosophy of Nicholas Berdyaev". Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe. 14 (5). Retrieved 27 September 2017. == External links == Works by or about Nikolai Berdyaev at Internet Archive Works by Nikolai Berdyaev at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Berdyaev Online Library and Index Dirk H. Kelder's collection of Berdyaev essays and quotes Philosopher of Freedom Archived 2020-02-20 at the Wayback Machine ISFP Gallery of Russian Thinkers: Nikolay Berdyaev Nikolai Berdiaev and Spiritual Freedom Fr. Aleksandr Men' Lecture on N. A. Berdyaev Odinblago.ru: Бердяев Николай Александрович (Russian) Korsun/Chersonese Eparchy (Russian and French language)

Ernst Cassirer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Cassirer

Ernst Alfred Cassirer ( kah-SEER-ər, kə-, German: [ˈɛʁnst kaˈsiːʁɐ]; July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science. After Cohen's death in 1918, Cassirer developed a theory of symbolism and used it to expand phenomenology of knowledge into a more general philosophy of culture. Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophical idealism. His most famous work is the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929). Though his work received a mixed reception shortly after his death, more recent scholarship has remarked upon Cassirer's role as a strident defender of the moral idealism of the Enlightenment era and the cause of liberal democracy at a time when the rise of fascism had made such advocacy unfashionable. Within the international Jewish community, Cassirer's work has additionally been seen as part of a long tradition of thought on ethical philosophy. == Biography == Born in Breslau in Silesia (modern-day southwest Poland), into a Jewish family, Cassirer studied literature and philosophy at the University of Marburg (where he completed his doctoral work in 1899 with a dissertation on René Descartes's analysis of mathematical and natural scientific knowledge entitled Descartes' Kritik der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis [Descartes' Critique of Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge]) and at the University of Berlin (where he completed his habilitation in 1906 with the dissertation Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit: Erster Band [The Problem of Knowledge in Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age: Volume I]).Politically, Cassirer supported the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP). After working for many years as a Privatdozent at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, Cassirer was elected in 1919 to the philosophy chair at the newly founded University of Hamburg, where he lectured until 1933, supervising amongst others the doctoral theses of Joachim Ritter and Leo Strauss. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Regime came to power. Cassirer left Germany on 12 March 1933 - one week after the first Reichstagswahl under that Regime - because he was Jewish.After leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years at the University of Oxford, before becoming a professor at Gothenburg University. When Cassirer considered Sweden too unsafe, he applied for a post at Harvard University, but was rejected because thirty years earlier he had rejected a job offer from them. In 1941 he became a visiting professor at Yale University, then moved to Columbia University in New York City, where he lectured from 1943 until his death in 1945. Cassirer died of a heart attack in April 1945 in New York City. The young rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who was a student of Cassirer's at Columbia University, conducted the funeral service. His grave is located in Westwood, New Jersey, on the Cedar Park Beth-El Cemeteries in the graves of the Congregation Habonim. His son, Heinz Cassirer, was also a Kantian scholar. Other members of his prominent family included the neurologist Richard Cassirer, the publisher and gallery owner Bruno Cassirer and the art dealer and editor Paul Cassirer. == Influences == Donald Phillip Verene, who published some of Cassirer's papers kept at Yale University, gave this overview of his ideas: "Cassirer as a thinker became an embodiment of Kantian principles, but also of much more, of an overall movement of spirit stretching from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, and on to Herder’s conception of history, Goethe’s poetry, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s study of the Kavi language, Schelling’s Philosophie Der Mythologie, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and Vischer’s conception of the aesthetic symbol, among many others. Cassirer’s own position is born through a mastery of the whole development of this world of the humanistic understanding, which included the rise of the scientific world view — a mastery evident both in his historical works and in his systematic philosophy." == Work == === History of science === Cassirer's first major published writings were a history of modern thought from the Renaissance to Kant. In accordance with his Marburg neo-Kantianism he concentrated upon epistemology. His reading of the scientific revolution, in books such as The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1927), as a "Platonic" application of mathematics to nature, influenced historians such as E. A. Burtt, E. J. Dijksterhuis, and Alexandre Koyré. === Philosophy of science === In Substance and Function (1910), he writes about late nineteenth-century developments in physics including relativity theory and the foundations of mathematics. In Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1921) he defended the claim that modern physics supports a neo-Kantian conception of knowledge. He also wrote a book about Quantum mechanics called Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (1936). === Philosophy of symbolic forms === At Hamburg Cassirer discovered the Library of the Cultural Sciences founded by Aby Warburg. Warburg was an art historian who was particularly interested in ritual and myth as sources of surviving forms of emotional expression. In Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29) Cassirer argues that man (as he put it in his more popular 1944 book Essay on Man) is a "symbolic animal". Whereas animals perceive their world by instincts and direct sensory perception, humans create a universe of symbolic meanings. Cassirer is particularly interested in natural language and myth. He argues that science and mathematics developed from natural language, and religion and art from myth. === The Cassirer–Heidegger debate === In 1929 Cassirer took part in a historically significant encounter with Martin Heidegger in Davos during the Second Davos Hochschulkurs (the Cassirer–Heidegger debate). Cassirer argues that while Kant's Critique of Pure Reason emphasizes human temporality and finitude, he also sought to situate human cognition within a broader conception of humanity. Cassirer challenges Heidegger's relativism by invoking the universal validity of truths discovered by the exact and moral sciences. === Philosophy of the Enlightenment === Cassirer believed that reason's self-realization leads to human liberation. Mazlish (2000), however, notes that Cassirer in his The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932) focuses exclusively on ideas, ignoring the political and social context in which they were produced. === The Logic of the Cultural Sciences === In The Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1942) Cassirer argues that objective and universal validity can be achieved not only in the sciences, but also in practical, cultural, moral, and aesthetic phenomena. Although inter-subjective objective validity in the natural sciences derives from universal laws of nature, Cassirer asserts that an analogous type of inter-subjective objective validity takes place in the cultural sciences. === The Myth of the State === Cassirer's last work, The Myth of the State (1946), was published posthumously; at one level it is an attempt to understand the intellectual origins of Nazi Germany. Cassirer sees Nazi Germany as a society in which the dangerous power of myth is not checked or subdued by superior forces. The book discusses the opposition of logos and mythos in Greek thought, Plato's Republic, the medieval theory of the state, Machiavelli, Thomas Carlyle's writings on hero worship, the racial theories of Arthur de Gobineau, and Hegel. Cassirer claimed that in 20th-century politics there was a return, with the passive acquiescence of Martin Heidegger, to the irrationality of myth, and in particular to a belief that there is such a thing as destiny. Of this passive acquiescence, Cassirer says that in departing from Husserl's belief in an objective, logical basis for philosophy, Heidegger attenuated the ability of philosophy to oppose the resurgence of myth in German politics of the 1930s. == Partial bibliography == Leibniz' System in seinem wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (1902) The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel [Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit] (1906–1920), English translation 1950 (online edition) "Kant und die moderne Mathematik." Kant-Studien (1907) Substance and Function [Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff] (1910) and Einstein's Theory of Relativity [Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie ] (1921), English translation 1923 (online edition) Freedom and Form [Freiheit und Form] (1916) Kant's Life and Thought [Kants Leben und Lehre] (1918), English translation 1981 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms [Philosophie der symbolischen Formen] (1923–29), English translation 1953–1957 Volume One: Language [Erster Teil: Die Sprache] (1923), English translation 1955 Volume Two: Mythical Thought [Zweiter Teil: Das mythische Denken] (1925), English translation 1955 Volume Three: The Phenomenology of Knowledge [Dritter Teil: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis] (1929), English translation 1957 Language and Myth [Sprache und Mythos] (1925), English translation 1946 by Susanne K. Langer The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy [Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance] (1927), English translation 1963 by Mario Domandi "Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie." Jahrbücher der Philosophie 3, 31-92 (1927) Die Idee der republikanischen Verfassung (1929) "Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Bemerkungen zu Martin Heideggers Kantinterpretation." Kant-Studien 26, 1-16 (1931) Philosophy of the Enlightenment [Die Philosophie der Aufklärung] (1932), English translation 1951 Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics: Historical and Systematic Studies of the Problem of Causality [Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik] (1936), English translation 1956 The Logic of the Cultural Sciences [Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften] (1942), English translation 2000 by Steve G. Lofts (previously translated in 1961 as The Logic of the Humanities) An Essay on Man (written and published in English) (1944) (books.google.com) The Myth of the State (written and published in English) (posthumous) (1946) (books.google.com) Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935-1945, ed. by Donald Phillip Verene (March 11, 1981) Ernst Cassirer: Gesammelte Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Electronic Edition. (2016) – The electronic version of the definitive edition of Cassirer's works, published in print by Felix Meiner Verlag, and electronically in the Past Masters series. The Warburg Years (1919-1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology. Translated and with an Introduction by S. G. Lofts with A. Calcagno. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. == References == == Further reading == Aubenque, Pierre, et al. "Philosophie und Politik: Die Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidgger in der Retrospektive." Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2: 290-312 Barash, Jeffrey Andrew. The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer (2008) (excerpt and text search) Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, London: Paul Trencher (2000) Eilenberger, Wolfram. Time of the Magicians: The invention of modern thought, 1919–29, Allen Lane (2020) Folkvord Ingvild & Hoel Aud Sissel (eds.), Ernst Cassirer on Form and Technology: Contemporary Readings, (2012), Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan (ISBN 978-0-230-36547-6). Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (2000) (excerpt and text search) Gordon, Peter Eli. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (2010) Krois, John Michael. Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (Yale University Press 1987) Lassègue, Jean. Cassirer’s Transformation: From a Transcendental to a Semiotic Philosophy of Forms. Springer, 2020. (Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics book series. volume 55) Online ISBN 978-3-030-42905-8 Lipton, David R. Ernst Cassirer: The Dilemma of a Liberal Intellectual in Germany, 1914-1933 (1978) Lofts. Steve G. Ernst Cassirer: A "Repetition" of Modernity (2000) SUNY Press, ISBN 978-0-791-44495-5: at Google Books Magerski, Christine. "Reaching Beyond the Supra-Historical Sphere: from Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms to Bourdieu's Sociology of Symbolic Forms." ´´Pierre Bourdieu and the Field of Cultural Production.´´ Ed. J. Browitt. University of Delaware Press (2004): 21-29. Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.). The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1949) archive.org Schultz, William. Cassirer & Langer on Myth (2nd ed. 2000) (excerpt and text search) Skidelsky, Edward. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton University Press, 2008), 288 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-13134-4. Hardy, Anton G. "Symbol Philosophy and the Opening into Consciousness and Creativity" (2014) == External links == Friedman, Michael. "Ernst Cassirer". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. History of the Cassirer Family Ernst Cassirer in family context Centre for Intercultural Studies Works by Ernst Cassirer at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Ernst Cassirer at Internet Archive Newspaper clippings about Ernst Cassirer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Ernst Cassirer Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University. Ernst Cassirer Papers - Addition. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Max Scheler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Scheler

Max Ferdinand Scheler (German: [ˈʃeːlɐ]; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Given that school's utopian ambitions of re-founding all of human knowledge, Scheler was nicknamed the "Adam of the philosophical paradise" by José Ortega y Gasset. After Scheler's death in 1928, Martin Heidegger affirmed, with Ortega y Gasset, that all philosophers of the century were indebted to Scheler and praised him as "the strongest philosophical force in modern Germany, nay, in contemporary Europe and in contemporary philosophy as such."Scheler was an important influence on the theology of Pope John Paul II, who wrote his 1954 doctoral thesis on "An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler", and later wrote many articles on Scheler's philosophy. Thanks to John Paul II as well as to Scheler's influence on his student Edith Stein, Scheler has exercised a notable influence on Catholic thought to this day. == Life and career == === Childhood === Max Scheler was born in Munich, Germany, on 22 August 1874, to a well-respected orthodox Jewish family. He had "a rather typical late nineteenth century upbringing in a Jewish household bent on assimilation and agnosticism." As an adolescent he turned to Catholicism, and Catholic thinkers such as St. Augustine and Pascal would significantly influence his philosophical positions. === Student years === Scheler began his university studies as a medical student at the University of Munich; he then transferred to the University of Berlin where he abandoned medicine in favor of philosophy and sociology, studying under Wilhelm Dilthey, Carl Stumpf and Georg Simmel. He moved to the University of Jena in 1896 where he studied under Rudolf Eucken, at that time a very popular philosopher who went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1908. (Eucken corresponded with William James, a noted proponent of philosophical pragmatism, and throughout his life, Scheler entertained a strong interest in pragmatism.) It was at Jena that Scheler completed his doctorate and his habilitation and began his professional life as a teacher. His doctoral thesis, completed in 1897, was entitled Beiträge zur Feststellung der Beziehungen zwischen den logischen und ethischen Prinzipien (Contribution to establishing the relationships between logical and ethical principles). In 1898 he made a trip to Heidelberg and met Max Weber, who also had a significant impact on his thought. He earned his habilitation in 1899 with a thesis entitled Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode (The transcendental and the psychological method) directed by Eucken. He became a lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Jena in 1901. === First period (Jena, Munich, Gottingen and World War I) === Scheler taught at Jena from 1901 until 1906, then returned to the University of Munich where he taught from 1907 to 1910. At this time his study of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology deepened. Scheler had first met Husserl at Halle in 1901. At Munich, Husserl's own teacher Franz Brentano was still lecturing, and Scheler joined the Phenomenological Circle in Munich, centred around M. Beck, Th. Conrad, J. Daubert, M. Geiger, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Theodor Lipps, and Alexander Pfänder. Scheler was never a direct student of Husserl's, and in fact, their relationship was somewhat strained. In later years Scheler was rather critical of Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900/01) and Ideas I (1913), and he also was to harbor reservations about Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. At Munich Scheler was caught up in the conflict between the predominantly Catholic university and the local Socialist media, which led to the loss of his Munich teaching position in 1910. He then briefly lectured at the Philosophical Society of Göttingen, where he made and renewed acquaintances with Theodore Conrad, Hedwig Conrad-Martius (an ontologist and Conrad's wife), Moritz Geiger, Jean Hering, Roman Ingarden, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Husserl, Alexandre Koyré, and Adolf Reinach. Edith Stein was one of his students, impressed by him "way beyond philosophy". In 1911, he moved to Berlin as an unattached writer and grew close to Walther Rathenau and Werner Sombart. When his first marriage, to Amalie von Dewitz, ended in divorce, Scheler married Märit Furtwängler in 1912, who was the sister of the noted conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Scheler's son by his first wife, Wolf Scheler, became troublesome after the divorce, often stealing from his father, and in 1923, after Wolf had tried to force him to pay for a prostitute, Scheler sent him to his former student Kurt Schneider, a psychiatrist, for diagnosis. Schneider diagnosed Wolf as not being mentally ill, but a psychopath, using two diagnostic categories (Gemütlos and Haltlos) essentially equivalent to today's "antisocial personality disorder".Along with other Munich phenomenologists such as Reinach, Pfänder and Geiger, Scheler co-founded in 1912 the famous Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, with Husserl as main editor. Scheler's first major work, published in 1913, was strongly influenced by phenomenology: Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und von Liebe und Hass (English translation: The Nature of Sympathy, 1954). During World War I (1914–1918), Scheler was initially drafted, but later discharged because of astigmia of the eyes. He was passionately devoted to the defence of both the war and Germany's cause during the conflict. === Second period (Cologne) === In 1919 Scheler became professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Cologne. He stayed there until 1928. After 1921 he disassociated himself in public from Catholic teaching and even from the Judeo-Christian God, committing himself to pantheism and philosophical anthropology.His thinking increasingly took on a political character, and he became the only scholar of rank in the Weimar Republic to warn in public speeches against the dangers both of National Socialism and Communism. He met the Russian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev in Berlin in 1923. In 1927 he delivered talks in Berlin on 'Politics and Morals' and 'The Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism'. He argued that capitalism is not so much an economic system as a calculating, globally growing 'mind-set'. While economic capitalism may have had some roots in ascetic Calvinism (as argued by Max Weber), its mind-set, however, has its origin in modern, subconscious angst as expressed in increasing needs for financial and other securities, for protection and personal safeguards as well as for rational manageability of all things, which ultimately subordinates the value of the individual person. Scheler called instead for a new era of culture and values, which he called 'The World-Era of Adjustment'. Scheler also advocated an international university to be set up in Switzerland and was at that time supportive of programs such as 'continuing education' and of what he seems to have been the first to call a 'United States of Europe'. He deplored the gap existing in Germany between power and mind, a gap which he regarded as the very source of an impending dictatorship and the greatest obstacle to the establishment of German democracy. Five years after his death, the Nazi dictatorship (1933–1945) suppressed Scheler's work. Towards the end of his life many invitations were extended to him from China, India, Japan, and Russia. On the advice of his physician, he cancelled reservations on the Star Line to the United States. In 1927 at a conference in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, arranged by the new-age philosopher Hermann Keyserling, Scheler delivered a lengthy lecture entitled 'Man's Particular Place' (Die Sonderstellung des Menschen), published later in much abbreviated form as Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos [literally: 'Man's Position in the Cosmos']. His well-known oratorical style and delivery captivated his audience for about four hours. Early in 1928, he accepted a new position at the University of Frankfurt. There he looked forward to conversing with Ernst Cassirer, Karl Mannheim, Rudolph Otto and Richard Wilhelm, all of whom are occasionally referred to in his writings. Scheler had developed the habit of smoking between sixty and eighty cigarettes a day which contributed to a series of heart attacks throughout 1928, forcing him to cancel any travel plans. On May 19, 1928, he died in a Frankfurt hospital due to complications from a severe heart attack. His plans to publish a major work in Anthropology in 1929 were curtailed by his premature death. == Philosophical contributions == === Love and the "phenomenological attitude" === When the editors of Geisteswissenschaften invited Scheler (about 1913/14) to write on the then developing philosophical method of phenomenology, Scheler indicated that the phenomenological movement was not defined by universally accepted theses but by a "common bearing and attitude toward philosophical problems." Scheler disagrees with Husserl that phenomenology is a method of strict phenomenological reduction, but rather "an attitude of spiritual seeing...something which otherwise remains hidden...." Calling phenomenology a method fails to take seriously the phenomenological domain of original experience: the givenness of phenomenological facts (essences or values as a priori) "before they have been fixed by logic," and prior to assuming a set of criteria or symbols, as is the case in the natural and human sciences as well as other (modern) philosophies which tailor their methods to those of the sciences. Rather, that which is given in phenomenology "is given only in the seeing and experiencing act itself." The essences are never given to an 'outside' observer without direct contact with a specific domain of experience. Phenomenology is an engagement of phenomena, while simultaneously a waiting for its self-givenness; it is not a methodical procedure of observation as if its object is stationary. Thus, the particular attitude (Geisteshaltung, lit. "disposition of the spirit" or "spiritual posture") of the philosopher is crucial for the disclosure, or seeing, of phenomenological facts. This attitude is fundamentally a moral one, where the strength of philosophical inquiry rests upon the basis of love. Scheler describes the essence of philosophical thinking as "a love-determined movement of the inmost personal self of a finite being toward participation in the essential reality of all possibles."The movement and act of love is important for philosophy for two reasons: (1) If philosophy, as Scheler describes it, hearkening back to the Platonic tradition, is a participation in a "primal essence of all essences" (Urwesen), it follows that for this participation to be achieved one must incorporate within oneself the content or essential characteristic of the primal essence. For Scheler, such a primal essence is most characterized according to love, thus the way to achieve the most direct and intimate participation is precisely to share in the movement of love. It is important to mention, however, that this primal essence is not an objectifiable entity whose possible correlate is knowledge; thus, even if philosophy is always concerned with knowing, as Scheler would concur, nevertheless, reason itself is not the proper participative faculty by which the greatest level of knowing is achieved. Only when reason and logic have behind them the movement of love and the proper moral preconditions can one achieve philosophical knowledge. (2) Love is likewise important insofar as its essence is the condition for the possibility of the givenness of value-objects and especially the givenness of an object in terms of its highest possible value. Love is the movement which "brings about the continuous emergence of ever-higher value in the object--just as if it was streaming out from the object of its own accord, without any sort of exertion...on the part of the lover. ...true love opens our spiritual eyes to ever-higher values in the object loved." Hatred, on the other hand, is the closing off of oneself or closing one's eyes to the world of values. It is in the latter context that value-inversions or devaluations become prevalent, and are sometimes solidified as proper in societies. Furthermore, by calling love a movement, Scheler hopes to dispel the interpretation that love and hate are only reactions to felt values rather than the very ground for the possibility of value-givenness (or value-concealment). Scheler writes, "Love and hate are acts in which the value-realm accessible to the feelings of a being...is either extended or narrowed." Love and hate are to be distinguished from sensible and even psychical feelings; they are, instead, characterized by an intentional function (one always loves or hates something) and therefore must belong to the same anthropological sphere as theoretical consciousness and the acts of willing and thinking. Scheler, therefore calls love and hate, "spiritual feelings," and are the basis for an "emotive a priori" insofar as values, through love, are given in the same manner as are essences, through cognition. In short, love is a value-cognition, and insofar as it is determinative of the way in which a philosopher approaches the world, it is also indicative of a phenomenological attitude. === Material value-ethics === A fundamental aspect of Scheler's phenomenology is the extension of the realm of the a priori to include not only formal propositions, but material ones as well. Kant's identification of the a priori with the formal was a "fundamental error" which is the basis of his ethical formalism. Furthermore, Kant erroneously identified the realm of the non-formal (material) with sensible or empirical content. The heart of Scheler's criticism of Kant is within his theory of values. Values are given a priori, and are "feelable" phenomena. The intentional feeling of love discloses values insofar as love opens a person evermore to beings-of-value (Wertsein). Additionally, values are not formal realities; they do not exist somewhere apart from the world and their bearers, and they only exist with a value-bearer, as a value-being. They are, therefore, part of the realm of a material a priori. Nevertheless, values can vary with respect to their bearers without there ever occurring an alteration in the object as bearer. E.g., the value of a specific work of art or specific religious articles may vary according to differences of culture and religion. However, this variation of values with respect to their bearers by no means amounts to the relativity of values as such, but only with respect to the particular value-bearer. As such, the values of culture are always spiritual irrespective of the objects that may bear this value, and values of the holy still remain the highest values regardless of their bearers. According to Scheler, the disclosure of the value-being of an object precedes representation. The axiological reality of values is given prior to knowing, but, upon being felt through value-feeling, can be known (as to their essential interconnections). Values and their corresponding disvalues are ranked according to their essential interconnections as follows: Religiously-relevant values (holy/unholy) Spiritual values (beauty/ugliness, knowledge/ignorance, right/wrong) Vital values (health/unhealthiness, strength/weakness) Sensible values (agreeable/disagreeable, comfort/discomfort)Further essential interconnections apply with respect to a value's (disvalue's) existence or non-existence: The existence of a positive value is itself a positive value. The existence of a negative value (disvalue) is itself a negative value. The non-existence of a positive value is itself a negative value. The non-existence of a negative value is itself a positive value.And with respect to values of good and evil: Good is the value that is attached to the realization of a positive value in the sphere of willing. Evil is the value that is attached to the realization of a negative value in the sphere of willing. Good is the value that is attached to the realization of a higher value in the sphere of willing. Evil is the value that is attached to the realization of a lower value [at the expense of a higher one] in the sphere of willing.Goodness, however, is not simply "attached" to an act of willing, but originates ultimately within the disposition (Gesinnung) or "basic moral tenor" of the acting person. Accordingly: The criterion of 'good' consists in the agreement of a value intended, in the realization, with the value preferred, or in its disagreement with the value rejected. The criterion of 'evil' consists in the disagreement of a value intended, in the realization, with the value preferred, or in its agreement with the value rejected.Scheler argued that most of the older ethical systems (Kantian formalism, theonomic ethics, nietzscheanism, hedonism, consequentialism, and platonism, for example) fall into axiological error by emphasizing one value-rank to the exclusion of the others. A novel aspect of Scheler's ethics is the importance of the "kairos" or call of the hour. Moral rules cannot guide the person to make ethical choices in difficult, existential life-choices. For Scheler, the very capacity to obey rules is rooted in the basic moral tenor of the person. A disorder "of the heart" occurs whenever a person prefers a value of a lower rank to a higher rank, or a disvalue to a value. The term Wertsein or value-being is used by Scheler in many contexts, but his untimely death prevented him from working out an axiological ontology. Another unique and controversial element of Scheler's axiology is the notion of the emotive a priori: values can only be felt, just as color can only be seen. Reason cannot think values; the mind can only order categories of value after lived experience has happened. For Scheler, the person is the locus of value-experience, a timeless act-being that acts into time. Scheler's appropriation of a value-based metaphysics renders his phenomenology quite different from the phenomenology of consciousness (Husserl, Sartre) or the existential analysis of the being-in-the-world of Dasein (Heidegger). Scheler's concept of the "lived body" was appropriated in the early work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Max Scheler extended the phenomenological method to include a reduction of the scientific method too, thus questioning the idea of Husserl that phenomenological philosophy should be pursued as a rigorous science. Natural and scientific attitudes (Einstellung) are both phenomenologically counterpositive and hence must be sublated in the advancement of the real phenomenological reduction which, in the eyes of Scheler, has more the shapes of an allround ascesis (Askese) rather than a mere logical procedure of suspending the existential judgments. The Wesenschau, according to Scheler, is an act of breaking down the Sosein limits of Sein A into the essential-ontological domain of Sein B, in short, an ontological participation of Sosenheiten, seeing the things as such (cf. the Buddhist concept of tathata, and the Christian theological quidditas). === Man and History (1924) === Scheler planned to publish his major work in Anthropology in 1929, but the completion of such a project was curtailed by his premature death in 1928. Some fragments of such work have been published in Nachlass. In 1924, Man and History (Mensch und Geschichte), Scheler gave some preliminary statements on the range and goal of philosophical anthropology.In this book, Scheler argues for a tabula rasa of all the inherited prejudices from the three main traditions that have formulated an idea of man: religion, philosophy and science. Scheler argues that it is not enough just to reject such traditions, as did Nietzsche with the Judeo-Christian religion by saying that "God is dead"; these traditions have impregnated all parts of our culture, and therefore still determine a great deal of the way of thinking even of those that don't believe in the Christian God. To really get freedom from such traditions it is necessary to study and deconstruct them (Husserl's term Abbau). Scheler says that philosophical anthropology must address the totality of man, while it must be informed by the specialized sciences like biology, psychology, sociology, etc. == Works == Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und von Liebe und Hass, 1913 Der Genius des Kriegs und der Deutsche Krieg, 1915 Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 1913 - 1916 Krieg und Aufbau, 1916 Die Ursachen des Deutschenhasses, 1917 Vom Umsturz der Werte, 1919 Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus, 1921 Vom Ewigen im Menschen, 1921 Probleme der Religion. Zur religiösen Erneuerung, 1921 Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, 1923 (neu aufgelegt als Titel von 1913: Zur Phänomenologie ...) Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre, 3 Bände, 1923/1924 Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, 1926 Der Mensch im Zeitalter des Ausgleichs, 1927 Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, 1928 Philosophische Weltanschauung, 1929 Logik I. (Fragment, Korrekturbögen). Amsterdam 1975 === English translations === The Nature of Sympathy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. Philosophical Perspectives. translated by Oscar Haac. Boston: Beacon Press. 1958.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 144 pages. (German title: Philosophische Weltanschauung.)On the Eternal in Man. translated by Bernard Noble. London: SCM Press. 1960.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 480 pages.Ressentiment. edited by Lewis A. Coser, translated by William W. Holdheim. New York: Schocken. 1972.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 201 pages. ISBN 0-8052-0370-2.Selected Philosophical Essays. translated by David R. Lachterman. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. 1973. ISBN 9780810103795.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 359 pages. ISBN 0-8101-0379-6.Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A new attempt toward the foundation of an ethical personalism. translated by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. 1973.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 620 pages. ISBN 0-8101-0415-6. (Original German edition: Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 1913–16.) Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. translated by Manfred S. Frings. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1980.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 239 pages. ISBN 0-7100-0302-1.Person and Self-value: three essays. edited and partially translated by Manfred S. Frings. Boston: Nijhoff. 1987.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 201 pages. ISBN 90-247-3380-4.On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing. Selected Writings. edited and partially translated by Harold J. Bershady. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1992.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 267 pages. ISBN 0-226-73671-7.The Human Place in the Cosmos. translated by Manfred Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 2009.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) 79 pages. ISBN 978-0-8101-2529-2. == See also == Axiological ethics Ressentiment (Scheler) Mimpathy == References == == Sources == Barber, Michael (1993). Guardian of Dialogue: Max Scheler's Phenomenology, Sociology of Knowledge, and Philosophy of Love. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. 205 pages. ISBN 0-8387-5228-4.Blosser, Philip (1995). Scheler's Critique of Kant's Ethics. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821411087. 221 pages. ISBN 0-8214-1108-X.Deeken, Alfons (1974). Process and Permanence in Ethics: Max Scheler's Moral Philosophy. New York: Paulist Press. 282 pages. ISBN 0-8091-1800-9.Frings, Manfred S. (1965). Max Scheler: A concise introduction to the world of a great thinker. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press. 223 pages.Frings, Manfred S. (1969). Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. 118 pages.Frings, Manfred S., ed. (1974). Max Scheler (1874-1928): centennial essays. The Hague: Nijhoff. 176 pages.Frings, Manfred (1997). The Mind of Max Scheler: The first comprehensive guide based on the complete works. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press. 324 pages. ISBN 0-87462-613-7. 2nd ed., 2001.Frings, Manfred (2003). Life-Time. Springer. 260 pages. ISBN 1-4020-1333-7. 2nd ed., 2001.Kelly, Eugene (1977). Max Scheler. Chicago: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 9780805777079. 203 pages. ISBN 0-8057-7707-5.Kelly, Eugene (1997). Structure and Diversity: Studies in the Phenomenological Philosophy of Max Scheler. Boston: Kluwer. 247 pages. ISBN 0-7923-4492-8.Nota, John H., S.J. (1983). Max Scheler: The Man and His Work. translated by Theodore Plantinga and John H. Nota. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. 213 pages. ISBN 0-8199-0852-5. (Original Dutch title: Max Scheler: De man en zijn werk)Ranly, Ernest W. (1966). Scheler's Phenomenology of Community. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 130 pages.Schneck, Stephen F. (1987). Person and Polis: Max Scheler's Personalism and Political Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press. 188 pages. ISBN 0-88706-340-3.Spader, Peter (2002). Scheler's Ethical Personalism: Its logic, Development, and Promise. New York: Fordham University Press. 327 pages. ISBN 0-8232-2178-4. == External links == Max-Scheler-Gesellschaft (Max Scheler Society) - German-language website Works by Max Scheler at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Max Scheler at Internet Archive Nature, Vol. 63. March 7, 1901, Book review of: Die Transcendentale Und Die Psychologische Methode, Method in Philosophy, Dr. Max F. Scheler, 1900 The Monist, Vol 12, 1902 Book review of: Die Transcendentale Und Die Psychologische Methode, by Dr. Max F. Scheler 1900 in English Prof. Frings' Max Scheler Website (www.maxscheler.com) Photos of Max Scheler at web site of Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology A Filosofia de Max Scheler (Portuguese-language website) Deutsches Leben der Gegenwart at Project Gutenberg (German) Newspaper clippings about Max Scheler in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Giovanni Gentile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile

Giovanni Gentile (Italian: [dʒoˈvanni dʒenˈtiːle]; 30 May 1875 – 15 April 1944) was an Italian philosopher, educator, and politician. Described by himself and by Benito Mussolini as the "philosopher of Fascism", he was influential in providing an intellectual foundation for Italian Fascism, and ghostwrote part of "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932) with Mussolini. He was involved in the resurgence of Hegelian idealism in Italian philosophy and also devised his own system of thought, which he called "actual idealism" or "actualism", which has been described as "the subjective extreme of the idealist tradition". == Biography == === Early life and career === Gentile was born in Castelvetrano, Italy. He was inspired by Risorgimento-era Italian intellectuals such as Mazzini, Rosmini, Gioberti, and Spaventa from whom he borrowed the idea of autoctisi, "self-construction", but also strongly influenced and mentored by the German idealist and materialist schools of thought – namely Karl Marx, Hegel, and Fichte, with whom he shared the ideal of creating a Wissenschaftslehre (Epistemology), a theory for a structure of knowledge that makes no assumptions. Friedrich Nietzsche, too, influenced him, as seen in an analogy between Nietzsche's Übermensch and Gentile's Uomo Fascista. In religion he presented himself as a Catholic (of sorts), and emphasised actual idealism's Christian heritage; Antonio G. Pesce insists that 'there is in fact no doubt that Gentile was a Catholic', but he occasionally identified himself as an atheist, albeit one who was still culturally a Catholic.He won a fierce competition to become one of four exceptional students of the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, where he enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities. In 1898 he graduated in Letters and Philosophy with a dissertation titled Rosmini e Gioberti, that he realized under the supervision of Donato Jaja, a disciple of Bertrando Spaventa.During his academic career, Gentile served in a number of positions, including as: Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Palermo (27 March 1910); Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Pisa (9 August 1914); Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Rome (11 November 1917), and later as Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (1926); Commissioner of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (1928–32), and later as its Director (1932–43); and Vice President of Bocconi University in Milan (1934–44). === Involvement with Fascism === In 1922, Gentile was named Minister of Public Education for the government of Benito Mussolini. In this capacity he instituted the "Riforma Gentile" – a reformation of the secondary school system that had a long-lasting impact on Italian education. His philosophical works included The Theory of Mind as Pure Act (1916) and Logic as Theory of Knowledge (1917), with which he defined actual idealism, a unified metaphysical system reinforcing his sentiments that philosophy isolated from life, and life isolated from philosophy, are but two identical modes of backward cultural bankruptcy. For Gentile, this theory indicated how philosophy could directly influence, mould, and penetrate life; or, how philosophy could govern life. In 1925, Gentile headed two constitutional reform commissions that helped establish the corporate state of Fascism. He would go on to serve as president of the Fascist state's Grand Council of Public Education (1926–28), and even gained membership on the powerful Fascist Grand Council (1925–29). Gentile's philosophical system – the foundation of all Fascist philosophy – viewed thought as all-embracing: no-one could actually leave his or her sphere of thought, nor exceed his or her thought. Reality was unthinkable, except in relation to the activity by means of which it becomes thinkable, positing that as a unity — held in the active subject and the discrete abstract phenomena that reality comprehends – wherein each phenomenon, when truly realised, was centered within that unity; therefore, it was innately spiritual, transcendent, and immanent, to all possible things in contact with the unity. Gentile used that philosophic frame to systematize every item of interest that now was subject to the rule of absolute self-identification – thus rendering as correct every consequence of the hypothesis. The resultant philosophy can be interpreted as an idealist foundation for Legal Naturalism. Giovanni Gentile was described by Mussolini, and by himself, as "the philosopher of Fascism"; moreover, he was the ghostwriter of the first part of the essay "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), attributed to Mussolini. It was first published in 1932, in the Italian Encyclopedia, wherein he described the traits characteristic of Italian Fascism at the time: compulsory state corporatism, Philosopher Kings, the abolition of the parliamentary system, and autarky. He also wrote the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals which was signed by a number of writers and intellectuals, including Luigi Pirandello, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Giuseppe Ungaretti. Gentile became a member of the Fascist Grand Council in 1925, and remained loyal to Mussolini even after the fall of the Fascist government in 1943. He supported Mussolini's establishment of the "Republic of Salò", a puppet state of Nazi Germany, despite having criticized its anti-Jewish laws, and accepted an appointment in its government. Gentile was the last president of the Royal Academy of Italy (1943–1944). === Assassination === On March 30, 1944, Gentile received death threats blaming him for the execution of the Martyrs of Campo di Marte by Republic of Salò troops and accusing him of promoting fascism. Only two weeks later on April 15, 1944, Bruno Fanciullacci and Antonio Ignesti, both of whom belonged to the communist partisan organization Gruppi di Azione Patriottica (GAP), approached Gentile in his parked car, hiding pistols behind a book. When Gentile lowered the car window to speak to them, he was immediately hit with several bullets to the chest and heart, killing him. Fanciullacci would be killed several months later as he tried to escape capture.Gentile's assassination divided the anti-fascist front. It was disapproved of by the Tuscan branch of the CLN with the sole exception of the Italian Communist Party, which approved the assassination and claimed responsibility for it. Gentile was buried in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. == Philosophy == Benedetto Croce wrote that Gentile "...holds the honor of having been the most rigorous neo-Hegelian in the entire history of Western philosophy and the dishonor of having been the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy." His philosophical basis for fascism was rooted in his understanding of ontology and epistemology, in which he found vindication for the rejection of individualism, and acceptance of collectivism, with the state as the ultimate location of authority and loyalty outside of which individuality had no meaning (and which in turn helped justify the totalitarian dimension of fascism).The conceptual relationship between Gentile's actual idealism and his conception of fascism is not self-evident. The supposed relationship does not appear to be based on logical deducibility. That is, actual idealism does not entail a fascist ideology in any rigorous sense. Gentile enjoyed fruitful intellectual relations with Croce from 1899 – and particularly during their joint editorship of La Critica from 1903 to 1922 – but broke philosophically and politically from Croce in the early 1920s over Gentile's embrace of fascism. (Croce assesses their philosophical disagreement in Una discussione tra filosofi amici in Conversazioni Critiche, II.) Ultimately, Gentile foresaw a social order wherein opposites of all kinds weren't to be considered as existing independently from each other; that 'publicness' and 'privateness' as broad interpretations were currently false as imposed by all former kinds of government, including capitalism and communism; and that only the reciprocal totalitarian state of corporatism, a fascist state, could defeat these problems which are made from reifying as an external reality that which is in fact, to Gentile, only a reality in thinking. Whereas it was common in the philosophy of the time to see the conditional subject as abstract and the object as concrete, Gentile postulated (after Hegel) the opposite, that the subject is concrete and the object a mere abstraction (or rather, that what was conventionally dubbed "subject" is in fact only conditional object, and that the true subject is the act of being or essence of the object). Gentile was, because of his actualist system, a notable philosophical presence across Europe during his time. At its base, Gentile's brand of idealism asserted the primacy of the "pure act" of thinking. This act is foundational to all human experience – it creates the phenomenal world – and involves a process of "reflective awareness" (in Italian, "l'atto del pensiero, pensiero pensante") that is constitutive of the Absolute and revealed in education. Gentile's emphasis on seeing Mind as the Absolute signaled his "revival of the idealist doctrine of the autonomy of the mind." It also connected his philosophical work to his vocation as a teacher. In actual idealism, then, pedagogy is transcendental and provides the process by which the Absolute is revealed. His idea of a transcending truth above positivism garnered particular attention by emphasizing that all modes of sensation only take the form of ideas within one's mind; in other words, they are mental constructs. To Gentile, for example, even the correlation of the function and location of the physical brain with the functions of the physical body was merely a consistent creation of the mind, and not of the brain (itself a creation of the mind). Observations like this have led some commentators to view Gentile's philosophy as a kind of "absolute solipsism," expressing the idea "that only the spirit or mind is real".Actual idealism also touches on ideas of concern to theology. An example of actual idealism in theology is the idea that although man may have invented the concept of God, it does not make God any less real in any possible sense, so long as God is not presupposed to exist as abstraction, and except in case qualities about what existence actually entails (i.e. being invented apart from the thinking that makes it) are presupposed. Benedetto Croce objected that Gentile's "pure act" is nothing other than Schopenhauer's will.Therefore, Gentile proposed a form of what he called "absolute Immanentism" in which the divine was the present conception of reality in the totality of one's individual thinking as an evolving, growing and dynamic process. Many times accused of solipsism, Gentile maintained his philosophy to be a Humanism that sensed the possibility of nothing beyond what was colligate in perception; the self's human thinking, in order to communicate as immanence is to be human like oneself, made a cohesive empathy of the self-same, without an external division, and therefore not modeled as objects to one's own thinking. Whereas solipsism would feel trapped in realization of its solitude, actualism rejects such a privation and is an expression of the only freedom which is possible within objective contingencies, where the transcendental Self does not even exist as an object, and the dialectical co-substantiation of others necessary to understand the empirical self are felt as true others when found to be the unrelativistic subjectivity of that whole self and essentially unified with the spirit of such higher self in actu, where others can be truly known, rather than thought as windowless monads. === Phases of his thought === A number of developments in Gentile's thought and career helped to define his philosophy, including: the definition of Actual Idealism in his work Theory of the Pure Act (1903); his support for the invasion of Libya (1911) and the entry of Italy into World War I (1915); his dispute with Benedetto Croce over the historic inevitability of Fascism; his role as minister of education (1922–24); his belief that Fascism could be made subservient to his philosophical thought, along with his gathering of influence through the work of students like Armando Carlini (leader of the so-called "right Gentilians") and Ugo Spirito (who applied Gentile's philosophy to social problems and helped codify Fascist political theory); and his work on the Enciclopedia Italiana (1925–43; first edition finished in 1936). === Gentile's definition of and vision for Fascism === Gentile considered Fascism the fulfillment of the Risorgimento ideals, particularly those represented by Giuseppe Mazzini and the Historical Right party.Gentile sought to make his philosophy the basis for Fascism. However, with Gentile and with Fascism, the "problem of the party" existed by virtue of the fact that the Fascist "party", as such, arose organically rather than from a tract or pre-established socio-political doctrine. This complicated the matter for Gentile as it left no consensus to any way of thinking among Fascists, but ironically this aspect was to Gentile's view of how a state or party doctrine should live out its existence: with natural organic growth and dialectical opposition intact. The fact that Mussolini gave credence to Gentile's view points via Gentile's authorship helped with an official consideration, even though the "problem of the party" continued to exist for Mussolini as well. Gentile placed himself within the Hegelian tradition, but also sought to distance himself from those views he considered erroneous. He criticized Hegel's dialectic (of Idea-Nature-Spirit), and instead proposed that everything is Spirit, with the dialectic residing in the pure act of thinking. Gentile believed Marx's conception of the dialectic to be the fundamental flaw of his application to system making. To the neo-Hegelian Gentile, Marx had made the dialectic into an external object, and therefore had abstracted it by making it part of a material process of historical development. The dialectic to Gentile could only be something of human precepts, something that is an active part of human thinking. It was, to Gentile, concrete subject and not abstract object. This Gentile expounded by how humans think in forms wherein one side of a dual opposite could not be thought of without its complement. "Upward" wouldn't be known without "downward" and "heat" couldn't be known without "cold", while each are opposites they are co-dependent for either one's realization: these were creations that existed as dialectic only in human thinking and couldn't be confirmed outside of which, and especially could not be said to exist in a condition external to human thought like independent matter and a world outside of personal subjectivity or as an empirical reality when not conceived in unity and from the standpoint of the human mind. To Gentile, Marx's externalizing of the dialectic was essentially a fetishistic mysticism. Though when viewed externally thus, it followed that Marx could then make claims to the effect of what state or condition the dialectic objectively existed in history, a posteriori of where any individual's opinion was while comporting oneself to the totalized whole of society. i.e. people themselves could by such a view be ideologically 'backwards' and left behind from the current state of the dialectic and not themselves be part of what is actively creating the dialectic as-it-is. Gentile thought this was absurd, and that there was no 'positive' independently existing dialectical object. Rather, the dialectic was natural to the state, as-it-is. Meaning that the interests composing the state are composing the dialectic by their living organic process of holding oppositional views within that state, and unified therein. It being the mean condition of those interests as ever they exist. Even criminality is unified as a necessarily dialectic to be subsumed into the state and a creation and natural outlet of the dialectic of the positive state as ever it is. This view (influenced by the Hegelian theory of the state) justified the corporative system, where in the individualized and particular interests of all divergent groups were to be personably incorporated into the state ("Stato etico") each to be considered a bureaucratic branch of the state itself and given official leverage. Gentile, rather than believing the private to be swallowed synthetically within the public as Marx would have it in his objective dialectic, believed that public and private were a priori identified with each other in an active and subjective dialectic: one could not be subsumed fully into the other as they already are beforehand the same. In such a manner each is the other after their own fashion and from their respective, relative, and reciprocal, position. Yet both constitute the state itself and neither are free from it, nothing ever being truly free from it, the state (as in Hegel) existing as an eternal condition and not an objective, abstract collection of atomistic values and facts of the particulars about what is positively governing the people at any given time. == Works == === Collected works === ==== Systematic works ==== ==== Historical works ==== ==== Various works ==== ==== Letter collections ==== == Notes == == References == A. James Gregor, Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001. == Further reading == === English === Brown, Merle E. (1966). Neo-idealistic Aesthetics: Croce-Gentile-Collingwood, Wayne State University Press. Brown, Merle E., "Respice Finem: The Literary Criticism of Giovanni Gentile," in Italica, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring, 1970). Crespi, Angelo (1926). Contemporary Thought of Italy, Williams and Norgate, Limited. De Ruggiero, Guido, "G. Gentile: Absolute Idealism." in Modern Philosophy, Part IV, Chap. III, (George Allen & Unwin, 1921). Evans, Valmai Burwood, "The Ethics of Giovanni Gentile," in International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jan. 1929). Evans, Valmai Burwood, "Education in the Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile," in International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Jan. 1933). Gregor, James A., "Giovanni Gentile and the Philosophy of the Young Karl Marx," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 24, No. 2 (April–June 1963). Gregor, James A. (2004). Origins and Doctrine of Fascism: With Selections from Other Works by Giovanni Gentile. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers Gregor, James A. (2009). Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought, Princeton University Press. Gullace, Giovanni, "The Dante Studies of Giovanni Gentile," Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 90 (1972). Harris, H. S. (1966). The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, U. of Illinois Press. Holmes, Roger W. (1937). The Idealism of Giovanni Gentile The Macmillan Company. Horowitz, Irving Louis, "On the Social Theories of Giovanni Gentile," in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Dec. 1962). Lion, Aline (1932). The Idealistic Conception of Religion; Vico, Hegel, Gentile, Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Lyttleton, Adrian, ed. (1973). Italian Fascisms: From Pareto to Gentile, Harper & Row. Minio-Paluello, L. (1946). Education in Fascist Italy, Oxford University Press. Moss, M. E. (2004). Mussolini's Fascist Philosopher: Giovanni Gentile Reconsidered, Lang. Roberts, David D. (2007). Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy, University of Toronto Press. Romanell, Patrick (1937). The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, Columbia University. Romanell, Patrick (1946). Croce versus Gentile, S. F. Vanni. Runes, Dagobert D., ed. (1955). Treasury of Philosophy, Philosophical Library, New York. Santillana, George de, "The Idealism of Giovanni Gentile," in Isis, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Nov. 1938). Smith, J.A. "The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 20, (1919–1920). Smith, William A. (1970). Giovanni Gentile on the Existence of God, Beatrice-Naewolaerts. Spirito, Ugo, "The Religious Feeling of Giovanni Gentile," in East and West, Vol. 5, No. 2 (July 1954). Thompson, Merritt Moore (1934). The Educational Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, University of Southern California. Turi, Gabrielle, "Giovanni Gentile: Oblivion, Remembrance, and Criticism," in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 1998). === In Italian === Giovanni Gentile (Augusto Del Noce, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990) Giovanni Gentile filosofo europeo (Salvatore Natoli, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1989) Giovanni Gentile (Antimo Negri, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975) Faremo una grande università: Girolamo Palazzina-Giovanni Gentile; Un epistolario (1930–1938), a cura di Marzio Achille Romano (Milano: Edizioni Giuridiche Economiche Aziendali dell'Università Bocconi e Giuffré editori S.p.A., 1999) Parlato, Giuseppe. "Giovanni Gentile: From the Risorgimento to Fascism." Trans. Stefano Maranzana. Telos 133 (Winter 2005): pp. 75–94. Antonio Cammarana, Proposizioni sulla filosofia di Giovanni Gentile, prefazione del Sen. Armando Plebe, Roma, Gruppo parliamentare MSI-DN, Senato della Repubblica, 1975, 157 Pagine, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze BN 758951. Antonio Cammarana, Teorica della reazione dialettica : filosofia del postcomunismo, Roma, Gruppo parliamentare MSI-DN, Senato della Repubblica, 1976, 109 Pagine, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze BN 775492. == External links == Castelvetrano website Works by Giovanni Gentile at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Giovanni Gentile at Internet Archive Newspaper clippings about Giovanni Gentile in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Media talks by Diego Fusaro captioned in English: Diego Fusaro: Giovanni Gentile's Philosophy of Pure Act Diego Fusaro: The Idealism of Karl Marx, according to Giovanni Gentile Diego Fusaro: The Act of Giovanni Gentile & Antonio Gramsci's Praxis Emanuele Severino & Diego Fusaro: Action & Becoming. About Giovanni Gentile & Antonio Gramsci Diego Fusaro: Giovanni Gentile's Philosophy. An Introduction Diego Fusaro: Idealism & Practice; Fichte, Marx & Gentile Diego Fusaro: We Must Think Outside The Box (Gramsci, Pound, Gentile)

Ralph Barton Perry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Barton_Perry

Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 – January 22, 1957) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth." Perry's viewpoints on religion stressed the notion that religious thinking possessed legitimacy should it exist within a framework accepting of human reason and social progress. == Biography == Ralph Barton Perry was born in Poultney, Vermont on July 3, 1876. He was educated at Princeton (B.A., 1896) and at Harvard (M.A., 1897; Ph.D., 1899), where, after teaching philosophy for three years at Williams and Smith colleges, he was instructor (1902–05), assistant professor (1905–13), full professor (1913–30) and Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy (1930–46). He was president of the American Philosophical Association's eastern division in 1920–21. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1928 and the American Philosophical Society in 1939.A pupil of William James, whose Essays in Radical Empiricism he edited (1912), Perry became one of the leaders of the New Realism movement. Perry argued for a naturalistic theory of value and a New Realist theory of perception and knowledge. He wrote a celebrated biography of William James, which won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, and proceeded to a revision of his critical approach to natural knowledge. An active member among a group of American New Realist philosophers, he elaborated around 1910 the program of new realism. However, he soon dissented from moral and spiritual ontology, and turned to a philosophy of disillusionment. Perry was an advocate of a militant democracy: in his words "total but not totalitarian". Puritanism and Democracy (1944) is a famous wartime attempt to reconcile two fundamental concepts in the origins of modern America. Between 1946 and 1948, he delivered in Glasgow his Gifford Lectures, titled Realms of Value. He married Rachel Berenson on August 15, 1905, and they lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their son was Edward Barton Perry born at their home 5 Avon Street in Cambridge, September 27, 1906. In 1932, Edward married Harriet Armington Seelye (born Worcester, Massachusetts, May 28, 1909), daughter of physician and surgeon Dr. Walker Clarke Seelye of Worcester and Annie Ide Barrows Seelye, formerly of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1919, he gave the commencement address for the first graduating class of Connecticut College, which had opened its doors in 1915. Perry died at his home in Cambridge on January 22, 1957, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. == Bibliography == The Approach to Philosophy, (1905), New York, Chicago and Boston: Charles Scribner's Sons The Moral Economy, (1909), New York: Charles Scribner's Son Present Philosophical Tendencies: A Critical Survey of Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and Realism, together with a Synopsis of the Philosophy of William James, (1912), New York:Longmans, Green & Co. Holt, EB; Marvin, WT; Montague, WP; Perry, RB; Pitkin, WB; Spaulding, EG, The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy, (1912), New York: The Macmillan Company The Free Man and the Soldier, (1916), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War, (1918), New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Annotated Bibliography of the Writings of William James, (1920), Longmans, Green & Co. The Plattsburg movement: A Chapter of America's Participation in the World War (1921), New York: E.P. Dutton & company A Modernist View of National Ideals (1926) Berkeley: University of California Press, Howison Lectures in Philosophy, 1925 General Theory of Value (1926) Philosophy of the Recent Past: An Outline of European and American Philosophy Since 1860, (1926), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons The Hope for Immortality (1935) The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (1935) Plea for an Age Movement (1942) New York: The Vanguard Press [Talk at 1941 Princeton and Harvard Reunions] Puritanism and Democracy, (1944) Characteristically American: Five Lectures Delivered on the William W. Cook Foundation at the University of Michigan, November–December 1948, (1949), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949 Realms of Value, (1954), Harvard University Press [Based on Gifford Lectures] The Humanity of Man, (1956), New York: George Braziller "A Definition of morality". In P. W. Taylor (Ed.), Problems of moral philosophy: an introduction to ethics (pp. 13–24). Belmont, CA: Dickenson, 1967 == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers == References == == External links == Biography, at the Gifford Lectures site Works by Ralph Barton Perry at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Ralph Barton Perry at Internet Archive Works by Ralph Barton Perry at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Some works by and about Perry, in the Mead Project website "PROF. ROYCE'S REFUTATION OF REALISM AND PLURALISM", The Monist 12 (1901-2): 446–458. Review: The Refutation of Idealism, Reviews, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. I, No. 3 (Feb. 4, 1904), 76–77. THE EGO-CENTRIC PREDICAMENT, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 7 (1910): 5-14 Editor’s Preface, Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) by William James Lectures on the Harvard Classics. The Harvard Classics, Volume LI (1914): Philosophy: I. General Introduction Philosophy: III. The Rise of Modern Philosophy Philosophy: IV. Introduction to Kant Religion: I. General Introduction Non-Resistance and the Present War--A Reply to Mr. Russell, International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 25 No. 3 (April, 1915). 307–316.

W.D. Ross

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Ross

Sir William David Ross (15 April 1877 – 5 May 1971), known as David Ross but usually cited as W. D. Ross, was a Scottish Aristotelian philosopher, translator, WWI veteran, civil servant, and university administrator. His best-known work is The Right and the Good (1930), in which he developed a pluralist, deontological form of intuitionist ethics in response to G. E. Moore's consequentialist form of intuitionism. Ross also critically edited and translated a number of Aristotle's works, such as his 12-volume translation of Aristotle together with John Alexander Smith, and wrote on other Greek philosophy. == Life == William David Ross was born in Thurso, Caithness in the north of Scotland the son of John Ross (1835-1905).He spent most of his first six years as a child in southern India. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh. In 1895, he gained a first class MA honours degree in classics. He completed his studies at Balliol College, Oxford, with a First in Classical Moderations in 1898 and a First in Literae Humaniores ('Greats', a combination of philosophy and ancient history) in 1900. He was made a Fellow of Merton College in 1900, a position he held until 1945; he was elected to a tutorial fellowship at Oriel College in October 1902.With the outbreak of World War I, Ross joined the army in 1915 with a commission on the special list. He held a series of positions involved with the supply of munitions. At the time of the armistice he held the rank of major and was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Munitions. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 in recognition of his wartime service. For his post-war services to various public bodies he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1938.Ross was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy (1923–1928), Provost of Oriel College, Oxford (1929–1947), Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1941 to 1944 and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1944–1947). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1939 to 1940. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and was its President from 1936–to 1940. Of the many governmental committees on which he served one was the Civil Service Tribunal, of which he was chairman. One of his two colleagues was Leonard Woolf, who thought that the whole system of fixing governmental remuneration should be on the same basis as the US model, dividing the civil service into a relatively small number of pay grades. Ross did not agree with this radical proposal. In 1947 he was appointed chairman of the first Royal Commission on the Press, United Kingdom, elected an honorary fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950. He died in Oxford on 5 May 1971. He is memorialised on his parents' grave in the Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh. == Family == His younger brother was Rev Donald George Ross (1879-1943). He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters, Margaret (who married Robin Harrison), Eleanor, Rosalind (who married John Miller Martin), and Katharine. Edith died in 1953. He was a cousin of Berriedale Keith. == Ross's ethical theory == W. D. Ross was a moral realist, a non-naturalist, and an intuitionist. He argued that there are moral truths. He wrote: The moral order...is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe (and...of any possible universe in which there are moral agents at all) as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic. Thus, according to Ross, the claim that something is good is true if that thing really is good. Ross also agreed with G.E. Moore's claim that any attempt to define ethical statements solely in terms of statements about the natural world commits the naturalistic fallacy. Furthermore, the terms "right" and "good" are indefinable. This means not only that they cannot be defined in terms of natural properties but also that it is not possible to define one in terms of the other. Ross rejected Moore's consequentialist ethics. According to consequentialist theories, what people ought to do is determined only by whether their actions will bring about the best. By contrast, Ross argues that maximising the good is only one of several prima facie duties (prima facie obligations) which play a role in determining what a person ought to do in any given case. === Duties === In The Right and the Good, Ross lists seven prima facie duties, without claiming his list to be all-inclusive: fidelity; reparation; gratitude; justice; beneficence; non-maleficence; and self-improvement. In any given situation, any number of these prima facie duties may apply. In the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another. Someone could have a prima facie duty of reparation, say, a duty to help people who helped you move house, move house themselves, and a prima facie duty of fidelity, such as taking your children on a promised trip to the park, and these could conflict. Nonetheless, there can never be a true ethical dilemma, Ross would argue, because one of the prima facie duties in a given situation is always the weightiest, and over-rules all the others. This is thus the absolute obligation or absolute duty, the action that the person ought to perform.It is frequently argued, however, that Ross should have used the term "pro tanto" rather than "prima facie". Shelly Kagan, for example, wrote: It may be helpful to note explicitly that in distinguishing between pro tanto and prima facie reasons I depart from the unfortunate terminology proposed by Ross, which has invited confusion and misunderstanding. I take it that – despite his misleading label – it is actually pro tanto reasons that Ross has in mind in his discussion of what he calls prima facie duties. Explaining the difference between pro tanto and prima facie, Kagan wrote: "A pro tanto reason has genuine weight, but nonetheless may be outweighed by other considerations. Thus, calling a reason a pro tanto reason is to be distinguished from calling it a prima facie reason, which I take to involve an epistemological qualification: a prima facie reason appears to be a reason, but may actually not be a reason at all." === Values and intuition === According to Ross, self-evident intuition shows that there are four kinds of things that are intrinsically good: pleasure, knowledge, virtue and justice. "Virtue" refers to actions or dispositions to act from the appropriate motives, for example, from the desire to do one's duty. "Justice", on the other hand, is about happiness in proportion to merit. As such, pleasure, knowledge and virtue all concern states of mind, in contrast to justice, which concerns a relation between two states of mind. These values come in degrees and are comparable with each other. Ross holds that virtue has the highest value while pleasure has the lowest value. He goes so far as to suggest that "no amount of pleasure is equal to any amount of virtue, that in fact virtue belongs to a higher order of value".: 150  Values can also be compared within each category, for example, well-grounded knowledge of general principle is more valuable than weakly grounded knowledge of isolated matters of fact.: 146–7 According to Ross's intuitionism, we can know moral truths through intuition, for example, that it is wrong to lie or that knowledge is intrinsically good. Intuitions involve a direct apprehension that is not mediated by inferences or deductions: they are self-evident and therefore not in need of any additional proof. This ability is not inborn but has to be developed on the way to reaching mental maturity.: 29  But in its fully developed form, we can know moral truths just as well as we can know mathematical truths like the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.: 30  This self-evident knowledge is limited to general principles: we can come to know the prima facie duties this way but not our absolute duty in a particular situation: what we should do all things considered.: 19–20, 30  All we can do is consult perception to determine which prima facie duty has the highest normative weight in this particular case, even though this usually does not amount to knowledge proper due to the complexity involved in most specific cases. === Criticism and influence === A frequent criticism of Ross's ethics is that it is unsystematic and often fails to provide clear-cut ethical answers. Another is that "moral intuitions" are not a reliable basis for ethics, because they are fallible, can vary widely from individual to individual, and are often rooted in our evolutionary past in ways that should make us suspicious of their capacity to track moral truth. Additionally there is no consideration of the consequence of the action undertaken, as with all deontological approaches.Ross's deontological pluralism was a true innovation and provided a plausible alternative to Kantian deontology. His ethical intuitionism found few followers among his contemporaries but has seen a revival by the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Among the philosophers influenced by The Right and the Good are Philip Stratton-Lake, Robert Audi, Michael Huemer, and C.D. Broad. == Selected works == 1908: Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1923: Aristotle 1924: Aristotle's Metaphysics 1927: 'The Basis of Objective Judgments in Ethics'. International Journal of Ethics, 37:113–127. 1930: The Right and the Good 1936: Aristotle's Physics 1939: Foundations of Ethics 1949: Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics 1951: Plato's Theory of Ideas 1954: Kant’s Ethical Theory: A Commentary on the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Oxford: Oxford University Press. == References == == Further reading == G. N. Clark, ‘Sir David Ross’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 57 (1971), 525–43 Phillips, David. Rossian Ethics: W.D. Ross and Contemporary Moral Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Stout, A. K. 1967. 'Ross, William David'. In P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan: 216–217. Stratton-Lake, Philip. 2002. 'Introduction'. In Ross, W. D. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Timmons, Mark. 2003. 'Moral Writings and The Right and the Good'. [Book Review] Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews == External links == Skelton, Anthony. "William David Ross". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "William David Ross" by David L. Simpson in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012 William David Ross a biography and online lectures at the Gifford Lectures website Cooley, Ken. Sir David Ross's Pluralistic Theory of Duty (The Beginnings)

Ludwig von Mises

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (German: [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian-American Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism and the power of consumers. He is best known for his work on praxeology studies comparing communism and capitalism. Mises emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1940. Since the mid-20th century, libertarian movements have been strongly influenced by Mises's writings. Mises' student Friedrich Hayek viewed Mises as one of the major figures in the revival of classical liberalism in the post-war era. Hayek's work "The Transmission of the Ideals of Freedom" (1951) pays high tribute to the influence of Mises in the 20th-century libertarian movement.Mises's Private Seminar was a leading group of economists. Many of its alumni, including Friedrich Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, emigrated from Austria to the United States and Great Britain. Mises has been described as having approximately seventy close students in Austria. == Biography == === Early life === Ludwig von Mises was born to Jewish parents in the city of Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary. The family of his father, Arthur Edler von Mises, had been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century (Edler indicates a noble landless family), and they had been involved in financing and constructing railroads. His mother Adele (née Landau) was a niece of Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the Austrian Parliament.: 3–9  Arthur von Mises was stationed in Lemberg as a construction engineer with the Czernowitz railway company. By the age of 12, Mises spoke fluent German, Russian, Polish and French, read Latin and could understand Ukrainian. Mises had a younger brother, Richard von Mises, who became a mathematician and a member of the Vienna Circle, and a probability theorist. When Ludwig and Richard were still children, their family moved back to Vienna.In 1900, Mises attended the University of Vienna, becoming influenced by the works of Carl Menger. Mises's father died in 1903. Three years later, Mises was awarded his doctorate from the school of law in 1906. From 1913 to 1938, Mises was a professor at the university, during which he mentored Hayek. === Life in Europe === In the years from 1904 to 1914, Mises attended lectures given by Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. He graduated in February 1906 (Juris Doctor) and started a career as a civil servant in Austria's financial administration. After a few months, he left to take a trainee position in a Vienna law firm. During that time, Mises began lecturing on economics and in early 1909 joined the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, serving as economic adviser to the Austrian government until he left Austria in 1934. During World War I, Mises served as a front officer in the Austro-Hungarian artillery and as an economic adviser to the War Department.Mises was chief economist for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and was an economic adviser of Engelbert Dollfuss, the austrofascist Austrian Chancellor. Later, Mises was economic adviser to Otto von Habsburg, the Christian democratic politician and claimant to the throne of Austria (which had been legally abolished in 1918 following the Great War). In 1934, Mises left Austria for Geneva, Switzerland, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940. While in Switzerland, Mises married Margit Herzfeld Serény, a former actress and widow of Ferdinand Serény. She was the mother of Gitta Sereny. === Work in the United States === In 1940, Mises and his wife fled Austria from the Nazi German advance in Europe and emigrated to New York City in the United States.: xi  He had come to the United States under a grant by the Rockefeller Foundation. Like many other classical liberal scholars who fled to the United States, he received support from the William Volker Fund to obtain a position in American universities. Mises became a visiting professor at New York University and held this position from 1945 until his retirement in 1969, though he was not salaried by the university. Businessman and libertarian commentator Lawrence Fertig, a member of the New York University Board of Trustees, funded Mises and his work.For part of this period, Mises studied currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement, which was led by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, a fellow New York University faculty member and Austrian exile. In 1947, Mises became one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. In 1962, Mises received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art for political economy at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C.: 1034 Mises retired from teaching at the age of 87 and died at the age of 92 in New York. He is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Grove City College houses the 20,000-page archive of Mises papers and unpublished works. The personal library of Mises was given to Hillsdale College as bequeathed in his will.At one time, Mises praised the work of writer Ayn Rand, and she generally looked on his work with favor, but the two had a volatile relationship, with strong disagreements for example over the moral basis of capitalism. == Contributions and influence in economics == Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism. In his magnum opus Human Action, Mises adopted praxeology as a general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and set forth his methodological approach to economics. Mises was for economic non-interventionism and was an anti-imperialist. He referred to the Great War as such a watershed event in human history and wrote that "war has become more fearful and destructive than ever before because it is now waged with all the means of the highly developed technique that the free economy has created. Bourgeois civilization has built railroads and electric power plants, has invented explosives and airplanes, in order to create wealth. Imperialism has placed the tools of peace in the service of destruction. With modern means it would be easy to wipe out humanity at one blow."In 1920, Mises introduced in an article his Economic Calculation Problem as a critique of socialisms which are based on planned economies and renunciations of the price mechanism. In his first article "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth", Mises describes the nature of the price system under capitalism and describes how individual subjective values are translated into the objective information necessary for rational allocation of resources in society. Mises argued that the pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because, if a public entity owned all the means of production, no rational prices could be obtained for capital goods, as they were merely internal transfers of goods and not "objects of exchange", unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced, and hence the system would be necessarily irrational, as the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. He wrote that "rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth". Mises developed his critique of socialism more completely in his 1922 book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, arguing that the market price system is an expression of praxeology and cannot be replicated by any form of bureaucracy. In his 1956 book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Mises examined American socialism and addressed intellectual opposition to the free market. Mises argued that these intellectuals were too resentful towards the necessity of handling mass demand, which he argued is necessary for large businesses to prosper.Friends and students of Mises in Europe included Wilhelm Röpke and Alfred Müller-Armack (advisors to German chancellor Ludwig Erhard), Jacques Rueff (monetary advisor to Charles de Gaulle), Gottfried Haberler (later a professor at Harvard), Lionel, Lord Robbins (of the London School of Economics), Italian President Luigi Einaudi, and Leonid Hurwicz, recipient of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Economist and political theorist Friedrich Hayek first came to know Mises while working as his subordinate at a government office dealing with Austria's post-World War I debt. While toasting Mises at a party in 1956, Hayek said: "I came to know him as one of the best educated and informed men I have ever known".: 219–220  Mises's seminars in Vienna fostered lively discussion among established economists there. The meetings were also visited by other important economists who happened to be traveling through Vienna. At his New York University seminar and at informal meetings at his apartment, Mises attracted college and high school students who had heard of his European reputation. They listened while he gave carefully prepared lectures from notes. Among those who attended his informal seminar over the course of two decades in New York were: Israel Kirzner, Hans Sennholz, Ralph Raico, Leonard Liggio, George Reisman, and Murray Rothbard. Mises's work also influenced other Americans, including Benjamin Anderson, Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Max Eastman, legal scholar Sylvester J. Petro and novelist Ayn Rand. === Creation of the Mises Institute === As a result of the economic works of Ludwig Von Mises, the Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, Burton Blumert, and Murray Rothbard, following a split between the Cato Institute and Rothbard, who had been one of the founders of the Cato Institute.[non-primary source needed] It was funded by Ron Paul. The Mises Institute offers thousands of free books written by Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and other prominent economists in e-book and audiobook format. The Mises Institute also offers a graduate school program. == Reception == === Debates about Mises's arguments === Economic historian Bruce Caldwell wrote that in the mid-20th century, with the ascendance of positivism and Keynesianism, Mises came to be regarded by many as the "archetypal 'unscientific' economist". In a 1957 review of his book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The Economist said of Mises: "Professor von Mises has a splendid analytical mind and an admirable passion for liberty; but as a student of human nature he is worse than null and as a debater he is of Hyde Park standard". Conservative commentator Whittaker Chambers published a similarly negative review of that book in the National Review, stating that Mises's thesis that anti-capitalist sentiment was rooted in "envy" epitomized "know-nothing conservatism" at its "know-nothingest".Scholar Scott Scheall called economist Terence Hutchison "the most persistent critic of Mises's apriorism",: 233  starting in Hutchison's 1938 book The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory and in later publications such as his 1981 book The Politics and Philosophy of Economics: Marxians, Keynesians, and Austrians.: 242  Scheall noted that Friedrich Hayek, later in his life (after Mises died), also expressed reservations about Mises's apriorism, such as in a 1978 interview where Hayek said that he "never could accept the ... almost eighteenth-century rationalism in his [Mises's] argument".: 233–234  In a 1978 interview, Hayek said about Mises's book Socialism: At first we all felt he was frightfully exaggerating and even offensive in tone. You see, he hurt all our deepest feelings, but gradually he won us around, although for a long time I had to – I just learned he was usually right in his conclusions, but I was not completely satisfied with his argument. Economist Milton Friedman considered Mises inflexible in his thinking, but added that Mises's difficult life and lack of acceptance by academia are the likely culprits: The story I remember best happened at the initial Mont Pelerin meeting when he got up and said, "You're all a bunch of socialists." We were discussing the distribution of income, and whether you should have progressive income taxes. Some of the people there were expressing the view that there could be a justification for it. Another occasion which is equally telling: Fritz Machlup was a student of Mises's, one of his most faithful disciples. At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Machlup gave a talk in which I think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of floating exchange rates. Mises was so mad he wouldn't speak to Machlup for three years. Some people had to come around and bring them together again. It's hard to understand; you can get some understanding of it by taking into account how people like Mises were persecuted in their lives. Economist Murray Rothbard, who studied under Mises, agreed he was uncompromising, but disputes reports of his abrasiveness. In his words, Mises was "unbelievably sweet, constantly finding research projects for students to do, unfailingly courteous, and never bitter" about the discrimination he received at the hands of the economic establishment of his time. After Mises died, his widow Margit quoted a passage that he had written about Benjamin Anderson. She said it best described Mises's own personality: His most eminent qualities were his inflexible honesty, his unhesitating sincerity. He never yielded. He always freely enunciated what he considered to be true. If he had been prepared to suppress or only to soften his criticisms of popular, but irresponsible, policies, the most influential positions and offices would have been offered him. But he never compromised. === Comments about fascism === Marxists Herbert Marcuse and Perry Anderson as well as German writer Claus-Dieter Krohn accused Mises of writing approvingly of Italian fascism, especially for its suppression of leftist elements, in his 1927 book Liberalism. In 2009, economist J. Bradford DeLong and sociologist Richard Seymour repeated the accusation. Mises, in his 1927 book Liberalism, wrote: It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error. Mises biographer Jörg Guido Hülsmann says that critics who suggest that Mises supported fascism are "absurd" as he notes that the full quote describes fascism as dangerous. He notes that Mises said it was a "fatal error" to think that it was more than an "emergency makeshift" against up and coming communism and socialism as exemplified by the Bolsheviks in Russia and the surging communists of Germany.: 560  Hülsmann writes in Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism that Mises had been a card-carrying member of the Fatherland Front party and that this was "probably mandatory for all employees of public and semi-public organizations."Mises, in his 1927 book Liberalism, also wrote of fascism: Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property. The next episode will be the victory of Communism. The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales. So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone. In regards to Nazism, Mises called on the Allies in his 1944 book Omnipotent Government to "smash Nazism" and to "fight desperately until the Nazi power is completely broken". == Works == Books The Theory of Money and Credit (1912, enlarged US edition 1953) Full text available. Nation, State, and Economy (1919) Full text available. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (1920) (long-form essay) Full text available. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922, 1932, 1951) Full text available. Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition (1927, 1962) Full text available. A Critique of Interventionism (1929) (collection of essays) Full text available. Epistemological Problems of Economics (1933, 1960) Full text available. Memoirs (1940) Full text available. Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1941, 1998) Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War (1944) Full text available. Bureaucracy (1944, 1962) Full text available. Planned Chaos (1947, added to 1951 edition of Socialism) Full text available. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949, 1963, 1966, 1996) Full text available. [Planning for Freedom] (1952, enlarged editions in 1962, 1974, and 1980) (Collection of essays and addresses) Full text available. The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956) Full text available. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (1957) Full text available. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962) Full text available. The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics (1969) (long-form essay) Full text available. Notes and Recollections (1978, written in 1940-41) On the Manipulation of Money and Credit (1978) (collection of essays, reissued as The Causes of the Economic Crisis) Full text available. Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979, collection of lectures given in 1959) Full text available. Money, Method, and the Market Process (1990) (collection of essays) Full text available. Economic Freedom and Interventionism (1990) (collection of essays and addresses) Full text available. The Free Market and Its Enemies (2004, collection of lectures given in 1951) Full text available. Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction (2006, collection of lectures given in 1952) Full text available. Ludwig von Mises on Money and Inflation (2010, collection of lectures given in the 1960s) Full text available.Book reviews "Review of The Economic Munich by Philip Cortney". The Freeman, March 1955. Full issue available. == See also == == References == == Further reading == Butler, Eamonn, Ludwig von Mises – A Primer, Institute of Economic Affairs (2010). Ebeling, Richard M. Political Economy, Public Policy, and Monetary Economics: Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Tradition, (London/New York: Routledge, 2010) 354 pages, ISBN 978-0415779517. Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part I", (The Freeman, May 2006). Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part II", (The Freeman, June 2006). Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time, Part I", (The Freeman, March 2005). Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time, Part II", (The Freeman, April 2005). Ebeling, Richard M. "Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom", (The Freeman, June 2004). Gordon, David (2011-02-23) Mises's Epistemology, Ludwig von Mises Institute. Jones, Daniel Stedman. Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (2012), pp. 49–51. Rothbard, Murray N. "Mises, Ludwig Edler von," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1987, v. 3, pp. 479–480. Shelton, Judy (1994). Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency System. New York: Free Press. p. 399. ISBN 978-0029291122. OCLC 797359731. Reviewed in: Dornbusch, Rudi (July 10, 1994). "Money Meltdown". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2013. The hero in this book is Ludwig von Mises.. von Mises, Margit (1976). My Years with Ludwig von Mises. Arlington House Publishers. ISBN 978-0870003684. Yeager, Leland (2008). "Mises, Ludwig von (1881–1972)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). Mises, Ludwig von (1881–1973). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 334–336. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n205. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024. == External links == Ludwig von Mises Institute Europe Mises.de (books and articles in the original German versions by Mises and other authors of the Austrian School) Ludwig von Mises at Curlie Ludwig von Mises at Find a Grave Ludwig von Mises publications indexed by Google Scholar

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French: [pjɛʁ tɛjaʁ də ʃaʁdɛ̃] (listen ); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. He took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point. With Vladimir Vernadsky he developed the concept of the noosphere. In 1962, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned several of Teilhard's works based on their alleged ambiguities and doctrinal errors. Some eminent Catholic figures, including Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, have made positive comments on some of his ideas since. The response to his writings by scientists has been divided. Teilhard served in World War I as a stretcher-bearer. He received several citations, and was awarded the Médaille militaire and the Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. == Life == === Early years === Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in the Château of Sarcenat, Orcines, some four km (2.5 mi) north-west of Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, French Third Republic, on 1 May 1881, as the fourth of eleven children of librarian Emmanuel Teilhard de Chardin (1844–1932) and Berthe-Adèle, née de Dompierre d'Hornoys of Picardy, a great-grandniece of Voltaire. He inherited the double surname from his father, who was descended on the Teilhard side from an ancient family of magistrates from Auvergne originating in Murat, Cantal, ennobled under Louis XVIII of France.His father, a graduate of the École Nationale des Chartes, served as a regional librarian and was a keen naturalist. He collected rocks, insects and plants and encouraged nature studies in the family. Pierre Teilhard's spirituality was awakened by his mother. When he was twelve, he went to the Jesuit college of Mongré in Villefranche-sur-Saône, where he completed the Baccalauréat in philosophy and mathematics. In 1899, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Aix-en-Provence. In October 1900, he began his junior studies at the Collégiale Saint-Michel de Laval. On 25 March 1901, he made his first vows. In 1902, Teilhard completed a licentiate in literature at the University of Caen. That same year the Émile Combes premiership took over from Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau in pursuit of an anti-clerical agenda. As a result, religious associations had to submit their properties to state control, which obliged the Jesuits to go into exile in the United Kingdom. Theilhard continued his philosophical studies on the island of Jersey until 1905. Strong in science subjects, he was despatched to teach physics at the Collège de la Sainte Famille in Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt until 1908. From there he wrote in a letter: "[I]t is the dazzling of the East foreseen and drunk greedily ... in its lights, its vegetation, its fauna and its deserts."For the next four years he was a Scholastic at Ore Place in Hastings, East Sussex where he acquired his theological formation. There he synthesized his scientific, philosophical and theological knowledge in the light of evolution. At that time he read Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson, about which he wrote that "the only effect that brilliant book had upon me was to provide fuel at just the right moment, and very briefly, for a fire that was already consuming my heart and mind." Bergson's ideas were influential on his views on matter, life, and energy. On 24 August 1911, aged 30, he was ordained priest. == Academic career == === Paleontology === From 1912 to 1914, Teilhard worked in the paleontology laboratory of the National Museum of Natural History, France, studying the mammals of the middle Tertiary period. Later he studied elsewhere in Europe. In June 1912 he formed part of the original digging team, with Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson, at the Piltdown site, after the discovery of the first fragments of the fraudulent "Piltdown Man". Some have suggested he participated in the hoax. Marcellin Boule, a specialist in Neanderthal studies, who as early as 1915 had recognized the non-hominid origins of the Piltdown finds, gradually guided Teilhard towards human paleontology. At the museum's Institute of Human Paleontology, he became a friend of Henri Breuil and in 1913 took part with him in excavations at the prehistoric painted Cave of El Castillo in northwest Spain. === Service in World War I === Mobilized in December 1914, Teilhard served in World War I as a stretcher-bearer in the 8th Moroccan Rifles. For his valor, he received several citations, including the Médaille militaire and the Legion of Honor. During the war, he developed his reflections in his diaries and in letters to his cousin, Marguerite Teillard-Chambon, who later published a collection of them. (See section below) He later wrote: "...the war was a meeting ... with the Absolute." In 1916, he wrote his first essay: La Vie Cosmique (Cosmic life), where his scientific and philosophical thought was revealed just as his mystical life. While on leave from the military he pronounced his solemn vows as a Jesuit in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon on 26 May 1918. In August 1919, in Jersey, he wrote Puissance spirituelle de la Matière (The Spiritual Power of Matter). At the University of Paris, Teilhard pursued three unit degrees of natural science: geology, botany, and zoology. His thesis treated the mammals of the French lower Eocene and their stratigraphy. After 1920, he lectured in geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris and after earning a science doctorate in 1922 became an assistant professor there. === Research in China === In 1923 he traveled to China with Father Émile Licent, who was in charge of a significant laboratory collaboration between the National Museum of Natural History and Marcellin Boule's laboratory in Tianjin. Licent carried out considerable basic work in connection with missionaries who accumulated observations of a scientific nature in their spare time. Teilhard wrote several essays, including La Messe sur le Monde (the Mass on the World), in the Ordos Desert. In the following year, he continued lecturing at the Catholic Institute and participated in a cycle of conferences for the students of the Engineers' Schools. Two theological essays on original sin were sent to a theologian at his request on a purely personal basis: July 1920: Chute, Rédemption et Géocentrie (Fall, Redemption and Geocentry) Spring 1922: Notes sur quelques représentations historiques possibles du Péché originel (Note on Some Possible Historical Representations of Original Sin) (Works, Tome X)The Church required him to give up his lecturing at the Catholic Institute in order to continue his geological research in China. Teilhard traveled again to China in April 1926. He would remain there for about twenty years, with many voyages throughout the world. He settled until 1932 in Tianjin with Émile Licent, then in Beijing. Teilhard made five geological research expeditions in China between 1926 and 1935. They enabled him to establish a general geological map of China. That same year, Teilhard's superiors in the Jesuit Order forbade him to teach any longer. In 1926–27, after a missed campaign in Gansu, Teilhard traveled in the Sanggan River Valley near Kalgan (Zhangjiakou) and made a tour in Eastern Mongolia. He wrote Le Milieu Divin (The Divine Milieu). Teilhard prepared the first pages of his main work Le Phénomène Humain (The Phenomenon of Man). The Holy See refused the Imprimatur for Le Milieu Divin in 1927. He joined the ongoing excavations of the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian as an advisor in 1926 and continued in the role for the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the China Geological Survey following its founding in 1928. Teilhard resided in Manchuria with Émile Licent, staying in western Shanxi and northern Shaanxi with the Chinese paleontologist Yang Zhongjian and with Davidson Black, Chairman of the China Geological Survey. After a tour in Manchuria in the area of Greater Khingan with Chinese geologists, Teilhard joined the team of American Expedition Center-Asia in the Gobi Desert, organized in June and July by the American Museum of Natural History with Roy Chapman Andrews. Henri Breuil and Teilhard discovered that the Peking Man, the nearest relative of Anthropopithecus from Java, was a faber (worker of stones and controller of fire). Teilhard wrote L'Esprit de la Terre (The Spirit of the Earth). Teilhard took part as a scientist in the Croisière Jaune (Yellow Cruise) financed by André Citroën in Central Asia. Northwest of Beijing in Kalgan, he joined the Chinese group who joined the second part of the team, the Pamir group, in Aksu City. He remained with his colleagues for several months in Ürümqi, capital of Xinjiang. In 1933, Rome ordered him to give up his post in Paris. Teilhard subsequently undertook several explorations in the south of China. He traveled in the valleys of the Yangtze and Sichuan in 1934, then, the following year, in Guangxi and Guangdong. The relationship with Marcellin Boule was disrupted; the museum cut its financing on the grounds that Teilhard worked more for the Chinese Geological Service than for the museum.During all these years, Teilhard contributed considerably to the constitution of an international network of research in human paleontology related to the whole of eastern and southeastern Asia. He would be particularly associated in this task with two friends, Davidson Black and the Scot George Brown Barbour. Often he would visit France or the United States, only to leave these countries for further expeditions. === World travels === From 1927 to 1928, Teilhard based himself in Paris. He journeyed to Leuven, Belgium, and to Cantal and Ariège, France. Between several articles in reviews, he met new people such as Paul Valéry and Bruno de Solages, who were to help him in issues with the Catholic Church. Answering an invitation from Henry de Monfreid, Teilhard undertook a journey of two months in Obock, in Harar in the Ethiopian Empire, and in Somalia with his colleague Pierre Lamarre, a geologist, before embarking in Djibouti to return to Tianjin. While in China, Teilhard developed a deep and personal friendship with Lucile Swan.During 1930–1931, Teilhard stayed in France and in the United States. During a conference in Paris, Teilhard stated: "For the observers of the Future, the greatest event will be the sudden appearance of a collective humane conscience and a human work to make." From 1932 to 1933, he began to meet people to clarify issues with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding Le Milieu divin and L'Esprit de la Terre. He met Helmut de Terra, a German geologist in the International Geology Congress in Washington, D.C. Teilhard participated in the 1935 Yale–Cambridge expedition in northern and central India with the geologist Helmut de Terra and Patterson, who verified their assumptions on Indian Paleolithic civilisations in Kashmir and the Salt Range Valley. He then made a short stay in Java, on the invitation of Dutch paleontologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald to the site of Java Man. A second cranium, more complete, was discovered. Professor von Koenigswald had also found a tooth in a Chinese apothecary shop in 1934 that he believed belonged to a three-meter-tall ape, Gigantopithecus, which lived between one hundred thousand and around a million years ago. Fossilized teeth and bone (dragon bones) are often ground into powder and used in some branches of traditional Chinese medicine.In 1937, Teilhard wrote Le Phénomène spirituel (The Phenomenon of the Spirit) on board the boat Empress of Japan, where he met Sylvia Brett, Ranee of Sarawak The ship conveyed him to the United States. He received the Mendel Medal granted by Villanova University during the Congress of Philadelphia, in recognition of his works on human paleontology. He made a speech about evolution, the origins and the destiny of man. The New York Times dated 19 March 1937 presented Teilhard as the Jesuit who held that man descended from monkeys. Some days later, he was to be granted the Doctor Honoris Causa distinction from Boston College. Upon arrival in that city, he was told that the award had been cancelled.Rome banned his work L’Énergie Humaine in 1939. By this point Teilhard was based again in France, where he was immobilized by malaria. During his return voyage to Beijing he wrote L'Energie spirituelle de la Souffrance (Spiritual Energy of Suffering) (Complete Works, tome VII). In 1941, Teilhard submitted to Rome his most important work, Le Phénomène Humain. By 1947, Rome forbade him to write or teach on philosophical subjects. The next year, Teilhard was called to Rome by the Superior General of the Jesuits who hoped to acquire permission from the Holy See for the publication of Le Phénomène Humain. However, the prohibition to publish it that was previously issued in 1944 was again renewed. Teilhard was also forbidden to take a teaching post in the Collège de France. Another setback came in 1949, when permission to publish Le Groupe Zoologique was refused. Teilhard was nominated to the French Academy of Sciences in 1950. He was forbidden by his Superiors to attend the International Congress of Paleontology in 1955. The Supreme Authority of the Holy Office, in a decree dated 15 November 1957, forbade the works of de Chardin to be retained in libraries, including those of religious institutes. His books were not to be sold in Catholic bookshops and were not to be translated into other languages. Further resistance to Teilhard's work arose elsewhere. In April 1958, all Jesuit publications in Spain ("Razón y Fe", "Sal Terrae","Estudios de Deusto", etc.) carried a notice from the Spanish Provincial of the Jesuits that Teilhard's works had been published in Spanish without previous ecclesiastical examination and in defiance of the decrees of the Holy See. A decree of the Holy Office dated 30 June 1962, under the authority of Pope John XXIII, warned:[I]t is obvious that in philosophical and theological matters, the said works [Teilhard's] are replete with ambiguities or rather with serious errors which offend Catholic doctrine. That is why... the Rev. Fathers of the Holy Office urge all Ordinaries, Superiors, and Rectors... to effectively protect, especially the minds of the young, against the dangers of the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his followers. The Diocese of Rome on 30 September 1963 required Catholic booksellers in Rome to withdraw his works as well as those that supported his views. === Death === Teilhard died in New York City, where he was in residence at the Jesuit Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Park Avenue. On 15 March 1955, at the house of his diplomat cousin Jean de Lagarde, Teilhard told friends he hoped he would die on Easter Sunday. On the evening of Easter Sunday, 10 April 1955, during an animated discussion at the apartment of Rhoda de Terra, his personal assistant since 1949, Teilhard suffered a heart attack and died. He was buried in the cemetery for the New York Province of the Jesuits at the Jesuit novitiate, St. Andrew-on-Hudson, in Hyde Park, New York. With the moving of the novitiate, the property was sold to the Culinary Institute of America in 1970. == Teachings == Teilhard de Chardin wrote two comprehensive works, The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu.His posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man, set forth a sweeping account of the unfolding of the cosmos and the evolution of matter to humanity, to ultimately a reunion with Christ. In the book, Teilhard abandoned literal interpretations of creation in the Book of Genesis in favor of allegorical and theological interpretations. The unfolding of the material cosmos is described from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, which is "pulling" all creation towards it. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal-driven way. Teilhard argued in Darwinian terms with respect to biology, and supported the synthetic model of evolution, but argued in Lamarckian terms for the development of culture, primarily through the vehicle of education.Teilhard made a total commitment to the evolutionary process in the 1920s as the core of his spirituality, at a time when other religious thinkers felt evolutionary thinking challenged the structure of conventional Christian faith. He committed himself to what the evidence showed.Teilhard made sense of the universe by assuming it had a vitalist evolutionary process. He interprets complexity as the axis of evolution of matter into a geosphere, a biosphere, into consciousness (in man), and then to supreme consciousness (the Omega Point). Jean Houston's story of meeting Teilhard illustrates this point.Teilhard's unique relationship to both paleontology and Catholicism allowed him to develop a highly progressive, cosmic theology which took into account his evolutionary studies. Teilhard recognized the importance of bringing the Church into the modern world, and approached evolution as a way of providing ontological meaning for Christianity, particularly creation theology. For Teilhard, evolution was "the natural landscape where the history of salvation is situated."Teilhard's cosmic theology is largely predicated on his interpretation of Pauline scripture, particularly Colossians 1:15-17 (especially verse 1:17b) and 1 Corinthians 15:28. He drew on the Christocentrism of these two Pauline passages to construct a cosmic theology which recognizes the absolute primacy of Christ. He understood creation to be "a teleological process towards union with the Godhead, effected through the incarnation and redemption of Christ, 'in whom all things hold together' (Col. 1:17)." He further posited that creation would not be complete until each "participated being is totally united with God through Christ in the Pleroma, when God will be 'all in all' (1Cor. 15:28)."Teilhard's life work was predicated on his conviction that human spiritual development is moved by the same universal laws as material development. He wrote, "...everything is the sum of the past" and "...nothing is comprehensible except through its history. 'Nature' is the equivalent of 'becoming', self-creation: this is the view to which experience irresistibly leads us. ... There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law."The Phenomenon of Man represents Teilhard's attempt at reconciling his religious faith with his academic interests as a paleontologist. One particularly poignant observation in Teilhard's book entails the notion that evolution is becoming an increasingly optional process. Teilhard points to the societal problems of isolation and marginalization as huge inhibitors of evolution, especially since evolution requires a unification of consciousness. He states that "no evolutionary future awaits anyone except in association with everyone else." Teilhard argued that the human condition necessarily leads to the psychic unity of humankind, though he stressed that this unity can only be voluntary; this voluntary psychic unity he termed "unanimization". Teilhard also states that "evolution is an ascent toward consciousness", giving encephalization as an example of early stages, and therefore, signifies a continuous upsurge toward the Omega Point which, for all intents and purposes, is God. Teilhard also used his perceived correlation between spiritual and material to describe Christ, arguing that Christ not only has a mystical dimension but also takes on a physical dimension as he becomes the organizing principle of the universe—that is, the one who "holds together" the universe (Col. 1:17b). For Teilhard, Christ forms not only the eschatological end toward which his mystical/ecclesial body is oriented, but he also "operates physically in order to regulate all things" becoming "the one from whom all creation receives its stability." In other words, as the one who holds all things together, "Christ exercises a supremacy over the universe which is physical, not simply juridical. He is the unifying center of the universe and its goal. The function of holding all things together indicates that Christ is not only man and God; he also possesses a third aspect—indeed, a third nature—which is cosmic."In this way, the Pauline description of the Body of Christ is not simply a mystical or ecclesial concept for Teilhard; it is cosmic. This cosmic Body of Christ "extend[s] throughout the universe and compris[es] all things that attain their fulfillment in Christ [so that] ... the Body of Christ is the one single thing that is being made in creation." Teilhard describes this cosmic amassing of Christ as "Christogenesis". According to Teilhard, the universe is engaged in Christogenesis as it evolves toward its full realization at Omega, a point which coincides with the fully realized Christ. It is at this point that God will be "all in all" (1Cor. 15:28c). Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore. Teilhard has been criticized as incorporating common notions of Social Darwinism and scientific racism into his work, along with support for eugenics, though he has also been defended by theologian John F. Haught. == Relationship with the Catholic Church == In 1925, Teilhard was ordered by the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, to leave his teaching position in France and to sign a statement withdrawing his controversial statements regarding the doctrine of original sin. Rather than leave the Society of Jesus, Teilhard signed the statement and left for China.This was the first of a series of condemnations by a range of ecclesiastical officials that would continue until after Teilhard's death. The climax of these condemnations was a 1962 monitum (warning) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cautioning on Teilhard's works. It said: Several works of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, some of which were posthumously published, are being edited and are gaining a good deal of success. Prescinding from a judgement about those points that concern the positive sciences, it is sufficiently clear that the above-mentioned works abound in such ambiguities and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine. For this reason, the most eminent and most revered Fathers of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries as well as the superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the youth, against the dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers. The Holy Office did not, however, place any of Teilhard's writings on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books), which still existed during Teilhard's lifetime and at the time of the 1962 decree. Shortly thereafter, prominent clerics mounted a strong theological defense of Teilhard's works. Henri de Lubac (later a Cardinal) wrote three comprehensive books on the theology of Teilhard de Chardin in the 1960s. While de Lubac mentioned that Teilhard was less than precise in some of his concepts, he affirmed the orthodoxy of Teilhard de Chardin and responded to Teilhard's critics: "We need not concern ourselves with a number of detractors of Teilhard, in whom emotion has blunted intelligence". Later that decade Joseph Ratzinger, a German theologian who became Pope Benedict XVI, spoke glowingly of Teilhard's Christology in Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity: It must be regarded as an important service of Teilhard de Chardin's that he rethought these ideas from the angle of the modern view of the world and, in spite of a not entirely unobjectionable tendency toward the biological approach, nevertheless on the whole grasped them correctly and in any case made them accessible once again. On 20 July 1981, the Holy See stated that, after consultation of Cardinal Casaroli and Cardinal Franjo Šeper, the letter did not change the position of the warning issued by the Holy Office on 30 June 1962, which pointed out that Teilhard's work contained ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors. Cardinal Ratzinger in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy incorporates Teilhard's vision as a touchstone of the Catholic Mass:And so we can now say that the goal of worship and the goal of creation as a whole are one and the same—divinization, a world of freedom and love. But this means that the historical makes its appearance in the cosmic. The cosmos is not a kind of closed building, a stationary container in which history may by chance take place. It is itself movement, from its one beginning to its one end. In a sense, creation is history. Against the background of the modern evolutionary world view, Teilhard de Chardin depicted the cosmos as a process of ascent, a series of unions. From very simple beginnings the path leads to ever greater and more complex unities, in which multiplicity is not abolished but merged into a growing synthesis, leading to the "Noosphere" in which spirit and its understanding embrace the whole and are blended into a kind of living organism. Invoking the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, Teilhard looks on Christ as the energy that strives toward the Noosphere and finally incorporates everything in its "fullness". From here Teilhard went on to give a new meaning to Christian worship: the transubstantiated Host is the anticipation of the transformation and divinization of matter in the christological "fullness". In his view, the Eucharist provides the movement of the cosmos with its direction; it anticipates its goal and at the same time urges it on. Cardinal Avery Dulles said in 2004: In his own poetic style, the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin liked to meditate on the Eucharist as the first fruits of the new creation. In an essay called The Monstrance he describes how, kneeling in prayer, he had a sensation that the Host was beginning to grow until at last, through its mysterious expansion, "the whole world had become incandescent, had itself become like a single giant Host". Although it would probably be incorrect to imagine that the universe will eventually be transubstantiated, Teilhard correctly identified the connection between the Eucharist and the final glorification of the cosmos. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn wrote in 2007: Hardly anyone else has tried to bring together the knowledge of Christ and the idea of evolution as the scientist (paleontologist) and theologian Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., has done. ... His fascinating vision ... has represented a great hope, the hope that faith in Christ and a scientific approach to the world can be brought together. ... These brief references to Teilhard cannot do justice to his efforts. The fascination which Teilhard de Chardin exercised for an entire generation stemmed from his radical manner of looking at science and Christian faith together. In July 2009, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said, "By now, no one would dream of saying that [Teilhard] is a heterodox author who shouldn't be studied."Fr Donal Dorr (Theologian) refers to Teilhard in his 2020 book: A Creed for Today. Faith and Commitment for our New Earth Awareness. Pope Francis refers to Teilhard's eschatological contribution in his encyclical Laudato si'.The philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand criticized severely the work of Teilhard. According to Hildebrand, in a conversation after a lecture by Teilhard: "He (Teilhard) ignored completely the decisive difference between nature and supernature. After a lively discussion in which I ventured a criticism of his ideas, I had an opportunity to speak to Teilhard privately. When our talk touched on St. Augustine, he exclaimed violently: 'Don’t mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural.'" Von Hildebrand writes that Teilhardism is incompatible with Christianity, substitutes efficiency for sanctity, dehumanizes man, and describes love as merely cosmic energy. == Evaluations by scientists == === Julian Huxley === Julian Huxley, the evolutionary biologist, in the preface to the 1955 edition of The Phenomenon of Man, praised the thought of Teilhard de Chardin for looking at the way in which human development needs to be examined within a larger integrated universal sense of evolution, though admitting he could not follow Teilhard all the way. === Theodosius Dobzhansky === Theodosius Dobzhansky, writing in 1973, drew upon Teilhard's insistence that evolutionary theory provides the core of how man understands his relationship to nature, calling him "one of the great thinkers of our age". === Daniel Dennett === According to Daniel Dennett (1995), "it has become clear to the point of unanimity among scientists that Teilhard offered nothing serious in the way of an alternative to orthodoxy; the ideas that were peculiarly his were confused, and the rest was just bombastic redescription of orthodoxy." === Steven Rose === Steven Rose wrote that "Teilhard is revered as a mystic of genius by some, but among most biologists is seen as little more than a charlatan." === Stephen Jay Gould === In an essay published in the magazine Natural History (and later compiled as the 16th essay in his book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes), American biologist Stephen Jay Gould made a case for Teilhard's guilt in the Piltdown Hoax, arguing that Teilhard has made several compromising slips of the tongue in his correspondence with paleontologist Kenneth Oakley, in addition to what Gould termed to be his "suspicious silence" about Piltdown despite having been, at that moment in time, an important milestone in his career. === Peter Medawar === In 1961, British immunologist and Nobel laureate Peter Medawar wrote a scornful review of The Phenomenon of Man for the journal Mind: "the greater part of it [...] is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself. [...] Teilhard practiced an intellectually unexacting kind of science [...]. He has no grasp of what makes a logical argument or what makes for proof. He does not even preserve the common decencies of scientific writing, though his book is professedly a scientific treatise. [...] Teilhard habitually and systematically cheats with words [...], uses in metaphor words like energy, tension, force, impetus, and dimension as if they retained the weight and thrust of their special scientific usages. [...] It is the style that creates the illusion of content." === Richard Dawkins === Evolutionary biologist and New Atheist Richard Dawkins called Medawar's review "devastating" and The Phenomenon of Man "the quintessence of bad poetic science". === George Gaylord Simpson === George Gaylord Simpson felt that if Teilhard were right, the lifework "of Huxley, Dobzhansky, and hundreds of others was not only wrong, but meaningless", and was mystified by their public support for him. He considered Teilhard a friend and his work in paleontology extensive and important, but expressed strongly adverse views of his contributions as scientific theorist and philosopher. === David Sloan Wilson === In 2019, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson praised Teilhard's book The Phenomenon of Man as "scientifically prophetic in many ways", and considers his own work as an updated version of it, commenting that "[m]odern evolutionary theory shows that what Teilhard meant by the Omega Point is achievable in the foreseeable future." === Wolfgang Smith === Wolfgang Smith, an American scientist versed in Catholic theology, devotes an entire book to the critique of Teilhard's doctrine, which he considers neither scientific (assertions without proofs), nor Catholic (personal innovations), nor metaphysical (the "Absolute Being" is not yet absolute), and of which the following elements can be noted (all the words in quotation marks are Teilhard's, quoted by Smith): ==== Evolution ==== Smith claims that for Teilhard, evolution is not only a scientific theory but an irrefutable truth "immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience"; it constitutes the foundation of his doctrine. Matter becomes spirit and humanity moves towards a super-humanity thanks to complexification (physico-chemical, then biological, then human), socialization, scientific research and technological and cerebral development; the explosion of the first atomic bomb is one of its milestones, while waiting for "the vitalization of matter by the creation of super-molecules, the remodeling of the human organism by means of hormones, control of heredity and sex by manipulation of genes and chromosomes [...]". ==== Matter and spirit ==== Teilhard maintains that the human spirit (which he identifies with the anima and not with the spiritus) originates in a matter which becomes more and more complex until it produces life, then consciousness, then the consciousness of being conscious, holding that the immaterial can emerge from the material. At the same time, he supports the idea of the presence of embryos of consciousness from the very genesis of the universe: "We are logically forced to assume the existence [...] of some sort of psyche" infinitely diffuse in the smallest particle. ==== Theology ==== Smith believes that since Teilhard affirms that "God creates evolutively", he denies the Book of Genesis, not only because it attests that God created man, but that he created him in his own image, thus perfect and complete, then that man fell, that is to say the opposite of an ascending evolution. That which is metaphysically and theologically "above" - symbolically speaking - becomes for Teilhard "ahead", yet to come; even God, who is neither perfect nor timeless, evolves in symbiosis with the World, which Teilhard, a resolute pantheist, venerates as the equal of the Divine. As for Christ, not only is he there to activate the wheels of progress and complete the evolutionary ascent, but he himself evolves.. ==== New religion ==== As he wrote to a cousin: "What dominates my interests increasingly is the effort to establish in me and define around me a new religion (call it a better Christianity, if you will)...", and elsewhere: "a Christianity re-incarnated for a second time in the spiritual energies of Matter". The more Teilhard refines his theories, the more he emancipates himself from established Christian doctrine: a "religion of the earth" must replace a "religion of heaven". By their common faith in Man, he writes, Christians, Marxists, Darwinists, materialists of all kinds will ultimately join around the same summit: the Christic Omega Point. == Legacy == Brian Swimme wrote "Teilhard was one of the first scientists to realize that the human and the universe are inseparable. The only universe we know about is a universe that brought forth the human."George Gaylord Simpson named the most primitive and ancient genus of true primate, the Eocene genus Teilhardina. === Influence on arts and culture === Teilhard and his work continue to influence the arts and culture. Characters based on Teilhard appear in several novels, including Jean Telemond in Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman (mentioned by name and quoted by Oskar Werner playing Fr. Telemond in the movie version of the novel). In Dan Simmons' 1989–97 Hyperion Cantos, Teilhard de Chardin has been canonized a saint in the far future. His work inspires the anthropologist priest character, Paul Duré. When Duré becomes Pope, he takes Teilhard I as his regnal name. Teilhard appears as a minor character in the play Fake by Eric Simonson, staged by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2009, involving a fictional solution to the infamous Piltdown Man hoax. References range from occasional quotations—an auto mechanic quotes Teilhard in Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly—to serving as the philosophical underpinning of the plot, as Teilhard's work does in Julian May's 1987–94 Galactic Milieu Series. Teilhard also plays a major role in Annie Dillard's 1999 For the Time Being. Teilhard is mentioned by name and the Omega Point briefly explained in Arthur C. Clarke's and Stephen Baxter's The Light of Other Days. The title of the short-story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor is a reference to Teilhard's work. The American novelist Don DeLillo's 2010 novel Point Omega borrows its title and some of its ideas from Teilhard de Chardin. Robert Wright, in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, compares his own naturalistic thesis that biological and cultural evolution are directional and, possibly, purposeful, with Teilhard's ideas. Teilhard's work also inspired philosophical ruminations by Italian laureate architect Paolo Soleri and Mexican writer Margarita Casasús Altamirano, artworks such as French painter Alfred Manessier's L'Offrande de la terre ou Hommage à Teilhard de Chardin and American sculptor Frederick Hart's acrylic sculpture The Divine Milieu: Homage to Teilhard de Chardin. A sculpture of the Omega Point by Henry Setter, with a quote from Teilhard de Chardin, can be found at the entrance to the Roesch Library at the University of Dayton. The Spanish painter Salvador Dalí was fascinated by Teilhard de Chardin and the Omega Point theory. His 1959 painting The Ecumenical Council is said to represent the "interconnectedness" of the Omega Point.Edmund Rubbra's 1968 Symphony No. 8 is titled Hommage à Teilhard de Chardin. The Embracing Universe, an oratorio for choir and 7 instruments, composed by Justin Grounds to a libretto by Fred LaHaye saw its first performance in 2019. It is based on the life and thought of Teilhard de Chardin.Several college campuses honor Teilhard. A building at the University of Manchester is named after him, as are residence dormitories at Gonzaga University and Seattle University. The De Chardin Project, a play celebrating Teilhard's life, ran from 20 November to 14 December 2014 in Toronto, Canada. The Evolution of Teilhard de Chardin, a documentary film on Teilhard's life, was scheduled for release in 2015.Founded in 1978, George Addair based much of Omega Vector on Teilhard's work. The American physicist Frank J. Tipler has further developed Teilhard's Omega Point concept in two controversial books, The Physics of Immortality and the more theologically based Physics of Christianity. While keeping the central premise of Teilhard's Omega Point (i.e. a universe evolving towards a maximum state of complexity and consciousness) Tipler has supplanted some of the more mystical/ theological elements of the OPT with his own scientific and mathematical observations (as well as some elements borrowed from Freeman Dyson's eternal intelligence theory).In 1972, the Uruguayan priest Juan Luis Segundo, in his five-volume series A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity, wrote that Teilhard "noticed the profound analogies existing between the conceptual elements used by the natural sciences — all of them being based on the hypothesis of a general evolution of the universe." === Influence of his cousin, Marguerite === Marguerite Teillard-Chambon, (alias Claude Aragonnès) was a French writer who edited and had published three volumes of correspondence with her cousin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "La genèse d'une pensée" ("The Making of a Mind") being the last, after her own death in 1959. She furnished each with an introduction. Marguerite, a year older than Teilhard, was considered among those who knew and understood him best. They had shared a childhood in Auvergne; she it was who encouraged him to undertake a doctorate in science at the Sorbonne; she eased his entry into the Catholic Institute, through her connection to Emmanuel de Margerie and she introduced him to the intellectual life of Paris. Throughout the First World War, she corresponded with him, acting as a "midwife" to his thinking, helping his thought to emerge and honing it. In September 1959 she participated in a gathering organised at Saint-Babel, near Issoire, devoted to Teilhard's philosophical contribution. On the way home to Chambon-sur-Lac, she was fatally injured in a road traffic accident. Her sister, Alice, completed the final preparations for the publication of the final volume of her cousin Teilhard's wartime letters. === Influence on the New Age movement === Teilhard has had a profound influence on the New Age movements and has been described as "perhaps the man most responsible for the spiritualization of evolution in a global and cosmic context". === Other === Teilhard's words about likening the discovery of the power of love to the second time man will have discovered the power of fire, were quoted in the sermon of the Most Reverend Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, during the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on 20 May 2018.Fritjof Capra's systems theory book The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture positively contrasts Teilhard to Darwinian evolution. == Bibliography == The dates in parentheses are the dates of first publication in French and English. Most of these works were written years earlier, but Teilhard's ecclesiastical order forbade him to publish them because of their controversial nature. The essay collections are organized by subject rather than date, thus each one typically spans many years. Le Phénomène Humain (1955), written 1938–40, scientific exposition of Teilhard's theory of evolution. The Phenomenon of Man (1959), Harper Perennial 1976: ISBN 978-0-06-090495-1. Reprint 2008: ISBN 978-0-06-163265-5. The Human Phenomenon (1999), Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2003: ISBN 978-1-902210-30-8. Letters From a Traveler (1956; English translation 1962), written 1923–55. Le Groupe Zoologique Humain (1956), written 1949, more detailed presentation of Teilhard's theories. Man's Place in Nature (English translation 1966). Le Milieu Divin (1957), spiritual book written 1926–27, in which the author seeks to offer a way for everyday life, i.e. the secular, to be divinized. The Divine Milieu (1960) Harper Perennial 2001: ISBN 978-0-06-093725-6. L'Avenir de l'Homme (1959) essays written 1920–52, on the evolution of consciousness (noosphere). The Future of Man (1964) Image 2004: ISBN 978-0-385-51072-1. Hymn of the Universe (1961; English translation 1965) Harper and Row: ISBN 978-0-06-131910-5, mystical/spiritual essays and thoughts written 1916–55. L'Energie Humaine (1962), essays written 1931–39, on morality and love. Human Energy (1969) Harcort Brace Jovanovich ISBN 978-0-15-642300-7. L'Activation de l'Energie (1963), sequel to Human Energy, essays written 1939–55 but not planned for publication, about the universality and irreversibility of human action. Activation of Energy (1970), Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 978-0-15-602817-2. Je M'Explique (1966) Jean-Pierre Demoulin, editor ISBN 978-0-685-36593-9, "The Essential Teilhard" — selected passages from his works. Let Me Explain (1970) Harper and Row ISBN 978-0-06-061800-1, Collins/Fontana 1973: ISBN 978-0-00-623379-4. Christianity and Evolution, Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 978-0-15-602818-9. The Heart of the Matter, Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 978-0-15-602758-8. Toward the Future, Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 978-0-15-602819-6. The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest 1914–1919, Collins (1965), Letters written during wartime. Writings in Time of War, Collins (1968) composed of spiritual essays written during wartime. One of the few books of Teilhard to receive an imprimatur. Vision of the Past, Collins (1966) composed of mostly scientific essays published in the French science journal Etudes. The Appearance of Man, Collins (1965) composed of mostly scientific writings published in the French science journal Etudes. Letters to Two Friends 1926–1952, Fontana (1968). Composed of personal letters on varied subjects including his understanding of death. See Letters to Two Friends 1926–1952. Helen Weaver (translation). 1968. ISBN 978-0-85391-143-2. OCLC 30268456.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) Letters to Léontine Zanta, Collins (1969). Correspondence / Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Maurice Blondel, Herder and Herder (1967) This correspondence also has both the imprimatur and nihil obstat. de Chardin, P T (1952). "On the zoological position and the evolutionary significance of Australopithecines". Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences (published March 1952). 14 (5): 208–10. doi:10.1111/j.2164-0947.1952.tb01101.x. PMID 14931535. de Terra, H; de Chardin, PT; Paterson, TT (1936). "Joint geological and prehistoric studies of the Late Cenozoic in India". Science (published 6 March 1936). 83 (2149): 233–236. Bibcode:1936Sci....83..233D. doi:10.1126/science.83.2149.233-a. PMID 17809311. == See also == == Notes == == References == == Further reading == == External links == === Pro === Works by or about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin at Internet Archive Teilhard de Chardin (A site devoted to the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin) The Teilhard de Chardin Foundation The American Teilhard Association Teilhard de Chardin A personal website === Contra === Warning Regarding the Writings of Father Teilhard de Chardin The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, 1962 Medawar, Peter (1961). "A review of The Phenomenon of Man". Mind. 70: 99–106. doi:10.1093/mind/LXX.277.99. McCarthy, John F. ♦ A review of Teilhardism and the New Religion by Wolfgang Smith 1989 === Other === Web pages and timeline about the Piltdown forgery hosted by the British Geological Survey "Teilhard de Chardin: His Importance in the 21st Century" - Georgetown University - June 23, 2015

Hans Kelsen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kelsen

Hans Kelsen (; German: [ˈhans ˈkɛlsən]; October 11, 1881 – April 19, 1973) was an Austrian jurist, legal philosopher and political philosopher. He was the author of the 1920 Austrian Constitution, which with amendments is still in operation. Due to the rise of totalitarianism in Austria (and a 1929 constitutional change), Kelsen left for Germany in 1930 but was forced out of his university post after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry. That year he left for Geneva and in 1940 he moved to the United States. In 1934, Roscoe Pound lauded Kelsen as "undoubtedly the leading jurist of the time". While in Vienna, Kelsen met Sigmund Freud and his circle, and wrote on social psychology and sociology. By the 1940s, Kelsen's reputation was already well established in the United States for his defense of democracy and for his Pure Theory of Law. Kelsen's academic stature exceeded legal theory alone and extended to political philosophy and social theory as well. His influence encompassed the fields of philosophy, legal science, sociology, theory of democracy, and international relations. Late in his career while at the University of California, Berkeley, although officially retired in 1952, Kelsen rewrote his short book of 1934, Reine Rechtslehre (Pure Theory of Law), into a much enlarged "second edition" published in 1960 (it appeared in an English translation in 1967). Kelsen throughout his active career was also a significant contributor to the theory of judicial review, the hierarchical and dynamic theory of positive law, and the science of law. In political philosophy he was a defender of the state-law identity theory and an advocate of explicit contrast of the themes of centralization and decentralization in the theory of government. Kelsen was also an advocate of the position of separation of the concepts of state and society in their relation to the study of the science of law. The reception and criticism of Kelsen's work and contributions has been extensive with both ardent supporters and detractors. Kelsen's neo-Kantian defense of legal positivism was influential on H. L. A. Hart, Joseph Raz and other legal theorists in the analytical tradition of jurisprudence. == Biography == === Early life === Kelsen was born in Prague into a middle-class, German-speaking, Jewish family. His father, Adolf Kelsen, was from Galicia, and his mother, Auguste Löwy, was from Bohemia. Hans was their first child; there were two younger brothers and a sister. The family moved to Vienna in 1884, when Hans was three years old. After graduating from the Akademisches Gymnasium, Kelsen studied law at the University of Vienna, taking his doctorate in law (Dr. juris) on 18 May 1906 and his habilitation on 9 March 1911. Twice in his life, Kelsen converted to separate religious denominations. At the time of his dissertation on Dante and Catholicism, Kelsen was baptised as a Roman Catholic on 10 June 1905. On 25 May 1912 he married Margarete Bondi (1890–1973), the two having converted a few days earlier to Lutheranism of the Augsburg Confession; they had two daughters. === Kelsen and his years in Austria up to 1930 === Kelsen's early work on Dante's theory of the state in 1905 became his first book on political theory. The study makes a rigorous examination of the "two swords doctrine" of Pope Gelasius I, along with Dante's distinct sentiments in the Roman Catholic debates between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Kelsen's conversion to Catholicism was contemporaneous to the book's completion in 1905. He obtained the degree of Dr. Juris (doctor of law) by examination in 1906. In 1908, studying for his habilitation, Kelsen won a research scholarship which allowed him to attend the University of Heidelberg for three consecutive semesters, where he studied with the distinguished jurist Georg Jellinek before returning to Vienna. The closing chapter of Kelsen's study of political allegory in Dante also was important for emphasizing the particular historical path which led directly to the development of modern law in the twentieth century. After emphasizing Dante's importance to this development of legal theory, Kelsen then indicated the historical importance of Niccolò Machiavelli and Jean Bodin to these historical transitions in legal theory leading to modern twentieth century law. In the case of Machiavelli, Kelsen saw an important counter-example of an exaggerated executive part of government operating without effective legal restraints on responsible conduct. For Kelsen, this was instrumental in the orientation of his own legal thinking in the direction of government strictly according to law, eventually with a heightened emphasis on the importance of a fully elaborated power of judicial review.Kelsen's time at Heidelberg was of lasting importance to him in that he began to solidify his position of the identity of law and state from the initial steps he observed as being taken by Jellinek. Kelsen's historical reality was to be surrounded by the dualistic theories of law and state prevailing in his time. The major question for Jellinek and Kelsen, as stated by Baume is, "How can the independence of the state in a dualist perspective be reconciled with its status (as) representative of the legal order? For dualistic theorists there remains an alternative to monistic doctrines: the theory of the self-limitation of the state. Georg Jellinek is an eminent representative of this theory, which allows one to avoid reducing the state to a legal entity, and also to explain the positive relationship between law and state. The self-limitation of the sphere of the state presupposes that the state, as a sovereign power, by the limits that it imposes on itself, becomes a rule-of-law state." For Kelsen, this was appropriate for as far as it went yet it still remained a dualistic doctrine and therefore Kelsen rejected it stating: "The problem of the so-called auto-obligation of the State is one of those pseudo-problems that result from the erroneous dualism of State and law. This dualism is, in turn, due to a fallacy of which we meet numerous examples in the history of all fields of human thought. Our desire for the intuitive representation of abstractions leads us to personify the unity of a system, and then to hypostasize the personification. What originally was only a way of representing the unity of a system of objects becomes a new object, existing in its own right." Kelsen was joined in this critique by the distinguished French jurist Léon Duguit, who wrote in 1911: "Self-limitation theory (vis Jellinek) contains some real sleight of hand. Voluntary subordination is not subordination. The state is not really limited by the law if the state alone can introduce and write this law, and if it can at any time make any changes that it wants to make in it. This kind of foundation of public law is clearly extremely fragile." As a result, Kelsen solidified his position endorsing the doctrine of the identity of law and state.In 1911, he achieved his habilitation (license to give university lectures) in public law and legal philosophy, with a thesis that became his first major work on legal theory, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatze ("Main Problems in Theory of Public Law, Developed from Theory of the Legal Statement"). In 1919, he became full professor of public and administrative law at the University of Vienna, where he established and edited the Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht (Journal of Public Law). At the behest of Chancellor Karl Renner, Kelsen worked on drafting a new Austrian Constitution, enacted in 1920. The document still forms the basis of Austrian constitutional law. Kelsen was appointed to the Constitutional Court, for his lifetime. Kelsen's emphasis during these years upon a Continental form of legal positivism began to further flourish from the standpoint of his law-state monism, somewhat based upon the previous examples of Continental legal positivism found in such scholars of law-state dualism such as Paul Laband (1838–1918) and Carl Friedrich von Gerber (1823–1891).During the early 1920s he published six major works in the areas of government, public law, and international law: in 1920, Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts (The Problem of Sovereignty and Theory of International Law) and Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (On the Essence and Value of Democracy); in 1922, Der soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff (The Sociological and Juristic Concepts of the State); in 1923, Österreichisches Staatsrecht (Austrian Public Law); and, in 1925, Allgemeine Staatslehre (General Theory of the State), together with Das Problem des Parlamentarismus (The Problem of Parliamentarianism). In the late 1920s, these were followed by Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturrechtslehre und des Rechtspositivismus (The Philosophical Foundations of the Doctrine of Natural Law and Legal Positivism). During the 1920s, Kelsen continued to promote his celebrated theory of the identity of law and state which made his efforts a counterpoint to the position of Carl Schmitt who advocated for the priority of the political concerns of the state. Kelsen was supported in his position by Adolf Merkl and Alfred Verdross, while opposition to his view was voiced by Erich Kaufman, Hermann Heller, and Rudolf Smend. An important part of Kelsen's main practical legacy is as the inventor of the modern European model of constitutional review. This was first introduced in both Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1920, and later in the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, as well as in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe. As described above, the Kelsenian court model set up a separate constitutional court which was to have sole responsibility over constitutional disputes within the judicial system. Kelsen was the primary author of its statutes in the state constitution of Austria as he documents in his 1923 book cited above. This is different from the system usual in common-law countries, including the United States, in which courts of general jurisdiction from the trial level up to the court of last resort frequently have powers of constitutional review. Following increasing political controversy about some positions of the Constitutional Court of Austria, Kelsen faced increasing pressure from the administration which appointed him to specifically address issues and cases concerning the providence of divorce provisions in state family law. Kelsen was inclined to a liberal interpretation of the divorce provision while the administration which had originally appointed him was responding to public pressure for the predominantly Catholic country to take a more conservative position on the issue of the curtailment of divorce. In this increasingly conservative climate, Kelsen, who was considered sympathetic to the Social Democrats, although not a party member, was removed from the court in 1930. === Kelsen and his European years between 1930 and 1940 === Sandrine Baume has summarized the confrontation between Kelsen and Schmitt at the very start of the 1930s. This debate was to reignite Kelsen's strong defense of the principle of judicial review against the principle of an authoritarian version of the executive branch of government which Schmitt had envisioned for national socialism in Germany. Kelsen wrote his scathing reply to Schmitt in his 1931 essay, "Who Should Be the Guardian of the Constitution?", in which he defended in plain terms the importance of judicial review over and against the excessive form of executive authoritarian government which Schmitt was promulgating in the early 1930s. As Baume states, "Kelsen defended the legitimacy of the constitutional court by combating the reasons that Schmitt cites for assigning the role of the guardian of the Constitution to the President of the Reich. The dispute between these two lawyers was about which body of the state should be assigned the role of guardian of the German Constitution. Kelsen thought that this mission ought to be conferred on the judiciary, especially the Constitutional Court." Although Kelsen was successful in drafting sections for the Constitution in Austria for a strong court of judicial review, his sympathizers in Germany were less successful. Both Heinrich Triepel in 1924 and Gerhard Anschütz in 1926 were unsuccessful in their explicit drive to instill a strong version of judicial review in Germany's Weimar Constitution.Kelsen accepted a professorship at the University of Cologne in 1930. When the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, he was removed from his post. He relocated to Geneva, Switzerland where he taught international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies from 1934 to 1940. During this time period, Hans Morgenthau departed from Germany to complete his habilitation dissertation in Geneva, which resulted in his book The Reality of Norms and In Particular the Norms of International Law: Foundations of a Theory of Norms. By remarkable good fortune for Morgenthau, Kelsen had just arrived in Geneva as a professor and he became an adviser for Morgenthau's dissertation. Kelsen was among the strongest critics of Carl Schmitt because Schmitt was advocating for the priority of the political concerns of the state over the adherence by the state to the rule of law. Kelsen and Morgenthau were united against this National Socialist school of political interpretation which down-played the rule of law, and they became lifelong colleagues even after both had emigrated from Europe to take their respective academic positions in the United States. During these years, Kelsen and Morgenthau had both become persona non grata in Germany during the full rise to power of National Socialism. That Kelsen was the principal defender of Morgenthau's Habilitationschrift is recently documented in the translation of Morgenthau's book titled The Concept of the Political. In the introductory essay to the volume, Behr and Rosch indicate that the Geneva faculty under the examiners Walther Burckhardt and Paul Guggenheim were initially quite negative concerning Morgenthau's Habilitationschrift. When Morgenthau had found a Paris publisher for the volume, he asked Kelsen to re-evaluate it. In the words of Behr and Rosch, "Kelsen was the right choice to assess Morgenthau's thesis because not only was he a senior scholar in Staatslehre, but Morgenthau's thesis was also largely a critical examination of Kelsen's legal positivism. Thus, it was Kelsen to whom Morgenthau 'owed his Habilitation in Geneva,' as Kelsen's biographer Rudolf Aladár Métall confirms, and also eventually his subsequent academic career, because Kelsen produced the positive evaluation that convinced the board of examiners to award Morgenthau his Habilitation."In 1934, at the age of 52, he published the first edition of Reine Rechtslehre (Pure Theory of Law). While in Geneva he became more deeply interested in international law. This interest in international law in Kelsen was in reaction largely to the Kellogg–Briand Pact in 1929 and his negative reaction to the vast idealism he saw represented in its pages, along with the lack of the recognition of sanctions for the illicit actions of belligerent states. Kelsen had come to endorse strongly the sanction-delict theory of law which he saw as substantially under-represented in the Kellogg–Briand Pact. In 1936–1938 he was briefly professor at the German University in Prague before returning to Geneva where he remained until 1940. His interest in international law became especially focused in Kelsen's writings on international war crimes which he redoubled his efforts on behalf of after his departure to the United States. === Hans Kelsen and his American years after 1940 === In 1940, at the age of 58, he and his family fled Europe on the last voyage of the SS Washington, embarking on 1 June in Lisbon. He moved to the United States, giving the prestigious Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School in 1942. He was supported by Roscoe Pound for a faculty position at Harvard but opposed by Lon Fuller on the Harvard faculty before becoming a full professor at the department of political science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1945. Kelsen was defending a position of the distinction of the philosophical definition of justice as it is separable from the application of positive law. As Fuller stated his opposition, "I share the opinion of Jerome Hall, evidenced in this excellent Readings, that jurisprudence should start with justice. I place this preference not on exhortatory grounds, but on a belief that until one has wrestled with the problem of justice one cannot truly understand the other issues of jurisprudence. Kelsen, for example, excludes justice from his studies (of practical law) because it is an 'irrational ideal' and therefore 'not subject to cognition.' The whole structure of his theory derives from that exclusion. The meaning of his theory can therefore be understood only when we have subjected to critical scrutiny its keystone of negation." Lon Fuller felt that the natural law position he was advocating against Kelsen was incompatible with Kelsen's dedication to the responsible use of positive law and the science of law. During the ensuing years, Kelsen increasingly dealt with issues of international law and international institutions such as the United Nations. In 1953-54, he was visiting Professor of International Law at the United States Naval War College. Another part of Kelsen's practical legacy, as he has recorded, was the influence that his writings from the 1930s and early 1940s had upon the extensive and unprecedented prosecution of political leaders and military leaders at the end of WWII at Nuremberg and Tokyo, producing convictions in more than one thousand war crimes cases. For Kelsen, the trials were the culmination of approximately fifteen years of research he had devoted to this topic, which started still in his European years, and which he followed with his celebrated essay, "Will the Judgment In the Nuremberg Trial Constitute a Precedent In International Law?," published in The International Law Quarterly in 1947. It was preceded in 1943 by Kelsen's essay, 'Collective and Individual Responsibility in International Law with Particular Regard to Punishment of War Criminals', 31 California Law Review, p 530, and in 1944 by his essay, "The Rule Against Ex Post Facto and the Prosecution of the Axis War Criminals," which appeared in The Judge Advocate Journal, Issue 8. In Kelsen's companion 1948 essay for J.Y.B.I.L. to his 1943 "War Criminals" essay cited in the above paragraph titled, "Collective and Individual Responsibility for Acts of State in International Law," Kelsen presented his thoughts on the distinction between the doctrine of respondeat superior and the acts of State doctrine when used as a defense during the prosecution of war crimes. On page 228 of the essay Kelsen states that, "Acts of State are acts of individuals performed by them in their capacity as organs of the State, especially by that organ which is called the Government of the State. These acts are performed by individuals who belong to the Government as the head of State, or members of the cabinet, or are acts performed at its command or with the authorization of the Government." Yoram Dinstein of Hebrew University in Jerusalem has taken exception to Kelsen's formulation in his book The Defense of 'Obedience to Superior Orders' in International Law, reprinted in 2012 by Oxford University Press, dealing with Kelsen's specific attribution of acts of State.Shortly after the initiation of the drafting of the UN Charter on 25 April 1945 in San Francisco, Kelsen began the writing of his extended 700-page treatise on the United Nations as a newly appointed professor at the University of California at Berkeley (The Law of the United Nations, New York 1950). In 1952, he also published his book-length study about international law entitled Principles of International Law in English, and reprinted in 1966. In 1955, Kelsen turned to a 100-page essay, "Foundations of Democracy," for the leading philosophy journal Ethics; written during the height of Cold War tensions, it expressed a passionate commitment to the Western model of democracy over soviet and national-socialist forms of government.This 1955 essay by Kelsen on democracy was also important for summarizing his critical stance towards the 1954 book on politics by his former student in Europe Eric Voegelin. Following this, in Kelsen's book entitled A New Science of Politics (Ontos Verlag, reprinted in 2005, 140pp, originally published 1956), Kelsen enumerated a point by point criticism of the excessive idealism and ideology which he saw as prevailing in Voegelin's book on politics. This exchange and debate has been documented in the appendix to the book, written by the author on Voegelin, Barry Cooper, entitled Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science from 1999. Kelsen's other book defending his realist position regarding the issue of the separation of state and religion as opposed to that of Voegelin's position on this issue was published posthumously under the title Secular Religion. Kelsen's objective in part was to safeguard the importance of the responsible separation of state and religion for those sympathetic to religion and concerned with this separation. Kelsen's 1956 book was followed in 1957 by a collection of essays on justice, law and politics, most of them previously published in English. It had originally been published in the German language in 1953. == The Pure Theory of Law == Kelsen is considered one of the preeminent jurists of the 20th century and has been highly influential among scholars of jurisprudence and public law, especially in Europe and Latin America although less so in common-law countries. Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law aims to describe law as a hierarchy of binding norms, while refusing, itself, to evaluate those norms. That is, 'legal science' is to be separated from 'legal politics'. Central to the Pure Theory is the notion of a 'basic norm (Grundnorm)'—a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the theory, from which in a hierarchy of empowerments all 'lower' norms in a legal system, from constitutional law downward, are understood to derive their validity, hence their authority or 'bindingness'. This is not logical validity (i.e. of deduction), but 'legal validity'; a norm is legally 'valid' if and only if the organ creating it has been so empowered by a higher norm. Public international law is understood as similarly hierarchical. In this way, Kelsen contends, the validity of legal norms (their specifically 'legal' character) can be understood without tracing it ultimately to some suprahuman source such as God, personified Nature or a personified State or Nation. The Pure Theory is intended as rigorous legal positivism, excluding any idea of natural law. Kelsen's main statement of his theory, his book Reine Rechtslehre, was published in two editions, far apart: in 1934, while he was in exile in Geneva, and a second, much expanded edition after he had formally retired from the University of California, Berkeley. The second edition appeared in English translation in 1967, as Pure Theory of Law; the first edition appeared in English translation in 1992, as Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory. The current translation of the second edition, in omitting many footnotes, obscures the extent to which the Pure Theory is both philosophically grounded and responsive to earlier theories of law; a new translation is in preparation. Kelsen wrote primarily in German, as well as in French and in English. His complete works are being published, both in hard copy and online, as the Hans Kelsen Werke, planned to run to 32 volumes with completion in 2042. == Kelsen's widespread contributions to legal theory == Kelsen's theory both drew from and has been developed by scholars in his homelands, notably the Vienna School in Austria and the Brno School led by František Weyr in Czechoslovakia. It is stated that in the English-speaking world, and notably the "Oxford school" of jurisprudence, Kelsen's influence can be seen particularly in the work of H. L. A. Hart, John Gardner, Leslie Green, and Joseph Raz, and "in the backhanded compliment of strenuous criticism, also in the work of John Finnis". Among the principal other writers in English on Kelsen are Robert S. Summers, Neil MacCormick and Stanley L. Paulson. Among Kelsen's principal critics today is Joseph Raz, who has excoriated the reading of Nuremberg and the war crimes trials which Kelsen had interpreted in a consistent manner throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Some mystery surrounds the belated publication, in 2012, of Kelsen's Secular Religion. The text was begun in the 1950s, as an attack on work by his former pupil Eric Voegelin. In the early 1960s an expanded version was set up in proof but was withdrawn at Kelsen's insistence (and considerable personal expense in reimbursing the publisher), for reasons that have never become clear. However, the Hans Kelsen Institute eventually decided that it should be published. It is a vigorous defense of modern science against all, including Voegelin, who wished to overturn the accomplishments of the Enlightenment by demanding that science be guided by religion. Kelsen seeks to expose contradictions in their claim that modern science, after all, rests upon the same sorts of assumption as religion—that it constitutes forms of "new religion" and so should not complain when old religion is brought back in. Four major areas of Kelsen's contributions to legal theory over his lifetime included the following areas of (i) judicial review, (ii) hierarchical law, (iii) the de-ideologicalization of positive law to strongly disassociate all reference to natural law, and (iv) the clear delineation of the science of law and legal science in twentieth century modern law. === Judicial review === Judicial review for Kelsen in the twentieth century was part of a tradition inherited from the common law tradition based upon the American constitutional experience as introduced by John Marshall. By the time the principle had reached Europe and specifically Kelsen, the issue of the codification of Marshall's common law version of judicial review into its form of constitutionally legislated law became an explicit theme for Kelsen. In drafting the constitutions for both Austria and Czechoslovakia, Kelsen chose to carefully delineate and limit the domain of judicial review to a narrower focus than was originally accommodated by John Marshall. Kelsen did receive a lifetime appointment to the court of judicial review in Austria and remained on this court for almost an entire decade during the 1920s. === Hierarchical law === Hierarchical law as a model for understanding the structural description of the process of understanding and applying the law was central for Kelsen and he adopted the model directly from his colleague Adolf Merkl at the University of Vienna. The main purposes of the hierarchical description of the law was three-fold for Kelsen. First, it was essential to understanding his celebrated static theory of law as elaborated in Chapter four of his book on the Pure Theory of Law (see subsection above). In its second edition, this chapter on the static theory of the law was almost one hundred pages in length and represented a comprehensive study of law capable of standing as an independent subject for research for legal scholars in this area of specialization. Second, it was a measure of relative centralization or decentralization. Third, a fully centralized system of law would also correspond to a unique Grundnorm or basic norm which would not be inferior to any other norm in the hierarchy due to its placement at the utmost foundation of the hierarchy (see Grundnorm section below). === The de-ideologicalization of positive law === Kelsen, during the time period of his education and legal training in fin-de-siecle Europe, had inherited a highly ambiguous definition of natural law which could be presented as having metaphysical, theological, philosophical, political, religious, or ideological components depending on any one of numerous sources who might desire to utilize the term. For Kelsen, this ambiguity in the definition of natural made it unusable in any practical sense for a modern approach to understanding the science of law. Kelsen explicitly defined positive law to deal with the many ambiguities he associated with the use of natural law in his time, along with the negative influence which it had upon the reception of what was meant even by positive law in contexts apparently removed from the domain of influence normally associated with natural law. === Science of law === The redefinition of the science of law and legal science to meet the requirements of modern law in the twentieth century was of significant concern to Kelsen. Kelsen wrote book-length studies detailing the many distinctions to be made between the natural sciences and their associated methodology of causal reasoning in contrast to methodology of normative reasoning which he saw as more directly suited to the legal sciences. The science of law and legal science were key methodological distinctions which were of high importance to Kelsen in the development of the pure theory of law and the general project of removing ambiguous ideological elements from having undue influence on the development of modern twentieth century law. In his last years, Kelsen turned to a comprehensive presentation of his ideas on norms. The unfinished manuscript was published posthumously as Allgemeine Theorie der Normen (General Theory of Norms). == Political philosophy == Kelsen's very first book (see Section above) was written about the political philosophy of Dante Alighieri and it was only with his second book that Kelsen started to write book length studies about the philosophy of law and its practical applications. Baume speaks of Kelsen's political philosophy concerning judicial review as coming closest to Ronald Dworkin and John Hart Ely among the scholars active after the end of Kelsen's life.As summarized by Sandrine Baume, "In 1927 [Kelsen] recognized his debt to Kantianism on this methodological point that determined much of his pure theory of law: 'Purity of method, indispensable to legal science, did not seem to me to be guaranteed by any philosopher as sharply as by Kant with his contrast between Is and Ought. Thus for me, Kantian philosophy was from the very outset the light that guided me.'" Kelsen's high praise of Kant in the absence of any specific neo-Kantians is matched among more recent scholars by John Rawls of Harvard University. Both Kelsen and Rawls also have made strong endorsements of Kant's books on Perpetual Peace (1795) and Idea for a Universal History (1784). In his book titled What is Justice?, Kelsen indicated his position concerning social justice stating, "[S]uppose that it is possible to prove that the economic situation of a people can be improved so essentially by so-called planned economy that social security is guaranteed to everybody in an equal measure; but that such an organization is possible only if all individual freedom is abolished. The answer to the question whether planned economy is preferable to free economy depends on our decision between the values of individual freedom and social security. Hence, to the question of whether individual freedom is a higher value than social security or vice versa, only a subjective answer is possible,"Five principal areas of concern for Kelsen in the area of political philosophy can be identified among his many interests for their centrality and the effect which they exerted over virtually his entire lifetime. These are; (i) Sovereignty, (ii) Law-state identity theory, (iii) State-society dualism, (iv) Centralization-decentralization, and (v) Dynamic theory of law. === Sovereignty === The definition and redefinition of sovereignty for Kelsen in the context of twentieth century modern law became a central theme for the political philosophy of Hans Kelsen from 1920 to the end of his life. The sovereignty of the state defines the domain of jurisdiction for the laws which govern the state and its associated society. The principles of explicitly defined sovereignty became of increasing importance to Kelsen as the domain of his concerns extended more comprehensively into international law and its manifold implications following the conclusion of WWI. The very regulation of international law in the presence of asserted sovereign borders either presented a major barrier for Kelsen in the application of principles in international law, or represented areas where the mitigation of sovereignty could greatly facilitate the progress and effectiveness of international law in geopolitics. === Law–state identity theory === The understanding of Kelsen's highly functional reading of the identity of law and state continues to represent one of the most challenging barriers to students and researchers of law approaching Kelsen's writings for the first time. After Kelsen completed his doctoral dissertation on the political philosophy of Dante, he turned to the study of Jellinek's dualist theory of law and state in Heidelberg in the years leading to 1910. Kelsen found that although he had a high respect for Jellinek as a leading scholar of his day, that Jellinek endorsement of a dualist theory of law and state was an impediment to the further development of a legal science which would be supportive of the development of responsible law throughout the twentieth century in addressing the requirements of the new century for the regulation of its society and of its culture. Kelsen's highly functional reading of the state was the most compatible manner he could locate for allowing for the development of positive law in a manner compatible with the demands of twentieth century geopolitics. === State–society distinctions and delineations === After accepting the need for endorsing an explicit reading of the identity of law and state, Kelsen remained equally sensitive to recognizing the need for society to nonetheless express tolerance and even encourage the discussion and debate of philosophy, sociology, theology, metaphysics, sociology, politics, and religion. Culture and society were to be regulated by the state according to legislative and constitutional norms. Kelsen recognized the province of society in an extensive sense which would allow for the discussion of religion, natural law, metaphysics, the arts, etc., for the development of culture in its many and varied attributes. Very significantly, Kelsen came to the strong inclination in his writings that the discussion of justice, as one example, was appropriate to the domain of society and culture, though its dissemination within the law was highly narrow and dubious. A twentieth century version of modern law, for Kelsen, would need to very carefully and appropriately delineate the responsible discussion of philosophical justice if the science of law was to be allowed to progress in an effective manner responding to the geopolitical and domestic needs of the new century. === Centralization and decentralization === A common theme which was unavoidable for Kelsen within the many applications he encountered of his political philosophy was that of centralization and decentralization. For Kelsen, centralization was a philosophically key position to the understanding of the pure theory of law. The pure theory of law is in many ways dependent upon the logical regress of its hierarchy of superior and inferior norms reaching a centralized point of origination in the hierarchy which he termed the basic norm, or Grundnorm. In Kelsen's general assessments, centralization was to often be associated with more modern and highly developed forms of enhancements and improvements to sociological and cultural norms, while the presence of decentralization was a measure of more primitive and less sophisticated observations concerning sociological and cultural norms. === Dynamic theory of law === The dynamic theory of law is singled out in this subsection discussing the political philosophy of Hans Kelsen for the very same reasons which Kelsen applied in separating its explication from the discussion of the static theory of law within the pages of Pure Theory of Law. The dynamic theory of law is the explicit and very acutely defined mechanism of state by which the process of legislation allows for new law to be created, and already established laws to be revised, as a result of political debate in the sociological and cultural domains of activity. Kelsen devotes one of his longest chapters in the revised version of Pure Theory of Law to discussing the central importance he associated with the dynamic theory of law. Its length of nearly one hundred pages is suggestive of its central significance to the book as a whole and may almost be studied as an independent book in its own right complementing the other themes which Kelsen covers in this book. == Reception and criticism == This section delineates the reception and criticism of Kelsen's writings and research throughout his lifetime. It also explicates the reaction of his scholarly reception after his death in 1973 concerning his intellectual legacy. Throughout his lifetime, Kelsen maintained a highly authoritative position representing his wide range of contributions to the theory and practice of law. Few scholars in the study of law were able to match his ability to engage and often polarize legal opinion during his own lifetime and extending well into his legacy reception after his death. One significant example of this involves his introduction and development of the term Grundnorm which can be briefly summarized to illustrate the diverse responses which his opinion was able to often stimulate in the legal community of his time. The short version of its reception is illustrative of many similar debates with which Kelsen was involved at many points in his career and may be summarized as follows. === The Grundnorm === Regarding Kelsen's original use of the term Grundnorm, its closest antecedent appears in writings of his colleague Adolf Merkl at the University of Vienna. Merkl was developing a structural research approach for the understanding of law as a matter of the hierarchical relationship of norms, largely on the basis of their being either superior, the one to the other, or inferior with respect to each other. Kelsen adapted and assimilated much of Merkl's approach into his own presentation of the Pure Theory of Law in both its original version (1934) and its revised version (1960). For Kelsen, the importance of the Grundnorm was in large measure two-fold since it importantly indicated the logical regress of superior relationships between norms as they led to the norm which ultimately would have no other norm to which it was inferior. Its second feature was that it represented the importance which Kelsen associated with the concept of a fully centralized legal order in contrast to the existence of decentralized forms of government and representing legal orders. Another form of the reception of the term originated from the fairly extended attempt to read Kelsen as a neo-Kantian following his early engagement with Hermann Cohen's work in 1911, the year his Habilitation dissertation on public law was published. Cohen was a leading neo-Kantian of the time and Kelsen was, in his own way, receptive to many of the ideas which Cohen had expressed in his published book review of Kelsen's writing. Kelsen had insisted that he had never used this material in the actual writing of his own book, though Cohen's ideas were attractive to him in their own right. This has resulted in one of the longest-running debates within the general Kelsen community as to whether Kelsen became a neo-Kantian himself after the encounter with Cohen's work, or if he managed to keep his own non-neo-Kantian position intact which he claimed was the prevailing circumstance when he first wrote his book in 1911. The neo-Kantians, when pressing the issue, would lead Kelsen into discussions concerning whether the existence of such a Grundnorm was strictly symbolic or whether it had a concrete foundation. This has led to the further division within this debate concerning the currency of the term Grundnorm as to whether it should be read, on the one hand, as part and parcel of Hans Vaihinger's "as-if" hypothetical construction. On the other hand, to those seeking a practical reading, the Grundnorm corresponded to something directly and concretely comparable to a sovereign nation's federal constitution, under which would be organized all of its regional and local laws, and no law would be recognized as being superior to it.In different contexts, Kelsen would indicate his preferences in different ways, with some neo-Kantians asserting that late in life Kelsen largely abided by the symbolic reading of the term when used in the neo-Kantian context, and as he has documented. The neo-Kantian reading of Kelsen can further be subdivided into three subgroups, with each representing their own preferred reading of the meaning of the Grundnorm, which were identifiable as (a) the Marburg neo-Kantians, (b) the Baden neo-Kantians, and (c) his own Kelsenian reading of the neo-Kantian school (during his "analytico-linguistic" phase circa 1911–1915) with which his writings on this subject are often associated. === Reception during Kelsen's European years === This section covers Kelsen's years in Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. While still in Austria, Kelsen entered the debate on the versions of Public Law prevailing in his time by engaging the predominating opinions of Jellinek and Gerber in his 1911 Habilitation dissertation (see description above). Kelsen, after attending Jellinek's lectures in Heidelberg oriented his interpretation according to the need to extend Jellinek's research past the points which Jellinek had set as its limits. For Kelsen, the effective operation of a legal order required that it be separated from political influences in terms which exceeded substantially the terms which Jellinek had adopted as its preferred form. In response to his 1911 dissertation, Kelsen was challenged by the neo-Kantians, originally led by Hermann Cohen, who maintained that there were substantial neo-Kantian insights which were open to Kelsen, which Kelsen himself did not appear to develop to the full extent of their potential interpretation as summarized in the section above. Sara Lagi in her book on Kelsen and his 1920s writings on democracy has articulated the revised and guarded reception of Jellinek by Kelsen. Kelsen was the principal author of the passages for the incorporation of judicial review in the Constitutions of Austria and Czechoslovakia during the 1910s largely on the model of John Marshall and the American Constitutional experience. In addition to this debate, Kelsen had initiated a separate discussion with Carl Schmitt on questions relating to the definition of sovereignty and its interpretation in international law. Kelsen became deeply committed to the principle of the adherence of the state to the rule of law above political controversy, while Schmitt adhered to the divergent view of the state deferring to political fiat. The debate had the effect of polarizing opinion not only throughout the 1920s and 1930s leading up to WWII, but has also extended into the decades after Kelsen's death in 1973. A third example of the controversies with which Kelsen was involved during his European years surrounded the severe disenchantment which many felt concerning the political and legal outcomes of WWI and the Treaty of Versailles. Kelsen believed that the blamelessness associated with Germany's political leaders and military leaders indicated a gross historical inadequacy of international law which could no longer be ignored. Kelsen devoted much of his writings from the 1930s and leading into the 1940s towards reversing this historical inadequacy which was deeply debated until ultimately Kelsen succeeded in contributing to the international precedent of establishing war crime trials for political leaders and military leaders at the end of WWII at Nuremberg and Tokyo. === Critical reception during his American years === This section covers Kelsen's years during his American years. Kelsen's participation and his part in the establishment of war crimes tribunals following WWII has been discussed in the previous section. The end of WWII and the start of the United Nations became a significant concern for Kelsen after 1940. For Kelsen, in principle, the United Nations represented in potential a significant phase change from the previous League of Nations and its numerous inadequacies which he had documented in his previous writings. Kelsen wrote his 700-page treatise on the United Nations, along with a subsequent two hundred page supplement, which became a standard text book on studying the United Nations for over a decade in the 1950s and 1960s.Kelsen also became a significant contributor to the Cold War debate in publishing books on Bolshevism and communism, which he reasoned were less successful forms of government when compared to democracy. This, for Kelsen, was especially the case when dealing with the question of the compatibility of different forms of government in relation to the Pure Theory of Law (1934, first edition). The completion of Kelsen's second edition of his magnum opus on Pure Theory of Law published in 1960 had at least as large an effect upon the international legal community as did the first edition published in 1934. Kelsen was a tireless defender of the application legal science in defending his position and was constantly confronting detractors who were unconvinced that the domain of legal science was sufficient to its own subject matter. This debate has continued well into the twenty-first century as well. Two critics of Kelsen in the United States were the legal realist Karl Llewellyn and the jurist Harold Laski. Llewellyn, as a firm anti-positivist against Kelsen stated, "I see Kelsen's work as utterly sterile, save in by-products that derive from his taking his shrewd eyes, for a moment, off what he thinks of as 'pure law.'" In his democracy essay of 1955, Kelsen took up the defense of representative democracy made by Joseph Schumpeter in Schumpeter's book on democracy and capitalism. Although Schumpeter took a position unexpectedly favorable to socialism, Kelsen felt that a rehabilitation of the reading of Schumpeter's book more amicable to democracy could be defended and he quoted Schumpter's strong conviction that, to "realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly," as consistent with his own defense of democracy. Kelsen himself made mixed statements concerning the extensiveness of the greater or lesser strict association of democracy and capitalism. === Critical reception of Kelsen's legacy after 1973 === Many of the controversies and critical debates during his lifetime continued after Kelsen's death in 1973. Kelsen's ability to polarize opinion among established legal scholars continued to influence the reception of his writings well after his death. The formation of the European Union recalled many of his debates with Schmitt on the issue of the degree of centralization which would in principle be possible, and what the implications concerning state sovereignty would be once the unification was put into place. Kelsen's contrast with Hart as representing two distinguishable forms of legal positivism has continued to be influential in distinguishing between Anglo-American forms of legal positivism from Continental forms of legal positivism. The implications of these contrasting forms continues to be part of the continuing debates within legal studies and the application of legal research at both the domestic and the international level of investigation. == Hans Kelsen Institute and Hans Kelsen Research Center == For the occasion of Hans Kelsen's 90th birthday, the Austrian federal government decided on 14 September 1971 to establish a foundation bearing the name "Hans Kelsen-Institut". The Institut became operational in 1972. Its task is to document the Pure Theory of Law and its dissemination in Austria and abroad, and to inform about and encourage the continuation and development of the pure theory. To this end it produces, through the publishing house Manz, a book series that currently runs to more than 30 volumes. The Institut administers the rights to Kelsen's works and has edited several works from his unpublished papers, including General Theory of Norms (1979, translated 1991) and Secular Religion (2012, written in English). The Institut's database is free online with login registration. The founding directors of the Institut, Kurt Ringhofer and Robert Walter, held their posts until their deaths respectively in 1993 and 2010. The current directors are Clemens Jabloner (since 1993) and Thomas Olechowski (since 2011).In 2006, the Hans-Kelsen-Forschungsstelle (Hans Kelsen Research Center) was founded under the direction of Matthias Jestaedt at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. After Jestaedt's appointment at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg in 2011, the center was transferred there. The Hans-Kelsen-Forschungsstelle publishes, in cooperation with the Hans Kelsen-Institut and through the publishing house Mohr Siebeck, a historical-critical edition of Kelsen's works which is planned to reach more than 30 volumes; as of July 2013, the first five volumes have been published. An extensive biography of Kelsen by Thomas Olechowski, Hans Kelsen: Biographie eines Rechtswissenschaftlers (Hans Kelsen: Biography of a Legal Scientist), was published in May 2020. == Honours and awards == 1938: Honorary Member of the American Society of International Law 1953: Karl Renner Prize 1960: Feltrinelli Prize 1961: Grand Merit Cross with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany 1961: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art 1966: Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna 1967: Great Silver Medal with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria 1981: Kelsenstrasse in Vienna Landstrasse (3rd District) named after him == Bibliography == Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts (1920). Reine Rechtslehre, Vienna 1934. Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory (1934; Litschewski Paulson and Paulson trans.), Oxford 1992; the translators have adopted the subtitle, Einleitung in die rechtswissenschaftliche Problematik, in order to avoid confusion with the English translation of the second edition. Law and Peace in International Relations, Cambridge (Mass.) 1942, Union (N.J.) 1997. Society and Nature, 1943, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. 2009 ISBN 1584779861 Peace Through Law, Chapel Hill 1944, Union (N.J.) 2000. The Political Theory of Bolshevism: A Critical Analysis, University of California Press 1948, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. 2011. The Law of the United Nations. First published under the auspices of The London Institute of World Affairs in 1950. With a supplement, Recent Trends in the Law of the United Nations [1951]. A critical, detailed, highly technical legal analysis of the United Nations charter and organization. Originally published conjointly: New York: Frederick A. Praeger, [1964]. “Foundations of Democracy.” Ethics 66(1)1955: 1-101. Reine Rechtslehre, 2nd edn Vienna 1960 (much expanded from 1934 and effectively a different book); Studienausgabe with amendments, Vienna 2017 ISBN 978-3-16-152973-3 Pure Theory of Law (1960; Knight trans.), Berkeley 1967, Union (N.J.) 2002. Théorie pure du droit (1960; Eisenmann French trans.), Paris 1962. General Theory of Law and State (German original unpublished; Wedberg trans.), 1945, New York 1961, Clark (N.J.) 2007. What is Justice? Berkeley 1957. "The Function of a Constitution" (1964; Stewart trans.) in Richard Tur and William Twining (eds), Essays on Kelsen, Oxford 1986; also in 5th and later editions of Lloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence, London (currently 8th ed 2008). Essays in Legal and Moral Philosophy (Weinberger sel., Heath trans.), Dordrecht 1973. Allgemeine Theorie der Normen (ed. Ringhofer and Walter), Vienna 1979; see English translation in 1990 below. Die Rolle des Neukantianismus in der Reinen Rechtslehre: Eine Debatte zwischen Sander und Kelsen (German Edition) by Hans Kelsen and Fritz Sander (Dec 31, 1988). General Theory of Norms (1979; Hartney trans.), Oxford 1990. The Essence and Value of Democracy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. Translation of 1929 version of Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie. Secular Religion: A Polemic against the Misinterpretation of Modern Social Philosophy, Science, and Politics as "New Religions" (ed. Walter, Jabloner and Zeleny), Vienna and New York 2012 (written in English), revised edition 2017. == See also == Legal positivism Neo-Kantianism Pure Theory of Law Basic norm Alfred Verdross Carl Schmitt H. L. A. Hart Joseph Raz == References == == Sources == == Further reading on Kelsen == Sandrine Baume, Hans Kelsen and the Case for Democracy.Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 2012. Jochen von Bernstorff, The Public International Law Theory of Hans Kelsen: Believing in Universal Law. Cambridge University Press, 2010; translated from the original German edition, 2001. Uta Bindreiter, Why Grundnorm? A Treatise on the Implications of Kelsen's Doctrine. The Hague 2002. Ian Bryan, Peter Langford & John McGarry (eds.), The Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political: Affinity and Divergence in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber. Routledge, 2015. California Law Review (ed.), Essays in Honor of Hans Kelsen, Celebrating the 90th Anniversary of His Birth. South Hackensack (1971). Óscar Correas, El otro Kelsen." Mexico: UNAM, 1989.[1] Sara Lagi, Democracy in Its Essence Hans Kelsen as A Political Thinker. Lexington Books, 2020. Peter Langford, Ian Bryan and John McGarry (eds.), Kelsenian Legal Science and the Nature of Law. Springer, 2017. Keekok Lee, The Legal-Rational State: A Comparison of Hobbes, Bentham and Kelsen (Avebury Series in Philosophy) (Sep 1990). George Arthur Lipsky, Law and politics in the world community: Essays in Hans Kelsen's pure theory and related problems in international law. (1953). Ronald Moore, Legal Norms and Legal Science: a Critical Study of Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law. Honolulu 1978. Thomas Olechowski, Hans Kelsen. Biographie eines Rechtswissenschaftlers. Tübingen 2020. Stanley L. Paulson and Bonnie Litschewski Paulson (eds), Normativity and Norms: Critical Perspectives on Kelsenian Themes. Oxford 1998. Iain Stewart, 'The Critical Legal Science of Hans Kelsen' (1990) 17 Journal of Law and Society 273-308. == External links == Works by or about Hans Kelsen at Internet Archive Hans Kelsen-Institut, Vienna Hans-Kelsen-Forschungsstelle, Freiburg Archived 2020-10-30 at the Wayback Machine Full biography Biographical note 1 Biographical note 2 Bibliographical note 1 Bibliographical note 2 - Kelsen's Werke Newspaper clippings about Hans Kelsen in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Moritz Schlick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Schlick

Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick (; German: [ʃlɪk] (listen); 14 April 1882 – 22 June 1936) was a German philosopher, physicist, and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. == Early life and works == Schlick was born in Berlin to a wealthy Prussian family with deep nationalist and conservative traditions. His father was Ernst Albert Schlick and his mother was Agnes Arndt. At the age of sixteen, he started to read Descartes' Meditations and Schopenhauer's Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik. Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra especially impressed him.: 58 He studied physics at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Lausanne, and, ultimately, the University of Berlin under Max Planck. Schlick explained this choice in his autobiography by saying that, despite his love for philosophy, he believed that only mathematical physics could help him obtain actual and exact knowledge. He felt deep distrust towards any metaphysical speculation.: 58 In 1904, he completed his PhD thesis at the University of Berlin under the supervision of Planck. Schlick's thesis was titled Über die Reflexion des Lichts in einer inhomogenen Schicht (On the Reflection of Light in a Non-Homogeneous Medium). After a year as Privatdozent at Göttingen, he turned to the study of philosophy in Zurich. In 1907, he married Blanche Hardy. In 1908, he published Lebensweisheit (The Wisdom of Life), a slim volume about eudaemonism, the theory that happiness results from the pursuit of personal fulfillment as opposed to passing pleasures. His habilitation thesis at the University of Rostock, Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen Logik (The Nature of Truth According to Modern Logic), was published in 1910. Several essays about aesthetics followed, whereupon Schlick turned his attention to problems of epistemology, the philosophy of science, and more general questions about science. In this last category, Schlick distinguished himself by publishing a paper in 1915 about Einstein's special theory of relativity, a topic only ten years old. He also published Raum und Zeit in der gegenwärtigen Physik (Space and Time in Contemporary Physics), which extended his earlier results by applying Poincaré's geometric conventionalism to explain Einstein's adoption of a non-Euclidean geometry in the general theory of relativity. == The Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein == After early appointments at Rostock and Kiel, in 1922 Schlick assumed the chair of Naturphilosophie at the University of Vienna which had previously been held by Ludwig Boltzmann and Ernst Mach. Schlick displayed an unusual success in organizing talented individuals in the philosophical and scientific spheres. When Schlick arrived in Vienna, he was invited to lead a group of scientists and philosophers who met regularly (on Thursday evenings in the Chemistry Building) to discuss philosophical topics in the sciences. Early members included the mathematician Hans Hahn and, within a few years, they were joined by Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann, and others. They initially called themselves the Ernst Mach Association, but they eventually became best known as the Vienna Circle. In the years 1925–26, the Thursday night group discussed recent work in the foundations of mathematics by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was a work that advanced, among other things, a logical theory of symbolism and a "picture" or "model" theory of language. Schlick and his group were impressed by the work, devoting considerable time to its study and, even when it was no longer the principal focus of their discussion, it was mentioned in discussion. Eventually Wittgenstein agreed to meet with Schlick and other Circle members to discuss the Tractatus and other ideas, but he later found it necessary to restrict the visitors to sympathetic interlocutors. Through Schlick's influence, Wittgenstein was encouraged to consider a return to philosophy after some ten years away from the field. Schlick and Waismann's discussions with Wittgenstein continued until the latter felt that germinal ideas had been used without permission in an essay by Carnap, a charge of dubious merit. But he continued discussions in letters to Schlick after he no longer met with other Circle members. == General Theory of Knowledge and later works == Schlick had worked on his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (General Theory of Knowledge) between 1918 and 1925, and, though later developments in his philosophy were to make various contentions of his epistemology untenable, the General Theory is perhaps his greatest work in its acute reasoning against synthetic a priori knowledge. This critique of synthetic a priori knowledge argues that the only truths which are self-evident to reason are statements which are true as a matter of definition, such as the statements of formal logic and mathematics. The truth of all other statements must be evaluated with reference to empirical evidence. If a statement is proposed which is not a matter of definition, and not capable of being confirmed or falsified by evidence, that statement is "metaphysical", which is synonymous with "meaningless", or "nonsense". This is the principle upon which members of the Vienna Circle were most clearly in agreement—with each other, as well as with Wittgenstein. == Problems of Ethics == Between 1926 and 1930, Schlick labored to finish Fragen der Ethik (Problems of Ethics), in which he surprised some of his fellow Circlists by including ethics as a viable branch of philosophy. In his 1932–33 contribution to Erkenntnis, "Positivism and Realism", Schlick offered one of the most illuminating definitions of positivism as every view "which denies the possibility of metaphysics" (Schlick [1932–1933], p. 260). Accordingly, he defined metaphysics as the doctrine of "true being", "thing in itself" or "transcendental being", a doctrine which obviously "presupposes that a non-true, lesser or apparent being stands opposed to it" (Ibid). Therefore, in this work he bases the positivism on a kind of epistemology which holds that the only true beings are givens or constituents of experience. Also during this time, the Vienna Circle published The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle as a homage to Schlick. Its strong anti-metaphysical stance crystallized the viewpoint of the group. === Comment on Wittgenstein's Tractatus === Rudolf Carnap, in his book Logical Syntax of Language, included a comment by Schlick on Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Schlick ( [Wende] p.8 ) interprets Wittgenstein's position as follows: philosophy "is that activity by which the meaning of propositions is established or discovered"; it is a question of "what the propositions actually mean. The content, soul, and spirit of science naturally consist in what is ultimately meant by its sentences; the philosophical activity of rendering significant is thus the alpha and omega of all scientific knowledge". == Death == With the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austrofascism in Austria, many of the Vienna Circle's members left for the United States and the United Kingdom. Schlick, however, stayed on at the University of Vienna. When visited by Herbert Feigl in 1935, he expressed dismay at events in Germany. On 22 June 1936, Schlick was ascending the steps of the university for a class when he was confronted by a former student, Johann Nelböck, who killed Schlick with a pistol. The court declared Nelböck to be fully compos mentis; he confessed to the act and was detained without any resistance, but was unrepentant. The killer used the judicial proceedings as a chance to present himself and his ideology in the public. He claimed that Schlick's anti-metaphysical philosophy had "interfered with his moral restraint". In another version of the events, the murderer covered up all political causes and claimed that he was motivated by jealousy over his failed attachment to the female student Sylvia Borowicka, leading to a paranoid delusion about Schlick as his rival and persecutor. Nelböck was tried and sentenced, but the event became a distorted cause célèbre around which crystallized the growing nationalist and anti-Jewish sentiments in the city. The fact that Schlick was not Jewish did not seem to matter to propagandists capitalizing on the crime, who associated Schlick with Jewish members of the intelligentsia. After the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, the murderer was released on probation after serving two years of a 10-year sentence. == Legacy == Schlick's enduring contribution to the world of philosophy is as the founder of logical positivism. His humanity, good will, gentleness, and especially his encouragement have been documented by many of his peers. Herbert Feigl and Albert Blumberg, in their introduction to the General Theory of Knowledge, wrote, No other thinker was so well prepared to give new impetus to the philosophical questings of the younger generation. Though many of his students and successors have attained a higher degree of exactitude and adequacy in their logical analyses of problems in the theory of knowledge, Schlick had an unsurpassed sense for what is essential in philosophical issues. == Works == Lebensweisheit. Versuch einer Glückseligkeitslehre. Munich, Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung 1908 "Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen Logik", in: Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie, Jg. 34, 1910, p. 386–477 "Die philosophische Bedeutung des Relativitätsprinzips", in: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 159, 1915, S. 129–175 Raum und Zeit in der gegenwärtigen Physik. Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer 1917 (4th ed. 1922) Hermann von Helmholtz. Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie (Publishers: Moritz Schlick & Paul Hertz). Berlin: Springer 1921 Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre. Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer 1918 (2nd edition 1925) "Kritizistische oder empiristische Deutung der neuen Physik?", in: Kant-Studien, 26, 1921, p. 96–111 "Einsteins Relativitätstheorie". In: Mosse Almanach, 1921, S. 105–123. "Erleben, Erkennen, Metaphysik", in: Kant-Studien, 31, 1926, p. 146–158 "Vom Sinn des Lebens", in: Symposion. Philosophische Zeitschrift für Forschung und Aussprache, Jg. 1, 1927, p. 331–354 Fragen der Ethik. Vienna: Verlag von Julius Springer 1930 "Gibt es ein Materiales Apriori?", 1930 "Die Wende der Philosophie". Erkenntnis. 1: 4–11. 1930. doi:10.1007/BF00208605. S2CID 119913188. "Über das Fundament der Erkenntnis". Erkenntnis. 4: 79–99. 1934. doi:10.1007/BF01793485. S2CID 143301931. "Unanswerable Questions?", 1935 "Meaning and Verification", 1936 Gesammelte Aufsätze 1926–1936. Vienna: Gerold & Co. 1938 Die Probleme der Philosophie in ihrem Zusammenhang. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag 1986 Moritz Schlick Gesamtausgabe. Vienna/New York: Springer Verlag 2006. — Almost complete author copy of Vol. I/1, I/2, I/3, I/5, I/6 == See also == Definitions of philosophy == Notes == == References == Edmonds, David and John Eidinow. Wittgenstein's Poker. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Fynn Ole Engler, Mathias Iven. Moritz Schlick. Leben, Werk und Wirkung. Berlin: Parerga 2008. (in German) Schlick, Moritz. Positivism and Realism. Originally appeared in Erkenntnis 111 (1932/33); translated by Peter Heath and reprinted in Moritz Schlick: Philosophical Papers, Volume II (1925–1936) from Vienna Circle Collection, edited by Henk L. Mulder (Kluwer, 1979), pp. 259–284. == Further reading == Edmonds, David (2020). The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-6911-6490-8. Holt, Jim, "Positive Thinking" (review of Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 449 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 74–76. == External links == "Moritz Schlick" entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Moritz Schlick Research Center at Rostock University

Otto Neurath

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Neurath

Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath (German: [ˈɔtoː ˈnɔʏʁaːt]; 10 December 1882 – 22 December 1945) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. He was also the inventor of the ISOTYPE method of pictorial statistics and an innovator in museum practice. Before he fled his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle. == Early life == Neurath was born in Vienna, the son of Wilhelm Neurath (1840–1901), a well-known political economist at the time. Otto's mother was a Protestant, and he would also become one. Helene Migerka was his cousin. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna (he formally enrolled for classes only for two semesters in 1902–3). In 1906, he gained his PhD in the department of Political Science and Statistics at the University of Berlin with a thesis entitled Zur Anschauung der Antike über Handel, Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft (On the Conceptions in Antiquity of Trade, Commerce and Agriculture). He married Anna Schapire in 1907, who died in 1911 while bearing their son, Paul, and then married a close friend, the mathematician and philosopher Olga Hahn. Perhaps because of his second wife's blindness and then because of the outbreak of war, Paul was sent to a children's home outside Vienna, where Neurath's mother lived, and returned to live with both of his parents when he was nine years old. == Career in Vienna == Neurath taught political economy at the New Vienna Commercial Academy in Vienna until war broke out. Subsequently, he directed the Department of War Economy in the War Ministry. In 1917, he completed his habilitation thesis Die Kriegswirtschaftslehre und ihre Bedeutung für die Zukunft (War Economics and Their Importance for the Future) at Heidelberg University. In 1918, he became director of the Deutsches Kriegswirtschaftsmuseum (German Museum of War Economy, later the "Deutsches Wirtschaftsmuseum") at Leipzig. Here he worked with Wolfgang Schumann, known from the Dürerbund for which Neurath had written many articles. During the political crisis which led to the armistice, Schumann urged him to work out a plan for socialization in Saxony. Along with Schumann and Hermann Kranold developed the Programm Kranold-Neurath-Schumann. Neurath then joined the German Social Democratic Party in 1918–19 and ran an office for central economic planning in Munich. When the Bavarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Neurath was imprisoned but returned to Austria after intervention from the Austrian government. While in prison, he wrote Anti-Spengler, a critical attack on Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. In Red Vienna, he joined the Social Democrats and became secretary of the Austrian Association for Settlements and Small Gardens (Verband für Siedlungs-und Kleingartenwesen), a collection of self-help groups that set out to provide housing and garden plots to its members. In 1923, he founded a new museum for housing and city planning called Siedlungsmuseum. In 1925 he renamed it Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna) and founded an association for it, in which the Vienna city administration, the trade unions, the Chamber of Workers and the Bank of Workers became members. Then-mayor Karl Seitz acted as first proponent of the association. Julius Tandler, city councillor for welfare and health, served at the first board of the museum together with other prominent social democratic politicians. The museum was provided with exhibition rooms at buildings of the city administration, the most prominent being the People's Hall at the Vienna City Hall. To make the museum understandable for visitors from all around the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, Neurath worked on graphic design and visual education, believing that "Words divide, pictures unite," a coinage of his own that he displayed on the wall of his office there. In the late 1920s, graphic designer and communications theorist Rudolf Modley served as an assistant to Neurath, contributing to a new means of communication: a visual "language." With the illustrator Gerd Arntz and with Marie Reidemeister (who he would marry in 1941), Neurath developed novel ways of representing quantitative information via easily interpretable icons. The forerunner of contemporary Infographics, he initially called this the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics. As his ambitions for the project expanded beyond social and economic data related to Vienna, he renamed the project "Isotype", an acronymic nickname for the project's full title: International System of Typographic Picture Education. At international conventions of city planners, Neurath presented and promoted his communication tools. During the 1930s, he also began promoting Isotype as an International Picture Language, connecting it both with the adult education movement and with the Internationalist passion for new and artificial languages like Esperanto, although he stressed in talks and correspondence that Isotype was not intended to be a stand-alone language and was limited in what it could communicate. In the 1920s, Neurath also became an ardent logical positivist, and was the main author of the Vienna Circle manifesto. He was the driving force behind the Unity of Science movement and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. == Exile == === Netherlands === During the Austrian Civil War in 1934, Neurath had been working in Moscow. Anticipating problems, he had asked to get a coded message in case it would be dangerous for him to return to Austria. As Marie Reidemeister reported later, after receiving the telegram "Carnap is waiting for you," Neurath chose to travel to The Hague, the Netherlands, instead of Vienna, to be able to continue his international work. He was joined by Arntz after affairs in Vienna had been sorted out as best they could. His wife also fled to the Netherlands, where she died in 1937. === British Isles === After the Luftwaffe had bombed Rotterdam, he and Marie Reidemeister fled to Britain, crossing the Channel with other refugees in an open boat. He and Reidemeister married in 1941 after a period of being interned on the Isle of Man (Neurath was in Onchan Camp). In Britain, he and his wife set up the Isotype Institute in Oxford and he was asked to advise on, and design Isotype charts for, the intended redevelopment of the slums of Bilston, near Wolverhampton. Neurath died of a stroke, suddenly and unexpectedly, in December 1945. After his death, Marie Neurath continued the work of the Isotype Institute, publishing Neurath's writings posthumously, completing projects he had started and writing many children's books using the Isotype system, until her death in the 1980s. == Ideas == === Philosophy of science and language === Neurath's work on protocol statements tried to reconcile an empiricist concern for the grounding of knowledge in experience with the essential publicity of science. Neurath suggested that reports of experience should be understood to have a third-person and hence public and impersonal character, rather than as being first person subjective pronouncements. Bertrand Russell took issue with Neurath's account of protocol statements in his book An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth (p. 139ff), on the grounds that it severed the connection to experience that is essential to an empiricist account of truth, facts and knowledge. One of Neurath's later and most important works, Physicalism, completely transformed the nature of the logical positivist discussion of the program of unifying the sciences. Neurath delineates and explains his points of agreement with the general principles of the positivist program and its conceptual bases: the construction of a universal system which would comprehend all of the knowledge furnished by the various sciences, and the absolute rejection of metaphysics, in the sense of any propositions not translatable into verifiable scientific sentences.He then rejects the positivist treatment of language in general and, in particular, some of Wittgenstein's early fundamental ideas. First, Neurath rejects isomorphism between language and reality as useless metaphysical speculation, which would call for explaining how words and sentences could represent things in the external world. Instead, Neurath proposed that language and reality coincide—that reality consists in simply the totality of previously verified sentences in the language, and "truth" of a sentence is about its relationship to the totality of already verified sentences. If a sentence fails to "concord" (or cohere) with the totality of already verified sentences, then either it should be considered false, or some of that totality's propositions must be modified somehow. He thus views truth as internal coherence of linguistic assertions, rather than anything to do with facts or other entities in the world. Moreover, the criterion of verification is to be applied to the system as a whole (see semantic holism) and not to single sentences. Such ideas profoundly shaped the holistic verificationism of Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine's book Word and Object (p. 3f) made famous Neurath's analogy which compares the holistic nature of language and consequently scientific verification with the construction of a boat which is already at sea (cf. Ship of Theseus): We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. Keith Stanovich discusses this metaphor in context of memes and memeplexes and refers to this metaphor as a "Neurathian bootstrap".Neurath also rejected the notion that science should be reconstructed in terms of sense data, because perceptual experiences are too subjective to constitute a valid foundation for the formal reconstruction of science. Thus, the phenomenological language that most positivists were still emphasizing was to be replaced by the language of mathematical physics. This would allow for the required objective formulations because it is based on spatio-temporal coordinates. Such a physicalistic approach to the sciences would facilitate the elimination of every residual element of metaphysics because it would permit them to be reduced to a system of assertions relative to physical facts. "Finally, Neurath suggested that since language itself is a physical system, because it is made up of an ordered succession of sounds or symbols, it is capable of describing its own structure without contradiction."These ideas helped form the foundation of the sort of physicalism which remains the dominant position in metaphysics and especially the philosophy of mind. === Economics === In economics, Neurath was notable for his advocacy of ideas like "in-kind" economic accounting in place of monetary accounting. In the 1920s, he also advocated Vollsozialisierung, that is "complete" rather than merely partial "socialization". Thus, he advocated changes to the economic system that were more radical than those of the mainstream Social-Democratic parties of Germany and Austria. In the 1920s, Neurath debated these matters with leading Social Democratic theoreticians (such as Karl Kautsky, who insisted that money is necessary in a socialist economy). While serving as a government economist during the war, Neurath had observed that "As a result of the war, in-kind calculus was applied more often and more systematically than before ... war was fought with ammunition and with the supply of food, not with money" i.e. that goods were incommensurable. This convinced Neurath of the feasibility of economic planning in terms of amounts of goods and services, without use of money. In response to these ideas, Ludwig von Mises wrote his famous essay of 1920, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth".Otto Neurath believed it was 'war socialism' that would come into effect after capitalism. For Neurath, war economies showed advantages in speed of decision and execution, optimal distribution of means relative to (military) goals, and no-nonsense evaluation and utilization of inventiveness. Two disadvantages which he perceived as resulting from centralized decision-making were a reduction in productivity and a loss of the benefits of simple economic exchanges; but he thought that the reduction in productivity could be mitigated by means of "scientific" techniques based on analysis of work-flows etc. as advocated by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Neurath believed that socio-economic theory and scientific methods could be applied together in contemporary practice. Neurath's view on socioeconomic development was similar to the materialist conception of history first elaborated in classical Marxism, in which technology and the state of epistemology come into conflict with social organization. In particular, Neurath, influenced also by James George Frazer, associated the rise of scientific thinking and empiricism / positivism with the rise of socialism, both of which were coming into conflict with older modes of epistemology such as theology (which was allied with idealist philosophy), the latter of which served reactionary purposes. However, Neurath followed Frazer in claiming that primitive magic closely resembled modern technology, implying an instrumentalist interpretation of both. Neurath claimed that magic was unfalsifiable and therefore disenchantment could never be complete in a scientific age. Adherents of the scientific view of the world recognize no authority other than science and reject all forms of metaphysics. Under the socialist phase of history, Neurath predicted that the scientific worldview would become the dominant mode of thought. == Selected publications == Most publications by and about Neurath are still available only in German. However he also wrote in English, using Ogden's Basic English. His scientific papers are held at the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem; the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection is held in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading in England. === Books === 1913. Serbiens Erfolge im Balkankriege: Eine wirtschaftliche und soziale Studie. Wien : Manz. 1921. Anti-Spengler. München, Callwey Verlag. 1926. Antike Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Leipzig, Berlin: B. G. Teubner. 1928. Lebensgestaltung und Klassenkampf. Berlin: E. Laub. 1933. Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie. Wien. 1936. International Picture Language; the First Rules of Isotype. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd., 1936 1937. Basic by Isotype. London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd. 1939. Modern Man in the Making. Alfred A. Knopf 1944. Foundations of the Social Sciences. University of Chicago Press 1944. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. With Rudolf Carnap, and Charles W. Morris (eds.). University of Chicago Press. 1946. Philosophical Papers, 1913–1946: With a Bibliography of Neurath in English. Marie Neurath and Robert S. Cohen, with Carolyn R. Fawcett, eds. 1983 1973. Empiricism and Sociology. Marie Neurath and Robert Cohen, eds. With a selection of biographical and autobiographical sketches by Popper and Carnap. Includes abridged translation of Anti-Spengler. === Articles === 1912. The problem of the pleasure maximum. In: Cohen and Neurath (eds.) 1983 1913. The lost wanderers of Descartes and the auxiliary motive. In: Cohen and Neurath 1983 1916. On the classification of systems of hypotheses. In: Cohen and Neurath 1983 1919. Through war economy to economy in kind. In: Neurath 1973 (a short fragment only) 1920a. Total socialisation. In: Cohen and Uebel 2004 1920b. A system of socialisation. In: Cohen and Uebel 2004 1928. Personal life and class struggle. In: Neurath 1973 1930. Ways of the scientific world-conception. In: Cohen and Neurath 1983 1931a. The current growth in global productive capacity. In: Cohen and Uebel 2004 1931b. Empirical sociology. In: Neurath 1973 1931c. Physikalismus. In: Scientia : rivista internazionale di sintesi scientifica, 50, 1931, pp. 297–303 1932. Protokollsätze (Protocol statements).In: Erkenntnis, Vol. 3. Repr.: Cohen and Neurath 1983 1935a. Pseudorationalism of falsification. In: Cohen and Neurath 1983 1935b. The unity of science as a task. In: Cohen and Neurath 1983 1937. Die neue enzyklopaedie des wissenschaftlichen empirismus. In: Scientia: rivista internazionale di sintesi scientifica, 62, 1937, pp. 309–320 1938 'The Departmentalization of Unified Science', Erkenntnis VII, pp. 240–46 1940. Argumentation and action. The Otto Neurath Nachlass in Haarlem 198 K.41 1941. The danger of careless terminology. In: The New Era 22: 145–50 1942. International planning for freedom. In: Neurath 1973 1943. Planning or managerial revolution. (Review of J. Burnham, The Managerial Revolution). The New Commonwealth 148–54 1943–5. Neurath–Carnap correspondence, 1943–1945. The Otto Neurath Nachlass in Haarlem, 223 1944b. Ways of life in a world community. The London Quarterly of World Affairs, 29–32 1945a. Physicalism, planning and the social sciences: bricks prepared for a discussion v. Hayek. 26 July 1945. The Otto Neurath Nachlass in Haarlem 202 K.56 1945b. Neurath–Hayek correspondence, 1945. The Otto Neurath Nachlass in Haarlem 243 1945c. Alternatives to market competition. (Review of F. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom). The London Quarterly of World Affairs 121–2 1946a. The orchestration of the sciences by the encyclopedism of logical empiricism. In: Cohen and. Neurath 1983 1946b. After six years. In: Synthese 5:77–82 1946c. The orchestration of the sciences by the encyclopedism of logical empiricism. In: Cohen and. Neurath 1983 1946. From Hieroglyphics to Isotypes. Nicholson and Watson. Excerpts. Rotha (1946) claims that this is in part Neurath's autobiography. == References == == Further reading == Cartwright, Nancy, J. Cat, L. Fleck, and T. Uebel, 1996. Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics. Cambridge University Press Cohen R. S. and M. Neurath (eds.) 1983. Otto Neurath: Philosophical Papers. Reidel Cohen, R. S. and T. Uebel (eds.) 2004. Otto Neurath: Economic Writings 1904–1945. Kluwer Dale, Gareth, The Technocratic Socialism of Otto Neurath, Jacobin Magazine. Dutto, Andrea Alberto, 2017, "The Pyramid and the Mosaic. Otto Neurath’s encyclopedism as a critical model," Footprint. Delft Architecture Theory Journal, #20. Matthew Eve and Christopher Burke: Otto Neurath: From Hieroglyphics to Isotype. A Visual Autobiography, Hyphen Press, London 2010 Sophie Hochhäusl: Otto Neurath – City Planning: Proposing a Socio-Political Map for Modern Urbanism, Innsbruck University Press, 2011 ISBN 978-3-902-81107-3. Holt, Jim, "Positive Thinking" (review of Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 449 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 74–76. Kraeutler, Hadwig. 2008. Otto Neurath. Museum and Exhibition Work – Spaces (Designed) for Communication. Frankfurt, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna, Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. Nemeth, E., and Stadler, F., eds., "Encyclopedia and Utopia: The Life and Work of Otto Neurath (1882–1945)." Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol. 4. O'Neill, John, 2003, "Unified science as political philosophy: positivism, pluralism and liberalism," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. O'Neill, John, 2002, "Socialist Calculation and Environmental Valuation: Money, Markets and Ecology," Science & Society, LXVI/1. Neurath, Otto, 1946, "From Hieroglyphs to Isotypes". Symons, John – Pombo, Olga – Torres, Juan Manuel (eds.): Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science. (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 18.) Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. ISBN 978-94-007-0142-7 Vossoughian, Nader. 2008. Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis. NAi Publishers. ISBN 978-90-5662-350-0 Sandner, Günther, 2014, Otto Neurath. Eine politische Biographie. Zsolnay, Vienna. ISBN 978-3-552-05676-3. (German) Danilo Zolo, 1990, Reflexive Epistemology and Social Complexity. The Philosophical Legacy of Otto Neurath, Dordrecht: Kluwer == External links == Shalizi, C R, "Otto Neurath: 1882–1945". Includes references and links. Gerd Arntz Web Archive with more than 500 Isotypes Bibliography Pictorial Statistics Mundaneum in Netherlands Article discussing Gödel's Incomplete theorems as a refutation to Neurath and the Vienna Circle's logical Positivism Austrian Museum for Social and Economic Affairs (Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum) Guide to the Unity of Science Movement Records 1934-1968 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center

Nicolai Hartmann

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Hartmann

Paul Nicolai Hartmann (German: [ˈhaʁtman]; 20 February 1882 – 9 October 1950) was a Baltic German philosopher. He is regarded as a key representative of critical realism and as one of the most important twentieth-century metaphysicians. == Biography == Hartmann was born a Baltic German in Riga, which was then the capital of the Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire, and which is now in Latvia. He was the son of the engineer Carl August Hartmann and his wife Helene, born Hackmann. He attended from 1897 the German-language high school in Saint Petersburg. In the years 1902–1903 he studied Medicine at the University of Yuryev (now Tartu), and 1903–1905 classical philology and philosophy at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University with his friend Vasily Sesemann. In 1905 he went to the University of Marburg, where he studied with the neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. In Marburg began a lifelong friendship with Heinz Heimsoeth. In 1907 he received his doctorate with the thesis Das Seinsproblem in der griechischen Philosophie vor Plato (The Problem of Being in Greek Philosophy Before Plato). In 1909 he published the book Platos Logik des Seins (The Logic of Being in Plato). The same year he completed his habilitation on Proclus: Des Proklus Diadochus philosophische Anfangsgründe der Mathematik (Proclus Diadochus' Philosophical Elements of Mathematics). In 1911, Hartmann married Alice Stepanitz, with whom he had a daughter, Dagmar, in 1912. In 1912 he published Die philosophischen Grundfragen der Biologie (The Philosophical Foundations of Biology). From 1914 to 1918 he did military service as an interpreter, letter censor, and intelligence officer. In 1919, i.e., after the war, he received a position as Privatdozent in Marburg. Around this time he met Martin Heidegger. In 1920 he became Associate Professor (außerordentlicher Professor) and in 1921 appeared the work that established him as an independent philosophical thinker, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (Foundation of a Metaphysics of Knowledge). The following year he became Full Professor (ordentlicher Professor) as successor of the Chair held by Natorp. In 1925, he moved to Cologne, where he came into contact with Max Scheler. In 1926 he published his second major work—Ethik—in which he develops a material value ethics akin to that of Scheler. The same year he divorced from his wife. In 1929 Hartmann married Frida Rosenfeld, with whom he had a son, Olaf (1930), and a daughter, Lise (1932). In 1931 he became Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Berlin. He held the Chair until 1945. During this time he successively published many pieces of his ontology: Das Problem des geistigen Seins (The Problem of Spiritual Being) (1933), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (On the Foundation of Ontology) (1935), Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit (Possibility and Actuality) (1938) and Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriß der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre (The Structure of the Real World. Outline of the General Theory of Categories) (1940). The unrest of the National Socialist period seems to have left Hartmann relatively undisturbed in his task of developing a new ontology. In the "'-Dossiers über Philosophie-Professoren" (i.e. SD-files concerning philosophy professors) that were set up by the SS Security Service (SD) Nicolai Hartmann was classified from an SS-point of view in the following way: "has always been a nationalist. Loyal to National Socialism, too, without political activity, but a social attitude has to be acknowledged. (cf. donations to the NSV and hosting children during school vacations)".In 1942, Hartmann edited a volume entitled Systematische Philosophie, in which he contributed the essay Neue Wege der Ontologie (New Ways of Ontology), which summarizes his work in ontology. Between 1945 and 1950, Hartmann taught in Göttingen. He died of a stroke in 1950. In the year of his death, there appeared his Philosophie der Natur (Philosophy of Nature). His works Teleologisches Denken (Teleological Thinking) (1951) and Ästhetik (Aesthetics) (1953) were published posthumously. He is regarded as an important representative of critical realism and as one of the major metaphysicians of the twentieth century. Among Hartmann's many students were Boris Pasternak, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emil Cioran, Jakob Klein, Delfim Santos and Max Wehrli. He is the modern discoverer of emergence — originally called by him categorial novum. His encyclopedic work is basically forgotten today, although famous during his lifetime. His early work in the philosophy of biology has been cited in modern discussions of genomics and cloning, and his views on consciousness and free will are currently in vogue among contributors to the Journal of Consciousness Studies. == Ontology == Nicolai Hartmann equates ontology with Aristotle's science of being qua being. This science involves studying the most general characteristics of entities, usually referred to as categories, and the relations between them. According to Hartmann, the most general categories are: Moments of being (Seinsmomente): existence (Dasein) and essence (Sosein) Modes of being (Seinsweisen): reality and ideality Modalities of being (Seinsmodi): possibility, actuality and necessity === Existence and essence === The existence of an entity constitutes the fact that this entity is there, that it exists. Essence, on the other hand, constitutes what this entity is like, what its characteristics are. Every entity has both of these modes of being. But, as Hartmann points out, there is no absolute difference between existence and essence. For example, the existence of a leaf belongs to the essence of the tree while the existence of the tree belongs to the essence of the forest. === Reality and ideality === Reality and ideality are two disjunctive categories: every entity is either real or ideal. Ideal entities are universal, returnable and always existing while real entities are individual, unique and destructible. Among the ideal entities are mathematical objects and values. Reality is made up of a chain of temporal events. Reality is obtrusive, it is often experienced as a form of resistance in contrast to ideality. === Modalities of being === The modalities of being are divided into the absolute modalities (actuality and non-actuality) and the relative modalities (possibility, impossibility and necessity). The relative modalities are relative in the sense that they depend on the absolute modalities: something is possible, impossible or necessary because something else is actual. Hartmann analyzes modality in the real sphere in terms of necessary conditions. An entity becomes actual if all its necessary conditions obtain. If all these factors obtain, it is necessary that the entity exists. But as long as one of its factors is missing, it can't become actual, it is impossible. This has the consequence that all positive and all the negative modalities fall together: whatever is possible is both actual and necessary, whatever is not necessary is both non-actual and impossible. This is true also in the ideal sphere, where possibility is given by being free from contradictions. === Levels of reality === In Hartmann's ontological theory, the levels of reality are: (1) the inorganic level (German: anorganische Schicht), (2) the organic level (organische Schicht), (3) the psychical/emotional level (seelische Schicht) and (4) the intellectual/cultural level (geistige Schicht). In The Structure of the Real World (Der Aufbau der realen Welt), Hartmann postulates four laws that apply to the levels of reality. The law of recurrence: Lower categories recur in the higher levels as a subaspect of higher categories, but never vice versa. The law of modification: The categorial elements modify in their recurrence in the higher levels (they are shaped by the characteristics of the higher levels). The law of the novum: The higher category is composed of a diversity of lower elements, but it is a specific novum that is not included in the lower levels. The law of distance between levels: Since the different levels do not develop continuously but in leaps, they can be clearly distinguished. == Ethical theory == The central concept of Hartmann's ethical theory is that of a value. Hartmann's 1926 book, Ethik, elaborates a material ethics of value according to which moral knowledge is achieved through phenomenological investigation into our experiences of values. Moral phenomena are understood by Hartmann to be experiences of a realm of being which is distinct from that of material things, namely, the realm of values. The values inhabiting this realm are unchanging, super-temporal, and super-historical, though human consciousness of them shifts in focus over time. Borrowing a style of phrase from Kant, Hartmann characterizes values as conditions of the possibility of goods; in other words, values are what make it possible for situations in the world to be good. Our knowledge of the goodness (or badness) of situations is derived from our emotional experiences of them, experiences which are made possible by an a priori capacity for the appreciation of value. For Hartmann, this means that our awareness of the value of a state of affairs is not arrived at through a process of reasoning, but rather, by way of an experience of feeling, which he calls valuational consciousness. If, then, ethics is the study of what one ought to do, or what states of affairs one ought to bring about, such studies, according to Hartmann, must be carried out by paying close attention to our emotional capacities to discern what is valuable in the world. As such, Hartmann's conception of proper moral philosophy contrasts with rationalist and formalist theories, such as Kant's, according to which ethical knowledge is derived from purely rational principles. == Quotations == "The tragedy of man is that of somebody who is starving and sitting at a richly laden table but does not reach out with his hand, because he cannot see what is right in front of him. For the real world has inexhaustible splendour, the real life is full of meaning and abundance, where we grasp it, it is full of miracles and glory." == Works == === Works in German === Books1909, Des Proklus Diadochus philosophische Anfangsgründe der Mathematik, Töpelmann, Gießen. 1909, Platos Logik des Seins, Töpelmann, Gießen. 1912, Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. 1921, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Vereinigung wissenschaftlichen. Verleger, Berlin. 1923, Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1: Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1926, Ethik, de Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig. 1929, Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 2: Hegel, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1931, Zum Problem der Realitätsgegebenheit, Pan-Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin. 1933, Das Problem des geistigen Seins. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie und der Geisteswissenschaften, de Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig. 1935, Ontologie, (4 Volumes) I: Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, de Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig. 1938, II: Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1940, III: Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriß d. allg. Kategorienlehre , de Gruyter, Berlin. 1942, Systematische Philosophie, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart & Berlin. 1943, Neue Wege der Ontologie, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart. 1949, Einführung in die Philosophie, Luise Hanckel Verlag, Hannover. 1950, IV: Philosophie der Natur : Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1951, Teleologisches Denken, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1953, Asthetik, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1954, Philosophische Gespräche, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. 1955, Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte, Zeitlichkeit und Substantialität, Sinngebung und Sinnerfüllung, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1955, Kleinere Schriften ; *Bd. 1* Abhandlungen zur systematischen Philosophie, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1957, Kleinere Schriften ; *Bd. 2* Abhandlungen zur Philosophie-Geschichte, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1958, Kleinere Schriften ; *Bd. 3* Vom Neukantianismus zur Ontologie, de Gruyter, Berlin.Articles1924, Diesseits von Idealismus und Realismus : Ein Beitrag zur Scheidg d. Geschichtl. u. Übergeschichtl. in d. Kantischen Philosophie in: Sonderdrucke der Kantischen Studien, Pan Verlag R. Heise Berlin, pp. 160–206. 1926, Aristoteles und Hegel, Beitrage zur Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus, 3 (1923), pp. 1–36. 1927, "Über die Stellung der ästhetischen Werte im Reich der Werte überhaupt", in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, Edgar Sheffield Brightman (ed.), New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, pp. 428–436. 1933, Systematische Selbstdarstellung in: Deutsche systematische Philosophie nach ihren Gestaltern, Ebda, Berlin : Junker & Dünnhaupt, pp. 283–340. 1935, Das Problem des Apriorismus in der Platonischen Philosophie in: Sitzungsberichte d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Kl. 1935, 15, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1936, Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte, in: Abhandlungen d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wissenschaften. Phil.-hist. Kl. 1936, Nr 5, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1937, Der megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff : Ein Beitr. zur Geschichte d. ontolog. Modalitätsproblems, in; Sitzungsberichte d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Kl. 1937, 10, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1938, Heinrich Maiers Beitrag zum Problem der Kategorien, in: Sitzungsberichte d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Kl. 1938, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1939, Aristoteles und das Problem des Begriffs, in: Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften : Philosophisch-historische Klasse ; Jg. 1939, Nr 5, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1941, “Zur Lehre vom Eidos bei Platon und Aristoteles”, in: Abhandlungen d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Kl. Jg. 1941, Nr 8, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1942, Neue Wege der Ontologie, in: Systematische Philosophie, N. Hartmann, editor, Stuttgart. 1943, Die Anfänge des Schichtungsgedankens in der alten Philosophie, in: Abhandlungen der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften : Philosophisch-historische Klasse ; Jg. 1943, Nr 3, de Gruyter, Berlin. 1946, Leibniz als Metaphysiker, de Gruyter, Berlin. === Translations in English === Nicolai Hartmann, Ethics, London: George Allen & Unwin 1932. Reprinted with a new introduction by Andreas A. M. Kinneging - New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 2002-2004 in three volumes: I. Moral phenomena (2002); II. Moral values (2004); III. Moral freedom (2004). Nicolai Hartmann, "German Philosophy in the Last Ten Years", translated by John Ladd, Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, vol. 58, no. 232, 1949, pp. 413–433. Nicolai Hartmann, New Ways of Ontology, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1952 (Reprinted with a new introduction by P. Cicovacki, Transaction Publishers, 2012). Nicolai Hartmann, "How Is Critical Ontology Possible? Toward the Foundation of the General Theory of the Categories, Part One", translated from "Wie ist kritische Ontologie überhaupt möglich?" (1924) by Keith R. Peterson, Axiomathes, vol. 22, 2012, pp. 315-354. Nicolai Hartmann, Possibility and Actuality. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013 (Translation by Alex Scott and Stephanie Adair of Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, 1938). Nicolai Hartmann, Aesthetics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014 (Translation by Eugene Kelly of Ästhetik, 1953). Nicolai Hartmann, "The Megarian and the Aristotelian Concept of Possibility: A Contribution to the History of the Ontological Problem of Modality". Axiomathes, 2017 (Translation by Frederic Tremblay and Keith R. Peterson of "Der Megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des ontologischen Modalitätsproblems", 1937). Nicolai Hartmann, "Max Scheler", translated by Frederic Tremblay, in Nicolai Hartmanns Neue Ontologie und die Philosophische Anthropologie: Menschliches Leben in Natur und Geist, edited by Moritz Kalckreuth, Gregor Schmieg, Friedrich Hausen, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019, pp. 263-272. Nicolai Hartmann, Ontology: Laying the Foundations, Translation and Introduction by Keith R. Peterson, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. == See also == Supervenience == References == == Further reading == Books1952, H. Heimsoeth and others, N. Hartmann, der Denker und seine Werk. 1957, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead: A Study in Recent Platonism, Calcutta: Progressive Publishers. 1959, H. Hulsmann, Die Methode in der Philosophie N. Hartmanns. 1962, K. Kanthack, N. Hartmann und das Ende der Ontologie. 1965, I. Wirth, Realismus und Apriorismus in N. Hartmanns Erkenntnistheorie. 1965, J. B. Forsche, Zur Philosophie Nicolai Hartmann". 1971, E. Hammer-Kraft, Freiheit und Dependenz im Schichtdenken Nicolai Hartmanns. 1973, R. Gamp, Die interkategoriale Relation und die dialektische Methode in der Philosophie N. Hartmanns. 1974, S. U. Kang, Nächstenliebe und Fernstenliebe Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Nicolai Hartmann. 1974, Imre Szilágyi, Az érték szférája és objektivitásának paradoxonja (N. Hartmann értéketikájának kritikájához), Budapest. 1982, Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (Chapter VI: Phenomenology in the Critical Ontology of Nicolai Hartmann). 1984, Eva Hauel Cadwallader, Searchlight on Values: Nicolai Hartmann's Twentieth-Century Value Platonism, Washington: University press of America. 1987, Dong-Hyun Son, Die Seinsweise des objektivierten Geistes: Eine Untersuchung im Anschluss an Nicolai Hartmanns Problematik des "geistigen Seins", Peter Lang 1989, Arnd. Grötz, Nicolai Hartmanns Lehre vom Menschen, Frankfurt am Main, Lang. 1990, William H. Werkmeister, Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology, Tallahassee, Florida State University Press. 1992, Roland H. Feucht, Die Neoontologie Nicolai Hartmanns im Licht der evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie, Regensburg, Roderer. 1994, Abolghassem Sakersadeh, Immanenz und Transzendenz als ungelöste Problematik in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns, Münster, Lit. 1996, João Maurício Adeodato, Filosofia do direito: uma crítica à verdade na ética e na ciência (através de um exame da ontologia de Nicolai Hartmann), São Paulo, Saraiva. 1997, Martin Morgenstern,Nicolai Hartmann zur Einführung, Hamburg, Junius. 2000, Wolfgang, Harich, Nicolai Hartmann - Größe und Grenzen, edited by Martin Morgenstern, Wurzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. 2001, Axiomathes (Springer), 12:3-4, special issue on N. Hartmann (Includes papers by Albertazzi, Cicovacki, Da Re, Johansson, Peruzzi, Poli, Tegtmeier, van der Schaar, Wildgen) 2001, Nebil Reyhani, Hermann Weins Auseinandersetzung mit Nicolai Hartmann als sein Weg von der Ontologie zu einer philosophischen Kosmologie, PhD dissertation, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz. 2003, Gerhard Ehrl, Nicolai Hartmanns philosophische Anthropologie in systematischer Perspektive, Cuxhave, Junghans. 2004, Alessandro Gamba, In principio era il fine. Ontologia e teleologia in Nicolai Hartmann, Milano, Vita e Pensiero. 2007, Leszek Kopciuch, "Człowiek i historia u Nicolaia Hartmanna", Lublin, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. 2009 Giuseppe D'Anna "Nicolai Hartmann. Dal conoscere all'essere", Brescia, Morcelliana 2010, Leszek Kopciuch, "Wolnośc a wartości. Max Scheler - Nicolai Hartmann - Dietrich von Hildebrand - Hans Reiner", Lublin, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. 2011, Roberto Poli, Carlo Scognamiglio and Frederic Tremblay (eds.), The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter. 2011, Eugene Kelly, Material Ethics of Value: Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann, Dordrecht: Springer. 2012, Alicja Pietras, "W stronę ontologii. Nicolaia Hartmanna i Martina Heideggera postneokantowskie projekty filozofii", Kraków, Uniwersitas. 2016, Keith Peterson and Roberto Poli (eds.), New Research on the Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter.Articles1935, Hilda Oakeley, "Professor Nicolai Hartmann's Concept of Objective Spirit," Mind, vol. 44, pp. 39–57. 1942, Lewis White Beck, "Nicolai Hartmann's Criticism of Kant's Theory of Knowledge," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 2, pp. 472–500. 1943, Michael Landmann, "Nicolai Hartmann and Phenomenology," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 3 pp. 393–423. 1951, Helmut Kuhn, "Nicolai Hartmann's Ontology," Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 1, pp. 289–318. 1953, Jacob Taubes, "The Development of the Ontological Question in Recent German Philosophy," Review of Metaphysics, vol. 6, pp. 651–664. 1954, John E. Smith, "Hartmann's New Ontology," Review of Metaphysics, vol. 7, pp. 583–601. 1956, Eva Schaper, "The Aesthetics of Hartmann and Bense," Review of Metaphysics, vol. 10, pp. 289–307. 1960, Helen James, "Nicolai Hartmann's Study of Human Personality," New Scholasticism, vol. 34, pp. 204–233. 1961, Robert Hein, "Nicolai Hartmann: A Personal Sketch," Personalist, vol 42, pp. 469–486. 1963, Stanislas Breton, "Ontology and Ontologies: The Contemporary Situation," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 3, pp. 339–369. 1963, Paul K. Feyerabend, "Professor Hartmann's Philosophy of Nature," Ratio, vol. 5, pp. 91–106. 1963, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, "Remarks on Nicolai Hartmann's Modal Doctrine," Kant Studien, vol. 54, pp. 181–187. 1966, Caroline Schuetzinger, "The Gnoseological Transcendence in Nicolai Hartmann's Metaphysics of Cognition (First Part)," Thomist, vol. 30, pp. 1–37. 1966, Caroline Schuetzinger, "The Gnoseological Transcendence in Nicolai Hartmann's Metaphysics of Cognition (Second Part)," Thomist, vol. 30, pp. 136–196. 1984, Richard Bodeus, "The Problem of Freedom According to Nicolai Hartmann," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 24, pp. 55–60. 1984, Eva Hauel Cadwallader, "The Continuing Relevance of Nicolai Hartmann's Theory of Value", Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 18, pp. 113–121. 1984, Frederick Kraenzel, "Nicolai Hartmann's Doctrine of Ideal Values: An Examination," Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 18, pp. 299–306. 1986, Janina Makota, "Nicolai Hartmann's and Roman Ingarden's Philosophy of Man," Reports on Philosophy, vol. 10, pp. 69–79. 1994, Wolfgang Drechsler and Rainer Kattel, "Nicolai Hartmann", Akademia, vol. 6, pp. 1579–1592. 1997, Robert Welsh Jordan, "Nicolai Hartmann." Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, eds Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, Thomas Seebohm, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Joseph J. Kockelmans, et al. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol. 18, Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers; 288-292. 1998, Roberto Poli, "Levels," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 9, pp. 197–211. 2001, Predrag Cicovacki, "New Ways of Ontology - The Ways of Interaction", Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 159–170. 2001, Gabor Csepregi, "The Relevance of Nicolai Hartmann's Musical Aesthetics," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 339–354. 2001, Antonio Da Re, "Objective Spirit and Personal Spirit in Hartmann's Philosophy," Axiomathes, vol. 12, pp. 317–326. 2001, Ingvar Johansson, "Hartmann's Nondeductive Materialism, Superimposition, and Supervenience," Axiomathes, vol. 12, pp. 195–215. 2001, Leszek Kopciuch, "Metafizyka historii u Nicolaia Hartmanna. Granice rozumu historycznego", in: Z. J. Czarnecji (ed.), "Dylematy racjonalności. Między rozumem teoretycznym a praktycznym, Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowoskiej, pp. 133-152. 2001, Erwin Tegtmeier, "Hartmann's General Ontology," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 217–225. 2001, Maria Van der Schaar, "Hartmann's Rejection of the Notion of Evidence," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 285–297. 2001, Robert Welsh Jordan, "Hartmann, Schutz, and the Hermeneutics of Action," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 327–338. 2001, Roberto Poli, "The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 261–283. 2001, Alberto Peruzzi, "Hartmann's Stratified Reality," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, vol. 12, pp. 227–260. 2002, Robert Welsh Jordan, "Nicolai Hartmann: Proper Ethics is Atheistic, Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy. a Handbook, edited by John J. Drummond and Lester Embree, Dordrecht; Boston; London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 175-196. 2005, Leszek Kopciuch, "Aprioryzm w czuciu wartości u N. Hartmanna", in: H. Jakuszko (ed.), "Racjonalność teoretyczna i praktyczna", „Annales UMCS”, vol. XXX, Sect. I, pp. 153–173. 2006, Leszek Kopciuch, "Krytyka relatywizmu aksjologicznego u N. Hartmanna", „Edukacja Filozoficzna” vol. 41, pp. 157–170. 2006, Alicja Pietras, "Pojęcie kategorii a problem granic poznania. Nicolai Hartmann a Immanuel Kant", „Czasopismo Filozoficzne” vol 1, pp. 22-40. 2007, Leszek Kopciuch, "O sile i bezsile wartości u Nicolaia Hartmanna", in: K. łojek (red.), "Człowiek w kulturze", Warszawa: Wydawnictwo WSFiZ, pp. 233–244. 2007, Leszek Kopciuch, "Przedmiot czucia wartości w etyce N. Hartmanna", „Etyka”, No.40, pp. 49–61. 2007, Leszek Kopciuch, "O trudnościach w poznawaniu wartości etycznych u N. Hartmanna", in: M. Hetmański (ed.), "Epistemologia współcześnie", Kraków: Universitas, pp. 445–453. 2008, Leszek Kopciuch, "O różnicy w budowie dzieła sztuki u R. Ingardena i N. Hartmanna (w sprawie zarzutów Ingardena względem N. Hartmanna)", „Kwartalnik Filozoficzny”, vol. XXXVI, issue 2, pp. 101–114. 2008, Leszek Kopciuch, "Zum Problem der Geschichtsphilosophie bei N. Hartmann", in: D. Pater (ed.)"Eine Philosophie – eine Welt – ein Mensch", Hannover: Europäische Akademie der Naturwissenschaften, pp. 13–28. 2008, Alicja Pietras, "Nicolaia Hartmanna krytyka logicyzmu". W: Z problemów współczesnej humanistyki III. Red. A. J. Noras. Katowice 2008, p. 95-111. 2009, Leszek Kopciuch, "Wolna wola – G. W. Leibniz i N. Hartmann", in: H. Jakuszko, L. Kopciuch (ed.), "W kręgu zagadnień filozofii XVII wieku", Lublin: Lubelskie Towarzystwo Naukowe, Wydawnictwo Olech, pp. 213–222. 2009, Leszek Kopciuch, "Nicolaia Hartmanna prawa bytu realnego", „Acta Universitatis Lodziensis”, Folia Philosophica, vol. 22, pp. 105–115 2010, Leszek Kopciuch, "Kilka uwag o stosunku Hartmanna do etyki Kanta, „Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia”, vol. V, fasc. 2, pp. 167–170. 2010, Leszek Kopciuch, "O stosunku N. Hartmanna do A. Schopenhauera, „Idea. Studia nad strukturą i rozwojem pojęć filozoficznych”, vol. XXII, pp. 51–61. 2011, Frederic Tremblay, "Nicolai Hartmann's Definition of Biological Species," in R. Poli, C. Scognamiglio, F. Tremblay (eds.), The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 125-139. 2011, Leszek Kopciuch, "Nicolaia Hartmanna krytyka podmiotu transcendentalnego w etyce", in: P. Parszutowicz, M. Soin (ed.), "Idea transcendentalizmu. Od Kanta do Wittgensteina", Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN, pp. 279–294. 2011, Alicja Pietras, "Nicolai Hartmann as a Post-Neo-Kantian", in R. Poli, C. Scognamiglio, F. Tremblay (eds.), The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 237-251. 2011, Alicja Pietras, "Recepcja myśli Kanta w filozofii Hartmanna i Heideggera. Problem relacji między filozofią a naukami szczegółowymi", in: A. J. Noras, T. Kubalica (eds.), "Filozofia Kanta i jej recepcja", Katowice 2011, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, pp. 217-228. 2012, Alicja Pietras, "O interpretacji z punktu widzenia ontologii bytu duchowego Nicolaia Hartmanna", in: M. Brodnicki, J. Jakubowska, K. Jaroń (eds.), "Historia interpretacji. Interpretacja historii", Gdańsk 2012, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, pp. 25-35. 2012, Alicja Pietras, "Pojęcie aprioryczności w filozofii Nicolaia Hartmanna", "Ruch Filozoficzny",Tom LXIX, nr 3-4, Toruń 2012, pp. 421-435. 2013, Alicja Pietras, "Nicolaia Hartmanna projekt syntezy myślenia i intuicji", "Przegląd Filozoficzny – Nowa Seria", R 22: 2013, Nr 1 (85), pp. 335-350. 2013, Alicja Pietras, "Problem principium individuationis w ontologii Nicolaia Hartmanna", “Filo-Sofija”, nr 23 (2013/14), pp. 175-184. 2013, Frederic Tremblay, "Nicolai Hartmann and the Metaphysical Foundation of Phylogenetic Systematics," Biological Theory, vol. 7, n. 1, pp. 56-68. 2016, Vélez León, Paulo. "An Intellectual Profile of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950). Part I". Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 457-538. (In Spanish) 2017, Frederic Tremblay, "Vladimir Solovyov, Nicolai Hartmann, and Levels of Reality," Axiomathes, vol. 27, n. 2, pp. 133-146. 2017, Frederic Tremblay, "Historical Introduction to Nicolai Hartmann's Concept of Possibility," Axiomathes, vol. 27, n. 2, pp. 193-207. 2018, Alicja Pietras, "The Ontology of Processual Being: Nicolai Hartmann’s Interpretation of the Hegelian Dialectical Process," Constructivist Foundations 14 (1), pp. 62-65, 2019, Frederic Tremblay, "Ontological Axiology in Nikolai Lossky, Max Scheler, and Nicolai Hartmann." In Moritz Kalckreuth, Gregor Schmieg, Friedrich Hausen (eds.), Nicolai Hartmanns Neue Ontologie und die Philosophische Anthropologie: Menschliches Leben in Natur und Geist, Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 193-232. 2021, Alicja Pietras, "Nicolai Hartmann and the Transcendental Method, Logic and Logical Philosophy 30, n. 3, pp. 461–492. == External links == Poli, Roberto. "Nicolai Hartmann". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Nicolai Hartmann Society Levels of Reality in the Ontology of Nicolai Hartmann Martin Morgenstern, Vom Idealismus zur realistischen Ontologie. Das Frühwerk Nicolai Hartmanns, in: Philosophia: E-Journal of Philosophy and Culture, 5/2013.

José Ortega y Gasset

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ortega_y_Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish: [xoˈse oɾˈteɣaj ɣaˈset]; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosophy has been characterized as a "philosophy of life" that "comprised a long-hidden beginning in a pragmatist metaphysics inspired by William James, and with a general method from a realist phenomenology imitating Edmund Husserl, which served both his proto-existentialism (prior to Martin Heidegger's) and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey and Benedetto Croce." == Biography == José Ortega y Gasset was born 9 May 1883 in Madrid. His father was director of the newspaper El Imparcial, which belonged to the family of his mother, Dolores Gasset. The family was definitively of Spain's end-of-the-century liberal and educated bourgeoisie. The liberal tradition and journalistic engagement of his family had a profound influence in Ortega y Gasset's activism in politics. Ortega was first schooled by the Jesuit priests of St. Stanislaus Kostka College, Málaga, Málaga (1891–1897). He attended the University of Deusto, Bilbao (1897–98) and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Central University of Madrid (now Complutense University of Madrid) (1898–1904), receiving a doctorate in Philosophy. From 1905 to 1907, he continued his studies in Germany at Leipzig, Nuremberg, Cologne, Berlin and, above all Marburg. At Marburg, he was influenced by the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, among others. On his return to Spain in 1908, he was appointed professor of Philosophy, Logic and Ethics at the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid. In 1910, he married Rosa Spottorno Topete, a Spanish translator and feminist, and was named full professor of Metaphysics at Complutense University of Madrid, a vacant seat previously held by Nicolás Salmerón.In 1917 he became a contributor to the newspaper El Sol, where he published, as a series of essays, his two principal works: España invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain) and La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of the Masses). The latter made him internationally famous. He founded the Revista de Occidente in 1923, remaining its director until 1936. This publication promoted translation of (and commentary upon) the most important figures and tendencies in philosophy, including Oswald Spengler, Johan Huizinga, Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel, Jakob von Uexküll, Heinz Heimsoeth, Franz Brentano, Hans Driesch, Ernst Müller, Alexander Pfänder, and Bertrand Russell. Elected deputy for the Province of León in the constituent assembly of the Second Spanish Republic, he was the leader of a parliamentary group of intellectuals known as Agrupación al Servicio de la República ("The Grouping at the Service of the Republic"), which supported the platform of Socialist Republican candidates, but he soon abandoned politics, disappointed. Leaving Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, he spent years of exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina until moving back to Europe in 1942. He settled in Portugal by mid-1945 and slowly began to make short visits to Spain. In 1948 he returned to Madrid, where he founded the Institute of Humanities, at which he lectured. Upon his return to Spain, he often privately expressed his hostility to the Franco regime, stating that the government did not deserve anyone's confidence and that his beliefs were "incompatible with Franco." == Philosophy == === Liberalism === The Revolt of the Masses is Ortega's best known work. In this book he defends the values of meritocratic liberalism reminiscent of John Stuart Mill against attacks from both communists and right-wing populists. Ortega likewise shares Mill's fears of the "tyranny of the majority" and the "collective mediocrity" of the masses, which he believes threaten individuality, free thought, and protections for minorities. Ortega characterized liberalism as a politics of "magnanimity."Ortega's rejection of the Spanish Conservative Party under Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and his successors was unequivocal, as was his distrust of the Spanish monarchy and Catholic Church. Yet, Ortega's political thought has been characterized as anti-democratic and conservative and his work The Revolt of the Masses is widely regarded as a conservative classic.However, again in a manner similar to Mill, Ortega was open-minded toward certain socialists and non-Marxist forms of socialism, and even complimented Pablo Iglesias Posse as a "lay saint." Under the influence of German social democrats such as Paul Natorp and Hermann Cohen, he adopted a communitarian ontology and could be critical of capitalism, particularly the laissez-faire variant, declaring that "nineteenth-century capitalism has demoralized humanity" and that it had "impoverished the ethical consciousness of man." === "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" === For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. To accomplish such tasks, the philosopher must—as Husserl proposed—leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs, and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism (in which reality centers around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism (in which reality is outside the subject) to focus on the only truthful reality: "my life"—the life of each individual. He suggests that there is no "me" without things, and things are nothing without me: "I" (human being) cannot be detached from "my circumstance" (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am me and my circumstance") (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914) which he always put at the core of his philosophy. For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian 'cogito ergo sum' is insufficient to explain reality. Therefore, the Spanish philosopher proposes a system wherein the basic or "radical" reality is "my life" (the first yo), which consists of "I" (the second yo) and "my circumstance" (mi circunstancia). This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom. In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom "is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny." In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a "project of life"—thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project. === Ratiovitalism === With a philosophical system that centered around life, Ortega y Gasset also stepped out of Descartes' cogito ergo sum and asserted "I live therefore I think". This stood at the root of his Kantian-inspired perspectivism, which he developed by adding a non-relativistic character in which absolute truth does exist and would be obtained by the sum of all perspectives of all lives, since for each human being life takes a concrete form and life itself is a true radical reality from which any philosophical system must derive. In this sense, Ortega coined the terms "vital reason" (Spanish: razón vital, "reason with life as its foundation") to refer to a new type of reason that constantly defends the life from which it has surged and "ratiovitalism" (Spanish: raciovitalismo), a theory that based knowledge in the radical reality of life, one of whose essential components is reason itself. This system of thought, which he introduces in History as System, escaped from Nietzsche's vitalism in which life responded to impulses; for Ortega, reason is crucial to create and develop the above-mentioned project of life. === Historical reason === For Ortega y Gasset, vital reason is also "historical reason", for individuals and societies are not detached from their past. In order to understand a reality we must understand, as Dilthey pointed out, its history. == Influence == Ortega y Gasset's influence was considerable, not only because many sympathized with his philosophical writings, but also because those writings did not require that the reader be well-versed in technical philosophy. Among those strongly influenced by Ortega y Gasset were Luis Buñuel, Manuel García Morente, Joaquín Xirau, Xavier Zubiri, Ignacio Ellacuría, Emilio Komar, José Gaos, Luis Recasens, Manuel Granell, Francisco Ayala, María Zambrano, Agustín Basave, Máximo Etchecopar, Pedro Laín Entralgo, José Luis López-Aranguren, Julián Marías, John Lukacs, Pierre Bourdieu, Paulino Garagorri, Vicente Ferreira da Silva, Vilém Flusser and Félix Martí-Ibáñez. The Ortega hypothesis, based on a quote in The Revolt of the Masses, states that average or mediocre scientists contribute substantially to the advancement of science. German grape breeder Hans Breider named the grape variety Ortega in his honor.The American philosopher Graham Harman has recognized Ortega y Gasset as a source of inspiration for his own object-oriented ontology. La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of the Masses) has been translated into English twice. The first, in 1932, is by a translator who wanted to remain anonymous, generally accepted to be J.R. Carey. The second translation was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 1985, in association with W.W. Norton & Co. This translation was by Anthony Kerrigan (translator) and Kenneth Moore (editor), with an introduction by Saul Bellow. Mildred Adams is the translator (into English) of the main body of Ortega's work, including Invertebrate Spain, Man and Crisis, What is Philosophy?, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, The Idea of Principle in Leibniz and the Evolution of Deductive Theory, and An Interpretation of Universal History. === Madrid School === The Madrid School (also School of Madrid; Spanish: Escuela de Madrid) was a group of philosophers, the members of which were students of Ortega y Gasset, who share an intellectual tradition of arguing against naturalism and positivism. Members included José Gaos, Julián Marías, and Xavier Zubiri. === Influence on the Generation of '27 === Ortega y Gasset had considerable influence on writers of the Generation of '27, a group of poets that arose in Spanish literature in the 1920s. == Works == Much of Ortega y Gasset's work consists of course lectures published years after the fact, often posthumously. This list attempts to list works in chronological order by when they were written, rather than when they were published. Meditaciones del Quijote (Meditations on Quixote, 1914) Vieja y nueva política (Old and new politics, 1914) Investigaciones psicológicas (Psychological investigations, course given 1915–16 and published in 1982) Personas, obras, cosas (People, works, things, articles and essays written 1904–1912: "Renan", "Adán en el Paraíso" – "Adam in Paradise", "La pedagogía social como programa político" – "Pedagogy as a political program", "Problemas culturales" – "Cultural problems", etc., published 1916) El Espectador (The Spectator, 8 volumes published 1916–1934) España invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain, 1921) El tema de nuestro tiempo (The Modern Theme, 1923) Las Atlántidas (The Atlantises, 1924) La deshumanización del arte e Ideas sobre la novela (The dehumanization of art and Ideas about the novel, 1925) Espíritu de la letra (The spirit of the letter 1927) Mirabeau o el político (Mirabeau or the politician, 1928–1929) ¿Qué es filosofía? (What is philosophy? 1928–1929, course published posthumously in 1957) Kant (1929–31) ¿Qué es conocimiento? (What is knowledge? Published in 1984, covering three courses taught in 1929, 1930, and 1931, entitled, respectively: "Vida como ejecución (El ser ejecutivo)" – "Life as execution (The executive being)", "Sobre la realidad radical" – "On radical reality" and "¿Qué es la vida?" – "What is Life?") La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of the Masses, 1930) Rectificación de la República; La redención de las provincias y la decencia nacional (Rectification of the Republic: Redemption of the provinces and national decency, 1931) Goethe desde dentro (Goethe from within, 1932) Unas lecciones de metafísica (Some lessons in metaphysics, course given 1932–33, published 1966) En torno a Galileo (About Galileo, course given 1933–34; portions were published in 1942 under the title "Esquema de las crisis" – "Outline of crises"; Mildred Adams's translation was published in 1958 as Man and Crisis.) Prólogo para alemanes (Prologue for Germans, prologue to the third German edition of El tema de nuestro tiempo. Ortega himself prevented its publication "because of the events of Munich in 1934". It was finally published, in Spanish, in 1958.) History as a System (First published in English in 1935. the Spanish version, Historia como sistema, 1941, adds an essay "El Imperio romano" – "The Roman Empire"). Ensimismamiento y alteración. Meditación de la técnica. (Self-absorption and alteration. Meditation on the technique, 1939) Ideas y creencias (Ideas and beliefs: on historical reason, a course taught in 1940 Buenos Aires, published 1979 along with Sobre la razón histórica) Teoría de Andalucía y otros ensayos – Guillermo Dilthey y la idea de vida (The theory of Andalucia and other essays: Wilhelm Dilthey and the idea of life, 1942) Sobre la razón histórica (On historical reason, course given in Lisbon, 1944, published 1979 along with Ideas y Crencias) Prólogo a un Tratado de Montería (Preface to a treatise on the Hunt [separately published as Meditations on the Hunt], created as preface to a book on the hunt by Count Ybes published 1944) Idea del teatro. Una abreviatura (The idea of theatre. An abbreviated version, lecture given in Lisbon April 1946, and in Madrid, May 1946; published in 1958, La Revista Nacional de educación num. 62 contained the version given in Madrid.) La Idea de principio en Leibniz y la evolución de la teoría deductiva (The Idea of principle in Leibniz and the evolution of deductive theory, 1947, published 1958) Una interpretación de la historia universal. En torno a Toynbee (An interpretation of universal history. On Toynbee, 1948, published in 1960) Meditación de Europa (Meditation on Europe), lecture given in Berlin in 1949 with the Latin-language title De Europa meditatio quaedam. Published 1960 together with other previously unpublished works. El hombre y la gente (Man and people, course given 1949–1950 at the Institute of the Humanities, published 1957; Willard Trask's translation as Man and People published 1957; Partisan Review published parts of this translation in 1952) Papeles sobre Velázquez y Goya (Papers on Velázquez and Goya, 1950) Pasado y porvenir para el hombre actual (Past and future for present-day man, published 1962, brings together a series of lectures given in Germany, Switzerland, and England in the period 1951–1954, published together with a commentary on Plato's Symposium.) Goya (1958) Velázquez (1959) Origen y epílogo de la filosofía (Origin and epilogue of philosophy, 1960), La caza y los toros (Hunting and bulls, 1960) Meditations on hunting (1972) translated into English by Howard B. Westcott == Bibliography == === Translated books in English === The Revolt of the Masses Invertebrate Spain Man and Crisis What is Knowledge? What is Philosophy? 1964 Some Lessons in Metaphysics 1971 The Idea of Principle in Leibniz and the Evolution of Deductive Theory 1971 An Interpretation of Universal History The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature, 1925, Princeton 2019 On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme. 1957, 2012 History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History, 1962 Man and Crisis, 1962 (Norton Library) Man and People, 1963 (Norton Library) Meditations on Hunting, 1972 The Origin of Philosophy, 1968 Psychological Investigations 1987 Historical Reason 1986 Mission of the University, 2014 (International Library of Sociology) === Books about Ortega y Gasset === Rockwell Gray - The Imperative of Modernity: An Intellectual Biography of José Ortega y Gasset Carlos Morujão - The Philosophy of Ortega y Gasset Reevaluated Andrew Dobson - An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies) Pedro Blas González- Human Existence as Radical Reality: Ortega's Philosophy of Subjectivity Pedro Blas González- Fragments: Essays in Subjectivity, Individuality and Autonomy Pedro Blas González- Ortega's 'The Revolt of the Masses' and the Triumph of the New Man == See also == List of liberal theorists == Notes == == References == Antonio Rodríguez Huéscar. Jose Ortega y Gasset's Metaphysical Innovation: A Critique and Overcoming of Idealism, SUNY Press, 1995. John T. Graham. A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset, University of Missouri Press, 1994. John T. Graham. Theory of History in Ortega y Gasset: "The Dawn of Historical Reason", University of Missouri Press, 1997. John T. Graham. The Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset: A Systematic Synthesis in Postmodernism and Interdisciplinarity, University of Missouri Press. 2001. Howard N. Tuttle. Human Life Is Radical Reality: An Idea Developed from the Conceptions of Dilthey, Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset, Peter Lang, 2004. Pedro Blas Gonzalez. Human Existence as Radical Reality: Ortega y Gasset's Philosophy of Subjectivity, Paragon House, 2005. Pedro Blas Gonzalez. Ortega's 'The Revolt of the Masses' and the Triumph of the New Man, Algora Publishing, 2007. Joxe Azurmendi: "Ortega y Gasset" in Espainiaren arimaz, Donostia: Elkar, 2006. ISBN 84-9783-402-X Andrew Dobson. An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset, Oxford University Press, 2009. Fitzsimons, David; Harper, Jim (2008). "Ortega y Gasset, José (1883–1955)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 365–66. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n223. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024. == External links == A Bibliography of Works in English By and About José Ortega y Gasset Fundación José Ortega y Gasset Spain (in Spanish) Fundación José Ortega y Gasset Argentina (in Spanish) Holmes, Oliver, "José Ortega y Gasset", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Newspaper clippings about José Ortega y Gasset in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

C.I. Lewis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis, (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963). He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain. Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. Both men served on the English faculty at Oxford University and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings. According to Lewis's 1955 memoir Surprised by Joy, he was baptized in the Church of Ireland but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England". Lewis's faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio, and cinema. His philosophical writings are widely cited by Christian scholars from many denominations. In 1956, Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, one week before his 65th birthday. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. == Biography == === Childhood === Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in Ulster, Ireland (before partition), on 29 November 1898. His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewis née Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, a Church of Ireland priest, and the great-granddaughter of both Bishop Hugh Hamilton and John Staples. Lewis had an elder brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie"). He was baptized on 29 January 1899 by his maternal grandfather in St Mark's Church, Dundela.When his dog Jacksie was killed by a car, the four-year old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the Strandtown area of East Belfast.As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with Beatrix Potter's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of Boxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass". Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to England to live and study at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. Not long after, the school was closed due to a lack of pupils. Lewis then attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to respiratory problems. He was then sent back to England to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis referred to as "Chartres" in his autobiography. It was during this time that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became an atheist. During this time he also developed a fascination with European mythology and the occult.In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive. After leaving Malvern, he studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of Lurgan College.As a teenager, Lewis was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he called Northernness, the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas. These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began experimenting with different art forms such as epic poetry and opera to try to capture his new-found interest in Norse mythology and the natural world. Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterward called him) instilled in him a love of Greek literature and mythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford. === "My Irish life" === Lewis experienced a certain cultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England," Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy. "The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."From boyhood, Lewis had immersed himself in Norse and Greek mythology, and later in Irish mythology and literature. He also expressed an interest in the Irish language, though there is not much evidence that he laboured to learn it. He developed a particular fondness for W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland's Celtic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend, Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology."In 1921, Lewis met Yeats twice, since Yeats had moved to Oxford. Lewis was surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement, and wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish – if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish." Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the major Dublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall try Maunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school."After his conversion to Christianity, his interests gravitated towards Christian theology and away from pagan Celtic mysticism (as opposed to Celtic Christian mysticism).Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek chauvinism towards the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman, he wrote: "Like all Irish people who meet in England, we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dullness of the Anglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt, ami, that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults, I would not gladly live or die among another folk." Throughout his life, he sought out the company of other Irish people living in England and visited Northern Ireland regularly. In 1958 he spent his honeymoon there at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn, which he called "my Irish life".Various critics have suggested that it was Lewis's dismay over the sectarian conflict in his native Belfast which led him to eventually adopt such an ecumenical brand of Christianity. As one critic has said, Lewis "repeatedly extolled the virtues of all branches of the Christian faith, emphasising a need for unity among Christians around what the Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton called 'Mere Christianity', the core doctrinal beliefs that all denominations share". On the other hand, Paul Stevens of the University of Toronto has written that "Lewis' mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashioned Ulster Protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable." === First World War and Oxford University === Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying at University College, and shortly after, he joined the Officers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army". From there, he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training. After his training, he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry of the British Army as a Second Lieutenant, and was later transferred to the 1st Battalion of the regiment, then serving in France (he would not remain with the 3rd Battalion as it moved to Northern Ireland). Within months of entering Oxford, he was shipped by the British Army to France to fight in the First World War.On his 19th birthday (29 November 1917), Lewis arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, where he experienced trench warfare for the first time. On 15 April 1918, as 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry assaulted the village of Riez du Vinage in the midst of the German spring offensive, Lewis was wounded and two of his colleagues were killed by a British shell falling short of its target. He was depressed and homesick during his convalescence and, upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in Andover, England. He was demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies. In a later letter, Lewis stated that his experience of the horrors of war, along with the loss of his mother and unhappiness in school, were the basis of his pessimism and atheism.After Lewis returned to Oxford University, he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. In 1924 he became a Philosophy tutor at University College and, in 1925, was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he served for 29 years until 1954. === Janie Moore === During his army training, Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, said that the two made a mutual pact that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both of their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Janie King Moore, and a friendship quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Janie, who was 45. The friendship with Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit him. Lewis lived with and cared for Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his mother, referred to her as such in letters, and developed a deeply affectionate friendship with her. Lewis's own mother had died when he was a child, while his father was distant, demanding, and eccentric. Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication of A. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore. George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years before Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biography Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, he wrote: Were they lovers? Owen Barfield, who knew Jack well in the 1920s, once said that he thought the likelihood was "fifty-fifty". Although she was twenty-six years older than Jack, she was still a handsome woman, and he was certainly infatuated with her. But it seems very odd, if they were lovers, that he would call her "mother". We know, too, that they did not share the same bedroom. It seems most likely that he was bound to her by the promise he had given to Paddy and that his promise was reinforced by his love for her as his second mother. Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote: I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore's daughter, Maureen, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at The Kilns, I am quite certain that they were. However, the romantic nature of the relationship is doubted by other writers; for example, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski write in The Fellowship that When—or whether—Lewis commenced an affair with Mrs. Moore remains unclear. Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Janie and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world". In 1930, Lewis moved into The Kilns with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore, and her daughter Maureen. The Kilns was a house in the district of Headington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford, now part of the suburb of Risinghurst. They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which eventually passed to Maureen, who by then was Dame Maureen Dunbar, when Warren died in 1973. Moore had dementia in her later years and was eventually moved into a nursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death. === Return to Christianity === Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "very angry with God for not existing" and "equally angry with him for creating a world". His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics. Lewis quoted Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism: which he translated poetically as follows: (This is a highly poetic, rather than a literal translation. A more literal translation, by William Ellery Leonard, reads: "That in no wise the nature of all things / For us was fashioned by a power divine – / So great the faults it stands encumbered with.") Lewis's interest in the works of the Scottish writer George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's The Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven: ... I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy of Phantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness. He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, as well as the book The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape". He described his last struggle in Surprised by Joy: You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen [College, Oxford], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk along Addison's Walk with close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church.Lewis was a committed Anglican who upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory (The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm) and mortal sin (The Screwtape Letters), which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism (particularly in high church Anglo-Catholic circles). Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns. === Second World War === After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Lewises took child evacuees from London and other cities into The Kilns. Lewis was only 40 when the war began, and he tried to re-enter military service, offering to instruct cadets; however, his offer was not accepted. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for the Ministry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies" to deceive the enemy. He later served in the local Home Guard in Oxford.From 1941 to 1943, Lewis spoke on religious programmes broadcast by the BBC from London while the city was under periodic air raids. These broadcasts were appreciated by civilians and servicemen at that stage. For example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote: "The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that."The youthful Alistair Cooke was less impressed, and in 1944 described "the alarming vogue of Mr. C.S. Lewis" as an example of how wartime tends to "spawn so many quack religions and Messiahs". The broadcasts were anthologized in Mere Christianity. From 1941, Lewis was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visiting R.A.F. stations to speak on his faith, invited by Chaplain-in-Chief Maurice Edwards.It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of the Oxford Socratic Club in January 1942, a position that he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to Cambridge University in 1954. === Honour declined === Lewis was named on the last list of honours by George VI in December 1951 as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) but declined so as to avoid association with any political issues. === Chair at Cambridge University === In 1954, Lewis accepted the newly founded chair in Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he finished his career. He maintained a strong attachment to the city of Oxford, keeping a home there and returning on weekends until his death in 1963. === Joy Davidman === In later life, Lewis corresponded with Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of Jewish background, a former Communist, and a convert from atheism to Christianity. She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, novelist William L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David and Douglas. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was on this level that he agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK. They were married at the register office, 42 St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956. Lewis's brother Warren wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met ... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun." After complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957.Gresham's cancer soon went into remission, and the couple lived together as a family with Warren Lewis until 1960, when her cancer recurred. She died on 13 July 1960. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the English Channel after 1918. Lewis's book A Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public by Faber's, with the permission of the executors.Lewis continued to raise Gresham's two sons after her death. Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother, while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becoming Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly on "shohet" (ritual slaughterer). David informed Lewis that he was going to become a ritual slaughterer to present this type of Jewish religious functionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a 2005 interview, Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, although they had corresponded via email.David died on 25 December 2014. In 2020, Douglas revealed that his brother had died at a Swiss mental hospital, and that when David was a young man he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. === Illness and death === In early June 1961, Lewis began experiencing nephritis, which resulted in blood poisoning. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friend George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early 1963. On 15 July that year, Lewis fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he had a heart attack at 5:00 pm the next day and lapsed into a coma, but unexpectedly woke the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August 1963. Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November, exactly one week before his 65th birthday, and died a few minutes later. He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford. His brother Warren died on 9 April 1973 and was buried in the same grave.Media coverage of Lewis's death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day (approximately 55 minutes following Lewis's collapse), as did the death of English writer Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley. Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the church calendar of the Episcopal Church. == Career == === Scholar === Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University, where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study. He was then elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he worked for nearly thirty years, from 1925 to 1954. In 1954, he was awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, and was elected a fellow of Magdalene College. Concerning his appointed academic field, he argued that there was no such thing as an English Renaissance. Much of his scholarly work concentrated on the later Middle Ages, especially its use of allegory. His The Allegory of Love (1936) helped reinvigorate the serious study of late medieval narratives such as the Roman de la Rose. Lewis was commissioned to write the volume English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) for the Oxford History of English Literature. His book A Preface to Paradise Lost is still cited as a criticism of that work. His last academic work, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos.Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", including J. R. R. Tolkien, Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his brother Warren Lewis. Glyer points to December 1929 as the Inklings' beginning date. Lewis's friendship with Coghill and Tolkien grew during their time as members of the Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group that Tolkien founded and which ended around the time of the inception of the Inklings. At Oxford, he was the tutor of poet John Betjeman, critic Kenneth Tynan, mystic Bede Griffiths, novelist Roger Lancelyn Green and Sufi scholar Martin Lings, among many other undergraduates. The religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.Of Tolkien, Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy: When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. They were HVV Dyson ... and JRR Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both. === Novelist === In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote several popular novels, including the science fiction Space Trilogy for adults and the Narnia fantasies for children. Most deal implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity's fall from grace, and redemption.His first novel after becoming a Christian was The Pilgrim's Regress (1933), which depicted his experience with Christianity in the style of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. The book was poorly received by critics at the time, although David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer."The Space Trilogy (also called the Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy) dealt with what Lewis saw as the dehumanizing trends in contemporary science fiction. The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, was apparently written following a conversation with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien about these trends. Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one, but Tolkien never completed "The Lost Road", linking his Middle-earth to the modern world. Lewis's main character Elwin Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact to which Tolkien alludes in his letters.The second novel, Perelandra, depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus, a new Adam and Eve, and a new "serpent figure" to tempt Eve. The story can be seen as an account of what might have happened if the terrestrial Adam had defeated the serpent and avoided the Fall of Man, with Ransom intervening in the novel to "ransom" the new Adam and Eve from the deceptions of the enemy. The third novel, That Hideous Strength, develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values, embodied in Arthurian legend.Many ideas in the trilogy, particularly opposition to dehumanization as portrayed in the third book, are presented more formally in The Abolition of Man, based on a series of lectures by Lewis at Durham University in 1943. Lewis stayed in Durham, where he says he was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cathedral. That Hideous Strength is in fact set in the environs of "Edgestow" university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel apparently written by Lewis called The Dark Tower. Ransom appears in the story but it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in 1977, though Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity. The Chronicles of Narnia, considered a classic of children's literature, is a series of seven fantasy novels. Written between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages (Kelly 2006) (Guthmann 2005). It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales.Lewis's last novel, Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, was published in 1956. Although Lewis called it "far and away my best book," it was not as well-reviewed as his previous work. ==== Other works ==== Lewis wrote several works on Heaven and Hell. One of these, The Great Divorce, is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay if they choose, in which case they can call the place where they had come from "Purgatory", instead of "Hell", but many find it not to their taste. The title is a reference to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a concept that Lewis found a "disastrous error". This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Another short work, The Screwtape Letters, which he dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien, consists of letters of advice from senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation. Lewis's last novel was Till We Have Faces, which he thought of as his most mature and masterly work of fiction but which was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirely pagan, and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit.Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books: Spirits in Bondage, a collection of poems, and Dymer, a single narrative poem. Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton. Other narrative poems have since been published posthumously, including Launcelot, The Nameless Isle, and The Queen of Drum.He also wrote The Four Loves, which rhetorically explains four categories of love: friendship, eros, affection, and charity.In 2009, a partial draft was discovered of Language and Human Nature, which Lewis had begun co-writing with J. R. R. Tolkien, but which was never completed. === Christian apologist === Lewis is also regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time, in addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction. Mere Christianity was voted best book of the 20th century by Christianity Today in 2000. He has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics" due to his approach to religious belief as a sceptic, and his following conversion.Lewis was very interested in presenting an argument from reason against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God. Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and Miracles were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as the question, "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?" He also became a popular lecturer and broadcaster, and some of his writing originated as scripts for radio talks or lectures (including much of Mere Christianity).According to George Sayer, losing a 1948 debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian, led Lewis to re-evaluate his role as an apologist, and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books. Anscombe had a completely different recollection of the debate's outcome and its emotional effect on Lewis. Victor Reppert also disputes Sayer, listing some of Lewis's post-1948 apologetic publications, including the second and revised edition of his Miracles in 1960, in which Lewis addressed Anscombe's criticism. Noteworthy too is Roger Teichman's suggestion in The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe that the intellectual impact of Anscombe's paper on Lewis's philosophical self-confidence should not be over-rated: "... it seems unlikely that he felt as irretrievably crushed as some of his acquaintances have made out; the episode is probably an inflated legend, in the same category as the affair of Wittgenstein's Poker. Certainly, Anscombe herself believed that Lewis's argument, though flawed, was getting at something very important; she thought that this came out more in the improved version of it that Lewis presented in a subsequent edition of Miracles – though that version also had 'much to criticize in it'."Lewis wrote an autobiography titled Surprised by Joy, which places special emphasis on his own conversion. He also wrote many essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected in God in the Dock and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.His most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia, contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958: If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, "What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?" This is not allegory at all. Prior to his conversion, Lewis used the word "Moslem" to refer to Muslims, adherents of Islam; following his conversion, however, he started using "Mohammedans" and described Islam as a Christian heresy rather than an independent religion. ==== "Trilemma" ==== In a much-cited passage from Mere Christianity, Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. It has also been used by Christian apologist Josh McDowell in his book More Than a Carpenter. It has been widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature but largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars.Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable", and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of a false dilemma. The Pluralist theologian John Hick claimed that New Testament scholars do not now support the view that Jesus claimed to be God. The Anglican New Testament scholar N. T. Wright criticizes Lewis for failing to recognize the significance of Jesus's Jewish identity and setting – an oversight which "at best, drastically short-circuits the argument" and which lays Lewis open to criticism that his argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the gospels", although he argues that this "doesn't undermine the eventual claim".Lewis used a similar argument in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the old Professor advises his young guests that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth. ==== Universal morality ==== One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity, which he calls "natural law". In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity, Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect people to adhere. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles. These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In The Chronicles of Narnia he describes Universal Morality as the "deep magic" which everyone knew.In the second chapter of Mere Christianity, Lewis recognizes that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature ... is." And he responds first to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply our herd instinct" and second to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply a social convention". In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities. Finally, he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts: I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did – if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house. Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: most notably, On Vivisection and "On the Pains of Animals". == Legacy == Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis joined some of Britain's greatest writers recognized at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The dedication service, at noon on 22 November 2013, included a reading from The Last Battle by Douglas Gresham, younger stepson of Lewis. Flowers were laid by Walter Hooper, trustee and literary advisor to the Lewis Estate. An address was delivered by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. The floor stone inscription is a quotation from an address by Lewis: I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. Lewis has been the subject of several biographies, a few of which were written by close friends, such as Roger Lancelyn Green and George Sayer. In 1985, the screenplay Shadowlands by William Nicholson dramatized Lewis's life and relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham. It was aired on British television starring Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. This was also staged as a theatre play starring Nigel Hawthorne in 1989 and made into the 1993 feature film Shadowlands starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. Many books have been inspired by Lewis, including A Severe Mercy by his correspondent and friend Sheldon Vanauken. The Chronicles of Narnia has been particularly influential. Modern children's literature has been more or less influenced by Lewis's series, such as Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter.(Hilliard 2005) Pullman is an atheist and is known to be sharply critical of C. S. Lewis's work, accusing Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism in his books. However, he has also modestly praised The Chronicles of Narnia for being a "more serious" work of literature in comparison with Tolkien's "trivial" The Lord of the Rings. Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.In A Sword Between the Sexes? C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen finds in Lewis's work "a hierarchical and essentialist view of class and gender" corresponding to an upbringing during the Edwardian era.Most of Lewis's posthumous work has been edited by his literary executor Walter Hooper. Kathryn Lindskoog, an independent Lewis scholar, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, denies the forgery claims, saying that "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons ... Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited."A bronze statue of Lewis's character Digory from The Magician's Nephew stands in Belfast's Holywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library.Several C. S. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in 1982. The C.S. Lewis Society at the University of Oxford meets at Pusey House during term time to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.Live-action film adaptations have been made of three of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). Lewis is featured as a main character in The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series by James A. Owen. He is one of two characters in Mark St. Germain's 2009 play Freud's Last Session, which imagines a meeting between Lewis, aged 40, and Sigmund Freud, aged 83, at Freud's house in Hampstead, London, in 1939, as the Second World War is about to break out.In 2021, The Most Reluctant Convert, a biographical drama about Lewis's life and conversion, was released.The CS Lewis Nature Reserve, on ground owned by Lewis, lies behind his house, The Kilns. There is public access. == Bibliography == == See also == Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, has the world's largest collection of works by and about Lewis Courtly love Johan Huizinga D. W. Robertson Jr. == Notes == == References == == Further reading == == External links == Works by C. S. Lewis in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Clive Staples Lewis at Project Gutenberg Works by C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis at Faded Page (Canada) Works by or about C. S. Lewis at Internet Archive Works by C. S. Lewis at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Journal of Inklings Studies peer-reviewed journal on Lewis and his literary circle, based at Oxford C. S. Lewis Reading Room, with extensive links to online primary and secondary literature (Tyndale Seminary) C. S. Lewis research collection at The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College C. S. Lewis at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction C. S. Lewis at the Encyclopedia of Fantasy BBC Radio 4 – Great Lives – Suzannah Lipscomb on CS Lewis – 3 January 2017 Step though the wardrobe on Great Lives as CS Lewis – creator of the Narnia Chronicles – is this week's choice C. S. Lewis at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Gaston Bachelard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard (; French: [baʃlaʁ]; 27 June 1884 – 16 October 1962) was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter, he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break (obstacle épistémologique and rupture épistémologique). He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida, as well as the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour.For Bachelard, the scientific object should be constructed and therefore different from the positivist sciences; in other words, information is in continuous construction. Empiricism and rationalism are not regarded as dualism or opposition but complementary, therefore studies of a priori and a posteriori, or in other words reason and dialectic, are part of scientific research. == Life and work == Bachelard was a postal clerk in Bar-sur-Aube, and then studied physics and chemistry before finally becoming interested in philosophy. To obtain his doctorate (doctorat ès lettres) in 1927, he wrote two theses: the main one, Essai sur la connaissance approchée, under the direction of Abel Rey, and the complementary one, Étude sur l'évolution d'un problème de physique : la propagation thermique dans les solides, supervised by Léon Brunschvicg. He first taught from 1902 to 1903 at the college of Sézanne, but turned away from teaching to consider a career in telegraphy. Literary by training, he took the technological path before moving towards science and mathematics. In particular, he was fascinated by the great discoveries of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (radioactivity, quantum and wave mechanics, relativity, electromagnetism and wireless telegraphy).He was a professor at the University of Dijon from 1930 to 1940 and then was appointed chair in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris. In 1958, he became a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. === Bachelard's psychology of science === Bachelard's studies of the history and philosophy of science in such works as Le nouvel esprit scientifique ("The New Scientific Spirit", 1934) and La formation de l'esprit scientifique ("The Formation of the Scientific Mind", 1938) were based on his vision of historical epistemology as a kind of psychoanalysis of the scientific mind. In the English-speaking world, the connection Bachelard made between psychology and the history of science has been little understood. Bachelard demonstrated how the progress of science could be blocked by certain types of mental patterns, creating the concept of obstacle épistémologique ("epistemological obstacle"). One task of epistemology is to make clear the mental patterns at use in science, in order to help scientists overcome the obstacles to knowledge. Another goal is to “give back to human reason its function of agitation and aggressiveness” as Bachelard put it in ‘L'engagement rationaliste’ (1972). === Epistemological breaks: the discontinuity of scientific progress === Bachelard was critical of Auguste Comte's positivism, which considered science as a continual progress. To Bachelard, scientific developments such as Einstein's theory of relativity demonstrated the discontinuous nature of the history of sciences. Thus models that framed scientific development as continuous, such as that of Comte and Émile Meyerson, seemed simplistic and erroneous to Bachelard. Through his concept of "epistemological break", Bachelard underlined the discontinuity at work in the history of sciences. However the term "epistemological break" itself is almost never used by Bachelard but became famous through Louis Althusser. He showed that new theories integrated old theories in new paradigms, changing the sense of concepts (for instance, the concept of mass, used by Newton and Einstein in two different senses). Thus, non-Euclidean geometry did not contradict Euclidean geometry, but integrated it into a larger framework. === Teacher and philosopher === Discharged in March 1919 and unemployed, Bachelard searched and obtained a job in October as a professor of physics and chemistry at the college of Bar-sur-Aube. His wife, Jeanne Rossi, a schoolteacher he had married in 1914, was transferred to Voigny. His daughter Suzanne was born on 18 October. He travelled the six kilometers to Bar-sur-Aube on foot every day, was provided a very useful education, and enrolled for a philosophy degree. Jeanne died in June 1920, and Bachelard raised his daughter alone. At the age of thirty-six he began a completely unexpected philosophical career. Starting decisively in 1922, he acquired the title of Doctor of Letters at the Sorbonne in 1927. His theses, supported by Abel Rey and Léon Brunschvicg, were published. He became a lecturer at the Faculty of Letters of Dijon from October 1927, but remained at the college of Bar-sur-Aube until 1930. He even participated in the municipal elections of 1929 to defend the project of a college for all. He nevertheless accepted a professorship at the University of Burgundy when his daughter Suzanne entered the second degree. He did the same when he was appointed to the Sorbonne as a university professor and director of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology in 1940, accompanying his daughter in her higher educations.On 25 August 1937 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor. He became a professor at the Sorbonne from 1940 to 1954. He held the chair of the history and philosophy of science, where he succeeded Abel Rey, director of the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHST), which in 1992 became IHPST. === The role of epistemology in science === Bachelard was a rationalist in the Cartesian sense, although he recommended his "non-Cartesian epistemology" as a replacement for the more standard Cartesian epistemology. He compared "scientific knowledge" to ordinary knowledge in the way we deal with it, and saw error as only illusion: "Scientifically, one thinks truth as the historical rectification of a persistent error, and experiments as correctives for an initial, common illusion (illusion première)."The role of epistemology is to show the history of the (scientific) production of concepts. Those concepts are not just theoretical propositions: they are simultaneously abstract and concrete, pervading technical and pedagogical activity. This explains why "The electric bulb is an object of scientific thought… an example of an abstract-concrete object." To understand the way it works, one has to take the detour of scientific knowledge. Epistemology is thus not a general philosophy that aims at justifying scientific reasoning. Instead, it produces regional histories of science. === Shifts in scientific perspective === Bachelard never saw how seemingly irrational theories often simply represented a drastic shift in scientific perspective. For instance, he never claimed that the theory of probabilities was just another way of complexifying reality through a deepening of rationality (even though critics like Lord Kelvin found this theory irrational).One of his main theses in The New Scientific Mind was that modern sciences had replaced the classical ontology of the substance with an "ontology of relations", which could be assimilated to something like a process philosophy. For instance, the physical concepts of matter and rays correspond, according to him, to the metaphysical concepts of the thing and of movement; but whereas classical philosophy considered both as distinct, and the thing as ontologically real, modern science can not distinguish matter from rays. It is thus impossible to examine an immobile thing, which was precisely the condition for knowledge according to the classical theory of knowledge (Becoming being impossible to be known, in accordance with Aristotle and Plato's theories of knowledge). In non-Cartesian epistemology, there is no "simple substance" as in Cartesianism, but only complex objects built by theories and experiments and continuously improved (VI, 4). Intuition is therefore not primitive, but built (VI, 2). These themes led Bachelard to support a sort of constructivist epistemology. === Other academic interests === In addition to epistemology, Bachelard's work deals with many other topics, including poetry, dreams, psychoanalysis, and the imagination. The Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938) and The Poetics of Space (1958) are among the most popular of his works: Jean-Paul Sartre cites the former and Bachelard's Water and Dreams in his Being and Nothingness (1943), and the latter had a wide reception in architectural theory circles, and continues to be influential in literary theory and creative writing. In philosophy, this nocturnal side of his work is developed by his student Gilbert Durand. == Philosopher and citizen == === Feminist philosopher === It should be noted, in his singular career, the concern which he had to ensure the development of his daughter, so much the time was marked by the cleavage of the sexes and the functions. Going against sexist stereotypes, he wanted to make his daughter a scholar. Suzanne would be a mathematician and philosopher and would be able to develop phenomenological and epistemological research of high standing. == Bibliography == His works include: Essai sur la connaissance approchée (1928) Étude sur l'évolution d'un problème de physique: la propagation thermique dans les solides (1928) La valeur inductive de la relativité (1929) La pluralisme cohérent de la chimie moderne (1932) L'Intuition de l'instant (1932) Les intuitions atomistiques: essai de classification (1933) Le nouvel esprit scientifique (1934) La dialectique de la durée (1936) L'expérience de l'espace dans la physique contemporaine (1937) La formation de l'esprit scientifique: contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective (1938) La psychanalyse du feu (1938) (The Psychoanalysis of Fire, 1964) La philosophie du non: essai d'une philosophie du nouvel esprit scientifique (1940), publisher Pellicanolibri, 1978 L'eau et les rêves (1942) (Water and Dreams, 1983) L'air et les songes (1943) (Air and Dreams, 1988) La terre et les rêveries de la volonté (1948) (Earth and Reveries of Will, 2002) La terre et les rêveries du repos (1948) (Earth and Reveries of Repose, 2011) Le Rationalisme appliqué (1949) L'activité rationaliste de la physique contemporaine (1951) Le matérialisme rationnel (1953) La poétique de l'espace (1957) (The Poetics of Space, 1969 and 2014) La poétique de la rêverie (1960) (The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos, 1969) La flamme d'une chandelle (1961) L'engagement rationaliste (1972) === English translations === Though most of Bachelard's major works on poetics have been translated into English, only about half of his works on the philosophy of science have been translated. The Philosophy of No: A Philosophy of the New Scientific Mind. Orion Press, New York, 1968. Translation by G.C. Waterston. (La philosophie du non) The New Scientific Spirit. Beacon Press, Boston, 1985. Translation by A. Goldhammer. (Le nouvel esprit scientifique) Dialectic of Duration. Clinamen, Bolton, 2000. Translation by M. McAllester Jones. (La dialectique de la durée) The Formation of the Scientific Mind. Clinamen, Bolton, 2002. Translation by M. McAllester Jones. (La formation de l'esprit scientifique) Intuition of the Instant. Northwestern University Press, 2013. Translation by Eileen Rizo-Patron (L'intuition de l'instant) Atomistic Intuitions. State University of New York Press, 2018. Translation by Roch C. Smith (Intuitions atomistiques) == See also == == References == == Sources == Dominique Lecourt, L’épistémologie historique de Gaston Bachelard (1969). Vrin, Paris, 11e édition augmentée, 2002. Dominique Lecourt, Pour une critique de l’épistémologie : Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault (1972, réed. Maspero, Paris, 5e éd. 1980). D. Lecourt, Marxism and Epistemology: Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault, New Left Books, London (1975). Dominique Lecourt, Bachelard, Epistémologie, textes choisis (1971). PUF, Paris, 6e édition, 1996. Dominique Lecourt, Bachelard, le jour et la nuit, Grasset, Paris, 1974. Didier Gil, Bachelard et la culture scientifique, Presses Universitaires de France, 1993. Didier Gil, Autour de Bachelard – esprit et matière, un siècle français de philosophie des sciences (1867–1962), Les Belles Lettres, Encre marine, 2010. Hommage à Gaston Bachelard. Etudes de philosophie et d'histoire des sciences, by C. Bouligand, G. Canguilhem, P. Costabel, F. Courtes, François Dagognet, M. Daumas, Gilles Granger, J. Hyppolite, R. Martin, R. Poirier and R. Taton Actes du Colloque sur Bachelard de 1970 (Colloque de Cerisy). L'imaginaire du concept: Bachelard, une épistémologie de la pureté by Françoise Gaillard, MLN, Vol. 101, No. 4, French Issue (Sep 1986), pp. 895–911. Gaston Bachelard ou le rêve des origines, by Jean-Luc Pouliquen, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2007. == Further reading == Dagognet, F. (1970). "Bachelard, Gaston". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 365–366. ISBN 0-684-10114-9. Smith, James L. (2012). "New Bachelards?: Reveries, Elements and Twenty-First Century Materialisms". Other Modernities: 156–167. doi:10.13130/2035-7680/2418. McAllester Jones, Gaston Bachelard Subversive Humanist: Texts and Readings, University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Eileen Rizo-Patron, Edward S. Casey, and Jason Wirth, eds. Adventures in Phenomenology, Gaston Bachelard, State University of New York Press, 2017 Roch C. Smith, Gaston Bachelard, Philosopher of Science and Imagination, State University of New York Press, 2016 Mary Tiles, Bachelard: Science and Objectivity, Cambridge University Press, 1984 == External links == Website of the Association of Friends of Gaston Bachelard (in French) Centre Gaston Bachelard de Recherche sur l'Imaginaire et la Rationalité, Université de Bourgogne (in French) Works of Bachelard on-line (in French)

Georg Lukács

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_Luk%C3%A1cs

György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; Hungarian: szegedi Lukács György Bernát; German: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Soviet Marxist ideological orthodoxy. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution. As a critic, Lukács was especially influential due to his theoretical developments of literary realism and of the novel as a literary genre. In 1919, he was appointed the Hungarian Minister of Culture of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (March–August 1919). Lukács has been described as the preeminent Marxist intellectual of the Stalinist era, though assessing his legacy can be difficult as Lukács seemed both to support Stalinism as the embodiment of Marxist thought, and yet also to champion a return to pre-Stalinist Marxism. == Life and politics == Lukács was born Löwinger György Bernát in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to the investment banker József Löwinger (later Szegedi Lukács József; 1855–1928) and his wife Adele Wertheimer (Wertheimer Adél; 1860–1917), who were a wealthy Jewish family. He had a brother and sister. He and his family converted to Lutheranism in 1907.His father was knighted by the empire and received a baronial title, making Lukács a baron as well through inheritance. As a writer, he published under the names Georg Lukács and György Lukács. Lukács participated in intellectual circles in Budapest, Berlin, Florence and Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in economic and political sciences (Dr. rer. oec.) in 1906 from the Royal Hungarian University of Kolozsvár. In 1909, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Budapest under the direction of Zsolt Beöthy. === Pre-Marxist period === Whilst at university in Budapest, Lukács was part of socialist intellectual circles through which he met Ervin Szabó, an anarcho-syndicalist who introduced him to the works of Georges Sorel (1847–1922), the French proponent of revolutionary syndicalism. In that period, Lukács's intellectual perspectives were modernist and anti-positivist. From 1904 to 1908, he was part of a theatre troupe that produced modernist, psychologically realistic plays by Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Gerhart Hauptmann.Between 1906 and 1909 while in his early twenties, he worked on his 1,000 page A modern dráma fejlődésének története (English: History of the Development of the Modern Drama). It was published in Hungary in 1911. He was despaired when it won a prize in 1908 because he did not think the jury was fit to judge it.Lukács spent much time in Germany, and studied at the University of Berlin from 1906 to 1907, during which time he made the acquaintance of the philosopher Georg Simmel. Later in 1913 whilst in Heidelberg, he befriended Max Weber, Emil Lask, Ernst Bloch, and Stefan George. The idealist system to which Lukács subscribed at this time was intellectually indebted to neo-Kantianism (then the dominant philosophy in German universities) and to Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In that period, he published Soul and Form (Die Seele und die Formen, Berlin, 1911; tr. 1974) and The Theory of the Novel (1916/1920; tr. 1971).After the beginning of the First World War, Lukács was exempted from military service. In 1914, he married the Russian political activist Jelena Grabenko.In 1915, Lukács returned to Budapest, where he was the leader of the "Sunday Circle", an intellectual salon. Its concerns were the cultural themes that arose from the existential works of Dostoyevsky, which thematically aligned with Lukács's interests in his last years at Heidelberg. As a salon, the Sunday Circle sponsored cultural events whose participants included literary and musical avant-garde figures, such as Karl Mannheim, the composer Béla Bartók, Béla Balázs, Arnold Hauser, Zoltán Kodály and Karl Polanyi; some of them also attended the weekly salons. In 1918, the last year of the First World War (1914–1918), the Sunday Circle became divided. They dissolved the salon because of their divergent politics; several of the leading members accompanied Lukács into the Communist Party of Hungary. === Pivot to communism === In the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lukács rethought his ideas. He became a committed Marxist in this period and joined the fledgling Communist Party of Hungary in 1918. Up until at least September 1918, he had intended to emigrate to Germany, but after being rejected from a habilitation in Heidelberg, he wrote on December 16 that he had already decided to pursue a political career in Hungary instead. Lukács later wrote that he was persuaded to this course by Béla Kun. The last publication of Lukács' pre-Marxist period was "Bolshevism as a Moral Problem", a rejection of Bolshevism on ethical grounds that he apparently reversed within days. === Communist leader === As part of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukács was made People's Commissar for Education and Culture (he was deputy to the Commissar for Education Zsigmond Kunfi).It is said by József Nádass that Lukács was giving a lecture entitled "Old Culture and New Culture" to a packed hall when the republic was proclaimed which was interrupted due to the revolution.During the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukács was a theoretician of the Hungarian version of the red terror. In an article in the Népszava, 15 April 1919, he wrote that "The possession of the power of the state is also a moment for the destruction of the oppressing classes. A moment, we have to use". Lukács later became a commissar of the Fifth Division of the Hungarian Red Army, in which capacity he ordered the execution of eight of his own soldiers in Poroszlo, in May 1919, which he later admitted in an interview.After the Hungarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Lukács was ordered by Kun to remain behind with Ottó Korvin, when the rest of the leadership evacuated. Lukács and Korvin's mission was to clandestinely reorganize the communist movement, but this proved to be impossible. Lukács went into hiding, with the help of photographer Olga Máté. After Korvin's capture in 1919, Lukács fled from Hungary to Vienna. He was arrested but was saved from extradition due to a group of writers including Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Thomas Mann later based the character Naphta on Lukács in his novel The Magic Mountain.He married his second wife, Gertrúd Bortstieber in 1919 in Vienna, a fellow member of the Hungarian Communist Party.Around the 1920s, while Antonio Gramsci was also in Vienna, though they did not meet each other, Lukács met a fellow communist, Victor Serge, and began to develop Leninist ideas in the field of philosophy. His major works in this period were the essays collected in his magnum opus History and Class Consciousness (Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, Berlin, 1923). Although these essays display signs of what Vladimir Lenin referred to as "left communism" (with later Leninists calling it "ultra-leftism"), they provided Leninism with a substantive philosophical basis. In July 1924, Grigory Zinoviev attacked this book along with the work of Karl Korsch at the Fifth Comintern Congress.In 1925, shortly after Lenin's death, Lukács published in Vienna the short study Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought (Lenin: Studie über den Zusammenhang seiner Gedanken). In 1925, he published a critical review of Nikolai Bukharin's manual of historical materialism.As a Hungarian exile, he remained active on the left wing of Hungarian Communist Party, and was opposed to the Moscow-backed programme of Béla Kun. His "Blum theses" of 1928 called for the overthrow of the counter-revolutionary regime of Admiral Horthy in Hungary by a strategy similar to the Popular Fronts that arose in the 1930s. He advocated a "democratic dictatorship" of the proletariat and peasantry as a transitional stage leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat. After Lukács's strategy was condemned by the Comintern, he retreated from active politics into theoretical work. Lukács left Vienna in 1929 first for Berlin, then for Budapest. === Under Stalin and Rákosi === In 1930, while residing in Budapest, Lukács was summoned to Moscow. This coincided with the signing of a Viennese police order for his expulsion. Leaving their children to attend their studies, Lukács and his wife went to Moscow in March 1930. Soon after his arrival, Lukács was "prevented" from leaving and assigned to work alongside David Riazanov ("in the basement") at the Marx–Engels Institute.Lukács returned to Berlin in 1931 and in 1933 he once again left Berlin for Moscow to attend the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. During this time, Lukács first came into contact with the unpublished works of the young Marx.Lukács and his wife were not permitted to leave the Soviet Union until after the Second World War. During Stalin's Great Purge, Lukács was sent to internal exile in Tashkent for a time, where he and Johannes Becher became friends. Lukács survived the purges of the Great Terror. There is much debate among historians concerning the extent to which Lukács accepted Stalinism at this period.In 1945, Lukács and his wife returned to Hungary. As a member of the Hungarian Communist Party, he took part in establishing the new Hungarian government. From 1945 Lukács was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between 1945 and 1946 he strongly criticised non-communist philosophers and writers. Lukács has been accused of playing an "administrative" (legal-bureaucratic) role in the removal of independent and non-communist intellectuals such as Béla Hamvas, István Bibó, Lajos Prohászka, and Károly Kerényi from Hungarian academic life. Between 1946 and 1953, many non-communist intellectuals, including Bibó, were imprisoned or forced into menial work or manual labour. Lukács's personal aesthetic and political position on culture was always that socialist culture would eventually triumph in terms of quality. He thought it should play out in terms of competing cultures, not by "administrative" measures. In 1948–49, Lukács' position for cultural tolerance was smashed in a "Lukács purge," when Mátyás Rákosi turned his famous salami tactics on the Hungarian Working People's Party. In the mid-1950s, Lukács was reintegrated into party life. The party used him to help purge the Hungarian Writers' Union in 1955–1956. Tamás Aczél and Tibor Méray (former Secretaries of the Hungarian Writers' Union) both believe that Lukács participated grudgingly, and cite Lukács leaving the presidium and the meeting at the first break as evidence of this reluctance. === De-Stalinisation === In 1956, Lukács became a minister of the brief communist revolutionary government led by Imre Nagy, which opposed the Soviet Union. At this time Lukács's daughter led a short-lived party of communist revolutionary youth. Lukács's position on the 1956 revolution was that the Hungarian Communist Party would need to retreat into a coalition government of socialists, and slowly rebuild its credibility with the Hungarian people. While a minister in Nagy's revolutionary government, Lukács also participated in trying to reform the Hungarian Communist Party on a new basis. This party, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, was rapidly co-opted by János Kádár after 4 November 1956.During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Lukács was present at debates of the anti-party and revolutionary communist Petőfi Society while remaining part of the party apparatus. During the revolution, as mentioned in Budapest Diary, Lukács argued for a new Soviet-aligned communist party. In Lukács's view, the new party could win social leadership only by persuasion instead of force. Lukács envisioned an alliance between the dissident communist Hungarian Revolutionary Youth Party, the revolutionary Hungarian Social Democratic Party and his own Soviet-aligned party as a very junior partner. Following the defeat of the Revolution, Lukács was deported to the Socialist Republic of Romania with the rest of Nagy's government. Unlike Nagy, he avoided execution, albeit narrowly. Due to his role in Nagy's government, he was no longer trusted by the party apparatus. Lukács's followers were indicted for political crimes throughout the 1960s and '70s, and a number fled to the West. Lukács's books The Young Hegel (Der junge Hegel, Zurich, 1948) and The Destruction of Reason (Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, Berlin, 1954) have been used to argue that Lukács was covertly critical of Stalinism as a distortion of Marxism. In this reading, these two works are attempts to reconcile the idealism of Hegelian-dialectics with the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels, and position Stalinism as a philosophy of irrationalism.He returned to Budapest in 1957. Lukács publicly abandoned his positions of 1956 and engaged in self-criticism. Having abandoned his earlier positions, Lukács remained loyal to the Communist Party until his death in 1971. In his last years, following the uprisings in France and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Lukács became more publicly critical of the Soviet Union and the Hungarian Communist Party.In an interview just before his death, Lukács remarked: Without a genuine general theory of society and its movement, one does not get away from Stalinism. Stalin was a great tactician... But Stalin, unfortunately, was not a Marxist... The essence of Stalinism lies in placing tactics before strategy, practice above theory... The bureaucracy generated by Stalinism is a tremendous evil. Society is suffocated by it. Everything becomes unreal, nominalistic. People see no design, no strategic aim, and do not move..." Thus Lukács concludes "[w]e must learn to connect the great decisions of popular political power with personal needs, those of individuals. == Work == === History and Class Consciousness === Written between 1919 and 1922 and published in 1923, Lukács's collection of essays History and Class Consciousness contributed to debates concerning Marxism and its relation to sociology, politics and philosophy. With this work, Lukács initiated the current of thought that came to be known as "Western Marxism". At Lukács' direction, there was no reprinting in his lifetime, making it rare and hard to acquire before 1968. Its return to prominence was aided by the social movements of the 1960s.The most important essay in Lukács's book introduces the concept of "reification". In capitalist societies, human properties, relations and actions are transformed into properties, relations and actions of man-produced things, which become independent of man and govern his life. These man-created things are then imagined to be originally independent of man. Moreover, human beings are transformed into thing-like beings that do not behave in a human way but according to the laws of the thing-world. This essay is notable for reconstructing aspects of Marx's theory of alienation before the publication of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 — the work in which Marx most clearly expounds the theory.Lukács also develops the Marxist theory of class consciousness - the distinction between the objective situation of a class and that class's subjective awareness of this situation. Lukács proffers a view of a class as an "historical imputed subject". An empirically existing class can successfully act only when it becomes conscious of its historical situation, i.e. when it transforms from a "class in itself" to a "class for itself". Lukács's theory of class consciousness has been influential within the sociology of knowledge. In his later career, Lukács repudiated the ideas of History and Class Consciousness, in particular the belief in the proletariat as a "subject-object of history" (1960 Postface to French translation). As late as 1925–1926, he still defended these ideas, in an unfinished manuscript, which he called Tailism and the Dialectic. It was not published until 1996 in Hungarian and English in 2000 under the title A Defence of History and Class Consciousness. ==== What is Orthodox Marxism? ==== Lukács argues that methodology is the only thing that distinguishes Marxism: even if all its substantive propositions were rejected, it would remain valid because of its distinctive method: Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the 'belief' in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. He criticises Marxist revisionism by calling for the return to this Marxist method, which is fundamentally dialectical materialism. Lukács conceives "revisionism" as inherent to the Marxist theory, insofar as dialectical materialism is, according to him, the product of class struggle: For this reason the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and utopianism can never mean the defeat, once and for all, of false tendencies. It is an ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process. According to him, "The premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: 'It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.' ...Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious product, of human activity." (§5). In line with Marx's thought, he criticises the individualist bourgeois philosophy of the subject, which founds itself on the voluntary and conscious subject. Against this ideology, he asserts the primacy of social relations. Existence – and thus the world – is the product of human activity; but this can be seen only if the primacy of social process on individual consciousness is accepted. Lukács does not restrain human liberty for sociological determinism: to the contrary, this production of existence is the possibility of praxis. He conceives the problem in the relationship between theory and practice. Lukács quotes Marx's words: "It is not enough that thought should seek to realise itself; reality must also strive towards thought." How does the thought of intellectuals relate to class struggle, if theory is not simply to lag behind history, as it is in Hegel's philosophy of history ("Minerva always comes at the dusk of night...")? Lukács criticises Friedrich Engels's Anti-Dühring, saying that he "does not even mention the most vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between subject and object in the historical process, let alone give it the prominence it deserves." This dialectical relation between subject and object is the basis of Lukács's critique of Immanuel Kant's epistemology, according to which the subject is the exterior, universal and contemplating subject, separated from the object. For Lukács, "ideology" is a projection of the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie, which functions to prevent the proletariat from attaining consciousness of its revolutionary position. Ideology determines the "form of objectivity", thus the very structure of knowledge. According to Lukács, real science must attain the "concrete totality" through which only it is possible to think the current form of objectivity as a historical period. Thus, the so-called eternal "laws" of economics are dismissed as the ideological illusion projected by the current form of objectivity ("What is Orthodoxical Marxism?", §3). He also writes: "It is only when the core of being has showed itself as social becoming, that the being itself can appear as a product, so far unconscious, of human activity, and this activity, in turn, as the decisive element of the transformation of being." ("What is Orthodoxical Marxism?", §5) Finally, "orthodoxical Marxism" is not defined as interpretation of Capital as if it were the Bible or an embrace of "marxist thesis", but as fidelity to the "marxist method", dialectics. ==== Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat ==== Drawing from the insights of Max Weber and Georg Simmel and Marx's magnum opus Capital, as well as Hegel's concept of appearance, Lukács argues that commodity fetishism is the central structural problem of capitalist society. The essence of the commodity structure is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing. Society subordinates production entirely to the increase of exchange-value and crystallises relations between human beings in to object-values. The commodity's fundamental nature is concealed: it appears to have autonomy and acquires a phantom objectivity. There are two sides to commodity fetishism: "Objectively a world of objects and relations between things springs into being (the world of commodities and their movements on the market) Subjectively - where the market economy has been fully developed - a man's activity becomes estranged from himself, it turns into a commodity which, subject to the non-human objectivity of the natural laws of society, must go its own way independently of man just like any consumer article." A man is no longer a specific individual but part of a huge system of production and exchange. He is a mere unit of labour power, an article to be bought and sold according to the laws of the market. The rationalisation of the productive mechanism based on what is and can be calculated extends to all fields, including human consciousness. Legal systems disregard tradition and reduce individuals to juridical units. Division of labour becomes increasingly specialised and particularised, confining the individual's productive activity to a narrower and narrower range of skills.As the bourgeoisie plays the dominant role in this system, it is contrary to its own interests to understand the system's transient historical character. Bourgeois consciousness is mystified. Bourgeois philosophy understands only empirical reality or normative ethics; it lacks the cognitive ability to grasp reality as a whole. Bourgeois rationalism has no interest in phenomena beyond what is calculable and predictable. Only the proletariat, which has no interest in the maintenance of capitalism, can relate to reality in a practical revolutionary way. When the proletariat becomes aware of its situation as a mere commodity in bourgeois society, it will be able to understand the social mechanism as a whole. The self-knowledge of the proletariat is more than just a perception of the world; it is a historical movement of emancipation, a liberation of humanity from the tyranny of reification. Lukács saw the destruction of society as a proper solution to the "cultural contradiction of the epoch". In 1969 he cited:“Even though my ideas were confused from a theoretical point of view, I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution to the cultural contradictions of the epoch. Such a worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values. === Literary and aesthetic work === In addition to his standing as a Marxist political thinker, Lukács was an influential literary critic of the twentieth century. His important work in literary criticism began early in his career, with The Theory of the Novel, a seminal work in literary theory and the theory of genre. The book is a history of the novel as a form, and an investigation into its distinct characteristics. In The Theory of the Novel, he coins the term "transcendental homelessness", which he defines as the "longing of all souls for the place in which they once belonged, and the 'nostalgia… for utopian perfection, a nostalgia that feels itself and its desires to be the only true reality'". Lukács maintains that "the novel is the necessary epic form of our time."Lukács later repudiated The Theory of the Novel, writing a lengthy introduction that described it as erroneous, but nonetheless containing a "romantic anti-capitalism" which would later develop into Marxism. (This introduction also contains his famous dismissal of Theodor Adorno and others in Western Marxism as having taken up residence in the "Grand Hotel Abyss".) Lukács's later literary criticism includes the well-known essay "Kafka or Thomas Mann?", in which Lukács argues for the work of Thomas Mann as a superior attempt to deal with the condition of modernity, and criticises Franz Kafka's brand of modernism. Lukács steadfastly opposed the formal innovations of modernist writers like Kafka, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, preferring the traditional aesthetic of realism. During his time in Moscow in the 1930s, Lukács worked on Marxist views of aesthetics while belonging to the group around an influential Moscow magazine "The Literary Critic" (Literaturny Kritik). The editor of this magazine, Mikhail Lifshitz, was an important Soviet author on aesthetics. Lifshitz' views were very similar to Lukács's insofar as both argued for the value of the traditional art; despite the drastic difference in age (Lifschitz was much younger) both Lifschitz and Lukács indicated that their working relationship at that time was a collaboration of equals. Lukács contributed frequently to this magazine, which was also followed by Marxist art theoreticians around the world through various translations published by the Soviet government. The collaboration between Lifschitz and Lukács resulted in the formation of an informal circle of the like-minded Marxist intellectuals connected to the journal Literaturnyi Kritik [The Literary Critic], published monthly starting in the summer of 1933 by the Organisational Committee of the Writers' Union. ... A group of thinkers formed around Lifschitz, Lukács and Andrei Platonov; they were concerned with articulating the aesthetical views of Marx and creating a kind of Marxist aesthetics that had not yet been properly formulated. Lukács famously argued for the revolutionary character of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Honoré de Balzac. Lukács felt that both authors' nostalgic, pro-aristocratic politics allowed them accurate and critical stances because of their opposition (albeit reactionary) to the rising bourgeoisie. This view was expressed in his later book The Historical Novel (published in Russian in 1937, then in Hungarian in 1947), as well as in his essay "Realism in the Balance" (1938). The Historical Novel is probably Lukács's most influential work of literary history. In it he traces the development of the genre of historical fiction. While prior to 1789, he argues, people's consciousness of history was relatively underdeveloped, the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars that followed brought about a realisation of the constantly changing, evolving character of human existence. This new historical consciousness was reflected in the work of Sir Walter Scott, whose novels use 'representative' or 'typical' characters to dramatise major social conflicts and historical transformations, for example the dissolution of feudal society in the Scottish Highlands and the entrenchment of mercantile capitalism. Lukács argues that Scott's new brand of historical realism was taken up by Balzac and Tolstoy, and enabled novelists to depict contemporary social life not as a static drama of fixed, universal types, but rather as a moment of history, constantly changing, open to the potential of revolutionary transformation. For this reason he sees these authors as progressive and their work as potentially radical, despite their own personal conservative politics. For Lukács, this historical realist tradition began to give way after the 1848 revolutions, when the bourgeoisie ceased to be a progressive force and their role as agents of history was usurped by the proletariat. After this time, historical realism begins to sicken and lose its concern with social life as inescapably historical. He illustrates this point by comparing Flaubert's historical novel Salammbô to that of the earlier realists. For him, Flaubert's work marks a turning away from relevant social issues and an elevation of style over substance. Why he does not discuss Sentimental Education, a novel much more overtly concerned with recent historical developments, is not clear. For much of his life Lukács promoted a return to the realist tradition that he believed had reached its height with Balzac and Scott, and bemoaned the supposed neglect of history that characterised modernism. The Historical Novel has been hugely influential in subsequent critical studies of historical fiction, and no serious analyst of the genre fails to engage at some level with Lukács's arguments. ==== Critical and socialist realism ==== Lukács defined realistic literature as literature capable of relating human life to the totality. He distinguishes between two forms of realism, critical and socialist. Lukács argued that it was precisely the desire for a realistic depiction of life that enabled politically reactionary writers such as Balzac, Walter Scott and Tolstoy to produce great, timeless and socially progressive works. According to Lukács, there is a contradiction between worldview and talent among such writers. He greatly valued the comments made in that direction by Lenin on Tolstoy and especially by Engels on Balzac, where Engels describes the "triumph of realism": Balzac boldly exposed the contradiction of nascent capitalist society and hence his observation of reality constantly clashed with his political prejudices. But as an honest artist he always depicted only what he himself saw, learned and underwent, concerning himself not at all whether his-true-to-life description of the things he saw contradicted his pet ideas. Critical realists include writers who could not rise to the communist worldview, but despite this tried to truthfully reflect the conflicts of the era, not content with the direct description of single events. A great story speaks through individual human destinies in their work. Such writers are not naturalists, allegorists and metaphysicians. They do not flee from the world into the isolated human soul and do not seek to raise its experiences to the rank of timeless, eternal and irresistible properties of human nature. Balzac, Tolstoy, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, George Bernard Shaw, Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann are the brightest writers from the gallery of critical realists. Lukács notes that realistic art is usually found either in highly developed countries or in countries undergoing a period of rapid socio-economic development, yet it is possible that backward countries often give rise to advanced literature precisely because of their backwardness, which they seek to overcome by artistic means. Lukács (together with Lifshitz) polemicized against the "vulgar sociological" thesis then dominant in Soviet literary criticism. The "vulgar sociologists" (associated with the former RAPP) prioritized class origin as the most important determinant for an artist and his work, categorizing artists and artistic genres as "feudal", "bourgeois", "petty-bourgeois" etc. Lukács and Lifshitz sought to prove that such great artists as Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe or Tolstoy were able to rise above their class worldview by grasping the dialectic of individual and society in its totality and depicting their relations truthfully. All modernist art - avant-garde, naturalism, expressionism, surrealism, etc. - is the opposite of realism. This is decadent art, examples of which are the works of Kafka, Joyce, Musil, Beckett, etc. The main shortcoming of modernism, which predicts its inevitable defeat, is the inability to perceive the totality and carry out the act of mediation. One cannot blame the writer for describing loneliness, but one must show it in such a way that it is clear to everyone: human loneliness is an inevitable consequence of capitalist social relations. Whereas in Kafka we meet with "ontological solitariness", depicted as a permanent situation of man and a universal value. In this regard, Kafka stops at the description of the phenomenon, given directly, he is not able to rise to the totality, which alone can reveal the meaning of loneliness. Therefore, Kafka acts like the naturalists. In order for the image of chaos, confusion and fear of the modern world and man to be realistic, the writer must show the social roots that generate all these phenomena. And if, like Joyce, one depicts the spiritual world and the sense of time of a person in a state of absolute decay, without bothering to search for reasons and prospects for a way out, then the writer gives a false image of the world, and his works must be recognized as immature. So, modernism is deprived of a historical perspective, tying the person to positions and situations that are not really historically and socially determined. Modernism transforms such situations into transcendental qualities. The great images of great literature, Achilles and Werther, Oedipus and Tom Joad, Antigone and Anna Karenina, are social beings, for Aristotle already noted that man is a social being. And the heroes of modernist literature are torn out of ties with society and history. Narrative becomes purely "subjective", the animal in man is opposed to the social in him, which corresponds to Heidegger's denial and condemnation of society as something impersonal. He wrote: Literary and art history is a mass graveyard where many artists of talent rest in deserved oblivion because they neither sought nor found any association to the problems of advancing humanity and did not set themselves on the right side in the vital struggle between health and decay. Barbara Stackman maintains that, for Lukács, decadents are decadent not because they depict illness and decay, but because they do not recognize the existence of health, of the social sphere that would reunite the alienated writer to the progressive forces of history. Sickness, then, is a reactionary mode of insertion into the class struggle; sickness, writes Lukács, "produces a complete overturning of values." Though "sick art" may have its dialectical moment in the sun (Lukács cites only Antigone as an example where that which is declining may even appear as human greatness and purity), it is destined for the dust heap of history, while "healthy art" is a "reflection of the lasting truth of human relationships."On the other hand, socialist realism is recognized as the highest stage in the development of literature: The prospect of socialist realism is, of course, the struggle for socialism. Socialist realism differs from critical realism not only in that it is based on a specific socialist perspective, but also in that it uses this perspective to describe from within the forces that work in favor of socialism. Critical realists have more than once described the political struggle of our time and depicted heroes - socialists and communists. But only socialist realists describe such heroes from the inside, thus identifying them with the forces of progress. The greatness of socialist realism lies in the fact that the historical totality, directed towards communism, becomes clear as daylight in any fragment of a given work. In 1938, in his work Realism in the Balance, a polemic against Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno, Lukács explained the lack of modernism in the Soviet Union in this way: The more the domination of the proletariat strengthened, the more deeply and comprehensively socialism penetrated the economy of the Soviet Union, the wider and deeper the cultural revolution embraced the working masses, the stronger and more hopelessly "avant-garde" art was pushed out by an ever more conscious realism. The decline of expressionism is ultimately a consequence of the maturity of the revolutionary masses. No less typical is his article "Propaganda or Partisanship?", in which he polemicizes against the definition of socialist art as "tendentious." Literature, in his opinion, should not be biased, but only "party-spirited" in the essence of taking the side of the class that is objectively progressive in the given historical moment. Tendentious literature eclectically connects "pure art" with politically alien elements brought in from outside. But such a program, which Franz Mehring once defended, means "the primacy of form over content" and contrasts the aesthetic and political elements of the work. This understanding of art, Lukács says, is Trotskyist.Lukács' defense of socialist realism contained a critique of Stalinism and a condemnation of most of the party-propagandistic Soviet literature of the 1930s and 1940s (which was based on Andrei Zhdanov's doctrine of "conflictless art" and which Lukács dismissively called "illustrative" literature) as a distortion of true socialist realism. He acknowledged that Stalinism suffered from a lack of "mediation" in the field of cultural policy. Instead of describing the real conflicts of the life of socialist society, Stalinist literature turned into bare schemes and abstractions, describing the general truths of theory and in no way "mediating" them with images taken from reality. The specificity of art was forgotten, and it turned into an instrument of agitation. Schematic optimism has spread in place of the historical. The heroes did not represent any of the typical qualities of the new society. Lenin's article "Party Organization and Party Literature", which, as Nadezhda Krupskaya said, dealt only with political literature, turned into a rule of artistic activity and its evaluation. Despite all this criticism, Lukács never changed his basic conviction: socialist realism represents a "fundamentally" and "historically" higher stage in the development of art than all its predecessors. The most surprising product of Lukács' discourse on socialist realism is his articles on Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom he considered to be the greatest "plebeian realist" writer of the twentieth century. Lukács welcomed the appearance of the writer's short stories and novellas as the first sign of the renaissance of socialist realism, since Solzhenitsyn, in describing camp life in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, depicts everyday events as a symbol of an entire era. Nor is Solzhenitsyn a naturalist, since he refers the events described to the socio-historical totality and does not seek to restore capitalism in Russia. According to Lukács, Solzhenitsyn criticizes Stalinism from a plebeian, and not from a communist point of view. And if he does not overcome this weakness, then his artistic talent will decrease. === Ontology of social being === Later in life, Lukács undertook a major exposition on the ontology of social being, which has been partly published in English in three volumes. The work is a systematic treatment of dialectical philosophy in its materialist form. == Bibliography == History and Class Consciousness (1972). ISBN 0-262-62020-0. The Theory of the Novel (1974). ISBN 0-262-62027-8. Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought (1998). ISBN 1-85984-174-0. A Defense of History and Class Consciousness (2000). ISBN 1-85984-747-1. == See also == Lajos Jánossy, Lukács's adopted son Marx's notebooks on the history of technology == Notes == == References == === Sources === == Further reading == Furner, James. "Commodity Form Philosophy," in Marx on Capitalism: The Interaction-Recognition-Antinomy Thesis. (Leiden: Brill, 2018). pp. 85–128. Gerhardt, Christina. "Georg Lukács," The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500 to the Present. 8 vols. Ed. Immanuel Ness (Malden: Blackwell, 2009). 2135–2137. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. "The Scholar, The Intellectual, And The Essay: Weber, Lukács, Adorno, And Postwar Germany," German Quarterly 70.3 (1997): 217–231. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe "Art Work And Modernity: The Legacy of Georg Lukács," New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies 42.(1987): 33–49. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Blackwell Jeanine. "Georg Lukács in the GDR: On Recent Developments in Literary Theory," New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies 12.(1977): 169–174. Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Morgan, W. John, 'Political Commissar and Cultural Critic: Georg Lukács'. Chapter 6 in Morgan, W. John, Communists on Education and Culture 1848-1948, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 83–102. ISBN 0-333-48586-6 Morgan, W. John, ‘Georg Lukács: cultural policy, Stalinism, and the Communist International.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy, 12 (3), 2006, pp. 257–271. Stern, L. "George Lukacs: An Intellectual Portrait," Dissent, vol. 5, no. 2 (Spring 1958), pp. 162–173. == External links == Works by György Lukács at Project Gutenberg Works by or about György Lukács at Internet Archive Georg Lukács Archive, Marxists website Guide to Literary Theory Archived 1 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Johns Hopkins University Press Georg Lukács, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Petri Liukkonen. "György Lukács". Books and Writers Bendl Júlia, "Lukács György élete a századfordulótól 1918-ig" Lukács and Imre Lakatos Hungarian biography Georg Lukács Archive, Libertarian Communist Library Múlt-kor Történelmi portál (Past-Age Historic Portal): Lukács György was born 120 years ago (in Hungarian) Levee Blanc, "Georg Lukács: The Antinomies of Melancholy", Other Voices, Vol.1 no.1, 1998. Michael J. Thompson, "Lukacs Revisited" New Politics, 2001, Issue 30 Realism in the Balance

Franz Rosenzweig

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig (, German: [ˌfʁant͡s ˈʁoːzn̩ˌt͡svaɪ̯k] (listen); 25 December 1886 – 10 December 1929) was a German theologian, philosopher, and translator. == Early life and education == Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel, Germany, to an affluent, minimally observant Jewish family. His father owned a factory for dyestuff and was a city council member. Through his granduncle, Adam Rosenzweig, he came in contact with traditional Judaism and was inspired to request Hebrew lessons when he was around 11 years old. Yet he did not learn of Sabbat eve until after he was in college. He started to study medicine for five semesters in Göttingen, Munich, and Freiburg. In 1907 he changed subjects and studied history and philosophy in Freiburg and Berlin. Rosenzweig, under the influence of his cousin and close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, considered converting to Christianity. Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to live as an observant Jew first, before becoming Christian. After attending Yom Kippur services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, he underwent a mystical experience. As a result, he became a baal teshuva. Although he never recorded what transpired, he never again entertained converting to Christianity. In 1913, he turned to Jewish philosophy. His letters to his cousin and close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whom he had nearly followed into Christianity, have been published as Judaism Despite Christianity. Rosenzweig was a student of Hermann Cohen, and the two became close. While writing a doctoral dissertation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel and the State, Rosenzweig turned against idealism and sought a philosophy that did not begin with an abstract notion of the human. Later in the decade, Rosenzweig discovered a manuscript apparently written in Hegel's hand, which he named "The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism." The manuscript (first published in 1917) has been dated to 1796 and appears to show the influence of F. W. J. Schelling and Friedrich Hölderlin. Despite early debate about the authorship of the document, scholars now generally accept that it was written by Hegel, making Rosenzweig's discovery valuable for contemporary Hegel scholarship. == Career == === The Star of Redemption === Rosenzweig's major work is The Star of Redemption (first published in 1921). It is a description of the relationships between God, humanity, and the world, as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption. If one makes a diagram with God at the top, and the World and the Self below, the inter-relationships generate a Star of David map. He is critical of any attempt to replace actual human existence with an ideal. In Rosenzweig's scheme, revelation arises not in metaphysics but in the here and now. We are called to love God, and to do so is to return to the world, and that is redemption. Two translations into English have appeared, the most recent by Dr. Barbara E. Galli of McGill University in 2005 and by Professor William Wolfgang Hallo in 1971. === Collaboration with Buber === Rosenzweig was critical of the Jewish scholar Martin Buber's early work but became close friends with him upon their meeting. Buber was a Zionist, but Rosenzweig felt that a return to Israel would embroil the Jews into a worldly history that they should eschew. Rosenzweig criticized Buber's dialogical philosophy because it is based not only on the I-Thou relation but also on I-It, a notion that Rosenzweig rejected. He thought that the counterpart to I-Thou should be He-It, namely “as He said and it became”: building the "it" around the human "I"—the human mind—is an idealistic mistake. Rosenzweig and Buber worked together on a translation of the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, from Hebrew to German. The translation, while contested, has led to several other translations in other languages that use the same methodology and principles. Their publications concerning the nature and philosophy of translation are still widely read. === Educational activities === Rosenzweig, unimpressed with the impersonal learning of the academy, founded the House of Jewish Learning in Frankfurt in 1920, which sought to engage in dialogue with human beings rather than merely accumulate knowledge. Many prominent Jewish intellectuals were associated with the Lehrhaus, as it was known in Germany, such as Leo Löwenthal, the liberal rabbi Benno Jacob, historian of medicine Richard Koch, the chemist Eduard Strauß, the feminist Bertha Pappenheim, Siegfried Kracauer, a culture critic for the Frankfurter Zeitung, S.Y. Agnon, who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Gershom Scholem, the founder of modern secular studies of the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism (some of these intellectuals are also associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory). In October 1922, Rudolf Hallo took over the leadership of the Lehrhaus. The Lehrhaus stayed open until 1930 and was reopened by Martin Buber in 1933. == Illness and death == Rosenzweig suffered from the muscular degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as motor neurone disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease). Towards the end of his life, he had to write with the help of his wife, Edith, who would recite letters of the alphabet until he indicated for her to stop, continuing until she could guess the word or phrase he intended (or, at other times, Rosenzweig would point to the letter on the plate of his typewriter). They also developed a communication system based on him blinking his eyes. Rosenzweig's final attempt to communicate his thought, via the laborious typewriter-alphabet method, consisted in the partial sentence: "And now it comes, the point of all points, which the Lord has truly revealed to me in my sleep, the point of all points for which there—". The writing was interrupted by his doctor, with whom he had a short discussion using the same method. When the doctor left, Rosenzweig did not wish to continue with the writing, and he died on the night of 10 December 1929, in Frankfurt, the sentence left unfinished.Rosenzweig was buried on 12 December 1929. There was no eulogy; Buber read Psalm 73.After his death his son Rafael fled Germany for Palestine in 1939. Rosenzeig's library with about 3,000 volumes was to follow him, but the cargo ship was diverted to Tunis during the Second World War. It is now in the National Library of Tunisia, Dâr Al-Kutub Al-Wataniya. == See also == Interfaith dialogue André Neher == References == == Further reading == Anckaert, Luc & Casper, Bernhard Moses Casper, Franz Rosenzweig - a primary and secondary bibliography (Leuven, 1990) Amir, Yehoyada, "Towards mutual Listening: the Notion of Sermon in Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy", in: Alexander Deeg, Walter Homolka & Heinz–Günter Schöttler (eds.), "Preaching in Judaism and Christianity" (Berlin, 2008), 113–130 Amir, Yehoyada, Turner, Joseph (Yossi), Brasser, Martin, "Faith, Truth, and Reason - New Perspectives on Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption" (Karl Alber, 2012) Belloni, Claudio, Filosofia e rivelazione. Rosenzweig nella scia dell’ultimo Schelling, Marsilio, Venezia 2002 Bienenstock, Myriam Cohen face à Rosenzweig. Débat sur la pensée allemande (Paris, Vrin, 2009) Bienenstock, Myriam (ed.). Héritages de Franz Rosenzweig. "Nous et les autres" (Paris, éditions de l'éclat, 2011) Bowler, Maurice Gerald, "The Reconciliation of Church and Synagogue in Franz Rosenzweig," M.A. Thesis, Sir George Williams University, Montreal, 1973 Chamiel, Ephraim, The Dual Truth, Studies on Nineteenth-Century Modern Religious Thought and its Influence on Twentieth-Century Jewish Philosophy, Academic Studies Press, Boston 2019, Vol II, pp. 308–332. Gibbs, Robert, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (1994) Glatzer, Nahum Norbert Essays in Jewish thought (1978) Glatzer, Nahum Norbert, Franz Rosenzweig - his life and thought (New York, 1953) Guttmann, Isaak Julius. Philosophies of Judaism : the history of Jewish philosophy from biblical times to Franz Rosenzweig (New York, 1964) Maybaum, Ignaz Trialogue between Jew, Christian and Muslim (London, 1973) Mendes-Flohr, Paul R., German Jews - a dual identity (New Haven, CT, 1999) Miller, Ronald Henry Dialogue and disagreement - Franz Rosenzweig's relevance to contemporary Jewish-Christian understanding (Lanham, 1989) Putnam, Hilary Jewish philosophy as a guide to life - Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (Bloomington, IN, 2008) Rahel-Freund, Else Die Existenz philosophie Franz Rosenzweigs (Breslau 1933, Hamburg 1959) Rahel-Freund, Else Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy of existence - an analysis of The star of redemption (The Hague, 1979) Samuelson, Norbert Max, The Legacy of Franz Rosenzweig: Collected Essays (Cornell University Press, 2004) Santner, Eric L. The Psychotheology of Everyday Life - Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig (Chicago, IL, 2001) Schwartz, Michal. "Metapher und Offenbarung. Zur Sprache von Franz Rosenzweigs Stern der Erlösung" (Berlin, 2003) Tolone, Oreste. "La malattia immortale. Nuovo pensiero e nuova medicina tra Rosenzweig e Weizsäcker", (Pisa 2008) Zohar Mihaely, "Rosenzweig's Critique of Islam and its Value Today", in: Roczniki Kulturoznawcze Vol. 11 No. 2 (2020) pp. 5–34. == External links == Arnold Betz's essay on Rosenzweig and The Star of Redemption at Vanderbilt University Franz Rosenzweig's Der Stern der Erlösung online (in German) Review of The Star of Redemption by Spengler in Asia Times Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Franz Rosenzweig Guide to the Papers of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Guide to the Franz Rosenzweig - Martin Buber notebooks at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

Walter Terence Stace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Terence_Stace

Walter Terence Stace (17 November 1886 – 2 August 1967) was a British civil servant, educator, public philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, mysticism, and moral relativism. He worked with the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910 to 1932, and from 1932 to 1955 he was employed by Princeton University in the Department of Philosophy. He is most renowned for his work in the philosophy of mysticism, and for books like Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) and Teachings of the Mystics (1960). These works have been influential in the study of mysticism, but they have also been severely criticised for their lack of methodological rigor and their perennialist pre-assumptions. == Early life and education == Walter Terence Stace was born in Hampstead, London into an English military family. He was a son of Major Edward Vincent Stace (3 September 1841 – 6 May 1903) (of the Royal Artillery) and Amy Mary Watson (1856 - 29 March 1934), who were married on 21 December 1872 in Poona (Pune), India. In addition to attaining high rank in the Royal Artillery, Walter's father Edward had also served as a British Political Agent (February 1889-August 1893) in British Somaliland. Walter's great-grandfather William Stace (1755 - 31 May 1839) was Chief Commissary (Commissary-General) of the Royal Artillery during the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815). Walter's mother Amy was a daughter of Rev. George Augustus Frederick Watson (1821-1897) and Elizabeth Mary Williams, who were married on 15 June 1852 in St. James' Church, Paddington, London. Rev. G. A. F. Watson was vicar (1877-1893) of St. Margaret's Church in Abbotsley, Huntingdonshire/Cambridgeshire. Instead of pursuing a military career, Walter decided to follow a religious and philosophical path. He was educated at Bath College (1895-1901), Fettes College (in Edinburgh, Scotland) (1902-1904), and later at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). His original intention was to become a priest in the Anglican Church, having experienced a religious conversion in his teens. However, while at Trinity College, through the influence of Hegel scholar Henry Stewart Macran (1867-1937) (professor of moral philosophy in Trinity College) he developed a deep interest in the systematic philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), and graduated in philosophy in 1908. == Career == Under family pressure Stace joined the British Civil Service, and between 1910 and 1932 he served in the Ceylon Civil Service (now Sri Lanka) which was then a part of the British Empire. He held several positions in the Ceylonese government, including District Judge (1919-1920) and Mayor of Colombo (1931-1932), the capital city of Ceylon. In Colombo a street named after him (Stace Road) still exists. It was during his period in Ceylon that he developed an interest in Hinduism and Buddhism, religions which were to influence his subsequent studies of mysticism. While employed by the Ceylon Civil Service, during the period 1920-1932 Stace published 4 philosophical works (see below). Anticipating a change in the Ceylonese government and a possible termination of his employment, in 1929 Stace earned a LittD from Trinity College after he presented the college with a thesis, The Theory of Knowledge and Existence. In 1932 this thesis was published as a book by Oxford University Press. The LittD degree, and the 4 books he had published while an employee of the Ceylon Civil Service, proved to be the keys to his entry into a new career. After being employed for 22 years (1910-1932) in the Ceylon Civil Service, in 1932 Stace was offered the option of retirement, which he took. He then moved to Princeton University (in Princeton, New Jersey, USA) where he was employed by the Department of Philosophy, first as lecturer in Philosophy (1932-1935) and then as Stuart Professor of Philosophy (1935-1955). In 1949-1950 he was president of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division). Stace retired from Princeton University in 1955. From 1955 to 1967 he held the title/status of Professor Emeritus.Stace was married twice. His first wife, Adelaide McKechnie (born 1868 in Carlow, Ireland), was 18 years older. He married Adelaide in 1910 and divorced her in 1924. His second wife was Blanche Bianca Beven (4 August 1897 – 17 July 1986), whom he married in 1926. Blanche was born in Colombo, Ceylon and died in Los Angeles County, California. Walter Terence Stace died on 2 August 1967, of a heart attack at his home in Laguna Beach, California. == Philosophy == Stace's first 4 books - A Critical History of Greek Philosophy (1920), The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition (1924), The Meaning of Beauty (1929), and The Theory of Knowledge and Existence (1932) - were all published while he was employed by the Ceylon Civil Service. After these early works, his philosophy followed the British empiricist tradition of David Hume, G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell and H.H. Price. However, for Stace, empiricism did not need to be confined to propositions which it is possible to demonstrate. Instead, our common sense beliefs find support in two empirical facts: (1) men's minds are similar (2) men co-operate with each other, with the aim of solving their common problems.Stace is regarded as a pioneer in the philosophical study of mysticism. Many scholars regard Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) as his major work. Stace was the dissertation advisor of John Rawls when Rawls was a graduate student at Princeton, though it is not clear that he had a strong influence on Rawls. Richard Marius attributed his loss of faith partly to his intellectual engagement with Stace's essay Man Against Darkness. === Phenomenalist philosophy === His work in the 1930s and 40s bears a strong influence of phenomenalism, a form of radical empiricism (not to be confused with phenomenology, which examines the structure and content of consciousness). In his first book published while at Princeton, The Theory of Knowledge and Existence (1932), Stace proposes an empirical epistemology. He attempts to "trace out the logical steps by which the mind, starting with what is given, arrives at and justifies its belief in an external world". The book can be seen as a criticism of pragmatism. His paper Refutation of Realism (1934) acted as a response to G.E. Moore's famous refutation of idealism. Stace did not argue that realism is false, but that "there is absolutely no reason for asserting" it is true, so it "ought not be believed". Turning from epistemology to ethics, in 1937 he considered whether morals were relative or subject to a general law in The Concept of Morals. === The public philosopher === In 1948, Stace wrote an influential essay, Man Against Darkness, for The Atlantic Review in which he examined religion. He concluded that the spirit of scientific enquiry (rather than scientific discoveries themselves) has furthered religious scepticism by undermining the teleological presumption of an ultimate 'final cause'. Concern with divine purpose of events had been replaced by investigation into what had caused them; the new imaginative picture of the world was dominated by the idea that life is purposeless and meaningless. The effects of this change included moral relativity, the individualisation of morality, and the loss of belief in free will. Stace wrote: Skepticism did not have to wait for the discoveries of Darwin and the geologists in the nineteenth century. It flooded the world immediately after the age of the rise of science. Neither the Copernican hypothesis nor any of Newton's or Galileo's particular discoveries were the real causes. Religious faith might well have accommodated itself to the new astronomy. The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when the scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called "final causes." ... If the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends, money, fame, art, science, and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center. Hence the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless, spirit of modern man. In the spring of 1949, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a forum called "The Social Implications of Scientific Progress—an Appraisal at Mid-Century." Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, Vannevar Bush, Nelson Rockefeller were amongst those in attendance. Stace took part in a discussion called 'Science, Materialism and the Human Spirit' alongside J. Seelye Bixler (1894-1985), Percy W. Bridgman and Jacques Maritain. He contributed an essay, The Need for a Secular Ethic, in which he concluded that although supernatural or metaphysical justifications for morality are in decline, this should not lead to a crisis of the moral faith if it is remembered that 'morals have a perfectly firm and objective foundation in the human personality'. In 1954, he gave the annual Howison Lecture in Philosophy at University of California, Berkeley, where he spoke on "Mysticism and Human Reason".In the fall of 1957, two years after retiring from his post at Princeton, Stace was involved in a controversy surrounding Dr. Joseph Hugh Halton (1913-1979), a member of the Roman Catholic Dominican Order (Order of Preachers) who was the Roman Catholic chaplain at Princeton University and the Director of the Aquinas Institute (located near the Princeton University campus). Halton criticised the university's 'abusive liberalism', and Stace was the first of those singled out for censure. Halton stated that 'Stace is enthroning the devil' and that he was 'professionally incompetent', while his philosophy was described as a 'metaphysical mambo'. The Princeton president Dr. Robert F. Goheen stripped Dr. Halton of his title, an action which was supported by Jacques Maritain, the noted Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian and former Princeton professor.Stace continued to engage with the public until the end of his career. Two of his final books, Religion and the Modern Mind (1952) and The Teachings of the Mystics (1960) were written for the general reader. He gave lectures at various university campuses around the United States, many of which were included in Man Against Darkness and other essays (1967). == Philosophy of religion and mysticism == It is in the philosophy of mysticism that Stace is both important and influential, and his thought is at its most original. He has been described as "one of the pioneers in the philosophical study of mysticism", as someone who laid out and offered solutions to the major issues in the study of the subject, and created an important phenomenological classification of mystical experience. Stace is seen as an important representative of the perennial philosophy (also known as the perennialism) that sees a universal core to religious feelings. However, although he is seen by many scholars as an important thinker to acknowledge, he is also one to dispute.Stace's philosophy of mysticism grew out of his earlier empiricist epistemology, although this is something many critics of his position fail to appreciate. The concept of the 'given', commonly used in phenomenalism to understand the nature of experience, is crucial to both his earlier epistemology and his later analysis. For Stace it lies at the basis of our knowledge of the external world and of ourselves. The given has an important epistemological function because it possesses the properties of certainty (infallibility, incorrigibility, indubitability), and it provides the ultimate justification for all forms of human knowledge. Stace's Theory of Knowledge and Existence (1932) explains that knowledge arises from the process of interpretation of the given, although he writes that it is not easy to distinguish between the given and interpretation of it. For Overall, the 'pure experience' or 'sensation' he refers to in Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) is the same as the given that he had been writing about earlier. === The 1952 books === In 1952 Stace published three books about religion. Each examined the struggle between the religious worldview and those of science and of naturalism, which he had begun to explore in his essays Man Against Darkness and The Need for a Secular Ethic in the 1940s. Religion and the Modern Mind is divided into three sections, the first of these looks at the medieval "world-picture" which Stace characterises as marked by a religious, moral and purposeful view of existence. The second section looks at the modern world, which is characterised by the rise of science and naturalism (although Stace denies that the latter logically follows from the former), and the Romantic reaction to this. The final section looks specifically at religion and morality in the modern world. Stace examines religious truth and its expression, and concludes that the latter necessarily takes symbolic form in much the same way as he does in Time and Eternity. He also roots morality in both utilitarian considerations and in mysticism, which together fuse into "a single homogeneous set of ideal ends".The Gate of Silence is a 50-page poetic meditation upon religion and naturalism in which Stace expounds "the doctrine of the flatness of the world", which is a world that is void of meaning, purpose and value, in which "the hogwash of spirituality" will provide no solace. In his prefatory note Stace explains that he wrote the book four years previously and that it "records the phase of intellectual and emotional experience through which the writer was passing at the time."Stace called Time and Eternity a "defence of religion" that also seeks to investigate how God can be both being and non-being. He roots the book in the ancient religious insight that "all religious thought and speech are through and through symbolic". Addressing the apparent inconsistency between the book and the naturalism of Man Against Darkness, he maintains that he does not withdraw his naturalism by "a jot or a tittle", but rather seeks "to add to it that other half of the truth which I now think naturalism misses." In addition to the symbolic nature of all religious expression, the book proposes the existence of two realms of being, time and eternity, which intersect but do not contradict each other. According to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, many consider this to be his most profound work. === The 1960 books === Stace published his two final books on religion in 1960. The Teachings of the Mystics (1960) was written for the general rather than academic reader. The book sets out a simplified version of his philosophy of religion found in Mysticism and Philosophy, and gives examples from writings of mystics (and occasionally from the scriptures of the world's principal religions) that illustrate his idea that mysticism is everywhere "the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things".Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) is generally regarded both as Stace's key work and one that is the "standard point of departure" in the critical study of mysticism. In it Stace explains that he writes as a philosopher, empiricist and analyst rather than mystic, and that mystical experience can and should be distinguished from its interpretation. He makes a distinctinction between extrovertive and introvertive mystical experience. In the former, the mystic perceives the unity in "the multiplicity of external material objects", while in the latter the mystic perceives the One within the depths of her consciousness "as the wholly naked One devoid of any plurality whatever". Stace also looks at whether mystical experience can be considered objective or subjective, and considers whether the relationship between God and the world should properly be considered pantheism, dualism or something else. He examines mysticism, logic and language, and concludes that the laws of logic do not apply to mysticism and that mystical experience is paradoxical but not ineffable (a development in his thought from Time and Eternity). Finally, Stace says he does not wish to be drawn into a battle of prejudices as to whether or not mysticism contributes to the moral good. Stace summarised his thought on mysticism in two lectures given at Mount Holyoke College in 1961, entitled The Psychology of Mysticism and The Philosophy of Mysticism respectively. In the former he states that the psychology of mysticism must rely on introspection, because it is the only method that is available to investigate the phenomenon, despite it being difficult to verify (unlike the inspection of physical events). Like William James, he distinguishes between ordinary and mystical consciousness; the former he describes as sensory-intellectual, while the latter contains neither sensory nor intellectual content. He then proceeds to layout the psychological qualities of mystical experience, which he roots in a passage from the Mandukya Upanishad: Undifferentiated unity Dissolution of the self Feeling of revelation or veracity of the event Feeling of blessedness and peace Feeling of serenity The transformation of the subject's moral character from evil towards good and nobility.Stace characterised his philosophy of mysticism as the examination of whether mystical experience is subjective or objective, that is whether it is imagined or real. Again he turns to the Mandukya Upanishad for his definition of mysticism, and identifies the realisation the personal self is identical with the infinite Self at the core of the experience. Although there are three causes for this (loss of individuality; transcending space and time; feeling of peace and bliss) these are not logical reasons. Further he holds that the unanimity of mystical experience across cultures is not an argument for its objectivity, as illusions can be found in all peoples and cultures. That mystical experience is found in all cultures indicates that it is a part of human nature. Next Stace asks how we can say if something is objective. He defines the most important criteria for determining objectivity as 'orderliness' - or keeping in order with the laws of nature - rather than verifiability. Mystical experience is neither orderly nor disorderly, so cannot be classed as either subjective or objective. Stace terms this "transsubjective" (because the notions of subjective and objective do not apply to the infinite). == Influence == Stace's schema of mystical experience formed the basis for the most commonly cited scale to measure reports of mystical experience, Ralph W. Hood's Mysticism-scale. == Criticism == Although Stace's work on mysticism received a positive response, it has also been criticised in the 1970s and 1980s, for its lack of methodological rigour and its perennialist pre-assumptions. Major criticism came from Steven T. Katz in his influential series of publications on mysticism and philosophy, and from Wayne Proudfoot in his Religious experience (1985).As early as 1961 the Times Literary Supplement was critical of Stace's scholarship: Professor Stace seems to have no knowledge of any Indian language and his examples are drawn from what is most monistic in the Upanishads and other sacred writings, usually in a very free translation not notable for its accuracy or for its lack of bias. Moore (1973) gives an overview of criticisms of Stace. He notes that the positing of a "phenomenological identity in mystical experiences" is problematic, which leads to either non-descriptive statements, or to value-laden statements on mystical experiences. Moore doubts whether Stace phenomenology of mystical experience is sufficient. Moore notes that Stace's quotations from mystical writings are brief, "often second-hand," and omitting the contexts of these quotations. Stace's list of characteristics hardly represents the broad variety of mystical experiences described by mystics. His "unitary consciousness" is only one characteristic, and not necessarily connected to illuminating insight. According to Moore, Stace also thinks too lightly about the relation between experience and language, supposing that descriptions are phenomenologically straightforward and reliable. Stace is also normative in his preference for monistic mysticism and his rejection of theistic mysticism. Moore concludes by noting that Stace fails to understand the difference between phenomenology and metaphysics, and that his writings don't provide solutions to the philosophical problems which mystical claims raise.Masson & Masson (1976) note that Stace starts with a "buried premise," namely that mysticism can provide truths about the world which cannot be obtained with science or logical thinking. According to Masson & Masson, this premise makes Stace naive in his approach, and which is not accord with his self-presentation as an objective and empirical philosopher. According to Masson & Masson, Stace fails in presenting mystical experiences as an objective source of information. They question Stace's exclusion of trances and other phenomena from his investigations, noting that such phenomena are an essential part of many descriptions of mystical experiences. They give the example of Ramakrishna, a 19th-century Indian mystic, who is presented without a critical consideration of the sources. They further note that Ramakrishna had delusions, a fact which they deem problematic for the use of Ramakrishna as a prime example of mystical consciousness. They further note that Stace seems to be unaware of the major relevant scholarly studies on mysticism at the time of his writings. According to Masson & Masson, Stace's criteria for inclusion and exclusion of cases are based on personal preferences, and "his work reads more like a theological text than a philosophical one."According to Katz (1978), Stace's typology is "too reductive and inflexible," reducing the complexities and varieties of mystical experience into "improper categories." According to Katz, Stace does not notice the difference between experience and interpretation of experience, and Stace fails to notice the epistemological issues involved in "mystical" experiences, especially the fundamental epistemological issue of which conceptual framework precedes and shapes these experiences. Katz further notes that Stace supposes that similarities in descriptive language also imply a similarity in experience, an assumption which Katz rejects. According to Katz, close examination of the descriptions and their contexts reveals that those experiences are not identical. Katz further notes that Stace held one specific mystical tradition to be superior and normative, whereas Katz rejects reductionist notions and leaves God as God, and Nirvana as Nirvana.In defense of Stace, Hood (2001) cites Forman, who argues that introverted mysticism is correctly conceptualized as a common core, since it lacks all content, and is the correct basis for a perennial philosophy. Hood notes that Stace's work is a conceptual approach, based on textual studies. He posits his own work as a parallel approach, based on an empirical approach, thereby placing the conceptual claims in an empirical framework, assuming that Stace is correct in his approach. Jacob van Belzen (2010) criticized Hood, noting that Hood validated the existence of a common core in mystical experiences, but based on a conceptual framework which presupposes the existence of such a common core: [T]he instrument used to verify Stace's conceptualization of Stace is not independent of Stace, but based on him." Belzen also notes that religion does not stand on its own, but is embedded in a cultural context, and this should be taken into account. To this criticism Hood et al. answer that universalistic tendencies in religious research "are rooted first in inductive generalizations from cross-cultural consideration of either faith or mysticism," stating that Stace sought out texts which he recognized as an expression of mystical expression, from which he created his universal core. Hood therefore concludes that Belzen "is incorrect when he claims that items were presupposed."Shear (2011) notes that Stace regarded extroverted mysticism to be a less complete form of mysticism, but was puzzled by the fact that there are far more descriptions of introverted mysticism than of extroverted mysticism. Shear proposes a developmental sequence of three higher states of consciousness: the recognition of pure consciousness/emptiness the stable presence of this pure consciousness/emptiness throughout all activity the recognition of this pure consciousness/emptiness as the ground of all beingAccording to Shear, HS1 corresponds to Stace's introverted mysticism, whereas HS3 corresponds to Stace's extroverted mysticism, and is actually the more developed form of mysticism, in contrast to what Stace supposed. == Works == A Critical History of Greek Philosophy (1920) Online text The Philosophy of Hegel: A systematic exposition (1924) Online text The Meaning of Beauty (1929) The Theory of Knowledge and Existence (1932) The Concept of Morals (1937) The Nature of the World. An Essay in Phenomenalist Metaphysics (1940) The Destiny of Western Man (1942) What are Our Values? (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1950) Religion and the modern mind (1952) Time and Eternity (Princeton: University Press, 1952) Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) Full text online Teachings of the Mystics (1960) Man against darkness, and other essays (1967) == See also == William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience Richard Maurice Bucke and Cosmic Consciousness Aldous Huxley and The Perennial Philosophy Nondualism == Explanatory notes == == References == == Sources == === Printed sources === === Web-sources === == Further reading == Mohammad Fanaei Nematsara, Walter Stace's philosophy of mysticism: a critical analysis == External links == Short biography at Princeton University Slide show on some of Stace's ideas Introductory chapter, The Teachings of the Mystics Photograph of Walter Stace at LIFE, 12 August 1955 Works by Walter Terence Stace at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Walter Terence Stace at Internet Archive Works by Walter Terence Stace at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Karl Barth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth

Karl Barth (; German: [bart]; (1886-05-10)10 May 1886 – (1968-12-10)10 December 1968) was a Swiss Reformed theologian. Barth is best known for his commentary The Epistle to the Romans, his involvement in the Confessing Church, including his authorship (except for a single phrase) of the Barmen Declaration, and especially his unfinished multi-volume theological summa the Church Dogmatics (published between 1932–1967). Barth's influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of Time on 20 April 1962.Like many Protestant theologians of his generation, Barth was educated in a liberal theology influenced by Adolf von Harnack, Friedrich Schleiermacher and others. His pastoral career began in the rural Swiss town of Safenwil, where he was known as the "Red Pastor from Safenwil". There he became increasingly disillusioned with the liberal Christianity in which he had been trained. This led him to write the first edition of his The Epistle to the Romans (a.k.a. Romans I), published in 1919, in which he resolved to read the New Testament differently. Barth began to gain substantial worldwide acclaim with the publication in 1921 of the second edition of his commentary, The Epistle to the Romans, in which he openly broke from liberal theology.He influenced many significant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer who supported the Confessing Church, and Jürgen Moltmann, Helmut Gollwitzer, James H. Cone, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Rudolf Bultmann, Thomas F. Torrance, Hans Küng, and also Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacques Ellul, and novelists such as Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, and Miklós Szentkuthy. Among many other areas, Barth has also had a profound influence on modern Christian ethics, influencing the work of ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Jacques Ellul and Oliver O'Donovan. == Early life and education == Karl Barth was born on 10 May 1886, in Basel, Switzerland, to Johann Friedrich "Fritz" Barth (1852–1912) and Anna Katharina (Sartorius) Barth (1863–1938). Karl had two younger brothers, Peter Barth (1888–1940) and Heinrich Barth (1890–1965), and two sisters, Katharina and Gertrude. Fritz Barth was a theology professor and pastor and desired for Karl to follow his positive line of Christianity, which clashed with Karl's desire to receive a liberal Protestant education. Karl began his student career at the University of Bern, and then transferred to the University of Berlin to study under Adolf von Harnack, and then transferred briefly to the University of Tübingen before finally in Marburg to study under Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922).From 1911 to 1921, Barth served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton of Aargau. In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffmann, a talented violinist. They had a daughter and four sons, two of whom were Biblical scholars and theologians Markus (6 October 1915 – 1 July 1994) and Christoph Barth (1917–1986). Later Karl Barth was professor of theology in Göttingen (1921–1925), Münster (1925–1930) and Bonn (1930–1935), in Germany. While serving at Göttingen he met Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who became his long-time secretary and assistant; she played a large role in the writing of his epic, the Church Dogmatics. He was deported from Germany in 1935 after he refused to sign (without modification) the Oath of Loyalty to Adolf Hitler and went back to Switzerland and became a professor in Basel (1935–1962). == Break from Liberal theology == Liberal theology (German, moderne Theologie) was a trend in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Protestant theology to reinterpret traditional beliefs in two ways. First, it adopted an historical-critical approach to the sources of Christianity. Second, it engaged with the questions that science, philosophy and other disciplines raised for the Christian faith. Barth's striking out on a different theological course from that of his Liberal university teachers Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann was due to several significant influences and events. While Pastor at Safenwil, Barth had an influential friendship with neighbouring Pastor Eduard Thurneysen. Troubled that their theological educations had left them ill-equipped to preach God's message effectively, they together engaged in an intensive quest to find a 'wholly other' theological foundation than that which Schleiermacher had proposed.In August 1914, Karl Barth was dismayed to learn that his venerated teachers including Adolf von Harnack had signed the "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals to the Civilized World"; as a result, Barth concluded he could not follow their understanding of the Bible and history any longer. In 1915, Barth and Thurneysen visited Christoph Blumhardt, Leader of the Bad Boll Christian Community and Social Democratic politician. Their conversation made a deep impression on Barth. He later commented that "Blumhardt always begins with God's presence, power, and purpose," which indicates a likely influence in shaping his own theocentric starting-point. Barth also found in Blumhardt's pro-Socialist politics an inspiring encouragement for his own advocacy for the rights and unionization of Safenwil textile workers and alignment with Social Democratic values. These activities, and a public disagreement with a local factory owner, earned him local notoriety as the 'Red Pastor'. Blumhardt's resolute anti-war stance probably strengthened Barth's anti-war activism. Although in one sense it is accurate to say that Barth's Dialectical approach sought deliberately to destabilize the assumptions of Liberal theology; in another sense it is important to acknowledge that Barth never totally repudiated the historical-critical approach to the Scriptures. In addition, he continued to engage with the questions that other disciplines raised for the Christian faith, typically responding with a robust theological and Christ-centered approach. == The Epistle to the Romans == Barth first began his commentary The Epistle to the Romans (German: Der Römerbrief) in the summer of 1916 while he was still a pastor in Safenwil, with the first edition appearing in December 1918 (but with a publication date of 1919). On the strength of the first edition of the commentary, Barth was invited to teach at the University of Göttingen. Barth decided around October 1920 that he was dissatisfied with the first edition and heavily revised it the following eleven months, finishing the second edition around September 1921. Particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922, Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions. The book's popularity led to its republication and reprinting in several languages. == Barmen Declaration == In 1934, as the Protestant Church attempted to come to terms with Nazi Germany, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen Declaration (Barmer Erklärung). This declaration rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity by arguing that the Church's allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ should give it the impetus and resources to resist the influence of other lords, such as the German Führer, Adolf Hitler. Barth mailed this declaration to Hitler personally. This was one of the founding documents of the Confessing Church and Barth was elected a member of its leadership council, the Bruderrat. He was forced to resign from his professorship at the University of Bonn in 1935 for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler. Barth then returned to his native Switzerland, where he assumed a chair in systematic theology at the University of Basel. In the course of his appointment, he was required to answer a routine question asked of all Swiss civil servants: whether he supported the national defence. His answer was, "Yes, especially on the northern border!" The newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung carried his 1936 criticism of the philosopher Martin Heidegger for his support of the Nazis. In 1938 he wrote a letter to a Czech colleague Josef Hromádka in which he declared that soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany were serving a Christian cause. == Church Dogmatics == Barth's theology found its most sustained and compelling expression in his five-volume magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics (Kirchliche Dogmatik). Widely regarded as an important theological work, the Church Dogmatics represents the pinnacle of Barth's achievement as a theologian. Church Dogmatics runs to over six million words and 9,000 pages – one of the longest works of systematic theology ever written. The Church Dogmatics is in five volumes: the Doctrine of the Word of God, the Doctrine of God, the Doctrine of Creation, the Doctrine of Reconciliation and the Doctrine of Redemption. Barth's planned fifth volume was never written and the fourth volume's final part-volume was unfinished. == Later life and death == After the end of the Second World War, Barth became an important voice in support both of German penitence and of reconciliation with churches abroad. Together with Hans Iwand, he authored the Darmstadt Statement in 1947 – a more concrete statement of German guilt and responsibility for Nazi Germany and the Second World War than the 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. In it, he made the point that the Church's willingness to side with anti-socialist and conservative forces had led to its susceptibility to National Socialist ideology. In the context of the developing Cold War, that controversial statement was rejected by anti-Communists in the West who supported the CDU course of re-militarization, as well as by East German dissidents who believed that it did not sufficiently depict the dangers of Communism. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950. In the 1950s, Barth sympathized with the peace movement and opposed German rearmament. Barth was exempted from a regulation that limited the tenure of a professorship at the University of Basel to the year they were 70 years of age, which he would have reached in 1956.Barth wrote a 1960 article for The Christian Century regarding the "East–West question" in which he denied any inclination toward Eastern communism and stated he did not wish to live under Communism or wish anyone to be forced to do so; he acknowledged a fundamental disagreement with most of those around him, writing: "I do not comprehend how either politics or Christianity require [sic] or even permit such a disinclination to lead to the conclusions which the West has drawn with increasing sharpness in the past 15 years. I regard anticommunism as a matter of principle an evil even greater than communism itself."In 1962, Barth visited the United States and lectured at Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Chicago, the Union Theological Seminary and the San Francisco Theological Seminary. He was invited to be a guest at the Second Vatican Council. At the time Barth's health did not permit him to attend. However, he was able to visit the Vatican and be a guest of the pope in 1967, after which he wrote the small volume Ad Limina Apostolorum (At the Threshold of the Apostles).Barth was featured on the cover of the 20 April 1962 issue of Time magazine, an indication that his influence had reached out of academic and ecclesiastical circles and into mainstream American religious culture. Pope Pius XII is often claimed to have said Barth was "the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas," though Fergus Kerr observes that "there is never chapter and verse for the quotation" and it is sometimes attributed to Pope Paul VI instead.Barth died on 10 December 1968, at his home in Basel, Switzerland. The evening before his death, he had encouraged his lifelong friend Eduard Thurneysen that he should not be downhearted, "For things are ruled, not just in Moscow or in Washington or in Peking, but things are ruled – even here on earth—entirely from above, from heaven above." == Theology == Karl Barth's most significant theological work is his summa theology titled the Church Dogmatics, which contains Barth's doctrine of the word of God, doctrine of God, doctrine of reconciliation and doctrine of redemption. Barth is most well known for reorienting all theological discussion around Jesus. === Trinitarian focus === One major objective of Barth is to recover the doctrine of the Trinity in theology from its putative loss in liberalism. His argument follows from the idea that God is the object of God's own self-knowledge, and revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling to humanity of the God who cannot be discovered by humanity simply through its own intuition. God's revelation comes to man 'vertically from above' (Senkrecht von Oben). === Election === One of the most influential and controversial features of Barth's Dogmatics was his doctrine of election (Church Dogmatics II/2). Barth's theology entails a rejection of the idea that God chose each person to either be saved or damned based on purposes of the Divine will, and it was impossible to know why God chose some and not others.Barth's doctrine of election involves a firm rejection of the notion of an eternal, hidden decree. In keeping with his Christo-centric methodology, Barth argues that to ascribe the salvation or damnation of humanity to an abstract absolute decree is to make some part of God more final and definitive than God's saving act in Jesus Christ. God's absolute decree, if one may speak of such a thing, is God's gracious decision to be for humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Drawing from the earlier Reformed tradition, Barth retains the notion of double predestination but makes Jesus himself the object of both divine election and reprobation simultaneously; Jesus embodies both God's election of humanity and God's rejection of human sin. While some regard this revision of the doctrine of election as an improvement on the Augustinian-Calvinist doctrine of the predestination of individuals, critics, namely Emil Brunner, have charged that Barth's view amounts to a soft universalism, thereby departing from Augustinian-Calvinism. Barth's doctrine of objective atonement develops as he distances himself from Anselm of Canterbury's doctrine of the atonement. In The Epistle to the Romans, Barth endorses Anselm's idea that God who is robbed of his honor must punish those who robbed him. In Church Dogmatics I/2, Barth advocates divine freedom in the incarnation with the support of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo. Barth holds that Anselm's doctrine of the atonement preserves both God's freedom and the necessity of Christ's incarnation. The positive endorsement of Anselmian motives in Cur Deus Homo continues in Church Dogmatics II/1. Barth maintains with Anselm that the sin of humanity cannot be removed by the merciful act of divine forgiveness alone. In Church Dogmatics IV/1, however, Barth's doctrine of the atonement diverges from that of Anselm. By over-christologizing the doctrine, Barth completes his formulation of objective atonement. He finalizes the necessity of God's mercy at the place where Anselm firmly establishes the dignity and freedom of the will of God. In Barth's view, God's mercy is identified with God's righteousness in a distinctive way where God's mercy always takes the initiative. The change in Barth's reception of Anselm's doctrine of the atonement is, therefore, alleged to show that Barth's doctrine entails support for universalism. === Salvation === Barth argued that previous perspectives on sin and salvation, influenced by strict Calvinist thinking, sometimes misled Christians into thinking that predestination set up humanity such that the vast majority of human beings were foreseen to disobey and reject God, with damnation coming to them as a matter of fate. Barth's view of salvation is centrally Christological, with his writings stating that in Jesus Christ the reconciliation of all of mankind to God has essentially already taken place and that through Christ man is already elect and justified. Karl Barth denied that he was a Universalist: "I do not believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, reconciler of all.". However, Barth asserted that eternal salvation for everyone, even those that reject God, is a possibility that is not just an open question but should be hoped for by Christians as a matter of grace; specifically, he wrote, "Even though theological consistency might seem to lead our thoughts and utterances most clearly in this direction, we must not arrogate to ourselves that which can be given and received only as a free gift", just hoping for total reconciliation.Barth, in the words of a later scholar, went a "significant step beyond traditional theology" in that he argued against more conservative strains of Protestant Christianity in which damnation is seen as an absolute certainty for many or most people. To Barth, Christ's grace is central. === Understanding of Mary === Unlike many Protestant theologians, Barth wrote on the topic of Mariology (the theological study of Mary). Barth's views on the subject agreed with much Catholic dogma but he disagreed with the Catholic veneration of Mary. Aware of the common dogmatic tradition of the early Church, Barth fully accepted the dogma of Mary as the Mother of God, seeing a rejection of that title equivalent to rejecting the doctrine that Christ's human and divine natures are inseparable (contra the Nestorian heresy). Through Mary, Jesus belongs to the human race. Through Jesus, Mary is Mother of God. === Criticism by reformed conservatives === Barth's doctrine of scripture was criticised by Cornelius Van Til, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and others in the confessional reformed tradition. Chapter VIII of Van Til's, Christianity and Barthianism (1962), critiques Barth's view of revelation and das Wort Gottes ('the Word of God'). == Charlotte von Kirschbaum == Charlotte von Kirschbaum was Barth's theological academic colleague for more than three decades. George Hunsinger summarizes the influence of von Kirschbaum on Barth's work: "As his unique student, critic, researcher, adviser, collaborator, companion, assistant, spokesperson, and confidante, Charlotte von Kirschbaum was indispensable to him. He could not have been what he was, or have done what he did, without her." In 2017 Christiane Tietz examined intimate letters written by Barth, Charlotte von Kirschbaum, and Nelly Barth, which discuss the complicated relationship between all three individuals that occurred over the span of 40 years. The letters between von Kirschbaum and Barth from 1925 to 1935 made public "the deep, intense, and overwhelming love between these two human beings," through the lengthy period in which von Kirschbaum lived in the same house as Barth and his wife Nelly. In them, Barth describes a permanent conflict between his marriage and his affections for von Kirschbaum: "The way I am, I never could and still cannot deny either the reality of my marriage or the reality of my love. It is true that I am married, that I am a father and a grandfather. It is also true that I love. And it is true that these two facts don't match. This is why we, after some hesitation at the beginning, decided not to solve the problem with a separation on one or the other side." When Charlotte von Kirschbaum died in 1975, Barth's wife Nelly buried Charlotte in the family tomb. Nelly died the following year. == In literature == In John Updike's Roger's Version, Roger Lambert is a professor of religion. Lambert is influenced by the works of Karl Barth. That is the primary reason that he rejects his student's attempt to use computational methods to understand God. Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven makes mentions of Barth's Church Dogmatics, as does David Markson's The Last Novel. In the case of Mulisch and Markson, it is the ambitious nature of the Church Dogmatics that seems to be of significance. In the case of Updike, it is the emphasis on the idea of God as "Wholly Other" that is emphasized. In Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, the preacher John Ames reveres Barth's "Epistle to the Romans" and refers to it as his favorite book other than the Bible. Whittaker Chambers cites Barth in nearly all his books: Witness (p. 507), Cold Friday (p. 194), and Odyssey of a Friend (pp. 201, 231). In Flannery O'Connor's letter to Brainard Cheney, she said, "I distrust folks who have ugly things to say about Karl Barth. I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around." == Center for Barth Studies == Princeton Theological Seminary, where Barth lectured in 1962, houses the Center for Barth Studies, which is dedicated to supporting scholarship related to the life and theology of Karl Barth. The Barth Center was established in 1997 and sponsors seminars, conferences, and other events. It also holds the Karl Barth Research Collection, the largest in the world, which contains nearly all of Barth's works in English and German, several first editions of his works, and an original handwritten manuscript by Barth. == Writings == The Epistle to the Romans (Der Römerbrief I, 1st ed., 1919) The Epistle to the Romans (Der Römerbrief. Zweite Fassung, 1922). E. C. Hoskyns, trans. London: Oxford University Press, 1933, 1968 ISBN 0-19-500294-6 The Word of God and The Word of Man (Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 1928). New York: Harper & Bros, 1957. ISBN 978-0-8446-1599-8; The Word of God and Theology. Amy Marga, trans. New York: T & T Clark, 2011. Preaching Through the Christian Year. H. Wells and J. McTavish, eds. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1978. ISBN 0-8028-1725-4 God Here and Now. London: Routledge, 1964. Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of His Theological Scheme (written in 1931). I. W. Robertson, trans. London: SCM, 1960; reprinted by Pickwick Publications (1985) ISBN 0-915138-75-1 Church and State. G.R. Howe, trans. London: SCM, 1939. The Church and the War. A. H. Froendt, trans. New York: Macmillan, 1944. Prayer according to the Catechisms of the Reformation. S.F. Terrien, trans. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952 (Also published as: Prayer and Preaching. London: SCM, 1964). The Humanity of God, J.N. Thomas and T. Wieser, trans. Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1960. ISBN 0-8042-0612-0 Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1963. The Christian Life. Church Dogmatics IV/4: Lecture Fragments. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981. ISBN 0-567-09320-4, ISBN 0-8028-3523-6 The Word in this World: Two Sermons by Karl Barth. Edited by Kurt I. Johanson. Regent Publishing (Vancouver, BC, Canada): 2007 "No Angels of Darkness and Light," The Christian Century, 20 January 1960, p. 72 (reprinted in Contemporary Moral Issues. H. K. Girvetz, ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1963. pp. 6–8). The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1. G.W. Bromiley, trans. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991. ISBN 0-8028-2421-8 Dogmatics in Outline (1947 lectures), Harper Perennial, 1959, ISBN 0-06-130056-X A Unique Time of God: Karl Barth's WWI Sermons, William Klempa, editor. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. On Religion. Edited and translated by Garrett Green. London: T & T Clark, 2006. === The Church Dogmatics in English translation === Volume I Part 1: Doctrine of the Word of God: Prolegomena to Church Dogmatics, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09013-2, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05059-9 (German: 1932) Volume I Part 2: Doctrine of the Word of God, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09012-4, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05069-6 (German: 1938) Volume II Part 1: The Doctrine of God: The Knowledge of God; The Reality of God, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09021-3, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05169-2 (German: 1940) Volume II Part 2: The Doctrine of God: The Election of God; The Command of God, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09022-1, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05179-X (German: 1942) Volume III Part 1: The Doctrine of Creation: The Work of Creation, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09031-0, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05079-3 (German: 1945) Volume III Part 2: The Doctrine of Creation: The Creature, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09032-9, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05089-0 (German: 1948) Volume III Part 3: The Doctrine of Creation: The Creator and His Creature, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09033-7, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05099-8 (German: 1950) Volume III Part 4: The Doctrine of Creation: The Command of God the Creator, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09034-5, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05109-9 (German: 1951) Volume IV Part 1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09041-8, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05129-3 (German: 1953) Volume IV Part 2: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the Servant As Lord, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09042-6, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05139-0 (German: 1955) Volume IV Part 3, first half: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the True Witness, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09043-4, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05189-7 (German: 1959) Volume IV Part 3, second half: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the True Witness, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09044-2, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05149-8 (German: 1959) Volume IV Part 4 (unfinished): Doctrine of Reconciliation: The Foundation of the Christian Life (Baptism), hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09045-0, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05159-5 (German: 1967) Volume V: Church Dogmatics: Contents and Indexes, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09046-9, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05119-6 Church Dogmatics, 14 volume set, softcover, ISBN 0-567-05809-3 Church Dogmatics: A Selection, with intro. by H. Gollwitzer, 1961, Westminster John Knox Press 1994, ISBN 0-664-25550-7 Church Dogmatics, dual language German and English, books with CD-ROM, ISBN 0-567-08374-8 Church Dogmatics, dual language German and English, CD-ROM only, ISBN 0-567-08364-0 === Audio === Evangelical Theology, American lectures 1962 – given by Barth in Chicago, Illinois and Princeton, New Jersey, ISBN 978-0-9785738-0-5 and ISBN 0-9785738-0-3 == See also == First they came ... Frederick Herzog Neo-orthodoxy == References == == Sources == "Witness to an Ancient Truth". Time. 20 April 1962. Archived from the original on 6 July 2007. Retrieved 17 November 2012. Bradshaw, Timothy. 1988. Trinity and Ontology: A Comparative Study of the Theologies of Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Rutherford House Books, reprint, Lewiston; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press for Rutherford House, Edinburgh, 1992. Braaten, Carl E. (2008). That All May Believe: A Theology of the Gospel and the Mission of the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0802862396. Retrieved 19 October 2015. Bromiley, Geoffrey William. An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1979. Buclin, Hadrien, Entre culture du consensus et critique sociale. Les intellectuels de gauche dans la Suisse de l'après-guerre, Thèse de doctorat, Université de Lausanne, 2015. Busch, Eberhard. Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976. ——— (2004), The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans. Chung, Paul S. Karl Barth: God's Word in Action. James Clarke & Co, Cambridge (2008), ISBN 978-0-227-17266-7. Chung, Sung Wook. Admiration and Challenge: Karl Barth's Theological Relationship with John Calvin. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. ISBN 978-0-820-45680-5. Chung, Sung Wook, ed. Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008.ISBN 978-0-801-03127-4. Clark, Gordon. Karl Barth's Theological Method. Trinity Foundation (1997, 2nd ed.), 1963. ISBN 0-940931-51-6. Fiddes, Paul. 'The status of women in the thought of Karl Barth', in Janet Martin Soskice, ed., After Eve [alternative title After Eve: women, theology and the Christian tradition], 1990, pp. 138–55. Marshall Pickering Fink, Heinrich. "Karl Barth und die Bewegung Freies Deutschland in der Schweiz." [Doctoral dissertation.] "Karl Barth und die Bewegung Freies Deutschland in der Schweiz : Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor scientiae theologiae (Dr.sc.theol.), vorgelegt dem Senat des Wissenschaftlichen Rates der Humboldt-Universitaaet zu Berlin." Berlin, H. Fink [Selfpublisher], 1978. Galli, Mark (2000). "Neo-Orthodoxy: Karl Barth". Christianity Today. Gherardini, Brunero. "A domanda risponde. In dialogo con Karl Barth sulle sue 'Domande a Roma' (A Question Answered. In Dialogue with Karl Barth on His 'Questions in Rome')". Frigento (Italy): Casa Mariana Editrice, 2011. ISBN 978-88-9056-111-5. Gignilliat, Mark S (2009). Karl Barth and the Fifth Gospel: Barth's Theological Exegesis of Isaiah. Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0754658566. Retrieved 19 October 2015. Gorringe, Timothy. Karl Barth: Against Hegemony. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hunsinger, George. How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Jae Jin Kim. Die Universalitaet der Versoehnung im Gottesbund. Zur biblischen Begruendung der Bundestheologie in der kirchlichen Dogmatik Karl Barths, Lit Verlag, 1992. Mangina, Joseph L. Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004. McCormack, Bruce. Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936. Oxford University Press, USA (27 March 1997), ISBN 978-0-19-826956-4 McKenny, Gerald. "The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth's Moral Theology." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 0-19-958267-X. Oakes, Kenneth. Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Oakes, Kenneth. Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans. Eugene: Cascade, 2011. Webster, John. Barth. 2nd ed., London: Continuum, 2004. Webster, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. == External links == aPublications by and about Karl Barth in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library "Top Ten Theologians: Karl Barth", Reclaiming the mind, Parchment & Pen, August 2011, archived from the original on 15 December 2018, retrieved 12 August 2011 The Center for Barth Studies, Princeton Theological Seminary, archived from the original on 25 January 2013 Barth Literature Search Project, NL: PTHU, archived from the original on 2 March 2012. Complete bibliography of literature by and about Karl Barth. Karl Barth Reading Room, with extensive links to on-line primary and secondary sources, CA: Tyndale Seminary "Karl Barth". Time. 20 April 1962. Archived from the original on 1 March 2005. Karl Barth-Archiv Primer on Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics One Year With Karl Barth A year-long project promoting discussion and application of Barth's Church Dogmatics. Article on Barth and Visual Art Karl Barth: Courageous theologian article from Christianity Today Karl Barth Hub to organizations and resources associated with Karl Barth Newspaper clippings about Karl Barth in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

C. D. Broad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._D._Broad

Charlie Dunbar Broad (30 December 1887 – 11 March 1971), usually cited as C. D. Broad, was an English epistemologist, historian of philosophy, philosopher of science, moral philosopher, and writer on the philosophical aspects of psychical research. He was known for his thorough and dispassionate examinations of arguments in such works as Scientific Thought (1923), The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), and Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (2 vols., 1933–1938). Broad's essay on "Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism" in Ethics and the History of Philosophy (1952) introduced the philosophical terms occurrent causation and non-occurrent causation, which became the basis for the contemporary distinction between "agent-causal" and "event-causal" in debates on libertarian free will. == Biography == Broad was born in Harlesden, in Middlesex, England.He was educated at Dulwich College from 1900 until 1906. He gained a scholarship in 1906 to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1910 with First-Class Honours, with distinction. He became a Fellow of Trinity College the following year. === Career === As his fellowship at Trinity College was a non-residential position, he was also able to accept a position as an assistant lecturer that he had applied for at St Andrews University, where he remained until 1920. That year, he was appointed professor at Bristol University, working there until 1923, when he returned to Trinity as a lecturer. From 1926 until 1931, he was a lecturer in 'moral science' at Cambridge University's Faculty of Philosophy. Later at Cambridge, he was appointed in 1931 as 'Sidgwick Lecturer', a role he would keep until 1933, when he was appointed Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the university, a position he held for twenty years (until 1953). In 1927 he gave the British Academy's Master-Mind Lecture, entitled Sir Isaac Newton.In addition, Broad was President of the Aristotelian Society from 1927 to 1928, and again from 1954 to 1955. He was also President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1935 and 1958. === Personal life === Broad was openly homosexual at a time when homosexual acts were illegal. In March 1958, Broad along with fellow philosophers A.J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, writer J.B. Priestley and 27 others sent a letter to The Times which urged the acceptance of the Wolfenden Report's recommendation that homosexual acts should "no longer be a criminal offence." == Theory == === Psychical research === Broad argued that if research could demonstrate that psychic events occur, this would challenge philosophical theories of "basic limiting principles" in at least five ways: Backward causation (i.e., the future affecting the past) is rejected by many philosophers, but would be shown to occur if, for example, people could predict the future. One common argument against dualism (i.e., the belief that, while bodies are physical entities, minds are a different, non-physical sort of entity) is that physical and non-physical things cannot interact. However, this would be shown to be possible if people can move physical objects by thought (telekinesis). Similarly, philosophers tend to be skeptical about claims that non-physical 'stuff' could interact with anything. This would also be challenged if minds are shown to be able to communicate with each other, as would be the case if mind-reading is possible. Philosophers generally accept that we can only learn about the world through reason and perception. This belief would be challenged if people were able to psychically perceive events in other places. Physicalist philosophers believe that there cannot be persons without bodies. If ghosts were shown to exist, this view would be challenged. === Free will === In his essay "Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism", Broad argued for non-occurrent causation as "literally determined by the agent or self." The agent could be considered as a substance or continuant, and not by a total cause which contains as factors events in and dispositions of the agent. Thus, our efforts would be completely determined, but their causes would not be prior events. New series of events would then originate, which he called "continuants", which are essentially causa sui. Peter van Inwagen says that Broad formulated an excellent version of what van Inwagen has called the "Consequence Argument" in defence of incompatibilism. == Works == 1914. Perception, physics and reality. An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can Supply about the Real. London: Cambridge University Press. perceptionphysic00broarich at the Internet Archive. 1923. Scientific thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. (scientificthough00broauoft at the Internet Archive). 1925. The Mind and Its Place in Nature. London: Kegan. 1926. The Philosophy of Francis Bacon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1930. Five types of ethical theory. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1931. War Thoughts in Peace Time. London: Humphrey Milford. 1933. Examination of McTaggart's philosophy. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. 1934. Determinism, interdeterminism and libertarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1938. Examination of McTaggart's philosophy. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press. 1952/2000. Ethics and the History of Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22530-2. 1953/2000. Religion, Philosophy and Psychic Research. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22558-2. 1955. Human Personality and the Possibility of Its Survival. University of California Press. 1958. Personal Identity and Survival. London: Society for Psychical Research. 1962. Lectures on Psychical Research. Incorporating the Perrott Lectures given in Cambridge University in 1959 and 1960. New York: Humanities Press. contains Saltmarsh's Investigation of Mrs Warren Elliott's Mediumship." Lectures on Psychical Research. Incorporating the Perrott Lectures given in Cambridge University in 1959 and 1960. New York: Humanities Press. 1968. Induction, Probability, and Causation. Selected Papers of C. D. Broad, Dordrecht: Reidel. 1971. Broad's Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy, New York: Humanities Press. 1975. Leibniz: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20691-X 1976. Berkeley's Argument. Haskell House Pub Ltd. 1978. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-21755-5 1985. Ethics. Dordrecht: Nijhoff. == Notes == == References == == Sources == Borchert, Donald M., ed. 2006. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 1 (2nd ed.). Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference. == Further reading == Britton, Karl. 1978. "Charlie Dunbar Broad, 1887–1971." Proceedings of the British Academy 64:289–310. Schilpp, Paul. 1959. The Philosophy of C. D. Broad. Tudor: New York. == External links == Charlie Dunbar Broad entry at The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy C. D. Broad: a bibliography. Provides full pdf's of most of Broad's writings. C. D. Broad on Digital Text International Papers of Charlie Dunbar Broad

Ludwig Wittgenstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( VIT-gən-s(h)tyne; German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈjoːzɛf 'joːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. In spite of his position, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the 75-page Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise, 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a book review; and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. A survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations".His philosophy is often divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus, and a later period, articulated primarily in the Philosophical Investigations. The "early Wittgenstein" was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world, and he believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship, he had solved all philosophical problems. The "later Wittgenstein", however, rejected many of the assumptions of the Tractatus, arguing that the meaning of words is best understood as their use within a given language game.Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a fortune from his father in 1913. Before World War I, he "made a very generous financial bequest to a group of poets and artists chosen by Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of Der Brenner, from artists in need. These included Trakl as well as Rainer Maria Rilke and the architect Adolf Loos." Later, in a period of severe personal depression after World War I, he gave away his remaining fortune to his brothers and sisters. Three of his four older brothers died by separate acts of suicide. Wittgenstein left academia several times: serving as an officer on the front line during World War I, where he was decorated a number of times for his courage; teaching in schools in remote Austrian villages, where he encountered controversy for using sometimes violent corporal punishment on girls and a boy (the Haidbauer incident) especially during mathematics classes; working during World War II as a hospital porter in London; and working as a hospital laboratory technician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne. He later expressed remorse for these incidents, and spent the remainder of his life lecturing and attempting to prepare a second manuscript for publication, which was published posthumously as the hugely influential Philosophical Investigations. == Background == === The Wittgensteins === According to a family tree prepared in Jerusalem after World War II, Wittgenstein's paternal great-great-grandfather was Moses Meier, a Jewish land agent who lived with his wife, Brendel Simon, in Bad Laasphe in the Principality of Wittgenstein, Westphalia. In July 1808, Napoleon issued a decree that everyone, including Jews, must adopt an inheritable family surname, so Meier's son, also Moses, took the name of his employers, the Sayn-Wittgensteins, and became Moses Meier Wittgenstein. His son, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein — who took the middle name "Christian" to distance himself from his Jewish background — married Fanny Figdor, also Jewish, who converted to Protestantism just before they married, and the couple founded a successful business trading in wool in Leipzig. Ludwig's grandmother Fanny was a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim.They had 11 children – among them Wittgenstein's father. Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein (1847–1913) became an industrial tycoon, and by the late 1880s was one of the richest men in Europe, with an effective monopoly on Austria's steel cartel. Thanks to Karl, the Wittgensteins became the second wealthiest family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only the Rothschilds being wealthier. Karl Wittgenstein was viewed as the Austrian equivalent of Andrew Carnegie, with whom he was friends, and was one of the wealthiest men in the world by the 1890s. As a result of his decision in 1898 to invest substantially in the Netherlands and in Switzerland as well as overseas, particularly in the US, the family was to an extent shielded from the hyperinflation that hit Austria in 1922. However, their wealth diminished due to post-1918 hyperinflation and subsequently during the Great Depression, although even as late as 1938 they owned 13 mansions in Vienna alone. === Early life === Wittgenstein's mother was Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus, known among friends as Poldi. Her father was a Bohemian Jew and her mother was Austrian-Slovene Catholic – she was Wittgenstein's only non-Jewish grandparent. Wittgenstein was ethnically Jewish. She was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side. Wittgenstein was born at 8:30 PM on 26 April 1889 in the "Villa Wittgenstein" at what is today Neuwaldegger Straße 38 in the suburban parish Neuwaldegg next to Vienna. Karl and Poldi had nine children in all – four girls: Hermine, Margaret (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter Dora who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), Paul – who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I – and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family. The children were baptized as Catholics, received formal Catholic instruction, and were raised in an exceptionally intense environment. The family was at the center of Vienna's cultural life; Bruno Walter described the life at the Wittgensteins' palace as an "all-pervading atmosphere of humanity and culture." Karl was a leading patron of the arts, commissioning works by Auguste Rodin and financing the city's exhibition hall and art gallery, the Secession Building. Gustav Klimt painted Wittgenstein's sister for her wedding portrait, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family's numerous music rooms. Wittgenstein, who valued precision and discipline, never considered contemporary music acceptable. He said to his friend Drury in 1930: Music came to a full stop with Brahms; and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the noise of machinery.Ludwig Wittgenstein himself had absolute pitch, and his devotion to music remained vitally important to him throughout his life; he made frequent use of musical examples and metaphors in his philosophical writings, and he was unusually adept at whistling lengthy and detailed musical passages. He also learnt to play the clarinet in his 30s. A fragment of music (three bars), composed by Wittgenstein, was discovered in one of his 1931 notebooks, by Michael Nedo, director of the Wittgenstein Institute in Cambridge. === Family temperament and the brothers' suicides === Ray Monk writes that Karl's aim was to turn his sons into captains of industry; they were not sent to school lest they acquire bad habits, but were educated at home to prepare them for work in Karl's industrial empire. Three of the five brothers would later commit suicide. Psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald argues that Karl was a harsh perfectionist who lacked empathy, and that Wittgenstein's mother was anxious and insecure, unable to stand up to her husband. Johannes Brahms said of the family, whom he visited regularly: They seemed to act towards one another as if they were at court.The family appeared to have a strong streak of depression running through it. Anthony Gottlieb tells a story about Paul practicing on one of the pianos in the Wittgensteins' main family mansion, when he suddenly shouted at Ludwig in the next room:I cannot play when you are in the house, as I feel your scepticism seeping towards me from under the door! The family palace housed seven grand pianos and each of the siblings pursued music "with an enthusiasm that, at times, bordered on the pathological". The eldest brother, Hans, was hailed as a musical prodigy. At the age of four, writes Alexander Waugh, Hans could identify the Doppler effect in a passing siren as a quarter-tone drop in pitch, and at five started crying "Wrong! Wrong!" when two brass bands in a carnival played the same tune in different keys. But he died in mysterious circumstances in May 1902, when he ran away to America and disappeared from a boat in Chesapeake Bay, most likely having committed suicide.Two years later, aged 22 and studying chemistry at the Berlin Academy, the third eldest brother, Rudi, committed suicide in a Berlin bar. He had asked the pianist to play Thomas Koschat's "Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich" ("Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken am I"), before mixing himself a drink of milk and potassium cyanide. He had left several suicide notes, one to his parents that said he was grieving over the death of a friend, and another that referred to his "perverted disposition". It was reported at the time that he had sought advice from the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, an organization that was campaigning against Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which prohibited homosexual sex. His father forbade the family from ever mentioning his name again. The second eldest brother, Kurt, an officer and company director, shot himself on 27 October 1918 just before the end of World War I, when the Austrian troops he was commanding refused to obey his orders and deserted en masse. According to Gottlieb, Hermine had said Kurt seemed to carry "the germ of disgust for life within himself". Later, Ludwig wrote: I ought to have ... become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth. == 1903–1906: Realschule in Linz == === Realschule in Linz === Wittgenstein was taught by private tutors at home until he was 14 years old. Subsequently, for three years, he attended a school. After the deaths of Hans and Rudi, Karl relented, and allowed Paul and Ludwig to be sent to school. Waugh writes that it was too late for Wittgenstein to pass his exams for the more academic Gymnasium in Wiener Neustadt; having had no formal schooling, he failed his entrance exam and only barely managed after extra tutoring to pass the exam for the more technically oriented k.u.k. Realschule in Linz, a small state school with 300 pupils. In 1903, when he was 14, he began his three years of formal schooling there, lodging nearby in term time with the family of Dr. Josef Strigl, a teacher at the local gymnasium, the family giving him the nickname Luki. On starting at the Realschule, Wittgenstein had been moved forward a year. Historian Brigitte Hamann writes that he stood out from the other boys: he spoke an unusually pure form of High German with a stutter, dressed elegantly, and was sensitive and unsociable. Monk writes that the other boys made fun of him, singing after him: "Wittgenstein wandelt wehmütig widriger Winde wegen Wienwärts" ("Wittgenstein wanders wistfully Vienna-wards (in) worsening winds"). In his leaving certificate, he received a top mark (5) in religious studies; a 2 for conduct and English, 3 for French, geography, history, mathematics and physics, and 4 for German, chemistry, geometry and freehand drawing. He had particular difficulty with spelling and failed his written German exam because of it. He wrote in 1931:My bad spelling in youth, up to the age of about 18 or 19, is connected with the whole of the rest of my character (my weakness in study). === Faith === Wittgenstein was baptized as an infant by a Catholic priest and received formal instruction in Catholic doctrine as a child, as was common at the time. In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein says that their grandfather's "strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity" was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children. While he was at the Realschule, he decided he lacked religious faith and began reading Arthur Schopenhauer per Gretl's recommendation. He nevertheless believed in the importance of the idea of confession. He wrote in his diaries about having made a major confession to his oldest sister, Hermine, while he was at the Realschule; Monk speculates that it may have been about his loss of faith. He also discussed it with Gretl, his other sister, who directed him to Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. As a teenager, Wittgenstein adopted Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism. However, after his study of the philosophy of mathematics, he abandoned epistemological idealism for Gottlob Frege's conceptual realism. In later years, Wittgenstein was highly dismissive of Schopenhauer, describing him as an ultimately "shallow" thinker: Schopenhauer has quite a crude mind ... where real depth starts, his comes to an end.Wittgenstein's relationship with Christianity and with religion in general, for which he always professed a sincere and devoted sympathy, would change over time, much like his philosophical ideas. In 1912, Wittgenstein wrote to Russell saying that Mozart and Beethoven were the actual sons of God. However, Wittgenstein resisted formal religion, saying it was hard for him to "bend the knee", though his grandfather's beliefs continued to influence Wittgenstein – as he said, "I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." Wittgenstein referred to Augustine of Hippo in his Philosophical Investigations. Philosophically, Wittgenstein's thought shows alignment with religious discourse. For example, he would become one of the century's fiercest critics of scientism. Wittgenstein's religious belief emerged during his service for the Austrian army in World War I, and he was a devoted reader of Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's religious writings. He viewed his wartime experiences as a trial in which he strove to conform to the will of God, and in a journal entry from 29 April 1915, he writes: Perhaps the nearness of death will bring me the light of life. May God enlighten me. I am a worm, but through God I become a man. God be with me. Amen. Around this time, Wittgenstein wrote that "Christianity is indeed the only sure way to happiness", but he rejected the idea that religious belief was merely thinking that a certain doctrine was true. From this time on, Wittgenstein viewed religious faith as a way of living and opposed rational argumentation or proofs for God. With age, a deepening personal spirituality led to several elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion—attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God's existence as a matter of scientific evidence. In 1947, finding it more difficult to work, he wrote:I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God's will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God's will. In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes:Is what I am doing [my work in philosophy] really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above.His close friend Norman Malcolm would write:Wittgenstein's mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers.Toward the end, Wittgenstein wrote:Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein, 'To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.' That is what I would have liked to say about my work. === Influence of Otto Weininger === While a student at the Realschule, Wittgenstein was influenced by Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger's 1903 book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character). Weininger (1880–1903), who was Jewish, argued that the concepts male and female exist only as Platonic forms, and that Jews tend to embody the Platonic femininity. Whereas men are basically rational, women operate only at the level of their emotions and sexual organs. Jews, Weininger argued, are similar, saturated with femininity, with no sense of right and wrong, and no soul. Weininger argues that man must choose between his masculine and feminine sides, consciousness and unconsciousness, Platonic love and sexuality. Love and sexual desire stand in contradiction, and love between a woman and a man is therefore doomed to misery or immorality. The only life worth living is the spiritual one – to live as a woman or a Jew means one has no right to live at all; the choice is genius or death. Weininger committed suicide, shooting himself in 1903, shortly after publishing the book. Wittgenstein, then 14, attended Weininger's funeral. Many years later, as a professor at the University of Cambridge, Wittgenstein distributed copies of Weininger's book to his bemused academic colleagues. He said that Weininger's arguments were wrong, but that it was the way they were wrong that was interesting. In a letter dated 23 August 1931, Wittgenstein wrote the following to G. E. Moore:Dear Moore,Thanks for your letter. I can quite imagine that you don't admire Weininger very much, what with that beastly translation and the fact that W. must feel very foreign to you. It is true that he is fantastic but he is great and fantastic. It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous mistake which is great. I.e. roughly speaking if you just add a "∼" to the whole book it says an important truth.In an unusual move, Wittgenstein took out a copy of Weininger's work on 1 June 1931 from the Special Order Books in the university library. He met Moore on 2 June, when he probably gave this copy to Moore. === Jewish background and Hitler === There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings, who were of 3/4 Jewish descent, saw themselves as Jews. The issue has arisen in particular regarding Wittgenstein's schooldays, because Adolf Hitler was, for a while, at the same school at the same time. Laurence Goldstein argues that it is "overwhelmingly probable" that the boys met each other and that Hitler would have disliked Wittgenstein, a "stammering, precocious, precious, aristocratic upstart ..." Other commentators have dismissed as irresponsible and uninformed any suggestion that Wittgenstein's wealth and unusual personality might have fed Hitler's antisemitism, in part because there is no indication that Hitler would have seen Wittgenstein as Jewish.Wittgenstein and Hitler were born just six days apart, though Hitler had to re-sit his mathematics exam before being allowed into a higher class, while Wittgenstein was moved forward by one, so they ended up two grades apart at the Realschule. Monk estimates that they were both at the school during the 1904–1905 school year, but says there is no evidence they had anything to do with each other. Several commentators have argued that a school photograph of Hitler may show Wittgenstein in the lower left corner, In his own writings Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, at times as part of an apparent self-flagellation. For example, while berating himself for being a "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" thinker, he attributed this to his own Jewish sense of identity, writing:The saint is the only Jewish "genius". Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance).While Wittgenstein would later claim that "[m]y thoughts are 100% Hebraic", as Hans Sluga has argued, if so, His was a self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in Weininger's case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius.By Hebraic, he meant to include the Christian tradition, in contradistinction to the Greek tradition, holding that good and evil could not be reconciled. == 1906–1913: University == === Engineering at Berlin and Manchester === He began his studies in mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Berlin in Charlottenburg, Berlin, on 23 October 1906, lodging with the family of professor Dr. Jolles. He attended for three semesters, and was awarded a diploma (Abgangzeugnis) on 5 May 1908.During his time at the Institute, Wittgenstein developed an interest in aeronautics. He arrived at the Victoria University of Manchester in the spring of 1908 to study for a doctorate, full of plans for aeronautical projects, including designing and flying his own plane. He conducted research into the behavior of kites in the upper atmosphere, experimenting at a meteorological observation site near Glossop in Derbyshire. Specifically, the Royal Meteorological Society researched and investigated the ionization of the upper atmosphere, by suspending instruments on balloons or kites. At Glossop, Wittgenstein worked under Professor of Physics Sir Arthur Schuster.He also worked on the design of a propeller with small jet engines on the end of its blades, something he patented in 1911, and which earned him a research studentship from the university in the autumn of 1908. At the time, contemporary propeller designs were not advanced enough to actually put Wittgenstein's ideas into practice, and it would be years before a blade design that could support Wittgenstein's innovative design was created. Wittgenstein's design required air and gas to be forced along the propeller arms to combustion chambers on the end of each blade, where it was then compressed by the centrifugal force exerted by the revolving arms and ignited. Propellers of the time were typically wood, whereas modern blades are made from pressed steel laminates as separate halves, which are then welded together. This gives the blade a hollow interior, and thus creates an ideal pathway for the air and gas. Work on the jet-powered propeller proved frustrating for Wittgenstein, who had very little experience working with machinery. Jim Bamber, a British engineer who was his friend and classmate at the time, reported that when things went wrong, which often occurred, he would throw his arms around, stomp about, and swear volubly in German.According to William Eccles, another friend from that period, Wittgenstein then turned to more theoretical work, focusing on the design of the propeller – a problem that required relatively sophisticated mathematics. It was at this time that he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, particularly after reading Bertrand Russell's The Principles of Mathematics (1903), and Gottlob Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic, vol. 1 (1893) and vol. 2 (1903). Wittgenstein's sister Hermine said he became obsessed with mathematics as a result, and was anyway losing interest in aeronautics. He decided instead that he needed to study logic and the foundations of mathematics, describing himself as in a "constant, indescribable, almost pathological state of agitation." In the summer of 1911 he visited Frege at the University of Jena to show him some philosophy of mathematics and logic he had written, and to ask whether it was worth pursuing. He wrote: I was shown into Frege's study. Frege was a small, neat man with a pointed beard who bounced around the room as he talked. He absolutely wiped the floor with me, and I felt very depressed; but at the end he said 'You must come again', so I cheered up. I had several discussions with him after that. Frege would never talk about anything but logic and mathematics, if I started on some other subject, he would say something polite and then plunge back into logic and mathematics. === Arrival at Cambridge === Wittgenstein wanted to study with Frege, but Frege suggested he attend the University of Cambridge to study under Russell, so on 18 October 1911 Wittgenstein arrived unannounced at Russell's rooms in Trinity College. Russell was having tea with C. K. Ogden, when, according to Russell, an unknown German appeared, speaking very little English but refusing to speak German. He turned out to be a man who had learned engineering at Charlottenburg, but during this course had acquired, by himself, a passion for the philosophy of mathematics & has now come to Cambridge on purpose to hear me.He was soon not only attending Russell's lectures, but dominating them. The lectures were poorly attended and Russell often found himself lecturing only to C. D. Broad, E. H. Neville, and H. T. J. Norton. Wittgenstein started following him after lectures back to his rooms to discuss more philosophy, until it was time for the evening meal in Hall. Russell grew irritated; he wrote to his lover Lady Ottoline Morrell: "My German friend threatens to be an infliction." Russell soon came to believe that Wittgenstein was a genius, especially after he had examined Wittgenstein's written work. He wrote in November 1911 that he had at first thought Wittgenstein might be a crank, but soon decided he was a genius: Some of his early views made the decision difficult. He maintained, for example, at one time that all existential propositions are meaningless. This was in a lecture room, and I invited him to consider the proposition: 'There is no hippopotamus in this room at present.' When he refused to believe this, I looked under all the desks without finding one; but he remained unconvinced. Three months after Wittgenstein's arrival Russell told Morrell:I love him & feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve ... He is the young man one hopes for. Wittgenstein later told David Pinsent that Russell's encouragement had proven his salvation, and had ended nine years of loneliness and suffering, during which he had continually thought of suicide. In encouraging him to pursue philosophy and in justifying his inclination to abandon engineering, Russell had, quite literally, saved Wittgenstein's life. The role-reversal between Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein was soon such that Russell wrote in 1916, after Wittgenstein had criticized Russell's own work:His [Wittgenstein's] criticism, tho' I don't think you realized it at the time, was an event of first-rate importance in my life, and affected everything I have done since. I saw that he was right, and I saw that I could not hope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy. === Cambridge Moral Sciences Club and Apostles === In 1912 Wittgenstein joined the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, an influential discussion group for philosophy dons and students, delivering his first paper there on 29 November that year, a four-minute talk defining philosophy as all those primitive propositions which are assumed as true without proof by the various sciences.He dominated the society and for a time would stop attending in the early 1930s after complaints that he gave no one else a chance to speak. The club became infamous within popular philosophy because of a meeting on 25 October 1946 at Richard Braithwaite's rooms in King's College, Cambridge, where Karl Popper, another Viennese philosopher, had been invited as the guest speaker. Popper's paper was "Are there philosophical problems?", in which he struck up a position against Wittgenstein's, contending that problems in philosophy are real, not just linguistic puzzles as Wittgenstein argued. Accounts vary as to what happened next, but Wittgenstein apparently started waving a hot poker, demanding that Popper give him an example of a moral rule. Popper offered one – "Not to threaten visiting speakers with pokers" – at which point Russell told Wittgenstein he had misunderstood and Wittgenstein left. Popper maintained that Wittgenstein "stormed out", but it had become accepted practice for him to leave early (because of his aforementioned ability to dominate discussion). It was the only time the philosophers, three of the most eminent in the 20th CE, were ever in the same room together. The minutes record that the meeting was charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy. === Cambridge Apostles === The economist John Maynard Keynes also invited him to join the Cambridge Apostles, an elite secret society formed in 1820, which both Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore had joined as students, but Wittgenstein did not greatly enjoy it and attended only infrequently. Russell had been worried that Wittgenstein would not appreciate the group's raucous style of intellectual debate, its precious sense of humour, and the fact that the members were often in love with one another. He was admitted in 1912 but resigned almost immediately because he could not tolerate the style of discussion. Nevertheless, the Cambridge Apostles allowed Wittgenstein to participate in meetings again in the 1920s when he had returned to Cambridge. Reportedly, Wittgenstein also had trouble tolerating the discussions in the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club. === Frustrations at Cambridge === Wittgenstein was quite vocal about his depression in his years at Cambridge, and before he went to war; on many an occasion, he told Russell of his woes. His mental anguish seemed to stem from two sources: his work, and his personal life. Wittgenstein made numerous remarks to Russell about logic driving him mad. Wittgenstein also stated to Russell that he "felt the curse of those who have half a talent". He later expresses this same worry, and tells of being in mediocre spirits due to his lack of progress in his logical work. Monk writes that Wittgenstein lived and breathed logic, and a temporary lack of inspiration plunged him into despair. Wittgenstein tells of his work in logic affecting his mental status in a very extreme way. However, he also tells Russell another story. Around Christmas, in 1913, he writes: how can I be a logician before I'm a human being? For the most important thing is coming to terms with myself! He also tells Russell on an occasion in Russell's rooms that he was worried about logic and his sins; also, once upon arrival to Russell's rooms one night Wittgenstein announced to Russell that he would kill himself once he left. Of things Wittgenstein personally told Russell, Ludwig's temperament was also recorded in the diary of David Pinsent. Pinsent writes I have to be frightfully careful and tolerant when he gets these sulky fits and I am afraid he is in an even more sensitive neurotic state just now than usual when talking about Wittgenstein's emotional fluctuations. === Sexual orientation and relationship with David Pinsent === Wittgenstein had romantic relations with both men and women. He is generally believed to have fallen in love with at least three men, and had a relationship with the latter two: David Hume Pinsent in 1912, Francis Skinner in 1930, and Ben Richards in the late 1940s. He later claimed that, as a teenager in Vienna, he had had an affair with a woman. Additionally, in the 1920s Wittgenstein fell in love with a young Swiss woman, Marguerite Respinger, sculpting a bust modelled on her and seriously considering marriage, albeit on condition that they would not have children; she decided that he was not right for her. Wittgenstein's relationship with David Pinsent occurred during an intellectually formative period, and is well documented. Bertrand Russell introduced Wittgenstein to Pinsent in the summer of 1912. Pinsent was a mathematics undergraduate and a relation of David Hume, and Wittgenstein and he soon became very close. The men worked together on experiments in the psychology laboratory about the role of rhythm in the appreciation of music, and Wittgenstein delivered a paper on the subject to the British Psychological Association in Cambridge in 1912. They also travelled together, including to Iceland in September 1912—the expenses paid by Wittgenstein, including first class travel, the hiring of a private train, and new clothes and spending money for Pinsent. In addition to Iceland, Wittgenstein and Pinsent traveled to Norway in 1913. In determining their destination, Wittgenstein and Pinsent visited a tourist office in search of a location that would fulfill the following criteria: a small village located on a fjord, a location away from tourists, and a peaceful destination to allow them to study logic and law. Choosing Øystese, Wittgenstein and Pinsent arrived in the small village on 4 September 1913. During a vacation lasting almost three weeks, Wittgenstein was able to work vigorously on his studies. The immense progress on logic during their stay led Wittgenstein to express to Pinsent his notion of leaving Cambridge and returning to Norway to continue his work on logic. Pinsent's diaries provide valuable insights into Wittgenstein's personality: sensitive, nervous, and attuned to the tiniest slight or change in mood from Pinsent. Pinsent also writes of Wittgenstein being "absolutely sulky and snappish" at times, as well. In his diaries Pinsent wrote about shopping for furniture with Wittgenstein in Cambridge when the latter was given rooms in Trinity. Most of what they found in the stores was not minimalist enough for Wittgenstein's aesthetics: I went and helped him interview a lot of furniture at various shops ... It was rather amusing: He is terribly fastidious and we led the shopman a frightful dance, Vittgenstein [sic] ejaculating "No – Beastly!" to 90 percent of what he shewed us!He wrote in May 1912 that Wittgenstein had just begun to study the history of philosophy: He expresses the most naive surprise that all the philosophers he once worshipped in ignorance are after all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting mistakes!The last time they saw each other was on 8 October 1913 at Lordswood House in Birmingham, then residence of the Pinsent family: I got up at 6:15 to see Ludwig off. He had to go very early—back to Cambridge—as he has lots to do there. I saw him off from the house in a taxi at 7:00—to catch a 7:30 AM train from New Street Station. It was sad parting from him.Wittgenstein left to live in Norway. == 1913–1920: World War I and the Tractatus == === Work on Logik === Karl Wittgenstein died on 20 January 1913, and after receiving his inheritance Wittgenstein became one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He donated some of his money, at first anonymously, to Austrian artists and writers, including Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. Trakl requested to meet his benefactor but in 1914 when Wittgenstein went to visit, Trakl had killed himself. Wittgenstein came to feel that he could not get to the heart of his most fundamental questions while surrounded by other academics, and so in 1913 he retreated to the village of Skjolden in Norway, where he rented the second floor of a house for the winter. He later saw this as one of the most productive periods of his life, writing Logik (Notes on Logic), the predecessor of much of the Tractatus.While in Norway, Wittgenstein learned Norwegian to converse with the local villagers, and Danish to read the works of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He adored the "quiet seriousness" of the landscape but even Skjolden became too busy for him. He soon designed a small wooden house which was erected on a remote rock overlooking the Eidsvatnet Lake just outside the village. The place was called "Østerrike" (Austria) by locals. He lived there during various periods until the 1930s, and substantial parts of his works were written there. (The house was broken up in 1958 to be rebuilt in the village. A local foundation collected donations and bought it in 2014; it was dismantled again and re-erected at its original location; the inauguration took place on 20 June 2019 with international attendance.) It was during this time that Wittgenstein began addressing what he considered to be a central issue in Notes on Logic, a general decision procedure for determining the truth value of logical propositions which would stem from a single primitive proposition. He became convinced during this time that [a]ll the propositions of logic are generalizations of tautologies and all generalizations of tautologies are generalizations of logic. There are no other logical propositions.Based on this, Wittgenstein argued that propositions of logic express their truth or falsehood in the sign itself, and one need not know anything about the constituent parts of the proposition to determine it true or false. Rather, one simply need identify the statement as a tautology (true), a contradiction (false), or neither. The problem lay in forming a primitive proposition which encompassed this and would act as the basis for all of logic. As he stated in correspondence with Russell in late 1913, The big question now is, how must a system of signs be constituted in order to make every tautology recognizable as such IN ONE AND THE SAME WAY? This is the fundamental problem of logic!The importance Wittgenstein placed upon this fundamental problem was so great that he believed if he did not solve it, he had no reason or right to live. Despite this apparent life-or-death importance, Wittgenstein had given up on this primitive proposition by the time of the writing of the Tractatus. The Tractatus does not offer any general process for identifying propositions as tautologies; in a simpler manner, Every tautology itself shows that it is a tautology.This shift to understanding tautologies through mere identification or recognition occurred in 1914 when Moore was called on by Wittgenstein to assist him in dictating his notes. At Wittgenstein's insistence, Moore, who was now a Cambridge don, visited him in Norway in 1914, reluctantly because Wittgenstein exhausted him. David Edmonds and John Eidinow write that Wittgenstein regarded Moore, an internationally known philosopher, as an example of how far someone could get in life with "absolutely no intelligence whatever." In Norway it was clear that Moore was expected to act as Wittgenstein's secretary, taking down his notes, with Wittgenstein falling into a rage when Moore got something wrong. When he returned to Cambridge, Moore asked the university to consider accepting Logik as sufficient for a bachelor's degree, but they refused, saying it wasn't formatted properly: no footnotes, no preface. Wittgenstein was furious, writing to Moore in May 1914: If I am not worth your making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to Hell directly; and if I am worth it and you don't do it then – by God – you might go there.Moore was apparently distraught; he wrote in his diary that he felt sick and could not get the letter out of his head. The two did not speak again until 1929. === Military service === On the outbreak of World War I, Wittgenstein immediately volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army, despite being eligible for a medical exemption. He served first on a ship and then in an artillery workshop "several miles from the action". He was wounded in an accidental explosion, and hospitalised to Kraków. In March 1916, he was posted to a fighting unit on the front line of the Russian front, as part of the Austrian 7th Army, where his unit was involved in some of the heaviest fighting, defending against the Brusilov Offensive. Wittgenstein directed the fire of his own artillery from an observation post in no-man's land against Allied troops—one of the most dangerous jobs, since he was targeted by enemy fire. He was decorated with the Military Merit with Swords on the Ribbon, and was commended by the army for "exceptionally courageous behaviour, calmness, sang-froid, and heroism" that "won the total admiration of the troops". In January 1917, he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front, where he won several more medals for bravery including the Silver Medal for Valour, First Class. In 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant and sent to the Italian front as part of an artillery regiment. For his part in the final Austrian offensive of June 1918, he was recommended for the Gold Medal for Valour, one of the highest honours in the Austrian army, but was instead awarded the Band of the Military Service Medal with Swords—it being decided that this particular action, although extraordinarily brave, had been insufficiently consequential to merit the highest honour. Throughout the war, he kept notebooks in which he frequently wrote philosophical reflections alongside personal remarks, including his contempt for the character of the other soldiers. His notebooks also attest to his philosophical and spiritual reflections, and it was during this time that he experienced a kind of religious awakening. In his entry from 11 June 1915, Wittgenstein states that The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life. and on 8 July that To believe in God means to understand the meaning of life. To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning [ ... ]When my conscience upsets my equilibrium, then I am not in agreement with Something. But what is this? Is it the world? Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God. He discovered Leo Tolstoy's 1896 The Gospel in Brief at a bookshop in Tarnów, and carried it everywhere, recommending it to anyone in distress, to the point where he became known to his fellow soldiers as "the man with the gospels".The extent to which The Gospel in Brief influenced Wittgenstein can be seen in the Tractatus, in the unique way both books number their sentences. In 1916 Wittgenstein read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov so often that he knew whole passages of it by heart, particularly the speeches of the elder Zosima, who represented for him a powerful Christian ideal, a holy man "who could see directly into the souls of other people".Iain King has suggested that Wittgenstein's writing changed substantially in 1916, when he started confronting much greater dangers during frontline fighting. Russell said he returned from the war a changed man, one with a deeply mystical and ascetic attitude. === Completion of the Tractatus === In the summer of 1918 Wittgenstein took military leave and went to stay in one of his family's Vienna summer houses, Neuwaldegg. It was there in August 1918 that he completed the Tractatus, which he submitted with the title Der Satz (German: proposition, sentence, phrase, set, but also "leap") to the publishers Jahoda and Siegel.A series of events around this time left him deeply upset. On 13 August, his uncle Paul died. On 25 October, he learned that Jahoda and Siegel had decided not to publish the Tractatus, and on 27 October, his brother Kurt killed himself, the third of his brothers to commit suicide. It was around this time he received a letter from David Pinsent's mother to say that Pinsent had been killed in a plane crash on 8 May. Wittgenstein was distraught to the point of being suicidal. He was sent back to the Italian front after his leave and, as a result of the defeat of the Austrian army, he was captured by Allied forces on 3 November in Trentino. He subsequently spent nine months in an Italian prisoner of war camp. He returned to his family in Vienna on 25 August 1919, by all accounts physically and mentally spent. He apparently talked incessantly about suicide, terrifying his sisters and brother Paul. He decided to do two things: to enroll in teacher training college as an elementary school teacher, and to get rid of his fortune. In 1914, it had been providing him with an income of 300,000 Kronen a year, but by 1919 was worth a great deal more, with a sizable portfolio of investments in the United States and the Netherlands. He divided it among his siblings, except for Margarete, insisting that it not be held in trust for him. His family saw him as ill, and acquiesced. == 1920–1928: Teaching, the Tractatus, Haus Wittgenstein == === Teacher training in Vienna === In September 1919 he enrolled in the Lehrerbildungsanstalt (teacher training college) in the Kundmanngasse in Vienna. His sister Hermine said that Wittgenstein working as an elementary teacher was like using a precision instrument to open crates, but the family decided not to interfere. Thomas Bernhard, more critically, wrote of this period in Wittgenstein's life: "the multi-millionaire as a village schoolmaster is surely a piece of perversity." === Teaching posts in Austria === In the summer of 1920, Wittgenstein worked as a gardener for a monastery. At first he applied, under a false name, for a teaching post at Reichenau, was awarded the job, but he declined it when his identity was discovered. As a teacher, he wished to no longer be recognized as a member of the Wittgenstein family. In response, his brother Paul wrote: It is out of the question, really completely out of the question, that anybody bearing our name and whose elegant and gentle upbringing can be seen a thousand paces off, would not be identified as a member of our family ... That one can neither simulate nor dissimulate anything including a refined education I need hardly tell you. In 1920, Wittgenstein was given his first job as a primary school teacher in Trattenbach, under his real name, in a remote village of a few hundred people. His first letters describe it as beautiful, but in October 1921, he wrote to Russell: "I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere." He was soon the object of gossip among the villagers, who found him eccentric at best. He did not get on well with the other teachers; when he found his lodgings too noisy, he made a bed for himself in the school kitchen. He was an enthusiastic teacher, offering late-night extra tuition to several of the students, something that did not endear him to the parents, though some of them came to adore him; his sister Hermine occasionally watched him teach and said the students "literally crawled over each other in their desire to be chosen for answers or demonstrations."To the less able, it seems that he became something of a tyrant. The first two hours of each day were devoted to mathematics, hours that Monk writes some of the pupils recalled years later with horror. They reported that he caned the boys and boxed their ears, and also that he pulled the girls' hair; this was not unusual at the time for boys, but for the villagers he went too far in doing it to the girls too; girls were not expected to understand algebra, much less have their ears boxed over it. The violence apart, Monk writes that he quickly became a village legend, shouting "Krautsalat!" ("coleslaw" – i.e. shredded cabbage) when the headmaster played the piano, and "Nonsense!" when a priest was answering children's questions. === Publication of the Tractatus === While Wittgenstein was living in isolation in rural Austria, the Tractatus was published to considerable interest, first in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, part of Wilhelm Ostwald's journal Annalen der Naturphilosophie, though Wittgenstein was not happy with the result and called it a pirate edition. Russell had agreed to write an introduction to explain why it was important, because it was otherwise unlikely to have been published: it was difficult if not impossible to understand, and Wittgenstein was unknown in philosophy. In a letter to Russell, Wittgenstein wrote "The main point is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by prop[osition]s – i.e. by language – (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what can not be expressed by pro[position]s, but only shown (gezeigt); which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy." But Wittgenstein was not happy with Russell's help. He had lost faith in Russell, finding him glib and his philosophy mechanistic, and felt he had fundamentally misunderstood the Tractatus. The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both were right and both wrong; though the view of the ancients is clearer insofar as they have an acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. An English translation was prepared in Cambridge by Frank Ramsey, a mathematics undergraduate at King's commissioned by C. K. Ogden. It was Moore who suggested Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus for the title, an allusion to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Initially there were difficulties in finding a publisher for the English edition too, because Wittgenstein was insisting it appear without Russell's introduction; Cambridge University Press turned it down for that reason. Finally in 1922 an agreement was reached with Wittgenstein that Kegan Paul would print a bilingual edition with Russell's introduction and the Ramsey-Ogden translation. This is the translation that was approved by Wittgenstein, but it is problematic in a number of ways. Wittgenstein's English was poor at the time, and Ramsey was a teenager who had only recently learned German, so philosophers often prefer to use a 1961 translation by David Pears and Brian McGuinness.An aim of the Tractatus is to reveal the relationship between language and the world: what can be said about it, and what can only be shown. Wittgenstein argues that the logical structure of language provides the limits of meaning. The limits of language, for Wittgenstein, are the limits of philosophy. Much of philosophy involves attempts to say the unsayable: "What we can say at all can be said clearly," he argues. Anything beyond that – religion, ethics, aesthetics, the mystical – cannot be discussed. They are not in themselves nonsensical, but any statement about them must be. He wrote in the preface: "The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather – not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought)."The book is 75 pages long – "As to the shortness of the book, I am awfully sorry for it ... If you were to squeeze me like a lemon you would get nothing more out of me," he told Ogden – and presents seven numbered propositions (1–7), with various sub-levels (1, 1.1, 1.11): Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. The world is everything that is the case. Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke. The logical picture of the facts is the thought. Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz. The thought is the significant proposition. Der Satz ist eine Wahrheitsfunktion der Elementarsätze. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. Die allgemeine Form der Wahrheitsfunktion ist: [ p ¯ , ξ ¯ , N ( ξ ¯ ) ] [{\bar {p}},{\bar {\xi }},N({\bar {\xi }})] . Dies ist die allgemeine Form des Satzes. The general form of a truth-function is: [ p ¯ , ξ ¯ , N ( ξ ¯ ) ] [{\bar {p}},{\bar {\xi }},N({\bar {\xi }})] . This is the general form of proposition. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. === Visit from Frank Ramsey, Puchberg === In September 1922 he moved to a secondary school in a nearby village, Hassbach, but considered the people there just as bad – "These people are not human at all but loathsome worms," he wrote to a friend – and he left after a month. In November he began work at another primary school, this time in Puchberg in the Schneeberg mountains. There, he told Russell, the villagers were "one-quarter animal and three-quarters human." Frank P. Ramsey visited him on 17 September 1923 to discuss the Tractatus; he had agreed to write a review of it for Mind. He reported in a letter home that Wittgenstein was living frugally in one tiny whitewashed room that only had space for a bed, a washstand, a small table, and one small hard chair. Ramsey shared an evening meal with him of coarse bread, butter, and cocoa. Wittgenstein's school hours were eight to twelve or one, and he had afternoons free. After Ramsey returned to Cambridge a long campaign began among Wittgenstein's friends to persuade him to return to Cambridge and away from what they saw as a hostile environment for him. He was accepting no help even from his family. Ramsey wrote to John Maynard Keynes: [Wittgenstein's family] are very rich and extremely anxious to give him money or do anything for him in any way, and he rejects all their advances; even Christmas presents or presents of invalid's food, when he is ill, he sends back. And this is not because they aren't on good terms but because he won't have any money he hasn't earned ... It is an awful pity. === Teaching continues, Otterthal; Haidbauer incident === He moved schools again in September 1924, this time to Otterthal, near Trattenbach; the socialist headmaster, Josef Putre, was someone Wittgenstein had become friends with while at Trattenbach. While he was there, he wrote a 42-page pronunciation and spelling dictionary for the children, Wörterbuch für Volksschulen, published in Vienna in 1926 by Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, the only book of his apart from the Tractatus that was published in his lifetime. A first edition sold in 2005 for £75,000. In 2020, an English version entitled Word Book translated by art historian Bettina Funcke and illustrated by artist / publisher Paul Chan was released. An incident occurred in April 1926 and became known as Der Vorfall Haidbauer (the Haidbauer incident). Josef Haidbauer was an 11-year-old pupil whose father had died and whose mother worked as a local maid. He was a slow learner, and one day Wittgenstein hit him two or three times on the head, causing him to collapse. Wittgenstein carried him to the headmaster's office, then quickly left the school, bumping into a parent, Herr Piribauer, on the way out. Piribauer had been sent for by the children when they saw Haidbauer collapse; Wittgenstein had previously pulled Piribauer's daughter, Hermine, so hard by the ears that her ears had bled. Piribauer said that when he met Wittgenstein in the hall that day: I called him all the names under the sun. I told him he wasn't a teacher, he was an animal-trainer! And that I was going to fetch the police right away!Piribauer tried to have Wittgenstein arrested, but the village's police station was empty, and when he tried again the next day he was told Wittgenstein had disappeared. On 28 April 1926, Wittgenstein handed in his resignation to Wilhelm Kundt, a local school inspector, who tried to persuade him to stay; however, Wittgenstein was adamant that his days as a schoolteacher were over. Proceedings were initiated in May, and the judge ordered a psychiatric report; in August 1926 a letter to Wittgenstein from a friend, Ludwig Hänsel, indicates that hearings were ongoing, but nothing is known about the case after that. Alexander Waugh writes that Wittgenstein's family and their money may have had a hand in covering things up. Waugh writes that Haidbauer died shortly afterwards of haemophilia; Monk says he died when he was 14 of leukaemia. Ten years later, in 1936, as part of a series of "confessions" he engaged in that year, Wittgenstein appeared without warning at the village saying he wanted to confess personally and ask for pardon from the children he had hit. He visited at least four of the children, including Hermine Piribauer, who apparently replied only with a "Ja, ja," though other former students were more hospitable. Monk writes that the purpose of these confessions was notto hurt his pride, as a form of punishment; it was to dismantle it – to remove a barrier, as it were, that stood in the way of honest and decent thought.Of the apologies, Wittgenstein wrote, This brought me into more settled waters... and to greater seriousness. === The Vienna Circle === The Tractatus was now the subject of much debate amongst philosophers, and Wittgenstein was a figure of increasing international fame. In particular, a discussion group of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians, known as the Vienna Circle, had built up purportedly as a result of the inspiration they had been given by reading the Tractatus. While it is commonly assumed that Wittgenstein was a part of the Vienna Circle, in reality, this was not actually the case. German philosopher Oswald Hanfling writes bluntly: "Wittgenstein was never a member of the Circle, though he was in Vienna during much of the time. Yet his influence on the Circle's thought was at least as important as that of any of its members." However, the philosopher A. C. Grayling contends that while certain superficial similarities between Wittgenstein's early philosophy and logical positivism led its members to study the Tractatus in detail and to arrange discussions with him, Wittgenstein's influence on the Circle was rather limited. The fundamental philosophical views of Circle had been established before they met Wittgenstein and had their origins in the British empiricists, Ernst Mach, and the logic of Frege and Russell. Whatever influence Wittgenstein did have on the Circle was largely limited to Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann and, even in these cases, resulted in little lasting effect on their positivism. Grayling states: "...it is no longer possible to think of the Tractatus as having inspired a philosophical movement, as most earlier commentators claimed."From 1926, with the members of the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein would take part in many discussions. However, during these discussions, it soon became evident that Wittgenstein held a different attitude towards philosophy than the members of the Circle. For example, during meetings of the Vienna Circle, he would express his disagreement with the group's misreading of his work by turning his back to them and reading poetry aloud. In his autobiography, Rudolf Carnap describes Wittgenstein as the thinker who gave him the greatest inspiration. However, he also wrote that "there was a striking difference between Wittgenstein's attitude toward philosophical problems and that of Schlick and myself. Our attitude toward philosophical problems was not very different from that which scientists have toward their problems." As for Wittgenstein: His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer... When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation ... the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment or analysis of it would be a profanation. === Haus Wittgenstein === I am not interested in erecting a building, but in [...] presenting to myself the foundations of all possible buildings. In 1926 Wittgenstein was again working as a gardener for a number of months, this time at the monastery of Hütteldorf, where he had also inquired about becoming a monk. His sister, Margaret, invited him to help with the design of her new townhouse in Vienna's Kundmanngasse. Wittgenstein, his friend Paul Engelmann, and a team of architects developed a spare modernist house. In particular, Wittgenstein focused on the windows, doors, and radiators, demanding that every detail be exactly as he specified. When the house was nearly finished Wittgenstein had an entire ceiling raised 30 mm so that the room had the exact proportions he wanted. Monk writes that "This is not so marginal as it may at first appear, for it is precisely these details that lend what is otherwise a rather plain, even ugly house its distinctive beauty."It took him a year to design the door handles and another to design the radiators. Each window was covered by a metal screen that weighed 150 kilograms (330 lb), moved by a pulley Wittgenstein designed. Bernhard Leitner, author of The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein, said there is barely anything comparable in the history of interior design: "It is as ingenious as it is expensive. A metal curtain that could be lowered into the floor."The house was finished by December 1928 and the family gathered there at Christmas to celebrate its completion. Wittgenstein's sister Hermine wrote: "Even though I admired the house very much. ... It seemed indeed to be much more a dwelling for the gods." Wittgenstein said "the house I built for Gretl is the product of a decidedly sensitive ear and good manners, and expression of great understanding... But primordial life, wild life striving to erupt into the open – that is lacking." Monk comments that the same might be said of the technically excellent, but austere, terracotta sculpture Wittgenstein had modelled of Marguerite Respinger in 1926, and that, as Russell first noticed, this "wild life striving to be in the open" was precisely the substance of Wittgenstein's philosophical work. == 1929–1941: Fellowship at Cambridge == === PhD and fellowship === According to Feigl (as reported by Monk), upon attending a conference in Vienna by mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer, Wittgenstein remained quite impressed, taking into consideration the possibility of a "return to Philosophy". At the urging of Ramsey and others, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929. Keynes wrote in a letter to his wife: "Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train." Despite this fame, he could not initially work at Cambridge as he did not have a degree, so he applied as an advanced undergraduate. Russell noted that his previous residency was sufficient to fulfill eligibility requirements for a PhD, and urged him to offer the Tractatus as his thesis. It was examined in 1929 by Russell and Moore; at the end of the thesis defence, Wittgenstein clapped the two examiners on the shoulder and said, '"Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it." Moore wrote in the examiner's report: "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree." Wittgenstein was appointed as a lecturer and was made a fellow of Trinity College. === Anschluss === From 1936 to 1937, Wittgenstein lived again in Norway, where he worked on the Philosophical Investigations. In the winter of 1936/7, he delivered a series of "confessions" to close friends, most of them about minor infractions like white lies, in an effort to cleanse himself. In 1938, he travelled to Ireland to visit Maurice O'Connor Drury, a friend who became a psychiatrist, and considered such training himself, with the intention of abandoning philosophy for it. The visit to Ireland was at the same time a response to the invitation of the then Irish Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, himself a former mathematics teacher. De Valera hoped Wittgenstein's presence would contribute to the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies which he was soon to set up.While he was in Ireland in March 1938, Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss; the Viennese Wittgenstein was now a Jew under the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws, because three of his grandparents had been born as Jews. He would also, in July, become by law a citizen of the enlarged Germany.The Nuremberg Laws classified people as Jews (Volljuden) if they had three or four Jewish grandparents, and as mixed blood (Mischling) if they had one or two. It meant inter alia that the Wittgensteins were restricted in whom they could marry or have sex with, and where they could work.After the Anschluss, his brother Paul left almost immediately for England, and later the US. The Nazis discovered his relationship with Hilde Schania, a brewer's daughter with whom he had had two children but whom he had never married, though he did later. Because she was not Jewish, he was served with a summons for Rassenschande (racial defilement). He told no one he was leaving the country, except for Hilde who agreed to follow him. He left so suddenly and quietly that for a time people believed he was the fourth Wittgenstein brother to have committed suicide.Wittgenstein began to investigate acquiring British or Irish citizenship with the help of Keynes, and apparently had to confess to his friends in England that he had earlier misrepresented himself to them as having just one Jewish grandparent, when in fact he had three.A few days before the invasion of Poland, Hitler personally granted Mischling status to the Wittgenstein siblings. In 1939 there were 2,100 applications for this, and Hitler granted only 12. Anthony Gottlieb writes that the pretext was that their paternal grandfather had been the bastard son of a German prince, which allowed the Reichsbank to claim foreign currency, stocks and 1700 kg of gold held in Switzerland by a Wittgenstein family trust. Gretl, an American citizen by marriage, started the negotiations over the racial status of their grandfather, and the family's large foreign currency reserves were used as a bargaining tool. Paul had escaped to Switzerland and then the US in July 1938, and disagreed with the negotiations, leading to a permanent split between the siblings. After the war, when Paul was performing in Vienna, he did not visit Hermine who was dying there, and he had no further contact with Ludwig or Gretl. === Professor of philosophy === After G. E. Moore resigned the chair in philosophy in 1939, Wittgenstein was elected. He was naturalised as a British subject shortly after on 12 April 1939. In July 1939 he travelled to Vienna to assist Gretl and his other sisters, visiting Berlin for one day to meet an official of the Reichsbank. After this, he travelled to New York to persuade Paul, whose agreement was required, to back the scheme. The required Befreiung was granted in August 1939. The unknown amount signed over to the Nazis by the Wittgenstein family, a week or so before the outbreak of war, included amongst many other assets 1,700 kg of gold. There is a report Wittgenstein visited Moscow a second time in 1939, travelling from Berlin, and again met the philosopher Sophia Janowskaya. Norman Malcolm, at the time a post-graduate research fellow at Cambridge, describes his first impressions of Wittgenstein in 1938: At a meeting of the Moral Science Club, after the paper for the evening was read and the discussion started, someone began to stammer a remark. He had extreme difficulty in expressing himself and his words were unintelligible to me. I whispered to my neighbour, 'Who's that?': he replied, 'Wittgenstein'. I was astonished because I had expected the famous author of the Tractatus to be an elderly man, whereas this man looked young – perhaps about 35. (His actual age was 49.) His face was lean and brown, his profile was aquiline and strikingly beautiful, his head was covered with a curly mass of brown hair. I observed the respectful attention that everyone in the room paid to him. After this unsuccessful beginning he did not speak for a time but was obviously struggling with his thoughts. His look was concentrated, he made striking gestures with his hands as if he was discoursing ... Whether lecturing or conversing privately, Wittgenstein always spoke emphatically and with a distinctive intonation. He spoke excellent English, with the accent of an educated Englishman, although occasional Germanisms would appear in his constructions. His voice was resonant ... His words came out, not fluently, but with great force. Anyone who heard him say anything knew that this was a singular person. His face was remarkably mobile and expressive when he talked. His eyes were deep and often fierce in their expression. His whole personality was commanding, even imperial. Describing Wittgenstein's lecture programme, Malcolm continues: It is hardly correct to speak of these meetings as 'lectures', although this is what Wittgenstein called them. For one thing, he was carrying on original research in these meetings ... Often the meetings consisted mainly of dialogue. Sometimes, however, when he was trying to draw a thought out of himself, he would prohibit, with a peremptory motion of the hand, any questions or remarks. There were frequent and prolonged periods of silence, with only an occasional mutter from Wittgenstein, and the stillest attention from the others. During these silences, Wittgenstein was extremely tense and active. His gaze was concentrated; his face was alive; his hands made arresting movements; his expression was stern. One knew that one was in the presence of extreme seriousness, absorption, and force of intellect ... Wittgenstein was a frightening person at these classes. After work, the philosopher would often relax by watching Westerns, where he preferred to sit at the very front of the cinema, or reading detective stories especially the ones written by Norbert Davis. Norman Malcolm wrote that Wittgenstein would rush to the cinema when class ended.By this time, Wittgenstein's view on the foundations of mathematics had changed considerably. In his early 20s, Wittgenstein had thought logic could provide a solid foundation, and he had even considered updating Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. Now he denied there were any mathematical facts to be discovered. He gave a series of lectures on mathematics, discussing this and other topics, documented in a book, with lectures by Wittgenstein and discussions between him and several students, including the young Alan Turing who described Wittgenstein as "a very peculiar man". The two had many discussions about the relationship between computational logic and everyday notions of truth.Wittgenstein's lectures from this period have also been discussed by another of his students, the Greek philosopher and educator Helle Lambridis. Wittgenstein's teachings in the years 1940–1941 are used in the mid-1950s by Lambridis to write a long text in the form of an imagined dialogue with him, where she begins to develop her own ideas about resemblance in relation to language, elementary concepts and basic-level mental images. Initially only a part of it was published in 1963 in the German education theory review Club Voltaire, but the entire imagined dialogue with Wittgenstein was published after Lambridis's death by her archive holder, the Academy of Athens, in 2004. == 1941–1947: Guy's Hospital and Royal Victoria Infirmary == Monk writes that Wittgenstein found it intolerable that a war (World War II) was going on and he was teaching philosophy. He grew angry when any of his students wanted to become professional philosophers. In September 1941, he asked John Ryle, the brother of the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, if he could get a manual job at Guy's Hospital in London. John Ryle was professor of medicine at Cambridge and had been involved in helping Guy's prepare for the Blitz. Wittgenstein told Ryle he would die slowly if left at Cambridge, and he would rather die quickly. He started working at Guy's shortly afterwards as a dispensary porter, delivering drugs from the pharmacy to the wards where he apparently advised the patients not to take them. In the new year of 1942, Ryle took Wittgenstein to his home in Sussex to meet his wife who had been determined to meet him. His son recorded the weekend in his diary;Wink is awful strange [sic] – not a very good english speaker, keeps on saying 'I mean' and 'its "tolerable"' meaning intolerable. The hospital staff were not told he was one of the world's most famous philosophers, though some of the medical staff did recognize him – at least one had attended Moral Sciences Club meetings – but they were discreet. "Good God, don't tell anybody who I am!" Wittgenstein begged one of them. Some of them nevertheless called him Professor Wittgenstein, and he was allowed to dine with the doctors. He wrote on 1 April 1942: "I no longer feel any hope for the future of my life. It is as though I had before me nothing more than a long stretch of living death. I cannot imagine any future for me other than a ghastly one. Friendless and joyless." It was at this time that Wittgenstein had an operation at Guy's to remove a gallstone that had troubled him for some years.He had developed a friendship with Keith Kirk, a working-class teenage friend of Francis Skinner, the mathematics undergraduate he had had a relationship with until Skinner's death in 1941 from polio. Skinner had given up academia, thanks at least in part to Wittgenstein's influence, and had been working as a mechanic in 1939, with Kirk as his apprentice. Kirk and Wittgenstein struck up a friendship, with Wittgenstein giving him lessons in physics to help him pass a City and Guilds exam. During his period of loneliness at Guy's he wrote in his diary: "For ten days I've heard nothing more from K, even though I pressed him a week ago for news. I think that he has perhaps broken with me. A tragic thought!" Kirk had in fact got married, and they never saw one another again.While Wittgenstein was at Guy's he met Basil Reeve, a young doctor with an interest in philosophy, who, with R. T. Grant, was studying the effect of wound shock (a state associative to hypovolaemia) on air-raid casualties. When the Blitz ended there were fewer casualties to study. In November 1942, Grant and Reeve moved to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, to study road traffic and industrial casualties. Grant offered Wittgenstein a position as a laboratory assistant at a wage of £4 per week, and he lived in Newcastle (at 28 Brandling Park, Jesmond) from 29 April 1943 until February 1944. While there he worked and associated socially with Dr Erasmus Barlow, a great-grandson of Charles Darwin.In the summer of 1946, Wittgenstein thought often of leaving Cambridge and resigning his position as Chair. Wittgenstein grew further dismayed at the state of philosophy, particularly about articles published in the journal Mind. It was around this time that Wittgenstein fell in love with Ben Richards, writing in his diary, "The only thing that my love for B. has done for me is this: it has driven the other small worries associated with my position and my work into the background." On 30 September, Wittgenstein wrote about Cambridge after his return from Swansea, "Everything about the place repels me. The stiffness, the artificiality, the self-satisfaction of the people. The university atmosphere nauseates me."Wittgenstein had only maintained contact with Fouracre, from Guy's hospital, who had joined the army in 1943 after his marriage, only returning in 1947. Wittgenstein maintained frequent correspondence with Fouracre during his time away displaying a desire for Fouracre to return home urgently from the war. In May 1947, Wittgenstein addressed a group of Oxford philosophers for the first time at the Jowett Society. The discussion was on the validity of Descartes' Cogito ergo sum, where Wittgenstein ignored the question and applied his own philosophical method. Harold Arthur Prichard who attended the event was not pleased with Wittgenstein's methods;Wittgenstein: If a man says to me, looking at the sky, 'I think it will rain, therefore I exist', I do not understand him.Prichard: That's all very fine; what we want to know is: is the cogito valid or not? == 1947–1951: Final years == Death is not an event in life: We do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits. Wittgenstein resigned the professorship at Cambridge in 1947 to concentrate on his writing, and in 1947 and 1948 travelled to Ireland, staying at Ross's Hotel in Dublin and at a farmhouse in Redcross, County Wicklow, where he began the manuscript MS 137, volume R. Seeking solitude he moved to a holiday cottage in Rosroe overlooking Killary Harbour, Connemara owned by Drury's brother. He also accepted an invitation from Norman Malcolm, then professor at Cornell University, to stay with him and his wife for several months at Ithaca, New York. He made the trip in April 1949, although he told Malcolm he was too unwell to do philosophical work: "I haven't done any work since the beginning of March & I haven't had the strength of even trying to do any." A doctor in Dublin had diagnosed anaemia and prescribed iron and liver pills. The details of Wittgenstein's stay in America are recounted in Norman Malcolm's Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. During his summer in America, Wittgenstein began his epistemological discussions, in particular his engagement with philosophical scepticism, that would eventually become the final fragments On Certainty. He returned to London, where he was diagnosed with an inoperable prostate cancer, which had spread to his bone marrow. He spent the next two months in Vienna, where his sister Hermine died on 11 February 1950; he went to see her every day, but she was hardly able to speak or recognize him. "Great loss for me and all of us," he wrote. "Greater than I would have thought." He moved around a lot after Hermine's death staying with various friends: to Cambridge in April 1950, where he stayed with G.H. von Wright; to London to stay with Rush Rhees; then to Oxford to see Elizabeth Anscombe, writing to Norman Malcolm that he was hardly doing any philosophy. He went to Norway in August with Ben Richards, then returned to Cambridge, where on 27 November he moved into Storey's End at 76 Storey's Way, the home of his doctor, Edward Bevan, and his wife Joan; he had told them he did not want to die in a hospital, so they said he could spend his last days in their home instead. Joan at first was afraid of Wittgenstein, but they soon became good friends.By the beginning of 1951, it was clear that he had little time left. He wrote a new will in Oxford on 29 January, naming Rhees as his executor, and Anscombe and von Wright his literary administrators, and wrote to Norman Malcolm that month to say, "My mind's completely dead. This isn't a complaint, for I don't really suffer from it. I know that life must have an end once and that mental life can cease before the rest does." In February, he returned to the Bevans' home to work on MS 175 and MS 176. These and other manuscripts were later published as Remarks on Colour and On Certainty. He wrote to Malcolm on 16 April, 13 days before his death: An extraordinary thing happened to me. About a month ago I suddenly found myself in the right frame of mind for doing philosophy. I had been absolutely certain that I'd never again be able to do it. It's the first time after more than 2 years that the curtain in my brain has gone up. – Of course, so far I've only worked for about 5 weeks & it may be all over by tomorrow; but it bucks me up a lot now. === Death === Wittgenstein began work on his final manuscript, MS 177, on 25 April 1951. It was his 62nd birthday on 26 April. He went for a walk the next afternoon, and wrote his last entry that day, 27 April. That evening, he became very ill; when his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, "Good!". Joan stayed with him throughout that night, and just before losing consciousness for the last time on 28 April, he told her: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life." Norman Malcolm describes this as a "strangely moving utterance".Four of Wittgenstein's former students arrived at his bedside – Ben Richards, Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Maurice O'Connor Drury. Anscombe and Smythies were Catholics; and, at the latter's request, a Dominican friar, Father Conrad Pepler, also attended. (Wittgenstein had asked for a "priest who was not a philosopher" and had met with Pepler several times before his death.) They were at first unsure what Wittgenstein would have wanted, but then remembered he had said he hoped his Catholic friends would pray for him, so they did, and he was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. Wittgenstein was given a Catholic burial at Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge. Drury later said he had been troubled ever since about whether that was the right thing to do. In 2015 the ledger gravestone was refurbished by the British Wittgenstein Society.On his religious views, Wittgenstein was said to be greatly interested in Catholicism, and was sympathetic to it, but did not consider himself to be a Catholic. According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein saw Catholicism more as a way of life than as a set of beliefs he held, considering that he did not accept any religious faith. Wittgenstein has no goal to either support or reject religion; his only interest is to keep discussions, whether religious or not, clear. — T. Labron (2006) Wittgenstein was said by some commentators to be agnostic, in a qualified sense. I won't say 'See you tomorrow' because that would be like predicting the future, and I'm pretty sure I can't do that. == 1953: Publication of the Philosophical Investigations == The Blue Book, a set of notes dictated to his class at Cambridge in 1933–1934, contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later thoughts on language and is widely read as a turning point in his philosophy of language. Philosophical Investigations was published in two parts in 1953. Most of Part I was ready for printing in 1946, but Wittgenstein withdrew the manuscript from his publisher. The shorter Part II was added by his editors, Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees. Wittgenstein asks the reader to think of language as a multiplicity of language games within which parts of language develop and function. He argues that the bewitchments of philosophical problems arise from philosophers' misguided attempts to consider the meaning of words independently of their context, usage, and grammar — what he called "language gone on holiday".According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed. He describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language, all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all. Wittgenstein argues that philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the "rough ground" of ordinary language in use. Much of the Investigations consists of examples of how the first false steps can be avoided, so that philosophical problems are dissolved, rather than solved: "The clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear." == Other posthumous publications == Wittgenstein's archive of unpublished papers included 83 manuscripts, 46 typescripts and 11 dictations, amounting to an estimated 20,000 pages. Choosing among repeated drafts, revisions, corrections, and loose notes, editorial work has found nearly one third of the total suitable for print. An Internet facility hosted by the University of Bergen allows access to images of almost all the material and to search the available transcriptions. In 2011, two new boxes of Wittgenstein papers, thought to have been lost during the Second World War, were found.What became the Philosophical Investigations was already close to completion in 1951. Wittgenstein's three literary executors prioritized it, both because of its intrinsic importance and because he had explicitly intended publication. The book was published in 1953. At least three other works were more or less finished. Two were already "bulky typescripts", the Philosophical Remarks and Philosophical Grammar. Literary (co-)executor G. H. von Wright stated, "They are virtually completed works. But Wittgenstein did not publish them." The third was Remarks on Colour. "He wrote i.a. a fair amount on colour concepts, and this material he did excerpt and polish, reducing it to a small compass." == Legacy == === Assessment === Bertrand Russell described Wittgenstein as perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating. As mentioned above, in 1999 a survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations." The Investigations also ranked 54th on a list of most influential twentieth-century works in cognitive science prepared by the University of Minnesota's Center for Cognitive Sciences.Duncan J. Richter of the Virginia Military Institute, writing for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, has described Wittgenstein as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and regarded by some as the most important since Immanuel Kant." Peter Hacker argues that Wittgenstein's influence on 20th-century analytical philosophy can be attributed to his early influence on the Vienna Circle and later influence on the Oxford "ordinary language" school and Cambridge philosophers.He is considered by some to be one of the greatest philosophers of the modern era. But despite its deep influence on analytical philosophy, Wittgenstein's work did not always gain a positive reception. Argentine-Canadian philosopher Mario Bunge considers that "Wittgenstein is popular because he is trivial." In Bunge's opinion, Wittgenstein's philosophy is trivial because it deals with unimportant problems and ignores science. According to Bunge, Wittgenstein's philosophy of language is shallow because it ignores scientific linguistics. Bunge also considers Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind to be speculative because it is not informed by the scientific research performed in psychology. === Scholarly interpretation === There are many diverging interpretations of Wittgenstein's thought. In the words of his friend and colleague Georg Henrik von Wright: He was of the opinion ... that his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he was writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men. Since Wittgenstein's death, scholarly interpretations of his philosophy have differed. Scholars have differed on the continuity between the so-called early Wittgenstein and the so-called late(r) Wittgenstein (that is, the difference between his views expressed in the Tractatus and those in Philosophical Investigations), with some seeing the two as starkly disparate and others stressing the gradual transition between the two works through analysis of Wittgenstein's unpublished papers (the Nachlass). ==== The New Wittgenstein ==== One significant debate in Wittgenstein scholarship concerns the work of interpreters who are referred to under the banner of The New Wittgenstein school such as Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, and James F. Conant. While the Tractatus, particularly in its conclusion, seems paradoxical and self-undermining, New Wittgenstein scholars advance a "therapeutic" understanding of Wittgenstein's work – "an understanding of Wittgenstein as aspiring, not to advance metaphysical theories, but rather to help us work ourselves out of confusions we become entangled in when philosophizing." To support this goal, the New Wittgenstein scholars propose a reading of the Tractatus as "plain nonsense" – arguing it does not attempt to convey a substantive philosophical project but instead simply tries to push the reader to abandon philosophical speculation. The therapeutic approach traces its roots to the philosophical work of John Wisdom and the review of The Blue Book written by Oets Kolk Bouwsma.The therapeutic approach is not without critics: Hans-Johann Glock argues that the "plain nonsense" reading of the Tractatus "is at odds with the external evidence, writings and conversations in which Wittgenstein states that the Tractatus is committed to the idea of ineffable insight."Hans Sluga and Rupert Read have advocated a "post-therapeutic" or "liberatory" interpretation of Wittgenstein. ==== Bertrand Russell ==== In October 1944, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge around the same time as did Russell, who had been living in the United States for several years. Russell returned to Cambridge after a backlash in America to his writings on morals and religion. Wittgenstein said of Russell's works to Drury:Russell's books should be bound in two colours...those dealing with mathematical logic in red – and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue – and no one should be allowed to read them.Russell made similar disparaging comments about Wittgenstein's later work:I have not found in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting and I do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages. Psychologically this is surprising. The earlier Wittgenstein, whom I knew intimately, was a man addicted to passionately intense thinking, profoundly aware of difficult problems of which I, like him, felt the importance, and possessed (or at least so I thought) of true philosophical genius. The later Wittgenstein, on the contrary, seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary. I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true. I realize, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to lexicographers, and at worst, an idle tea-table amusement. ==== Saul Kripke ==== Saul Kripke's 1982 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language contends that the central argument of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is a devastating rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date."Kripke's book generated a large secondary literature, divided between those who find his sceptical problem interesting and perceptive, and others, such as John McDowell, Stanley Cavell, Gordon Baker, Peter Hacker, Colin McGinn, and Peter Winch who argue that his scepticism of meaning is a pseudo-problem that stems from a confused, selective reading of Wittgenstein. Kripke's position has, however, recently been defended against these and other attacks by the Cambridge philosopher Martin Kusch (2006). == Works == == See also == Definitions of philosophy International Wittgenstein Symposium Paul Horwich's views on the Antiphilosophy of Wittgenstein == Footnotes == == References == == Sources == == Further reading == == External links == Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein at Project Gutenberg C.K. Ogden's English translation of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Gutenberg) Works by or about Ludwig Wittgenstein at Internet Archive Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Ludwig Wittgenstein at Curlie "Ludwig Wittgenstein". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Later Philosophy of Mathematics". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Trinity College Chapel John Searle on Ludwig Wittgenstein on YouTube BBC Radio 4 programme on Wittgenstein, broadcast 13 December 2011 "A. J. Ayer's Critique of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument" Wittgenstein, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Ray Monk, Barry Smith & Marie McGinn (In Our Time, 4 December 2003) Ludwig Wittgenstein at the Mathematics Genealogy Project In Our Time, Ludwig Wittgenstein, broadcast 4 December 2003 on BBC Radio 4 The Significance of Ontology in Epistemological Research - Hannah Arendt Memorial Lecture, 1980

Martin Heidegger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (; German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century. He has been widely criticized for supporting the Nazi Party after his election as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933, and there has been controversy about the relationship between his philosophy and Nazism.In Heidegger's fundamental text Being and Time (1927), "Dasein" is introduced as a term for the type of being that humans possess. Dasein has been translated as "being there". Heidegger believes that Dasein already has a "pre-ontological" and concrete understanding that shapes how it lives. This mode of being he terms "being-in-the-world". Dasein and "being-in-the-world" are unitary concepts at odds with rationalist philosophy and its "subject/object" view since at least René Descartes. Heidegger explicitly disagrees with Descartes, and uses an analysis of Dasein to approach the question of the meaning of being. This meaning is "concerned with what makes beings intelligible as beings", according to Heidegger scholar Michael Wheeler. == Biography == === Early years === Heidegger was born in rural Meßkirch, Baden, the son of Johanna (Kempf) and Friedrich Heidegger. Raised a Roman Catholic, he was the son of the sexton of the village church that adhered to the First Vatican Council of 1870, which was observed mainly by the poorer class of Meßkirch. His family could not afford to send him to university, so he entered a Jesuit seminary, though he was turned away within weeks because of the health requirement and what the director and doctor of the seminary described as a psychosomatic heart condition. Heidegger was short and sinewy, with dark piercing eyes. He enjoyed outdoor pursuits, being especially proficient at skiing.Studying theology at the University of Freiburg while supported by the church, he later switched his field of study to philosophy. Heidegger completed his doctoral thesis on psychologism in 1914, influenced by Neo-Thomism and Neo-Kantianism, directed by Arthur Schneider. In 1916, he finished his venia legendi with a habilitation thesis on Duns Scotus directed by the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert and influenced by Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. He attempted to get the (Catholic) philosophy post at the University of Freiburg on 23rd June 1916 but failed despite the support of Heinrich Finke.In the two years following, he worked first as an unsalaried Privatdozent then served as a soldier during the final year of World War I; serving "the last ten months of the war" with "the last three of those in a meteorological unit on the western front".Heidegger taught courses at the University of Freiburg from 1919-1923. See his published courses in Gesamtausgabe. Early Freiburg lecture courses, 1919–1923. === Marburg === In 1923, Heidegger was elected to an extraordinary professorship in philosophy at the University of Marburg. His colleagues there included Rudolf Bultmann, Nicolai Hartmann, Paul Tillich, and Paul Natorp.: 65  Heidegger's students at Marburg included Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Gerhard Krüger, Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, Günther Anders, and Hans Jonas. Following on from Aristotle, he began to develop in his lectures the main theme of his philosophy: the question of the sense of being. He extended the concept of subject to the dimension of history and concrete existence, which he found prefigured in such Christian thinkers as Paul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and Søren Kierkegaard. He also read the works of Wilhelm Dilthey, Husserl, Max Scheler, and Friedrich Nietzsche. === Freiburg === In 1927 Heidegger published his main work, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). When Husserl retired as Professor of Philosophy in 1928, Heidegger accepted Freiburg's election to be his successor, in spite of a counter-offer by Marburg. Heidegger remained at Freiburg im Breisgau for the rest of his life, declining later offers including one from Humboldt University of Berlin. His students at Freiburg included Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas, Karl Löwith, Charles Malik, Herbert Marcuse, and Ernst Nolte. Karl Rahner likely attended four of his seminars in four semesters from 1934 to 1936. Emmanuel Levinas attended his lecture courses during his stay in Freiburg in 1928, as did Jan Patočka in 1933; Patočka in particular was deeply influenced by him. Heidegger was elected rector of the University on 21 April 1933, and joined the Nazi Party on 1 May.: 82  During his time as rector he was a member and an enthusiastic supporter of the party. There is continuing controversy as to the relationship between his philosophy and his political allegiance to Nazism. He wanted to position himself as the philosopher of the party, but the highly abstract nature of his work and the opposition of Alfred Rosenberg, who himself aspired to act in that position, limited Heidegger's role. His withdrawal from his position as rector owed more to his frustration as an administrator than to any principled opposition to the Nazis, according to historians. In his inaugural address as rector on 27 May he expressed his support of a German revolution, and in an article and a speech to the students from the same year he also supported Adolf Hitler.: 3 : 11  In November 1933, Heidegger signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State. Heidegger resigned from the rectorate in April 1934, but remained a member of the Nazi Party until 1945 even though the Nazis eventually prevented him from publishing.: 3  From 1936 to 1940, Heidegger delivered a series of lectures on Nietzsche at Freiburg that presented much of the raw material incorporated in his more established work and thought from this time. Of this series, Heidegger said in his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel: "Everyone who had ears to hear was able to hear in these lectures... a confrontation with National Socialism." Later scholars, however, have come to the opposite conclusion about this material; for example David Farrell Krell, in the introduction to an English translation of the seminar, writes: "The problem is not that Heidegger lacked a political theory and praxis but that he had one."In the autumn of 1944, Heidegger was drafted into the Volkssturm and assigned to dig anti-tank ditches along the Rhine.Heidegger's Black Notebooks, written between 1931 and into the early 1970s and first published in 2014, contain several expressions of antisemitic sentiments, which have led to a reevaluation of Heidegger's relation to Nazism. Having analysed the Black Notebooks, Donatella di Cesare asserts in her book Heidegger and the Jews that "metaphysical anti-semitism" and antipathy toward Jews was central to Heidegger's philosophical work. Heidegger, according to di Cesare, considered Jewish people to be agents of modernity disfiguring the spirit of Western civilization; he held the Holocaust to be the logical result of the Jewish acceleration of technology, and thus blamed the Jewish genocide on its victims themselves. === Post-war === In late 1946, as France engaged in épuration légale in its occupation zone, the French military authorities determined that Heidegger should be blocked from teaching or participating in any university activities because of his association with the Nazi Party. The denazification procedures against Heidegger continued until March 1949 when he was finally pronounced a Mitläufer (the second lowest of five categories of "incrimination" by association with the Nazi regime). No punitive measures against him were proposed. This opened the way for his readmission to teaching at Freiburg University in the winter semester of 1950–51. He was granted emeritus status and then taught regularly from 1951 until 1958, and by invitation until 1967. === Death === Heidegger died on 26 May 1976 in Meßkirch: 1  and was buried in the Meßkirch cemetery. == Personal life == Heidegger married Elfride Petri on 21 March 1917, in a Catholic ceremony officiated by his friend Engelbert Krebs, and a week later in a Protestant ceremony in the presence of her parents. Their first son, Jörg, was born in 1919.: 159  Elfride then gave birth to Hermann in August 1920. Heidegger knew that he was not Hermann's biological father but raised him as his son. Hermann's biological father, who became godfather to his son, was family friend and doctor Friedel Caesar. Hermann was told of this at the age of 14; Hermann became a historian and would later serve as the executor of Heidegger's will. Hermann Heidegger died on 13 January 2020.Heidegger spent much time at his vacation home at Todtnauberg, on the edge of the Black Forest. He considered the seclusion provided by the forest to be the best environment in which to engage in philosophical thought. A few months before his death, he met with Bernhard Welte, a Catholic priest, Freiburg University professor and earlier correspondent. The exact nature of their conversation is not known, but what is known is that it included talk of Heidegger's relationship to the Catholic Church and subsequent Christian burial at which the priest officiated.: 10  === Affairs === Heidegger had a four-year affair with Hannah Arendt and a decades-long affair with Elisabeth Blochmann; both women were his students. Arendt was Jewish, and Blochmann had one Jewish parent, making them subject to severe persecution by the Nazi authorities. The 35-year-old Heidegger, who was married with two young sons, began a long romantic relationship with 17-year-old Arendt who later faced criticism for this because of Heidegger's support for the Nazi Party after his election as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933. They agreed to keep the details of the relationship a secret, preserving their letters but keeping them unavailable. The relationship was not known until Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's biography of Arendt appeared in 1982. At the time of publishing, Arendt and Heidegger were deceased and Heidegger's wife, Elfride (1893–1992), was still alive. The affair was not widely known until 1995, when Elzbieta Ettinger gained access to the sealed correspondence.It is probably fair to say that, following his relationship with Hannah Arendt, Blochmann had one of the most important extramarital affairs with Heidegger (as is known since 2005, Heidegger led something of an open marriage and his wife Elfriede both knew about his affairs and conducted her own). Elfriede Heidegger and Elisabeth Blochmann were friends and former classmates. The story is well documented in the 1989 edition of their letters, starting in 1918. Heidegger's letters to his wife contain information about several other affairs of his. He helped Blochmann emigrate from Germany before the start of World War II and resumed contact with both of them after the war. == Philosophy == === Dasein === In the 1927 Being and Time, Heidegger rejects the Cartesian view of the human being as a subjective spectator of objects, according to Marcella Horrigan-Kelly (et al.). The book instead holds that both subject and object are inseparable. In presenting "being" as inseparable, Heidegger introduced the term Dasein (literally: being there), intended to embody a "living being" through their activity of "being there" and "being-in-the-world". "Famously, Heidegger writes of Dasein as Being-in-the-world," according to Michael Wheeler (2011). Understood as a unitary phenomenon rather than a contingent, additive combination, being-in-the-world is an essential characteristic of Dasein, Wheeler writes.Heidegger's account of Dasein in Being and Time passes through a dissection of the experiences of Angst, "the Nothing" and mortality, and then through an analysis of the structure of "Care" as such. From there he raises the problem of "authenticity", that is, the potentiality for mortal Dasein to exist fully enough that it might actually understand being and its possibilities. Dasein is not "man", but is nothing other than "man", according to Heidegger. Moreover, he wrote that Dasein is "the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of Being". === Being === Dasein's ordinary and even mundane experience of "being-in-the-world" provides "access to the meaning" or "sense of being" (Sinn des Seins). This access via Dasein is also that "in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something." Heidegger proposes that this meaning would elucidate ordinary "prescientific" understanding, which precedes abstract ways of knowing, such as logic or theory.This supposed "non-linguistic, pre-cognitive access" to the meaning of Being didn't underscore any particular, preferred narrative, according to an account of Richard Rorty's analysis by Edward Grippe. In this account, Heidegger holds that no particular understanding of Being (nor state of Dasein and its endeavors) is to be preferred over another. Moreover, "Rorty agrees with Heidegger that there is no hidden power called Being," Grippe writes, adding that Heidegger's concept of Being is viewed by Rorty as metaphorical. But Heidegger actually offers "no sense of how we might answer the question of being as such," writes Simon Critchley in his 2009 nine-part blog commentary on Being and Time for The Guardian. The book instead provides "an answer to the question of what it means to be human," according to Critchley. Nonetheless, Heidegger does present the concept: "'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings." The interpreters Thomas Sheehan and Mark Wrathall each separately assert that commentators' emphasis on the term "Being" is misplaced, and that Heidegger's central focus was never on "Being" as such. Wrathall wrote (2011) that Heidegger's elaborate concept of "unconcealment" was his central, life-long focus, while Sheehan (2015) proposed that the philosopher's prime focus was on that which "brings about being as a givenness of entities." Heidegger claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked the question of being. === Time === Heidegger believes that time finds its meaning in death, according to Michael Kelley. That is, time is understood only from a finite or mortal vantage. Dasein's essential mode of being-in-the-world is temporal: Having been "thrown" into a world implies a “pastness” to its being. Dasein occupies itself with the present tasks required by goals it has projected on the future. Thus Heidegger concludes that Dasein's fundamental characteristic is temporality, Kelley writes.Dasein as an inseparable subject/object, cannot be separated from its objective "historicality". On the one hand, Dasein is "stretched along" between birth and death, and thrown into its world; into its possibilities which Dasein is charged with assuming. On the other hand, Dasein's access to this world and these possibilities is always via a history and a tradition—this is the question of "world historicality". === Ontological difference and fundamental ontology === In Being and Time, "Heidegger drew a sharp distinction between ontical and the ontological -- or beings and "Being" as such. He labelled this the "Ontological Difference". It is from this distinction that he developed the concept of "Fundamental Ontology". According to Taylor Carman (2003), traditional ontology asks "Why is there anything?" whereas Heidegger's "Fundamental Ontology" asks "What does it mean for something to be?". Heidegger's ontology "is fundamental relative to traditional ontology in that it concerns what any understanding of entities necessarily presupposes, namely, our understanding of that in virtue of which entities are entities", Carman writes.: 8–52 This line of inquiry is based on the "ontological difference"—central to Heidegger's philosophy. In 1937's "Contributions to Philosophy" Heidegger calls the ontological difference "the essence of Dasein". He accuses the Western philosophical tradition of incorrectly focusing on the "ontic"—and thus forgetful of this distinction. This has led to the mistake of understanding being as such as a kind of ultimate entity, for example as idea, energeia, substantia, actualitas or will to power. According to Richard Rorty, Heidegger envisioned no "hidden power of Being" as an ultimate entity. Heidegger purportedly modifies "traditional" ontic philosophy by focusing instead on the meaning of being—or what he called "fundamental ontology". This "ontological inquiry" is required to understand the basis of the sciences, according to "Being and Time" (1927).This inquiry is engaged by studying the human being, or Dasein, according to Heidegger. This method works because of Dasein's pre-ontological understanding of being that shapes experience. This implicit understanding can be made explicit through phenomenology and its methods, but these must be employed using hermeneutics in order to avoid distortions by the forgetfulness of being, according to interpretations of Heidegger.Fundamental Ontology, regarded as a project, is akin to contemporary meta-ontology. === Later works: The Turn === Heidegger's Kehre, or "the turn" (die Kehre) refers to a change in his work as early as 1930 that became clearly established by the 1940s, according to various commentators. Heidegger rarely used the term. Recurring themes include poetry and technology. Commentators such as William J. Richardson (1963) describe, variously, a shift of focus, or a major change in outlook.The 1935 Introduction to Metaphysics "clearly shows the shift" to an emphasis on language from a previous emphasis on Dasein in Being and Time eight years earlier, according to Brian Bard's 1993 essay titled "Heidegger's Reading of Heraclitus". In a 1950 lecture Heidegger formulated the famous saying "Language speaks", later published in the 1959 essays collection Unterwegs zur Sprache, and collected in the 1971 English book Poetry, Language, Thought.This supposed shift—applied here to cover about thirty years of Heidegger's 40-year writing career—has been described by commentators from widely varied viewpoints; including as a shift in priority from Being and Time to Time and Being—namely, from dwelling (being) in the world to doing (time) in the world. (This aspect, in particular the 1951 essay "Building, Dwelling Thinking" influenced architectural theorists including Christian Norberg-Schulz, Dalibor Vesely, Joseph Rykwert, Daniel Libeskind and the philosopher-architect Nader El-Bizri.)Other interpreters believe "the Kehre" can be overstated or even that it doesn't exist. Thomas Sheehan (2001) believes this supposed change is "far less dramatic than usually suggested," and entailed a change in focus and method. Sheehan contends that throughout his career, Heidegger never focused on "being", but rather tried to define "[that which] brings about being as a givenness of entities." Mark Wrathall argued (2011) that the Kehre isn't found in Heidegger's writings but is simply a misconception. As evidence for this view, Wrathall sees a consistency of purpose in Heidegger's life-long pursuit and refinement of his notion of "unconcealment". Some notable "later" works are The Origin of the Work of Art", (1935), Contributions to Philosophy (1937), Letter on Humanism (1946). "Building Dwelling Thinking", (1951), "The Question Concerning Technology", (1954) " and What Is Called Thinking? (1954). Also during this period, Heidegger wrote extensively on Nietzsche and the poet Holderlin. === Heidegger and the ground of history === In his later philosophy, Heidegger attempted to reconstruct the "history of being" in order to show how the different epochs in the history of philosophy were dominated by different conceptions of being. His goal is to retrieve the original experience of being present in the early Greek thought that was covered up by later philosophers.Michael Allen Gillespie says (1984) that Heidegger's theoretical acceptance of "destiny" has much in common with the millenarianism of Marxism. But Marxists believe Heidegger's "theoretical acceptance is antagonistic to practical political activity and implies fascism. Gillespie, however, says "the real danger" from Heidegger isn't quietism but fanaticism. "History, as Heidegger understands it, doesn't move forward gradually and regularly but spasmodically and unpredictably." Modernity has cast mankind toward a new goal "on the brink of profound nihilism" that is "so alien it requires the construction of a new tradition to make it comprehensible."Allen extrapolated from Heidegger's writings that mankind may degenerate into scientists, workers and brutes. According to Allen, Heidegger envisaged this abyss to be the greatest event in the West's history because it would enable Humanity to comprehend Being more profoundly and primordially than the Pre-Socratics. === Influences === ==== Augustine of Hippo ==== Heidegger was substantially influenced by Augustine of Hippo, and Being and Time would not have been possible without the influence of Augustine's thought. Augustine's Confessions was particularly influential in shaping Heidegger's thought. Almost all central concepts of Being and Time are derived from Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard, according to Christian Lotz.Augustine viewed time as relative and subjective, and that being and time were bound up together. Heidegger adopted similar views, e.g. that time was the horizon of Being: ' ...time temporalizes itself only as long as there are human beings.' ==== Aristotle and the Greeks ==== Heidegger was influenced at an early age by Aristotle, mediated through Catholic theology, medieval philosophy and Franz Brentano. Aristotle's ethical, logical, and metaphysical works were crucial to the development of his thought in the crucial period of the 1920s. Although he later worked less on Aristotle, Heidegger recommended postponing reading Nietzsche, and to "first study Aristotle for ten to fifteen years". In reading Aristotle, Heidegger increasingly contested the traditional Latin translation and scholastic interpretation of his thought. Particularly important (not least for its influence upon others, both in their interpretation of Aristotle and in rehabilitating a neo-Aristotelian "practical philosophy") was his radical reinterpretation of Book Six of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and several books of the Metaphysics. Both informed the argument of Being and Time. Heidegger's thought is original in being an authentic retrieval of the past, a repetition of the possibilities handed down by the tradition.The idea of asking about being may be traced back via Aristotle to Parmenides. Heidegger claimed to have revived the question of being, the question having been largely forgotten by the metaphysical tradition extending from Plato to Descartes, a forgetfulness extending to the Age of Enlightenment and then to modern science and technology. In pursuit of the retrieval of this question, Heidegger spent considerable time reflecting on ancient Greek thought, in particular on Plato, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaximander, as well as on the tragic playwright Sophocles.According to W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, Heidegger believed "the thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides, which lies at the origin of philosophy, was falsified and misinterpreted" by Plato and Aristotle, thus tainting all of subsequent Western philosophy. In his Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger states: Among the most ancient Greek thinkers, it is Heraclitus who was subjected to the most fundamentally un-Greek misinterpretation in the course of Western history, and who nevertheless in more recent times has provided the strongest impulses toward redisclosing what is authentically Greek. Charles Guignon wrote that Heidegger aimed to correct this misunderstanding by reviving Presocratic notions of 'being' with an emphasis on "understanding the way beings show up in (and as) an unfolding happening or event." Guignon adds that "we might call this alternative outlook 'event ontology.'" ==== Dilthey ==== Heidegger's very early project of developing a "hermeneutics of factical life" and his hermeneutical transformation of phenomenology was influenced in part by his reading of the works of Wilhelm Dilthey.Of the influence of Dilthey, Hans-Georg Gadamer writes that Dilthey's influence was important in helping the youthful Heidegger "in distancing himself from the systematic ideal of Neo-Kantianism, as Heidegger acknowledges in Being and Time."Scholars as diverse as Theodore Kisiel and David Farrell Krell have argued for the importance of Diltheyan concepts and strategies in the formation of Heidegger's thought.Even though Gadamer's interpretation of Heidegger has been questioned,: 32–33  there is little doubt that Heidegger seized upon Dilthey's concept of hermeneutics. Heidegger's novel ideas about ontology required a gestalt formation, not merely a series of logical arguments, in order to demonstrate his fundamentally new paradigm of thinking, and the hermeneutic circle offered a new and powerful tool for the articulation and realization of these ideas. ==== Husserl ==== Husserl's influence on Heidegger is controversial. Disagreements centre upon how much of Husserlian phenomenology is contested by Heidegger, and how much his phenomenology in fact informs Heidegger's own understanding. On the relation between the two figures, Gadamer wrote: "When asked about phenomenology, Husserl was quite right to answer as he used to in the period directly after World War I: 'Phenomenology, that is me and Heidegger'." Nevertheless, Gadamer noted that Heidegger was no patient collaborator with Husserl, and that Heidegger's "rash ascent to the top, the incomparable fascination he aroused, and his stormy temperament surely must have made Husserl, the patient one, as suspicious of Heidegger as he always had been of Max Scheler's volcanic fire."Robert J. Dostal understood the importance of Husserl to be profound: Heidegger himself, who is supposed to have broken with Husserl, bases his hermeneutics on an account of time that not only parallels Husserl's account in many ways but seems to have been arrived at through the same phenomenological method as was used by Husserl.... The differences between Husserl and Heidegger are significant, but if we do not see how much it is the case that Husserlian phenomenology provides the framework for Heidegger's approach, we will not be able to appreciate the exact nature of Heidegger's project in Being and Time or why he left it unfinished. Daniel O. Dahlstrom saw Heidegger's presentation of his work as a departure from Husserl as unfairly misrepresenting Husserl's own work. Dahlstrom concluded his consideration of the relation between Heidegger and Husserl as follows: Heidegger's silence about the stark similarities between his account of temporality and Husserl's investigation of internal time-consciousness contributes to a misrepresentation of Husserl's account of intentionality. Contrary to the criticisms Heidegger advances in his lectures, intentionality (and, by implication, the meaning of 'to be') in the final analysis is not construed by Husserl as sheer presence (be it the presence of a fact or object, act or event). Yet for all its "dangerous closeness" to what Heidegger understands by temporality, Husserl's account of internal time-consciousness does differ fundamentally. In Husserl's account the structure of protentions is accorded neither the finitude nor the primacy that Heidegger claims are central to the original future of ecstatic-horizonal temporality. ==== Kierkegaard ==== Heideggerians regarded Søren Kierkegaard as, by far, the greatest philosophical contributor to Heidegger's own existentialist concepts. Heidegger's concepts of anxiety (Angst) and mortality draw on Kierkegaard and are indebted to the way in which the latter lays out the importance of our subjective relation to truth, our existence in the face of death, the temporality of existence, and the importance of passionate affirmation of one's individual being-in-the-world.Patricia J. Huntington claims that Heidegger's book Being and Time continued Kierkegaard's existential goal. Nevertheless, she argues that Heidegger began to distance himself from any existentialist thought.Calvin Shrag argues Heidegger's early relationship with Kierkegaard as: Kierkegaard is primarily concerned with existence as it is experienced in man's concrete ethico-religious situation. Heidegger is interested in deriving an ontological analysis of man. But as Heidegger's ontological and existentialist descriptions can arise only from ontic and existential experience, so Kierkegaard's ontic and existential elucidations express an implicit ontology. ==== Hölderlin and Nietzsche ==== Friedrich Hölderlin and Friedrich Nietzsche were both important influences on Heidegger, and many of his lecture courses were devoted to one or the other, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.: 224  The lectures on Nietzsche focused on fragments posthumously published under the title The Will to Power, rather than on Nietzsche's published works. Heidegger read The Will to Power as the culminating expression of Western metaphysics, and the lectures are a kind of dialogue between the two thinkers. This is also the case for the lecture courses devoted to the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin, which became an increasingly central focus of Heidegger's work and thought. Heidegger grants to Hölderlin a singular place within the history of being and the history of Germany, as a herald whose thought is yet to be "heard" in Germany or the West. Many of Heidegger's works from the 1930s onwards include meditations on lines from Hölderlin's poetry, and several of the lecture courses are devoted to the reading of a single poem (see, for example, Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"). === Heidegger and Eastern thought === Some writers on Heidegger's work see possibilities within it for dialogue with traditions of thought outside of Western philosophy, particularly East Asian thinking.: 351–354  Despite perceived differences between Eastern and Western philosophy, some of Heidegger's later work, particularly "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer", does show an interest in initiating such a dialogue. Heidegger himself had contact with a number of leading Japanese intellectuals, including members of the Kyoto School, notably Hajime Tanabe and Kuki Shūzō. Reinhard May refers to Chang Chung-Yuan who stated (in 1977) "Heidegger is the only Western Philosopher who not only intellectually understands Tao, but has intuitively experienced the essence of it as well." May sees great influence of Taoism and Japanese scholars in Heidegger's work, although this influence is not acknowledged by the author. He asserts (1996): "The investigation concludes that Heidegger's work was significantly influenced by East Asian sources. It can be shown, moreover, that in particular instances Heidegger even appropriated wholesale and almost verbatim major ideas from the German translations of Daoist and Zen Buddhist classics. This clandestine textual appropriation of non-Western spirituality, the extent of which has gone undiscovered for so long, seems quite unparalleled, with far-reaching implications for our future interpretation of Heidegger's work." ==== Islam ==== Heidegger has been influential in research on the relationship between Western philosophy and the history of ideas in Islam, particularly for some scholars interested in Arabic philosophical medieval sources. These include the Lebanese philosopher and architectural theorist Nader El-Bizri, who, as well as focusing on the critique of the history of metaphysics (as an 'Arab Heideggerian'), also moves towards rethinking the notion of "dwelling" in the epoch of the modern unfolding of the essence of technology and Gestell, and realizing what can be described as a "confluence of Western and Eastern thought" as well. El-Bizri has also taken a new direction in his engagement in 'Heidegger Studies' by way of probing the Arab/Levantine Anglophone reception of Sein und Zeit in 1937 as set in the Harvard doctoral thesis of the 20th century Lebanese thinker and diplomat Charles Malik.It is also claimed that the works of counter-enlightenment philosophers such as Heidegger, along with Friedrich Nietzsche and Joseph de Maistre, influenced Iran's Shia Islamist scholars, notably Ali Shariati. A clearer impact of Heidegger in Iran is associated with thinkers such as Reza Davari Ardakani, Ahmad Fardid, and Fardid's student Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, who have been closely associated with the unfolding of philosophical thinking in a Muslim modern theological legacy in Iran. This included the construction of the ideological foundations of the Iranian Revolution and modern political Islam in its connections with theology. == Heidegger and the Nazi Party == === The rectorate === Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg on 21 April 1933, and assumed the position the following day. On May 1, he joined the Nazi Party. On 27 May 1933, Heidegger delivered his inaugural address, the Rektoratsrede ("The Self-assertion of the German University"), in a hall decorated with swastikas, with members of the Sturmabteilung and prominent Nazi Party officials present.His tenure as rector was fraught with difficulties from the outset. Some Nazi education officials viewed him as a rival, while others saw his efforts as comical. Some of Heidegger's fellow Nazis also ridiculed his philosophical writings as gibberish. He finally offered his resignation as rector on 23 April 1934, and it was accepted on 27 April. Heidegger remained a member of both the academic faculty and of the Nazi Party until the end of the war.Philosophical historian Hans Sluga wrote: Though as rector he prevented students from displaying an anti-Semitic poster at the entrance to the university and from holding a book burning, he kept in close contact with the Nazi student leaders and clearly signaled to them his sympathy with their activism. In 1945, Heidegger wrote of his term as rector, giving the writing to his son Hermann; it was published in 1983: The rectorate was an attempt to see something in the movement that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudeness, that was much more far-reaching and that could perhaps one day bring a concentration on the Germans' Western historical essence. It will in no way be denied that at the time I believed in such possibilities and for that reason renounced the actual vocation of thinking in favor of being effective in an official capacity. In no way will what was caused by my own inadequacy in office be played down. But these points of view do not capture what is essential and what moved me to accept the rectorate. === Treatment of Husserl === Beginning in 1917, German-Jewish philosopher Edmund Husserl championed Heidegger's work, and helped Heidegger become his successor for the chair in philosophy at the University of Freiburg in 1928.On 6 April 1933, the Gauleiter of Baden Province, Robert Wagner, suspended all Jewish government employees, including present and retired faculty at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger's predecessor as rector formally notified Husserl of his "enforced leave of absence" on 14 April 1933. Heidegger became Rector of the University of Freiburg on 22 April 1933. The following week the national Reich law of 28 April 1933 replaced Reichskommissar Wagner's decree. The Reich law required the firing of Jewish professors from German universities, including those, such as Husserl, who had converted to Christianity. The termination of the retired professor Husserl's academic privileges thus did not involve any specific action on Heidegger's part.Heidegger had by then broken off contact with Husserl, other than through intermediaries. Heidegger later claimed that his relationship with Husserl had already become strained after Husserl publicly "settled accounts" with Heidegger and Max Scheler in the early 1930s.Heidegger did not attend his former mentor's cremation in 1938. In 1941, under pressure from publisher Max Niemeyer, Heidegger agreed to remove the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time (restored in post-war editions).Heidegger's behavior towards Husserl has provoked controversy. Hannah Arendt initially suggested that Heidegger's behavior precipitated Husserl's death. She called Heidegger a "potential murderer". However, she later recanted her accusation.In 1939, only a year after Husserl's death, Heidegger wrote in his Black Notebooks: "The more original and inceptive the coming decisions and questions become, the more inaccessible will they remain to this [Jewish] 'race'. Thus, Husserl's step toward phenomenological observation, and his rejection of psychological explanations and historiological reckoning of opinions, are of enduring importance—yet it never reaches into the domains of essential decisions", seeming to imply that Husserl's philosophy was limited purely because he was Jewish. === Post-rectorate period === After the failure of Heidegger's rectorship, he withdrew from most political activity, but remained a member of the Nazi Party. In May 1934 he accepted a position on the Committee for the Philosophy of Law in the Academy for German Law (Ausschuß für Rechtphilosophie der Akademie für Deutsches Recht), where he remained active until at least 1936. The academy had official consultant status in preparing Nazi legislation such as the Nuremberg racial laws that came into effect in 1935. In addition to Heidegger, such Nazi notables as Hans Frank, Julius Streicher, Carl Schmitt and Alfred Rosenberg belonged to the Academy and served on this committee.In a 1935 lecture, later published in 1953 as part of the book Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger refers to the "inner truth and greatness" of the Nazi movement (die innere Wahrheit und Größe dieser Bewegung), but he then adds a qualifying statement in parentheses: "namely, the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity" (nämlich die Begegnung der planetarisch bestimmten Technik und des neuzeitlichen Menschen). However, it subsequently transpired that this qualification had not been made during the original lecture, although Heidegger claimed that it had been. This has led scholars to argue that Heidegger still supported the Nazi party in 1935 but that he did not want to admit this after the war, and so he attempted to silently correct his earlier statement.In private notes written in 1939, Heidegger took a strongly critical view of Hitler's ideology; however, in public lectures, he seems to have continued to make ambiguous comments which, if they expressed criticism of the regime, did so only in the context of praising its ideals. For instance, in a 1942 lecture, published posthumously, Heidegger said of recent German classics scholarship: In the majority of "research results," the Greeks appear as pure National Socialists. This overenthusiasm on the part of academics seems not even to notice that with such "results" it does National Socialism and its historical uniqueness no service at all, not that it needs this anyhow. An important witness to Heidegger's continued allegiance to Nazism during the post-rectorship period is his former student Karl Löwith, who met Heidegger in 1936 while Heidegger was visiting Rome. In an account set down in 1940 (though not intended for publication), Löwith recalled that Heidegger wore a swastika pin to their meeting, though Heidegger knew that Löwith was Jewish. Löwith also recalled that Heidegger "left no doubt about his faith in Hitler", and stated that his support for Nazism was in agreement with the essence of his philosophy.Heidegger rejected the "biologically grounded racism" of the Nazis, replacing it with linguistic-historical heritage. === Post-war period === After the end of World War II, Heidegger was summoned to appear at a denazification hearing. Heidegger's former lover Hannah Arendt spoke on his behalf at this hearing, while Karl Jaspers spoke against him.: 249  He was charged on four counts, dismissed from the university and declared a "follower" (Mitläufer) of Nazism. Heidegger was forbidden to teach between 1945 and 1951. One consequence of this teaching ban was that Heidegger began to engage far more in the French philosophical scene.In his postwar thinking, Heidegger distanced himself from Nazism, but his critical comments about Nazism seem "scandalous" to some since they tend to equate the Nazi war atrocities with other inhumane practices related to rationalisation and industrialisation, including the treatment of animals by factory farming. For instance in a lecture delivered at Bremen in 1949, Heidegger said: "Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs."In 1967 Heidegger met with the Jewish poet Paul Celan, a concentration camp survivor. Having corresponded since 1956,: 66  Celan visited Heidegger at his country retreat and wrote an enigmatic poem about the meeting, which some interpret as Celan's wish for Heidegger to apologize for his behavior during the Nazi era. === Der Spiegel interview === On 23 September 1966, Heidegger was interviewed by Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff for Der Spiegel magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. ("Only a God Can Save Us" was published five days after his death, on 31 May 1976.) In the interview, Heidegger defended his entanglement with Nazism in two ways: first, he argued that there was no alternative, saying that he was trying to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and thus had to compromise with the Nazi administration. Second, he admitted that he saw an "awakening" (Aufbruch) which might help to find a "new national and social approach," but said that he changed his mind about this in 1934, largely prompted by the violence of the Night of the Long Knives. In his interview Heidegger defended as double-speak his 1935 lecture describing the "inner truth and greatness of this movement." He affirmed that Nazi informants who observed his lectures would understand that by "movement" he meant Nazism. However, Heidegger asserted that his dedicated students would know this statement wasn't praise for the Nazi Party. Rather, he meant it as he expressed it in the parenthetical clarification later added to Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), namely, "the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity.": 92 The eyewitness account of Löwith from 1940 contradicts the account given in the Der Spiegel interview in two ways: that he did not make any decisive break with Nazism in 1934, and that Heidegger was willing to entertain more profound relations between his philosophy and political involvement. The Der Spiegel interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation comparing the industrialization of agriculture to the extermination camps. In fact, the interviewers were not in possession of much of the evidence now known for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies. Der Spiegel journalist Georg Wolff had been an SS-Hauptsturmführer with the Sicherheitsdienst, stationed in Oslo during World War II, and had been writing articles with antisemitic and racist overtones in Der Spiegel since the end of the war.: 178  == Influence and reception in France == Heidegger is "widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century while remaining one of the most controversial." His ideas have penetrated into many areas, but in France there is a very long and particular history of reading and interpreting his work which in itself resulted in deepening the impact of his thought in Continental Philosophy. He influenced Jean Beaufret, François Fédier, Dominique Janicaud, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-François Courtine, Jean Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and others.: 166  === Existentialism and pre-war influence === Heidegger's influence on French philosophy began in the 1930s, when Being and Time, "What is Metaphysics?" and other Heideggerian texts were read by Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialists, as well as by thinkers such as Alexandre Kojève, Georges Bataille and Emmanuel Levinas. Because Heidegger's discussion of ontology (the study of being) is rooted in an analysis of the mode of existence of individual human beings (Da-sein, or there-being), his work has often been associated with existentialism. The influence of Heidegger on Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) is marked, but Heidegger felt that Sartre had misread his work, as he argued in later texts such as the "Letter on Humanism". In that text, intended for a French audience, Heidegger explained this misreading in the following terms: Sartre's key proposition about the priority of existentia over essentia [that is, Sartre's statement that "existence precedes essence"] does, however, justify using the name "existentialism" as an appropriate title for a philosophy of this sort. But the basic tenet of "existentialism" has nothing at all in common with the statement from Being and Time [that "the 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence"]—apart from the fact that in Being and Time no statement about the relation of essentia and existentia can yet be expressed, since there it is still a question of preparing something precursory.: 250–251  "Letter on 'Humanism'" is often seen as a direct response to Sartre's 1945 lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism". Aside from merely disputing readings of his own work, however, in the "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger asserts that "Every humanism is either grounded in a metaphysics or is itself made to be the ground of one." Heidegger's largest issue with Sartre's existential humanism is that, while it does make a humanistic 'move' in privileging existence over essence, "the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement." From this point onward in his thought, Heidegger attempted to think beyond metaphysics to a place where the articulation of the fundamental questions of ontology were fundamentally possible: only from this point can we restore (that is, re-give [redonner]) any possible meaning to the word "humanism". === Post-war forays into France === After the war, Heidegger was banned from university teaching for a period on account of his support of Nazism while serving as Rector of Freiburg University. He developed a number of contacts in France, where his work continued to be taught, and a number of French students visited him at Todtnauberg (see, for example, Jean-François Lyotard's brief account in Heidegger and "the Jews", which discusses a Franco-German conference held in Freiburg in 1947, one step toward bringing together French and German students).: 51  Heidegger subsequently made several visits to France, and made efforts to keep abreast of developments in French philosophy by way of correspondence with Jean Beaufret, an early French translator of Heidegger, and with Lucien Braun. === Derrida and deconstruction === Deconstruction came to Heidegger's attention in 1967 by way of Lucien Braun's recommendation of Jacques Derrida's work (Hans-Georg Gadamer was present at an initial discussion and indicated to Heidegger that Derrida's work came to his attention by way of an assistant). Heidegger expressed interest in meeting Derrida personally after the latter sent him some of his work. There was a discussion of a meeting in 1972, but this failed to take place. Heidegger's interest in Derrida is said by Braun to have been considerable (as is evident in two letters, of September 29, 1967, and May 16, 1972, from Heidegger to Braun). Braun also brought to Heidegger's attention the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault's relation to Heidegger is a matter of considerable difficulty; Foucault acknowledged Heidegger as a philosopher whom he read but never wrote about. (For more on this see Penser à Strasbourg, Jacques Derrida, et al., which includes reproductions of both letters and an account by Braun, "À mi-chemin entre Heidegger et Derrida"). Derrida attempted to displace the understanding of Heidegger's work that had been prevalent in France from the period of the ban against Heidegger teaching in German universities, which amounted to an almost wholesale rejection of the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialist terms. In Derrida's view, deconstruction is a tradition inherited via Heidegger (the French term "déconstruction" is a term coined to translate Heidegger's use of the words "Destruktion"—literally "destruction"—and "Abbau"—more literally "de-building"). According to Derrida, Sartre's interpretation of Dasein and other key Heideggerian concerns is overly psychologistic, anthropocentric, and misses the historicality central to Dasein in Being and Time. === The Farías debate === Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-François Lyotard, among others, all engaged in debate and disagreement about the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his Nazi politics. These debates included the question of whether it was possible to do without Heidegger's philosophy, a position which Derrida in particular rejected. Forums where these debates took place include the proceedings of the first conference dedicated to Derrida's work, published as "Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980", Derrida's "Feu la cendre/cio' che resta del fuoco", and the studies on Paul Celan by Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida which shortly preceded the detailed studies of Heidegger's politics published in and after 1987. When in 1987 Víctor Farías published his book Heidegger et le nazisme, this debate was taken up by many others, some of whom were inclined to disparage so-called "deconstructionists" for their association with Heidegger's philosophy. Derrida and others not only continued to defend the importance of reading Heidegger, but attacked Farías on the grounds of poor scholarship and for what they saw as the sensationalism of his approach. Not all scholars agreed with this negative assessment: Richard Rorty, for example, declared that "[Farías'] book includes more concrete information relevant to Heidegger's relations with the Nazis than anything else available, and it is an excellent antidote to the evasive apologetics that are still being published." === Bernard Stiegler === More recently, Heidegger's thought has influenced the work of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. This is evident even from the title of Stiegler's multi-volume magnum opus, La technique et le temps (volume one translated into English as Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus). Stiegler offers an original reading of Heidegger, arguing that there can be no access to "originary temporality" other than via material, that is, technical, supports, and that Heidegger recognised this in the form of his account of world historicality, yet in the end suppressed that fact. Stiegler understands the existential analytic of Being and Time as an account of psychic individuation, and his later "history of being" as an account of collective individuation. He understands many of the problems of Heidegger's philosophy and politics as the consequence of Heidegger's inability to integrate the two. === Giorgio Agamben === Heidegger has been very influential in the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Agamben attended seminars in France led by Heidegger in the late 1960s. == Criticism == === Early criticisms === According to Husserl, Being and Time claimed to deal with ontology but only did so in the first few pages of the book. Having nothing further to contribute to an ontology independent of human existence, Heidegger changed the topic to Dasein. Whereas Heidegger argued that the question of human existence is central to the pursuit of the question of being, Husserl criticised this as reducing phenomenology to "philosophical anthropology" and offering an abstract and incorrect portrait of the human being.In 1929 the Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer and Heidegger engaged in an influential debate, during the Second Davos Hochschulkurs in Davos, concerning the significance of Kantian notions of freedom and rationality (see Cassirer–Heidegger debate). Whereas Cassirer defended the role of rationality in Kant, Heidegger argued for the priority of the imagination.Dilthey's student Georg Misch wrote the first extended critical appropriation of Heidegger in Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung der Diltheyschen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl, Leipzig 1930 (3rd ed. Stuttgart 1964). === The Young Hegelians and critical theory === Hegel-influenced Marxist thinkers, especially György Lukács and the Frankfurt School, associated the style and content of Heidegger's thought with German irrationalism and criticised its political implications.Initially, members of the Frankfurt School were positively disposed to Heidegger, becoming more critical at the beginning of the 1930s. Heidegger's student Herbert Marcuse (1928-1932) became associated with the Frankfurt School. Initially striving for a synthesis between Hegelian Marxism and Heidegger's phenomenology, Marcuse later rejected Heidegger's thought for its "false concreteness" and "revolutionary conservatism". Theodor Adorno wrote an extended critique of the ideological character of Heidegger's early and later use of language in the Jargon of Authenticity. Contemporary social theorists associated with the Frankfurt School have remained largely critical of Heidegger's works and influence. In particular, Jürgen Habermas admonishes the influence of Heidegger on recent French philosophy in his polemic against "postmodernism" in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985). However, work by philosopher and critical theorist Nikolas Kompridis tries to show that Heidegger's insights into world disclosure are badly misunderstood and mishandled by Habermas, and are of vital importance for critical theory, offering an important way of renewing that tradition. === Reception by analytic and Anglo-American philosophy === Criticism of Heidegger's philosophy has also come from analytic philosophy (whose value upon clarity he seemingly did not share) beginning with logical positivism. In "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language" (1932), Rudolf Carnap accused Heidegger of offering an "illusory" ontology, criticising him for committing the fallacy of reification and for wrongly dismissing the logical treatment of language which, according to Carnap, can only lead to writing "nonsensical pseudo-propositions".The British logical positivist A. J. Ayer was strongly critical of Heidegger's philosophy. In Ayer's view, Heidegger proposed vast, overarching theories regarding existence, which are completely unverifiable through empirical demonstration and logical analysis. For Ayer, this sort of philosophy was a poisonous strain on modern thought. He considered Heidegger to be the worst example of such philosophy, which Ayer believed to be entirely useless.: 90  In his Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1982) Ayer accuses Heidegger of "surprising ignorance" or "unscrupulous distortion" and "what can fairly be described as charlatanism."Bertrand Russell considered Heidegger an obscurantist, writing, Highly eccentric in its terminology, his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot. An interesting point in his speculations is the insistence that nothingness is something positive. As with much else in Existentialism, this is a psychological observation made to pass for logic. This quote expresses the sentiments of many 20th-century analytic philosophers concerning Heidegger.Roger Scruton stated that: "His major work Being and Time is formidably difficult—unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy. I am not sure how to judge it, and have read no commentator who even begins to make sense of it".Apart from the charge of obscurantism, other analytic philosophers considered the actual content of Heidegger's work to be either faulty and meaningless, vapid or uninteresting. Positive evaluations include Gilbert Ryle's a critical yet sympathetic review of Being and Time. And a remark attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein by Friedrich Waismann: "To be sure, I can imagine what Heidegger means by being and anxiety" has been construed by some commentators as sympathetic to Heidegger's philosophical approach. Positive and negative analytic evaluations have been collected in, for example, Michael Murray's Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays (1978). Heidegger's reputation within English-language philosophy has slightly improved in philosophical terms in some part through the efforts of Hubert Dreyfus, Richard Rorty, and a recent generation of analytically oriented phenomenology scholars. Pragmatist Rorty claimed that Heidegger's approach to philosophy in the first half of his career has much in common with that of the latter-day Ludwig Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, Rorty asserted that what Heidegger had constructed in his writings was a myth of being rather than an account of it. === Contemporary European reception === Although Heidegger is considered by many observers to be one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, aspects of his work have been criticised by those who nevertheless acknowledge this influence, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida. Some questions raised about Heidegger's philosophy include the priority of ontology, the status of animals,: 139–143  the nature of the religious, Heidegger's supposed neglect of ethics (Levinas), the body (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), the sexual difference (Luce Irigaray), or space (Peter Sloterdijk).: 85–88 Levinas was deeply influenced by Heidegger, and yet became one of his fiercest critics, contrasting the infinity of the good beyond being with the immanence and totality of ontology. Levinas also condemned Heidegger's involvement with Nazism, stating: "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."Heidegger's defenders, notably Arendt, see his support for Nazism as arguably a personal " 'error' " (a word which Arendt placed in quotation marks when referring to Heidegger's Nazi-era politics). Defenders think this error was irrelevant to Heidegger's philosophy. Critics such as Levinas, Karl Löwith, and Theodor Adorno claim that Heidegger's support for Nazism revealed flaws inherent in his thought.W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz states in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy that Heidegger's writing is "notoriously difficult", possibly because his thinking was "original" and focused on obscure and innovative topics. He concludes that Being and Time "remains his most influential work". == In film == Being in the World draws on Heidegger's work to explore what it means to be human in a technological age. A number of Heidegger scholars are interviewed, including Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall, Albert Borgmann, John Haugeland and Taylor Carman. The Ister (2004) is a film based on Heidegger's 1942 lecture course on Friedrich Hölderlin, and features Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Bernard Stiegler, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. The film director Terrence Malick translated Heidegger's 1929 essay Vom Wesen des Grundes into English. It was published under the title The Essence of Reasons (1969). It is also frequently said of Malick that his cinema has Heideggerian sensibilities. The 2006 experimental short Die Entnazifizierung des MH by James T. Hong imagines Heidegger's denazification proceedings. In the 2012 film Hannah Arendt, Heidegger is portrayed by actor Klaus Pohl. == Bibliography == === Gesamtausgabe === Heidegger's collected writings are published by Vittorio Klostermann.: ix–xiii  The Gesamtausgabe was begun during Heidegger's lifetime. He defined the order of publication and dictated that the principle of editing should be "ways not works". Publication has not yet been completed. The current executor of Martin Heidegger’s Literary Estate is his grandson and a lawyer, Arnulf Heidegger (1969- ).The contents are listed here: Heidegger Gesamtausgabe. === Selected works === == See also == Daseinsanalysis Heidegger and Nazism Heidegger Gesamtausgabe Hermeneutic idealism Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister" Khôra List of Nazi ideologues Object-oriented ontology Sous rature == Notes == == References == == Further reading == === On Being and Time === William Blattner, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism Taylor Carman, Heidegger's Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in "Being and Time" (2003) doi:10.1017/CBO9780511498060 ISBN 9780511498060 Craig J. N. de Paulo, The Influence of Augustine on Heidegger: The Emergence of an Augustinian Phenomenology Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I Michael Gelven, A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Revised Edition E.F. Kaelin, "Heidegger's Being & Time: A Reading for Readers" Magda King, A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time Stephen Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time James Luchte, Heidegger's Early Philosophy: The Phenomenology of Ecstatic Temporality Alexandros Schismenos, Castoriadis against Heidegger: Time and existence, 2023, ISBN 9798394891908, ISBN 9798394648090. Mark Wrath.all, How to Read Heidegger === Biographies === Víctor Farías, Heidegger and Nazism, ed. by Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path of Thinking, trans. by D. Magurshak and S. Barber, Humanities Press, 1987. Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King === Politics and Nazism === Pierre Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question Víctor Farías, Heidegger and Nazism, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1989. Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, l'introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie : autour des séminaires inédits de 1933–1935, Paris, Albin Michel, 2005. ISBN 2-226-14252-5 in French language Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger. The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933–1935, Translated by Michael B. Smith, foreword by Tom Rockmore, Yale University Press, 2009, 436 p. Foreword Award: Book of the year 2009 for Philosophy. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert & Otto Pöggeler (eds.), Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1989. in German language Dominique Janicaud, The Shadow of That Thought W.J. Korab-Karpowicz, "Heidegger's Hidden Path: From Philosophy to Politics", Review of Metaphysics, 61 (2007) Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "Transcendence Ends in Politics", in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political George Leaman, Heidegger im Kontext: Gesamtüberblick zum NS-Engagement der Universitätsphilosophen, Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 1993. ISBN 9783886192052 Karl Löwith, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism Karl Löwith, Heidegger's Existentialism Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and "the Jews" Hugo Ott, Heidegger. A Political Life. Günther Neske & Emil Kettering (eds.), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers Political Texts – Rectoral Addresses Guillaume Payen, Martin Heidegger's Changing Destinies: Catholicism, Revolution, Nazism. Translated by Jane Marie Todd and Steven Rendall, Yale University Press, 2023. Tom Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (ed.), The Heidegger Case Daniel Ross, Heidegger and the Question of the Political Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany Iain Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the Political Richard Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy ISBN 0-262-23166-2. Julian Young, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism === Other secondary literature === Renate Maas, Diaphan und gedichtet. Der künstlerische Raum bei Martin Heidegger und Hans Jantzen, Kassel 2015, 432 pages, 978-3-86219-854-2. Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning (New York: Fordham, 2003) Robert Bernasconi, Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing Babette Babich, Words in Blood, Like Flowers. Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hoelderlin, Nietzsche and Heidegger (2006). ISBN 978-0791468364 Walter A. Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being Scott M. Campbell: The Early Heidegger's Philosophy of Life: Facticity, Being, and Language. Fordham University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0823242207 Richard M. Capobianco, Engaging Heidegger with a foreword by William J. Richardson. University of Toronto Press, 2010. Richard M. Capobianco, Heidegger's Way of Being. University of Toronto Press, 2014. Maxence Caron, Heidegger – Pensée de l'être et origine de la subjectivité, 1760 pages, first and only book on Heidegger awarded by the Académie française. Gabriel Cercel and Cristian Ciocan (eds.), The Early Heidegger (Studia Phaenomenologica I, 3–4), Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001, 506 p., including letters by Heidegger and Pöggeler, and articles by Walter Biemel, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Theodore Kisiel, Marion Heinz, Alfred Denker Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology Walter A. Davis. Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Jacques Derrida, "Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time", in Margins of Philosophy Hubert L. Dreyfus & Mark A. Wrathall, A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) Paul Edwards, Heidegger's Confusions Nader El-Bizri The Phenomenological Quest Between Avicenna and Heidegger (New York, 2000); reprinted by SUNY Press in 2014 Christopher Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity Michael Allen Gillespie, Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History (University of Chicago Press, 1984) Glazebrook, Trish (2000), Heidegger's Philosophy of Science, Fordham University Press. Patricia Altenbernd Johnson, On Heidegger (Wadsworth Philosophers Series), Wadsworth Publishing, 1999 Alan Kim, Plato in Germany: Kant-Natorp-Heidegger (Academia, 2010) Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry as Experience Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry S. J. McGrath, Heidegger. A (Very) Critical Introduction William McNeill, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory William McNeill, The Time of Life: Heidegger and Ethos Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Decision of Existence", in The Birth to Presence Herman Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction François Raffoul, Heidegger and the Subject François Raffoul & David Pettigrew (ed), Heidegger and Practical Philosophy François Raffoul & Eric S. Nelson (ed), The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger (Bloomsbury, 2013) William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. John Sallis, Echoes: After Heidegger John Sallis (ed), Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, including articles by Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Derrida, Rodolphe Gasché, and John Sallis, among others. Stefan W. Schmidt: Grund und Freiheit. Eine phänomenologische Untersuchung des Freiheitsbegriffs Heideggers. Springer, Dordrecht 2016 (= Phaenomenologica, Bd. 217), ISBN 978-3-319-20573-1 Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy Tony See, Community without Identity: The Ontology and Politics of Heidegger Adam Sharr, Heidegger's Hut Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus Leo Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism", in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (University of Chicago: 1989). Andrzej Warminski, Readings in Interpretation: Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger Hue Woodson, Heideggerian Theologies: The Pathmarks of John Macquarrie, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Karl Rahner (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018) Foster, Stephen (2019) "Theology as Repetition: John Macquarrie in Conversation" (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019) Julian Young, Heidegger's Philosophy of Art Julian Young, Heidegger's Later Philosophy Bastian Zimmermann, Die Offenbarung des Unverfügbaren und die Würde des Fragens. Ethische Dimensionen der Philosophie Martin Heideggers (London: 2010) ISBN 978-1-84790-037-1 Sean J. McGrath and Andrzej Wierciński, ed., A Companion to Heidegger's "Phenomenology of Religious Life" (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010). Gino Zaccaria, The Enigma of Art (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2021) ISBN 978-90-04-44870-4 === Reception in France === Jean Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger, 4 vols., Paris: Minuit, 1973–1985. Jean-François Courtine, Heidegger et la phénoménologie, Paris: Vrin, 1990. John E. Drabinski and Eric S. Nelson, eds., Between Levinas and Heidegger, Albany: SUNY Press, 2014. Dominique Janicaud, trans. François Raffoul and David Pettigrew, Heidegger en France, 2 vols., Paris: Albin Michel, 2001. Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927–1961 David Pettigrew and François Raffoul, eds., French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception, Albany : SUNY Press, 2006. === Reception in Italy === Gino Zaccaria, L'etica originaria. Hölderlin, Heidegger e il linguaggio, Milano: Egea, 1992. Gino Zaccaria, L'inizio greco del pensiero. Heidegger e l'essenza futura della filosofia, Milano: Marinotti Edizioni, 1999. Ivo De Gennaro and Gino Zaccaria, Dasein : Da-sein. Tradurre la parola del pensiero, Milano: Marinotti Edizioni, 2007. Gino Zaccaria, Pensare il nulla. Leopardi, Heidegger, Pavia: Ibis, 2015. Gino Zaccaria, La provenienza dell'arte. Atena e l'enigma (with the it. translation of a Heidegger's conference on Art), Pavia: Ibis, 2015. Gino Zaccaria, The Enigma of Art, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2021. Gino Zaccaria, Meditazioni scismatiche. Il nulla e il tempo, l'infinito e l'arte, Firenze: Olschki, 2022. === Influence on Japanese philosophy === Mayeda, Graham. 2006. Time, space and ethics in the philosophy of Watsuji Tetsurō, Kuki Shūzō, and Martin Heidegger (New York: Routledge, 2006). ISBN 0-415-97673-1 (alk. paper). === Heidegger and Asian philosophy === Parkes, Graham (1987). Heidegger and Asian Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1064-3 May, Reinhard, & Parkes, Graham (1996). Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East Asian influences on his work. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-14037-4 Nelson, Eric S. (2017). Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350002555 == External links == === Archival collections === Original Heidegger manuscripts are kept at the Loyola University Chicago archives. See also "The transcripts and photocopies of Martin Heidegger’s writings were given to Barbara Fiand, SNDdeN, Ph.D., by Fritz Heidegger in 1978". Martin Heidegger Collection, ca. 1918-1976 Guide to the Student Notes from Lectures by Martin Heidegger. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Works by Heidegger and on Heidegger (categorization) Publications by and about Martin Heidegger in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library Majority of Heidegger Archives. Online: Deutsches Literaturarchiv in the town of Marbach am Neckar, Germany. Also known as: DLA - German Literature Archive. Most of Martin Heidegger’s manuscripts are in the DLA’s collection. Search for Heidegger in their Manuscript collections is online here. === General information === Political Texts – Rectoral Addresses W.J. Korab-Karpowicz, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Karl Löwith, My Last Meeting with Heidegger, Rome 1936 German Heidegger Society (in German) Arne D. Naess, Jr., Martin Heidegger in Encyclopædia Britannica Martin Heidegger, Der Spiegel Interview by Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff, 23 September 1966; published May 31 1976 Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism Newspaper clippings about Martin Heidegger in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW === Works by Heidegger === English translations of Heidegger's works Works by or about Martin Heidegger at Internet Archive

Rudolf Carnap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Carnap

Rudolf Carnap (; German: [ˈkaʁnaːp]; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He is considered "one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers." == Biography == Carnap's father had risen from being a poor ribbon-weaver to be the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from an academic family; her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld. As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied Wilhelm Dörpfeld on an expedition to Greece. Carnap was raised in a profoundly religious Protestant family, but later became an atheist.He began his formal education at the Barmen Gymnasium and the Carolo-Alexandrinum Gymnasium in Jena. From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics. He also intently studied Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason during a course taught by Bruno Bauch, and was one of very few students to attend Gottlob Frege's courses in mathematical logic. During his university years he became enthralled with the German Youth Movement.While Carnap held moral and political opposition to World War I, he felt obligated to serve in the German army. After three years of service, he was given permission to study physics at the University of Berlin, 1917–18, where Albert Einstein was a newly appointed professor. Carnap then attended the University of Jena, where he wrote a thesis defining an axiomatic theory of space and time. The physics department said it was too philosophical, and Bruno Bauch of the philosophy department said it was pure physics. Carnap then wrote another thesis in 1921, under Bauch's supervision, on the theory of space in a more orthodox Kantian style, and published as Der Raum (Space) in a supplemental issue of Kant-Studien (1922). Frege's course exposed him to Bertrand Russell's work on logic and philosophy, which put a sense of the aims to his studies. He accepted the effort to surpass traditional philosophy with logical innovations that inform the sciences. He wrote a letter to Russell, who responded by copying by hand long passages from his Principia Mathematica for Carnap's benefit, as neither Carnap nor his university could afford a copy of this epochal work. In 1924 and 1925, he attended seminars led by Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, and continued to write on physics from a logical positivist perspective. Carnap discovered a kindred spirit when he met Hans Reichenbach at a 1923 conference. Reichenbach introduced Carnap to Moritz Schlick, a professor at the University of Vienna who offered Carnap a position in his department, which Carnap accepted in 1926. Carnap thereupon joined an informal group of Viennese intellectuals that came to be known as the Vienna Circle, directed largely by Schlick and including Hans Hahn, Friedrich Waismann, Otto Neurath, and Herbert Feigl, with occasional visits by Hahn's student Kurt Gödel. When Wittgenstein visited Vienna, Carnap would meet with him. He (with Hahn and Neurath) wrote the 1929 manifesto of the Circle, and (with Hans Reichenbach) initiated the philosophy journal Erkenntnis. In February 1930 Alfred Tarski lectured in Vienna, and during November 1930 Carnap visited Warsaw. On these occasions he learned much about Tarski's model theoretic method of semantics. Rose Rand, another philosopher in the Vienna Circle, noted, "Carnap's conception of semantics starts from the basis given in Tarski's work but a distinction is made between logical and non-logical constants and between logical and factual truth... At the same time he worked with the concepts of intension and extension and took these two concepts as a basis of a new method of semantics."In 1931, Carnap was appointed Professor at the German University of Prague. In 1933, W. V. Quine met Carnap in Prague and discussed the latter's work at some length. Thus began the lifelong mutual respect these two men shared, one that survived Quine's eventual forceful disagreements with a number of Carnap's philosophical conclusions. Carnap, whose socialist and pacifist beliefs put him at risk in Nazi Germany, emigrated to the United States in 1935 and became a naturalized citizen in 1941. Meanwhile, back in Vienna, Schlick was murdered in 1936. From 1936 to 1952, Carnap was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. During the late 1930s, Carnap offered an assistant position in philosophy to Carl Gustav Hempel, who accepted and became one of his most significant intellectual collaborators. Thanks partly to Quine's help, Carnap spent the years 1939–41 at Harvard University, where he was reunited with Tarski. Carnap (1963) later expressed some irritation about his time at Chicago, where he and Charles W. Morris were the only members of the department committed to the primacy of science and logic. (Their Chicago colleagues included Richard McKeon, Charles Hartshorne, and Manley Thompson.) Carnap's years at Chicago were nonetheless very productive ones. He wrote books on semantics (Carnap 1942, 1943, 1956), modal logic, and on the philosophical foundations of probability and inductive logic (Carnap 1950, 1952). After a stint at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1952–1954), he joined the UCLA Department of Philosophy in 1954, Hans Reichenbach having died the previous year. He had earlier refused an offer of a similar job at the University of California, Berkeley, because accepting that position required that he sign a loyalty oath, a practice to which he was opposed on principle. While at UCLA, he wrote on scientific knowledge, the analytic–synthetic distinction, and the verification principle. His writings on thermodynamics and on the foundations of probability and inductive logic, were published posthumously as Carnap (1971, 1977, 1980). Carnap taught himself Esperanto when he was 14 years of age, and remained sympathetic to it (Carnap 1963). He later attended the World Congress of Esperanto in 1908 and 1922, and employed the language while traveling. Carnap had four children by his first marriage to Elizabeth Schöndube, which ended in divorce in 1929. He married his second wife, Elizabeth Ina Stöger, in 1933. Ina committed suicide in 1964. == Philosophical work == Below is an examination of the main topics in the evolution of the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. It is not exhaustive, but it outlines Carnap's main works and contributions to modern epistemology and philosophy of logic. === Der Raum === From 1919 to 1921, Carnap worked on a doctoral thesis called Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre (Space: A Contribution to the Theory of Science, 1922). In this dissertation on the philosophical foundations of geometry, Carnap tried to provide a logical basis for a theory of space and time in physics. Considering that Carnap was interested in pure mathematics, natural sciences and philosophy, his dissertation can be seen as an attempt to build a bridge between the different disciplines that are geometry, physics and philosophy. For Carnap thought that in many instances those disciplines use the same concepts, but with totally different meanings. The main objective of Carnap's dissertation was to show that the inconsistencies between theories concerning space only existed because philosophers, as well as mathematicians and scientists, were talking about different things while using the same "space" word. Hence, Carnap characteristically argued that there had to be three separate notions of space. "Formal" space is space in the sense of mathematics: it is an abstract system of relations. "Intuitive" space is made of certain contents of intuition independent of single experiences. "Physical" space is made of actual spatial facts given in experience. The upshot is that those three kinds of "space" imply three different kinds of knowledge and thus three different kinds of investigations. It is interesting to note that it is in this dissertation that the main themes of Carnap's philosophy appear, most importantly the idea that many philosophical contradictions appear because of a misuse of language, and a stress on the importance of distinguishing formal and material modes of speech. === Der Logische Aufbau der Welt === From 1922 to 1925, Carnap worked on a book which became one of his major works, namely Der logische Aufbau der Welt (translated as The Logical Structure of the World, 1967), which was accepted in 1926 as his habilitation thesis at the University of Vienna and published as a book in 1928. That achievement has become a landmark in modern epistemology and can be read as a forceful statement of the philosophical thesis of logical positivism. Indeed, the Aufbau suggests that epistemology, based on modern symbolic logic, is concerned with the logical analysis of scientific propositions, while science itself, based on experience, is the only source of knowledge of the external world, i.e. the world outside the realm of human perception. According to Carnap, philosophical propositions are statements about the language of science; they aren't true or false, but merely consist of definitions and conventions about the use of certain concepts. In contrast, scientific propositions are factual statements about the external reality. They are meaningful because they are based on the perceptions of the senses. In other words, the truth or falsity of those propositions can be verified by testing their content with further observations. In the Aufbau, Carnap wants to display the logical and conceptual structure with which all scientific (factual) statements can be organized. Carnap gives the label "constitution theory" to this epistemic-logical project. It is a constructive undertaking that systematizes scientific knowledge according to the notions of symbolic logic. Accordingly, the purpose of this constitutional system is to identify and discern different classes of scientific concepts and to specify the logical relations that link them. In the Aufbau, concepts are taken to denote objects, relations, properties, classes and states. Carnap argues that all concepts must be ranked over a hierarchy. In that hierarchy, all concepts are organized according to a fundamental arrangement where concepts can be reduced and converted to other basic ones. Carnap explains that a concept can be reduced to another when all sentences containing the first concept can be transformed into sentences containing the other. In other words, every scientific sentence should be translatable into another sentence such that the original terms have the same reference as the translated terms. Most significantly, Carnap argues that the basis of this system is psychological. Its content is the "immediately given", which is made of basic elements, namely perceptual experiences. These basic elements consist of conscious psychological states of a single human subject. In the end, Carnap argues that his constitutional project demonstrates the possibility of defining and uniting all scientific concepts in a single conceptual system on the basis of a few fundamental concepts. === Overcoming metaphysics === From 1928 to 1934, Carnap published papers (Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie, 1928; translated as Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, 1967) in which he appears overtly skeptical of the aims and methods of metaphysics, i.e. the traditional philosophy that finds its roots in mythical and religious thought. Indeed, he discusses how, in many cases, metaphysics is made of meaningless discussions of pseudo-problems. For Carnap, a pseudo-problem is a philosophical question which, on the surface, handles concepts that refer to our world while, in fact, these concepts do not actually denote real and attested objects. In other words, these pseudo-problems concern statements that do not, in any way, have empirical implications. They do not refer to states of affairs and the things they denote cannot be perceived. Consequently, one of Carnap's main aim has been to redefine the purpose and method of philosophy. According to him, philosophy should not aim at producing any knowledge transcending the knowledge of science. In contrast, by analyzing the language and propositions of science, philosophers should define the logical foundations of scientific knowledge. Using symbolic logic, they should explicate the concepts, methods and justificatory processes that exist in science. Carnap believed that the difficulty with traditional philosophy lay in the use of concepts that are not useful for science. For Carnap, the scientific legitimacy of these concepts was doubtful, because the sentences containing them do not express facts. Indeed, a logical analysis of those sentences proves that they do not convey the meaning of states of affairs. In other words, these sentences are meaningless. Carnap explains that to be meaningful, a sentence should be factual. It can be so, for one thing, by being based on experience, i.e. by being formulated with words relating to direct observations. For another, a sentence is factual if one can clearly state what are the observations that could confirm or disconfirm that sentence. After all, Carnap presupposes a specific criterion of meaning, namely the Wittgensteinian principle of verifiability. Indeed, he requires, as a precondition of meaningfulness, that all sentences be verifiable, which implies that a sentence is meaningful only if there is a way to verify if it is true or false. To verify a sentence, one needs to expound the empirical conditions and circumstances that would establish the truth of the sentence. As a result, it is clear for Carnap that metaphysical sentences are meaningless. They include concepts like "god", "soul" and "the absolute" that transcend experience and cannot be traced back or connected to direct observations. Because those sentences cannot be verified in any way, Carnap suggests that science, as well as philosophy, should neither consider nor contain them. === The logical analysis of language === At that point in his career, Carnap attempted to develop a full theory of the logical structure of scientific language. This theory, exposed in Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934; translated as The Logical Syntax of Language, 1937) gives the foundations to his idea that scientific language has a specific formal structure and that its signs are governed by the rules of deductive logic. Moreover, the theory of logical syntax expounds a method with which one can talk about a language: it is a formal meta-theory about the pure forms of language. In the end, because Carnap argues that philosophy aims at the logical analysis of the language of science and thus is the logic of science, the theory of the logical syntax can be considered as a definite language and a conceptual framework for philosophy. The logical syntax of language is a formal theory. It is not concerned with the contextualized meaning or the truth-value of sentences. In contrast, it considers the general structure of a given language and explores the different structural relations that connect the elements of that language. Hence, by explaining the different operations that allow specific transformations within the language, the theory is a systematic exposition of the rules that operate within that language. In fact, the basic function of these rules is to provide the principles to safeguard coherence, to avoid contradictions and to deduce justified conclusions. Carnap sees language as a calculus. This calculus is a systematic arrangement of symbols and relations. The symbols of the language are organized according to the class they belong to and it is through their combination that we can form sentences. The relations are different conditions under which a sentence can be said to follow, or to be the consequence, of another sentence. The definitions included in the calculus state the conditions under which a sentence can be considered of a certain type and how those sentences can be transformed. We can see the logical syntax as a method of formal transformation, i.e. a method for calculating and reasoning with symbols. It is in the logical syntax that Carnap introduces his notable principle of tolerance. This principle suggests that there is no moral in logic. When it comes to using a language, there is no good or bad, fundamentally true or false. In this perspective, the philosopher's task is not to bring authoritative interdicts prohibiting the use of certain concepts. In contrast, philosophers should seek general agreements over the relevance of certain logical devices. According to Carnap, those agreements are possible only through the detailed presentation of the meaning and use of the expressions of a language. In other words, Carnap believes that every logical language is correct only if this language is supported by exact definitions and not by philosophical presumptions. Carnap embraces a formal conventionalism. That implies that formal languages are constructed and that everyone is free to choose the language it finds more suited to his purpose. There should not be any controversy over which language is the correct language; what matters is agreeing over which language best suits a particular purpose. Carnap explains that the choice of a language should be guided according to the security it provides against logical inconsistency. Furthermore, practical elements like simplicity and fruitfulness in certain tasks influence the choice of a language. Clearly enough, the principle of tolerance was a sophisticated device introduced by Carnap to dismiss any form of dogmatism in philosophy. === Inductive logic === After having considered problems in semantics, i.e. the theory of the concepts of meaning and truth (Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, 1939; Introduction to Semantics, 1942; Formalization of Logic, 1943), Carnap turned his attention to the subject of probability and inductive logic. His views on that subject are for the most part exposed in Logical foundations of probability (1950) where Carnap aims to give a sound logical interpretation of probability. Carnap thought that according to certain conditions, the concept of probability had to be interpreted as a purely logical concept. In this view, probability is a basic concept anchored in all inductive inferences, whereby the conclusion of every inference that holds without deductive necessity is said be more or less likely to be the case. In fact, Carnap claims that the problem of induction is a matter of finding a precise explanation of the logical relation that holds between a hypothesis and the evidence that supports it. An inductive logic is thus based on the idea that probability is a logical relation between two types of statements: the hypothesis (conclusion) and the premises (evidence). Accordingly, a theory of induction should explain how, by pure logical analysis, we can ascertain that certain evidence establishes a degree of confirmation strong enough to confirm a given hypothesis. Carnap was convinced that there was a logical as well as an empirical dimension in science. He believed that one had to isolate the experiential elements from the logical elements of a given body of knowledge. Hence, the empirical concept of frequency used in statistics to describe the general features of certain phenomena can be distinguished from the analytical concepts of probability logic that merely describe logical relations between sentences. For Carnap, the statistical and the logical concepts must be investigated separately. Having insisted on this distinction, Carnap defines two concepts of probability. The first one is logical and deals with the degree to which a given hypothesis is confirmed by a piece of evidence. It is the degree of confirmation. The second is empirical, and relates to the long run rate of one observable feature of nature relative to another. It is the relative frequency. Statements belonging to the second concepts are about reality and describe states of affairs. They are empirical and, therefore, must be based on experimental procedures and the observation of relevant facts. On the contrary, statements belonging to the first concept do not say anything about facts. Their meaning can be grasped solely with an analysis of the signs they contain. They are analytical sentences, i.e. true by virtue of their logical meaning. Even though these sentences could refer to states of affairs, their meaning is given by the symbols and relations they contain. In other words, the probability of a conclusion is given by the logical relation it has to the evidence. The evaluation of the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis is thus a problem of meaning analysis. Clearly, the probability of a statement about relative frequency can be unknown; because it depends on the observation of certain phenomena, one may not possess the information needed to establish the value of that probability. Consequently, the value of that statement can be confirmed only if it is corroborated with facts. In contrast, the probability of a statement about the degree of confirmation could be unknown, in the sense that one may miss the correct logical method to evaluate its exact value. But, such a statement can always receive a certain logical value, given the fact that this value only depends on the meaning of its symbols. == Primary source materials == The Rudolf Carnap Papers contain thousands of letters, notes and drafts, and diaries. The majority of his papers were purchased from his daughter, Hanna Carnap-Thost in 1974, by the University of Pittsburgh, with subsequent further accessions. Documents that contain financial, medical, and personal information are restricted. These were written over his entire life and career. Carnap used the mail regularly to discuss philosophical problems with hundreds of others. The most notable were: Herbert Feigl, Carl Gustav Hempel, Felix Kaufmann, Otto Neurath, and Moritz Schlick. Photographs are also part of the collection and were taken throughout his life. Family pictures and photographs of his peers and colleagues are also stored in the collection. Some of the correspondence is considered notable and consist of his student notes, his seminars with Frege, (describing the Begriffsschrift and the logic in mathematics). Carnap's notes from Russell's seminar in Chicago, and notes he took from discussions with Tarski, Heisenberg, Quine, Hempel, Gödel, and Jeffrey are also part of the University of Pittsburgh Library System's Archives and Special Collections. Digitized contents include: Notes (old), 1958–1966More than 1,000 pages of lecture outlines are preserved that cover the courses that Carnap taught in the United States, Prague, and Vienna. Drafts of his published works and unpublished works are part of the collection. Additional Carnap materials can be found throughout the Archives of Scientific Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Manuscript drafts and typescripts both for his published works and for many unpublished papers and books. A partial listing include his first formulations of his Aufbau.Much material is written in an older German shorthand, the Stolze-Schrey system. He employed this writing system extensively beginning in his student days. Some of the content has been digitized and is available through the finding aid. The University of California also maintains a collection of Rudolf Carnap Papers. Microfilm copies of his papers are maintained by the Philosophical Archives at the University of Konstanz in Germany. == Selected publications == 1922. Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, Kant-Studien, Ergänzungshefte, no. 56 (doctoral thesis). 1926. Physikalische Begriffsbildung. Karlsruhe: Braun. 1928. Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie (Pseudoproblems in Philosophy). Berlin: Weltkreis-Verlag. 1928. Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (his habilitation thesis). Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag. English translation by Rolf A. George, 1967. The Logical Structure of the World. Pseudoproblems in Philosophy. University of California Press. ISBN 0-812-69523-2 1929. Abriss der Logistik, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relationstheorie und ihrer Anwendungen. Springer. 1931. "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache" (PDF). Erkenntnis. 2: 219–241. 1931. doi:10.1007/BF02028153. S2CID 144658746. — English translation: A.J. Ayer, ed. (1966). "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language" (PDF). Logical Positivism. The Library of Philosophical Movements. New York: The Free Press. pp. 60–81. ISBN 978-0029011300. 1934. Logische Syntax der Sprache. English translation 1937, The Logical Syntax of Language. Kegan Paul. 1996 (1935). Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Bristol UK: Thoemmes. Excerpt. 1939, Foundations of Logic and Mathematics in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 3. University of Chicago Press. 1942. Introduction to Semantics. Harvard Uni. Press. 1943. Formalization of Logic. Harvard Uni. Press. 1945. "On Inductive Logic" in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 12, pp. 72–97. 1945. The Two Concepts of Probability in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 513–532. 1947. "On the Application of Inductive Logic" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 8, pp. 133–148. 1956 (1947). Meaning and Necessity: a Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. University of Chicago Press. 1950. Logical Foundations of Probability. University of Chicago Press. pp. 3–15. 1950. "Empiricism, Semantics, Ontology", Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4: 20–40. 1952. The Continuum of Inductive Methods. University of Chicago Press. 1958. Introduction to Symbolic Logic and its Applications. Dover publications, New York. ISBN 9780486604534 1963, "Intellectual Autobiography" in Schilpp. Paul A. (ed.) The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, Library Of Living Philosophers V. XI, Open Court p. 3–83 (1963) ISBN 0-8126-9153-9, 978-0812691535 1966. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Basic Books. 1966. Philosophical Foundations of Physics. Martin Gardner, ed. Basic Books. Online excerpt. 1971. Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, Vol. 1. University of California Press. 1977. Two Essays on Entropy. Shimony, Abner, ed. University of California Press. 1980. Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, Vol. 2. Jeffrey, R. C., ed. University of California Press. 2000. Untersuchungen zur Allgemeinen Axiomatik. Edited from unpublished manuscript by T. Bonk and J. Mosterín. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 167 pp. ISBN 3-534-14298-5.Online bibliography is under construction and has no entries dated later than 1937. == Filmography == Interview with Rudolf Carnap, German TV, 1964. == See also == Definitions of philosophy Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences Second Davos Hochschulkurs == References == == Sources == Richard Creath, Michael Friedman, ed. (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Carnap. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521840156. Roger F Gibson, ed. (2004). The Cambridge companion to Quine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521639492. Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. In Search of Mathematical Roots. Princeton Uni. Press. Thomas Mormann, 2000. Rudolf Carnap. C. H. Beck. Willard Quine 1951, Two Dogmas of Empiricism. The Philosophical Review 60: 20–43. Reprinted in his 1953 From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press. 1985, The Time of My Life: An Autobiography. MIT Press. Richardson, Alan W., 1998. Carnap's construction of the world : the Aufbau and the emergence of logical empiricism. Cambridge Uni. Press. Schilpp, P. A., ed., 1963. The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. LaSalle IL: Open Court. Spohn, Wolfgang, ed., 1991. Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1991. Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, May 21–24, 1991. University of Pittsburgh Press. Wagner, Pierre, ed., 2009. Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language. Palgrave Macmillan. Wagner, Pierre, ed., 2012. Carnap's Ideal of Explication and Naturalism. Palgrave Macmillan. == Further reading == Holt, Jim, "Positive Thinking" (review of Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 449 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 74–76. Psillos, Stathis, "Rudolf Carnap's 'Theoretical Concepts in Science'", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 31(1) (2000):151–172. == External links == "Rudolf Carnap" entry by Hannes Leitgeb, André Carus in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Murzi, Mauro. "Rudolf Carnap". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Cresswell, M.J. "Carnap's Modal Logic". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Rudolf Carnap Webpage and Directory of Internet Resources Homepage of the Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap – Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University Precis of Carnap's philosophy The Life of Rudolf Carnap, Philosophy at RBJones.com R. Carnap: "Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Wissenschaftslogik", Paris Congress in 1935, Paris, 1936. R. Carnap: "Über die Einheitssprache der Wissenschaft", Paris Congress in 1935, Paris, 1936. R. Carnap: "Wahrheit und Bewährung", Paris Congress in 1935, Paris, 1936. Rudolf Carnap Papers: (Rudolf Carnap Papers, 1905–1970, ASP.1974.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.) Das Fremdpsychische bei Rudolf Carnap (German) by Robert Bauer. FBI file on Rudolph Carnap Luchte, James (2007). "Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Carnap: Radical Phenomenology, Logical Positivism and the Roots of the Continental/Analytic Divide". Philosophy Today. 51 (3): 241–260. doi:10.5840/philtoday200751332. RUDOLF CARNAP, PHILOSOPHER, DIES obituary in The New York Times, 15 September 1970 Homage to Rudolf Carnap (1970) by Feigl, Hempel, Jeffrey, Quine et al. reprinted in frontmatter of RUDOLF CARNAP, LOGICAL EMPIRICIST (1975) [Audio] Carnap lecturing on 'Theoretical Concepts in Science' at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, at Santa Barbara, California, on 29 December 1959.

Walter Benjamin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn] (listen); 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and Neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders. Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the invading Wehrmacht. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown. == Life == === Early life and education === Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) and Dora (1901–1946), were born to a wealthy business family of assimilated Ashkenazi Jews in the Berlin of the German Empire (1871–1918). Walter's father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who had relocated from France to Germany, where he worked as an antiques trader in Berlin; he later married Pauline Schönflies. He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks. Walter's uncle, William Stern (born Wilhelm Louis Stern; 1871–1938), was a prominent German child psychologist who developed the concept of the intelligence quotient (IQ). He also had a cousin, Günther Anders (born Günther Siegmund Stern; 1902–1992), a German philosopher and anti-nuclear activist who studied under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Through his mother, Walter's great-uncle was the classical archaeologist Gustav Hirschfeld.In 1902, ten-year-old Walter was enrolled to the Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburg; he completed his secondary school studies ten years later. In his youth, Walter was of fragile health and so in 1905 the family sent him to Hermann-Lietz-Schule Haubinda, a boarding school in the Thuringian countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School.In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the University of Freiburg, but at summer semester's end he returned to Berlin and matriculated at the University of Berlin to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure to Zionism, which had not been part of his liberal upbringing. This gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist Zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of "cultural Zionism"—an attitude that recognized and promoted Judaism and Jewish values. In Benjamin's formulation, his Jewishness meant a commitment to the furtherance of European culture. He wrote: "My life experience led me to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in the ranks of the spiritually active ... For Judaism is to me in no sense an end in itself, but the most distinguished bearer and representative of the spiritual." This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong.It was as a speaker and debater in the milieu of the Gustav Wyneken's German Youth Movement that Benjamin was first encountered by Gershom Scholem and later Martin Buber although he'd parted ways with the youth group before they'd become properly acquainted.Elected president of the Freie Studentenschaft (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change while working alongside Wyneken at the legendary and controversial youth magazine Der Anfang (The beginning), that was banned in all schools in Bavaria. Wyneken's thesis that a new youth must pave the way for revolutionary cultural change became the main theme of all of Benjamin's publications at that time. When not reelected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg to study, with particular attention to the lectures of Heinrich Rickert; at that time he traveled to France and Italy. Benjamin's attempt to volunteer for service at the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 was rejected by the army. Benjamin later feigned illnesses to avoid conscription, allowing him to continue his studies and his translations of works by French poet Charles Baudelaire. His conspicuous refuge in Switzerland on dubious medical grounds was a likely factor in his ongoing challenges in obtaining academic employment after the war.The next year, 1915, Benjamin moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the University of Munich, where he met Rainer Maria Rilke and Gershom Scholem; the latter became a friend. Intensive discussions with Scholem about Judaism and Jewish mysticism gave the impetus for the 1916 text (surviving as a manuscript) Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen ("On Language as Such and on the Language of Man"), which, as Benjamin said to Scholem , "has an immanent relationship to Judaism and to the first chapter of the Genesis". In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century Romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. In 1917 Benjamin transferred to the University of Bern; there he met Ernst Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner), whom he married. They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned his PhD summa cum laude with the dissertation Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism). For his post-doctoral thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by Heidegger in the latter's own postdoctoral project (Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning). Wolfram Eilenberger writes that Benjamin's plan was, "to legitimize [his theory of language] with reference to a largely forgotten tradition [found in the archaic writings of Duns Scotus], and to strike the sparks of systematization from the apparent disjunct among modern, logical, and analytical linguistic philosophy and medieval speculations on language that fell under the heading of theology". After Gershom Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication, Benjamin seems to have derived a lifelong antagonism toward the rival philosopher whose major insights, over the course of both of their careers, sometimes overlapped and sometimes conflicted with Benjamin's. Incidentally, at that time Heidegger was soon to embark on a love affair with Hannah Arendt, later related to Benjamin through marriage to his cousin Günther Anders. Later, unable to support himself and family, Benjamin returned to Berlin and resided with his parents. In 1921 he published the essay Zur Kritik der Gewalt (Toward the Critique of Violence). At this time Benjamin first became socially acquainted with Leo Strauss, and he remained an admirer of Strauss and his work throughout his life. === Friendships === Starting in adolescence, in a trend of episodic behavior that was to remain true throughout his life, Benjamin was a maven within an important community during a critically important historical period: the left-intelligentsia of interwar Berlin and Paris. Acquaintance with the eccentric critic was a connecting thread for a variety of major figures in metaphysics, philosophy, theology, the visual arts, theater, literature, radio, politics and various other domains. Benjamin was less of an organizer, impresario, or celebrity author and more of an occult, Zelig-like figure who just happened to be present on the outskirts of an improbably numerous inventory of the most important events within the intellectual ferment of the interwar-period in Weimar Germany and to interpret those events in a peculiar and sometimes unsettlingly premonitory style. He was in the crowd at the conference where Kurt Gödel first described the incompleteness theorem. He once took a class on the Ancient Mayans from Rainier Maria Rilke. He attended the same seminar as Martin Heidegger at Freiburg in the summer of 1913 when both men were still university students: concepts first encountered there influenced their thought for the remainder of their careers. He was an early draft script reader, comrade and frequent house-guest of Bertolt Brecht's (the most innovative writer and director of the Berlin theater scene, memorably mythologized in the musical Cabaret). Martin Buber took an interest in Benjamin, but the younger author declined to contribute to Buber’s journal because it was too exoteric. He hung out with Ernst Bloch while the older author was writing the Spirit of Utopia. Now a lesser known work, Bloch's Utopia is included as the representative Bolshevik Jewish work in a group of six prophetic, apocalyptic interwar German books that, George Steiner writes, "were more than books in their dimensions and extremity", characterizing the end-times ambience of thought in Germany during the Weimar period and setting the metaphysical tone of the era whose climax came with the Second World War from the perspective of German intelligentsia contemporary to that moment (other entries in this list include Being & Time by Martin Heidegger, The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth, The Star of Redemption by Franz Rosenzweig and Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler). It was Bloch's commission that inspired Benjamin's work on the theory of categories, according to Scholem. This was to be a consequential theme throughout his career. One of Benjamin's high-school best friends (also a German Jew) committed suicide by gas at the outbreak of the first World War. And another was one of the Jewish liaisons who took Nazi diplomats on a tour of Palestine. This was during a period of Nazi-Zionist relations when the Third Reich was preparing the European Zionists to believe that Europe's Jews would be forcibly emigrated from the Reich. The purpose of this was to deflect communal attention from the looming possibility of the strategy that was ultimately adopted: mass extermination in the death camps. Benjamin's oldest friend, and the sole executor of his literary estate, Gershom Scholem, would resurrect the canonical books of the Kabballah from private libraries and ancient document dumps called Genizah. These were created when the books flooded into Israel as darkness descended in the West during the period leading up to, coinciding with, and immediately following the Holocaust. === Career === In 1923, when the Institute for Social Research was founded, later to become home to the Frankfurt School, Benjamin published Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens. At that time he became acquainted with Theodor Adorno and befriended Georg Lukács, whose The Theory of the Novel (1920) much influenced him. Meanwhile, the inflation in the Weimar Republic after the war made it difficult for Emil Benjamin to continue supporting his son's family. At the end of 1923 Scholem emigrated to Palestine, a country under the British Mandate of Palestine; despite repeated invitations, he failed to persuade Benjamin (and family) to leave the continent for the Middle East. In 1924 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in the Neue Deutsche Beiträge magazine, published Benjamin's Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften (Goethe's Elective Affinities), about Goethe's third novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809). According to literary critic Burkhardt Lindner, the essay forms the "third major philosophical-aesthetic treatise of the early work" alongside the dissertation and the habilitation thesis. It has often been linked to the breakup of his marriage. The dedication to Julia Cohn, whom he had courted in vain at the time, suggests this assumption. According to Arendt, it was his essay on Goethe that ruined Benjamin's only chance of a university career. As so often in Benjamin's writings, this text was marked by polemics; the attack concerned Friedrich Gundolf's Goethe book. Gundolf was the most prominent and able academic member of the George-Kreis.Later that year Benjamin and Bloch resided on the Italian island of Capri; Benjamin wrote Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama) as a habilitation dissertation meant to qualify him as a tenured university professor in Germany. At Bloch's suggestion, he read Lukács's History and Class Consciousness (1923). He also met the Latvian Bolshevik and actress Asja Lācis, then residing in Moscow; he became her lover and was a lasting intellectual influence on him.A year later, in 1925, Benjamin withdrew The Origin of German Tragic Drama as his possible qualification for the habilitation teaching credential at the University of Frankfurt at Frankfurt am Main, fearing its possible rejection. The work was a study in which he sought to "save" the category of allegory. It proved too unorthodox and abstruse for its examiners, who included prominent members of the humanities faculty, such as Hans Cornelius; he was not to be an academic instructor. This failure resulted in his father's refusal to continue to support him financially, so that Benjamin was forced to make ends meet as a professional critic and occasional translator. Working with Franz Hessel he translated the first volumes of Marcel Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time). The next year, 1926, he began writing for the German newspapers Frankfurter Zeitung and Die Literarische Welt (The Literary World); that paid enough for him to reside in Paris for some months. In December 1926, the year his father died, Benjamin went to Moscow to meet Lācis and found her ill in a sanatorium.During his stay in Moscow, he was asked by the editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia to write an article on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for the first edition of the encyclopedia. Benjamin's article was ultimately rejected, with reviewer Anatoly Lunacharsky (then the People's Commissar of Education) characterizing it as "non-encyclopedic", and only a small part of the text prepared by Benjamin was included in the encyclopedia. During Benjamin's lifetime, the article was not published in its entirety. A Russian translation of the article was published in the Russian edition of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in 1996.In 1927, he began Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project), his uncompleted magnum opus, a study of 19th-century Parisian life. The same year, he saw Scholem in Berlin, for the last time, and considered emigrating from Germany to Palestine. In 1928, he and Dora separated (they divorced two years later, in 1930); in the same year he published Einbahnstraße (One-Way Street), and a revision of his habilitation dissertation Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama). In 1929 Berlin, Lācis, then an assistant to Bertolt Brecht, socially presented the intellectuals to each other. In that time, Benjamin also briefly embarked upon an academic career, as an instructor at the University of Heidelberg. === Exile and death === In 1932, during the turmoil preceding Adolf Hitler's assumption of the office of Chancellor of Germany, Benjamin left Germany temporarily for the Spanish island of Ibiza where he stayed for some months; he then moved to Nice, where he considered killing himself. Perceiving the sociopolitical and cultural significance of the Reichstag fire (27 February 1933) as the de facto Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, then manifest with the subsequent persecution of the Jews, he left Berlin and Germany for good in September. He moved to Paris, but before doing so he sought shelter in Svendborg, at Bertolt Brecht's house, and at Sanremo, where his ex-wife Dora lived. As he ran out of money, Benjamin collaborated with Max Horkheimer, and received funds from the Institute for Social Research, later going permanently into exile. In Paris, he met other refugee German artists and intellectuals; he befriended Hannah Arendt, novelist Hermann Hesse, and composer Kurt Weill. In 1936, a first version of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (originally written in German in 1935) was published in French ("L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction méchanisée") by Max Horkheimer in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung journal of the Institute for Social Research. It was a critique of the authenticity of mass-produced art; he wrote that a mechanically produced copy of an artwork can be taken somewhere the original could never have gone, arguing that the presence of the original is "prerequisite to the concept of authenticity". In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), met Georges Bataille (to whom he later entrusted the Arcades Project manuscript), and joined the College of Sociology (which he would criticize for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.") In 1938 he paid a last visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark. Meanwhile, the Nazi régime stripped German Jews of their German citizenship; now a stateless man, Benjamin was arrested by the French government and incarcerated for three months in a prison camp near Nevers, in central Burgundy. Returning to Paris in January 1940, he wrote "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("On the Concept of History", later published as "Theses on the Philosophy of History"). While the Wehrmacht was pushing back the French Army, on 13 June Benjamin and his sister fled Paris to the town of Lourdes, just a day before the Germans entered the capital with orders to arrest him at his flat. In August, he obtained a travel visa to the US that Horkheimer had negotiated for him. In eluding the Gestapo, Benjamin planned to travel to the US from neutral Portugal, which he expected to reach via Francoist Spain, then ostensibly a neutral country. The historical record indicates that he safely crossed the French–Spanish border and arrived at the coastal town of Portbou, in Catalonia on 25 September 1940. The Franco government had cancelled all transit visas and ordered the Spanish police to return such persons to France, including the Jewish refugee group Benjamin had joined. They were told by the Spanish police that they would be deported back to France the next day, which would have thwarted Benjamin's plans to travel to the United States. Expecting repatriation to Nazi hands, Benjamin killed himself with an overdose of morphine tablets that night, while staying at the Hotel de Francia; the official Portbou register records 26 September 1940 as the date of death. Benjamin's colleague Arthur Koestler, also fleeing Europe, attempted suicide by taking some of the morphine tablets, but survived. Benjamin's brother Georg was murdered at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in 1942. Despite his suicide, Benjamin was buried in the consecrated section of a Roman Catholic cemetery. The others in his party were allowed passage the next day (maybe because Benjamin's suicide shocked Spanish officials), and safely reached Lisbon on 30 September. Arendt, who crossed the French-Spanish border at Portbou a few months later, passed the manuscript of Theses to Adorno. Another completed manuscript, which Benjamin had carried in his suitcase, disappeared after his death and has not been recovered. Some critics speculate that it was his Arcades Project in a final form; this is very unlikely as the author's plans for the work had changed in the wake of Adorno's criticisms in 1938, and it seems clear that the work was flowing over its containing limits in his last years. == Thought == In addition to his lifelong dialogue in letters with Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin maintained an intense correspondence with Theodor Adorno and Bertolt Brecht, and was occasionally funded by the Frankfurt School under the direction of Adorno and Horkheimer, even from their New York City residence. At other times he received funding from Hebrew University or from funds made available by Martin Buber and his publishing associates including Salman Schocken. The dynamism or conflict between these competing influences—Brecht's Marxism, Adorno's critical theory, Scholem's Jewish mysticism—were central to his work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved. Moreover, the critic Paul de Man argued that the intellectual range of Benjamin's writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving a critique via juxtaposition; the exemplary synthesis is "Theses on the Philosophy of History". At least one scholar, historian of religion Jason Josephson-Storm, has argued that Benjamin's diverse interests may be understood in part by understanding the influence of Western Esotericism on Benjamin. Some of Benjamin's key ideas were adapted from occultists and New Age figures including Eric Gutkind and Ludwig Klages, and his interest in esotericism is known to have extended far beyond the Jewish Kabbalah. In addition to Brecht's Marxism, Adorno's critical theory, and Scholem's Jewish mysticism, Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have underscored the importance of Karl Korsch's interpretation of Capital to understanding Benjamin's engagement with Marxism in later works like the Arcades. Karl Korsch’s Karl Marx, which was “one of Benjamin’s main sources [on]… Marxism,” introduced him “to an advanced understanding of Marxism." === "Theses on the Philosophy of History" === "Theses on the Philosophy of History" is often cited as Benjamin's last complete work, having been completed, according to Adorno, in the spring of 1940. The Institute for Social Research, which had relocated to New York, published Theses in Benjamin's memory in 1942. Margaret Cohen writes in the Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin: In the "Concept of History" Benjamin also turned to Jewish mysticism for a model of praxis in dark times, inspired by the kabbalistic precept that the work of the holy man is an activity known as tikkun. According to the kabbalah, God's attributes were once held in vessels whose glass was contaminated by the presence of evil and these vessels had consequently shattered, disseminating their contents to the four corners of the earth. Tikkun was the process of collecting the scattered fragments in the hopes of once more piecing them together. Benjamin fused tikkun with the Surrealist notion that liberation would come through releasing repressed collective material, to produce his celebrated account of the revolutionary historiographer, who sought to grab hold of elided memories as they sparked to view at moments of present danger. In the essay, Benjamin's famed ninth thesis struggles to reconcile the Idea of Progress in the present with the apparent chaos of the past: A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. The final paragraph about the Jewish quest for the Messiah provides a harrowing final point to Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish heritage and the fight between humanity and nihilism. He brings up the interdiction, in some varieties of Judaism, of attempts to determine the year when the Messiah would come into the world, and points out that this did not make Jews indifferent to the future "for every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter". === "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" === Perhaps Walter Benjamin's best known essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," identifies the perceptual shift that takes place when technological advancements emphasize speed and reproducibility. The aura is found in a work of art that contains presence. The aura is precisely what cannot be reproduced in a work of art: its original presence in time and space. He suggests a work of art's aura is in a state of decay because it is becoming more and more difficult to apprehend the time and space in which a piece of art is created. This essay also introduces the concept of the optical unconscious, a concept that identifies the subject's ability to identify desire in visual objects. This also leads to the ability to perceive information by habit instead of rapt attention. === The Origin of German Tragic Drama === Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 1928), is a critical study of German baroque drama, as well as the political and cultural climate of Germany during the Counter-Reformation (1545–1648). Benjamin presented the work to the University of Frankfurt in 1925 as the (postdoctoral) dissertation meant to earn him the Habilitation (qualification) to become a university instructor in Germany. Professor Schultz of the University of Frankfurt found The Origin of German Tragic Drama inappropriate for his Germanistik department (Department of German Language and Literature), and passed it to the Department of Aesthetics (philosophy of art), the readers of which likewise dismissed Benjamin's work. The university officials recommended that Benjamin withdraw Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels as a Habilitation dissertation to avoid formal rejection and public embarrassment. He heeded the advice, and three years later, in 1928, he published The Origin of German Tragic Drama as a book. === One Way Street === Einbahnstraße (One Way Street, 1928) is a series of meditations written primarily during the same phase as The Origin of German Tragic Drama, after Benjamin had met Asja Lācis on the beach at Capri in 1924. He finished the cycle in 1926, and put it out the same year that his failed thesis was published. It is a kind of a collage work. Greil Marcus compares certain formal qualities of the book to the graphic novel Hundred Headless Women by Max Ernst and André Breton, or to Walter Ruttman's The Weekend (an early sound collage film). The book avoids, "all semblance of linear-narrative...[offering] a jumble of sixty apparently autonomous short prose pieces: aphorisms, jokes, dream protocols, cityscapes, landscapes, and mindscapes; portions of writing manuals, trenchant contemporary political analysis; prescient appreciations of the child's psychology, behavior, and moods; decodings of bourgeois fashion, living arrangments and courtship patterns; and time and again, remarkable penetrations into the heart of every day things, what Benjamin would later call a mode of empathy with 'the soul of the commodity'" according to Michael Jennings in his introduction to the work. He continues: "Many of the pieces...first appeared in the feuilleton section," of newspapers and magazines which was "not a separate section but rather an area at the bottom of every page...and the spatial restrictions of the feuilleton played a decisive role in shaping the prose form on which the book is based."Written contemporaneously with Martin Heidegger's Being & Time, Benjamin's work from this period explores much of the same territory: formally in his "Epistemo-Critical Prologue" to The Origin of German Tragic Drama, and as sketches, allusions and asides in One Way Street. === The Arcades Project === The Passagenwerk (Arcades Project, 1927–40) was Benjamin's final, incomplete book about Parisian city life in the 19th century, especially about the Passages couverts de Paris—the covered passages that extended the culture of flânerie (idling and people-watching) when inclement weather made flânerie infeasible in the boulevards and streets proper. In this work Benjamin uses his fragmentary style to write about the rise of modern European urban culture. Several of the major published works that appeared in his lifetime—"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", "Paris, The Capital of the 19th Century", and his late essays and monograph on Baudelaire—are fragments of the book that he developed as standalone pieces for publication. The Arcades Project, in its current form, brings together a massive collection of notes Benjamin filed together from 1927 to 1940.The Arcades Project was published for the first time in 1982, and is over a thousand pages long. === Writing style === Scholem said of Benjamin's prose: “Among the peculiarities of Benjamin’s philosophical prose—the critical and metaphysical prose, in which the Marxist element constitutes something like an inversion of the metaphysical-theological—is its enormous suitability for canonization; I might almost say for quotation as a kind of Holy Writ." Scholem commentary on this phenomena continues at length. Briefly: Benjamin's texts have an occult quality in the sense that passages appearing quite lucid today may seem impenetrable later, and elements that read as indecipherable or incoherent now may read as transparently obvious upon later revisitation.Susan Sontag said that in Benjamin's writing, sentences did not originate ordinarily, do not progress into one another, and delineate no obvious line of reasoning, as if each sentence "had to say everything, before the inward gaze of total concentration dissolved the subject before his eyes", a "freeze-frame baroque" style of writing and cogitation. "His major essays seem to end just in time, before they self-destruct". The occasional difficulties of Benjamin's style are essential to his philosophical project. Fascinated by notions of reference and constellation, his goal in later works was to use intertexts to reveal aspects of the past that cannot, and should not, be understood within greater, monolithic constructs of historical understanding. Benjamin's writings identify him as a modernist for whom the philosophic merges with the literary: logical philosophic reasoning cannot account for all experience, especially not for self-representation via art. He presented his stylistic concerns in "The Task of the Translator", wherein he posits that a literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover, in the deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language text are elucidated, while previously obvious aspects become unreadable. Such translational modification of the source text is productive; when placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear and are productive of philosophical truth. His work "The Task of the Translator" was later commented by the French translation scholar Antoine Berman (L'âge de la traduction). == Legacy and reception == Since the publication of Schriften (Writings, 1955), 15 years after his death, Benjamin's work—especially the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (French edition, 1936)—has become of seminal importance to academics in the humanities disciplines. In 1968, the first Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft was established by the German thinker, poet and artist Natias Neutert, as a free association of philosophers, writers, artists, media theoreticians and editors. They did not take Benjamin's body of thought as a scholastic "closed architecture [...], but as one in which all doors, windows and roof hatches are widely open", as the founder Neutert put it—more poetically than politically—in his manifesto. The members felt liberated to take Benjamin's ideas as a welcome touchstone for social change.Like the first Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft, a new one, established in 2000, researches and discusses the imperative that Benjamin formulated in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest the tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it." The successor society was registered in Karlsruhe (Germany); Chairman of the Board of Directors was Bernd Witte, an internationally recognized Benjamin scholar and Professor of Modern German Literature in Düsseldorf (Germany). Its members come from 19 countries, both within and beyond Europe and it provides an international forum for discourse. The Society supported research endeavors devoted to the creative and visionary potential of Benjamin's works and their view of 20th century modernism. Special emphasis had been placed upon strengthening academic ties to Latin America and Eastern and Central Europe. The society conducts conferences and exhibitions, as well as interdisciplinary and intermedial events, at regular intervals and different European venues: Barcelona Conference – September 2000 Walter-Benjamin-Evening at Berlin – November 2001 Walter-Benjamin-Evening at Karlsruhe – January 2003 Rome Conference – November 2003 Zurich Conference – October 2004 Paris Conference – June 2005 Düsseldorf Conference – June 2005 Düsseldorf Conference – November 2005 Antwerpen Conference – May 2006 Vienna Conference – March 2007In 2017 Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project was reinterpreted in an exhibition curated by Jens Hoffman, held at the Jewish Museum in New York City. The exhibition, entitled "The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin", featured 36 contemporary artworks representing the 36 convolutes of Benjamin's Project.In 2022, Igor Chubarov, a modern Russian philosopher, specialist in media studies and translator of Benjamin's works into Russian, created the Russian-language Telegram channel "Radio Benjamin". == Commemoration == A commemorative plaque is located by the residence where Benjamin lived in Berlin during the years 1930–1933: (Prinzregentenstraße 66, Berlin-Wilmersdorf). A commemorative plaque is located in Paris (10 rue Dombasle, 15th) where Benjamin lived in 1938–1940. Close by Kurfürstendamm, in the district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, a town square created by Hans Kollhoff in 2001 was named "Walter-Benjamin-Platz". There is a memorial sculpture by the artist Dani Karavan at Portbou, where Walter Benjamin ended his life. It was commissioned to mark 50 years since his death. == Works (selection) == Among Walter Benjamin's works are: "Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen" ("On Language as Such and on the Language of Man", 1916) "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" ("The Task of the Translator", 1921) – English translations by Harry Zohn, 1968, and by Stephen Rendell, 1997 "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Critique of Violence", 1921) "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" (Goethe's Elective Affinities, 1922) Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 1928) Einbahnstraße (One Way Street, 1928) "Karl Kraus" (1931, in the Frankfurter Zeitung) "Kafka" ("Some Remarks on Kafka", excerpted from a 1938 letter to Gershom Scholem) "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", 1935) "Paris, Hauptstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts" ("Paris, Capital of the 19th Century," 1935. This essay is often presented as a diptych with "Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire", as both are fragments or preparatory writings for the unfinished Arcades Project.) Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Childhood around 1900, 1938) "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire", 1938) "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("Theses on the Philosophy of History", 1940) == See also == Gertrud Kolmar Michael Heller List of people from Berlin == References == == Further reading == === Primary literature === === Secondary literature === == In other media == Transatlantic (2023 TV series) Les Unwanted de Europa (2018 film on Benjamin's last days 13, a ludodrama about Walter Benjamin, a cinematic essay by Carlos Ferrand and Thomas Sieber Satinsky, 2018, 77 min. The Passages of Walter Benjamin (2014 documentary) Who Killed Walter Benjamin? (2005 documentary) One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin (1992 documentary) == External links == Works by Walter Benjamin at Open Library Walter Benjamin Archive at Marxists Internet Archive "Walter Benjamin" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft (in English and German) at Internet Archive "Radio Benjamin". Telegram channel of modern Russian philosopher Igor Chubarov (in Russian)

F. S. C. Northrop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5

The Northrop F-5 is a family of supersonic light fighter aircraft initially designed as a privately funded project in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. There are two main models, the original F-5A and F-5B Freedom Fighter variants and the extensively updated F-5E and F-5F Tiger II variants. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and a low cost of maintenance. Smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. Though primarily designed for a day air superiority role, the aircraft is also a capable ground-attack platform. The F-5A entered service in the early 1960s. During the Cold War, over 800 were produced through 1972 for US allies. Though at the time the United States Air Force (USAF) did not have a need for a light fighter, it did procure approximately 1,200 Northrop T-38 Talon trainer aircraft, which was based on Northrop's N-156 fighter design. After winning the International Fighter Aircraft Competition, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, in 1970 Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, larger fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for better turn rates, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. Primarily used by American allies, it remains in US service to support training exercises. It has served in a wide array of roles, being able to perform both air and ground attack duties; the type was used extensively in the Vietnam War. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987. More than 3,800 F-5s and the closely related T-38 advanced trainer aircraft were produced in Hawthorne, California. The F-5N/F variants are in service with the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps as adversary trainers. Over 400 aircraft were in service as of 2021.The F-5 was also developed into a dedicated reconnaissance aircraft, the RF-5 Tigereye. The F-5 also served as a starting point for a series of design studies which resulted in the Northrop YF-17 and the F/A-18 naval fighter aircraft. The Northrop F-20 Tigershark was an advanced variant to succeed the F-5E which was ultimately canceled when export customers did not emerge. == Design and development == === Origins === The design effort was led by Northrop vice president of engineering and aircraft designer Edgar Schmued, who previously at North American Aviation had been the chief designer of the successful North American P-51 Mustang and F-86 Sabre fighters. Schmued recruited a strong engineering team to Northrop.In December 1953, NATO issued NBMR-1, calling for a lightweight tactical fighter capable of carrying conventional and nuclear weapons and operating from rough airfields. In late 1954, a Northrop team toured Europe and Asia to examine both the NBMR-1 and the needs of SEATO members. From this tour, Schmued gave his team the goal of reversing the trend in fighter development towards greater size and weight in order to deliver an aircraft with high performance, enhanced maneuverability, and high reliability, while still delivering a cost advantage over contemporary fighters. Recognizing that expensive jet aircraft could not viably be replaced every few years, he also demanded "engineered growth potential" allowing service longevity in excess of 10 years.The design began to firm up in 1955 with the introduction of the General Electric J85 turbojet engine. Originally developed for McDonnell's ADM-20 Quail decoy for use on the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the J85 had a thrust-to-weight ratio of 6.25 to 7.5 depending on the version, giving it a notable advantage over contemporaries such as the 4.7 ratio of the J79 engine used in the F-4 Phantom. === Design evolution === Using a pair of J85s as the baseline, the team began considering a series of prospective designs. Among the earliest concepts was the N-156TX of March 1955. This mounted the engines in pods, one under each wing about mid-span. The fuselage was quite slim compared to the final design, with a crew of two under a narrow cockpit canopy.That year, the US Navy expressed an interest in a fighter to operate from its escort carriers, which were too small to operate the Navy's existing jet fighters. Northrop responded with a radical redesign, PD-2706, which placed the engines against the fuselage in short ducts exiting in front of the tail area, like the F-4, and moved the elevator up to form a T-tail. The resulting design had a much shorter fuselage and was quite compact. Development along these lines ended when the Navy decided to withdraw the escort carriers. Northrop continued development of the N-156, both as a two-seat advanced trainer, designated as N-156T, and a single-seat fighter, designated as N-156F. Another highly influential figure was chief engineer Welko Gasich, who convinced Schmued that the engines must be located within the fuselage for maximum performance. This led to the January 1956 PD-2812 version which began to look a lot like the final product, although this version had a long-span low-mounted elevator with notable anhedral. March 1956's PD-2832 moved to a more conventional elevator and had a strongly swept vertical stabilizer. The design underwent several further versions over the next year which experimented with different nose designs and continued to lengthen the fuselage. The final design, PD-2879D, emerged in December 1956.Gasich also introduced the concept of "life cycle cost" into fighter design, which provided the foundation for the F-5's low operating cost and long service life. A Northrop design study stated "The application of advanced technology was used to provide maximum force effectiveness at minimum cost. This became the Northrop philosophy in the development of the T-38 and F-5 lightweight trainer and fighter aircraft." === Into production === The N-156T was quickly selected by the United States Air Force as a replacement for the T-33 in July 1956. On 12 June 1959, the first prototype aircraft, which was subsequently designated as YT-38 Talon, performed its first flight. By the time production had ended in January 1972, a total of 1,189 Talons had been produced. Development of the N-156F continued at a lower priority as a private venture by Northrop; on 25 February 1958, an order for three prototypes was issued for a prospective low-cost fighter that could be supplied under the Military Assistance Program for distribution to less-developed nations. The first N-156F flew at Edwards Air Force Base on 30 July 1959, exceeding the speed of sound on its first flight.Although testing of the N-156F was successful, demonstrating unprecedented reliability and proving superior in the ground-attack role to the USAF's existing North American F-100 Super Sabres, official interest in the Northrop type waned, and by 1960 it looked as if the program was a failure. Interest revived in 1961 when the United States Army tested it, (along with the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and Fiat G.91) for reconnaissance and close-support. Although all three types proved capable during army testing, operating fixed-wing combat aircraft was legally the responsibility of the Air Force, which would not agree to allow the Army to operate fixed-wing combat aircraft, a situation repeated with the C-7 Caribou.In 1962, the Kennedy Administration revived the requirement for a low-cost export fighter, selecting the N-156F as winner of the F-X competition on 23 April 1962, subsequently becoming the "F-5A", and was ordered into production in October that year. It was named under the 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft designation system, which included a re-set of the fighter number series. Northrop manufactured a total of 624 F-5As, including three YF-5A prototypes, before production ended in 1972. A further 200 F-5B two-seat trainer aircraft, lacking nose-mounted cannons but otherwise combat-capable, and 86 RF-5A reconnaissance aircraft, fitted with four-camera noses, were also built. In addition, Canadair built 240 first generation F-5s under license, CASA in Spain built 70 more aircraft. === F-5E and F-5F Tiger II === In 1970, Northrop won the International Fighter Aircraft (IFA) competition to replace the F-5A, with better air-to-air performance against aircraft like the Soviet MiG-21. The resultant aircraft, initially known as F-5A-21, subsequently became the F-5E. It had more powerful (5,000 lbf) General Electric J85-21 engines, and had a lengthened and enlarged fuselage, accommodating more fuel. Its wings were fitted with enlarged leading edge extensions, giving an increased wing area and improved maneuverability. The aircraft's avionics were more sophisticated, crucially including a radar (initially the Emerson Electric AN/APQ-153) (the F-5A and B had no radar). It retained the gun armament of two M39 cannons, one on either side of the nose of the F-5A. Various specific avionics fits could be accommodated at a customer's request, including an inertial navigation system, TACAN and ECM equipment. Additionally the two position nose landing gear from the Canadian CF-5 was incorporated to reduce takeoff distance.The first F-5E flew on 11 August 1972. A two-seat combat-capable trainer, the F-5F, was offered, first flying on 25 September 1974, at Edwards Air Force Base, with a new nose, that was three feet longer, which, unlike the F-5B that did not mount a gun, allowed it to retain a single M39 cannon, albeit with a reduced ammunition capacity. The two-seater was equipped with the Emerson AN/APQ-157 radar, which is a derivative of the AN/APQ-153 radar, with dual control and display systems to accommodate the two-men crew, and the radar has the same range of AN/APQ-153, around 10 nmi. On 6 April 1973, the 425th TFS at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona, received the first F-5E Tiger II. A reconnaissance version, the RF-5E Tigereye, with a sensor package in the nose displacing the radar and one cannon, was also offered. The F-5E eventually received the official name Tiger II; 792 F-5Es, 146 F-5Fs and 12 RF-5Es were eventually built by Northrop. More were built under license overseas: 91 F-5Es and F-5Fs in Switzerland, 68 by Korean Air in South Korea, and 308 in Taiwan.The F-5E proved to be a successful combat aircraft in service with US allies, but had no combat service with the US Air Force, though the F-5A with modifications, designated F-5C, was flown by the US in Vietnam. The F-5E evolved into the single-engine F-5G, which was rebranded the F-20 Tigershark. It lost out on export sales to the F-16 Fighting Falcon in the 1980s. === Upgrades === The F-5E experienced numerous upgrades in its service life, with the most significant one being adopting a new planar array radar, Emerson AN/APQ-159 with a range of 20 nmi to replace the original AN/APQ-153. Similar radar upgrades were also proposed for F-5F, with the derivative of AN/APQ-159, the AN/APQ-167, to replace the AN/APQ-157, but that was cancelled. The latest radar upgrade included the Emerson AN/APG-69, which was the successor of AN/APQ-159, incorporating mapping capability. However, most nations chose not to upgrade for financial reasons, and the radar saw very little service in USAF aggressor squadrons and Swiss Air Force.Various F-5 versions remain in service with many nations. Having taken delivery of its first F-5 Tigers in 1979, Singapore operated approximately 49 modernized and re-designated F-5S (single-seat) and F-5T (two-seat) aircraft until the early 2010s when they were retired from service. Upgrades included new FIAR Grifo-F X-band radar from Galileo Avionica (similar in performance to the AN/APG-69), updated cockpits with multi-function displays, and compatibility with the AIM-120 AMRAAM and Rafael Python air-to-air missiles. One National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) F-5E was given a modified fuselage shape for its employment in the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration program carried out by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It is preserved in the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum at Titusville, Florida.The Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) had their F-5s undergo an extensive upgrade program, resulting in the aircraft re-designated as F-5T Tigris. They are armed with Python III and IV missiles; and equipped with the Dash helmet-mounted cueing system.Similar programs have been carried out in Chile and Brazil with the help of Elbit. The Chilean upgrade, called the F-5 Tiger III Plus, incorporated a new Elta EL/M-2032 radar and other improvements. The Brazilian program, re-designated as F-5M, adds a new Grifo-F radar along with several avionics and cockpit refurbishments, including the Dash helmet. The F-5M has been equipped with new weapon systems such as the Beyond Visual Range Derby missile, Python IV short-range air-to-air missile, SMKBs smart bomb, and several other weapons. == Operational history == The first contract for the production F-5A was issued in 1962, the first overseas order coming from the Royal Norwegian Air Force on 28 February 1964. It entered service with the 4441st Combat Crew Training Squadron, USAF, at Williams Air Force Base, which had the role of training pilots and ground crew for customer nations, including Norway, on 30 April 1964. At that point, it was still not intended that the aircraft be used in significant numbers by the USAF itself. === United States Air Force === USAF doctrine with regard to the F-5 changed following operational testing and limited deployment in 1965. Preliminary combat evaluation of the F-5A began at the Air Proving Ground Center, Eglin AFB, Florida, in mid-1965 under the code name Project Sparrow Hawk. One airframe was lost in the course of the project, through pilot error, on 24 June.In October 1965, the USAF began a five-month combat evaluation of the F-5A titled Skoshi Tiger. A total of 12 aircraft were delivered for trials to the 4503rd Tactical Fighter Squadron, and after modification with probe and drogue aerial refueling equipment, armor and improved instruments, were redesignated F-5C. Over the next six months, they flew in combat in Vietnam, flying more than 2,600 sorties, both from the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing at Bien Hoa over South Vietnam and from Da Nang Air Base where operations were flown over Laos. Nine aircraft were lost in Vietnam, seven to enemy ground fire and two to operational causes.Operations with 3rd TFW were declared a success, with the F-5 generally rated as being as capable a ground-attacker as the F-100, albeit having a shorter range. However, the program was more a political gesture that was intended to aid the export of F-5s, than a serious consideration of the type for US service. (Following Skoshi Tiger the Philippine Air Force acquired 23 F-5A and B models in 1965. These aircraft, along with remanufactured Vought F-8 Crusaders, eventually replaced the Philippine Air Force's F-86 Sabre in the air defense and ground attack roles.) From April 1966, the USAF aircraft continued operations under the auspices of the 10th Fighter Squadron, Commando, with their number boosted to 17 aircraft. In June 1967, the surviving aircraft of the 10th Fighter Squadron, Commando, were transferred to the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF). In view of the performance, agility and size of the F-5, it might have appeared to be a good match against the similar MiG-21 in air combat; however, US doctrine was to use heavy, faster and longer-range aircraft like the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II over North Vietnam. The F-5 was also adopted as an opposing forces (OPFOR) "aggressor" for dissimilar training role because of its small size and performance similarities to the Soviet MiG-21. In realistic trials at Nellis AFB in 1977, called ACEVAL/AIMVAL, the F-14 reportedly scored slightly better than a 2:1 kill ratio against the simpler F-5, while the F-15 scored slightly less. There is some contradiction of these reports, another source reports that "For the first three weeks of the test, the F-14s and F-15s were hopelessly outclassed and demoralized"; after adapting to qualities of the F-5 carrying the new all aspect AIM-9L missile and implementing rule changes to artificially favor long range radar-guided missiles, "the F-14s did slightly better than breaking even with the F-5s in non-1 v 1 engagements; the F-15s got almost 2:1". A 2012 Discovery Channel documentary Great Planes reported that in USAF exercises, F-5 aggressor aircraft were competitive enough with more modern and expensive fighters to only be at small disadvantage in Within Visual Range (WVR) combat. The F-5E served with the US Air Force from 1975 until 1990, in the 64th Aggressor Squadron and 65th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and with the 527th Aggressor Squadron at RAF Alconbury in the UK and the 26th Aggressor Squadron at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. The US Marines purchased used F-5s from the Air Force in 1989 to replace their F-21s, which served with VMFT-401 at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. The US Navy used the F-5E extensively at the Naval Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) when it was located at NAS Miramar, California. When TOPGUN relocated to become part of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at NAS Fallon, Nevada, the command divested itself of the F-5, choosing to rely on VC-13 (redesignated VFC-13 and which already used F-5s) to employ their F-5s as adversary aircraft. Former adversary squadrons such as VF-43 at NAS Oceana, VF-45 at NAS Key West, VF-126 at NAS Miramar, and VFA-127 at NAS Lemoore have also operated the F-5 along with other aircraft types in support of Dissimilar Air Combat Training (DACT). The US Navy F-5 fleet continues to be modernized with 36 low-hour F-5E/Fs purchased from Switzerland in 2006. These were updated as F-5N/Fs with modernized avionics and other improved systems. Currently, the only US Navy and US Marine Corps units flying the F-5 are VFC-13 at NAS Fallon, Nevada, VFC-111 at NAS Key West, Florida, and VMFT-401 at MCAS Yuma, Arizona. Currently, VFC-111 operates 18 Northrop F-5N/F Tiger IIs. 17 of these are single-seater F-5Ns and the last is a twin-seater F-5F "FrankenTiger", the product of grafting the older front-half fuselage of an F-5F into the back-half fuselage of a newer low-hours F-5E acquired from the Swiss Air Force. A total of three "FrankenTigers" were made.According to the FAA, there are 18 privately owned F-5s in the US, including Canadair CF-5Ds. === Brazil === In October 1974, the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) ordered 36 F-5E and 6 F-5B aircraft from Northrop for $72 million. The first three aircraft arrived on 12 March 1975. In 1988, FAB acquired 22 F-5E and four F-5F second-hand USAF "aggressor" fighters. A total of 15 of these aircraft were part of the initial batch of 30 aircraft produced by Northrop. In 1990, FAB retired all remaining five F-5Bs; later, they were sent to Brazilian museums around the country.In 2001, Elbit Systems and Embraer started work on a $230 million Brazilian F-5 modernization program, performed over an eight-year period, upgrading 46 F-5E/F aircraft, re-designated as F-5EM and F-5FM. The modernization centered on several areas: new electronic warfare systems, the Grifo F radar, an air-to-air refueling system, INS/GPS-based navigation, support for new weapons, targeting and self-defense systems, HOTAS, LCD displays, helmet-mounted displays (HMDs), Radar Warning Receiver, encrypted communications, cockpit compatibility for night vision goggles, On-Board Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS) and various new onboard computer upgrades. One important capability is the secure communication with R-99 airborne early warning platforms and ground stations.Externally, the new aircraft features a larger nose cone that accommodates the larger radar equipment. The first F-5EM was handed over on 21 September 2005. On 7 July 2003, four Rafael Litening III targeting pods were ordered at a cost of US$13 million, to be used on F-5M together with three Rafael Sky Shield jamming pods ordered on 5 July 2006 at a cost of US$42 million.In 2009, FAB bought eight single-seat and three twin-seat F-5F used aircraft from Jordan in a US$21 million deal. These aircraft were built between 1975 and 1980. On 14 April 2011, a contract of $153 million was signed with Embraer and Elbit to modernize the additional F-5s bought from Jordan, and to supply one more flight simulator as a continuation of the contract signed in 2000. These F-5s will receive the same configuration as those from the initial 46 F-5s currently completing the upgrade process. The first delivery of this second batch of upgraded jet fighters is scheduled for 2013 with expected use to 2030.In 2020, the FAB started implementing the new proprietary Datalink System of the Brazilian Armed Forces on the F-5EM, for integrated communication and real-time sharing battlefield/warfare data with AEW&C R-99/E-99 FAB/Embraer aircraft, other aircraft, ships, helicopters, tanks and front/back-ends battlefield control centers, called Link-BR2. === Ethiopia === Ethiopia received 10 F-5As and two F-5Bs from the US starting in 1966. In addition to these, Ethiopia had a training squadron equipped with at least eight Lockheed T-33 Shooting Stars. In 1970, Iran transferred at least three F-5As and Bs to Ethiopia. In 1975, another agreement was reached with the US to deliver a number of military aircraft, including 14 F-5Es and three F-5Fs; later in the same year eight F-5Es were transferred while the others were embargoed and delivered to a USAF aggressor Squadron due to the changed political situation. The US also withdrew its personnel and cut diplomatic relations. Ethiopian officers contracted a number of Israelis to maintain American equipment.The Ethiopian F-5 fighters saw combat action against Somali forces during the Ogaden War (1977–1978). The main Somali fighter aircraft was the MiG-21MF delivered in the 1970s, supported by Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17s delivered in the 1960s by the Soviet Union. Ethiopian F-5E aircraft were used to gain air superiority because they could use the AIM-9B air-to-air missile, while the F-5As were kept for air interdiction and airstrike. During this period Ethiopian F-5Es went on training against Ethiopian F-5As and F-86 Sabres (simulating Somali MiG-21s and MiG-17s).On 17 July 1977, two F-5s were on combat air patrol near Harer, when four Somali MiG-21MFs were detected nearby. In the engagement, two MiG-21s were shot down while the other two had a midair collision while avoiding an AIM-9B missile. The better-trained F-5 pilots swiftly gained air superiority over the Somali Air Force, shooting down a number of aircraft, while other Somali aircraft were lost to air defense and to incidents. Records indicate that Ethiopian F-5s of the 9th Fighter Squadron "shot down 13 MiGs-17 and 12 MiGs-21 from 20th July until 1st September 1977. All aircraft were hit by Sidewinders (AIM-9)." However at least three F-5s were shot down by air defense forces during attacks against supply bases in western Somalia.Ethiopian pilots who had flown both the F-5E and the MiG-21 considered the F-5E to be the superior fighter because of its manoeuvrability at low to medium speeds and the fact that it was far easier to fly, allowing the pilot to focus on combat rather than controlling his airplane. This effect was enhanced by the poor quality of pilot training provided by the Soviets, which provided limited flight time and focused exclusively on taking off and landing, with no practical training in air combat.Ethiopia's ace pilot and national hero was Legesse Tefera who is credited with shooting down 6 (or 7) Somali MiGs, thus making him the most successful F-5 pilot ever. === Greece === The Hellenic Air Force was the first European air force to receive the Freedom Fighter. The first F-5As were delivered in 1965, and over the next 8 years a total of about 70 F-5A/Bs were operational. The Hellenic Air Force bought an additional 10 F-5A/Bs from Iran in 1975, and around the same period another batch of 10 F-5A/Bs were acquired from Jordan. Another 10 were acquired from Norway in 1986, and a final 10 NF-5As were purchased from the Netherlands in 1991. The total number of F-5s in operation (including the ex-Iranian machines, 34 RF-5As, and 20 F-5Bs) in the Hellenic Air Force was about 120 aircraft, from 1965 to 2002, when the last F-5 was decommissioned and the type went out of operation in the Hellenic Air Force.Units that used the F-5 in Greek service: 337th Day Interceptor Squadron (1967–1978) 341st Day Interceptor Squadron (1965–1993) 343rd Day Interceptor Squadron (1966–2001) 349th Day Interceptor Squadron (1970–1997) === Iran === The Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) received extensive US equipment in the 1960s and 1970s. Iran received its first 11 F-5As and two F-5Bs in February 1965 which were then declared operational in June 1965. Ultimately, Iran received 104 F-5As and 23 F-5Bs by 1972. From January 1974 with the first squadron of 28 F-5Fs, Iran received a total of 166 F-5E/Fs and 15 additional RF-5As with deliveries ending in 1976. While receiving the F-5E and F, Iran began to sell its F-5A and B inventory to other countries, including Ethiopia, Turkey, Greece and South Vietnam; by 1976, many had been sold, except for several F-5Bs retained for training purposes. F-5s were also used by the IIAF's aerobatic display team, the Golden Crown. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the new Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) was partially successful at keeping Western fighters in service during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s and the simple F-5 had a good service readiness until late in the war. Initially, Iran took spare parts from foreign sources; later it was able to have its new aircraft industry keep the aircraft flying.IRIAF F-5s were heavily involved, flying air-to-air and air-to-ground sorties. Iranian F-5s took part in air combat with Iraqi Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-25s, Su-20/22s, Mirage F1s and Super Etendards. The exact combat record is not known with many differing claims from Iraqi, Iranian, Western, and Russian sources. There are reports that an IRIAF F-5E, piloted by Major Yadollah Javadpour, shot down a MiG-25 on 6 August 1983. Russian sources state that the first confirmed kill of a MiG-25 occurred in 1985.During their first years of service, Iranian F-5s had the advantage in missile technology, using advanced versions of the infrared-homing AIM-9 Sidewinder, later lost with deliveries of new missiles and fighters to Iraq.Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company currently produces three aircraft, the Azarakhsh, Saeqeh, and Kowsar, derived from the F-5. === Kenya === Starting on 16 October 2011 during Operation Linda Nchi, Kenyan Air Force F-5s supported the Kenyan forces fighting in Somalia against Al Shabab Islamists bombing targets inside Somalia and spearheading the ground forces. === Malaysia === In 1975, the Royal Malaysian Air Force received 14 F-5Es and two F-5Bs. In 1982, four F-5Fs were received and the two F-5Bs already in Malaysian service were transferred to the Royal Thai Air Force. In 1983, RMAF received two RF-5E Tigereye. Subsequently, two F-5Es (M29-21 & M29-22) and a F-5F (M29-23) which came with the new "shark nose" and with leading edge root extensions (LERX) version were ordered as attrition replacement. The F-5E was the first supersonic fighter in Royal Malaysian Air Force service and it replaced the former RAAF CAC Sabre as the Royal Malaysian Air Force's primary air defense fighter throughout the 1980s and early '90s. It also served in secondary ground attack role alongside the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. Five F-5Es and one F-5F were lost in the accident with three fatalities (2 pilots in E (1983 & 1995) and 1 in F (1986), all crashed into the sea). In 2000, all the RMAF F-5s were deactivated, but they were reactivated in 2003 as the Tactical Air Reconnaissance Squadron and Reserve. Several upgrade packages were proposed to extend the service life of the aircraft, but none were taken. In 2015, the F-5s was pulled out of service, but some were kept in storage. === Mexico === In 1982, the Mexican Air Force received 10 F-5Es and two F-5Fs after the purchase of 24 IAI Kfir C.1 was blocked by the US, because the Kfir used the American-produced J79 engine. These fighters complemented the Lockheed T-33 and de Havilland Vampire Mk. I (received much earlier), two of the first combat jet aircraft in Mexico. The F-5 gave Mexico its first supersonic warplane, and it saw the formation of Air Squadron 401. On 16 September 1995, after more than 30 military parade flights without incidents, an F-5E collided in midair with three Lockheed T-33s during the military parade for the Independence of Mexico resulting in 10 deaths. As of 2021, the Mexican Air Force has five Northrop F-5E and two F-5F fighters combat ready and for training purposes. === Morocco === The Royal Moroccan Air Force received 22 F-5As, two F-5Bs and two RF-5As from the United States between 1966 and 1974. These entered service with the 1st Fighter Squadron. Two additional F-5As were donated by Iran in 1974, and six F-5As were acquired from Jordan in 1976. Three F-5As were involved in the failed 1972 Moroccan coup attempt, attacking King Hassan II of Morocco's Boeing 727 in mid-air, before strafing and bombing a military airfield and the royal palace. After the failure of the attempted coup, nearly all F-5 pilots were arrested, and most of them disappeared. Another consequence of the failed coup was that the designation system of Moroccan air force units changed from numerical designations to names. From then on, the F-5A squadron was known as the Borak squadron.Morocco used its F-5s in the Western Sahara War in reconnaissance and bombing missions. Several aircraft were shot down by 9K32 Strela-2 MANPADS, machine-gun fire, and 9K31 Strela-1 (SA-9) and 2K12 Kub (SA-6) self-propelled anti-aircraft systems. To counter the SA-6 threat, AN/ALR-66 radar warning receivers were installed on the RF-5As and F-5Bs around 1981. These aircraft were grouped into a newly established dedicated reconnaissance unit, the Erige squadron; one of its main tasks was to track the Polisario Front's surface-to-air missile systems.In the same period, Morocco started receiving 16 F-5Es and four F-5Fs, that had been ordered in 1979 thanks to Saudi financing. Deliveries lasted from 1981 to 1983. Shortly after their arrival, the F-5Es were fitted with the same radar warning receivers as the RF-5As and F-5Bs; they also received in-flight refuelling probes. Lastly, Moroccan F-5Es could be equipped with electronic and infrared countermeasures pods, that enhanced their survivability against Polisario surface-to-air missiles. F-5E/Fs were operated by the Borak and Erige squadrons, where they served together with older F-5 versions, as well as the Chahine squadron. During the war in Western Sahara, Moroccan F-5s deployed general-purpose and cluster bombs, unguided rockets, and more rarely AGM-65 Maverick missiles. In total, 15 F-5s are confirmed to have been lost in the course of the Western Sahara War.Starting in 1990, Morocco received 12 more F-5Es from the United States, a total of 24 F-5Es having been upgraded to the F-5TIII standard. === Netherlands === The Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) received 75 F-5A single seat fighters and 30 F-5B dual–seat trainers. They were license built in Canada by Canadair respectively as NF-5As and Bs in the 1969 CL-226 production line. These aircraft equalled the Canadian CF-5A and CF-5D versions with more powerful engines fitted. The first NF-5A was handed over in October 1969 at Twenthe Air Base for 313 Squadron acting as Operational Conversion Unit. The last aircraft was handed over in March 1972. The NF-5As flew under the Dutch registrations K-3001 / K-3075 and the NF-5Bs under K-4002 / K-4030. They were operational at Twenthe AB (OCU, 313 and 315 Squadrons), Eindhoven AB (314 Squadron) and Gilze-Rijen AB (316 Squadron). During the RNLAF transition to the F-16, the NF-5s and Bs were stored at Gilze-Rijen and Woensdrecht air bases. 60 aircraft were sold to Turkey, 11 to Greece and 7 to Venezuela. Some aircraft have been written off during their operational life due to crashes and some remaining aircraft are displayed in museums or used in technical schools. The NF-5As and Bs were operational from 1971 to 1991. === Norway === The Royal Norwegian Air Force received 108 Freedom Fighters: 16 RF-5A, 78 F-5A and 14 F-5B. The first 64 were received as military aid. They were used by six squadrons, the first and last being 336 Squadron receiving the first aircraft in February 1966 (formal handing-over ceremony a month later), and deactivating in August 2000. Three aircraft were kept flying until 2007, serving with Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace for tests in the "Eye of the Tiger" program, supporting development of the Norwegian Penguin anti-ship missile. The aircraft received under military aid were handed off to Greece and Turkey. Of the aircraft bought by the Norwegian government, nine were used in exchange with US authorities for submarines of the Kobben class.In October 2011 five F-5A single seaters were given to aircraft maintenance schools around the country; including the Skedsmo, Sola, Bodø, and Bardufoss high schools, and the Royal Norwegian Air Force's training center at Kristiansand Airport, Kjevik. The aircraft were disassembled at Moss Airport, Rygge, before delivery to the schools. Of the ten remaining Norwegian F-5s, eight F-5B two-seaters were still for sale as of 2011, six of which were stored in Norway and two in the United States. The two aircraft in the United States had been approved for sale to the American businessman Ross Perot Jr., in 2008, but the deal was blocked by the US government initially. However, in 2015, Perot Jr. got permission and subsequently bought the aircraft for significantly below market price, which caused controversy and public criticism of the government of Norway. Three survivors are exhibited at the Norwegian Armed Forces Aircraft Collection, two at Norsk Luftfartsmuseum in Bodø and one at Flyhistorisk Museum, Sola, near Stavanger. === Philippines === The Philippine Air Force acquired 37 F-5A and F-5B from 1965 to 1998. The F-5A/Bs were used by the 6th Tactical Fighter Squadron (Cobras) of the 5th Fighter Wing and the Blue Diamonds aerobatic team, replacing the F-86F Sabre previously used by 1965 and 1968 respectively. The F-5s also underwent an upgrade which equipped it with surplus AN/APQ-153 radars with significant overhaul at the end of the 1970s to stretch their service lives another 15 years. In 2005, the Philippines decommissioned its remaining F-5A/B fleet, including those received from Taiwan and South Korea. === South Korea === The Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) purchased F-5A/Bs in 1965, and it purchased F-5Es in August 1974. KF-5 variants were built by Korean Air under license between 1982 and 1986.The F-5E/Fs and KF-5E/Fs were to be replaced by FA-50s and after 2001, by the plans to eventually field the Korean F-X Phase 3.: 18  === Singapore === Singapore is an important operator of the F-5E/F variant, first ordering the aircraft in 1976 during a massive expansion of the city-state's armed forces; delivery of this first batch of 18 F-5Es and three F-5Fs was completed by late February 1979, equipping the newly formed-up No. 144 Black Kite Squadron at Tengah Air Base. At the end of 1979, an order was placed for six more F-5Es, which were delivered by 1981. In 1982, an order for three more F-5Fs was placed, these were forward delivered in September 1983 to RAF Leuchars in Scotland where they were taken over by pilots of the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF). In 1983, the type took over the duties of airborne interception from the Royal Australian Air Force's Mirage IIIOs detachment (rotated between No. 3 & No. 75 Squadron RAAF) stationed at Tengah.Another order for six more F-5Es was placed in 1985, these were delivered the same year and would go on to equip the newly formed-up No. 149 Shikra Squadron at Tengah. The following year, the RSAF placed an order for its final batch of three F-5Fs and five F-5Es, these were delivered in December 1987 and July 1989, respectively. In a bid to modernize its air force, the Royal Jordanian Air Force put up seven F-5Es for sale in 1994, these were later acquired by Singapore.From 1990 to 1991, using jigs and toolings purchased from Northrop, Singapore Aircraft Industries (SAI, now ST Aerospace) converted eight existing F-5Es into RF-5E Tigereye variant. Subsequently, these were used to reequip No. 141 Merlin Squadron, which had traded in their older Hawker Hunter FR.74S for the newer Tigereyes in 1992 and was by then based at Paya Lebar Air Base, after the 144 Squadron had relocated there in 1986. By June 1993, all three squadrons had been relocated to the base, thus consolidating Singapore's F-5E/F operations at Paya Lebar.In 1991, SAI was awarded a contract as the prime contractor to modernize all RSAF F-5E/Fs (including the 7 ex-Jordanian F-5Es); Elbit Systems was the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades include a new X band multi-mode radar (the Italian FIAR Grifo-F, with Beyond-visual-range missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities), a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system (similar to the ST Aerospace A-4SU Super Skyhawk) and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.In addition, the starboard M39 20 mm cannon mounted in the nose was removed to make way for additional avionics (the sole cannon on the two-seaters was removed because of this), and to improve maneuverability, upgraded aircraft received larger leading edge root extensions (LERX). The process began in March 1996 and was completed by 2001, receiving the new designation of F-5S/T. In 1998, the eight RF-5Es also received the upgrades (except for the radar) and were redesignated as RF-5S. Each F-5S/T upgraded reportedly cost SGD$6 million.By end of 2009, the type had accumulated more than 170,000 hours of flight time in Singapore service with only two F-5Es being lost in separate accidents (in 1984 and 1991, respectively). As of June 2011, only 141 and 144 Squadron are left operating the RF-5S and F-5S/T, as 149 Squadron has since formally transitioned to the McDonnell Douglas F-15SG Strike Eagles on 5 April 2010. 144 Squadron, the last squadron operating F-5Es, disbanded in September 2015 after the F-5S was retired. The RSAF also used the F-5s as a trainer aircraft. === Switzerland === The Swiss Air Force flies a total of 22 F-5E and 4 F-5F aircraft, down from a peak of 98 and 12 in 1981. They were chosen chiefly because of their excellent performance, suitability for the unique Swiss Air Force mission, and their relatively low maintenance cost per flight hour. It had been expected these aircraft would be replaced by the Saab JAS 39 Gripen, but in May 2014, a referendum by the Swiss people decided against the purchase of the Gripens.For the foreseeable future, the Swiss Air Force will continue to fly its present F-5s. There are still plans by the Swiss Air Force and in the Swiss parliament to fly 18 F-5E and four F-5F models. This would also include the continued operation of the Patrouille Suisse, in F-5Es until 2018.In September 2020 the Swiss people voted yes in a referendum to get a replacement. With 50.1% to 49.9% and only 8670 votes between.The Swiss Air Force has decided to replace the aircraft with 36 F-35As. === Taiwan === The Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF, Taiwan's air force) received its first batch of seven F-5As and two F-5Bs under the US Military Assistance Program in 1965. By 1971, the ROCAF was operating 72 F-5As and 11 F-5Bs. During 1972, the US borrowed 48 ROCAF F-5As to lend to the Republic of Vietnam Air Force before the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. By 1973, most of those loaned F-5As were not in flying condition, thus the US opted to return 20 F-5As to Taiwan by drawing nine F-5As from US reserves while repairing 11 from South Vietnam. An additional 28 new F-5Es were issued to Taiwan by May 1975. By 1973, Taiwan's AIDC started local production of a first batch of 100 F-5Es, the first of six Peace Tiger production batches. By end of 1986 when the production line closed after completing Peace Tiger 6, the AIDC had produced 242 F-5Es and 66 F-5Fs. Taiwan was the largest operator of the type at one time, having 336 F-5E/Fs in inventory. The last batch of AIDC F-5E/Fs featured the F-20's shark nose.With the introduction of 150 F-16s, 60 Mirage 2000-5s and 130 F-CK-1s in the mid-to-late-1990s, the F-5E/F series became second line fighters in ROCAF service and mostly are now withdrawn from service as squadrons converted to new fighters entering ROCAF service. Seven low airframe hours F-5Es were sent to ST Aerospace to convert them to RF-5E standard to fulfill a reconnaissance role previously undertaken by the retiring Lockheed RF-104G in ROCAF service. As of 2009, only about 40 ROCAF F-5E/Fs still remain in service in training roles with about 90–100 F-5E/Fs held in reserve. The other retired F-5E/F are either scrapped, or used as decoys painted in colors representing the main front line F-16, Mirage 2000-5 or F-CK-1 fighters, and deployed around major air bases.Taiwan also tried to upgrade the F-5E/F fleet with AIDC's Tiger 2000/2001 program. The first flight took place on 24 July 2002. The program would replace the F-5E/F's radar with F-CK-1's GD-53 radar and allow the fighter to carry a single TC-2 BVRAAM on the centerline. But lack of interest from the ROCAF eventually killed the program. The only prototype is on display in AIDC in Central Taiwan.On 22 March 2021, two Taiwanese pilots flying F-5E's crashed into each other during a training mission resulting in the third crash within the last six months. Two pilots died after the crash. === South Vietnam / Vietnam === In June 1967, the US donated the surviving aircraft of 10th FCS USAF to South Vietnam. The president of South Vietnam had asked the US for F-4 Phantoms, but these were in high demand and the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) was flying only ground support missions, operating only Douglas A-1 Skyraider attackers at that point. In addition, the North Vietnamese Air Force was not sending aircraft over South Vietnam. Hence the RVNAF did not require an aircraft with advanced air to air capabilities (like the F-4). A dedicated RVNAF unit was formed – the 522nd Fighter Squadron. When South Vietnam was overrun by NVA forces on 30 April 1975, approximately 877 aircraft were captured by the communists. Of that number, 87 were reported as F-5As and 27 were F-5Es.In November 1975, the Vietnamese government gave the Soviet military an opportunity to select captured US equipment for research and intelligence purposes. A complete F-5, along with two complete spare engines, spare parts, and ground support equipment, were loaded onto a Soviet cargo ship. Several other F-5s were later transferred by Vietnam to the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia.The Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF) reportedly used 41 F-5s operationally. Others were decommissioned and put on display at museums in Vietnam. The 935th Fighter Regiment of the VPAF 372nd Air Division became the only unit in the world to simultaneously fly both the MiG-21 and F-5. The type was used for combat by the VPAF, in ground–attack sorties against the Khmer Rouge. Gradually, a lack of critical spare parts in Vietnam caused initially by a US embargo and later by termination of manufacturing and dwindling stocks – grounded the remaining F-5s. However, in May 2017 it was reported that the VPAF was considering upgrading particular systems in some retired aircraft, in order to put them back into service. === Venezuela === After a reorganization of the Venezuelan Air Force in the late 1960s, the government realized that it was time to replace its obsolete de Havilland Vampires and Venoms active at that time, as well as the last surviving F-86 Sabres in active duty. In 1971, 54 Canadian-built CF-5As were put in storage, after the RCAF could not take them due to budget cuts. From this batch, Venezuela acquired 16 CF-5As and two CF-5Ds. In 1972, after all the aircraft were delivered, the F-86s, Venoms, and Vampires were finally scrapped. The F-5 became the first military plane in Venezuela capable of flying at supersonic speeds. After a legal dispute between Canadair and Northrop, two more CF-5Ds were built and delivered to Venezuela in 1974. Their first base of operations was the General Rafael Urdaneta Air Base in Maracaibo. After 1974, the fleet was relocated to Teniente Vicente Landaeta Gil Air Base in Barquisimeto. In 1979, after several upgrades to the fleet's communication, navigation and approximation equipment, the aircraft were renamed VF-5s, designating the CF-5As as VF-5As and the CF-5Ds as VF-5Ds. Venezuelan F-5s could also carry weaponry such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, Mk.82 and M117 bombs, and 70mm rocket launchers. In 1991, after tensions between Colombia and Venezuela almost led to a conflict, the air force started yet another modernization program for the F-5s, called "Proyecto Grifo" (Project Gryphon). Some aircraft (VF-5D number 5681 and VF-5A number 9124) were sent to Singapore for testing, then brought back for upgrade of the remaining airframes. That same year, a small fleet of four NF-5Bs and a single NF-5A, was acquired from the Netherlands to replace aircraft lost in previous years. In 1992, during the coup d'état attempt against president Carlos Andres Perez, 3 F-5s were lost to a rebel-operated OV-10 Bronco bombing Barquisimeto Air Base. The failed coup delayed the modernization program for a year, finally coming together in 1993. The fleet was equipped with inertial laser navigation systems (similar to those in Venezuelan F-16s), IFFs, HUDs, refueling probes and modernized engines with an estimated lifespan of 22 years. In 2002, small upgrades were made to the remaining F-5s. The fleet was kept operational until 2010, when a batch of Hongdu JL-8s was delivered as their replacement. By late 2010, it was known that at least one VF-5D was in flight-worthy condition; it is unknown if more aircraft are in operational condition. Between 1972 and 2002, a total of 9 Venezuelan F-5s were lost. === Yemen === In March 1979, following North Yemen's defeat in the Yemenite War of 1979, the United States gave Saudi Arabia the permission to transfer four Northrop F-5B trainers to North Yemen. Additionally, Saudi Arabia financed the procurement of twelve F-5E fighters. By the end of the year, all 16 aircraft had arrived. This did not leave enough time to properly train local pilots and ground crews to operate them. Hence, the Saudis agreed with Taiwan to deploy a group of 80 Republic of China Air Force pilots and ground personnel to Sana'a. They formed the 112th Squadron of the Yemen Arab Republic Air Force (YARAF), which was also known as the Desert Squadron. Most of the Squadron's members were Taiwanese until 1985, by when enough Yemenis were trained on the F-5 to take over their duties. However, some Taiwanese personnel remained in the country: in 1990, no less than 700 Taiwanese served in Yemen. They were finally withdrawn in 1991, after the Yemeni unification.North Yemeni F-5Es have seen combat during the 1994 civil war. On 6 May, two South Yemeni MiG-21s were claimed shot down by Major Nabi Ali Ahmad, using AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. According to South Yemeni sources, only one MiG-21bis was shot down in an air combat, and its pilot killed. Reportedly, the North Yemenis subsequently deployed their Tiger IIs for air-to-air combat only. On 15 May, two helicopters (probably Mil Mi-8s) were shot down, one of them supposedly by Major Nabi Ali Ahmad. On 28 May, an F-5E was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. On 20 June, a South Yemeni MiG-21 was shot down over Al Anad Air Base in an air combat with two F-5Es, and its pilot was killed. Lastly, on 29 June, an encounter between two YARAF F-5Es and a single South Yemeni MiG-29 was reported. However, neither side opened fire.Following the North's victory in the civil war, the F-5 fleet was integrated into the unified Yemeni Air Force. However, the number of F-5s in service declined over the years. In 2003, negotiations with Singapore for the overhaul and upgrade of the remaining aircraft. However, nothing came out of it. Around 2010, only six aircraft were operational, partly thanks to US aid packages. In the night of 29–30 March 2015, at least one F-5B and one F-5E were destroyed on the ground at Sanaa International Airport by Royal Saudi Air Force bombardments, in the first days of the Saudi-led intervention. === Others === Saudi Arabia deployed F-5Es during the Gulf War, flying close air support and aerial interdiction missions against Iraqi units in Kuwait. One Royal Saudi Air Force F-5E was lost to ground fire on 13 February 1991, resulting in the death of the pilot.AeroGroup, a private commercial company in the US, operates the CF-5B as a fighter lead-in aircraft for training and for other support services. There were 17 aircraft originally purchased from the Canadian Government with US State Department approval and then imported into the US in 2006.Since 2013, Tunisian F-5s have been used in strike missions in support of major military offensives in the border region of Mount Chaambi against Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda-linked militants.F-5s were used by the Libyan Air Force at Wheelus Air Base in Tripoli, Libya from 1968 to 1969. == Variants == === Single-seat versions === N-156F Single-seat fighter prototype. Only three aircraft were built. YF-5A The three prototypes were given the US Air Force designation YF-5A. F-5A Single-seat fighter version of F-5, originally without radar, but was later equipped with AN/APQ-153 radar during upgrades. F-5A (G) Single-seat fighter version of the F-5A for the Royal Norwegian Air Force. XF-5A Designation was given to one aircraft used for static tests. A.9 Designation of Spanish Air and Space Force Northrop F-5As. F-5C Skoshi Tiger Twelve F-5A Freedom Fighters were tested by the US Air Force for four and a half months in Vietnam. Modified at Palmdale plant by adding removable, non retractable air-refueling probe on the left side, 90 lb of external armor plates under the cockpit and engine, and jettisonable stores pylons. F-5E Tiger II Single-seat fighter version with AN/APQ-159, replacing earlier AN/APQ-153. F-5E Tiger IIIUpgraded version of the F-5E in use by the Chilean Air Force, with EL/M-2032 radar replacing the original AN/APQ-159 and capable of firing advanced versions of the Python missile F-5E/F A single, prototype built for the Swiss Air Force, comprising an F-5E fuselage and tail section, with wings from an F-5F. As of 2011, this aircraft was at the Meiringen Air Base Museum. F-5G The temporary designation given to the Northrop F-20 Tigershark, equipped with General Electric AN/APG-67 radar. F-5N Ex-Swiss Air Force F-5Es used by the US Navy as an "aggressor" aircraft, with AN/APG-69 replacing the original AN/APQ-159. Intended to replace high-time USN/USMC F-5Es in the adversary role, and saw service through 2015. F-5S Upgraded version of the F-5E, was in use with the Republic of Singapore Air Force, equipped with the Galileo Avionica's FIAR Grifo-F X-band radar and are capable of firing the AIM-120 AMRAAM. F-5TH Super Tigris Formerly known as the F-5T Tigris before being officially redesignated. An upgraded version of the F-5E of Royal Thai Air Force by Israel, it is equipped with EL/M-2032, tactical datalink, Sky Shield jamming pod and are capable of firing the beyond visual range air-to-air Derby missile. F-5EM Upgraded version of the F-5E of Brazilian Air Force equipped with Italian Grifo-F radar. F-5TIII Upgraded version of the F-5E, in service with the Royal Moroccan Air Force. F-5E Tiger 2000 Upgraded version of Taiwan AIDC, equipped with the GD-53 radar, capable of firing the TC-2 Sky Sword II, MIL-STD-1553B Link and GPS/INS. Did not enter service as the ROCAF decided to immediately embark on the ultimately-successful process of acquiring additional F-16s to completely replace its F-5E/Fs. === Reconnaissance versions === RF-5A Single-seat reconnaissance version of the F-5A fighter. Approximately 120 were built. RF-5A (G) Single-seat reconnaissance version of the F-5A fighter for the Royal Norwegian Air Force. RF-5E Tigereye Single-seat reconnaissance version of the F-5E fighter. The RF-5E Tigereye was exported to Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. RF-5E Tigergazer Seven upgraded single-seat reconnaissance version of the F-5E for Taiwan by ST Aerospace. RF-5S Tigereye Single-seat reconnaissance version of the F-5S for the Republic of Singapore Air Force. AR-9 Spanish reconnaissance aircraft B.TKh.18 Thai designation of the RF-5A === Two-seat versions === AE.9 Spanish designation of the Northrop F-5B. F-5-21 Temporary designation for the YF-5B. YF-5B One F-5B was fitted with a 5,000 lbf (2,268 kgf) General Electric J85-GE-21 engine, and used as a prototype for the F-5E Tiger II. F-5B Two-seat trainer version. F-5B(G) Two-seat trainer version of the F-5B for the Royal Norwegian Air Force. F-5BM Two-seat trainer version in use by the Spanish Air and Space Force for air combat training. F-5D Unbuilt trainer version. F-5F Tiger II Two-seat trainer version of F-5E Tiger II, AN/APQ-167 radar tested, intended to replace AN/APQ-157, but not carried out. F-5F Tiger III Upgraded trainer version of the F-5F in use by the Chilean Air Force. F-5T Upgraded F-5F, was in service with the Republic of Singapore Air Force. F-5THF (บ.ข.18 ค) Twin-seat version of F-5TH in service with the Royal Thai Air Force as of May 2020. F-5FM Upgraded trainer version of the F-5F for the Brazilian Air Force. === Foreign variants === ==== Licensed versions ==== CF-5 Fighter versions for the Canadian Forces Air Command built under license by Canadair. Its Canadian designation is CF-116. NF-5A Single-seat fighter version of the CF-5A for the Royal Netherlands Air Force; 75 built. NF-5B Two-seat training version of the CF-5D for the Royal Netherlands Air Force; 30 built.SF-5A Single-seat fighter version of the F-5A for the Spanish Air and Space Force; built under license in Spain by CASA. SRF-5A Single-seat reconnaissance version of the RF-5A for the Spanish Air and Space Force; built under license in Spain by CASA. SF-5B Two-seat training version of the F-5B for the Spanish Air and Space Force. Built under license by CASA in Spain.VF-5A Single-seat version of the CF-5A for the Venezuelan Air Force. This designation was given to some Canadair CF-116s which were sold to the Venezuelan Air Force. VF-5D Two-seat training version of the CF-5D for the Venezuelan Air Force.KF-5E F-5E built in South Korea for the Republic of Korea Air Force. First introduction: September 1982; 48 built. KF-5F F-5F built in South Korea for the Republic of Korea Air Force. First introduction: September 1982; 20 built.Chung Cheng F-5E/F built in Taiwan for Republic of China Air Force by AIDC. First introduction: 30 October 1974, one day before President Chiang Kai Shek's 88th birthday, and was thus christened "Chung Cheng", an alias of President Chiang; 308 built. ==== Unlicensed versions ==== Azarakhsh F-5E built or modified in Iran with unknown changes and mid-wing intakes. Sa'eqeh F-5E modified in Iran with canted, twin vertical stabilizers. Kowsar Two-seat F-5F built or modified in Iran. === Derivatives === ==== F-20 Tigershark ==== In comparison to later fighters, the improved F-5E had some weaknesses; these included marginal acceleration, rearward visibility, and fuel fraction, and a lack of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) weapons once such radar–guided missiles became reliable during the 1980s. The F-5G, later renamed the F-20 Tigershark, aimed to correct these weaknesses while maintaining a small size and low cost to produce a competitive fighter. Compared to the F-5E, it had 60% more power, a higher climb rate and acceleration, better cockpit visibility, more modern radar and BVR capability, and competitive performance with fourth generation fighters. Like the F-5, it had better cost–effectiveness as it had the minimum necessary features relative to its competition to perform its air superiority mission. As an example, in the 1960s and early 1970s, the F-5's lack of BVR missiles was not a significant disadvantage as the kill rate of such missiles was approximately 8% to 10%, and the performance and loss of surprise (radar warning to the enemy) cost of carrying them was not practically justified. By the early 1980s, the American AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided missile in its "M" version was realistically exceeding a 60% kill rate, and was integrated onto the F-20. Brigadier General Chuck Yeager, test pilot and the first man to break the sound barrier, referred to the F-20 as "the finest fighter". Despite its performance and affordable cost, the F-20 lost out for foreign sales against the similarly capable but more expensive F-16, which was being procured in large numbers by the US Air Force and was viewed as having greater support. ==== Northrop YF-17 ==== The Northrop YF-17's main design elements date from the F-5 based internal Northrop project N-300. The N-300 featured a longer fuselage, small leading-edge root extensions (LERX), and more powerful GE15-J1A1 turbojets. The wing was moved higher on the fuselage to increase ordnance flexibility. The N-300 further evolved into the P-530 Cobra. The P-530's wing planform and nose section was similar to the F-5, with a trapezoidal shape formed by a sweep of 20° at the quarter-chord line, and an unswept trailing edge, but was over double the area. While the YF-17 lost its bid for the USAF lightweight fighter, it would be developed into the larger McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. ==== Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration ==== A single ex-USN F-5E was modified to carry out research into reducing noise from supersonic flight by shaping the shock waves produced by the aircraft. == Operators == BahrainBahrain Air Force received eight F-5Es and two F-5Fs in between 1985 and 1987. BotswanaBotswana Air Force purchased 10 upgraded CF-5As and 3 CF-5Ds from Canada in 1996. A further three CF-5A and two CF-5D were purchased in 2000. 11 CF-5A and 4 CF-5D were in service as of December 2021. BrazilBrazilian Air Force purchased 78 F-5s of different variants from 1974. Operates 42 F-5EM and 4 F-5FM as of December 2021, to be withdrawn gradually between 2017 and 2030, replaced by the JAS 39E/F Gripen. ChileChilean Air Force: Chile purchased 15 F-5Es and 3 F-5Fs in the 1970s, these being upgraded to Tiger III standard from 1993. A total of 10 F-5s are in use as of 2009. In March 2013, the Uruguayan Air Force initiated talks for procuring 12 surplus F-5 Tiger III aircraft from Chile for $80 million. However, 13 aircraft continue in service with the Chilean Air Force in December 2021. HondurasHonduran Air Force: The United States delivered 10 F-5E and 2 F-5Fs starting in 1987, as replacements of Dassault Super Mystére, which were reassigned to airstrike as they were in their last years of service. The F-5 were refurbished former United States Air Force aircraft. Three F-5Es and 2F-5Fs remain in service as of December 2021. IranIslamic Republic of Iran Air Force: 49 F-5E and F operational as of December 2021; Iran originally had received a total of 127 F-5A/B by 1972 which soon began to be phased out/sold to other countries. By 1976 Iran had received a total of 181 of the improved F-5E/F/RF-A delivered to the Imperial Iranian Air Force. Unknown numbers of HESA Saeqeh and HESA Azarakhsh fighters derived from the F-5 design. KenyaKenya Air Force: In July 2008, it was reported that Kenya will spend KSh.1.5 billion/= to buy 15 former Jordanian Air Force F-5s, 13 F-5E and two F-5F upgraded with Rockwell Collins avionics (plus training and spare parts). They will be added or eventually replace the existing F-5 fleet. Seventeen F-5Es and six F-5Fs remain in service as of December 2021. South KoreaRepublic of Korea Air Force: Received a total of 340 F-5s (88 F-5A, 30 F-5B, 8 RF-5A, 126 F-5E, 20 F-5F, 48 KF-5E, and 20 KF-5F). During the Vietnam War, 36 F-5As and 8 RF-5As were transferred to the Republic of Vietnam Air Force in exchange of F-4 Phantom II from the United States Air Force. 5 RF-5As were brought back to Korea before the war ended. The last Freedom Fighter retired in 2005, and 8 F-5As were donated to the Philippine Air Force. The ROKAF plans to replace the US made F-5E/Fs with 60 new FA-50 aircraft and KAI KF-X. 156 F-5Es and 29 F-5Fs remain in service as of December 2021. MexicoMexican Air Force received 12 F-5s in 1982. They operated eight F-5Es and two F-5F until being retired in 2017. Three Mexican F-5Es and one F-5F were in service as of December 2021. MoroccoRoyal Moroccan Air Force operates 12 F-5A/Bs upgraded with Tiger II avionics and 24 upgraded F-5 Tiger III. 22 F-5Es and 4 F-5Fs remain in service as of December 2021. SpainSpanish Air and Space Force operates 19 F-5BM as trainers for fighter school. Initially, 70 fighters version A and B were delivered. SwitzerlandSwiss Air Force: Operating 42 F-5E and 12 F-5F Tiger II. 110 F-5E/F12 were delivered, including 90 whose final assembly was done in Switzerland. After numerous tests, as part of the 1975 armament program, the federal parliament approved the purchase of 72 F-5 Tiger IIs in 1976, including 66 of the F-5E type (single-seater) and 6 of the F-5F type (two-seater) for the protection of airspace (formerly called air protection) for 1.17 billion Swiss francs. The F-5 was chosen because it was easier to maintain than the F-16. A second tranche of 38 Tigers, including six two-seaters (F-5F), were ordered as part of the 1981 armament program for 770 million Swiss francs. The last aircraft in this series rolls off the assembly line at F+W Emmen in 1984. Taiwan (Republic of China)Republic of China Air Force: Received 115 F-5A and B from 1965, 48 were transferred to South Vietnam before 1975. From 1973 to 1986, Taiwan produced 308 F-5E/Fs under license. Later batches of locally AIDC licensed production of Tiger IIs were fitted with flare/chaff dispensers, plus handling qualities upgrades with enlarged LEX and F-20's shark nose, and radar warning receivers(RWR). ThailandRoyal Thai Air Force: 30 F-5A/B/C retired. Now operating about 40 F-5E/F/T, F-5s from 701st Sq. retired and replaced by 12 JAS 39 Gripens. The last F-5 fleet, upgraded into F-5TH and F-5THF in 211st Sq. continue to serve until 2025–2030. TunisiaTunisian Air Force: Eight F-5E and four F-5F Tiger II were delivered in 1984–1985. The TAF received five ex-USAF F-5E in 1989. Eleven F-5Es and 3 F-5Fs were in service as of December 2021. TurkeyTurkish Air Force: More than 200 F-5A/Bs and NF-5A/Bs were bought from various countries. Between 40 and 50 of them were upgraded to F-5/2000 standard during the 2000s (decade). The F-5/2000 remains active of which 10 F-5A and two F-5Bs belong to the Turkish Stars aerobatic display team. On 7 April 2021, a NF-5 crashed during training exercises for the Turkish Stars aerobatic display team in Konya, Turkey. The aircraft is planned to be replaced with TAI Hurjet. YemenYemeni Air Force: inherited North Yemen's F-5 fleet in 1994. Only half a dozen F-5s were still operational as of the early 2010s. === Former operators === AustriaAustrian Air Force: On loan from Switzerland – all aircraft returned and replaced by Eurofighter Typhoons. CanadaCanadian Forces – see Canadair CF-5 EthiopiaEthiopian Air Force first delivery in 1966; it has operated the A, B, and E variants. GreeceHellenic Air Force received the first 55 F-5As in 1965. In 1975, 10 aircraft were bought from Iran and later, another 10 followed from Jordan. In 1986, nine aircraft were donated by Norway and in 1991, 10 NF-5As were donated by the Netherlands. During 1967 and 1968 this type of aircraft was used by the 3rd Hellenic Aerobatic Team "New Hellenic Flame". The last NF-5As were retired in 2002. IndonesiaIndonesian Air Force: Received in 1980, upgraded in Belgium in the middle to late 1990s. All 16 F-5E/Fs have been retired since 3 May 2016 per directive from Chief of Indonesian Air Force due to safety issues. Pahlavi IranImperial Iranian Air Force used them until the revolution in 1979. JordanRoyal Jordanian Air Force – retired in 2015. Replaced by F-16A/B and Hawk Mk 63. Sold 11 to Brazil for $21 million in 2009. Kingdom of LibyaRoyal Libyan Air Force to 1969. 10 F-5s. May have been sold to Turkey after 1969. MalaysiaRoyal Malaysian Air Force used 4 F-5F as trainer aircraft while another 16 of its Northrop F-5E Tiger IIs were upgraded for reconnaissance purposes. NetherlandsRoyal Netherlands Air Force: received 75 Canadair-built NF-5A (single-seat fighter version) and 30 NF-5B (two-seat training version) between 7 October 1969 and 20 March 1972. After the aircraft were phased out and replaced by the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the aircraft were initially stored at Gilze-Rijen Air Base and Woensdrecht Air Base, until 60 aircraft were sold to Turkey, 11 to Greece and 7 to Venezuela. Several of the remaining aircraft can be found in aviation museums and technical schools. No. 313 Squadron; Twenthe Air Base. Formed September 1972, transitioned to F-16 in 1987. No. 314 Squadron; Eindhoven Air Base. Converted from F-84F from June 1970, and was fully equipped in November that year. The squadron transitioned to the F-16 in April 1990. No. 315 Squadron, Operation Conversion Unit (OCU); Twenthe Air Base (transitioned to F-16 in 1986) No. 316 Squadron; Gilze-Rijen Air Base (transitioned to F-16 in 1991) Field Technic Training Unit NF-5 (1971–1984); Twenthe Air Base North YemenYemen Arab Republic Air Force: four F-5B trainers were transferred from Saudi Arabia, and twelve F-5E fighters delivered from the United States (but also paid for by Saudi Arabia) in 1979. Several additional aircraft were later donated by the Saudis as attrition replacements. The surviving aircraft were passed on to the reunified Yemeni Air Force in 1994. NorwayRoyal Norwegian Air Force: received a total of 108 F-5A, F-5B and RF-5A from 1966-1971. No. 332 Squadron; Rygge Air Station. No. 334 Squadron; Bodø Air Station. Transitioned to F-16 in 1982. No. 336 Squadron; Rygge Air Station. Operated F-5 until 2000. No. 338 Squadron; Ørland Air Station. Primary air-to-ground missions. Transitioned to F-16 in 1985. No. 717 Squadron; Rygge Air Station. Reconnaissance squadron. Operated RF-5A until 1979. No. 718 Squadron; Sola Air Station. PhilippinesPhilippine Air Force received 19 F-5A (single seat) and three F-5B (two seat) aircraft in 1965–1967. In 1989, the PAF received three ex-Taiwanese F-5A and one F-5B. In the 1990s, at least eight ex-South Korean F-5A and two Jordanian F-5A were acquired. The Philippines decommissioned its F-5A/B fleet in 2005. Saudi ArabiaRoyal Saudi Air Force: From 1974 to 1985 received a total of 20 F-5Bs, 109 F-5E/Fs and 10 RF-5Es. SingaporeRepublic of Singapore Air Force: operated 32 F-5S, 9 F-5T and 8 RF-5S fighters in 2011. Mostly retired by 2014 except a few left for training, before retiring all in 2015. South VietnamRepublic of Vietnam Air Force received a fleet of 158 former US, South Korean, Iranian, and Taiwanese F-5A Freedom Fighters, 10 RF-5A and eight F-5B trainers, USA also provided newer F-5E Tiger IIs, most of F-5s were evacuated to Thailand in 1975, but many were captured by People's Army. 538th Fighter Squadron, Da Nang AB, F-5A/B Freedom Fighter 522nd Fighter Squadron, Bien Hoa AB, F-5A/B and RF-5A Freedom Fighter 536th Fighter Squadron, Bien Hoa AB, F-5A/B Freedom Fighter and F-5E Tiger II 540th Fighter Squadron, Bien Hoa AB, F-5A Freedom Fighter and F-5E Tiger II 542nd Fighter Squadron, Bien Hoa AB, F-5A Freedom Fighter 544th Fighter Squadron, Bien Hoa AB, F-5A Freedom Fighter 716th Reconnaissance Squadron, Tan Son Nhut AB, RF-5A Freedom Fighter Soviet UnionF-5Es were received from Vietnam and the Derg regime in Ethiopia for performance tests and evaluation flights. They were tested in mock combat against MiG-21 and MiG-23 aircraft, ultimately aiding in the development of the MiG-23MLD and the MiG-29. SudanSudanese Air Force: 10 F-5Es and two F-5F were delivered in 1978, One of the F-5Fs was sold to Jordan. Further, two F-5s defected to Sudan from Ethiopia during the Ogaden crisis. United StatesUnited States Air Force Continental United States-based units 64th Aggressor Squadron (1976–1988) Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada 65th Aggressor Squadron (1975–1989) Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada 425th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron (1973-1989) Luke Air Force Base, Arizona United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) 527th Aggressor Squadron (1976-1988) RAF Alconbury, England Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) 4503rd Tactical Fighter Squadron (October 1965 - April 1966) Bien Hoa AB and Da Nang AB, Republic of Vietnam 10th Fighter Commando Squadron (April 1966 - June 1967) 26th Aggressor Squadron (1977-1988) Clark Air Base, PhilippinesUnited States Navy VFC-13 VF-43 VF-45 VFC-111 VF-126 VFA-127 United States Marine Corps VMFT-401 VenezuelaVenezuelan Air Force 27 aircraft acquired (16 CF-5As, 4 CF-5Ds, 1 NF-5A, 6 NF-5Bs), 9 lost to accidents. The last unit recorded to have flown did it in 2010. VietnamVietnam People's Air Force (several captured ex-RVNAF aircraft). One F-5E (s/n 73-00867) was transferred to the Soviet Union for evaluation flights, i.e. against the MiG-21bis; 40+ F-5E/F/C were in VNAF's service. After the Vietnam War, Vietnamese forces used the captured F-5 fleet against Chinese forces during Sino-Vietnamese War. == Aircraft on display == === Brazil === F-5BFAB-4805 - Brazilian Air Force - Santa Cruz Air Force Base, Rio de JaneiroF-5EFAB-4879 - Brazilian Air Force - CINDACTA II, Curitiba === Czech Republic === F-5E73-00878 (Vietnam Air Force) – Prague Aviation Museum, Kbely, Prague === Greece === F-5A68-9071 – Athens War Museum 69–132 – Hellenic Air Force Museum 13-353 – Thessaloniki War MuseumRF-5A69-7170 – Hellenic Air Force Museum === Indonesia === F-5ETS-0501 - Tri Matra Monument, Tanjungpinang, Riau Islands. Formerly at Adisutjipto Air Force Base TS-0502 - Ade Irma Suryani Nasution Traffic Park, Bandung, West Java TS-0503 - Dirgantara Mandala Museum, Sleman Regency, Special Region of Yogyakarta TS-0508 - Indonesian Air Force Academy, Sleman Regency, Special Region of Yogyakarta TS-0509 - As gate guardian at Iswahyudi Air Force Base, Magetan, East Java TS-0510 - In front of Indonesian National Air Defense Forces Command, Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport, East Jakarta, Jakarta TS-0511 - SMA Pradita Dirgantara high school, Boyolali Regency, Central Java TS-0512 - Indonesian Air Force Command and Staff College, West Bandung Regency, West JavaF-5FTS-0513 - Madiun Regency Plaza, Madiun Regency, East Java TS-0515 - Third Air Force Operations Command Headquarters, Biak Numfor Regency, Papua === Norway === F-5A69-7134 -- Norwegian Aviation Museum 68-9102—Norwegian Aviation Museum AH-M -- Sola Aviation Museum 594 -- Norwegian Armed Forces Aircraft Collection === Philippines === F-5A64-13326 - Philippine Air Force Museum, Pasay 65-10499/FA-499 - Basa Air Base, Pampanga 65-10507 - Clark Air Base, PampangaF-5B40780 - Clark Air Base, Pampanga. Ex-RoCAF "1117" === Poland === F-5E73-00852 (R1033) (Vietnam Air Force) – Polish Aviation Museum, Kraków === Spain === F-5BMAR9-053 – Elder Museum of Science and Technology, Gran Canaria === Switzerland === F-5EJ-3096 Gate Guard as "J-3013" in Patrouille Suisse paint at the Flieger-Flab-Museum J-3098 at the Flieger-Flab-Museum J-3099 Gate Guard as "J-3008" at Meiringen Air BaseF-5FJ-3202 at the Flieger-Flab-Museum === Thailand === F-5A97158 - Royal Thai Air Force MuseumF-5B38438 - Royal Thai Air Force Museum, the first F-5B produced 01603 - Wing 23 gate Udon Thani International AirportF-5E21134 - Royal Thai Air Force Museum === Turkey === F-5A14460 – Istanbul Aviation MuseumNF-5A3022/22 – Istanbul Aviation Museum 3070/3-070 – Istanbul Aviation MuseumRF-5A97147/5-147 – Istanbul Aviation Museum === United States === YF-5A59-4987 – Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington 59-4989 – National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, OhioF-5A66-9207 – Western Museum of Flight in Torrance, CaliforniaF-5B63-8447 - Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, Miami, Florida. Formerly on display at Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum at the former Chanute AFB, Rantoul, Illinois. Displayed completely covered in chrome. 72-0441 – Pima Air and Space Museum, adjacent to Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, ArizonaF-5E72-1387 – Pacific Coast Air Museum, Santa Rosa, California 73-01640 Hill Aerospace Museum, Ogden, Utah 74-1558, later US Navy 741558 – Fort Worth Aviation Museum, Fort Worth, Texas 74-1564, later US Navy/US Marine Corps 741564 – Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum at MCAS Miramar in San Diego, California 74-1571 – Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada. Carries the markings of the 57th Fighter Weapons Wing, with Bort Code 65. 141540 - Marine F-5E Aggresor, at Hickory Aviation Museum === Vietnam === F-5A66-9170 – War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam == Specifications (F-5E Tiger II) == Data from Jane's all the World's Aircraft 1976–77, The Complete Book of Fighters, Quest for PerformanceGeneral characteristics Crew: 1 Length: 48 ft 2.25 in (14.6876 m) Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m) 27 ft 11.875 in (8.53123 m) with wing-tip missilesHeight: 13 ft 4.5 in (4.077 m) Wing area: 186 sq ft (17.3 m2) Aspect ratio: 3.86 Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 Empty weight: 9,583 lb (4,347 kg) Gross weight: 15,745 lb (7,142 kg) clean Max takeoff weight: 24,675 lb (11,192 kg) Fuel capacity: Internal fuel: 677 US gal (564 imp gal; 2,560 L) External fuel: up to 3x 275 US gal (229 imp gal; 1,040 L) drop-tanksLift-to-drag ratio: 10.0 Zero-lift drag coefficient: CD0.0200 Frontal area: 3.4 sq ft (0.32 m2) Powerplant: 2 × General Electric J85-GE-21 afterburning turbojet engines, 3,500 lbf (16 kN) thrust each dry, 5,000 lbf (22 kN) with afterburnerPerformance Maximum speed: Mach 1.63 (1,741 km/h; 1,082 mph) at 36,000 ft (11,000 m) Maximum cruise speed: Mach 0.98 (1,050 km/h; 650 mph) at 36,000 ft (11,000 m) Economical cruise speed: Mach 0.8 (850 km/h; 530 mph) at 36,000 ft (11,000 m) Stall speed: 124 kn (143 mph, 230 km/h) 50% internal fuel, flaps and wheels extended Never exceed speed: 710 kn (820 mph, 1,310 km/h) IAS Range: 481 nmi (554 mi, 891 km) clean Combat radius (20 min reserve): 120 nmi (140 mi; 220 km) with 2x Sidewinders + 5,200 lb (2,400 kg) ordnance, with 5 minutes combat at max power at sea level Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,720 km) Ferry range (20 min reserve): 1,385 nmi (1,594 mi; 2,565 km) drop tanks retained Ferry range (20 min reserve): 1,590 nmi (1,830 mi; 2,940 km) drop tanks jettisoned Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m) Service ceiling one engine out: 41,000 ft (12,000 m) Rate of climb: 34,500 ft/min (175 m/s) Lift-to-drag: 10:1 Wing loading: 133 lb/sq ft (650 kg/m2) maximum Thrust/weight: 0.4 take-off thrust at maximum take-off weight Take-off run: 2,000 ft (610 m) with two Sidewinders at 15,745 lb (7,142 kg) Take-off run to 50 ft (15 m): 2,900 ft (884 m) with two Sidewinders at 15,745 lb (7,142 kg) Landing run from 50 ft (15 m): 3,701 ft (1,128 m) without brake-chute Landing run from 50 ft (15 m): 2,500 ft (762 m) with brake-chuteArmament Guns: 2× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose, 280 rounds/gun Hardpoints: 7 total (only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed): 2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg), with provisions to carry combinations of: Rockets: 2× LAU-61/LAU-68 rocket pods (each with 19× /7× Hydra 70 mm rockets, respectively); or 2× LAU-5003 rocket pods (each with 19× CRV7 70 mm rockets); or 2× LAU-10 rocket pods (each with 4× Zuni 127 mm rockets); or 2× Matra rocket pods (each with 18× SNEB 68 mm rockets) Missiles: 2× AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile on wingtips (initial F-5E Tiger II loadout) 4× AIM-9 Sidewinder or 4× AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile (F-5S and modernized F-5E) 4× AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missiles (on upgraded F-5 after 1995) AA-8 Aphid, AA-10 Alamo, AA-11 Archer and other Russian/Chinese AAMs (Iranian ver.) Bombs: A variety of air-to-ground ordnance such as the Mark 80 series of unguided bombs (including 3 kg and 14 kg practice bombs), CBU-24/49/52/58 cluster bomb munitions, napalm bomb canisters and M129 Leaflet bomb, and laser-guided bombs of Paveway family. Other: up to 3× 150 / 275 US gallons (570 / 1,040 L; 125 / 229 imp gal) Sargent Fletcher drop tanks for ferry flight or extended range/loitering time. 2× GPU-5/A 30mm cannon pods (fitted only on Thai F-5s)Avionics Emerson Electric AN/APQ-153 radar on early batch of F-5E Emerson Electric AN/APQ-159 radar on later production F-5E Emerson Electric AN/APQ-157 radar on F-5F Emerson Electric AN/APG-69 radar on US Navy F-5N (ex-Swiss Air Force F-5E) aggressors role Leonardo S.p.A. Grifo-F radar on Singaporean Air Force upgraded F-5E == Notable appearances in media == == See also == Grumman X-29Related development Northrop T-38 Talon Canadair CF-5 HESA Azarakhsh HESA Saeqeh HESA Kowsar Northrop F-20 Tigershark Northrop YF-17 Shaped Sonic Boom DemonstrationAircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era Aeritalia G.91 Dassault Mirage F1 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 Related lists List of military aircraft of the United States List of fighter aircraft == References == === Notes === === Citations === === Bibliography === Auten, Donald E. (2008). "Roger Ball!: The Odyssey of John Monroe "Hawk" Smith, Navy Fighter Pilot. Braybrook, Roy (March 1982). "From Claws to Jaws: Tiger into Tigershark". Air International. Vol. 22, no. 3. pp. 111–116, 136–138. ISSN 0306-5634. Cooper, Tom (2017). Hot Skies Over Yemen, Volume 1: Aerial Warfare Over the South Arabian Peninsula, 1962-1994. Solihull, UK: Helion & Company Publishing. ISBN 978-1-912174-23-2. Cooper, Tom (2018). Hot Skies Over Yemen, Volume 2: Aerial Warfare Over the South Arabian Peninsula, 1994-2017. Warwick, UK: Helion & Company Publishing. ISBN 978-1-911628-18-7. Cooper, Tom; Grandolini, Albert (2018). Showdown in Western Sahara, Volume 1: Air Warfare over the Last African Colony, 1945-1975. Warwick, UK: Helion & Company Publishing. ISBN 978-1-912390-35-9. Cooper, Tom; Grandolini, Albert; Fontanellaz, Adrien (2019). Showdown in Western Sahara, Volume 2: Air Warfare Over the Last African Colony, 1975-1991. Warwick, UK: Helion & Company Publishing. ISBN 978-1-912866-29-8. Crosby, Francis. Fighter Aircraft. London: Lorenz Books, 2002. ISBN 0-7548-0990-0. "Directory:World Air Forces". Flight International, 15–21 December 2009. pp. 33–53. Dorr, Robert F. and David Donald. Fighters of the United States Air Force. London: Aerospace Publishing, 1990. ISBN 0-600-55094-X. Eden, Paul, ed. "Northrop F-5 family". Encyclopedia of Modern Military Aircraft. London: Amber Books, 2004. ISBN 1-904687-84-9. Ford, Daniel. "First Freedoms: Pictorial Tribute to the Ground-breaking Northrop YF-5A". Air Enthusiast 105, May/June 2003, pp. 8–12. ISSN 0143-5450 Garrison, Peter (September 2005). "White Rocket". Air and Space Magazine. Gervasi, Tom (1981). Arsenal of Democracy: American Military Power in the 1980s and the Origins of the New Cold War. Vol. II. ISBN 9780394176628. Retrieved 28 February 2023. Gilcrist, Paul T. (1994). Tomcat!: The Grumman F-14 Story. Gordon, Yefim. Mikoyan Mig-21. Hersham, Surrey, UK: Ian Allan Publishing, 2008. ISBN 978-1-85780-257-3. Hammond, Grant T. The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. ISBN 978-1-58834-178-5. Harding, Stephen (1990). U.S. Army Aircraft Since 1947. Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife Publishing. ISBN 1-85310-102-8. Hobson, Chris. Vietnam Air Losses, United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps Fixed-Wing Aircraft Losses in Southeast Asia 1961–1973. 2001, Midland Publishing. ISBN 1-85780-115-6. Hoyle, Craig (2021). "World Air Forces 2022". Flight International. Retrieved 12 December 2021. Jenkins, Dennis R. and Tony R. Landis. Experimental & Prototype U.S. Air Force Jet Fighters. North Branch, Minnesota, USA: Specialty Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-58007-111-6. Johnsen, Frederick A. (2006). Northrop F-5/F-20/T-38. Warbird Tech. Vol. 44. North Branch, Minnesota: Specialty Press. ISBN 1-58007-094-9. Knaack, Marcelle Size. Encyclopedia of U.S. Air Force Aircraft and Missile Systems: Volume 1, Post-World War II Fighters, 1945–1973. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1978. ISBN 0-912799-59-5. Knott, Chris and Tim Spearman. "Photo Report:Botswana Defence Force". International Air Power Review, Volume 9, Summer 2003, pp. 76–79. Norwalk, Connecticut, USA: AIRtime Publishing. ISBN 1-880588-56-0. ISSN 1473-9917. Lake, Jon, ed. (1998). Grumman F-14 Tomcat: Shipborne Superfighter. Aerospace Publishing. p. 85. Lake, Jon; Hewson, Richard (Summer 1996). "Northrop F-5". World Air Power Journal. London: Aerospace Publishing. 25: 46–109. ISBN 1-874023-79-4. ISSN 0959-7050. Pace, Steve. X-Fighters: USAF Experimental and Prototype Fighters, XP-59 to YF-23. St. Paul, Minnesota: Motorbooks International, 1991. ISBN 0-87938-540-5. Paloque, Gerard (2013). Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter and Tiger II. Paris: Histoire & Collections. ISBN 978-2-35250-276-0. Scutts, Jerry. Northrop F-5/F-20. London: Ian Allan, 1986. ISBN 0-7110-1576-7. Shaw, Robbie. F-5: Warplane for the World. St. Paul, Minnesota: Motorbooks International, 1990. ISBN 0-87938-487-5. Sprey, Pierre. "Comparing the Effectiveness of Air-to-Air Fighters: F-86 to F-18" Archived 27 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine, April 1982. Stuart, William G. (1978). Northrop F-5 Case Study in Aircraft Design. West Falls Church, Virginia: Northrop Corporation Aircraft Group. Thompson, Warren (1996). Skoshi Tiger: The Northrop F-5 in Vietnam. Wings of Fame. Vol. 5. London: Aerospace Publishing. pp. 4–23. ISBN 1-874023-90-5. ISSN 1361-2034. Thompson, Warren E. (May 2003). "Skoshi Tiger: Test and evaluation of the F-5 Freedom Fighter in Vietnam". Air Enthusiast. Vol. 105. pp. 13–27. ISSN 0143-5450. Toperczer, Istvan. MiG-21 Units of the Vietnam War. Osprey 2001, No. 29. ISBN 978-1-84176-263-0. Van Gent, C.J. De Northrop NF-5: De geschiedenis van de NF-5 in Nederland. Alkmaar, Netherlands: Uitgeverij De Alk, 1992. ISBN 90-6013-518-0. Wagner, Raymond (2000). "Chapter 9: Northrop Launches a New Fighter". Mustang Designer: Edgar Schmued and the P-51. New York: Orion Books. pp. 192–207. ISBN 978-1-56098-994-3. Retrieved 28 February 2023. Wilson, David. Seek and Strike: 75 Squadron RAAF 1942–2002. Maryborough, Australia: Banner, 2002. ISBN 1-875593-23-3. Yeager, Chuck and Leo Janos. Yeager: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam, 1985. ISBN 978-0-553-25674-1. == External links == U.S. Navy Fact File on F-5N/F adversary aircraft Archived 7 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine F-5 Tiger page on Northrop Grumman site F-5 page at the USAF National Museum of the United States Air Force site

Roman Ingarden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Ingarden

Roman Witold Ingarden (; February 5, 1893 – June 14, 1970) was a Polish philosopher who worked in aesthetics, ontology, and phenomenology. Before World War II, Ingarden published his works mainly in the German language and in books and newspapers. During the war, he switched to Polish out of solidarity with his homeland after the German invasion, and as a result, his major works in ontology went largely unnoticed and undetected by the wider world and philosophical community. Nevertheless, Ingarden's writings have made some indirect cultural impact through the writings of his student and eventual Pope, Karol Wojtyla. Even though his workings didn't have a big influence on the philosophical community they still did have some influence. == Biography == Ingarden was born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary, on February 5, 1893. He first studied mathematics and philosophy at the Lwów University under Kazimierz Twardowski, then moved to the University of Göttingen in Germany to study philosophy under Edmund Husserl. He was considered by Husserl to be one of his best and greatest students and accompanied Husserl to the University of Freiburg, where, in 1918, Ingarden submitted his doctoral dissertation with Husserl as director. The title of his thesis was Intuition und Intellekt bei Henri Bergson (Intuition and Intellect in Henri Bergson). Ingarden previously suggested that he transfer to Lwów and write a new dissertation under Twardowski due to an increasing tension between Germany and Poland but Husserl refused and was uninterested.Ingarden then returned to Poland, where he spent his academic career after obtaining his doctorate. For a long period, he had to support himself by secondary-school teaching. During this period, one of his works - aside from his post-doctoral work in epistemology - was a review of the Festschrift written for Twardowski. This involved an analysis of Zygmunt Lempicki's "W sprawie uzasadnienia poetyki czystej" (On the Justification of Pure Poetics).In 1925 he submitted his Habilitationschrift, Essentiale Fragen (Essential Questions), to Kazimierz Twardowski at Lwów University. This thesis was noticed by the English-speaking philosophical community. In 1933, the university promoted him as professor of philosophy. He became well known for his work on The Literary Work of Art (Das literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft, 1931). Particularly, interest in his works increased when the English translation of this text was released.From 1939 to 1941 during the Soviet occupation of Lwów he continued his university activity and lived in the Kraków area. After the Operation Barbarossa 1941 under the German occupation Ingarden secretly taught students mathematics and philosophy. After his house was bombed, he continued work on his book, The Controversy over the Existence of the World.Ingarden became a professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in 1945 shortly after the war but was banned in 1946 under the Communist regime. He then moved to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he was offered a position. In 1949, however, he was banned from teaching due to his alleged idealism, supposedly being an "enemy of materialism". In 1957 he was reappointed at the Jagiellonian University after the ban was lifted, and so he went on to teach, write and publish. Ingarden died on June 14, 1970, in Kraków as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. == Works == Ingarden was a realist phenomenologist and thus did not accept Husserl's transcendental idealism. His training was phenomenological; thus, his work as a whole was directed towards ontology. That is why Ingarden is one of the most renowned phenomenological ontologists, as he strove to describe the ontological structure and state of being of various objects based on the essential features of any experience that could provide such knowledge. The best-known works of Ingarden, and the only ones widely-known to English-speaking readers, concern aesthetics and literature. His most popular book, for instance, was The Literary Work of Art, which explored the concept of the literary work of art. In this book, Ingarden argued that a literary work of art is a purely intentional object and is a product of the author's conscious acts. This work would contribute to the development of the literary theory called reader-response criticism and influence scholars such as René Wellek and Wolfgang Iser. Another notable notion in Ingarden's aesthetics was his idea that music is not a form of literature. He maintained that literary works have four distinct ontological strata, and one of these - the stratum of represented objectivities - is absent in musical works. In his stratification of literary work of art, he cited that aesthetic value is the polyphonic harmony that arises between these strata of meaning.The exclusive focus on Ingarden's work in aesthetics does not reflect Ingarden's overall philosophical standpoint, which is focused on the ideas regarding formal, existential, and material ontology set forth in his The Controversy over the Existence of the World. In his aesthetic investigations, Ingarden considered aesthetics as an integral part of philosophy. He argued that his aesthetic theory is not only an analysis of art but an approach that answers basic philosophical issues. Ingarden also attempted to establish a phenomenological circle at Lvov. The group, which focused on aesthetics and descriptive psychology, attracted some of Twardowski's students including Leopold Blaustein and Eugénie Ginsberg. Ingarden was a close associate of Edith Stein. He came to her defense when her work with Husserl was challenged.Ingarden wrote his own biography in 1949. This work, which was written in third person, was one of the three biographies he submitted to Tatarkiewicz, who was then revising his Historia filozofii (History of philosophy). The philosopher had also undertaken work for Husserl. === Main works in German === Intuition und Intellekt bei Henri Bergson, Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921 Essentiale Fragen. Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Wesens, Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1925 Das literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft, Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1931 Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst: Musikwerk. Bild. Architektur. Film, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1962 Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, Bd. I, II/I, II/2. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1964 Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1968 Erlebnis, Kunstwerk und Wert. Vorträge zur Ästhetik 1937-1967, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969 Über die Verantwortung. Ihre ontischen Fundamente, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1970 Über die kausale Struktur der realen Welt. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, Band III, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1974 === Main works in Polish === Niektóre założenia idealizmu Berkeley'a [Some of the Tenets of Berkeley’s Idealism]. Lwów. 1931. O poznawaniu dzieła literackiego (The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art), Ossolineum, Lwów: 1937 O budowie obrazu. Szkic z teorii sztuki (On the Structure of Paintings: A Sketch of the Theory of Art), Rozprawy Wydziału Filozoficznego PAU Vol. LXVII, No.2, Kraków, 1946 O dziele architektury (On Architectural Works), Nauka i Sztuka, Vol. II, 1946, No. 1, pp. 3-26 and No. 2, pp. 26-51 Spór o istnienie Świata (Controversy over the Existence of the World), PAU, Vol. I, Kraków: 1947, Vol. II, Kraków, 1948 Szkice z filozofii literatury (Sketches on the Philosophy of Literature), Vol. 1, Spółdzielnia wydawnicza "Polonista," Łódz, 1947 Elementy dzieła muzycznego (The Elements of Musical Works), Sprawozdania Towarzystwa Naukowego w Toruniu, Vol. IX, 1955, Nos. 1-4, pp. 82-84 Studia z estetyki (Studies in Aesthetics), PWN, Vol. I Warszawa, 1957, Vol. II, Warszawa, 1958 O dziele literackim (On Literary Works). PWN, Warszawa, 1960 Przeżycie - dzieło - wartość (Experience - Work of Art - Value). Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 1966 Studia z estetyki Tom III (Studies in Aesthetics, Vol. III), PWN, Warszawa, 1970 U podstaw teorii poznania (At the Foundations of the Theory of Knowledge), PWN, Warszawa, 1971 Książeczka o człowieku (Little Book About Man), Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 1972. Utwór muzyczny i sprawa jego tożsamości (The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity), Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, Warszawa, 1973. === Main works translated into English === Controversy over the Existence of the World. Volumes I and II, translated by Arthur Szylewicz, Bern: Peter Lang, 2013 / 2016. Time and Modes of Being, (selection from Der Streit), translated by Helen R. Michejda. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1964. The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, Translated by Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973. The Literary Work of Art, Translated by George G. Grabowicz. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Letter to Husserl about the VI [Logical] Investigation and ‘Idealism’ In Tymieniecka, 1976. Man and Value, Translated by Arthur Szylewicz. München: Philosophia Verlag, 1983. On the Motives which led Edmund Husserl to Transcendental Idealism, Translated by Arnor Hannibalsson. The Hague: 1976. The Ontology of the Work of Art, Translated by Raymond Meyer with John T. Goldthwait. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1989. Selected Papers in Aesthetics, Ed. by Peter J. McCormick, München: Philosophia Verlag,1985. The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity, Translated by Adam Czerniawski. London: Macmillan, 1986. == See also == History of philosophy in Poland List of Poles == References == == Further reading == J. Mitscherling Roman Ingarden's Ontology and Aesthetics, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1997. Robert Magliola, "Part II, Chapter 2: Roman Ingarden," in Robert Magliola, Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction (Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1977; 1978), pp. 107–141 see review Holdheim, W. Wolfgang (1979). "The Lessons of Phenomenology". Diacritics. 9 (2): 30–41. doi:10.2307/464782. JSTOR 464782. == External links == The Roman Ingarden Philosophical Research Centre Amie Thomasson. "Roman Ingarden". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Polish Philosophy Page: Roman Ingarden Theory and History of Ontology: Roman Ingarden: Ontology as a Science on the Possible Ways of Existence Annotated bibliography of and about Ingarden "Roman Ingarden’s Objectivity vs. Subjectivity as a problem of Translatability", by Gabriel Pareyon Roman Ingarden at Porta Polonica Realistic Phenomenology, in Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Kluwer, 1997, 586–590.

Friedrich Waismann

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Waismann

Friedrich Waismann (German: [ˈvaɪsman]; 21 March 1896 – 4 November 1959) was an Austrian mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. He is best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle and one of the key theorists in logical positivism. == Biography == Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, Waismann was educated in mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. In 1922, he began to study philosophy under the tutelage of Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle. He emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1938 due to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. He was a reader in philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge from 1937 to 1939, and lecturer in philosophy of mathematics at the University of Oxford from 1939 until his death. He died in Oxford. == Relationship with Wittgenstein == Intermittently, from 1927 until 1936, Waismann had extensive conversations with Ludwig Wittgenstein about topics in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of language. These conversations, recorded by Waismann, were published in Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (1979, ed. B.F. McGuinness). Other members of the Circle (including Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, and Herbert Feigl) also spoke with Wittgenstein, but not to the extent Waismann did. At one point in 1934, Wittgenstein and Waismann considered collaborating on a book, but these plans fell through after their philosophical differences became apparent. Waismann later accused Wittgenstein of obscurantism because of what he considered to be his betrayal of the project of logical positivism and empirically-based explanation. Ultimately the texts for the project, written or just transcribed by Waismann, were published by Gordon Baker in 2003. == Linguistic philosophy and logical positivism == In Introduction to Mathematical Thinking: The Formation of Concepts in Modern Mathematics (1936), Waismann argued that mathematical truths are true by convention rather than being necessarily (or verifiably) true. His collected lectures, The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy (1965), and How I See Philosophy (1968, ed. R. Harré), a collection of papers, were published posthumously. == Porosity and verifiability == Waismann introduced the concept of open texture, or porosity to describe the universal possibility of vagueness in empirical statements; it is based on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, particularly Section 80. According to the philosopher, even after measures have been taken to ensure that a statement is precise, there remains an inexhaustible source of vagueness due to an indefinite number of possibilities. Waismann's notion of vagueness is slightly different from his concept of open texture―he explained that open texture is more like the possibility of vagueness; vagueness can also be remedied so that it can be made more precise, while open texture cannot.Open texture has been found in legal philosophy through the writings of H. L. A. Hart (see Hart's "The Concept of Law about Rule Skepticism" and Waismann's article "Verifiability"). According to Hart, vagueness constitutes a fundamental feature of legal languages. It is claimed, however, that Waismann's conceptualization has limited practical application, since it is more for the extraordinary, while Hart's view of open texture concerns the more mundane, approaching the term in the context of a particular norm. == References ==

Georges Bataille

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Bataille

Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; French: [ʒɔʁʒ batɑj]; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism. == Early life == Georges Bataille was the son of Joseph-Aristide Bataille (b. 1851), a tax collector (later to go blind and be paralysed by neurosyphilis), and Antoinette-Aglaë Tournarde (b. 1865). Born on 10 September 1897 in Billom in the region of Auvergne, his family moved to Reims in 1898, where he was baptized. He went to school in Reims and then Épernay. Although brought up without religious observance, he converted to Catholicism in 1914, and became a devout Catholic for about nine years. He considered entering the priesthood and attended a Catholic seminary briefly. However, he quit, apparently in part in order to pursue an occupation where he could eventually support his mother. He eventually renounced Christianity in the early 1920s.Bataille attended the École Nationale des Chartes in Paris, graduating in February 1922. He graduated with a bachelor's thesis titled L'ordre de la chevalerie, conte en vers du xiiie siècle, avec introduction et notes. Though he is often referred to as an archivist and a librarian because of his employment at the Bibliothèque Nationale, his work there was with the medallion collections (he also published scholarly articles on numismatics). His thesis at the École des Chartes was a critical edition of the medieval poem L'Ordre de chevalerie which he produced directly by classifying the eight manuscripts from which he reconstructed the poem. After graduating he moved to the School of Advanced Spanish Studies in Madrid. As a young man, he befriended, and was much influenced by, the Russian existentialist Lev Shestov, who schooled him in the writing of Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Plato as well as Shestov's own critique of reason and philosophical systematization == Career == Founder of several journals and literary groups, Bataille is the author of a large and diverse body of work: readings, poems, essays on innumerable subjects (on the mysticism of economy, poetry, philosophy, the arts and eroticism). He sometimes published under pseudonyms, and some of his publications were banned. He was relatively ignored during his lifetime and scorned by contemporaries such as Jean-Paul Sartre as an advocate of mysticism, but after his death had considerable influence on authors such as Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers, and Jacques Derrida, all of whom were affiliated with the journal Tel Quel. His influence is felt most explicitly in the phenomenological work of Jean-Luc Nancy, but is also significant for the work of Jean Baudrillard, the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and recent anthropological work from the likes of Michael Taussig. Initially attracted to Surrealism, Bataille quickly fell out with its founder André Breton, although Bataille and the Surrealists resumed cautiously cordial relations after World War II. Bataille was a member of the extremely influential College of Sociology which included several other renegade surrealists. He was heavily influenced by Hegel, Freud, Marx, Marcel Mauss, the Marquis de Sade, Alexandre Kojève, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the last of whom he defended in a notable essay against appropriation by the Nazis.Fascinated by human sacrifice, he founded a secret society, Acéphale, the symbol of which was a headless man. According to legend, Bataille and the other members of Acéphale each agreed to be the sacrificial victim as an inauguration; none of them would agree to be the executioner. An indemnity was offered for an executioner, but none was found before the dissolution of Acéphale shortly before the war. The group also published an eponymous review of Nietzsche's philosophy which attempted to postulate what Derrida has called an "anti-sovereignty". Collaborators in these projects included André Masson, Pierre Klossowski, Roger Caillois, Jules Monnerot, Jean Rollin and Jean Wahl. Bataille drew from diverse influences and used various modes of discourse to create his work. His novel Story of the Eye (Histoire de l'oeil), published under the pseudonym Lord Auch (literally, Lord "to the shithouse" — "auch" being short for "aux chiottes," slang for telling somebody off by sending him to the toilet), was initially read as pure pornography, while interpretation of the work has gradually matured to reveal the same considerable philosophical and emotional depth that is characteristic of other writers who have been categorized within "literature of transgression". The imagery of the novel is built upon a series of metaphors which in turn refer to philosophical constructs developed in his work: the eye, the egg, the sun, the earth, the testicle. Other famous novels include the posthumously published My Mother (which would become the basis of Christophe Honoré's film Ma Mère), The Impossible and Blue of Noon, which, with its incest, necrophilia, politics, and autobiographical undertones, is a much darker treatment of contemporary historical reality. During World War II Bataille produced Summa Atheologica (the title parallels Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica) which comprises his works Inner Experience, Guilty, and On Nietzsche. After the war he composed The Accursed Share, which he said represented thirty years' work. The singular conception of "sovereignty" expounded there would become an important topic of discussion for Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy and others. Bataille also founded the influential journal Critique. == Personal life == Bataille's first marriage was to actress Silvia Maklès, in 1928; they divorced in 1934, and she later married the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Bataille also had an affair with Colette Peignot, who died in 1938. In 1946 Bataille married Diane de Beauharnais (author, pseudonym, Selena Warfield), with whom he had a daughter. In 1955 Bataille was diagnosed with cerebral arteriosclerosis, although he was not informed at the time of the terminal nature of his illness. He died seven years later, on 9 July 1962. Bataille was an atheist. == Themes == At the crossroads of knowledge and the great ideological, philosophical and anthropological debates of his time, his work is both literary and philosophical, multiple, heterogeneous, marginal and escapes labelling: "the traditional categories, the delimitations they establish, prove inappropriate or cumbersome when one wants to account for the whole of his writings". All the more so since he went out of his way to blur the lines, as he himself declared in his last interview with Madeleine Chapsal in March 1961: "I would willingly say that what I am most proud of is having blurred the lines [...], that is to say, having associated the most turbulent and shocking way of laughing, the most scandalous, with the deepest religious spirit ". This "scrambling" is all the more evident because of the multiple versions, manuscripts and typescripts of his texts, and also because he often used pseudonyms to sign certain writings (such as erotic stories): Troppmann, Lord Auch, Pierre Angélique, Louis Trente and Dianus. == Key concepts == === Base materialism === Bataille developed base materialism during the late 1920s and early 1930s as an attempt to break with mainstream materialism, which he viewed as a subtle form of idealism. He argues for the concept of an active base matter that disrupts the opposition of high and low and destabilises all foundations. Inspired by Gnostic ideas, this notion of materialism defies strict definition and rationalisation. Base materialism was a major influence on Derrida's deconstruction, and both thinkers attempt to destabilise philosophical oppositions by means of an unstable "third term." Bataille's notion of materialism may also be seen as anticipating Louis Althusser's conception of aleatory materialism or "materialism of the encounter," which draws on similar atomist metaphors to sketch a world in which causality and actuality are abandoned in favor of limitless possibilities of action. === The "accursed share" === La Part maudite is a book written by Bataille between 1946 and 1949, when it was published by Les Éditions de Minuit. It was translated into English and published in 1991, with the title The Accursed Share. It presents a new economic theory, which Bataille calls "general economy," as distinct from the "restricted" economic perspective of most economic theory. Thus, in the theoretical introduction, Bataille writes the following: I will simply state, without waiting further, that the extension of economic growth itself requires the overturning of economic principles—the overturning of the ethics that grounds them. Changing from the perspectives of restrictive economy to those of general economy actually accomplishes a Copernican transformation: a reversal of thinking—and of ethics. If a part of wealth (subject to a rough estimate) is doomed to destruction or at least to unproductive use without any possible profit, it is logical, even inescapable, to surrender commodities without return. Henceforth, leaving aside pure and simple dissipation, analogous to the construction of the Pyramids, the possibility of pursuing growth is itself subordinated to giving: The industrial development of the entire world demands of Americans that they lucidly grasp the necessity, for an economy such as theirs, of having a margin of profitless operations. An immense industrial network cannot be managed in the same way that one changes a tire… It expresses a circuit of cosmic energy on which it depends, which it cannot limit, and whose laws it cannot ignore without consequences. Woe to those who, to the very end, insist on regulating the movement that exceeds them with the narrow mind of the mechanic who changes a tire. Thus, according to Bataille's theory of consumption, the accursed share is that excessive and non-recuperable part of any economy which is destined to one of two modes of economic and social expenditure. This must either be spent luxuriously and knowingly without gain in the arts, in non-procreative sexuality, in spectacles and sumptuous monuments, or it is obliviously destined to an outrageous and catastrophic outpouring in war. Though the distinction is less apparent in Hurley's English translation, Bataille introduces the neologism "consummation" (akin to a fire's burning) to signal this excess expenditure as distinct from "consommation" (the non-excess expenditure more familiarly treated in theories of "restricted" economy). The notion of "excess" energy is central to Bataille's thinking. Bataille's inquiry takes the superabundance of energy, beginning from the infinite outpouring of solar energy or the surpluses produced by life's basic chemical reactions, as the norm for organisms. In other words, an organism in Bataille's general economy, unlike the rational actors of classical economy who are motivated by scarcity, normally has an "excess" of energy available to it. This extra energy can be used productively for the organism's growth or it can be lavishly expended. Bataille insists that an organism's growth or expansion always runs up against limits and becomes impossible. The wasting of this energy is "luxury." The form and role luxury assumes in a society, are characteristic of that society. "The accursed share" refers to this excess, destined for waste. Crucial to the formulation of the theory was Bataille's reflection upon the phenomenon of potlatch. It is influenced by Marcel Mauss's The Gift, as well as by Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. == Bibliography == A work-in-progress listing of Bataille's work and English translations can be found at Progressive Geographies. Complete works Georges Bataille, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard): Volume 1: Premiers écrits, 1922–1940: Histoire de l'œil - L'Anus solaire - Sacrifices - Articles Volume 2: Écrits posthumes, 1922–1940 Volume 3: Œuvres littéraires: Madame Edwarda - Le Petit - L'Archangélique - L'Impossible - La Scissiparité - L'Abbé C. - L'être indifférencié n'est rien - Le Bleu du ciel Volume 4: Œuvres littéraires posthumes: Poèmes - Le Mort - Julie - La Maison brûlée - La Tombe de Louis XXX - Divinus Deus - Ébauches Volume 5: La Somme athéologique I: L'Expérience intérieure - Méthode de méditation - Post-scriptum 1953 - Le Coupable - L'Alleluiah Volume 6: La Somme athéologique II: Sur Nietzsche - Mémorandum - Annexes Volume 7: L'économie à la mesure de l'univers - La Part maudite - La limite de l'utile (Fragments) - Théorie de la Religion - Conférences 1947-1948 - Annexes Volume 8: L'Histoire de l'érotisme - Le surréalisme au jour le jour - Conférences 1951-1953 - La Souveraineté - Annexes Volume 9: Lascaux, ou La naissance de l’art - Manet - La littérature et le mal - Annexes Volume 10: L’érotisme - Le procès de Gilles de Rais - Les larmes d’Eros Volume 11: Articles I, 1944–1949 Volume 12: Articles II, 1950–1961 Georges Bataille: Une liberté souveraine: Textes et entretiens, 2004 (articles, book reviews and interviews not included in Oeuvres Complètes, Michel Surya Ed.)Works published in French Histoire de l'oeil, 1928 (Story of the Eye) (under pseudonym of Lord Auch) L'Anus solaire, 1931 (The Solar Anus) The Notion of Expenditure, 1933 L'Amitié, 1940 (Friendship) (under pseudonym of Dianus; early version of Part One of Le Coupable) Madame Edwarda, 1941 (under pseudonym of Pierre Angélique, fictitiously dated 1937; 2nd Edition: 1945; 3rd Edition: 1956 published with preface in Bataille's name) Le Petit, 1943 (under pseudonym of Louis Trente; fictitious publication date of 1934) L'expérience intérieure, 1943 (Inner Experience) L'Archangélique, 1944 (The Archangelical) Le Coupable, 1944 (Guilty) Sur Nietzsche, 1945 (On Nietzsche) Dirty, 1945 L'Orestie, 1945 (The Oresteia) Histoire de rats, 1947 (A Story of Rats) L'Alleluiah, 1947 (Alleluia: The Catechism of Dianus) Méthode de méditation, 1947 (Method of Meditation) La Haine de la Poésie, 1947 (The Hatred of Poetry; reissued in 1962 as The Impossible) La Scissiparité, 1949 (The Scission) La Part maudite, 1949 (The Accursed Share) L'Abbé C, 1950 L'expérience intérieure, 1954 (second edition of Inner Experience, followed by Method of Meditation and Post-scriptum 1953) L'Être indifférencié n'est rien, 1954 (Undifferentiated Being is Nothing) Lascaux, ou la Naissance de l'Art, 1955 Manet, 1955 Le paradoxe de l'érotisme, Nouvelle Revue Française, n°29, 1er Mai 1955. Le Bleu du ciel, 1957 (written 1935–36) (Blue of Noon) La littérature et le Mal, 1957 (Literature and Evil) L'Erotisme, 1957 (Erotism) Le Coupable, 1961 (Guilty, second, revised edition, followed by Alleluia: The Catechism of Dianus) Les larmes d'Éros, 1961 (The Tears of Eros) L'Impossible : Histoire de rats suivi de Dianus et de L'Orestie, 1962 (The Impossible)Posthumous works Ma Mère, 1966 (My Mother) Le Mort, 1967 (The Dead Man) Théorie de la Religion, 1973 (Theory of Religion)Translated works Lascaux; or, the Birth of Art, the Prehistoric Paintings, Austryn Wainhouse, 1955, Lausanne: Skira. Manet, Austryn Wainhouse and James Emmons, 1955, Editions d'Art Albert Skira. Literature and Evil, Alastair Hamilton, 1973, Calder & Boyars Ltd. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie, Jr., 1985, University of Minnesota Press. Erotism: Death and Sensuality, Mary Dalwood, 1986, City Lights Books. Story of the Eye, Joachim Neugroschel, 1987, City Lights Books. The Accursed Share: An Essay On General Economy. Volume I: Consumption, Robert Hurley, 1988, Zone Books. The College of Sociology, 1937–39 (Bataille et al), Betsy Wing, 1988, University of Minnesota Press. Guilty, Bruce Boone, 1988, The Lapis Press. Inner Experience, Leslie Anne Boldt, 1988, State University of New York. My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man, Austryn Wainhouse, with essays by Yukio Mishima and Ken Hollings, 1989, Marion Boyars Publishers. The Tears of Eros, Peter Connor, 1989, City Lights Books. Theory of Religion, Robert Hurley, 1989, Zone Books. The Accursed Share: Volumes II and III, Robert Hurley, 1991, Zone Books. The Impossible, Robert Hurley, 1991, City Lights Books. The Trial of Gilles de Rais, Richard Robinson, 1991, Amok Press. On Nietzsche, Bruce Boone, 1992, Paragon House. The Absence of Myth: Writings on Surrealism, Michael Richardson, 1994, Verso. Encyclopaedia Acephalica (Bataille et al), Iain White et al., 1995, Atlas Press. L'Abbé C, Philip A Facey, 2001, Marion Boyars Publishers. Blue of Noon, Harry Mathews, 2002, Marion Boyars Publishers. The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, Stuart Kendall and Michelle Kendall, 2004, University of Minnesota Press. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture, Stuart Kendall, Michelle Kendall, 2009, Zone Books. Divine Filth: Lost Scatology and Erotica, Mark Spitzer, 2009, Solar Books. W.C., (fragmented) novel by Georges Bataille and Antonio Contiero; edited by Transeuropa Edizioni (Massa, 9/2011), ISBN 978-88-7580-150-2; accompanied with music by Alessandra Celletti and Jaan Patterson (Bubutz Records). Collected Poems of Georges Bataille, Mark Spitzer (ed.), 1998, 1999, Dufour Editions. Hardback is titled Collected Poetry of Georges Bataille, 1998. The Sacred Conspiracy: The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology, with additional texts by Roger Caillois, translated by Natasha Lehrer, John Harman and Meyer Barash, Atlas, 2018. == Notes == == References == == Further reading == Ades, Dawn, and Simon Baker, Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006). Barthes, Roland. "The Metaphor of the Eye". In Critical Essays. Trans. Richard Howard. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972). 239–248. Blanchot, Maurice. "The Limit-Experience". In The Infinite Conversation. Trans. Susan Hanson. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 202–229. Blanchot, Maurice. The Unavowable Community. Trans. Pierre Joris. (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1988). Derrida, Jacques, "From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve," in Writing and Difference (London: Routledge, 1978). Duarte, German A. “La chose maudite. The concept of reification in George Bataille’s The Accursed Share”. in Human and Social Studies - De Gruyter Open. Vol. 5. Issue 1.(2016): 113–134. Foucault, Michel. "A Preface to Transgression". Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984. Ed. James D. Faubion (New York: New Press, 1998). 103–122. Hussey, Andrew, Inner Scar: The Mysticism of Georges Bataille (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000). Kendall, Stuart, Georges Bataille (London: Reaktion Books, Critical Lives, 2007). Krauss, Rosalind, No More Play in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (MIT Press, 1985). Land, Nick. The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (London: Routledge, 1992) Lawtoo, Nidesh, The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013). Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis & Oxford: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Roudinesco, Élisabeth, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985, 1990, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Roudinesco, Élisabeth, Jacques Lacan, Outline of a Life, History of a System of Thought, 1999, New York, Columbia University Press. Roudinesco, Élisabeth, Our Dark Side, A History of Perversion, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2009. Skorin-Kapov, Jadranka, The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation (Lexington Books, 2015). Sollers, Philippe, Writing and the Experience of Limits (Columbia University Press, 1982). Sontag, Susan. "The Pornographic Imagination." Styles of Radical Will. (Picador, 1967). Surya, Michel, Georges Bataille: an intellectual biography, trans. by Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (London: Verso, 2002). Vanderwees, Chris, "Complicating Eroticism and the Male Gaze: Feminism and Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye." Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature. 38.1 (2014): 1–19. == External links == "Architecture" - short essay by Georges Bataille Petri Liukkonen. "Georges Bataille". Books and Writers Popsubculture, Bio Project, George Bataille biography SOFT TARGETS Journal, Bataille's Apocalypse Archived 29 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine University of Wolverhampton, Extract from Bataille's Eroticism Archived 7 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine IMDb entry for Ma mère Hayward Gallery's 'Undercover Surrealism' site New Statesman, Bataille's exhibition Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts. Geoffrey Roche, "Bataille on Sade" Archived 7 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine Revue Silène, From Heterogeneity to the Sacred Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Jérome Bourgon's Bataille essay Out of line theatre's devised theatre creation based upon Bataille's "The Dead Man" "Toward General Economy," in the journal Scapegoat, issue 05, 2013

Xavier Zubiri

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Zubiri

Xavier Zubiri (4 December 1898 – 21 September 1983) was a Spanish philosopher. Zubiri was a member of the Madrid School, composed of philosophers José Ortega y Gasset (the founder of the group), José Gaos, and Julián Marías, among others. Zubiri's philosophy has been categorized as a "materialist open realism", which "attempted to reformulate classical metaphysics, in a language that was entirely compatible with modern science". This relates to Xavier Zubiri's educational background. == Biography == Zubiri first received a philosophical and theological formation in Madrid and Rome. Later, he deepened his studies in philosophy through his graduate studies in Louvain, writing his dissertation on phenomenology. In 1929, Zubiri's critical interest in this current of thought took him to Freiburg, when he already was a professor in Madrid. There, he studied with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In 1930, Zubiri moved to Berlin, where he studied physics, philology and biology. There, he was hosted in Harnack House, which enabled Zubiri to socialize with important minds of this great period of academic activity in the Weimar Republic. For example, Albert Einstein (whom Zubiri had already met in Madrid, at Universidad Central, in 1923), Max Planck, Werner Jaeger, Erwin Schrödinger, among others. When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, Zubiri moved to Paris. There, he continued having an intensive intellectual life, attending courses with Louis de Broglie, Frédéric Joliot, Irène Curie, Elie Joseph Cartan and Emile Benveniste, among others. In 1939, just before France declared war with Germany, Zubiri returned to Spain. Zubiri's philosophy is little known outside of Spain and Latin America, mostly because Zubiri was compelled to resign from formal academic positions in Spain, in 1942. This had to do with the lack of academic freedoms in Francisco Franco's regime. However, it was possible for Zubiri to continue his work as an academic, through the sponsorship of family and friends. Zubiri was a prolific author in the Spanish magazines Cruz y Raya (led by José Bergamín) and Revista de Occidente (led by José Ortega y Gasset) under the second Spanish republic. However, after his resignation from Spanish universities, Zubiri did not publish much in established peer reviewed journals. Nonetheless, he did publish a series of books and research articles. Zubiri's work was initially not well received by established academic environments in Spain. This was mostly explained by the political context under Franco. But Zubiri's relationship to scholars like Ignacio Ellacuría made Zubiri's work widely known in Latin America, where Zubiri's thought has been further developed.Recently, Spanish academics have begun to recognize the importance of Zubiri's life and philosophy. For the same reasons outlined above, Zubiri's contact with the formal academic environments of the English speaking world was limited. There is all but one recorded visit by Zubiri to the United States, specifically Princeton University, on October 2, 1946. In Princeton, Zubiri lectured in French on "The real and mathematics- A philosophical problem" ("Le reel et les mathematiques—Un probleme de philosophie"). Some of Zubiri's work has been translated to English: "On Essence" (Caponigri, 1980), "Sentient Intelligence" (Fowler, 1999), "The Dynamic Structure of Reality" (Orringer, 2003) and "The Fundamental problems of Western Metaphysics" (Redondo & Fowler 2009). Despite his relative academic isolation at home in Spain, Zubiri has also been recognized in other countries. In 1979, the German government awarded Zubiri and Laín Entralgo the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Zubiri was awarded this distinction for his work in his books "Nature, History, God" (1954) and "On Essence" (1962). Zubiri's work has also been translated to French, German, Italian and Portuguese. == Bibliography == This overview is taken from a more extensive list of articles and books by and about Xavier Zubiri. This list is continuously updated by "Fundación Xavier Zubiri". Naturaleza, Historia, Dios (1944) Sobre la esencia (1ª ed. 1962 en Soc.E y P; 6ª edición ya en Alianza, 1998) Cinco lecciones de filosofía (1ª ed., 1963 en Soc.E y P; 1ª reimpresión en Alianza, 1997); Inteligencia sentiente. *Inteligencia y realidad (Soc.E y P, 1980; 50 ed. Alianza/F.XZ.); Inteligencia y logos (Soc.E y P/Alianza, 1982) Inteligencia y razón (Soc.E y P/Alianza, 1983) El hombre y Dios (1ª ed. a cargo de Ignacio Ellacuría, 1984) Sobre el hombre (1ª ed. a cargo de Ignacio Ellacuría, 1986) Estructura dinámica de la realidad (1989, ed. a cargo de Diego Gracia) Sobre el sentimiento y la volición (1992, ed. a cargo de Diego Gracia) El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones (1993, a cargo de Antonio González) Los problemas fundamentales de la Metafísica occidental (1994, a cargo de Antonio Pintor Ramos) Espacio. Tiempo. Materia (1996, Segunda edición revisada 2008) El problema teologal del hombre: Cristianismo (1997, a cargo de Antonio González) El hombre y la verdad (1999, a cargo de Juan Antonio Nicolás) Primeros escritos (1921–1926), ed. de 2000, por Antonio Pintor Ramos Sobre la realidad (2001, a cargo de José Antonio Martínez) Sobre el problema de la filosofía y otros escritos (1932–1944), 1ª ed. de 2002, a cargo de Germán Marquínez Argote El hombre: lo real y lo irreal (1ª ed. 2005, a cargo de Jesús Conill) Tres dimensiones del ser humano: individual, social, histórica (1ª ed. 2006, a cargo de Jordi Corominas) Escritos menores (1953–1983) (1ª ed. de 2007, a cargo de Germán Marquínez Argote) Cursos universitarios I (1ª ed. 2007, a cargo de Manuel Mazón) Cinco lecciones de filosofía – Con un nuevo curso inédito (2009, a cargo de Antonio Pintor Ramos) Cursos Universitarios, vol. II (2010, a cargo de Manuel Mazón) Acerca del mundo (2010, a cargo de Antonio González) Cursos Universitarios, vol. III (1933–1934). 2012. A cargo de Manuel Mazón Fascículo editado por la propia Fundación: Sobre el problema de la filosofía (Madrid, 1996) == References == == External links == (English) Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America (Spanish) Fundación Xavier Zubiri (Madrid) (Spanish) Materials on Xavier Zubiri (Spanish) Collection of news about Xavier Zubiri in the Spanish newspaper "El País", 1976–2013

H.H. Price

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Price

Henry Habberley Price (17 May 1899 – 26 November 1984), usually cited as H. H. Price, was a Welsh philosopher, known for his work on the philosophy of perception. He also wrote on parapsychology. == Biography == Born in Neath, Glamorganshire, Wales, Price was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He obtained first-class honours in Literae Humaniores in 1921. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1922–4, Assistant Lecturer in philosophy at the university of Liverpool (1922–23), Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford (1924–35), Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford (1932–35) and Wykeham Professor of Logic and Fellow of New College (1935–59). Price was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1943 to 1944. He was elected to the British Academy in 1943. Price is perhaps best known for his work on the philosophy of perception. He argues for a sophisticated sense-datum account, although he rejects phenomenalism. In his book Thinking and Experience, he moves from perception to thought and argues for a dispositionalist account of conceptual cognition. Concepts are held to be a kind of intellectual capacity, manifested in perceptual contexts as recognitional capacities. For Price, concepts are not some kind of mental entity or representation. The ultimate appeal is to a species of memory distinct from event recollection. He died in Oxford. == Parapsychology == Price had written various publications on parapsychology, often advocating new concepts and theories. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research (1939–40, 1960–1) === Afterlife === Price had speculated on the nature of the afterlife and developed his own hypothesis about what the afterlife may be like. According to Price after death the self will find itself in a dream world of memories and mental images from their life. Price wrote that the hypothetical "next world would be realms of real mental images." Price however believed that the self may be able to draw upon its memories of previous physical existence to create an environment of totally new images. According to Price, the dream world will not follow the laws of physics just as ordinary dreams do not. In addition, he wrote that each person will experience a world of their own, though he also wrote that the dream world doesn't necessarily have to be solipsistic as different selves may be able to communicate with each other by dream telepathy. === Place memories === Price developed the concept of "place memories" (see Stone Tape). He proposed that hauntings could be explained by memories becoming lost from an individual's mind and then somehow attaching themselves to the environment which could be picked up by others as hallucinations. He also believed that "place memories" could explain psychometry. === Psychic ether === Linking his afterlife hypothesis with the concept of place memories Price proposed another hypothesis called the "psychic ether" hypothesis. He wrote that this hypothesis would explain where the memories would be stored for hauntings as well as for clairvoyance, ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. Price proposed that a universal psychic ether coexisting dimension exists as an intermediary between the mental and ordinary matter. According to Price the psychic ether consists of images and ideas. Price wrote that apparitions are actually memories from people and that under the right conditions they can be seen as hallucinations. Price believed that the dreamlike world of the afterlife exists in the psychic ether. According to (Ellwood, 2001) the psychic ether of Price is "a posited level of reality consisting of persisting, dynamic images created by the mind and capable of being perceived by certain persons." === Reception === Some researchers have attempted to update the afterlife hypothesis of Price. Michael Grosso (1979) in an extension of Price's theory suggested that the "ego may become fragmented in the afterlife state and when ones wish's and desires are played out may experience a transpersonal state akin to those experienced by the mystics". The psychical researcher Ralph Noyes (1998) published an article discussing the theories of Price and attempted to update them with recent finds in parapsychology. Noyes proposed that the mental world of Price is a "psychosphere" which he defined as a "vast and complex cauldron of ideas, memories, volitions, desires and all the other furniture of conscious experience and unconscious mental functioning".The most common criticism of HH Price's afterlife hypothesis has come from the religious community as his suggestions are not consistent with traditional Christian teaching, nor the teachings of any other monotheistic religion. == Quotes == "When I see a tomato there is much that I can doubt. I can doubt whether it is a tomato that I am seeing, and not a cleverly painted piece of wax. I can doubt whether there is any material thing there at all. Perhaps what I took for a tomato was really a reflection; perhaps I am even the victim of some hallucination. One thing however I cannot doubt: that there exists a red patch of a round and somewhat bulgy shape, standing out from a background of other colour-patches, and having a certain visual depth, and that this whole field of colour is directly present to my consciousness." Price, H. H. Perception. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1932. == Works == Perception (1932) Truth and Corrigibility (1936) Hume's Theory of the External World (1940) Thinking and Representation.(1946) Hertz Trust Philosophical lecture, British Academy Thinking and Experience (1953; second edition, 1969) Belief (1969) (1959–61 Gifford Lectures, online) Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, based on the Sarum lectures 1971 (1972) Philosophical Interactions with Parapsychology: The Major Writings of H. H. Price on Parapsychology and Survival (1995) edited by Frank B. Dilley Collected Works of Henry H. Price (1996) four volumes, edited by Martha Kneale Thinking and Experience, and Some Aspects of the Conflict between Science and Religion (1996) reprintsArticlesPrice, H. H. (1939). "Haunting and the 'psychic ether' hypothesis: With some preliminary reflections on the present condition and possible future of psychical research". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 45, 307–374. Price, H. H. (1940). 2Some philosophical questions about telepathy and clairvoyance". Philosophy, 15, 363–374. Price, H.H. (1947). "Harold Arthur Prichard", Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXIII, 1947 [reprinted as pamphlet, 1–20] Price, H. H. (1948). "Psychical research and human personality". Hibbert Journal, 105–113. Price, H. H. (1953). "Survival and the idea of 'another world'". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 50, 1–125. Price, H. H. (1959). "Psychical research and human nature". Journal of Parapsychology, 23, 178–187. Price, H. H. (1961). "Apparitions: Two theories". Journal of Parapsychology, 24, 110–125. == References == == External links == J. Harrison, 'Henry Habberley Price, 1899–1984', Proceedings of the British Academy, 80, 1991, 473–91.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer (; German: [ˈɡaːdamɐ]; 11 February 1900 – 13 March 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode), on hermeneutics. In Truth and Method, Gadamer argued against the idea that meaning could be found through objective methods. Instead, he posited that understanding is a product of a historically effected consciousness, shaped by an individual's cultural and historical context. Interpreting a text, he argued, involves a fusion of horizons between the interpreter and the text, and this interaction leads to a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Gadamer's work has become influential in communication ethics, contributing to the formulation of dialogic coordinates and promoting mutual understanding and learning in communication. In addition to his work in hermeneutics, Gadamer published extensively on Greek philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle. Born in Marburg, Germany, he studied classics and philosophy under Neo-Kantian philosophers before becoming a student of Martin Heidegger. Despite his lack of political involvement during the Nazi regime, his relationship with the Nazis has been a subject of debate among scholars. After World War II, he left East Germany for West Germany, where he completed Truth and Method and engaged in notable debates with other philosophers. == Life == === Family and early life === Gadamer was born in Marburg, Germany, the son of Johannes Gadamer (1867–1928), a pharmaceutical chemistry professor who later also served as the rector of the University of Marburg. He was raised a Protestant Christian. Gadamer resisted his father's urging to take up the natural sciences and became more and more interested in the humanities. His mother, Emma Karoline Johanna Geiese (1869–1904) died of diabetes while Hans-Georg was four years old, and he later noted that this may have had an effect on his decision to not pursue scientific studies. Jean Grondin describes Gadamer as finding in his mother "a poetic and almost religious counterpart to the iron fist of his father". Gadamer did not serve during World War I for reasons of ill health and similarly was exempted from serving during World War II due to polio. === Education === He later studied classics and philosophy in the University of Breslau under Richard Hönigswald, but soon moved back to the University of Marburg to study with the Neo-Kantian philosophers Paul Natorp (his doctoral thesis advisor) and Nicolai Hartmann. He defended his dissertation The Essence of Pleasure in Plato's Dialogues (Das Wesen der Lust nach den Platonischen Dialogen) in 1922.Shortly thereafter, Gadamer moved to Freiburg University and began studying with Martin Heidegger, who was then a promising young scholar who had not yet received a professorship. He became close to Heidegger, and when Heidegger received a position at Marburg, Gadamer followed him there, where he became one of a group of students such as Leo Strauss, Karl Löwith, and Hannah Arendt. It was Heidegger's influence that gave Gadamer's thought its distinctive cast and led him away from the earlier neo-Kantian influences of Natorp and Hartmann. Gadamer studied Aristotle both under Edmund Husserl and under Heidegger. === Early career === Gadamer habilitated in 1929 and spent most of the early 1930s lecturing in Marburg. Unlike Heidegger, who joined the Nazi Party in May 1933 and continued as a member until the party was dissolved following World War II, Gadamer was silent on Nazism, and he was not politically active during Nazi rule. Gadamer did not join the Nazis, and he did not serve in the army because of the polio he had contracted in 1922. He joined the National Socialist Teachers League in August 1933.In 1933 Gadamer signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State. In April 1937 he became a temporary professor at Marburg, then in 1938 he received a professorship at Leipzig University. From an SS-point of view Gadamer was classified as neither supportive nor disapproving in the "SD-Dossiers über Philosophie-Professoren" (i.e. SD-files concerning philosophy professors) that were set up by the SS-Security-Service (SD). In 1946, he was found by the American occupation forces to be untainted by Nazism and named rector of the university. The level of Gadamer's involvement with the Nazis has been disputed in the works of Richard Wolin and Teresa Orozco. Orozco alleges, with reference to Gadamer's published works, that Gadamer had supported the Nazis more than scholars had supposed. Gadamer scholars have rejected these assertions: Jean Grondin has said that Orozco is engaged in a "witch-hunt" while Donatella Di Cesare said that "the archival material on which Orozco bases her argument is actually quite negligible". Cesare and Grondin have argued that there is no trace of antisemitism in Gadamer's work, and that Gadamer maintained friendships with Jews and provided shelter for nearly two years for the philosopher Jacob Klein in 1933 and 1934. Gadamer also reduced his contact with Heidegger during the Nazi era. === At Heidelberg === Communist East Germany was no more to Gadamer's liking than Nazi Germany, and he left for West Germany, accepting first a position in Goethe University Frankfurt and then the succession of Karl Jaspers in the University of Heidelberg in 1949. He remained in this position, as emeritus, until his death in 2002 at the age of 102. He was also an Editorial Advisor of the journal Dionysius. It was during this time that he completed his magnum opus, Truth and Method (1960), and engaged in his famous debate with Jürgen Habermas over the possibility of transcending history and culture in order to find a truly objective position from which to critique society. The debate was inconclusive, but marked the beginning of warm relations between the two men. It was Gadamer who secured Habermas's first professorship in the University of Heidelberg. In 1968, Gadamer invited Tomonobu Imamichi for lectures at Heidelberg, but their relationship became very cool after Imamichi alleged that Heidegger had taken his concept of Dasein out of Okakura Kakuzo's concept of das in-der-Welt-sein (to be in the being in the world) expressed in The Book of Tea, which Imamichi's teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having followed lessons with him the year before. Imamichi and Gadamer renewed contact four years later during an international congress.In 1981, Gadamer attempted to engage with Jacques Derrida at a conference in Paris but it proved less enlightening because the two thinkers had little in common. A last meeting between Gadamer and Derrida was held at the Stift of Heidelberg in July 2001, coordinated by Derrida's students Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly. This meeting marked, in many ways, a turn in their philosophical encounter. After Gadamer's death, Derrida called their failure to find common ground one of the worst debacles of his life and expressed, in the main obituary for Gadamer, his great personal and philosophical respect. Richard J. Bernstein said that "[a] genuine dialogue between Gadamer and Derrida has never taken place. This is a shame because there are crucial and consequential issues that arise between hermeneutics and deconstruction". === Honorary doctorates === Gadamer received honorary doctorates from the University of Bamberg, the University of Wrocław, Boston College, Charles University in Prague, Hamilton College, the University of Leipzig, the University of Marburg (1999) the University of Ottawa, Saint Petersburg State University (2001), the University of Tübingen and University of Washington. === Death === On 11 February 2000, the University of Heidelberg celebrated Gadamer's one hundredth birthday with a ceremony and conference. Gadamer's last academic engagement was in the summer of 2001 at an annual symposium on hermeneutics that two of Gadamer's American students had organised. On 13 March 2002, Gadamer died at Heidelberg's University Clinic at the age of 102. He is buried in the Köpfel cemetery in Ziegelhausen. == Work == === Philosophical hermeneutics and Truth and Method === Gadamer's philosophical project, as explained in Truth and Method, was to elaborate on the concept of "philosophical hermeneutics", which Heidegger initiated but never dealt with at length. Gadamer's goal was to uncover the nature of human understanding. In Truth and Method, Gadamer argued that "truth" and "method" were at odds with one another. For Gadamer, "the experience of art is exemplary in its provision of truths that are inaccessible by scientific methods, and this experience is projected to the whole domain of human sciences." He was critical of two approaches to the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). On the one hand, he was critical of modern approaches to humanities that modeled themselves on the natural sciences, which simply sought to "objectively" observe and analyze texts and art. On the other hand, he took issue with the traditional German approaches to the humanities, represented for instance by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey, who believed that meaning, as an object, could be found within a text through a particular process that allowed for a connection with the author's thoughts that led to the creation of a text (Schleiermacher), or the situation that led to an expression of human inner life (Dilthey).However, Gadamer argued meaning and understanding are not objects to be found through certain methods, but are inevitable phenomena. Hermeneutics is not a process in which an interpreter finds a particular meaning, but "a philosophical effort to account for understanding as an ontological—the ontological—process of man." Thus, Gadamer is not giving a prescriptive method on how to understand, but rather he is working to examine how understanding, whether of texts, artwork, or experience, is possible at all. Gadamer intended Truth and Method to be a description of what we always do when we interpret things (even if we do not know it): "My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing".As a result of Martin Heidegger's temporal analysis of human existence, Gadamer argued that people have a so-called historically effected consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein), and that they are embedded in the particular history and culture that shaped them. However the historical consciousness is not an object over and against our existence, but "a stream in which we move and participate, in every act of understanding." Therefore, people do not come to any given thing without some form of preunderstanding established by this historical stream. The tradition in which an interpreter stands establishes "prejudices" that affect how he or she will make interpretations. For Gadamer, these prejudices are not something that hinders our ability to make interpretations, but are both integral to the reality of being, and "are the basis of our being able to understand history at all." Gadamer criticized Enlightenment thinkers for harboring a "prejudice against prejudices".For Gadamer, interpreting a text involves a fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung). Both the text and the interpreter find themselves within a particular historical tradition, or "horizon." Each horizon is expressed through the medium of language, and both text and interpreter belong to and participate in history and language. This "belongingness" to language is the common ground between interpreter and text that makes understanding possible. As an interpreter seeks to understand a text, a common horizon emerges. This fusion of horizons does not mean the interpreter now fully understands some kind of objective meaning, but is "an event in which a world opens itself to him." The result is a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Gadamer further explains the hermeneutical experience as a dialogue. To justify this, he uses Plato's dialogues as a model for how we are to engage with written texts. To be in conversation, one must take seriously "the truth claim of the person with whom one is conversing." Further, each participant in the conversation relates to one another insofar as they belong to the common goal of understanding one another. Ultimately, for Gadamer, the most important dynamic of conversation as a model for the interpretation of a text is "the give-and-take of question and answer." In other words, the interpretation of a given text will change depending on the questions the interpreter asks of the text. The "meaning" emerges not as an object that lies in the text or in the interpreter, but rather an event that results from the interaction of the two. Truth and Method was published twice in English, and the revised edition is now considered authoritative. The German-language edition of Gadamer's Collected Works includes a volume in which Gadamer elaborates his argument and discusses the critical response to the book. Finally, Gadamer's essay on Celan (entitled "Who Am I and Who Are You?") has been considered by many—including Heidegger and Gadamer himself—as a "second volume" or continuation of the argument in Truth and Method. ==== Contributions to communication ethics ==== Gadamer's Truth and Method has become an authoritative work in the communication ethics field, spawning several prominent ethics theories and guidelines. The most profound of these is the formulation of the dialogic coordinates, a standard set of prerequisite communication elements necessary for inciting dialogue. Adhering to Gadamer's theories regarding bias, communicators can better initiate dialogic transaction, allowing biases to merge and promote mutual understanding and learning. === Other works === Gadamer also added philosophical substance to the notion of human health. In The Enigma of Health, Gadamer explored what it means to heal, as a patient and a provider. In this work the practice and art of medicine are thoroughly examined, as is the inevitability of any cure.In addition to his work in hermeneutics, Gadamer is also well known for a long list of publications on Greek philosophy. Indeed, while Truth and Method became central to his later career, much of Gadamer's early life centered on studying Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle specifically. In the Italian introduction to Truth and Method, Gadamer said that his work on Greek philosophy was "the best and most original part" of his career. His book Plato's Dialectical Ethics looks at the Philebus dialogue through the lens of phenomenology and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. == Prizes and awards == 1971: Pour le Mérite and the Reuchlin Prize 1972: Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1979: Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose and Hegel Prize 1986: Karl Jaspers Prize 1990: Great Cross of Merit with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1993: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 12 January 1996: appointed an honorary member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig === Honorary doctorates === 1995: University of Wrocław 1996: University of Leipzig 1999: Philipps-University Marburg == Bibliography == PrimaryTruth and Method. (1st English ed., 1975, trans. by W, Glen-Doepel, ed. by John Cumming and Garret Barden) Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976. Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato. Trans. and ed. by P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980. The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT: 1986. Gadamer on Celan: 'Who Am I and Who Are You?' and Other Essays. By Hans-Georg Gadamer. Trans. and ed. Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997. Heidegger's Ways. Trans. John W. Stanley. New York: SUNY Press, 1994. Literature and Philosophy in Dialogue: Essays in German Literary Theory. Trans. Robert H. Paslick. New York: SUNY Press, 1993. Philosophical Apprenticeships. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985 (Gadamer's memoirs, translated by Robert R. Sullivan.) The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age. Trans. John Gaiger and Richard Walker. Oxford: Polity Press, 1996. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Trans. and ed. by David Linge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Plato's "Parmenides" and Its Influence. Dionysius, Volume VII (1983): 3-16 Reason in the Age of Science. Trans. by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Trans. N. Walker. ed. R. Bernasconi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Praise of Theory. Trans. Chris Dawson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings. Ed. by Richard E. Palmer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007.SecondaryArthos, John. The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Cercel, Larisa (ed.), Übersetzung und Hermeneutik / Traduction et herméneutique, Bucharest, Zeta Books, 2009, ISBN 978-973-199-706-3. Davey, Nicholas. Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics. New York: SUNY Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0791468425. Davey, Nicholas. Unfinished Worlds. Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, and Gadamer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0748686223. Dostal, Robert L. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Drechsler, Wolfgang. Gadamer in Marburg. Marburg: Blaues Schloss, 2013. Code, Lorraine. ed. Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer. University Park: Penn State Press, 2003. Coltman, Robert. The Language of Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Heidegger in Dialogue. Albany: State University Press, 1998. Grondin, Jean. The Philosophy of Gadamer. trans. Kathryn Plant. New York: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002. Grondin, Jean. Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography trans. Joel Weinsheimer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Kögler, Hans-Herbert. The Power of Dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault trans. Paul Hendrickson. MIT Press, 1996. Krajewski, Bruce (ed.), Gadamer's Repercussions: Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Lawn, Chris.Wittgenstein and Gadamer: Towards a Post-Analytic Philosophy of Language, Continuum Press, 2005 Lawn, Chris. Gadamer: A Guide for the Perplexed. (Guides for the perplexed) London: Continuum, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8264-8461-1 Lawn, Chris, and Niall Keane, The Gadamer Dictionary, A&C Black. 2011 Malpas, Jeff, and Santiago Zabala (eds),Consequences of Hermeneutics: Fifty Years after Truth and Method, (Northwestern University Press, 2010). Malpas, Jeff, Ulrich Arnswald and Jens Kertscher (eds.). Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honour of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. Risser, James. Hermeneutics and the Voice of the other: Re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. Sullivan, Robert R., Political Hermeneutics, The Early Thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Univ. Park, Penn State Press,1989. Warnke, Georgia. "Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason". Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. Weinsheimer, Joel. Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of "Truth and Method". New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Wierciński, Andrzej. Gadamer's Hermeneutics and the Art of Conversation Germany, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2011. Wright, Kathleen ed. Festivals of Interpretation: Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer's Work. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990. P. Della Pelle, La dimensione ontologica dell'etica in Hans-Georg Gadamer, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2013. P. Della Pelle, La filosofia di Platone nell'interpretazione di Hans-Georg Gadamer, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2014. == See also == Gadamer–Derrida debate Limit situation == References == === Citations === == Works cited == Cesare, Donatella Di (2007). Gadamer: A Philosophical Portrait. Translated by Keane, Niall. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-25300-763-6. Gonzales, Francisco J. (2006). "Dialectic and Dialogue in the Hermeneutics of Paul Ricouer and H.G. Gadamer". Continental Philosophy Review. 39 (1): 313–345. doi:10.1007/s11007-006-9031-4. S2CID 170800798. Grondin, Jean (2003). Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography. Translated by Weinsheimer, Joel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-30009-841-9. Orozco, Teresa (1995). Platonische Gewalt: Gadamers politische Hermeneutik der NS-Zeit (in German). Hamburg; Berlin: Argument Verlag. ISBN 978-3-88619-240-3. Palmer, Richard (1969). Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-81010-459-4. Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E.; Wojcik, Jan; Haas, Roland (1978). "The Hermeneutics: Outline of the 1819 Lectures". New Literary History. 10 (1): 1–16. doi:10.2307/468302. JSTOR 468302. == External links == Works by or about Hans-Georg Gadamer at Internet Archive https://www.gadamer-gesellschaft.de/en/hans-georg-gadamer-society/ Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jeff Malpas, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900—2002), Lauren Swayne Barthold, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Gadamer's Hermeneutics (introductory lecture by Henk de Berg, 2015) Chronology (in German) Works by Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer: Plato as portratist Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz: "On Hermeneutical Ethics and Education", a paper on the relevance of Gadamer's Hermeneutics for our understanding of music, ethics and education in both.

Jacques Lacan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (UK: , US: , French: [ʒak maʁi emil lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself. Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from the International Psychoanalytic Association. In consequence, Lacan went on to establish new psychoanalytic institutions to promote and develop his work, which he declared to be a "return to Freud", in opposition to prevalent trends in psychology and institutional psychoanalysis collusive of adaptation to social norms. == Biography == === Early life === Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Émilie and Alfred Lacan's three children. His father was a successful soap and oils salesman. His mother was ardently Catholic – his younger brother entered a monastery in 1929. Lacan attended the Collège Stanislas between 1907 and 1918. An interest in philosophy led him to a preoccupation with the work of Spinoza, one outcome of which was his abandonment of religious faith for atheism. There were tensions in the family around this issue, and he regretted not persuading his brother to take a different path, but by 1924 his parents had moved to Boulogne and he was living in rooms in Montmartre.: 104 During the early 1920s, Lacan actively engaged with the Parisian literary and artistic avant-garde. Having met James Joyce, he was present at the Parisian bookshop where the first readings of passages from Ulysses in French and English took place, shortly before it was published in 1922. He also had meetings with Charles Maurras, whom he admired as a literary stylist, and he occasionally attended meetings of Action Française (of which Maurras was a leading ideologue),: 104  of which he would later be highly critical. In 1920, after being rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too thin, Lacan entered medical school. Between 1927 and 1931, after completing his studies at the faculty of medicine of the University of Paris, he specialised in psychiatry under the direction of Henri Claude at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, the major psychiatric hospital serving central Paris, at the Infirmary for the Insane of the Police Prefecture under Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault and also at the Hospital Henri-Rousselle.: 211  === 1930s === Lacan was involved with the Parisian surrealist movement of the 1930s, associating with André Breton, Georges Bataille, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. For a time, he served as Picasso's personal therapist. He attended the mouvement Psyché that Maryse Choisy founded and published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure. "[Lacan's] interest in surrealism predated his interest in psychoanalysis," former Lacanian analyst and biographer Dylan Evans explains, speculating that "perhaps Lacan never really abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its neo-Romantic view of madness as 'convulsive beauty', its celebration of irrationality." Translator and historian David Macey writes that "the importance of surrealism can hardly be over-stated... to the young Lacan... [who] also shared the surrealists' taste for scandal and provocation, and viewed provocation as an important element in psycho-analysis itself".In 1931, after a second year at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, Lacan was awarded his Diplôme de médecin légiste (a medical examiner's qualification) and became a licensed forensic psychiatrist. The following year he was awarded his Diplôme d'État de docteur en médecine (roughly equivalent to an M.D. degree) for his thesis "On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality" ("De la Psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité".: 21  Its publication had little immediate impact on French psychoanalysis but it did meet with acclaim amongst Lacan's circle of surrealist writers and artists. In their only recorded instance of direct communication, Lacan sent a copy of his thesis to Sigmund Freud who acknowledged its receipt with a postcard.: 212 Lacan's thesis was based on observations of several patients with a primary focus on one female patient whom he called Aimée. Its exhaustive reconstruction of her family history and social relations, on which he based his analysis of her paranoid state of mind, demonstrated his dissatisfaction with traditional psychiatry and the growing influence of Freud on his ideas. Also in 1932, Lacan published a translation of Freud's 1922 text, "Über einige neurotische Mechanismen bei Eifersucht, Paranoia und Homosexualität" ("Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality") as "De quelques mécanismes névrotiques dans la jalousie, la paranoïa et l'homosexualité" in the Revue française de psychanalyse. In Autumn 1932, Lacan began his training analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein, which was to last until 1938.In 1934 Lacan became a candidate member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP). He began his private psychoanalytic practice in 1936 whilst still seeing patients at the Sainte-Anne Hospital,: 129  and the same year presented his first analytic report at the Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in Marienbad on the "Mirror Phase". The congress chairman, Ernest Jones, terminated the lecture before its conclusion, since he was unwilling to extend Lacan's stated presentation time. Insulted, Lacan left the congress to witness the Berlin Olympic Games. No copy of the original lecture remains, Lacan having decided not to hand in his text for publication in the conference proceedings.Lacan's attendance at Kojève's lectures on Hegel, given between 1933 and 1939, and which focused on the Phenomenology and the master-slave dialectic in particular, was formative for his subsequent work,: 96–98  initially in his formulation of his theory of the mirror phase, for which he was also indebted to the experimental work on child development of Henri Wallon.: 143 It was Wallon who commissioned from Lacan the last major text of his pre-war period, a contribution to the 1938 Encyclopédie française entitled "La Famille" (reprinted in 1984 as "Les Complexes familiaux dans la formation de l'individu", Paris: Navarin). 1938 was also the year of Lacan's accession to full membership (membre titulaire) of the SPP, notwithstanding considerable opposition from many of its senior members who were unimpressed by his recasting of Freudian theory in philosophical terms.: 122 Lacan married Marie-Louise Blondin in January 1934 and in January 1937 they had the first of their three children, a daughter named Caroline. A son, Thibaut, was born in August 1939 and a daughter, Sybille, in November 1940.: 129  === 1940s === The SPP was disbanded due to Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1940. Lacan was called up for military service which he undertook in periods of duty at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris, whilst at the same time continuing his private psychoanalytic practice. In 1942 he moved into apartments at 5 rue de Lille, which he would occupy until his death. During the war he did not publish any work, turning instead to a study of Chinese for which he obtained a degree from the École spéciale des langues orientales.: 147 In a relationship they formed before the war, Sylvia Bataille (née Maklès), the estranged wife of his friend Georges Bataille, became Lacan's mistress and, in 1953, his second wife. During the war their relationship was complicated by the threat of deportation for Sylvia, who was Jewish, since this required her to live in the unoccupied territories. Lacan intervened personally with the authorities to obtain papers detailing her family origins, which he destroyed. In 1941 they had a child, Judith. She kept the name Bataille because Lacan wished to delay the announcement of his planned separation and divorce until after the war.: 147 After the war, the SPP recommenced their meetings. In 1945 Lacan visited England for a five-week study trip, where he met the British analysts Ernest Jones, Wilfred Bion and John Rickman. Bion's analytic work with groups influenced Lacan, contributing to his own subsequent emphasis on study groups as a structure within which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis. He published a report of his visit as 'La Psychiatrique anglaise et la guerre' (Evolution psychiatrique 1, 1947, pp. 293–318). In 1949, Lacan presented a new paper on the mirror stage, 'The Mirror-Stage, as Formative of the I, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience', to the sixteenth IPA congress in Zurich. The same year he set out in the Doctrine de la Commission de l'Enseignement, produced for the Training Commission of the SPP, the protocols for the training of candidates.: 220–221  === 1950s === With the purchase in 1951 of a country mansion at Guitrancourt, Lacan established a base for weekend retreats for work, leisure—including extravagant social occasions—and for the accommodation of his vast library. His art collection included Courbet's L'Origine du monde, which he had concealed in his study by a removable wooden screen on which an abstract representation of the Courbet by the artist André Masson was portrayed.: 294 In 1951, Lacan started to hold a private weekly seminar in Paris in which he inaugurated what he described as "a return to Freud," whose doctrines were to be re-articulated through a reading of Saussure's linguistics and Levi-Strauss's structuralist anthropology. Becoming public in 1953, Lacan's 27-year-long seminar was highly influential in Parisian cultural life, as well as in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.: 299 In January 1953 Lacan was elected president of the SPP. When, at a meeting the following June, a formal motion was passed against him criticising his abandonment of the standard analytic training session for the variable-length session, he immediately resigned his presidency. He and a number of colleagues then resigned from the SPP to form the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP).: 227  One consequence of this was to eventually deprive the new group of membership of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Encouraged by the reception of "the return to Freud" and of his report "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," Lacan began to re-read Freud's works in relation to contemporary philosophy, linguistics, ethnology, biology, and topology. From 1953 to 1964 at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, he held his Seminars and presented case histories of patients. During this period he wrote the texts that are found in the collection Écrits, which was first published in 1966. In his seventh seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959–60), which according to Lewis A. Kirshner "arguably represents the most far-reaching attempt to derive a comprehensive ethical position from psychoanalysis," Lacan defined the ethical foundations of psychoanalysis and presented his "ethics for our time"—one that would, in the words of Freud, prove to be equal to the tragedy of modern man and to the "discontent of civilization." At the roots of the ethics is desire: the only promise of analysis is austere, it is the entrance-into-the-I (in French a play on words between l'entrée en je and l'entrée en jeu). "I must come to the place where the id was," where the analysand discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. The end of psychoanalysis entails "the purification of desire." He defended three assertions: that psychoanalysis must have a scientific status; that Freudian ideas have radically changed the concepts of subject, of knowledge, and of desire; and that the analytic field is the only place from which it is possible to question the insufficiencies of science and philosophy. === 1960s === Starting in 1962, a complex negotiation took place to determine the status of the SFP within the IPA. Lacan's practice (with its controversial indeterminate-length sessions) and his critical stance towards psychoanalytic orthodoxy led, in August 1963, to the IPA setting the condition that registration of the SFP was dependent upon the removal of Lacan from the list of SFP analysts. With the SFP's decision to honour this request in November 1963, Lacan had effectively been stripped of the right to conduct training analyses and thus was constrained to form his own institution in order to accommodate the many candidates who desired to continue their analyses with him. This he did, on 21 June 1964, in the "Founding Act" of what became known as the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP), taking "many representatives of the third generation with him: among them were Maud and Octave Mannoni, Serge Leclaire ... and Jean Clavreul".: 293 With the support of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser, Lacan was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He started with a seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis in January 1964 in the Dussane room at the École Normale Supérieure. Lacan began to set forth his own approach to psychoanalysis to an audience of colleagues that had joined him from the SFP. His lectures also attracted many of the École Normale's students. He divided the École Freudienne de Paris into three sections: the section of pure psychoanalysis (training and elaboration of the theory, where members who have been analyzed but have not become analysts can participate); the section for applied psychoanalysis (therapeutic and clinical, physicians who either have not started or have not yet completed analysis are welcome); and the section for taking inventory of the Freudian field (concerning the critique of psychoanalytic literature and the analysis of the theoretical relations with related or affiliated sciences). In 1967 he invented the procedure of the Pass, which was added to the statutes after being voted in by the members of the EFP the following year. 1966 saw the publication of Lacan's collected writings, the Écrits, compiled with an index of concepts by Jacques-Alain Miller. Printed by the prestigious publishing house Éditions du Seuil, the Écrits did much to establish Lacan's reputation to a wider public. The success of the publication led to a subsequent two-volume edition in 1969. By the 1960s, Lacan was associated, at least in the public mind, with the far left in France. In May 1968, Lacan voiced his sympathy for the student protests and as a corollary his followers set up a Department of Psychology at the University of Vincennes (Paris VIII). However, Lacan's unequivocal comments in 1971 on revolutionary ideals in politics draw a sharp line between the actions of some of his followers and his own style of "revolt."In 1969, Lacan moved his public seminars to the Faculté de Droit (Panthéon), where he continued to deliver his expositions of analytic theory and practice until the dissolution of his school in 1980. === 1970s === Throughout the final decade of his life, Lacan continued his widely followed seminars. During this period, he developed his concepts of masculine and feminine jouissance and placed an increased emphasis on the concept of "the Real" as a point of impossible contradiction in the "symbolic order". Lacan continued to draw widely on various disciplines, working closely on classical Chinese literature with François Cheng and on the life and work of James Joyce with Jacques Aubert. The growing success of the Écrits, which was translated (in abridged form) into German and English, led to invitations to lecture in Italy, Japan and the United States. He gave lectures in 1975 at Yale, Columbia and MIT. === Last years === Lacan's failing health made it difficult for him to meet the demands of the year-long Seminars he had been delivering since the fifties, but his teaching continued into the first year of the eighties. After dissolving his School, the EFP, in January 1980, Lacan travelled to Caracas to found the Freudian Field Institute on 12 July.The Overture to the Caracas Encounter was to be Lacan's final public address. His last texts from the spring of 1981 are brief institutional documents pertaining to the newly formed Freudian Field Institute. Lacan died on 9 September 1981. == Major concepts == === Return to Freud === Lacan's "return to Freud" emphasizes a renewed attention to the original texts of Freud, and included a radical critique of ego psychology, whereas "Lacan's quarrel with Object Relations psychoanalysis": 25  was a more muted affair. Here he attempted "to restore to the notion of the Object Relation... the capital of experience that legitimately belongs to it", building upon what he termed "the hesitant, but controlled work of Melanie Klein... Through her we know the function of the imaginary primordial enclosure formed by the imago of the mother's body", as well as upon "the notion of the transitional object, introduced by D. W. Winnicott... a key-point for the explanation of the genesis of fetishism". Nevertheless, "Lacan systematically questioned those psychoanalytic developments from the 1930s to the 1970s, which were increasingly and almost exclusively focused on the child's early relations with the mother... the pre-Oedipal or Kleinian mother"; and Lacan's rereading of Freud—"characteristically, Lacan insists that his return to Freud supplies the only valid model"—formed a basic conceptual starting-point in that oppositional strategy. Lacan thought that Freud's ideas of "slips of the tongue", jokes, and the interpretation of dreams all emphasized the agency of language in subjects' own constitution of themselves. In "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," he proposes that "the psychoanalytic experience discovers in the unconscious the whole structure of language". The unconscious is not a primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, he explained, but rather a formation as complex and structurally sophisticated as consciousness itself. Lacan is associated with the idea that "the unconscious is structured like a language", but the first time this sentence occurs in his work, he clarifies that he means that both the unconscious and language are structured, not that they share a single structure; and that the structure of language is such that the subject cannot necessarily be equated with the speaker. This results in the self being denied any point of reference to which to be "restored" following trauma or a crisis of identity. André Green objected that "when you read Freud, it is obvious that this proposition doesn't work for a minute. Freud very clearly opposes the unconscious (which he says is constituted by thing-presentations and nothing else) to the pre-conscious. What is related to language can only belong to the pre-conscious".: 5n  Freud certainly contrasted "the presentation of the word and the presentation of the thing... the unconscious presentation is the presentation of the thing alone" in his metapsychology. Dylan Evans, however, in his Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, "... takes issue with those who, like André Green, question the linguistic aspect of the unconscious, emphasizing Lacan's distinction between das Ding and die Sache in Freud's account of thing-presentation".: 8n  Green's criticism of Lacan also included accusations of intellectual dishonesty, he said, "[He] cheated everybody... the return to Freud was an excuse, it just meant going to Lacan." === Mirror stage === Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalysis was the mirror stage, which he described as "formative of the function of the 'I' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience." By the early 1950s, he came to regard the mirror stage as more than a moment in the life of the infant; instead, it formed part of the permanent structure of subjectivity. In the "imaginary order", the subject's own image permanently catches and captivates the subject. Lacan explains that "the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body-image".As this concept developed further, the stress fell less on its historical value and more on its structural value. In his fourth seminar, "La relation d'objet", Lacan states that "the mirror stage is far from a mere phenomenon which occurs in the development of the child. It illustrates the conflictual nature of the dual relationship. " The mirror stage describes the formation of the ego via the process of objectification, the ego being the result of a conflict between one's perceived visual appearance and one's emotional experience. This identification is what Lacan called "alienation". At six months, the baby still lacks physical co-ordination. The child is able to recognize itself in a mirror prior to the attainment of control over their bodily movements. The child sees its image as a whole and the synthesis of this image produces a sense of contrast with the lack of co-ordination of the body, which is perceived as a fragmented body. The child experiences this contrast initially as a rivalry with its image, because the wholeness of the image threatens the child with fragmentation—thus the mirror stage gives rise to an aggressive tension between the subject and the image. To resolve this aggressive tension, the child identifies with the image: this primary identification with the counterpart forms the ego. Lacan understood this moment of identification as a moment of jubilation, since it leads to an imaginary sense of mastery; yet when the child compares its own precarious sense of mastery with the omnipotence of the mother, a depressive reaction may accompany the jubilation.Lacan calls the specular image "orthopaedic", since it leads the child to anticipate the overcoming of its "real specific prematurity of birth". The vision of the body as integrated and contained, in opposition to the child's actual experience of motor incapacity and the sense of his or her body as fragmented, induces a movement from "insufficiency to anticipation". In other words, the mirror image initiates and then aids, like a crutch, the process of the formation of an integrated sense of self. In the mirror stage a "misunderstanding" (méconnaissance) constitutes the ego—the "me" (moi) becomes alienated from itself through the introduction of an imaginary dimension to the subject. The mirror stage also has a significant symbolic dimension, due to the presence of the figure of the adult who carries the infant. Having jubilantly assumed the image as their own, the child turns their head towards this adult, who represents the big other, as if to call on the adult to ratify this image. === Other === While Freud uses the term "other", referring to der Andere (the other person) and das Andere (otherness), Lacan (influenced by the seminar of Alexandre Kojève) theorizes alterity in a manner more closely resembling Hegel's philosophy. Lacan often used an algebraic symbology for his concepts: the big other (l'Autre) is designated A, and the little other (l'autre) is designated a. He asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: "the analyst must be imbued with the difference between A and a, so he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not the other".: 135  Dylan Evans explains that: The little other is the other who is not really other, but a reflection and projection of the ego. Evans adds that for this reason the symbol a can represent both the little other and the ego in the schema L. It is simultaneously the counterpart and the specular image. The little other is thus entirely inscribed in the imaginary order. The big other designates radical alterity, an other-ness which transcends the illusory otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan equates this radical alterity with language and the law, and hence the big other is inscribed in the order of the symbolic. Indeed, the big other is the symbolic insofar as it is particularized for each subject. The other is thus both another subject, in its radical alterity and unassimilable uniqueness, and also the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject."For Lacan "the Other must first of all be considered a locus in which speech is constituted," so that the other as another subject is secondary to the other as symbolic order. We can speak of the other as a subject in a secondary sense only when a subject occupies this position and thereby embodies the other for another subject.In arguing that speech originates in neither the ego nor in the subject but rather in the other, Lacan stresses that speech and language are beyond the subject's conscious control. They come from another place, outside of consciousness—"the unconscious is the discourse of the Other". When conceiving the other as a place, Lacan refers to Freud's concept of psychical locality, in which the unconscious is described as "the other scene". "It is the mother who first occupies the position of the big Other for the child", Dylan Evans explains, "it is she who receives the child's primitive cries and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message". The castration complex is formed when the child discovers that this other is not complete because there is a "lack (manque)" in the other. This means that there is always a signifier missing from the trove of signifiers constituted by the other. Lacan illustrates this incomplete other graphically by striking a bar through the symbol A; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete other is the "barred other". === Phallus === Feminist thinkers have both utilised and criticised Lacan's concepts of castration and the phallus. Feminists such as Avital Ronell, Jane Gallop, and Elizabeth Grosz, have interpreted Lacan's work as opening up new possibilities for feminist theory. Some feminists have argued that Lacan's phallocentric analysis provides a useful means of understanding gender biases and imposed roles, while others, most notably Luce Irigaray, accuse Lacan of maintaining the sexist tradition in psychoanalysis. For Irigaray, the phallus does not define a single axis of gender by its presence or absence; instead, gender has two positive poles. Like Irigaray, French philosopher Jacques Derrida, in criticizing Lacan's concept of castration, discusses the phallus in a chiasmus with the hymen, as both one and other. === Three orders (plus one) === Lacan considered psychic functions to occur within a universal matrix. The Real, Imaginary and Symbolic are properties of this matrix, which make up part of every psychic function. This is not analogous to Freud's concept of id, ego and superego since in Freud's model certain functions take place within components of the psyche while Lacan thought that all three orders were part of every function. Lacan refined the concept of the orders over decades, resulting in inconsistencies in his writings. He eventually added a fourth component, the sinthome.: 77  ==== The Imaginary ==== The Imaginary is the field of images and imagination. The main illusions of this order are synthesis, autonomy, duality, and resemblance. Lacan thought that the relationship created within the mirror stage between the ego and the reflected image means that the ego and the Imaginary order itself are places of radical alienation: "alienation is constitutive of the Imaginary order". This relationship is also narcissistic. In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan argues that the Symbolic order structures the visual field of the Imaginary, which means that it involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the foundation of the symbolic, the signified and signification are part of the Imaginary order. Language has symbolic and Imaginary connotations—in its Imaginary aspect, language is the "wall of language" that inverts and distorts the discourse of the Other. The Imaginary, however, is rooted in the subject's relationship with his or her own body (the image of the body). In Fetishism: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real, Lacan argues that in the sexual plane the Imaginary appears as sexual display and courtship love. Insofar as identification with the analyst is the objective of analysis, Lacan accused major psychoanalytic schools of reducing the practice of psychoanalysis to the Imaginary order. Instead, Lacan proposes the use of the symbolic to dislodge the disabling fixations of the Imaginary—the analyst transforms the images into words. "The use of the Symbolic", he argued, "is the only way for the analytic process to cross the plane of identification." ==== The Symbolic ==== In his Seminar IV, "La relation d'objet", Lacan argues that the concepts of "Law" and "Structure" are unthinkable without language—thus the Symbolic is a linguistic dimension. This order is not equivalent to language, however, since language involves the Imaginary and the Real as well. The dimension proper to language in the Symbolic is that of the signifier—that is, a dimension in which elements have no positive existence, but which are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences. The Symbolic is also the field of radical alterity—that is, the Other; the unconscious is the discourse of this Other. It is the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the Oedipus complex. The Symbolic is the domain of culture as opposed to the Imaginary order of nature. As important elements in the Symbolic, the concepts of death and lack (manque) connive to make of the pleasure principle the regulator of the distance from the Thing (in German, "das Ding an sich") and the death drive that goes "beyond the pleasure principle by means of repetition"—"the death drive is only a mask of the Symbolic order".By working in the Symbolic order, the analyst is able to produce changes in the subjective position of the person undergoing psychoanalysis. These changes will produce imaginary effects because the Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic. ==== The Real ==== Lacan's concept of the Real dates back to 1936 and his doctoral thesis on psychosis. It was a term that was popular at the time, particularly with Émile Meyerson, who referred to it as "an ontological absolute, a true being-in-itself".: 162  Lacan returned to the theme of the Real in 1953 and continued to develop it until his death. The Real, for Lacan, is not synonymous with reality. Not only opposed to the Imaginary, the Real is also exterior to the Symbolic. Unlike the latter, which is constituted in terms of oppositions (i.e. presence/absence), "there is no absence in the Real". Whereas the Symbolic opposition "presence/absence" implies the possibility that something may be missing from the Symbolic, "the Real is always in its place". If the Symbolic is a set of differentiated elements (signifiers), the Real in itself is undifferentiated—it bears no fissure. The Symbolic introduces "a cut in the real" in the process of signification: "it is the world of words that creates the world of things—things originally confused in the 'here and now' of the all in the process of coming into being". The Real is that which is outside language and that resists symbolization absolutely. In Seminar XI Lacan defines the Real as "the impossible" because it is impossible to imagine, impossible to integrate into the Symbolic, and impossible to attain. It is this resistance to symbolization that lends the Real its traumatic quality. Finally, the Real is the object of anxiety, insofar as it lacks any possible mediation and is "the essential object which is not an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence." ==== The Sinthome ==== The term "sinthome" (French: [sɛ̃tom]) was introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar Le sinthome (1975–76). According to Lacan, sinthome is the Latin way (1495 Rabelais, IV,63) of spelling the Greek origin of the French word symptôme, meaning symptom. The seminar is a continuing elaboration of his topology, extending the previous seminar's focus (RSI) on the Borromean Knot and an exploration of the writings of James Joyce. Lacan redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of his topology of the subject. In "Psychoanalysis and its Teachings" (Écrits) Lacan views the symptom as inscribed in a writing process, not as ciphered message which was the traditional notion. In his seminar "L'angoisse" (1962–63) he states that the symptom does not call for interpretation: in itself it is not a call to the Other but a pure jouissance addressed to no-one. This is a shift from the linguistic definition of the symptom—as a signifier—to his assertion that "the symptom can only be defined as the way in which each subject enjoys (jouit) the unconscious in so far as the unconscious determines the subject". He goes from conceiving the symptom as a message which can be deciphered by reference to the unconscious structured like a language to seeing it as the trace of the particular modality of the subject's jouissance. === Desire === Lacan's concept of desire is related to Hegel's Begierde, a term that implies a continuous force, and therefore somehow differs from Freud's concept of Wunsch. Lacan's desire refers always to unconscious desire because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of psychoanalysis. The aim of psychoanalysis is to lead the analysand to recognize his/her desire and by doing so to uncover the truth about his/her desire. However this is possible only if desire is articulated in speech: "It is only once it is formulated, named in the presence of the other, that desire appears in the full sense of the term." And again in The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: "what is important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring desire into existence. The subject should come to recognize and to name her/his desire. But it isn't a question of recognizing something that could be entirely given. In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world." The truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, although discourse is never able to articulate the entire truth about desire; whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover or surplus.Lacan distinguishes desire from need and from demand. Need is a biological instinct where the subject depends on the Other to satisfy its own needs: in order to get the Other's help, "need" must be articulated in "demand". But the presence of the Other not only ensures the satisfaction of the "need", it also represents the Other's love. Consequently, "demand" acquires a double function: on the one hand, it articulates "need", and on the other, acts as a "demand for love". Even after the "need" articulated in demand is satisfied, the "demand for love" remains unsatisfied since the Other cannot provide the unconditional love that the subject seeks. "Desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second." Desire is a surplus, a leftover, produced by the articulation of need in demand: "desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need". Unlike need, which can be satisfied, desire can never be satisfied: it is constant in its pressure and eternal. The attainment of desire does not consist in being fulfilled but in its reproduction as such. As Slavoj Žižek puts it, "desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire".Lacan also distinguishes between desire and the drives: desire is one and drives are many. The drives are the partial manifestations of a single force called desire. Lacan's concept of "objet petit a" is the object of desire, although this object is not that towards which desire tends, but rather the cause of desire. Desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a lack (manque). In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis Lacan argues that "man's desire is the desire of the Other." This entails the following: Desire is the desire of the Other's desire, meaning that desire is the object of another's desire and that desire is also desire for recognition. Here Lacan follows Alexandre Kojève, who follows Hegel: for Kojève the subject must risk his own life if he wants to achieve the desired prestige. This desire to be the object of another's desire is best exemplified in the Oedipus complex, when the subject desires to be the phallus of the mother. In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious", Lacan contends that the subject desires from the point of view of another whereby the object of someone's desire is an object desired by another one: what makes the object desirable is that it is precisely desired by someone else. Again Lacan follows Kojève. who follows Hegel. This aspect of desire is present in hysteria, for the hysteric is someone who converts another's desire into his/her own (see Sigmund Freud's "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" in SE VII, where Dora desires Frau K because she identifies with Herr K). What matters then in the analysis of a hysteric is not to find out the object of her desire but to discover the subject with whom she identifies. Désir de l'Autre, which is translated as "desire for the Other" (though it could also be "desire of the Other"). The fundamental desire is the incestuous desire for the mother, the primordial Other. Desire is "the desire for something else", since it is impossible to desire what one already has. The object of desire is continually deferred, which is why desire is a metonymy. Desire appears in the field of the Other—that is, in the unconscious.Last but not least for Lacan, the first person who occupies the place of the Other is the mother and at first the child is at her mercy. Only when the father articulates desire with the Law by castrating the mother is the subject liberated from desire for the mother. === Drive === Lacan maintains Freud's distinction between drive (Trieb) and instinct (Instinkt). Drives differ from biological needs because they can never be satisfied and do not aim at an object but rather circle perpetually around it. He argues that the purpose of the drive (Triebziel) is not to reach a goal but to follow its aim, meaning "the way itself" instead of "the final destination"—that is, to circle around the object. The purpose of the drive is to return to its circular path and the true source of jouissance is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit. Lacan posits drives as both cultural and symbolic constructs: to him, "the drive is not a given, something archaic, primordial". He incorporates the four elements of drives as defined by Freud (pressure, end, object and source) to his theory of the drive's circuit: the drive originates in the erogenous zone, circles round the object, and returns to the erogenous zone. Three grammatical voices structure this circuit: the active voice (to see) the reflexive voice (to see oneself) the passive voice (to be seen)The active and reflexive voices are autoerotic—they lack a subject. It is only when the drive completes its circuit with the passive voice that a new subject appears, implying that, prior to that instance, there was no subject. Despite being the "passive" voice, the drive is essentially active: "to make oneself be seen" rather than "to be seen". The circuit of the drive is the only way for the subject to transgress the pleasure principle. To Freud sexuality is composed of partial drives (i.e. the oral or the anal drives) each specified by a different erotogenic zone. At first these partial drives function independently (i.e. the polymorphous perversity of children), it is only in puberty that they become organized under the aegis of the genital organs. Lacan accepts the partial nature of drives, but (1) he rejects the notion that partial drives can ever attain any complete organization—the primacy of the genital zone, if achieved, is always precarious; and (2) he argues that drives are partial in that they represent sexuality only partially and not in the sense that they are a part of the whole. Drives do not represent the reproductive function of sexuality but only the dimension of jouissance.Lacan identifies four partial drives: the oral drive (the erogenous zones are the lips (the partial object the breast—the verb is "to suck"), the anal drive (the anus and the faeces, "to shit"), the scopic drive (the eyes and the gaze, "to see") and the invocatory drive (the ears and the voice, "to hear"). The first two drives relate to demand and the last two to desire. The notion of dualism is maintained throughout Freud's various reformulations of the drive-theory. From the initial opposition between sexual drives and ego-drives (self-preservation) to the final opposition between the life drives (Lebenstriebe) and the death drives (Todestriebe). Lacan retains Freud's dualism, but in terms of an opposition between the symbolic and the imaginary and not referred to different kinds of drives. For Lacan all drives are sexual drives, and every drive is a death drive (pulsion de mort) since every drive is excessive, repetitive and destructive.The drives are closely related to desire, since both originate in the field of the subject. But they are not to be confused: drives are the partial aspects in which desire is realized—desire is one and undivided, whereas the drives are its partial manifestations. A drive is a demand that is not caught up in the dialectical mediation of desire; drive is a "mechanical" insistence that is not ensnared in demand's dialectical mediation. === Other concepts === == Lacan on error and knowledge == Building on Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Lacan long argued that "every unsuccessful act is a successful, not to say 'well-turned', discourse", highlighting as well "sudden transformations of errors into truths, which seemed to be due to nothing more than perseverance". In a late seminar, he generalised more fully the psychoanalytic discovery of "truth—arising from misunderstanding", so as to maintain that "the subject is naturally erring... discourse structures alone give him his moorings and reference points, signs identify and orient him; if he neglects, forgets, or loses them, he is condemned to err anew".Because of "the alienation to which speaking beings are subjected due to their being in language", to survive "one must let oneself be taken in by signs and become the dupe of a discourse... [of] fictions organized in to a discourse". For Lacan, with "masculine knowledge irredeemably an erring", the individual "must thus allow himself to be fooled by these signs to have a chance of getting his bearings amidst them; he must place and maintain himself in the wake of a discourse... become the dupe of a discourse... les non-dupes errent".Lacan comes close here to one of the points where "very occasionally he sounds like Thomas Kuhn (whom he never mentions)", with Lacan's "discourse" resembling Kuhn's "paradigm" seen as "the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community". == Clinical contributions == === Variable-length session === The "variable-length psychoanalytic session" was one of Lacan's crucial clinical innovations, and a key element in his conflicts with the IPA, to whom his "innovation of reducing the fifty-minute analytic hour to a Delphic seven or eight minutes (or sometimes even to a single oracular parole murmured in the waiting-room)" was unacceptable. Lacan's variable-length sessions lasted anywhere from a few minutes (or even, if deemed appropriate by the analyst, a few seconds) to several hours. This practice replaced the classical Freudian "fifty minute hour". With respect to what he called "the cutting up of the 'timing'", Lacan asked the question: "Why make an intervention impossible at this point, which is consequently privileged in this way?" By allowing the analyst's intervention on timing, the variable-length session removed the patient's—or, technically, "the analysand's"—former certainty as to the length of time that they would be on the couch.: 18  When Lacan adopted the practice, "the psychoanalytic establishment were scandalized": 17 —and, given that "between 1979 and 1980 he saw an average of ten patients an hour", it is perhaps not hard to see why: "psychoanalysis reduced to zero",: 397  if no less lucrative. At the time of his original innovation, Lacan described the issue as concerning "the systematic use of shorter sessions in certain analyses, and in particular in training analyses"; and in practice it was certainly a shortening of the session around the so-called "critical moment" which took place, so that critics wrote that 'everyone is well aware what is meant by the deceptive phrase "variable length"... sessions systematically reduced to just a few minutes'. Irrespective of the theoretical merits of breaking up patients' expectations, it was clear that "the Lacanian analyst never wants to 'shake up' the routine by keeping them for more rather than less time". Lacan's shorter sessions enabled him to take many more clients than therapists using orthodox Freudian methods, and this growth continued as Lacan's students and followers adopted the same practice.Accepting the importance of "the critical moment when insight arises", object relations theory would nonetheless quietly suggest that "if the analyst does not provide the patient with space in which nothing needs to happen there is no space in which something can happen". Julia Kristeva, if in very different language, would concur that "Lacan, alert to the scandal of the timeless intrinsic to the analytic experience, was mistaken in wanting to ritualize it as a technique of scansion (short sessions)". == Writings and writing style == According to Jean-Michel Rabaté, Lacan in the mid-1950s classed the seminars as commentaries on Freud rather than presentations of his own doctrine (like the writings), while Lacan by 1971 placed the most value on his teaching and "the interactive space of his seminar" (in contrast to Sigmund Freud). Rabaté also argued that from 1964 onward, the seminars include original ideas. However, Rabaté also wrote that the seminars are "more problematic" because of the importance of the interactive performances, and because they were partly edited and rewritten.Most of Lacan's psychoanalytic writings from the 1940s through to the early 1960s were compiled with an index of concepts by Jacques-Alain Miller in the 1966 collection, titled simply Écrits. Published in French by Éditions du Seuil, they were later issued as a two-volume set (1970/1) with a new "Preface". A selection of the writings (chosen by Lacan himself) were translated by Alan Sheridan and published by Tavistock Press in 1977. The full 35-text volume appeared for the first time in English in Bruce Fink's translation published by Norton & Co. (2006). The Écrits were included on the list of 100 most influential books of the 20th century compiled and polled by the broadsheet Le Monde. Lacan's writings from the late sixties and seventies (thus subsequent to the 1966 collection) were collected posthumously, along with some early texts from the nineteen thirties, in the Éditions du Seuil volume Autres écrits (2001). Although most of the texts in Écrits and Autres écrits are closely related to Lacan's lectures or lessons from his Seminar, more often than not the style is denser than Lacan's oral delivery, and a clear distinction between the writings and the transcriptions of the oral teaching is evident to the reader. An often neglected aspect of Lacan's oral and writing style is his influence from his colleague and personal friend Henry Corbin, whom introduced Lacan to the thought of Ibn Arabi. Both Lacan and Ibn Arabi share nearly identical ideas and writing styles according to the researcher Abdesselem Rechak.Jacques-Alain Miller is the sole editor of Lacan's seminars, which contain the majority of his life's work. "There has been considerable controversy over the accuracy or otherwise of the transcription and editing", as well as over "Miller's refusal to allow any critical or annotated edition to be published". Despite Lacan's status as a major figure in the history of psychoanalysis, some of his seminars remain unpublished. Since 1984, Miller has been regularly conducting a series of lectures, "L'orientation lacanienne." Miller's teachings have been published in the US by the journal Lacanian Ink. Lacan's writing is notoriously difficult, due in part to the repeated Hegelian/Kojèvean allusions, wide theoretical divergences from other psychoanalytic and philosophical theory, and an obscure prose style. For some, "the impenetrability of Lacan's prose... [is] too often regarded as profundity precisely because it cannot be understood". Arguably at least, "the imitation of his style by other 'Lacanian' commentators" has resulted in "an obscurantist antisystematic tradition in Lacanian literature".Although Lacan is a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, in the English-speaking world his influence on clinical psychology has been far less and his ideas are best known in the arts and humanities. However, there are Lacanian psychoanalytic societies in both North America and the United Kingdom that carry on his work.One example of Lacan's work being practiced in the United States is found in the works of Annie G. Rogers (A Shining Affliction; The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma), which credit Lacanian theory for many therapeutic insights in successfully treating sexually abused young women. Lacan's work has also reached Quebec, where The Interdisciplinary Freudian Group for Research and Clinical and Cultural Interventions (GIFRIC) claims that it has used a modified form of Lacanian psychoanalysis in successfully treating psychosis in many of its patients, a task once thought to be unsuited for psychoanalysis, even by psychoanalysts themselves. == Legacy and criticism == In his introduction to the 1994 Penguin edition of Lacan's The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, translator and historian David Macey describes Lacan as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". His ideas had a significant impact on post-structuralism, critical theory, 20th-century French philosophy, film theory, and clinical psychoanalysis. In 2003, Rabaté described "The Freudian Thing" (1956) as one of his "most important and programmatic essays".In Fashionable Nonsense (1997), Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont criticize Lacan's use of terms from mathematical fields such as topology, accusing him of "superficial erudition" and of abusing scientific concepts that he does not understand, accusing him of producing statements that are not even wrong.: 21  However, they note that they do not want to enter into the debate over the purely psychoanalytic part of Lacan's work.: 17 Other critics have dismissed Lacan's work wholesale. François Roustang called it an "incoherent system of pseudo-scientific gibberish", and quoted linguist Noam Chomsky's opinion that Lacan was an "amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan". The former Lacanian analyst Dylan Evans (who published a dictionary of Lacanian terms in 1996) eventually dismissed Lacanianism as lacking a sound scientific basis and as harming rather than helping patients, and has criticized Lacan's followers for treating his writings as "holy writ". Richard Webster has decried what he sees as Lacan's obscurity, arrogance, and the resultant "Cult of Lacan". Others have been more forceful still, describing him as "The Shrink from Hell" and listing the many associates—from lovers and family to colleagues, patients, and editors—left damaged in his wake. Roger Scruton included Lacan in his book Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, and named him as the only 'fool' included in the book—his other targets merely being misguided or frauds.His type of charismatic authority has been linked to the many conflicts among his followers and in the analytic schools he was involved with. His intellectual style has also come in for much criticism. Eclectic in his use of sources, Lacan has been seen as concealing his own thought behind the apparent explication of that of others.: 46  Thus his "return to Freud" was called by Malcolm Bowie "a complete pattern of dissenting assent to the ideas of Freud . . . Lacan's argument is conducted on Freud's behalf and, at the same time, against him". Bowie has also suggested that Lacan suffered from both a love of system and a deep-seated opposition to all forms of system.Many feminist thinkers have criticised Lacan's thought. Philosopher and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray accuses Lacan of perpetuating phallocentric mastery in philosophical and psychoanalytic discourse. Others have echoed this accusation, seeing Lacan as trapped in the very phallocentric mastery his language ostensibly sought to undermine. The result—Castoriadis would maintain—was to make all thought depend upon himself, and thus to stifle the capacity for independent thought among all those around him.: 386 Their difficulties were only reinforced by what Didier Anzieu described as a kind of teasing lure in Lacan's discourse; "fundamental truths to be revealed . . . but always at some further point". This was perhaps an aspect of the sadistic narcissism that feminists especially accused Lacan of. Claims surrounding misogynistic tendencies were further fueled when his wife Sylvia Lacan referred to her late husband as a "domestic tyrant" during a series of interviews conducted by anthropologist Jamer Hunt.In a 2012 interview with Veterans Unplugged, Noam Chomsky said: "quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven't the slightest idea. I don't see anything there that should be influential." == Works == Selected works published in English listed below. More complete listings can be found at Lacan.com. == See also == Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research World Association of Psychoanalysis == Footnotes == == References == == Sources == == Further reading == == External links == Homepage of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis and the San Francisco Society for Lacanian Studies The London Society of the New Lacanian School. Site includes online library of clinical & theoretical texts Lacan Dot Com

Henri Lefebvre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Lefebvre

Henri Lefebvre ( lə-FEV-rə, French: [ɑ̃ʁi ləfɛvʁ]; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social space, and for his work on dialectical materialism, alienation, and criticism of Stalinism, existentialism, and structuralism. In his prolific career, Lefebvre wrote more than sixty books and three hundred articles. He founded or took part in the founding of several intellectual and academic journals such as Philosophies, La Revue Marxiste, Arguments, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Espaces et Sociétés. == Biography == Lefebvre was born in Hagetmau, Landes, France. He studied philosophy at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), graduating in 1920. By 1924 he was working with Paul Nizan, Norbert Guterman, Georges Friedmann, Georges Politzer, and Pierre Morhange in the Philosophies group seeking a "philosophical revolution". This brought them into contact with the Surrealists, Dadaists, and other groups, before they moved towards the French Communist Party (PCF). Lefebvre joined the PCF in 1928 and became one of the most prominent French Marxist intellectuals during the second quarter of the 20th century, before joining the French resistance. From 1944 to 1949, he was the director of Radiodiffusion Française, a French radio broadcaster in Toulouse. Among his works was a highly influential, anti-Stalinist text on dialectics called Dialectical Materialism (1940). Seven years later, Lefebvre published his first volume of The Critique of Everyday Life. His early work on method was applauded and borrowed centrally by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). During Lefebvre's thirty-year stint with the PCF, he was chosen to publish critical attacks on opposed theorists, especially existentialists like Sartre and Lefebvre's former colleague Nizan, only to intentionally get himself expelled from the party for his own heterodox theoretical and political opinions in the late 1950s. He then went from serving as a primary intellectual for the PCF to becoming one of France's most important critics of the PCF's politics (e.g. immediately, the lack of an opinion on Algeria, and more generally, the partial apologism for and continuation of Stalinism) and intellectual thought (i.e. structuralism, especially the work of Louis Althusser).In 1961, Lefebvre became professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg, before joining the faculty at the new university at Nanterre in 1965. He was one of the most respected professors, and he had influenced and analysed the May 1968 student revolt. Lefebvre introduced the concept of the right to the city in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville (the publication of the book predates the May 1968 revolts which took place in many French cities). Following the publication of this book, Lefebvre wrote several influential works on cities, urbanism, and space, including The Production of Space (1974), which became one of the most influential and heavily cited works of urban theory. By the 1970s, Lefebvre had also published some of the first critical statements on the work of post-structuralists, especially Michel Foucault. During the following years he was involved in the editorial group of Arguments, a New Left magazine which largely served to enable the French public to familiarize themselves with Central European revisionism.Lefebvre died in 1991. In his obituary, Radical Philosophy magazine honored his long and complex career and influence: the most prolific of French Marxist intellectuals, died during the night of 28–29 June 1991, less than a fortnight after his ninetieth birthday. During his long career, his work has gone in and out of fashion several times, and has influenced the development not only of philosophy but also of sociology, geography, political science and literary criticism. == The critique of everyday life == One of Lefebvre's most important contributions to social thought is the idea of the "critique of everyday life", which he pioneered in the 1930s. Lefebvre defined everyday life dialectically as the intersection of "illusion and truth, power and helplessness; the intersection of the sector man controls and the sector he does not control", and is where the perpetually transformative conflict occurs between diverse, specific rhythms: the body's polyrhythmic bundles of natural rhythms, physiological (natural) rhythms, and social rhythms (Lefebvre and Régulier, 1985: 73). The everyday was, in short, the space in which all life occurred, and between which all fragmented activities took place. It was the residual. While the theme presented itself in many works, it was most notably outlined in his eponymous three-volume study, which came out in individual installments, decades apart, in 1947, 1961, and 1981. Lefebvre argued that everyday life was an underdeveloped sector compared to technology and production, and moreover that in the mid 20th century, capitalism changed such that everyday life was to be colonized. In this zone of everydayness (boredom) shared by everyone in society regardless of class or specialty, autocritique of everyday realities of boredom vs. societal promises of free time and leisure, could lead to people understanding and then revolutionizing their everyday lives. This was essential to Lefebvre because everyday life was where he saw capitalism surviving and reproducing itself. Without revolutionizing everyday life, capitalism would continue to diminish the quality of everyday life, and inhibit real self-expression. The critique of everyday life was crucial because it was for him only through the development of the conditions of human life—rather than abstract control of productive forces—that humans could reach a concrete utopian existence.Lefebvre's work on everyday life was heavily influential in French theory, particularly for the Situationists, as well as in politics (e.g. for the May 1968 student revolts). The third volume has also recently influenced scholars writing about digital technology and information in the present day, since it has a section dealing with this topic at length, including analysis of the Nora-Minc Report (1977); key aspects of information theory; and other general discussion of the "colonisation" of everyday life through information communication technologies as "devices" or "services". == The social production of space == Lefebvre dedicated a great deal of his philosophical writings to understanding the importance of (the production of) space in what he called the reproduction of social relations of production. This idea is the central argument in the book The Survival of Capitalism, written as a sort of prelude to La Production de l'espace (1974) (The Production of Space). Lefebvre contends that there are different modes of production of space (i.e. spatialization) from natural space ('absolute space') to more complex spaces and flows whose meaning is produced in a social way (i.e. social space). Lefebvre analyzes each historical mode as a three-part dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions (le perçu), representations or theories of space (le conçu) and the spatial imaginary of the time (le vécu).Lefebvre's argument in The Production of Space is that space is a social product, or a complex social construction (based on values, and the social production of meanings) which affects spatial practices and perceptions. Lefebvre argued that every society—and, therefore, every mode of production—produces a certain space, its own space. Lefebvre's concept has been criticised: e.g. in The Urban Question, Manuel Castells. Many responses to Castells are provided in The Survival of Capitalism, and some such as Andy Merrifield argue that the acceptance of those critiques in the academic world would be a motive for Lefebvre's effort in writing the long and theoretically dense The Production of Space. In "Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism," Michal Murawski critiques Lefebvre's dismissal of actually existing socialism by showing how socialist states produced differential space. == Bibliography == 1925 "Positions d'attaque et de défense du nouveau mysticisme", Philosophies 5–6 (March). pp. 471–506. (Pt. 2 of the "Philosophy of Consciousness" (Philosophie de la conscience) project on being, consciousness and identity, originally proposed as a DES thesis to Léon Brunschvicg and eventually abandoned—Lefebvre's DES 1920 thesis was titled Pascal et Jansénius (Pascal and Jansenius).) 1934 with Norbert Guterman, Morceaux choisis de Karl Marx, Paris: NRF (numerous reprintings). 1936 with Norbert Guterman, La Conscience mystifiée, Paris: Gallimard (new ed. Paris: Le Sycomore, 1979). 1937 Le nationalisme contre les nations (Preface by Paul Nizan), Paris: Éditions sociales internationales (reprinted, Paris: Méridiens-Klincksliek, 1988, Collection "Analyse institutionnelle", Présentation M. Trebitsch, Postface Henri Lefebvre). 1938 Hitler au pouvoir, bilan de cinq années de fascisme en Allemagne, Paris: Bureau d'Éditions. 1938 with Norbert Guterman, Morceaux choisis de Hegel, Paris: Gallimard (3 reprintings 1938–1939; in the reprinted Collection "Idées", 2 vols. 1969). 1938 with Norbert Guterman, Cahiers de Lénine sur la dialectique de Hegel, Paris: Gallimard. 1939 Nietzsche, Paris: Éditions sociales internationales. 1946 L'Existentialisme, Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire. 1947 Logique formelle, logique dialectique, Vol. 1 of A la lumière du matérialisme dialectique, written in 1940–41 (2nd volume censored). Paris: Éditions sociales. 1947 Descartes, Paris: Éditions Hier et Aujourd'hui. 1947 Critique de la vie quotidienne, L'Arche 1942 Le Don Juan du Nord, Europe – revue mensuelle 28, April 1948, pp. 73–104. 1950 Knowledge and Social Criticism, Philosophic Thought in France and the USA Albany N.Y.: State University of New York Press. pp. 281–300 (2nd ed. 1968). 1958 Problèmes actuels du marxisme, Paris: Presses universitaires de France; 4th edition, 1970, Collection "Initiation philosophique" 1958 (with Lucien Goldmann, Claude Roy, Tristan Tzara) Le romantisme révolutionnaire, Paris: La Nef. 1961 Critique de la vie quotidienne II, Fondements d'une sociologie de la quotidienneté, Paris: L'Arche. 1963 La vallée de Campan - Etude de sociologie rurale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1965 Métaphilosophie, foreword by Jean Wahl, Paris: Éditions de Minuit, Collection "Arguments". 1965 La Proclamation de la Commune, Paris: Gallimard, Collection "Trente Journées qui ont fait la France". 1968 Le Droit à la ville, Paris: Anthropos (2nd ed.); Paris: Ed. du Seuil, Collection "Points". 1968 La vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne, Paris: Gallimard, Collection "Idées". Trans. Sacha Rabinovitch as Everyday Life in the Modern World. Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1971. 1968 Dialectical Materialism, first published 1940 by Presses Universitaires de France, as Le Matérialisme Dialectique. First English translation published 1968 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-61507-6 1968 Sociology of Marx, N. Guterman trans. of 1966c, New York: Pantheon. 1969 The Explosion: From Nanterre to the Summit, Paris: Monthly Review Press. Originally published 1968. 1970 La révolution urbaine Paris: Gallimard, Collection "Idées". 1970 Du rural à l'urbain Paris: Anthropos. 1971 Le manifeste différentialiste, Paris: Gallimard, Collection "Idées". 1971 Au-delà du structuralisme, Paris: Anthropos. 1972 La pensée marxiste et la ville, Tournai and Paris: Casterman. 1973 La survie du capitalisme; la re-production des rapports de production. Trans. Frank Bryant as The Survival of Capitalism. London: Allison and Busby, 1976. 1974 La production de l'espace, Paris: Anthropos. Translation and Précis. 1974 with Leszek Kołakowski Evolution or Revolution, F. Elders, ed. Reflexive Water: The Basic Concerns of Mankind, London: Souvenir. pp. 199–267. ISBN 0-285-64742-3 1975 Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, ou le royaume des ombres, Paris: Tournai, Casterman. Collection "Synthèses contemporaines". ISBN 2-203-23109-2 1975 Le temps des méprises: Entretiens avec Claude Glayman, Paris: Stock. ISBN 2-234-00174-9 1978 with Catherine Régulier La révolution n'est plus ce qu'elle était, Paris: Éditions Libres-Hallier (German trans. Munich, 1979). ISBN 2-264-00849-0 1978 Les contradictions de l'Etat moderne, La dialectique de l'Etat, Vol. 4 of 4 De 1'Etat, Paris: UGE, Collection "10/18". 1980 La présence et l'absence, Paris: Casterman. ISBN 2-203-23172-6 1981 Critique de la vie quotidienne, III. De la modernité au modernisme (Pour une métaphilosophie du quotidien) Paris: L'Arche. 1981 De la modernité au modernisme: pour une métaphilosophie du quotidien, Paris: L'Arche Collection "Le sens de la marché". 1985 with Catherine Régulier-Lefebvre, Le projet rythmanalytique Communications 41. pp. 191–199. 1986 with Serge Renaudie and Pierre Guilbaud, "International Competition for the New Belgrade Urban Structure Improvement", in Autogestion, or Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade, Vancouver: Fillip Editions. ISBN 978-0-9738133-5-7 1988 Toward a Leftist Cultural Politics: Remarks Occasioned by the Centenary of Marx's Death, D. Reifman trans., L.Grossberg and C.Nelson (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana: University of Illinois Press; New York: Macmillan. pp. 75–88. ISBN 0-252-01108-2 1990 Du Contrat de Citoyenneté, Paris: Syllepse, 1990. 1991 The Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1, John Moore trans., London: Verso. Originally published 1947. ISBN 0-86091-340-6 1991 with Patricia Latour and Francis Combes, Conversation avec Henri Lefebvre P. Latour and F. Combes, eds. Paris: Messidor, Collection "Libres propos". 1991 The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith trans., Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Originally published 1974. ISBN 0-631-14048-4 1992 with Catherine Regulier-Lefebvre Éléments de rythmanalyse: Introduction à la connaissance des rythmes, preface by René Lorau, Paris: Ed. Syllepse, Collection "Explorations et découvertes". English translation: Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life, Stuart Elden, Gerald Moore trans. Continuum, New York, 2004. 1995 Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes September 1959-May 1961, J. Moore, trans., London: Verso. Originally published 1962. ISBN 1-85984-961-X 1996 Writings on Cities, Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, trans. and eds., Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19187-9 2003 Key Writings, Stuart Elden, Elizabeth Lebas, Eleonore Kofman, eds. London/New York: Continuum. 2009 State, Space, World: Selected Essay, Neil Brenner, Stuart Elden, eds. Gerald Moore, Neil Brenner, Stuart Elden trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2014 Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment., L. Stanek ed., R. Bononno trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), the first publication in any language of the book written in 1973. 2022 On the Rural. Economy, Sociology, Geography, Stuart Elden, Adam David Morton eds., Robert Bononno trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), including the first half of his book Du rural à l’urbain (1970) and supplementary texts == References == == Sources == Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible, London/New York: Continuum, 2004. Alan D. Schrift, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes And Thinkers, Blackwell Publishing, 2006. == Further reading == Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2006) Goonewardena, K., Kipfer, S., Milgrom, R. & Schmid, C. eds. Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. (New York: Routledge, 2008) Sue Middleton, Henri Lefebvre and Education: Space, History, Theory (New York: Routledge, 2016) Andrzej Zieleniec: Space and Social Theory, London 2007, p. 60–97. Derek R. Ford, Education and the Production of Space: Political Pedagogy, Geography, and Urban Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2017) Chris Butler, Henri Lefebvre: Spatial Politics, Everyday Life, and the Right to the City (New York/London: Routledge, 2012) Shields, R.,Lefebvre, Love, and Struggle(New York/London: Routledge, 1998) == External links == Quotations related to Henri Lefebvre at Wikiquote "The Ignored Philosopher and Social Theorist: The Work of Henri Lefebvre" by Stanley Aronowitz, in: Situations, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 133–155 (PDF available). Henri Lefebvre, Urban Research and Architecture Today Review of The Production of Space in Not Bored Review of The First Situationist Symphony in Not Bored "La Somme et la Reste" Newsletter (in French) Archived 18 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine "Henri Lefebvre: Philosopher of Everyday Life" (2001) by Rob Shields Lefebvre, Love and Struggle - Spatial Dialectics (London: Routledge 1999) by Rob Shields Includes largely complete bibliography of Henri Lefebvre's work. Review of Lefebvre, Love and Struggle "An English Précis of Henri Lefebvre's La Production de l'Espace" Urban and Regional Studies Working Paper (Sussex University 1986) by Rob Shields "Bioinformatic Alignments" by Jordan Crandall "Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm" (University of Texas at Austin 1996) by Katherine Arens "La Méthode d'Henri Lefebvre" in Multitudes by Rémi Hess (in French) Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft: Henri Lefebvre und die Theorie der Produktion des Raumes by Christian Schmid (in German) "Postmodern Spacings" in Postmodern Culture by Mark Nunes et al. "Towards a Heuristic Method: Sartre and Lefebvre" by Michael Kelly in Sartre Studies International, vol. 5, no. 1, 1999, pp. 1–15. Henri Lefebvre on Space Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory by Lukasz Stanek

Alfred Tarski

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tarski

Alfred Tarski (, born Alfred Teitelbaum; January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician and mathematician. A prolific author best known for his work on model theory, metamathematics, and algebraic logic, he also contributed to abstract algebra, topology, geometry, measure theory, mathematical logic, set theory, and analytic philosophy. Educated in Poland at the University of Warsaw, and a member of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic and the Warsaw school of mathematics, he immigrated to the United States in 1939 where he became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Tarski taught and carried out research in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1942 until his death in 1983.His biographers Anita Burdman Feferman and Solomon Feferman state that, "Along with his contemporary, Kurt Gödel, he changed the face of logic in the twentieth century, especially through his work on the concept of truth and the theory of models." == Life == === Early life and education === Alfred Tarski was born Alfred Teitelbaum (Polish spelling: "Tajtelbaum"), to parents who were Polish Jews in comfortable circumstances. He first manifested his mathematical abilities while in secondary school, at Warsaw's Szkoła Mazowiecka. Nevertheless, he entered the University of Warsaw in 1918 intending to study biology.After Poland regained independence in 1918, Warsaw University came under the leadership of Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski and Wacław Sierpiński and quickly became a world-leading research institution in logic, foundational mathematics, and the philosophy of mathematics. Leśniewski recognized Tarski's potential as a mathematician and encouraged him to abandon biology. Henceforth Tarski attended courses taught by Łukasiewicz, Sierpiński, Stefan Mazurkiewicz and Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and in 1924 became the only person ever to complete a doctorate under Leśniewski's supervision. His thesis was entitled O wyrazie pierwotnym logistyki (On the Primitive Term of Logistic; published 1923). Tarski and Leśniewski soon grew cool to each other. However, in later life, Tarski reserved his warmest praise for Kotarbiński, which was reciprocated. In 1923, Alfred Teitelbaum and his brother Wacław changed their surname to "Tarski". The Tarski brothers also converted to Roman Catholicism, Poland's dominant religion. Alfred did so even though he was an avowed atheist. === Career === After becoming the youngest person ever to complete a doctorate at Warsaw University, Tarski taught logic at the Polish Pedagogical Institute, mathematics and logic at the university, and served as Łukasiewicz's assistant. Because these positions were poorly paid, Tarski also taught mathematics at a Warsaw secondary school; before World War II, it was not uncommon for European intellectuals of research caliber to teach high school. Hence between 1923 and his departure for the United States in 1939, Tarski not only wrote several textbooks and many papers, a number of them ground-breaking, but also did so while supporting himself primarily by teaching high-school mathematics. In 1929 Tarski married fellow teacher Maria Witkowska, a Pole of Catholic background. She had worked as a courier for the army in the Polish–Soviet War. They had two children; a son Jan who became a physicist, and a daughter Ina who married the mathematician Andrzej Ehrenfeucht.Tarski applied for a chair of philosophy at Lwów University, but on Bertrand Russell's recommendation it was awarded to Leon Chwistek. In 1930, Tarski visited the University of Vienna, lectured to Karl Menger's colloquium, and met Kurt Gödel. Thanks to a fellowship, he was able to return to Vienna during the first half of 1935 to work with Menger's research group. From Vienna he traveled to Paris to present his ideas on truth at the first meeting of the Unity of Science movement, an outgrowth of the Vienna Circle. In 1937, Tarski applied for a chair at Poznań University but the chair was abolished. Tarski's ties to the Unity of Science movement likely saved his life, because they resulted in his being invited to address the Unity of Science Congress held in September 1939 at Harvard University. Thus he left Poland in August 1939, on the last ship to sail from Poland for the United States before the German and Soviet invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II. Tarski left reluctantly, because Leśniewski had died a few months before, creating a vacancy which Tarski hoped to fill. Oblivious to the Nazi threat, he left his wife and children in Warsaw. He did not see them again until 1946. During the war, nearly all his Jewish extended family were murdered at the hands of the German occupying authorities. Once in the United States, Tarski held a number of temporary teaching and research positions: Harvard University (1939), City College of New York (1940), and thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1942), where he again met Gödel. In 1942, Tarski joined the Mathematics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent the rest of his career. Tarski became an American citizen in 1945. Although emeritus from 1968, he taught until 1973 and supervised Ph.D. candidates until his death. At Berkeley, Tarski acquired a reputation as an astounding and demanding teacher, a fact noted by many observers: His seminars at Berkeley quickly became famous in the world of mathematical logic. His students, many of whom became distinguished mathematicians, noted the awesome energy with which he would coax and cajole their best work out of them, always demanding the highest standards of clarity and precision. Tarski was extroverted, quick-witted, strong-willed, energetic, and sharp-tongued. He preferred his research to be collaborative — sometimes working all night with a colleague — and was very fastidious about priority. A charismatic leader and teacher, known for his brilliantly precise yet suspenseful expository style, Tarski had intimidatingly high standards for students, but at the same time he could be very encouraging, and particularly so to women — in contrast to the general trend. Some students were frightened away, but a circle of disciples remained, many of whom became world-renowned leaders in the field. Tarski supervised twenty-four Ph.D. dissertations including (in chronological order) those of Andrzej Mostowski, Bjarni Jónsson, Julia Robinson, Robert Vaught, Solomon Feferman, Richard Montague, James Donald Monk, Haim Gaifman, Donald Pigozzi and Roger Maddux, as well as Chen Chung Chang and Jerome Keisler, authors of Model Theory (1973), a classic text in the field. He also strongly influenced the dissertations of Alfred Lindenbaum, Dana Scott, and Steven Givant. Five of Tarski's students were women, a remarkable fact given that men represented an overwhelming majority of graduate students at the time. However, he had extra-marital affairs with at least two of these students. After he showed another of his female students' work to a male colleague, the colleague published it himself, leading her to leave the graduate study and later move to a different university and a different advisor.Tarski lectured at University College, London (1950, 1966), the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris (1955), the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science in Berkeley (1958–60), the University of California at Los Angeles (1967), and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (1974–75). Among many distinctions garnered over the course of his career, Tarski was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences, the British Academy and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958, received honorary degrees from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 1975, from Marseilles' Paul Cézanne University in 1977 and from the University of Calgary, as well as the Berkeley Citation in 1981. Tarski presided over the Association for Symbolic Logic, 1944–46, and the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science, 1956–57. He was also an honorary editor of Algebra Universalis. == Work in mathematics == Tarski's mathematical interests were exceptionally broad. His collected papers run to about 2,500 pages, most of them on mathematics, not logic. For a concise survey of Tarski's mathematical and logical accomplishments by his former student Solomon Feferman, see "Interludes I–VI" in Feferman and Feferman.Tarski's first paper, published when he was 19 years old, was on set theory, a subject to which he returned throughout his life. In 1924, he and Stefan Banach proved that, if one accepts the Axiom of Choice, a ball can be cut into a finite number of pieces, and then reassembled into a ball of larger size, or alternatively it can be reassembled into two balls whose sizes each equal that of the original one. This result is now called the Banach–Tarski paradox.In A decision method for elementary algebra and geometry, Tarski showed, by the method of quantifier elimination, that the first-order theory of the real numbers under addition and multiplication is decidable. (While this result appeared only in 1948, it dates back to 1930 and was mentioned in Tarski (1931).) This is a very curious result, because Alonzo Church proved in 1936 that Peano arithmetic (the theory of natural numbers) is not decidable. Peano arithmetic is also incomplete by Gödel's incompleteness theorem. In his 1953 Undecidable theories, Tarski et al. showed that many mathematical systems, including lattice theory, abstract projective geometry, and closure algebras, are all undecidable. The theory of Abelian groups is decidable, but that of non-Abelian groups is not. In the 1920s and 30s, Tarski often taught high school geometry. Using some ideas of Mario Pieri, in 1926 Tarski devised an original axiomatization for plane Euclidean geometry, one considerably more concise than Hilbert's. Tarski's axioms form a first-order theory devoid of set theory, whose individuals are points, and having only two primitive relations. In 1930, he proved this theory decidable because it can be mapped into another theory he had already proved decidable, namely his first-order theory of the real numbers. In 1929 he showed that much of Euclidean solid geometry could be recast as a second-order theory whose individuals are spheres (a primitive notion), a single primitive binary relation "is contained in", and two axioms that, among other things, imply that containment partially orders the spheres. Relaxing the requirement that all individuals be spheres yields a formalization of mereology far easier to exposit than Lesniewski's variant. Near the end of his life, Tarski wrote a very long letter, published as Tarski and Givant (1999), summarizing his work on geometry.Cardinal Algebras studied algebras whose models include the arithmetic of cardinal numbers. Ordinal Algebras sets out an algebra for the additive theory of order types. Cardinal, but not ordinal, addition commutes. In 1941, Tarski published an important paper on binary relations, which began the work on relation algebra and its metamathematics that occupied Tarski and his students for much of the balance of his life. While that exploration (and the closely related work of Roger Lyndon) uncovered some important limitations of relation algebra, Tarski also showed (Tarski and Givant 1987) that relation algebra can express most axiomatic set theory and Peano arithmetic. For an introduction to relation algebra, see Maddux (2006). In the late 1940s, Tarski and his students devised cylindric algebras, which are to first-order logic what the two-element Boolean algebra is to classical sentential logic. This work culminated in the two monographs by Tarski, Henkin, and Monk (1971, 1985). == Work in logic == Tarski's student, Vaught, has ranked Tarski as one of the four greatest logicians of all time — along with Aristotle, Gottlob Frege, and Kurt Gödel. However, Tarski often expressed great admiration for Charles Sanders Peirce, particularly for his pioneering work in the logic of relations. Tarski produced axioms for logical consequence and worked on deductive systems, the algebra of logic, and the theory of definability. His semantic methods, which culminated in the model theory he and a number of his Berkeley students developed in the 1950s and 60s, radically transformed Hilbert's proof-theoretic metamathematics. Around 1930, Tarski developed an abstract theory of logical deductions that models some properties of logical calculi. Mathematically, what he described is just a finitary closure operator on a set (the set of sentences). In abstract algebraic logic, finitary closure operators are still studied under the name consequence operator, which was coined by Tarski. The set S represents a set of sentences, a subset T of S a theory, and cl(T) is the set of all sentences that follow from the theory. This abstract approach was applied to fuzzy logic (see Gerla 2000). In [Tarski's] view, metamathematics became similar to any mathematical discipline. Not only can its concepts and results be mathematized, but they actually can be integrated into mathematics. ... Tarski destroyed the borderline between metamathematics and mathematics. He objected to restricting the role of metamathematics to the foundations of mathematics. Tarski's 1936 article "On the concept of logical consequence" argued that the conclusion of an argument will follow logically from its premises if and only if every model of the premises is a model of the conclusion. In 1937, he published a paper presenting clearly his views on the nature and purpose of the deductive method, and the role of logic in scientific studies. His high school and undergraduate teaching on logic and axiomatics culminated in a classic short text, published first in Polish, then in German translation, and finally in a 1941 English translation as Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences.Tarski's 1969 "Truth and proof" considered both Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Tarski's undefinability theorem, and mulled over their consequences for the axiomatic method in mathematics. === Truth in formalized languages === In 1933, Tarski published a very long paper in Polish, titled "Pojęcie prawdy w językach nauk dedukcyjnych", "Setting out a mathematical definition of truth for formal languages." The 1935 German translation was titled "Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen", "The concept of truth in formalized languages", sometimes shortened to "Wahrheitsbegriff". An English translation appeared in the 1956 first edition of the volume Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. This collection of papers from 1923 to 1938 is an event in 20th-century analytic philosophy, a contribution to symbolic logic, semantics, and the philosophy of language. For a brief discussion of its content, see Convention T (and also T-schema). Some recent philosophical debate examines the extent to which Tarski's theory of truth for formalized languages can be seen as a correspondence theory of truth. The debate centers on how to read Tarski's condition of material adequacy for a true definition. That condition requires that the truth theory have the following as theorems for all sentences p of the language for which truth is being defined: "p" is true if and only if p.(where p is the proposition expressed by "p") The debate amounts to whether to read sentences of this form, such as "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white as expressing merely a deflationary theory of truth or as embodying truth as a more substantial property (see Kirkham 1992). It is important to realize that Tarski's theory of truth is for formalized languages, so examples in natural language are not illustrations of the use of Tarski's theory of truth. === Logical consequence === In 1936, Tarski published Polish and German versions of a lecture he had given the preceding year at the International Congress of Scientific Philosophy in Paris. A new English translation of this paper, Tarski (2002), highlights the many differences between the German and Polish versions of the paper and corrects a number of mistranslations in Tarski (1983). This publication set out the modern model-theoretic definition of (semantic) logical consequence, or at least the basis for it. Whether Tarski's notion was entirely the modern one turns on whether he intended to admit models with varying domains (and in particular, models with domains of different cardinalities). This question is a matter of some debate in the current philosophical literature. John Etchemendy stimulated much of the recent discussion about Tarski's treatment of varying domains.Tarski ends by pointing out that his definition of logical consequence depends upon a division of terms into the logical and the extra-logical and he expresses some skepticism that any such objective division will be forthcoming. "What are Logical Notions?" can thus be viewed as continuing "On the Concept of Logical Consequence". === Logical notions === Another theory of Tarski's attracting attention in the recent philosophical literature is that outlined in his "What are Logical Notions?" (Tarski 1986). This is the published version of a talk that he gave originally in 1966 in London and later in 1973 in Buffalo; it was edited without his direct involvement by John Corcoran. It became the most cited paper in the journal History and Philosophy of Logic.In the talk, Tarski proposed demarcation of logical operations (which he calls "notions") from non-logical. The suggested criteria were derived from the Erlangen program of the 19th-century German mathematician Felix Klein. Mautner (in 1946), and possibly an article by the Portuguese mathematician Sebastiao e Silva, anticipated Tarski in applying the Erlangen Program to logic. That program classified the various types of geometry (Euclidean geometry, affine geometry, topology, etc.) by the type of one-one transformation of space onto itself that left the objects of that geometrical theory invariant. (A one-to-one transformation is a functional map of the space onto itself so that every point of the space is associated with or mapped to one other point of the space. So, "rotate 30 degrees" and "magnify by a factor of 2" are intuitive descriptions of simple uniform one-one transformations.) Continuous transformations give rise to the objects of topology, similarity transformations to those of Euclidean geometry, and so on. As the range of permissible transformations becomes broader, the range of objects one is able to distinguish as preserved by the application of the transformations becomes narrower. Similarity transformations are fairly narrow (they preserve the relative distance between points) and thus allow us to distinguish relatively many things (e.g., equilateral triangles from non-equilateral triangles). Continuous transformations (which can intuitively be thought of as transformations which allow non-uniform stretching, compression, bending, and twisting, but no ripping or glueing) allow us to distinguish a polygon from an annulus (ring with a hole in the centre), but do not allow us to distinguish two polygons from each other. Tarski's proposal was to demarcate the logical notions by considering all possible one-to-one transformations (automorphisms) of a domain onto itself. By domain is meant the universe of discourse of a model for the semantic theory of logic. If one identifies the truth value True with the domain set and the truth-value False with the empty set, then the following operations are counted as logical under the proposal: Truth-functions: All truth-functions are admitted by the proposal. This includes, but is not limited to, all n-ary truth-functions for finite n. (It also admits of truth-functions with any infinite number of places.) Individuals: No individuals, provided the domain has at least two members. Predicates: the one-place total and null predicates, the former having all members of the domain in its extension and the latter having no members of the domain in its extension two-place total and null predicates, the former having the set of all ordered pairs of domain members as its extension and the latter with the empty set as extension the two-place identity predicate, with the set of all order-pairs <a,a> in its extension, where a is a member of the domain the two-place diversity predicate, with the set of all order pairs <a,b> where a and b are distinct members of the domain n-ary predicates in general: all predicates definable from the identity predicate together with conjunction, disjunction and negation (up to any ordinality, finite or infinite) Quantifiers: Tarski explicitly discusses only monadic quantifiers and points out that all such numerical quantifiers are admitted under his proposal. These include the standard universal and existential quantifiers as well as numerical quantifiers such as "Exactly four", "Finitely many", "Uncountably many", and "Between four and 9 million", for example. While Tarski does not enter into the issue, it is also clear that polyadic quantifiers are admitted under the proposal. These are quantifiers like, given two predicates Fx and Gy, "More(x, y)", which says "More things have F than have G." Set-Theoretic relations: Relations such as inclusion, intersection and union applied to subsets of the domain are logical in the present sense. Set membership: Tarski ended his lecture with a discussion of whether the set membership relation counted as logical in his sense. (Given the reduction of (most of) mathematics to set theory, this was, in effect, the question of whether most or all of mathematics is a part of logic.) He pointed out that set membership is logical if set theory is developed along the lines of type theory, but is extralogical if set theory is set out axiomatically, as in the canonical Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. Logical notions of higher order: While Tarski confined his discussion to operations of first-order logic, there is nothing about his proposal that necessarily restricts it to first-order logic. (Tarski likely restricted his attention to first-order notions as the talk was given to a non-technical audience.) So, higher-order quantifiers and predicates are admitted as well.In some ways the present proposal is the obverse of that of Lindenbaum and Tarski (1936), who proved that all the logical operations of Bertrand Russell's and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica are invariant under one-to-one transformations of the domain onto itself. The present proposal is also employed in Tarski and Givant (1987).Solomon Feferman and Vann McGee further discussed Tarski's proposal in work published after his death. Feferman (1999) raises problems for the proposal and suggests a cure: replacing Tarski's preservation by automorphisms with preservation by arbitrary homomorphisms. In essence, this suggestion circumvents the difficulty Tarski's proposal has in dealing with a sameness of logical operation across distinct domains of a given cardinality and across domains of distinct cardinalities. Feferman's proposal results in a radical restriction of logical terms as compared to Tarski's original proposal. In particular, it ends up counting as logical only those operators of standard first-order logic without identity. McGee (1996) provides a precise account of what operations are logical in the sense of Tarski's proposal in terms of expressibility in a language that extends first-order logic by allowing arbitrarily long conjunctions and disjunctions, and quantification over arbitrarily many variables. "Arbitrarily" includes a countable infinity. == Selected publications == Anthologies and collections1986. The Collected Papers of Alfred Tarski, 4 vols. Givant, S. R., and McKenzie, R. N., eds. Birkhäuser. Givant Steven (1986). "Bibliography of Alfred Tarski". Journal of Symbolic Logic. 51 (4): 913–41. doi:10.2307/2273905. JSTOR 2273905. S2CID 44369365. 1983 (1956). Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938 by Alfred Tarski, Corcoran, J., ed. Hackett. 1st edition edited and translated by J. H. Woodger, Oxford Uni. Press. This collection contains translations from Polish of some of Tarski's most important papers of his early career, including The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages and On the Concept of Logical Consequence discussed above.Original publications of Tarski 1930 Une contribution à la théorie de la mesure. Fund Math 15 (1930), 42–50. 1930. (with Jan Łukasiewicz). "Untersuchungen uber den Aussagenkalkul" ["Investigations into the Sentential Calculus"], Comptes Rendus des seances de la Societe des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Vol, 23 (1930) Cl. III, pp. 31–32 in Tarski (1983): 38–59. 1931. "Sur les ensembles définissables de nombres réels I", Fundamenta Mathematicae 17: 210–239 in Tarski (1983): 110–142. 1936. "Grundlegung der wissenschaftlichen Semantik", Actes du Congrès international de philosophie scientifique, Sorbonne, Paris 1935, vol. III, Language et pseudo-problèmes, Paris, Hermann, 1936, pp. 1–8 in Tarski (1983): 401–408. 1936. "Über den Begriff der logischen Folgerung", Actes du Congrès international de philosophie scientifique, Sorbonne, Paris 1935, vol. VII, Logique, Paris: Hermann, pp. 1–11 in Tarski (1983): 409–420. 1936 (with Adolf Lindenbaum). "On the Limitations of Deductive Theories" in Tarski (1983): 384–92. 1937. Einführung in die Mathematische Logik und in die Methodologie der Mathematik. Springer, Wien (Vienna). 1994 (1941). Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences. Dover. 1941. "On the calculus of relations", Journal of Symbolic Logic 6: 73–89. 1944. "The Semantical Concept of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4: 341–75. 1948. A decision method for elementary algebra and geometry. Santa Monica CA: RAND Corp. 1949. Cardinal Algebras. Oxford Univ. Press. 1953 (with Mostowski and Raphael Robinson). Undecidable theories. North Holland. 1956. Ordinal algebras. North-Holland. 1965. "A simplified formalization of predicate logic with identity", Archiv für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung 7: 61-79 1969. "Truth and Proof", Scientific American 220: 63–77. 1971 (with Leon Henkin and Donald Monk). Cylindric Algebras: Part I. North-Holland. 1985 (with Leon Henkin and Donald Monk). Cylindric Algebras: Part II. North-Holland. 1986. "What are Logical Notions?", Corcoran, J., ed., History and Philosophy of Logic 7: 143–54. 1987 (with Steven Givant). A Formalization of Set Theory Without Variables. Vol.41 of American Mathematical Society colloquium publications. Providence RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0821810415. Review 1999 (with Steven Givant). "Tarski's system of geometry", Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 5: 175–214. 2002. "On the Concept of Following Logically" (Magda Stroińska and David Hitchcock, trans.) History and Philosophy of Logic 23: 155–196. == See also == History of philosophy in Poland Cylindric algebra Interpretability Weak interpretability List of things named after Alfred Tarski Timeline of Polish science and technology == References == == Further reading == Biographical referencesFeferman, Anita Burdman (1999). "Alfred Tarski". American National Biography. Vol. 21. Oxford University Press. pp. 330–332. ISBN 978-0-19-512800-0. Feferman, Anita Burdman; Feferman, Solomon (2004). Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80240-6. OCLC 54691904. Frost-Arnold, Greg (2013). Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard: Conversations on Logic, Mathematics, and Science. Chicago: Open Court. ISBN 9780812698374. Givant Steven (1991). "A portrait of Alfred Tarski". Mathematical Intelligencer. 13 (3): 16–32. doi:10.1007/bf03023831. S2CID 122867668. Patterson, Douglas. Alfred Tarski: Philosophy of Language and Logic (Palgrave Macmillan; 2012) 262 pages; biography focused on his work from the late-1920s to the mid-1930s, with particular attention to influences from his teachers Stanislaw Lesniewski and Tadeusz Kotarbinski.Logic literatureThe December 1986 issue of the Journal of Symbolic Logic surveys Tarski's work on model theory (Robert Vaught), algebra (Jonsson), undecidable theories (McNulty), algebraic logic (Donald Monk), and geometry (Szczerba). The March 1988 issue of the same journal surveys his work on axiomatic set theory (Azriel Levy), real closed fields (Lou Van Den Dries), decidable theory (Doner and Wilfrid Hodges), metamathematics (Blok and Pigozzi), truth and logical consequence (John Etchemendy), and general philosophy (Patrick Suppes). Blok, W. J.; Pigozzi, Don, "Alfred Tarski's Work on General Metamathematics", The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 36–50 Chang, C.C., and Keisler, H.J., 1973. Model Theory. North-Holland, Amsterdam. American Elsevier, New York. Corcoran, John, and Sagüillo, José Miguel, 2011. "The Absence of Multiple Universes of Discourse in the 1936 Tarski Consequence-Definition Paper", History and Philosophy of Logic 32: 359–80. [1] Corcoran, John, and Weber, Leonardo, 2015. "Tarski's convention T: condition beta", South American Journal of Logic. 1, 3–32. Etchemendy, John, 1999. The Concept of Logical Consequence. Stanford CA: CSLI Publications. ISBN 1-57586-194-1 Feferman Solomon (1999). "Logic, Logics, and Logicism" (PDF). Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. 40: 31–54. doi:10.1305/ndjfl/1039096304. Gerla, G. (2000) Fuzzy Logic: Mathematical Tools for Approximate Reasoning. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940. Princeton Uni. Press. Kirkham, Richard, 1992. Theories of Truth. MIT Press. Maddux, Roger D., 2006. Relation Algebras, vol. 150 in "Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics", Elsevier Science. Mautner F. I. (1946). "An Extension of Klein's Erlanger Program: Logic as Invariant-Theory". American Journal of Mathematics. 68 (3): 345–84. doi:10.2307/2371821. JSTOR 2371821. McGee Van (1996). "Logical Operations". Journal of Philosophical Logic. 25 (6): 567–80. doi:10.1007/bf00265253. S2CID 32381037. Popper, Karl R., 1972, Rev. Ed. 1979, "Philosophical Comments on Tarski's Theory of Truth", with Addendum, Objective Knowledge, Oxford: 319–340. Sinaceur H (2001). "Alfred Tarski: Semantic shift, heuristic shift in metamathematics". Synthese. 126: 49–65. doi:10.1023/a:1005268531418. S2CID 28783841. Smith, James T., 2010. "Definitions and Nondefinability in Geometry", American Mathematical Monthly 117:475–89. Wolenski, Jan, 1989. Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov–Warsaw School. Reidel/Kluwer. == External links == Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Tarski's Truth Definitions by Wilfred Hodges. Alfred Tarski by Mario Gómez-Torrente. Algebraic Propositional Logic by Ramon Jansana. Includes a fairly detailed discussion of Tarski's work on these topics. Tarski's Semantic Theory on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

E. Nagel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Nagel

Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement. His 1961 book The Structure of Science is considered a foundational work in the logic of scientific explanation. == Life and career == Nagel was born in Nové Mesto nad Váhom (now in Slovakia, then Vágújhely and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to Jewish parents. His mother, Frida Weiss, was from the nearby town of Vrbové (or Verbo). He emigrated to the United States at the age of 10 and became a U.S. citizen in 1919. He received a BSc from the City College of New York in 1923, and earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1931, with a dissertation on the concept of measurement. Except for one year (1966-1967) at Rockefeller University, he spent his entire academic career at Columbia. He became the first John Dewey Professor of Philosophy there in 1955. And then University Professor from 1967 until his retirement in 1970, after which he continued to teach. In 1977, he was one of the few philosophers elected to the National Academy of Sciences. His work concerned the philosophy of mathematical fields such as geometry and probability, quantum mechanics, and the status of reductive and inductive theories of science. His book The Structure of Science (1961) practically inaugurated the field of analytic philosophy of science. He expounded the different kinds of explanation in different fields, and was sceptical about attempts to unify the nature of scientific laws or explanations. He was the first to propose that by positing analytic equivalencies (or "bridge laws") between the terms of different sciences, one could eliminate all ontological commitments except those required by the most basic science. He also upheld the view that social sciences are scientific, and should adopt the same standards as natural sciences. Nagel wrote An Introduction to Logic and the Scientific Method with Morris Raphael Cohen, his CCNY teacher in 1934. In 1958, he published with James R. Newman Gödel's proof, a short book explicating Gödel's incompleteness theorems to those not well trained in mathematical logic. He edited the Journal of Philosophy (1939–1956) and the Journal of Symbolic Logic (1940-1946). As a public intellectual, he supported a skeptical approach to claims of the paranormal, becoming one of the first sponsors and fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 1976, along with 24 other notable philosophers like W. V. Quine. The committee posthumously inducted him into their "Pantheon of Skeptics" in recognition of Nagel's contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism. Nagel was an atheist.Nagel was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1962) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1981).He died in New York. He had two sons, Alexander Nagel (professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin) and Sidney Nagel (professor of physics at the University of Chicago). Nagel's doctoral students include Morton White, Patrick Suppes, Henry Kyburg, Isaac Levi, and Kenneth Schaffner. A festschrift, Philosophy, Science and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel, was published in 1969. == Select works == On The Logic of Measurement (1930) An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (with M. R. Cohen, 1934) "The Formation of Modern Conceptions of Formal Logic in the Development of Geometry" (1939) Principles of the Theory of Probability (1939) "The Meaning of Reduction in the Natural Sciences" (1949) Sovereign Reason (1954) Logic without Metaphysics (1957) Gödel’s Proof (with J. R. Newman, 1958) The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (1961, second ed. 1979) Observation and Theory in Science (with others, 1971) Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science (1979) == References == == Further reading == Suppes, P. (2006). Ernest Nagel.* In S. Sarkar & Pfeifer, J. (Eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia (N-Z Indexed., Vol. 2, pp. 491-496). New York: Routledge. [*author eprint]

Mortimer Adler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_J._Adler

Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, served as chairman of the Encyclopædia Britannica board of editors, and founded the Institute for Philosophical Research. He lived for long stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. == Biography == === Intellectual development and philosophic evolution === While doing newspaper work and taking night classes during his adolescence, Adler encountered works of men he would come to call heroes: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and others, who "were assailed as irrelevant by student activists in the 1960s and subjected to 'politically correct' attack in later decades." His thought evolved toward the correction of what he considered "philosophical mistakes", as reflected in his 1985 book Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought. In Adler's view, these errors were introduced by Descartes on the continent and by Thomas Hobbes and David Hume in Britain, and were caused by a "culpable ignorance" about Aristotle by those who rejected the conclusions of dogmatic philosophy without acknowledging its sound classical premises. These modern errors were compounded and perpetuated by Kant and the idealists and existentialists on the one side, and by John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and Bertrand Russell and the English analytic tradition on the other, according to Adler. He corrected these mistakes, at least to his own satisfaction, with reference to insights and distinctions drawn from the Aristotelian tradition. === New York City === Adler was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 28, 1902, to Jewish immigrants from Germany: Clarissa (Manheim), a schoolteacher, and Ignatz Adler, a jewelry salesman. He dropped out of school at age 14 to become a copy boy for the New York Sun, with the ultimate aspiration of becoming a journalist. Adler soon returned to school to take writing classes at night, where he discovered the western philosophical tradition. After his early schooling and work, he went on to study at Columbia University and contributed to the student literary magazine, The Morningside, a poem "Choice" (in 1922 when Charles A. Wagner was editor-in-chief and Whittaker Chambers an associate editor). Though he refused to take the required swimming test for a bachelor's degree (a matter that was rectified when Columbia gave him an honorary degree in 1983), he stayed at the university and eventually received an instructorship and finally a doctorate in psychology. While at Columbia University, Adler wrote his first book: Dialectic, published in 1927.Adler worked with Scott Buchanan at the People's Institute and then for many years on their respective Great Books efforts. (Buchanan was the founder of the Great Books program at St. John's College). === Chicago === In 1930, Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, whom Adler had befriended some years earlier, arranged for Chicago's law school to hire him as a professor of the philosophy of law. The philosophers at Chicago (who included James H. Tufts, E. A. Burtt, and George H. Mead) had "entertained grave doubts as to Dr. Adler's competence in the field [of philosophy]" and resisted Adler's appointment to the university's Department of Philosophy. Adler was the first "non-lawyer" to join the law school faculty. After the Great Books seminar inspired Chicago businessman and university trustee Walter Paepcke to found the Aspen Institute, Adler taught philosophy to business executives there. === Popular appeal === Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses, and some of his works (such as How to Read a Book) became popular bestsellers. He was also an advocate of economic democracy and wrote an influential preface to Louis O. Kelso's The Capitalist Manifesto. Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days. In his own words: Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write – and they do. Dwight Macdonald once criticized Adler's popular style by saying "Mr. Adler once wrote a book called How to Read a Book. He should now read a book called How to Write a Book." == Encyclopedia and Educational Reform == Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. In 1952, Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, compiled its Syntopicon and later Propaedia, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. As the director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of Britannica from 1965, he was instrumental in the major reorganization of knowledge embodied in that edition. He introduced the Paideia Proposal which resulted in his founding the Paideia Program, a grade school curriculum centered around guided reading and discussion of difficult works (as judged for each grade). With Max Weismann, he founded the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas in 1990 in Chicago. == Religion and theology == Adler was born into a nonobservant Jewish family. In his early twenties, he discovered St. Thomas Aquinas, and in particular the Summa Theologica. Many years later, he wrote that its "intellectual austerity, integrity, precision and brilliance ... put the study of theology highest among all of my philosophical interests." An enthusiastic Thomist, he was a frequent contributor to Catholic philosophical and educational journals, as well as a frequent speaker at Catholic institutions, so much so that some assumed he was a convert to Catholicism. But that was reserved for later.In 1940, James T. Farrell called Adler "the leading American fellow-traveller of the Roman Catholic Church." What was true for Adler, Farrell said, was what was "postulated in the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church," and he "sang the same tune" as avowed Catholic philosophers like Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Martin D'Arcy. He also greatly admired Henri Bergson, the French Jewish philosopher and Nobel laureate, whose books the Catholic church had indexed as prohibited. Bergson refused to convert during the collaborationist Vichy regime, and despite the Statute on Jews he instead restated his previous views and was thus stripped of all his previous posts and honors. Farrell attributed Adler's delay in joining the Church to his being among those Christians who "wanted their cake and ... wanted to eat it too" and compared him to the Emperor Constantine, who waited until he was on his deathbed to formally become a Catholic.Adler took a long time to make up his mind about theological issues. When he wrote How to Think About God: A Guide for the Twentieth-Century Pagan in 1980, he claimed to consider himself the pagan of the book's subtitle. In volume 51 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal (2001), Ken Myers includes his 1980 interview with Adler, conducted after How to Think About God was published. Myers reminisces, "During that interview, I asked him why he had never embraced the Christian faith himself. He explained that while he had been profoundly influenced by a number of Christian thinkers during his life, ... there were moral – not intellectual – obstacles to his conversion. He didn't explain any further."Myers notes that Adler finally "surrendered to the Hound of Heaven" and "made a confession of faith and was baptized" as an Episcopalian in 1984, only a few years after that interview. Offering insight into Adler's conversion, Myers quotes him from a subsequent 1990 article in Christianity magazine: "My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy."According to his friend Deal Hudson, Adler "had been attracted to Catholicism for many years" and "wanted to be a Roman Catholic, but issues like abortion and the resistance of his family and friends" kept him away. Many thought he was baptized as an Episcopalian rather than a Catholic solely because of his "wonderful – and ardently Episcopal – wife" Caroline. Hudson suggests it is no coincidence that it was only after her death in 1998 that he took the final step. In December 1999, in San Mateo, where he had moved to spend his last years, Adler was formally received into the Catholic Church by a long-time friend and admirer, Bishop Pierre DuMaine. "Finally," wrote another friend, Ralph McInerny, "he became the Roman Catholic he had been training to be all his life".Despite not being a Catholic for most of his life, on account of his lifelong participation in the Neo-Thomist movement and his almost equally long membership in the American Catholic Philosophical Association, this latter, according to McInerny is willing to consider Adler "a Catholic philosopher". == Philosophy == Adler referred to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as the "ethics of common sense" and also as "the only moral philosophy that is sound, practical, and undogmatic." Thus, it is the only ethical doctrine that answers all the questions that moral philosophy should and can attempt to answer, neither more nor less, and that has answers that are true by the standard of truth that is appropriate and applicable to normative judgments. In contrast, Adler believed that other theories or doctrines try to answer more questions than they can or fewer than they should, and their answers are mixtures of truth and error, particularly the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Adler was a self-proclaimed "moderate dualist" and viewed the positions of psychophysical dualism and materialistic monism to be opposite sides of two extremes. Regarding dualism, he dismissed the extreme form of dualism that stemmed from such philosophers as Plato (body and soul) and Descartes (mind and matter), as well as the theory of extreme monism and the mind–brain identity theory. After eliminating the extremes, Adler subscribed to a more moderate form of dualism. He believed that the brain is only a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for conceptual thought; that an "immaterial intellect" is also requisite as a condition; and that the difference between human and animal behavior is a radical difference in kind. Adler defended this position against many challenges to dualistic theories. === Freedom and free will === The meanings of "freedom" and "free will" have been and are under debate, and the debate is confused because there is no generally accepted definition of either term. Adler's "Institute for Philosophical Research" spent ten years studying the "idea of freedom" as the word was used by hundreds of authors who have discussed and disputed freedom. The study was published in 1958 as Volume One of The Idea of Freedom, subtitled A Dialectical Examination of the Idea of Freedom with subsequent comments in Adler's Philosophical Dictionary. Adler's study concluded that a delineation of three kinds of freedom – circumstantial, natural, and acquired – is necessary for clarity on the subject. "Circumstantial freedom" denotes "freedom from coercion or restraint." "Natural freedom" denotes "freedom of a free will" or "free choice." It is the freedom to determine one's own decisions or plans. This freedom exists in everyone inherently, regardless of circumstances or state of mind. "Acquired freedom" is the freedom "to will as we ought to will" and, thus, "to live as [one] ought to live." This freedom is not inherent: it must be acquired by a change whereby a person gains qualities as "good, wise, virtuous, etc." === Religion === As Adler's interest in religion and theology increased, he made references to the Bible and the need to test articles of faith for compatibility with the conclusions of the science of nature and of philosophers. In his 1981 book How to Think About God, Adler attempts to demonstrate God as the exnihilator (the creator of something from nothing). Adler stressed that even with this conclusion, God's existence cannot be proven or demonstrated, but only established as true beyond a reasonable doubt. However, in a recent re-review of the argument, John Cramer concluded that recent developments in cosmology appear to converge with and support Adler's argument, and that in light of such theories as the multiverse, the argument is no worse for wear and may, indeed, now be judged somewhat more probable than it was originally.Adler believed that, if theology and religion are living things, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about efforts to modernize them. They must be open to change and growth like everything else. Furthermore, there is no reason to be surprised when discussions such as those about the "death of God" – a concept drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche – stir popular excitement as they did in the recent past and could do so again today. According to Adler, of all the great ideas, the idea of God has always been and continues to be the one that evokes the greatest concern among the widest group of men and women. However, he was opposed to the idea of converting atheism into a new form of religion or theology. == Personal life == Mortimer Adler was married twice and had four children. He and Helen Boynton, with whom in 1938 and 1940, respectively, adopted two children, Mark and Michael, were married in 1927 and later divorced in 1960. In 1963, Adler married Caroline Pring, his junior by thirty-four years; they had two children, Douglas and Philip. == Awards == 1985, Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 1993, Aspen Hall of Fame == Published works == Dialectic (1927) The Nature of Judicial Proof: An Inquiry into the Logical, Legal, and Empirical Aspects of the Law of Evidence (1931, with Jerome Michael) Diagrammatics (1932, with Maude Phelps Hutchins) Crime, Law and Social Science (1933, with Jerome Michael) Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy (1937) What Man Has Made of Man: A Study of the Consequences of Platonism and Positivism in Psychology (1937) St. Thomas and the Gentiles (1938) The Philosophy and Science of Man: A Collection of Texts as a Foundation for Ethics and Politics (1940) How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education (1940), 1966 edition subtitled A Guide to Reading the Great Books, 1972 revised edition with Charles Van Doren, The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading: ISBN 0-671-21209-5 A Dialectic of Morals: Towards the Foundations of Political Philosophy (1941) "How to Mark a Book". The Saturday Review of Literature. July 6, 1940. How to Think About War and Peace (1944) The Revolution in Education (1944, with Milton Mayer) Adler, Mortimer J. (1947). Heywood, Robert B. (ed.). The Works of the Mind: The Philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 752682744. The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Idea of Freedom, vol. 1, Doubleday, 1958. The Capitalist Manifesto (1958, with Louis O. Kelso) ISBN 0-8371-8210-7 The New Capitalists: A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings (1961, with Louis O. Kelso) The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Controversies about Freedom (1961) Great Ideas from the Great Books (1961) The Conditions of Philosophy: Its Checkered Past, Its Present Disorder, and Its Future Promise (1965) The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (1967) The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense (1970) The Common Sense of Politics (1971) The American Testament (1975, with William Gorman) Some Questions About Language: A Theory of Human Discourse and Its Objects (1976) Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (1977) Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling (1977, edited by Geraldine Van Doren) Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (1978) ISBN 0-684-83823-0 How to Think About God: A Guide for the 20th-Century Pagan (1980) ISBN 0-02-016022-4 Six Great Ideas: Truth–Goodness–Beauty–Liberty–Equality–Justice (1981) ISBN 0-02-072020-3 The Angels and Us (1982) The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982) ISBN 0-684-84188-6 How to Speak / How to Listen (1983) ISBN 0-02-500570-7 Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of Questions Raised by The Paideia Proposal (1983) A Vision of the Future: Twelve Ideas for a Better Life and a Better Society (1984) ISBN 0-02-500280-5 The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus (1984, with Members of the Paideia Group) ISBN 0-02-013040-6 Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors In Modern Thought – How they came about, their consequences, and how to avoid them. (1985) ISBN 0-02-500330-5 A Guidebook to Learning: For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom (1986) We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution (1987). ISBN 0-02-500370-4 Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1988, edited by Geraldine Van Doren) Intellect: Mind Over Matter (1990) Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth (1990) ISBN 0-02-064140-0 Haves Without Have-Nots: Essays for the 21st Century on Democracy and Socialism (1991) ISBN 0-02-500561-8 Desires, Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough (1991) A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher At Large (1992) The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought (1992) Natural Theology, Chance, and God (The Great Ideas Today, 1992) Adler, Mortimer J. (1993). The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-500574-X. Art, the Arts, and the Great Ideas (1994) Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon, Touchstone, 1995. How to Think About The Great Ideas (2000) ISBN 0-8126-9412-0 How to Prove There Is a God (2011) ISBN 978-0-8126-9689-9 === Anthologies, collections and surveys edited by Adler === Scholasticism and Politics (1940) Great Books of the Western World (1952, 52 volumes), 2nd edition 1990, 60 volumes A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas (1952, 2 volumes), 2nd edition 1990 The Great Ideas Today (1961–77, 17 volumes), with Robert Hutchins, 1978–99, 21 volumes The Negro in American History (1969, 3 volumes), with Charles Van Doren Gateway to the Great Books (1963, 10 volumes), with Robert Hutchins The Annals of America (1968, 21 volumes) Propædia: Outline of Knowledge and Guide to The New Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition (1974, 30 volumes) Great Treasury of Western Thought (1977, with Charles Van Doren) ISBN 0412449900 == See also == List of American philosophers Educational perennialism == References == == Further reading == Ashmore, Harry (1989). Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins. New York: Little Brown. ISBN 9780316053969. Beam, Alex (2008). A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books. New York: Public Affairs. Crockett, Jr.; Bennie R. (2000). Mortimer J. Adler: An Analysis and Critique of His Eclectic Epistemology (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Wales, Lampeter, UK. Dzuback, Mary Ann (1991). Robert M. Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator. Chicago: University of Chicago. ISBN 9780226177106. Kass, Amy A. (1973). Radical Conservatives for a Liberal Education. PhD dissertation. Lacy, Tim Lacy (2006). Making a Democratic Culture: The Great Books Idea, Mortimer J. Adler, and Twentieth-Century America (Ph.D. dissertation). Chicago: Loyola University. McNeill, William (1991). Hutchins' University: A Memoir of the University of Chicago 1929–50. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moorhead, Hugh Moorhead (1964). The Great Books Movement(Ph.D. dissertation). University of Chicago. OCLC 6060691. Rubin, Joan Shelley (1992). The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Ph.D. dissertation). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. == External links == Center for the Study of The Great Ideas Mortimer J. Adler at IMDb Appearances on C-SPAN Adler papers at University of Texas at Austin Adler papers at Syracuse University Guide to the Mortimer J. Adler Papers 1914–1995 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center

Frank P. Ramsey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ramsey_(mathematician)

Frank Plumpton Ramsey (; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein and, as an undergraduate, translated Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into English. He was also influential in persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and Cambridge. Like Wittgenstein, he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the secret intellectual society, from 1921. == Life == Ramsey was born on 22 February 1903 in Cambridge where his father Arthur Stanley Ramsey (1867–1954), also a mathematician, was President of Magdalene College. His mother was Mary Agnes Stanley (1875–1927). He was the eldest of two brothers and two sisters, and his brother Michael Ramsey, the only one of the four siblings who was to remain Christian, later became Archbishop of Canterbury. He entered Winchester College in 1915 and later returned to Cambridge to study mathematics at Trinity College. There he became a student of John Maynard Keynes, and an active member in the Apostles. In 1923, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics, passing his examinations with the result of first class with distinction, and was named Senior Wrangler (top of his class). Easy-going, simple and modest, Ramsey had many interests besides his mathematical and scientific studies. Even as a teenager Ramsey exhibited both a profound ability and, as attested by his brother, an extremely diverse range of interests: He was interested in almost everything. He was immensely widely read in English literature; he was enjoying classics though he was on the verge of plunging into being a mathematical specialist; he was very interested in politics, and well-informed; he had got a political concern and a sort of left-wing caring-for-the-underdog kind of outlook about politics. In 1923, Ramsey was befriended by Geoffrey and Margaret Pyke, then on the point of founding the Malting House School in Cambridge; the Pykes took Ramsey into their family, taking him on holiday and asking him to be the godfather of their young son. Margaret found herself to be the object of his affection, Ramsey recording in his diary: One afternoon I went out alone with her on Lake Orta and became filled with desire and we came back and lay on two beds side by side she reading, I pretending to, but with an awful conflict in my mind. After about an hour I said (she was wearing her horn spectacles and looking superlatively beautiful in the Burne Jones style) 'Margaret will you fuck with me?' Margaret wanted time to consider his proposition and thus began an uncomfortable dance between them, which contributed to Ramsey's depressive moods in early 1924; as a result, he travelled to Vienna for psychoanalysis. Like many of his contemporaries, including his Viennese flatmate and fellow Apostle Lionel Penrose (also in analysis with Siegfried Bernfeld), Ramsey was intellectually interested in psychoanalysis. Ramsey's analyst was Theodor Reik, a disciple of Freud. As one of the justifications for undertaking the therapy, he asserted in a letter to his mother that unconscious impulses might affect even a mathematician's work. While in Vienna, he made a trip to Puchberg in order to visit Wittgenstein, was befriended by the Wittgenstein family and visited A.S. Neill's experimental school four hours from Vienna at Sonntagsberg. In the summer of 1924, he continued his analysis by joining Reik at Dobbiaco (in South Tyrol), where a fellow analysand was Lewis Namier. Ramsey returned to England in October 1924; with John Maynard Keynes's support he became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He joined a Psychoanalysis Group in Cambridge with fellow members Arthur Tansley, Lionel Penrose, Harold Jeffreys, John Rickman and James Strachey, the qualification for membership of which was a completed psychoanalysis. Ramsey married Lettice Baker in August 1925, the wedding taking place in a Register Office since Ramsey was, as his wife described him, a 'militant atheist'. The marriage produced two daughters. After Ramsey's death, Lettice Ramsey opened a photography studio in Cambridge with photographer Helen Muspratt. Despite his atheism, Ramsey was "quite tolerant" towards his brother when the latter decided to become a priest in the Church of England.In 1926 he became a university lecturer in mathematics and later a Director of Studies in Mathematics at King's College. The Vienna Circle manifesto (1929) lists three of his publications in a bibliography of closely related authors. == Ramsey and Wittgenstein == When I. A. Richards and C. K. Ogden, both Fellows of Magdalene, first met Ramsey, he expressed his interest in learning German. According to Richards, he mastered the language "in almost hardly over a week", although other sources show he had taken one year of German in school. Ramsey was then able, at the age of 19, to make the first draft of the translation of the German text of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Ramsey was impressed by Wittgenstein's work and after graduating as Senior Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos of 1923 he made a journey to Austria to visit Wittgenstein, at that time teaching in a primary school in the small community of Puchberg am Schneeberg. For two weeks Ramsey discussed the difficulties he was facing in understanding the Tractatus. Wittgenstein made some corrections to the English translation in Ramsey's copy and some annotations and changes to the German text that subsequently appeared in the second edition in 1933. Ramsey and John Maynard Keynes cooperated to try to bring Wittgenstein back to Cambridge (he had been a student there before World War I). Once Wittgenstein had returned to Cambridge, Ramsey became his nominal supervisor. Wittgenstein submitted the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as his doctoral thesis. G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell acted as examiners. Later, the three of them arranged financial aid for Wittgenstein to help him continue his research work. In 1929 Ramsey and Wittgenstein regularly discussed issues in mathematics and philosophy with Piero Sraffa, an Italian economist who had been brought to Cambridge by Keynes after Sraffa had aroused Benito Mussolini's ire by publishing an article critical of the Fascist regime in the Manchester Guardian. The contributions of Ramsey to these conversations were acknowledged by both Sraffa and Wittgenstein in their later work, the latter mentioning him in the introduction to his Philosophical Investigations as an influence. == Early death == Suffering chronic liver problems, Ramsey developed jaundice after an abdominal operation and died on 19 January 1930 at Guy's Hospital in London at the age of 26. There is a suspicion that the cause of his death might be an undiagnosed leptospirosis with which Ramsey, an avid swimmer, could have become infected while swimming in the Cam.He is buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge; his parents are buried in the same plot.Ramsey's notes and manuscripts were acquired by Nicholas Rescher for the Archives of Scientific Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. This collection contains only a few letters but a great many drafts of papers and book chapters, some still unpublished. Other papers, including his diary and letters and memoirs by his widow Lettice Ramsey and his father, are held in the Modern Archives, King's College, Cambridge. == Work == === Mathematical logic === One of the theorems proved by Ramsey in his 1928 paper On a Problem of Formal Logic now bears his name (Ramsey's theorem). While this theorem is the work Ramsey is probably best remembered for, he proved it only in passing, as a minor lemma along the way to his true goal in the paper, solving a special case of the decision problem for first-order logic, namely the decidability of what is now called the Bernays–Schönfinkel–Ramsey class of first-order logic, as well as a characterisation of the spectrum of sentences in this fragment of logic. Alonzo Church would go on to show that the general case of the decision problem for first-order logic is unsolvable and that first-order logic is undecidable (see Church's theorem). A great amount of later work in mathematics was fruitfully developed out of the ostensibly minor lemma used by Ramsey in his decidability proof: this lemma turned out to be an important early result in combinatorics, supporting the idea that within some sufficiently large systems, however disordered, there must be some order. So fruitful, in fact, was Ramsey's theorem that today there is an entire branch of mathematics, known as Ramsey theory, which is dedicated to studying similar results. In 1926, Ramsey proposed a simplification of the Theory of Types developed by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica. The resulting theory is known today as Theory of Simple Type (TST) or Simple Type Theory. Ramsey observed that a hierarchy of types was sufficient to deal with mathematical paradoxes, so removed Russell's and Whitehead's ramified hierarchy, which was meant to elude semantic paradoxes. Ramsey's version of the theory is the one considered by Kurt Gödel in the original proof of his first incompleteness theorem. Ramsey's Theory of Simple Types was further simplified by Willard van Orman Quine in his New Foundations set theory, in which any explicit reference to types is eliminated from the language of the theory. === Philosophy === His main philosophical works included Universals (1925), Facts and propositions (1927) (which proposed a redundancy theory of truth), Universals of law and of fact (1928), Knowledge (1929), Theories (1929), On Truth (1929), Causal Qualities (1929), and General propositions and causality (1929). Ramsey was perhaps the first to propose a reliabilist theory of knowledge. He also produced what philosopher Alan Hájek has described as an "enormously influential version of the subjective interpretation of probability." His thought in this area was outlined in the paper Truth and Probability (discussed below) which was written in 1926 but first published posthumously in 1931. === Economics === Keynes and Pigou encouraged Ramsey to work on economics as "From a very early age, about sixteen I think, his precocious mind was intensely interested in economic problems" (Keynes, 1933). Ramsey responded to Keynes's urging by writing three papers in economic theory all of which were of fundamental importance, though it was many years before they received their proper recognition by the community of economists. Ramsey's three papers, described below in detail, were on subjective probability and utility (1926), optimal taxation (1927) and optimal growth in a one-sector economy (1928). The economist Paul Samuelson described them in 1970 as "three great legacies – legacies that were for the most part mere by-products of his major interest in the foundations of mathematics and knowledge." ==== A Mathematical Theory of Saving ==== Described by Partha Dasgupta, in a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry devoted to it, as "one of the dozen or so most influential papers of the 20th century" in the field of academic economics, "A Mathematical Theory of Saving" was originally published in The Economic Journal in 1928. It employed, as Paul Samuelson described it, "a strategically beautiful application of the calculus of variations" to determine the optimal amount an economy should invest rather than consume so as to maximise future utility, or as Ramsey put it, "how much of its income should a nation save?"Keynes described the article as "one of the most remarkable contributions to mathematical economics ever made, both in respect of the intrinsic importance and difficulty of its subject, the power and elegance of the technical methods employed, and the clear purity of illumination with which the writer's mind is felt by the reader to play about its subject. The article is terribly difficult reading for an economist, but it is not difficult to appreciate how scientific and aesthetic qualities are combined in it together." The Ramsey model is today acknowledged as the starting point for optimal accumulation theory although its importance was not recognised until many years after its first publication. The main contributions of the model were firstly the initial question Ramsey posed on how much savings should be and secondly the method of analysis, the intertemporal maximisation (optimisation) of collective or individual utility by applying techniques of dynamic optimisation. Tjalling C. Koopmans and David Cass modified the Ramsey model incorporating the dynamic features of population growth at a steady rate and of Harrod-neutral technical progress again at a steady rate, giving birth to a model named the Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans model where the objective now is to maximise household's utility function. ==== A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation ==== This paper, first published in 1927 has been described by Joseph E. Stiglitz as "a landmark in the economics of public finance" In the same, Ramsey contributed to economic theory the elegant concept of Ramsey pricing. This is applicable in situations where a (regulated) monopolist wants to maximise consumer surplus whilst at the same time ensuring that its costs are adequately covered. This is achieved by setting the price such that the markup over marginal cost is inversely proportional to the price elasticity of demand for that good. Ramsey poses the question that is to be solved at the beginning of the article: "a given revenue is to be raised by proportionate taxes on some or all uses of income, the taxes on different uses being possibly at different rates; how much should these rates be adjusted in order that the decrement of utility may be a minimum?" The problem was suggested to him by the economist Arthur Pigou and the paper was Ramsey's answer to the problem. ==== Truth and Probability ==== In A Treatise on Probability (1921), Keynes had argued against the subjective approach in epistemic probabilities. For Keynes, subjectivity of probabilities does not matter as much, as for him there is an objective relationship between knowledge and probabilities, as knowledge is disembodied and not personal. Ramsey disagreed with this approach. In his article "Truth and Probability" (1926), he argued that there is a difference between the notions of probability in physics and in logic. For Ramsey, probability is not related to a disembodied body of knowledge but is related to the knowledge that each individual possesses alone. Thus personal beliefs that are formulated by this individual knowledge govern probabilities, leading to the notions of subjective probability and Bayesian probability. Consequently, subjective probabilities can be inferred by observing actions that reflect individuals' personal beliefs. Ramsey argued that the degree of probability that an individual attaches to a particular outcome can be measured by finding what odds the individual would accept when betting on that outcome. After Ramsey's death, an approach to probability similar to his was developed independently by the Italian mathematician Bruno de Finetti.Ramsey suggested a way of deriving a consistent theory of choice under uncertainty that could isolate beliefs from preferences while still maintaining subjective probabilities.Despite the fact that Ramsey's work on probabilities was of great importance, no one paid any attention to it until the publication of Theory of Games and Economic Behavior of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in 1944 (1947 2nd ed.) == Legacy == === Frank P. Ramsey Medal === The Decision Analysis Society annually awards the Frank P. Ramsey Medal to recognise substantial contributions to decision theory and its application to important classes of real decision problems. === Frank Ramsey Professorships === Howard Raiffa was made the first Frank P. Ramsey Professor (of Managerial Economics) at Harvard University. Richard Zeckhauser was made the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University in 1971. Raiffa's chair was joint between the Harvard Business and Kennedy Schools. Zeckhauser's chair is in the Kennedy School. Partha Dasgupta was made the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics in 1994 and Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics in 2010 at the University of Cambridge. === Ramsey Effect === In 1999, the philosopher Donald Davidson gave the name "the Ramsey Effect" to anyone's realisation that their splendid new philosophical discovery already existed within Frank Ramsey's body of work. == See also == == Notes == == References == Arrow, K (1980). "Review: Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics and Economics" (PDF). Journal of Political Economy. 88 (3): 636–638. doi:10.1086/260894. Bernstein, B. A. (1932). "Review: The Foundations of Mathematics, and other Essays by Frank Plumpton Ramsey, edited by R. B. Braithwaite, preface by G. E. Moore" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 38 (9): 611–612. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1932-05470-2. Duarte, Pedro G (2009a). "Frank P. Ramsey: A Cambridge Economist". History of Political Economy. 41 (3): 445–470. doi:10.1215/00182702-2009-035. S2CID 144949987. Duarte, Pedro G. (2009b). "Frank Ramsey's Notes on Saving and Taxation". History of Political Economy. 41 (3): 471–489. doi:10.1215/00182702-2009-048. Forrester, John (2004). "Freud in Cambridge" (PDF). Critical Quarterly. 46 (2): 1–26. doi:10.1111/j.0011-1562.2004.t01-1-00560.x. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 May 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2010. Galavotti, M. C. (Ed.) (2006), Cambridge and Vienna: Frank P. Ramsey and the Vienna Circle, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (2000), The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Keynes, John Maynard (1933), "F. P. Ramsey", in Essays in Biography, New York, NY. Mellor, D.H. (1995). "Cambridge Philosophers I: F. P. Ramsey". Philosophy. 70 (272): 243–262. doi:10.1017/s0031819100065396. S2CID 143786971. Newbery, D. "Ramsey model". The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. 4: 46–48. Newman, P (1987). "Ramsey, Frank Plumpton". The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. 4: 41–46. Ramsey, F.P. (1927). "Facts and Propositions" (PDF). Aristotelian Society Supplementary. 7: 153–170. doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/7.1.153. Ramsey, F.P. (1928). "A Mathematical Theory of Saving". Economic Journal. 38 (152): 543–559. doi:10.2307/2224098. JSTOR 2224098. Ramsey, F.P. (1927). "A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation". Economic Journal. 37 (145): 47–61. doi:10.2307/2222721. JSTOR 2222721. Ramsey, F.P. (1929). "On a Problem in Formal Logic" (PDF). Proc. London Math. Soc. 30: 264–286. doi:10.1112/plms/s2-30.1.264. Ramsey, F.P. (1931), The Foundations of Mathematics, and other Essays, (ed.) R. B. Braithwaite Ramsey, F.P. (1978) Foundations – Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics and Economics, (ed.) D.H. Mellor, Humanities Press, LCCN 77-26864 Rescher, Nicholas and Ulrich Majer (eds.) (1991). F. P. Ramsey: On Truth , Dordrecht, Kluwer Sahlin, N.-E. (1990), The Philosophy of F. P. Ramsey, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Sahlin, N.-E. (1996), "He is no good for my work": On the philosophical relations between Ramsey and Wittgenstein, in Knowledge and Inquiry: Essays on Jaakko Hintikkas Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, ed by M. Sintonen, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of Sciences and the Humanities, Amsterdam, 61–84 Sahlin, N.-E. (2005), Ramsey's Ontology, a special issue of Metaphysica, No. 3 Samuelson, P (1970). "What Makes for a Beautiful Problem in Science?". Journal of Political Economy. 78 (6): 1372–1377. doi:10.1086/259716. S2CID 154344155. == Further reading == Gottlieb, Anthony. "The Man Who Thought Too Fast". The New Yorker. Retrieved 27 April 2020. Misak, Cheryl (2020). Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19875-535-7. (Review by Simon Blackburn [author-shared Eprint]) Paul, Margaret (2012). Frank Ramsey (1903–1930): A Sister's Memoir. Smith-Gordon. ISBN 978-1-85463-248-7. (Reviews: 1: by Ray Monk; 2: by David Papineau [Archived]) Sabbagh, Karl (2013). Shooting Star: The Brief and Brilliant Life of Frank Ramsey. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. ASIN B00BBJCUUW. == External links == Frank Ramsey, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Frank Plumpton Ramsey Papers Better than the Stars/Frank Ramsey: a biography a 1978 BBC radio portrait of Ramsey and a 1995 article derived from it, both by David Hugh Mellor. Maths and philosophy puzzles BBC Radio 3 programme discussing the legacy of Ramsey. A photo of Ramsey's grave at Findagrave

Theodor Adorno

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_W._Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno ( ə-DOR-noh, German: [ˈteːodoːɐ̯ ʔaˈdɔʁno] (listen); born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, for whom the works of Freud, Marx, and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society. As a critic of both fascism and what he called the culture industry, his writings—such as Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Minima Moralia (1951) and Negative Dialectics (1966)—strongly influenced the European New Left. Amidst the vogue enjoyed by existentialism and positivism in early 20th-century Europe, Adorno advanced a dialectical conception of natural history that critiqued the twin temptations of ontology and empiricism through studies of Kierkegaard and Husserl. As a classically trained pianist whose sympathies with the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg resulted in his studying composition with Alban Berg of the Second Viennese School, Adorno's commitment to avant-garde music formed the backdrop of his subsequent writings and led to his collaboration with Thomas Mann on the latter's novel Doctor Faustus, while the two men lived in California as exiles during the Second World War. Working for the newly relocated Institute for Social Research, Adorno collaborated on influential studies of authoritarianism, antisemitism and propaganda that would later serve as models for sociological studies the Institute carried out in post-war Germany. Upon his return to Frankfurt, Adorno was involved with the reconstitution of German intellectual life through debates with Karl Popper on the limitations of positivist science, critiques of Heidegger's language of authenticity, writings on German responsibility for the Holocaust, and continued interventions into matters of public policy. As a writer of polemics in the tradition of Nietzsche and Karl Kraus, Adorno delivered scathing critiques of contemporary Western culture. Adorno's posthumously published Aesthetic Theory, which he planned to dedicate to Samuel Beckett, is the culmination of a lifelong commitment to modern art which attempts to revoke the "fatal separation" of feeling and understanding long demanded by the history of philosophy and explode the privilege aesthetics accords to content over form and contemplation over immersion. == Life and career == === Early years: Frankfurt === Theodor W. Adorno (alias: Theodor Adorno-Wiesengrund) was born as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund in Frankfurt am Main on 11 September 1903, the only child of Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana (1865–1952) and Oscar Alexander Wiesengrund (1870–1946). His mother, a Catholic from Corsica, was once a professional singer, while his father, an assimilated Jew who had converted to Protestantism, ran a successful wine-export business. Proud of her origins, Maria wanted her son's paternal surname to be supplemented by the addition of her own name, Adorno. Thus his earliest publications carried the name Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno; upon his application for US citizenship, his name was modified to Theodor W. Adorno. His childhood was marked by the musical life provided by his mother and aunt: Maria was a singer who could boast of having performed in Vienna at the Imperial Court, while her sister, Agathe, who lived with them, had made a name for herself as both a singer and pianist. He was not only a precocious child but, as he recalled later in life, a child prodigy who could play pieces by Beethoven on the piano by the time he was twelve.At the age of six, he attended the Deutschherren middle school, before transferring to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gymnasium, where he studied from 1913 to 1921. Prior to his graduation at the top of his class, Adorno was already swept up by the revolutionary mood of the time, as is evidenced by his reading of Georg Lukács's The Theory of the Novel that year, as well as by his fascination with Ernst Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia, of which he would later write: Bloch's was a philosophy that could hold its head high before the most advanced literature; a philosophy that was not calibrated to the abominable resignation of methodology ... I took this motif so much as my own that I do not believe I have ever written anything without reference to it, either implicit or explicit. Adorno's intellectual nonconformism was also shaped by the repugnance he felt towards the nationalism which swept through the Reich during the First World War. Along with future collaborators Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Bloch, Adorno was profoundly disillusioned by the ease with which Germany's intellectual and spiritual leaders—among them Max Weber, Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, as well as his friend Siegfried Kracauer—came out in support of the war. The younger generation's distrust for traditional knowledge arose from the way in which this tradition had discredited itself.Over time, Oscar Wiesengrund's firm established close professional and personal ties with the factory of Karplus & Herzberger in Berlin. The eldest daughter of the Karplus family, Margarete, or Gretel, moved in the intellectual circles of Berlin, where she was acquainted with Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Bloch, each of whom Adorno would become familiar with during the mid-1920s; after fourteen years, Gretel Karplus and Adorno were married in 1937. At the end of his schooldays, Adorno not only benefited from the rich concert offerings of Frankfurt—where one could hear performances of works by Schoenberg, Schreker, Stravinsky, Bartók, Busoni, Delius and Hindemith—but also began studying music composition at the Hoch Conservatory while taking private lessons with well-respected composers Bernhard Sekles and Eduard Jung. At around the same time, he befriended Siegfried Kracauer, the Frankfurter Zeitung's literary editor, of whom he would later write: For years Kracauer read [Kant's] Critique of Pure Reason with me regularly on Saturday afternoons. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that I owe more to this reading than to my academic teachers ... Under his guidance I experienced the work from the beginning not as mere epistemology, not as an analysis of the conditions of scientifically valid judgments, but as a kind of coded text from which the historical situation of spirit could be read, with the vague expectation that in doing so one could acquire something of truth itself. Leaving gymnasium to study philosophy, psychology and sociology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Adorno continued his readings with Kracauer, turning now to Hegel and Kierkegaard, and began publishing concert reviews and pieces of music for distinguished journals like the Zeitschrift für Musik, the Neue Blätter für Kunst und Literatur and later for the Musikblätter des Anbruch. In these articles Adorno championed avant-garde music at the same time as he critiqued the failings of musical modernity, as in the case of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, which in 1923 he called a "dismal Bohemian prank". In these early writings he was unequivocal in his condemnation of performances that either sought or pretended to achieve a transcendence that Adorno, in line with many intellectuals of the time, regarded as impossible: "No cathedral", he wrote, "can be built if no community desires one." In the summer of 1924 Adorno received his doctorate with a study of Edmund Husserl under the direction of the unorthodox neo-Kantian Hans Cornelius. Before his graduation Adorno had already met his most important intellectual collaborators, Horkheimer and Benjamin. Through Cornelius's seminars, Adorno met Horkheimer, through whom he was then introduced to Friedrich Pollock. === Vienna, Frankfurt, and Berlin === During the summer of 1924, the Viennese composer Alban Berg's "Three Fragments from Wozzeck", op. 7, premiered in Frankfurt, at which time Adorno introduced himself to Berg and both agreed the young philosopher and composer would study with Berg in Vienna. Upon moving to Vienna in February 1925, Adorno immersed himself in the musical culture that had grown up around Schoenberg: in addition to his twice-weekly sessions with Berg, Adorno continued his studies on piano with Eduard Steuermann and befriended the violinist Rudolf Kolisch. In Vienna he and Berg attended public lectures by the satirist Karl Kraus, and he met Lukács, who had been living in Vienna after the failure of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Berg, whom Adorno called "my master and teacher", was among the most prescient of his young pupil's early friends: [I am] convinced that, in the sphere of the deepest understanding of music ... you are capable of supreme achievements and will undoubtedly fulfill this promise in the shape of great philosophical works. After leaving Vienna, Adorno traveled through Italy, where he met with Kracauer, Benjamin, and the economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel, with whom he developed a lasting friendship, before returning to Frankfurt. In December 1926 Adorno's "Two Pieces for String Quartet", op. 2, were performed in Vienna, which provided a welcome interruption from his preparations for the habilitation. After writing the "Piano Pieces in strict twelve-tone technique", as well as songs later integrated into the Six Bagatelles for Voice and Piano, op. 6, Adorno presented his habilitation manuscript, The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of the Psyche (Der Begriff des Unbewußten in der transzendentalen Seelenlehre), to Cornelius in November 1927. Cornelius advised Adorno to withdraw his application on the grounds that the manuscript was too close to his own way of thinking. In the manuscript Adorno attempted to underline the epistemological status of the unconscious as it emerged from Freud's early writings. Against the function of the unconscious in both Nietzsche and Spengler, Adorno argued that Freud's notion of the unconscious serves as a "sharp weapon ... against every attempt to create a metaphysics of the instincts and to deify full, organic nature." Undaunted by his academic prospects, Adorno threw himself once again into composition. In addition to publishing numerous reviews of opera performances and concerts, Adorno's "Four Songs for Medium Voice and Piano", op. 3, were performed in Berlin in January 1929. Between 1928 and 1930 Adorno took on a greater role within the editorial committee of the Musikblätter des Anbruch. In a proposal for transforming the journal, he sought to use Anbruch for championing radical modern music against what he called the "stabilized music" of Pfitzner, the later Richard Strauss, as well as the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Hindemith. During this period he published the essays "Night Music", "On Twelve-Tone Technique" and "Reaction and Progress". Yet his reservations about twelve-tone orthodoxy became steadily more pronounced. According to Adorno, twelve-tone technique's use of atonality can no more be regarded as an authoritative canon than can tonality be relied on to provide instructions for the composer. At this time Adorno struck up a correspondence with the composer Ernst Krenek, discussing problems of atonality and twelve-tone technique. In a 1934 letter he sounded a related criticism of Schoenberg: Twelve-tone technique alone is nothing but the principle of motivic elaboration and variation, as developed in the sonata, but elevated now to a comprehensive principle of construction, namely transformed into an a priori form and, by that token, detached from the surface of the composition. At this point Adorno reversed his earlier priorities: now his musical activities came second to the development of a philosophical theory of aesthetics. Thus, in the middle of 1929 he accepted Paul Tillich's offer to present an habilitation on Kierkegaard, which Adorno eventually submitted under the title The Construction of the Aesthetic. At the time, Kierkegaard's philosophy exerted a strong influence, chiefly through its claim to pose an alternative to Idealism and Hegel's philosophy of history. Yet when Adorno turned his attention to Kierkegaard, watchwords like "anxiety," "inwardness" and "leap"—instructive for existentialist philosophy—were detached from their theological origins and posed, instead, as problems for aesthetics. As the work proceeded—and Kierkegaard's overcoming of Hegel's idealism was revealed to be a mere interiorization—Adorno excitedly remarked in a letter to Berg that he was writing without looking over his shoulder at the faculty who would soon evaluate his work. Receiving favourable reports from Professors Tillich and Horkheimer, as well as Benjamin and Kracauer, the university conferred on Adorno the venia legendi in February 1931; on the very day his revised study was published, 23 March 1933, Hitler seized dictatorial powers.Several months after qualifying as a lecturer in philosophy, Adorno delivered an inaugural lecture at the Institute for Social Research, an independent organization that had recently appointed Horkheimer as its director and, with the arrival of the literary scholar Leo Lowenthal, social psychologist Erich Fromm and philosopher Herbert Marcuse, sought to exploit recent theoretical and methodological advances in the social sciences. His lecture, "The Actuality of Philosophy," created a scandal. In it Adorno not only deviated from the theoretical program Horkheimer had laid out a year earlier but challenged philosophy's very capacity for comprehending reality as such: "For the mind," Adorno announced, "is indeed not capable of producing or grasping the totality of the real, but it may be possible to penetrate the detail, to explode in miniature the mass of merely existing reality." In line with Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama and preliminary sketches of the Arcades Project, Adorno likened philosophical interpretation to experiments that should be conducted "until they arrive at figurations in which the answers are legible, while the questions themselves vanish." Having lost its position as the Queen of the Sciences, philosophy must now radically transform its approach to objects so that it might "construct keys before which reality springs open."Following Horkheimer's taking up the directorship of the institute, a new journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, was produced to publish the research of Institute members both before and after its relocation to the United States. Though Adorno was not an Institute member, the journal published many of his essays, including "The Social Situation of Music" (1932), "On Jazz" (1936), "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening" (1938) and "Fragments on Wagner" (1938). In his new role as social theorist, Adorno's philosophical analysis of cultural phenomena heavily relied on the language of historical materialism, as concepts like reification, false consciousness and ideology came to play an ever more prominent role in his work. At the same time, however, and owing to both the presence of another prominent sociologist at the institute, Karl Mannheim, as well as the methodological problem posed by treating objects—like "musical material"—as ciphers of social contradictions, Adorno was compelled to abandon any notion of "value-free" sociology in favour of a form of ideology critique that held on to an idea of truth. Before his emigration in autumn 1934, Adorno began work on a Singspiel based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer titled The Treasure of Indian Joe, which he never completed; by the time he fled Hitler's Germany Adorno had already written over 100 opera or concert reviews and 50 critiques of music composition. As the Nazi party became the largest party in the Reichstag, Horkheimer's 1932 observation proved typical for his milieu: "Only one thing is certain", he wrote, "the irrationality of society has reached a point where only the gloomiest predictions have any plausibility." In September Adorno's right to teach was revoked; in March, as the swastika was run up the flagpole of town hall, the Frankfurt criminal police searched the institute's offices. Adorno's house on Seeheimer Strasse was similarly searched in July and his application for membership in the Reich Chamber of Literature denied on the grounds that membership was limited to "persons who belong to the German nation by profound ties of character and blood. As a non-Aryan," he was informed, "you are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation." Soon afterwards Adorno was forced into 15 years of exile. === Exile: Oxford, New York, Los Angeles === After the possibility of transferring his habilitation to the University of Vienna came to nothing, Adorno considered relocating to Britain upon his father's suggestion. With the help of the Academic Assistance Council, Adorno registered as an advanced student at Merton College, Oxford, in June 1934. During the next four years at Oxford, Adorno made repeated trips to Germany to see both his parents and Gretel, who was still working in Berlin. Under the direction of Gilbert Ryle, Adorno worked on a dialectical critique of Husserl's epistemology. By this time, the Institute for Social Research had relocated to New York City and begun making overtures to Adorno. After months of strained relations, Horkheimer and Adorno reestablished their essential theoretical alliance during meetings in Paris. Adorno continued writing on music, publishing "The Form of the Phonograph Record" and "Crisis of Music Criticism" with the Viennese musical journal 23, "On Jazz" in the institute's Zeitschrift, "Farewell to Jazz" in Europäische Revue. But Adorno's attempts to break out of the sociology of music were twice thwarted: neither the study of Mannheim he had been working on for years nor extracts from his study of Husserl were accepted by the Zeitschrift. Impressed by Horkheimer's book of aphorisms, Dawn and Decline, Adorno began working on his own book of aphorisms, what later became Minima Moralia. While at Oxford, Adorno suffered two great losses: his Aunt Agathe died in June 1935, and Berg died in December of the same year. To the end of his life, Adorno never abandoned the hope of completing Berg's unfinished opera Lulu. At this time Adorno was in intense correspondence with Walter Benjamin about the latter's Arcades Project. After receiving an invitation from Horkheimer to visit the Institute in New York, Adorno sailed for New York on 9 June 1937 and stayed for two weeks. While he was in New York, Horkheimer's essays "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" and "Traditional and Critical Theory," which would soon become instructive for the institute's self-understanding, were the subject of intense discussion. Soon after his return to Europe, Gretel moved to Britain, where she and Adorno were married on 8 September 1937; a little over a month later, Horkheimer telegrammed from New York with news of a position Adorno could take with the Princeton Radio Project, then under the directorship of the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Yet Adorno's work continued with studies of Beethoven and Richard Wagner (published in 1939 as "Fragments on Wagner"), drafts of which he read to Benjamin during their final meeting, in December on the Italian Riviera. According to Benjamin, these drafts were astonishing for "the precision of their materialist deciphering" as well as the way in which "musical facts ... had been made socially transparent in a way that was completely new to me." In his Wagner study, the thesis later to characterize Dialectic of Enlightenment—man's domination of nature—first emerges. Adorno sailed for New York on 16 February 1938. Soon after settling into his new home on Riverside Drive, Adorno met with Lazarsfeld in Newark, New Jersey, to discuss the Project's plans for investigating the impact of broadcast music. Although he was expected to embed the Project's research within a wider theoretical context, it soon became apparent that the Project was primarily concerned with data collection to be used by administrators for establishing whether groups of listeners could be targeted by broadcasts specifically aimed at them. Expected to make use of devices with which listeners could press a button to indicate whether they liked or disliked a particular piece of music, Adorno bristled with distaste and astonishment: "I reflected that culture was simply the condition that precluded a mentality that tried to measure it." Thus Adorno suggested using individual interviews to determine listener reactions and, only three months after meeting Lazarsfeld, completed a 160-page memorandum on the Project's topic, "Music in Radio." Adorno was primarily interested in how the musical material was affected by its distribution through the medium of radio and thought it imperative to understand how music was affected by its becoming part of daily life. "The meaning of a Beethoven symphony," he wrote, "heard while the listener is walking around or lying in bed is very likely to differ from its effect in a concert-hall where people sit as if they were in church." In essays published by the institute's Zeitschrift, Adorno dealt with the atrophy of musical culture that had become instrumental in accelerating tendencies—toward conformism, trivialization and standardization—already present in the larger culture. Unsurprisingly, Adorno's studies found little resonance among members of the project. At the end of 1939, when Lazarsfeld submitted a second application for funding, the musical section of the study was left out. Yet during the two years during which he worked on the Project, Adorno was prolific, publishing "The Radio Symphony", "A Social Critique of Radio Music", and "On Popular Music", texts that, along with the draft memorandum and other unpublished writings, are found in Robert Hullot-Kentor's translation, Current of Music. In light of this situation, Horkheimer soon found a permanent post for Adorno at the institute. In addition to helping with the Zeitschrift, Adorno was expected to be the institute's liaison with Benjamin, who soon passed on to New York the study of Charles Baudelaire he hoped would serve as a model of the larger Arcades Project. In correspondence, the two men discussed the difference in their conceptions of the relationship between critique and artworks that had become manifest through Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility". At around the same time Adorno and Horkheimer began planning for a joint work on "dialectical logic", which would later become Dialectic of Enlightenment. Alarmed by reports from Europe, where Adorno's parents suffered increasing discrimination and Benjamin was interned in Colombes, they entertained few delusions about their work's practical effects. "In view of what is now threatening to engulf Europe," Horkheimer wrote, "our present work is essentially destined to pass things down through the night that is approaching: a kind of message in a bottle." As Adorno continued his work in New York with radio talks on music and a lecture on Kierkegaard's doctrine of love, Benjamin fled Paris and attempted to make an illegal border crossing. After learning that his Spanish visa was invalid and fearing deportation back to France, Benjamin took an overdose of morphine tablets. In light of recent events, the Institute set about formulating a theory of antisemitism and fascism. On one side were those who supported Franz Leopold Neumann's thesis according to which National Socialism was a form of "monopoly capitalism"; on the other were those who supported Friedrich Pollock's "state capitalist theory." Horkheimer's contributions to this debate, in the form of the essays "The Authoritarian State", "The End of Reason", and "The Jews and Europe", served as a foundation for what he and Adorno planned to do in their book on dialectical logic. In November 1941 Adorno followed Horkheimer to what Thomas Mann called "German California", setting up house in a Pacific Palisades neighborhood of German émigrés that included Bertolt Brecht and Schoenberg. Adorno arrived with a draft of his Philosophy of New Music, a dialectical critique of twelve-tone music that Adorno felt, while writing it, was a departure from the theory of art he had spent the previous decades elaborating. Horkheimer's reaction to the manuscript was wholly positive: "If I have ever in the whole of my life felt enthusiasm about anything, then I did on this occasion," he wrote after reading the manuscript. The two set about completing their joint work, which transformed from a book on dialectical logic to a rewriting of the history of rationality and the Enlightenment. First published in a small mimeographed edition in May 1944 as Philosophical Fragments, the text waited another three years before achieving book form when it was published with its definitive title, Dialectic of Enlightenment, by the Amsterdam publisher Querido Verlag. This "reflection on the destructive aspect of progress" proceeded through the chapters that treated rationality as both the liberation from and further domination of nature, interpretations of both Homer's Odyssey and the Marquis de Sade, as well as analyses of the culture industry and antisemitism. With their joint work completed, the two turned their attention to studies on antisemitism and authoritarianism in collaboration with the Nevitt Sanford-led Public Opinion Study Group and the American Jewish Committee. In line with these studies, Adorno produced an analysis of the Californian radio preacher Martin Luther Thomas. Fascist propaganda of this sort, Adorno wrote, "simply takes people for what they are: genuine children of today's standardized mass culture who have been robbed to a great extent of their autonomy and spontaneity". The result of these labors, the 1950 study The Authoritarian Personality, was pioneering in its combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting and evaluating data as well as its development of the F-scale personality test. After the USA entered the war in 1941, the situation of the émigrés, now classed "enemy aliens", became increasingly restricted. Forbidden from leaving their homes between 8pm and 6am and from going more than five miles from their houses, émigrés like Adorno, who was not naturalized until November 1943, were severely restricted in their movements. In addition to the aphorisms that conclude Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno put together a collection of aphorisms in honor of Horkheimer's 50th birthday that were later published as Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. These fragmentary writings, inspired by a renewed reading of Nietzsche, treated issues like emigration, totalitarianism, and individuality, as well as everyday matters such as giving presents, dwelling and the impossibility of love. In California Adorno made the acquaintance of Charlie Chaplin and became friends with Fritz Lang and Hanns Eisler, with whom he completed a study of film music in 1944. In this study the authors pushed for the greater usage of avant-garde music in film, urging that music be used to supplement, not simply accompany, films' visual aspect. Adorno also assisted Thomas Mann with his novel Doktor Faustus after the latter asked for his help. "Would you be willing," Mann wrote, "to think through with me how the work—I mean Leverkühn's work—might look; how you would do it if you were in league with the Devil?"At the end of October 1949, Adorno left America for Europe just as The Authoritarian Personality was being published. Before his return, Adorno had reached an agreement with a Tübingen publisher to print an expanded version of Philosophy of New Music and completed two compositions: Four Songs for Voice and Piano by Stefan George, op.7, and Three Choruses for Female Voices from the Poems of Theodor Däubler, op. 8. === Postwar Europe === ==== Return to Frankfurt University ==== Upon his return, Adorno helped shape the political culture of West Germany. Until his death in 1969, twenty years after his return, Adorno contributed to the intellectual foundations of the Federal Republic, as a professor at Frankfurt University, critic of the vogue enjoyed by Heideggerian philosophy, partisan of critical sociology, and teacher of music at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. Adorno resumed his teaching duties at the university soon after his arrival, with seminars on "Kant's Transcendental Dialectic", aesthetics, Hegel, "Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Knowledge", and "The Concept of Knowledge". Adorno's surprise at his students' passionate interest in intellectual matters did not, however, blind him to continuing problems within Germany: The literary climate was dominated by writers who had remained in Germany during Hitler's rule, the government re-employed people who had been active in the Nazi apparatus and people were generally loath to own up to their own collaboration or the guilt they thus incurred. Instead, the ruined city of Frankfurt continued as if nothing had happened, holding on to ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good despite the atrocities, hanging on to a culture that had itself been lost in rubble or killed off in the concentration camps. All the enthusiasm Adorno's students showed for intellectual matters could not erase the suspicion that, in the words of Max Frisch, culture had become an "alibi" for the absence of political consciousness. Yet the foundations for what would come to be known as "The Frankfurt School" were soon laid: Horkheimer resumed his chair in social philosophy and the Institute for Social Research, rebuilt, became a lightning rod for critical thought. ==== Essays on fascism ==== Starting with his 1947 essay Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler, Adorno produced a series of influential works to describe psychological fascist traits. One of these works was The Authoritarian Personality (1950), published as a contribution to the Studies in Prejudice performed by multiple research institutes in the US, and consisting of 'qualitative interpretations' that uncovered the authoritarian character of test persons through indirect questions. The books have had a major influence on sociology and remain highly discussed and debated. In 1951 he continued on the topic with his essay Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, in which he said that "Psychological dispositions do not actually cause fascism; rather, fascism defines a psychological area which can be successfully exploited by the forces which promote it for entirely non-psychological reasons of self-interest."In 1952 Adorno participated in a group experiment, revealing residual National Socialist attitudes among the recently democratized Germans. He then published two influential essays, The Meaning of Working Through the Past (1959), and Education after Auschwitz (1966), in which he argued on the survival of the uneradicated National Socialism in the mind-sets and institutions of the post-1945 Germany, and that there is still a real risk that it could rise again. Later on, however, Jean Améry—who had been tortured at Auschwitz—would sharply object that Adorno, rather than addressing such political concerns, was exploiting Auschwitz for his metaphysical phantom "absolute negativity" ("absolute Negativität"), using a language intoxicated by itself ("von sich selber bis zur Selbstblendung entzückte Sprache"). ==== Public events ==== In September 1951 Adorno returned to the United States for a six-week visit, during which he attended the opening of the Hacker Psychiatry Foundation in Beverly Hills, met Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse in New York and saw his mother for the last time. After stopping in Paris, where he met Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Michel Leiris and René Leibowitz, Adorno delivered a lecture entitled "The Present State of Empirical Social Research in Germany" at a conference on opinion research. Here he emphasized the importance of data collection and statistical evaluation while asserting that such empirical methods have only an auxiliary function and must lead to the formation of theories which would "raise the harsh facts to the level of consciousness."With Horkheimer as dean of the Arts Faculty, then rector of the university, responsibilities for the institute's work fell upon Adorno. At the same time, however, Adorno renewed his musical work: with talks at the Kranichsteiner Musikgesellschaft, another in connection with a production of Ernst Krenek's opera Leben des Orest, and a seminar on "Criteria of New Music" at the Fifth International Summer Course for New Music at Kranichstein. Adorno also became increasingly involved with the publishing house of Peter Suhrkamp, inducing the latter to publish Benjamin's Berlin Childhood Around 1900, Kracauer's writings and a two-volume edition of Benjamin's writings. Adorno's own recently published Minima Moralia was not only well received in the press, but also met with great admiration from Thomas Mann, who wrote to Adorno from America in 1952: I have spent days attached to your book as if by a magnet. Every day brings new fascination ... concentrated nourishment. It is said that the companion star to Sirius, white in colour, is made of such dense material that a cubic inch of it would weigh a tonne here. This is why it has such an extremely powerful gravitational field; in this respect it is similar to your book. Yet Adorno was no less moved by other public events: protesting the publication of Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrat with its film title, The Blue Angel; declaring his sympathy with those who protested the scandal of big-game hunting and penning a defense of prostitutes. ==== More essays on mass culture and literature ==== Because Adorno's American citizenship would have been forfeited by the middle of 1952 had he continued to stay outside the country, he returned once again to Santa Monica to survey his prospects at the Hacker Foundation. While there he wrote a content analysis of newspaper horoscopes (now collected in The Stars Down to Earth), and the essays "Television as Ideology" and "Prologue to Television"; even so, he was pleased when, at the end of ten months, he was enjoined to return as co-director of the institute. Back in Frankfurt, he renewed his academic duties and, from 1952 to 1954, completed three essays: "Notes on Kafka", "Valéry Proust Museum", and an essay on Schoenberg following the composer's death, all of which were included in the 1955 essay collection Prisms. In response to the publication of Thomas Mann's The Black Swan, Adorno penned a long letter to the author, who then approved its publication in the literary journal Akzente. A second collection of essays, Notes to Literature, appeared in 1958. After meeting Samuel Beckett while delivering a series of lectures in Paris the same year, Adorno set to work on "Trying to Understand Endgame," which, along with studies of Proust, Valéry, and Balzac, formed the central texts of the 1961 publication of the second volume of his Notes to Literature. Adorno's entrance into literary discussions continued in his June 1963 lecture at the annual conference of the Hölderlin Society. At the Philosophers' Conference of October 1962 in Münster, at which Habermas wrote that Adorno was "A writer among bureaucrats", Adorno presented "Progress".Although the Zeitschrift was never revived, the Institute nevertheless published a series of important sociological books, including Sociologica (1955), a collection of essays, Gruppenexperiment (1955), Betriebsklima, a study of work satisfaction among workers in Mannesmann, and Soziologische Exkurse, a textbook-like anthology intended as an introductory work about the discipline. ==== Public figure ==== Throughout the fifties and sixties, Adorno became a public figure, not simply through his books and essays, but also through his appearances in radio and newspapers. In talks, interviews, and round-table discussions broadcast on Hessen Radio, South-West Radio, and Radio Bremen, Adorno discussed topics as diverse as "The Administered World" (September 1950), "What is the Meaning of 'Working Through the Past?"' (February 1960) to "The Teaching Profession and its Taboos" (August 1965). Additionally, he frequently wrote for Frankfurter Allgemeine, Frankfurter Rundschau, and the weekly Die Zeit. At the invitation of Wolfgang Steinecke, Adorno took part in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Kranichstein from 1951 to 1958. Yet conflicts between the so-called Darmstadt school, which included composers like Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Karel Goeyvaerts, Luciano Berio and Gottfried Michael Koenig, soon arose, receiving explicit expression in Adorno's 1954 lecture, "The Aging of the New Music", where he argued that atonality's freedom was being restricted to serialism in much the same way as it was once restricted by twelve-tone technique. With his friend Eduard Steuermann, Adorno feared that music was being sacrificed to stubborn rationalization. During this time Adorno not only produced a significant series of notes on Beethoven (which was never completed and only published posthumously), but also published Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy in 1960. In his 1961 return to Kranichstein, Adorno called for what he termed a "musique informelle", which would possess the ability "really and truly to be what it is, without the ideological pretense of being something else. Or rather, to admit frankly the fact of non-identity and to follow through its logic to the end." ==== Post-war German culture ==== At the same time Adorno struck up relationships with contemporary German-language poets such as Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Adorno's 1949 dictum—"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"—posed the question of what German culture could mean after Auschwitz; his own continual revision of this dictum—in Negative Dialectics, for example, he wrote that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream"; while in "Commitment," he wrote in 1962 that the dictum "expresses in negative form the impulse which inspires committed literature"—was part of post-war Germany's struggle with history and culture. Adorno additionally befriended the writer and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger as well as the film-maker Alexander Kluge. In 1963, Adorno was elected to the post of chairman of the German Sociological Society, where he presided over two important conferences: in 1964, on "Max Weber and Sociology" and in 1968 on "Late Capitalism or Industrial Society". A debate launched in 1961 by Adorno and Karl Popper, later published as the Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, arose out of disagreements at the 1959 14th German Sociology Conference in Berlin. Adorno's critique of the dominant climate of post-war Germany was also directed against the pathos that had grown up around Heideggerianism, as practiced by writers like Karl Jaspers and Otto Friedrich Bollnow, and which had subsequently seeped into public discourse. His 1964 publication of The Jargon of Authenticity took aim at the halo such writers had attached to words like "angst", "decision" and "leap". After seven years of work, Adorno completed Negative Dialectics in 1966, after which, during the summer semester of 1967 and the winter semester of 1967–68, he offered regular philosophy seminars to discuss the book chapter by chapter. Among the students at these seminars were the Americans Angela Davis and Irving Wohlfarth. One objection, which would soon take on ever greater importance, was that critical thought must adopt the standpoint of the oppressed, to which Adorno replied that negative dialectics was concerned "with the dissolution of standpoint thinking itself." ==== Confrontations with students ==== At the time of Negative Dialectics' publication, student protests fragilized West German democracy. Trends in the media, an educational crisis in the universities, the Shah of Iran's 1967 state visit, German support for the war in Vietnam and the emergency laws combined to create a highly unstable situation. Like many of his students, Adorno too opposed the emergency laws, as well as the war in Vietnam, which, he said, proved the continued existence of the "world of torture that had begun in Auschwitz". The situation only deteriorated with the police shooting of Benno Ohnesorg at a protest against the Shah's visit. This death, as well as the subsequent acquittal of the responsible officer, were both commented upon in Adorno's lectures. As politicization increased, rifts developed within both the institute's relationship with its students as well as within the Institute itself. Soon Adorno himself would become an object of the students' ire. At the invitation of Peter Szondi, Adorno was invited to the Free University of Berlin to give a lecture on Goethe's Iphigenie in Tauris. After a group of students marched to the lectern, unfurling a banner that read "Berlin's left-wing fascists greet Teddy the Classicist," a number of those present left the lecture in protest after Adorno refused to abandon his talk in favour of discussing his attitude on the current political situation. Adorno shortly thereafter participated in a meeting with the Berlin Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) and discussed "Student Unrest" with Szondi on West German Radio. But as 1968 progressed, Adorno became increasingly critical of the students' disruptions to university life. His isolation was only compounded by articles published in the magazine alternative, which, following the lead of Hannah Arendt's articles in Merkur, claimed Adorno had subjected Benjamin to pressure during his years of exile in Berlin and compiled Benjamin's Writings and Letters with a great deal of bias. In response, Benjamin's longtime friend Gershom Scholem, wrote to the editor of Merkur to express his disapproval of the "in part, shameful, not to say disgraceful" remarks by Arendt.Relations between students and the West German state continued deteriorating. In spring 1968, a prominent SDS spokesman, Rudi Dutschke, was gunned down in the streets; in response, massive demonstrations took place, directed in particular against the Springer Press, which had led a campaign to vilify the students. An open appeal published in Die Zeit, signed by Adorno, called for an inquiry into the social reasons that gave rise to this assassination attempt as well as an investigation into the Springer Press' manipulation of public opinion. At the same time, however, Adorno protested against disruptions of his own lectures and refused to express his solidarity with their political goals, maintaining instead his autonomy as a theoretician. Adorno rejected the so-called unity of theory and praxis advocated by the students and argued that the students' actions were premised upon a mistaken analysis of the situation. The building of barricades, he wrote to Marcuse, is "ridiculous against those who administer the bomb." Adorno would refer to the radical students as stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung) in jeans."In September 1968 Adorno went to Vienna for the publication of Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. Upon his return to Frankfurt, events prevented his concentrating upon the book on aesthetics he wished to write: "Valid student claims and dubious actions," he wrote to Marcuse, "are all so mixed up together that all productive work and even sensible thought are scarcely possible any more." After striking students threatened to strip the institute's sociology seminar rooms of their furnishings and equipment, the police were brought in to close the building. ==== Later years ==== Adorno began writing an introduction to a collection of poetry by Rudolf Borchardt, which was connected with a talk entitled "Charmed Language," delivered in Zurich, followed by a talk on aesthetics in Paris where he met Beckett again. Beginning in October 1966, Adorno took up work on Aesthetic Theory. In June 1969 he completed Catchwords: Critical Models. During the winter semester of 1968–69 Adorno was on sabbatical leave from the university and thus able to dedicate himself to the completion of his book of aesthetics. For the summer semester Adorno planned a lecture course entitled "An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking," as well as a seminar on the dialectics of subject and object. But at the first lecture Adorno's attempt to open up the lecture and invite questions whenever they arose degenerated into a disruption from which he quickly fled: after a student wrote on the blackboard "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease," three women students approached the lectern, bared their breasts and scattered flower petals over his head. Yet Adorno continued to resist blanket condemnations of the protest movement which would have only strengthened the conservative thesis according to which political irrationalism was the result of Adorno's teaching. After further disruptions to his lectures, Adorno canceled the lectures for the rest of the seminar, continuing only with his philosophy seminar. In the summer of 1969, weary from these activities, Adorno returned once again to Zermatt, Switzerland, at the foot of Matterhorn to restore his strength. On August 6 he died of a heart attack. == Intellectual influences == Like most theorists of the Frankfurt School, Adorno was influenced by the works of Hegel, Marx and Freud. Their major theories fascinated many left-wing intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. Lorenz Jäger speaks critically of Adorno's "Achilles' heel" in his political biography: that Adorno placed "almost unlimited trust in finished teachings, in Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the teachings of the Second Viennese School." === Hegel === Adorno's adoption of Hegelian philosophy can be traced back to his inaugural lecture in 1931, in which he postulated: "only dialectically does philosophical interpretation seem possible to me" (Gesammelte Schriften 1: 338). Hegel rejected the idea of separating methods and content, because thinking is always thinking of something; dialectics for him is "the comprehended movement of the object itself." Like Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, Adorno adopted this claim as his own, and based his thinking on one of the Hegelian basic categories, the determinate negation, according to which something is not abstractly negated and dissolved into zero, but is preserved in a new, richer concept through its opposite.Adorno understood his Three Studies of Hegel as "preparation of a changed definition of dialectics" and that they stop "where the start should be" (Gesammelte Schriften 5: 249 f.). Adorno dedicated himself to this task in one of his later major works, the Negative Dialectics (1966). The title expresses "tradition and rebellion in equal measure." Drawing from Hegelian reason's speculative dialectic, Adorno developed his own "negative" dialectic of the "non-identical." === Karl Marx === Marx's Critique of Political Economy clearly shaped Adorno's thinking. As described by Jürgen Habermas, Marxist critique is, for Adorno, a "silent orthodoxy, whose categories [are revealed] in Adorno's cultural critique, although their influence is not explicitly named." Marx's influence on Adorno first came by way of György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness (Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein); from this text, Adorno took the Marxist categories of commodity fetishism and reification. These are closely related to Adorno's concept of trade, which stands in the center of his philosophy, not exclusively restricted to economic theory. Adorno's "exchange society" (Tauschgesellschaft), with its "insatiable and destructive appetite for expansion," is easily decoded as a description of capitalism. Furthermore, the Marxist concept of ideology is central for Adorno.Class theory, which appears less frequently in Adorno's work, also has its origins in Marxist thinking. Adorno made explicit reference to class in two of his texts: the first, the subchapter "Classes and Strata" (Klassen und Schichten), from his Introduction to the Sociology of Music; the second, an unpublished 1942 essay, "Reflections on Class Theory", published postmortem in his Collected Works. === Sigmund Freud === Psychoanalysis is a constitutive element of critical theory. Adorno read Sigmund Freud's work early on, although, unlike Horkheimer, he had never experienced psychoanalysis in practice. He first read Freud while working on his initial (withdrawn) habilitation thesis, The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of Mind (1927). In it Adorno argued that "the healing of all neuroses is synonymous with the complete understanding of the meaning of their symptoms by the patient". In his essay "On the Relationship between Sociology and Psychology" (1955), he justified the need to "supplement the theory of society with psychology, especially analytically oriented social psychology" in the face of fascism. Adorno emphasized the necessity of researching prevailing psychological drives in order to explain the cohesion of a repressive society acting against fundamental human interests.Adorno always remained a supporter and defender of Freudian orthodox doctrine, "psychoanalysis in its strict form". From this position, he attacked Erich Fromm and later Karen Horney because of their revisionism. He expressed reservations about sociologized psychoanalysis as well as about its reduction to a therapeutic procedure. == Theory == Adorno's work sets out from a central insight he shares with all early 20th century avant-garde art: the recognition of what is primitive in ourselves and the world itself. Neither Picasso's fascination with African sculpture nor Mondrian's reduction of painting to its most elementary component—the line—is comprehensible outside this concern with primitivism Adorno shared with the century's most radical art. At that time, the Western world, beset by world-wars, colonialist consolidation and accelerating commodification, sank into the very barbarism civilization had prided itself in overcoming. According to Adorno, society's self-preservation had become indistinguishable from societally sanctioned self-sacrifice: of "primitive" peoples, primitive aspects of the ego and those primitive, mimetic desires found in imitation and sympathy. Adorno's theory proceeds from an understanding of this primitive quality of reality which seeks to counteract whatever aims either to repress this primitive aspect or to further those systems of domination set in place by this return to barbarism. From this perspective, Adorno's writings on politics, philosophy, music and literature are a lifelong critique of the ways in which each tries to justify self-mutilation as the necessary price of self-preservation. According to Adorno's translator Robert Hullot-Kentor, the central motive of Adorno's work thus consists in determining "how life could be more than the struggle for self-preservation". In this sense, the principle of self-preservation, Adorno writes in Negative Dialectics, is nothing but "the law of doom thus far obeyed by history." At its most basic, Adorno's thought is motivated by a fundamental critique of this law. Adorno was chiefly influenced by Max Weber's critique of disenchantment, Georg Lukács's Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, as well as Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Adorno, along with the other major Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, argued that advanced capitalism had managed to contain or liquidate the forces that would bring about its collapse and that the revolutionary moment, when it would have been possible to transform it into socialism, had passed. As he put it at the beginning of his Negative Dialectics (1966), philosophy is still necessary because the time to realise it was missed. Adorno argued that capitalism had become more entrenched through its attack on the objective basis of revolutionary consciousness and through liquidation of the individualism that had been the basis of critical consciousness. Adorno, as well as Horkheimer, critiqued all forms of positivism as responsible for technocracy and disenchantment and sought to produce a theory that both rejected positivism and avoided reinstating traditional metaphysics. Adorno and Horkheimer have been criticized for over-applying the term "positivism," especially in their interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper as positivists. === Music and the Culture Industry === Adorno criticized jazz and popular music, viewing it as part of the culture industry, that contributes to the present sustainability of capitalism by rendering it "aesthetically pleasing" and "agreeable".In his early essays for the Vienna-based journal Anbruch, Adorno claimed that musical progress is proportional to the composer's ability to constructively deal with the possibilities and limitations contained within what he called the "musical material." For Adorno, twelve-tone serialism constitutes a decisive, historically developed method of composition. The objective validity of composition, according to him, rests with neither the composer's genius nor the work's conformity with prior standards, but with the way in which the work coherently expresses the dialectic of the material. In this sense, the contemporary absence of composers of the status of Bach or Beethoven is not the sign of musical regression; instead, new music is to be credited with laying bare aspects of the musical material previously repressed: The musical material's liberation from number, the harmonic series and tonal harmony. Thus, historical progress is achieved only by the composer who "submits to the work and seemingly does not undertake anything active except to follow where it leads." Because historical experience and social relations are embedded within this musical material, it is to the analysis of such material that the critic must turn. In the face of this radical liberation of the musical material, Adorno came to criticize those who, like Stravinsky, withdrew from this freedom by taking recourse to forms of the past as well as those who turned twelve-tone composition into a technique which dictated the rules of composition. Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. "Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them." The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme. He wrote that "the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods" but this is concealed under "the manipulation of taste and the official culture's pretense of individualism". By doing so, the culture industry appeals to every single consumer in a unique and personalized way, all while maintaining minimal costs and effort on their behalf. Consumers purchase the illusion that every commodity or product is tailored to the individual's personal preference, by incorporating subtle modifications or inexpensive "add-ons" in order to keep the consumer returning for new purchases, and therefore more revenue for the corporation system. Adorno conceptualized this phenomenon as pseudo-individualisation and the always-the-same.Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culture from the right. From both perspectives—left and right—the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasized moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects, e.g. as a form of reverse psychology. Thinkers influenced by Adorno believe that today's society has evolved in a direction foreseen by him, especially in regard to the past (Auschwitz), morals, or the Culture Industry. The latter has become a particularly productive, yet highly contested term in cultural studies. Many of Adorno's reflections on aesthetics and music have only just begun to be debated, as a collection of essays on the subject, many of which had not previously been translated into English, has only recently been collected and published as Essays on Music.Adorno's work in the years before his death was shaped by the idea of "negative dialectics", set out especially in his book of that title. A key notion in the work of the Frankfurt School since Dialectic of Enlightenment had been the idea of thought becoming an instrument of domination that subsumes all objects under the control of the (dominant) subject, especially through the notion of identity, i.e. of identifying as real in nature and society only that which harmonized or fit with dominant concepts, and regarding as unreal or non-existent everything that did not. Adorno's "negative dialectics" was an attempt to articulate a non-dominating thought that would recognize its limitations and accept the non-identity and reality of that which could not be subsumed under the subject's concepts. Indeed, Adorno sought to ground the critical bite of his sociological work in his critique of identity, which he took to be a reification in thought of the commodity form or exchange relation which always presumes a false identity between different things. The potential to criticise arises from the gap between the concept and the object, which can never go into the former without remainder. This gap, this non-identity in identity, was the secret to a critique of both material life and conceptual reflection.Adorno's reputation as a musicologist remains controversial. His sweeping criticisms of jazz and championing of the Second Viennese School in opposition to Stravinsky have caused him to fall out of favour. The distinguished American scholar Richard Taruskin declared Adorno to be "preposterously over-rated." The eminent pianist and critic Charles Rosen saw Adorno's book The Philosophy of New Music as "largely a fraudulent presentation, a work of polemic that pretends to be an objective study." Even a fellow Marxist such as the historian and jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm saw Adorno's writings as containing "some of the stupidest pages ever written about jazz". The British philosopher Roger Scruton saw Adorno as producing "reams of turgid nonsense devoted to showing that the American people are just as alienated as Marxism requires them to be, and that their cheerful life-affirming music is a 'fetishized' commodity, expressive of their deep spiritual enslavement to the capitalist machine." Irritation with Adorno's tunnel vision started even while he was alive. He may have championed Schoenberg, but the composer notably failed to return the compliment: "I have never been able to bear the fellow [...] It is disgusting, by the way, how he treats Stravinsky." Another composer, Luciano Berio said, in interview, "It's not easy to completely refute anything that Adorno writes – he was, after all, one of the most acute, and also one of the most negative intellects to excavate the creativity of the past 150 years... He forgets that one of the most cunning and interesting aspects of consumer music, the mass media, and indeed of capitalism itself, is their fluidity, their unending capacity for adaptation and assimilation."On the other hand, the scholar Slavoj Žižek has written a foreword to Adorno's In Search of Wagner, where Žižek attributes an "emancipatory impulse" to the same book, although Žižek suggests that fidelity to this impulse demands "a betrayal of the explicit theses of Adorno's Wagner study."Writing in the New Yorker in 2014, music critic Alex Ross, argued that Adorno's work has a renewed importance in the digital age: "The pop hegemony is all but complete, its superstars dominating the media and wielding the economic might of tycoons ... Culture appears more monolithic than ever, with a few gigantic corporations—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon—presiding over unprecedented monopolies.".Adorno's critique of commercial media capitalism continues to be influential. There is much scholarship influenced by Adorno on how Western entertainment industries strengthen transnational capitalism and reinforce a Western cultural dominance. Adornean critique can be found in works such as Tanner Mirrlees' "The US Empire's Culture Industry" which focus upon how Western commercial entertainment is artificially reinforced by transnational media corporations rather than being a local culture. ==== The five components of recognition ==== Adorno states that a start to understand the recognition in respect of any particular song hit may be made by drafting a scheme which divides the experience of recognition into its different components. All the factors people enumerate are interwoven to a degree that would be impossible to separate from one another in reality. Adorno's scheme is directed towards the different objective elements involved in the experience of recognition, than the actual experience felt for the individual. Vague remembrance Actual identification Subsumption by label Self-reflection and act of recognition Psychological transfer of recognition-authority to the object === Marxist criticisms === Adorno posits social totality as an automatic system. According to Horst Müller's Kritik der kritischen Theorie ("Critique of Critical Theory"), this assumption is consistent with Adorno's idea of society as a self-regulating system, from which one must escape (but from which nobody can escape). For him it was existent, but inhuman. Müller argues against the existence of such a system and claims that critical theory provides no practical solution for societal change. He concludes that Jürgen Habermas, in particular, and the Frankfurt School in general, misconstrue Marx. == Standardization == The phenomenon of standardization is "a concept used to characterize the formulaic products of capitalist-driven mass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit". According to Adorno we inhabit a media culture driven society which has product consumption as one of its main characteristics. Mass media is employed to deliver messages about products and services to consumers in order to convince these individuals to purchase the commodity they are advertising. Standardization consists of the production of large amounts of commodities to then pursue consumers in order to gain the maximum profit possible. They do this, as mentioned above, by individualizing products to give the illusion to consumers that they are in fact purchasing a product or service that was specifically designed for them. Adorno highlights the issues created with the construction of popular music, where different samples of music used in the creation of today's chart-topping songs are put together in order to create, re-create, and modify numerous tracks by using the same variety of samples from one song to another. He makes a distinction between "Apologetic music" and "Critical music". Apologetic music is defined as the highly produced and promoted music of the "pop music" industry: music that is composed of variable parts and interchanged to create several different songs. "The social and psychological functions of popular music [are that it] acts like a social cement" "to keep people obedient and subservient to the status quo of existing power structures."Serious music, according to Adorno, achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The example he gives is that of Beethoven's symphonies: "[his] greatness shows itself in the complete subordination of the accidentally private melodic elements to the form as a whole."Standardization not only refers to the products of the culture industry but to the consumers as well: many times every day consumers are bombarded by media advertising. Consumers are pushed and shoved into consuming products and services presented to them by the media system. The masses have become conditioned by the culture industry, which makes the impact of standardization much more important. By not realizing the impact of social media and commercial advertising, the individual is caught in a situation where conformity is the norm. "During consumption the masses become characterized by the commodities which they use and exchange among themselves." === Adorno's responses to his critics === As a pioneer of a self-reflexive sociology who prefigured Bourdieu's ability to factor in the effect of reflection on the societal object, Adorno realized that some criticism (including deliberate disruption of his classes in the 1960s) could never be answered in a dialogue between equals if, as he seems to have believed, what the naive ethnographer or sociologist thinks of a human essence is always changing over time. == Adorno's sociological methods == As Adorno believed that sociology needs to be self-reflective and self-critical, he also believed that the language the sociologist uses, like the language of the ordinary person, is a political construct in large measure that uses, often unreflectingly, concepts installed by dominant classes and social structures (such as our notion of "deviance" which includes both genuinely deviant individuals and "hustlers" operating below social norms because they lack the capital to operate above: for an analysis of this phenomenon, cf. Pierre Bourdieu's book The Weight of the World). He felt that those at the top of the Institute needed to be the source primarily of theories for evaluation and empirical testing, as well as people who would process the "facts" discovered ... including revising theories that were found to be false. For example, in an essay published in Germany on Adorno's return from the US, and reprinted in the Critical Models essays collection (ISBN 0-231-07635-5), Adorno praised the egalitarianism and openness of US society based on his sojourn in New York and the Los Angeles area between 1935 and 1955: "Characteristic for the life in America [...] is a moment of peacefulness, kindness and generosity". ("Dem amerikanischen Leben eignet [...] ein Moment von Friedlichkeit, Gutartigkeit und Großzügigkeit".)One example of the clash of intellectual culture and Adorno's methods can be found in Paul Lazarsfeld, the American sociologist for whom Adorno worked in the late 1930s after fleeing Hitler. As Rolf Wiggershaus recounts in The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance (MIT 1995), Lazarsfeld was the director of a project, funded and inspired by David Sarnoff (the head of RCA), to discover both the sort of music that listeners of radio liked and ways to improve their "taste", so that RCA could profitably air more classical music. Lazarsfeld, however, had trouble both with the prose style of the work Adorno handed in and what Lazarsfeld thought was Adorno's "lack of discipline in ... presentation".Adorno himself provided the following personal anecdote: What I mean by reified consciousness, I can illustrate—without elaborate philosophical contemplation—most simply with an American experience. Among the frequently changing colleagues which the Princeton Project provided me with, was a young lady. After a few days, she had gained confidence in me, and asked most kindly: "Dr Adorno, would you mind a personal question?". I said, "It depends on the question, but just go ahead", and she went on: "Please tell me: are you an extrovert or an introvert?". It was as if she, as a living being, already thought according to the model of multi-choice questions in questionnaires. == Adorno translated into English == While even German readers can find Adorno's work difficult to understand, an additional problem for English readers is that his German idiom is particularly difficult to translate into English. A similar difficulty of translation is true of Hegel, Heidegger, and a number of other German philosophers and poets. As a result, some early translators tended toward over-literalness. In recent years, Edmund Jephcott and Stanford University Press have published new translations of some of Adorno's lectures and books, including Introduction to Sociology, Problems of Moral Philosophy and his transcribed lectures on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Aristotle's "Metaphysics", and a new translation of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Professor Henry Pickford, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, has translated many of Adorno's works such as "The Meaning of Working Through the Past." A new translation has also appeared of Aesthetic Theory and the Philosophy of New Music by Robert Hullot-Kentor, from the University of Minnesota Press. Hullot-Kentor is also currently working on a new translation of Negative Dialectics. Adorno's correspondence with Alban Berg, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, and the letters to Adorno's parents, have been translated by Wieland Hoban and published by Polity Press. These fresh translations are slightly less literal in their rendering of German sentences and words, and are more accessible to English readers. The Group Experiment, which had been unavailable to English readers, is now available in an accessible translation by Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin on Harvard University Press, along with introductory material explaining its relation to the rest of Adorno's work and 20th-century public opinion research. == Works == Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (1933) Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Max Horkheimer, 1944) Composing for the Films (1947) Philosophy of New Music (1949) The Authoritarian Personality (1950) Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (1951) In Search of Wagner (1952) Prisms (1955) Against Epistemology: A Metacritique; Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies (1956) Dissonanzen. Musik in der verwalteten Welt (1956) Notes to Literature I (1958) Sound Figures (1959) Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy (1960) Notes to Literature II (1961) Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962) Hegel: Three Studies (1963) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (1963) Quasi una Fantasia (1963) The Jargon of Authenticity (1964) Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962 (1964) Negative Dialectics (1966) Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link (1968) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (1969) Aesthetic Theory (1970) The Culture Industry (Routledge, 1991) Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music; Fragments and Texts (1993) The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas' Radio Addresses (2000) Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' (2002) Current of Music (2006) === Musical works === Für Sebastian Wedler (1919) 6 Studies for string quartet (1920) Piano piece (1921) String quartet (1921) 3 stories by Theodor Däubler for female chorus (1923–1945) 2 Pieces for string quartet, Op. 2 (1925/26) 7 short works for orchestra, Op.4 (1929) 3 Short Pieces for piano (1934) 2 songs for voice & orchestra after Mark Twain's "Indian Joe" (1932/33) Kinderjahr – Six Piano pieces from op. 68 of Robert Schumann (1941) 2 songs with orchestra == See also == Positivism dispute == References == === Citations === === Sources === === Further reading === Edwards, Peter. "Convergences and Discord in the Correspondence Between Ligeti and Adorno", Music & Letters, 96/2, 2015. Morgan, Ben. "The project of the Frankfurt School", Telos, Nr. 119 (2001), 75–98 Scruton, Roger. Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left. New York: Bloomsbury US, 2015. Delanty, Gerard, ed. Theodor W. Adorno. London: SAGE, 2004. Bowie, Andrew. Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity 2013 == External links == Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. University of Minnesota Press, 1996 "Theodor Adorno". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Zuidervaart, Lambert. "Theodor W. Adorno". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Illuminations – The Critical Theory Project Odysseus and the Siren Call of Reason: The Frankfurt School Critique of Enlightenment published in Other Voices, n.1 v.1, 1997. "Adorno during the 1950s" by Juergen Habermas Daniel Sherer, "Adorno's Reception of Loos: Modern Architecture, Aesthetic Theory, and the Critique of Ornament," Potlatch 3 (Spring 2014), 19–31. Sound recordings with Theodor W. Adorno in the Online Archive of the Österreichische Mediathek (Scientific lectures) (in German) === Online works by Adorno === Works by or about Theodor W. Adorno at Internet Archive The Adorno Reference Archive at Marxists.org. Contains complete texts of Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Supramundane Character of the Hegelian World Spirit and Minima Moralia. Negative Dialectics at efn.org.

Ernest Addison Moody

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Addison_Moody

Ernest Addison Moody (1903–1975) was a noted philosopher, medievalist, and logician as well as a musician and scientist. He served as professor of philosophy at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also served as department chair, and Columbia University. He has an annual memorial conference in his name on the subject of medieval philosophy. He was president of the American Philosophical Association from 1963 to 1964. His father was John Moody, founder of the US credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service. == Education and honors == Williams College, B.A. (1924). Columbia University, M.A., Philosophy (1933), Ph.D., Philosophy (1936). 1956 Recipient of Columbia's Nicholas Murray Butler Silver Medal, cited as "a leading scholar, writer and teacher whose many original contributions to the field of medieval philosophy and science have won international recognition." New York Times, June 1, 1959 at page 21. 1956 Recipient of Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America. 1963–1964 President of the American Philosophical Association == Books == 1976 Truth and consequence in mediaeval logic. 1975 Studies in medieval philosophy, science, and logic: collected papers, 1933-1969. 1965 Gulielmi Ockham (William of Ockham, ca. 1285-ca. 1349.) Expositionis in libros artis logicae prooemium; et, Expositio in librum Porphyril De praedicabilibus. (ed. Ernest A. Moody.) 1965 The Logic of William of Ockham. 1964 "Nicolaus of Autrecourt's Critique of Causality and Substance", trans. Ernest A. Moody, in Herman Shapiro, ed., Medieval Philosophy: Readings from Augustine to Buridan, New York: Modern Library. 1952 Medieval science of weights, scientia de ponderibus. Treatises ascribed to Euclid, Archimedes, Thabit ibn Qurra, Jordanus de Nemore and Blasius of Parma (ed. with introductions, English translations and notes by Ernest A. Moody and Marshall Clagett). 1953Truth and consequence in mediaeval logic. 1942 Iohannis Buridani (Jean Buridan), Quaestiones super libris quattuor de caelo et mundo (edited by Ernest Addison Moody). 1935 The Logic of William of Ockham. == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers == Manuscripts == Selections from the SUMMA LOGICA of ALBERTUS DE SAXONIA available in PDF Format. Albert of Saxony wrote a treatise on logic. Ernest A. Moody produced a translation of selections from the first three parts of this work for the use of his students. Copies of this translation were widely circulated in manuscript form.

Jean-Paul Sartre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, US also ; French: [saʁtʁ]; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to do so. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture. == Biography == === Early life === Jean-Paul Sartre was born on 21 June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie (Schweitzer). When Sartre was two years old, his father died of an illness, which he most likely contracted in Indochina. Anne-Marie moved back to her parents' house in Meudon, where she raised Sartre with help from her father Charles Schweitzer, a teacher of German who taught Sartre mathematics and introduced him to classical literature at a very early age. When he was twelve, Sartre's mother remarried, and the family moved to La Rochelle, where he was frequently bullied, in part due to the wandering of his blind right eye (sensory exotropia).As a teenager in the 1920s, Sartre became attracted to philosophy upon reading Henri Bergson's essay Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. He attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school in Paris. He studied and earned certificates in psychology, history of philosophy, logic, general philosophy, ethics and sociology, and physics, as well as his diplôme d'études supérieures (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), an institution of higher education that was the alma mater for several prominent French thinkers and intellectuals. (His 1928 MA thesis under the title "L'Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature" ["Image in Psychological Life: Role and Nature"] was supervised by Henri Delacroix.) It was at ENS that Sartre began his lifelong, sometimes fractious, friendship with Raymond Aron. Perhaps the most decisive influence on Sartre's philosophical development was his weekly attendance at Alexandre Kojève's seminars, which continued for a number of years.From his first years in the École normale, Sartre was one of its fiercest pranksters. In 1927, his antimilitarist satirical cartoon in the revue of the school, coauthored with Georges Canguilhem, particularly upset the director Gustave Lanson. In the same year, with his comrades Nizan, Larroutis, Baillou and Herland, he organized a media prank following Charles Lindbergh's successful New York City–Paris flight; Sartre & Co. called newspapers and informed them that Lindbergh was going to be awarded an honorary École degree. Many newspapers, including Le Petit Parisien, announced the event on 25 May. Thousands, including journalists and curious spectators, showed up, unaware that what they were witnessing was a stunt involving a Lindbergh look-alike. The scandal led Lanson to resign.In 1929 at the École normale, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who studied at the Sorbonne and later went on to become a noted philosopher, writer, and feminist. The two became inseparable and lifelong companions, initiating a romantic relationship, though they were not monogamous. The first time Sartre took the agrégation, he failed. He took it a second time and virtually tied for first place with Beauvoir, although Sartre was eventually awarded first place, with Beauvoir second.From 1931 until 1945, Sartre taught at various lycées of Le Havre (at the Lycée de Le Havre, the present-day Lycée François-Ier (Le Havre), 1931–1936), Laon (at the Lycée de Laon, 1936–37), and, finally, Paris (at the Lycée Pasteur, 1937–1939, and at the Lycée Condorcet, 1941–1944; see below). In 1932, Sartre read Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a book that had a remarkable influence on him.In 1933–34, he succeeded Raymond Aron at the Institut français d'Allemagne in Berlin where he studied Edmund Husserl's phenomenological philosophy. Aron had already advised him in 1930 to read Emmanuel Levinas's Théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology).The neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. === World War II === In 1939 Sartre was drafted into the French army, where he served as a meteorologist. He was captured by German troops in 1940 in Padoux, and he spent nine months as a prisoner of war—in Nancy and finally in Stalag XII-D, Trier, where he wrote his first theatrical piece, Barionà, fils du tonnerre, a drama concerning Christmas. It was during this period of confinement that Sartre read Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, later to become a major influence on his own essay on phenomenological ontology. Because of poor health (he claimed that his poor eyesight and exotropia affected his balance) Sartre was released in April 1941. According to other sources, he escaped after a medical visit to the ophthalmologist. Given civilian status, he recovered his teaching position at Lycée Pasteur near Paris and settled at the Hotel Mistral. In October 1941 he was given a position, previously held by a Jewish teacher who had been forbidden to teach by Vichy law, at Lycée Condorcet in Paris. After coming back to Paris in May 1941, he participated in the founding of the underground group Socialisme et Liberté ("Socialism and Liberty") with other writers Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Toussaint Desanti, Dominique Desanti, Jean Kanapa, and École Normale students. In spring of 1941, Sartre suggested with "cheerful ferocity" at a meeting that the Socialisme et Liberté assassinate prominent war collaborators like Marcel Déat, but de Beauvoir noted his idea was rejected as "none of us felt qualified to make bombs or hurl grenades". The British historian Ian Ousby observed that the French always had far more hatred for collaborators than they did for the Germans, noting it was French people like Déat that Sartre wanted to assassinate rather than the military governor of France, General Otto von Stülpnagel, and the popular slogan always was "Death to Laval!" rather than "Death to Hitler!". In August Sartre and de Beauvoir went to the French Riviera seeking the support of André Gide and André Malraux. However, both Gide and Malraux were undecided, and this may have been the cause of Sartre's disappointment and discouragement. Socialisme et liberté soon dissolved and Sartre decided to write instead of being involved in active resistance. He then wrote Being and Nothingness, The Flies, and No Exit, none of which were censored by the Germans, and also contributed to both legal and illegal literary magazines. In his essay "Paris under the Occupation", Sartre wrote that the "correct" behaviour of the Germans had entrapped too many Parisians into complicity with the occupation, accepting what was unnatural as natural: The Germans did not stride, revolver in hand, through the streets. They did not force civilians to make way for them on the pavement. They would offer seats to old ladies on the Metro. They showed great fondness for children and would pat them on the cheek. They had been told to behave correctly and being well-disciplined, they tried shyly and conscientiously to do so. Some of them even displayed a naive kindness which could find no practical expression. Sartre noted when Wehrmacht soldiers asked Parisians politely in their German-accented French for directions, people usually felt embarrassed and ashamed as they tried their best to help out the Wehrmacht which led Sartre to remark "We could not be natural". French was a language widely taught in German schools and most Germans could speak at least some French. Sartre himself always found it difficult when a Wehrmacht soldier asked him for directions, usually saying he did not know where it was that the soldier wanted to go, but still felt uncomfortable as the very act of speaking to the Wehrmacht meant he had been complicit in the Occupation. Ousby wrote: "But, in however humble a fashion, everyone still had to decide how they were going to cope with life in a fragmenting society ... So Sartre's worries ... about how to react when a German soldier stopped him in the street and asked politely for directions were not as fussily inconsequential as they might sound at first. They were emblematic of how the dilemmas of the Occupation presented themselves in daily life". Sartre wrote the very "correctness" of the Germans caused moral corruption in many people who used the "correct" behavior of the Germans as an excuse for passivity, and the very act of simply trying to live one's day-to-day existence without challenging the occupation aided the "New Order in Europe", which depended upon the passivity of ordinary people to accomplish its goals.Throughout the occupation, it was German policy to plunder France, and food shortages were always a major problem as the majority of food from the French countryside went to Germany. Sartre wrote about the "languid existence" of the Parisians as people waited obsessively for the one weekly arrival of trucks bringing food from the countryside that the Germans allowed, writing: "Paris would grow peaked and yawn with hunger under the empty sky. Cut off from the rest of the world, fed only through the pity or some ulterior motive, the town led a purely abstract and symbolic life". Sartre himself lived on a diet of rabbits sent to him by a friend of de Beauvoir living in Anjou. The rabbits were usually in an advanced state of decay full of maggots, and despite being hungry, Sartre once threw out one rabbit as uneatable, saying it had more maggots in it than meat. Sartre also remarked that conversations at the Café de Flore between intellectuals had changed, as the fear that one of them might be a mouche (informer) or a writer of the corbeau (anonymous denunciatory letters) meant that no one really said what they meant anymore, imposing self-censorship. Sartre and his friends at the Café de Flore had reasons for their fear; by September 1940, the Abwehr alone had already recruited 32,000 French people to work as mouches while by 1942 the Paris Kommandantur was receiving an average of 1,500 letters/per day sent by the corbeaux.Sartre wrote under the occupation Paris had become a "sham", resembling the empty wine bottles displayed in shop windows as all of the wine had been exported to Germany, looking like the old Paris, but hollowed out, as what had made Paris special was gone. Paris had almost no cars on the streets during the occupation as the oil went to Germany while the Germans imposed a nightly curfew, which led Sartre to remark that Paris "was peopled by the absent". Sartre also noted that people began to disappear under the occupation, writing: One day you might phone a friend and the phone would ring for a long time in an empty flat. You would go round and ring the doorbell, but no-one would answer it. If the concierge forced the door, you would find two chairs standing close together in the hall with the fag-ends of German cigarettes on the floor between their legs. If the wife or mother of the man who had vanished had been present at his arrest, she would tell you that he had been taken away by very polite Germans, like those who asked the way in the street. And when she went to ask what had happened to them at the offices in the Avenue Foch or the Rue des Saussaies she would be politely received and sent away with comforting words" [No. 11 Rue des Saussaies was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Paris]. Sartre wrote the feldgrau ("field grey") uniforms of the Wehrmacht and the green uniforms of the Order Police which had seemed so alien in 1940 had become accepted, as people were numbed into accepting what Sartre called "a pale, dull green, unobtrusive strain, which the eye almost expected to find among the dark clothes of the civilians". Under the occupation, the French often called the Germans les autres ("the others"), which inspired Sartre's aphorism in his play Huis clos ("No Exit") of "l'enfer, c'est les Autres" ("Hell is other people"). Sartre intended the line "l'enfer, c'est les Autres" at least in part to be a dig at the German occupiers.Sartre was a very active contributor to Combat, a newspaper created during the clandestine period by Albert Camus, a philosopher and author who held similar beliefs. Sartre and de Beauvoir remained friends with Camus until 1951, with the publication of Camus's The Rebel. Sartre wrote extensively post-war about neglected minority groups, namely French Jews and black people. In 1946, he published Anti-Semite and Jew, after having published the first part of the essay, "Portrait de l'antisémite," the year before in Les Temps modernes, No. 3. In the essay, in the course of explaining the etiology of "hate" as the hater's projective fantasies when reflecting on the Jewish question, he attacks antisemitism in France during a time when the Jews who came back from concentration camps were quickly abandoned. In 1947, Sartre published several articles concerning the condition of African Americans in the United States—specifically the racism and discrimination against them in the country—in his second Situations collection. Then, in 1948, for the introduction of Léopold Sédar Senghor's l'Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry), he wrote "Black Orpheus" (re-published in Situations III), a critique of colonialism and racism in light of the philosophy Sartre developed in Being and Nothingness. Later, while Sartre was labeled by some authors as a resistant, the French philosopher and resistant Vladimir Jankelevitch criticized Sartre's lack of political commitment during the German occupation, and interpreted his further struggles for liberty as an attempt to redeem himself. According to Camus, Sartre was a writer who resisted; not a resister who wrote. In 1945, after the war ended, Sartre moved to an apartment on the rue Bonaparte, where he was to produce most of his subsequent work and where he lived until 1962. It was from there that he helped establish a quarterly literary and political review, Les Temps modernes (Modern Times), in part to popularize his thought. He ceased teaching and devoted his time to writing and political activism. He would draw on his war experiences for his great trilogy of novels, Les Chemins de la Liberté (The Roads to Freedom) (1945–1949). === Cold War politics and anticolonialism === The first period of Sartre's career, defined in large part by Being and Nothingness (1943), gave way to a second period—when the world was perceived as split into communist and capitalist blocs—of highly publicized political involvement. Sartre tended to glorify the Resistance after the war as the uncompromising expression of morality in action, and recalled that the résistants were a "band of brothers" who had enjoyed "real freedom" in a way that did not exist before nor after the war. Sartre was "merciless" in attacking anyone who had collaborated or remained passive during the German occupation; for instance, criticizing Camus for signing an appeal to spare the collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach from being executed. His 1948 play Les mains sales (Dirty Hands) in particular explored the problem of being a politically "engaged" intellectual. He embraced Marxism but did not join the Communist Party. For a time in the late 1940s, Sartre described French nationalism as "provincial" and in a 1949 essay called for a "United States of Europe". In an essay published in the June 1949 edition of the journal Politique étrangère, Sartre wrote: If we want French civilization to survive, it must be fitted into the framework of a great European civilization. Why? I have said that civilization is the reflection on a shared situation. In Italy, in France, in Benelux, in Sweden, in Norway, in Germany, in Greece, in Austria, everywhere we find the same problems and the same dangers ... But this cultural polity has prospects only as elements of a policy which defends Europe's cultural autonomy vis-à-vis America and the Soviet Union, but also its political and economic autonomy, with the aim of making Europe a single force between the blocs, not a third bloc, but an autonomous force which will refuse to allow itself to be torn into shreds between American optimism and Russian scientificism. About the Korean War, Sartre wrote: "I have no doubt that the South Korean feudalists and the American imperialists have promoted this war. But I do not doubt either that it was begun by the North Koreans". In July 1950, Sartre wrote in Les Temps Modernes about his and de Beauvoir's attitude to the Soviet Union: As we were neither members of the [Communist] party nor its avowed sympathizers, it was not our duty to write about Soviet labor camps; we were free to remain aloof from the quarrel over the nature of this system, provided that no events of sociological significance had occurred. Sartre held that the Soviet Union was a "revolutionary" state working for the betterment of humanity and could be criticized only for failing to live up to its own ideals, but that critics had to take in mind that the Soviet state needed to defend itself against a hostile world; by contrast Sartre held that the failures of "bourgeois" states were due to their innate shortcomings. The Swiss journalist François Bondy wrote that, based on a reading of Sartre's numerous essays, speeches and interviews "a simple basic pattern never fails to emerge: social change must be comprehensive and revolutionary" and the parties that promote the revolutionary charges "may be criticized, but only by those who completely identify themselves with its purpose, its struggle and its road to power", deeming Sartre's position to be "existentialist".Sartre believed at this time in the moral superiority of the Eastern Bloc, arguing that this belief was necessary "to keep hope alive" and opposed any criticism of Soviet Union to the extent that Maurice Merleau-Ponty called him an "ultra-Bolshevik". Sartre's expression "workers of Billancourt must not be deprived of their hopes" (Fr. "il ne faut pas désespérer Billancourt"), became a catchphrase meaning communist activists should not tell the whole truth to the workers in order to avoid decline in their revolutionary enthusiasm.In 1954, just after Stalin's death, Sartre visited the Soviet Union, which he stated he found a "complete freedom of criticism" while condemning the United States for sinking into "prefascism". Sartre wrote about those Soviet writers expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union "still had the opportunity of rehabilitating themselves by writing better books". Sartre's comments on Hungarian revolution of 1956 are quite representative to his frequently contradictory and changing views. On one hand, Sartre saw in Hungary a true reunification between intellectuals and workers only to criticize it for "losing socialist base".In 1964 Sartre attacked Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" which condemned the Stalinist repressions and purges. Sartre argued that "the masses were not ready to receive the truth".In 1973 he argued that "revolutionary authority always needs to get rid of some people that threaten it, and their death is the only way". A number of people, starting from Frank Gibney in 1961, classified Sartre as a "useful idiot" due to his uncritical position.Sartre came to admire the Polish leader Władysław Gomułka, a man who favored a "Polish road to socialism" and wanted more independence for Poland, but was loyal to the Soviet Union because of the Oder-Neisse line issue. Sartre's newspaper Les Temps Modernes devoted a number of special issues in 1957 and 1958 to Poland under Gomułka, praising him for his reforms. Bondy wrote of the notable contradiction between Sartre's "ultra Bolshevism" as he expressed admiration for the Chinese leader Mao Zedong as the man who led the oppressed masses of the Third World into revolution while also praising more moderate Communist leaders like Gomułka.As an anti-colonialist, Sartre took a prominent role in the struggle against French rule in Algeria, and the use of torture and concentration camps by the French in Algeria. He became an eminent supporter of the FLN in the Algerian War and was one of the signatories of the Manifeste des 121. Consequently, Sartre became a domestic target of the paramilitary Organisation armée secrète (OAS), escaping two bomb attacks in the early '60s. He later argued in 1959 that each French person was responsible for the collective crimes during the Algerian War of Independence. (He had an Algerian mistress, Arlette Elkaïm, who became his adopted daughter in 1965.) He opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and, along with Bertrand Russell and others, organized a tribunal intended to expose U.S. war crimes, which became known as the Russell Tribunal in 1967. His work after Stalin's death, the Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of Dialectical Reason), appeared in 1960 (a second volume appearing posthumously). In the Critique Sartre set out to give Marxism a more vigorous intellectual defense than it had received until then; he ended by concluding that Marx's notion of "class" as an objective entity was fallacious. Sartre's emphasis on the humanist values in the early works of Marx led to a dispute with a leading leftist intellectual in France in the 1960s, Louis Althusser, who claimed that the ideas of the young Marx were decisively superseded by the "scientific" system of the later Marx. In the late 1950s, Sartre began to argue that the European working classes were too apolitical to carry out the revolution predicated by Marx, and influenced by Frantz Fanon started to argue it was the impoverished masses of the Third World, the "real damned of the earth", who would carry out the revolution. A major theme of Sartre's political essays in the 1960s was of his disgust with the "Americanization" of the French working class who would much rather watch American TV shows dubbed into French than agitate for a revolution.Sartre went to Cuba in the 1960s to meet Fidel Castro and spoke with Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After Guevara's death, Sartre would declare him to be "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age" and the "era's most perfect man". Sartre would also compliment Guevara by professing that "he lived his words, spoke his own actions and his story and the story of the world ran parallel". However he stood against the persecution of gays by Castro's government, which he compared to Nazi persecution of the Jews, and said: "In Cuba there are no Jews, but there are homosexuals".During a collective hunger strike in 1974, Sartre visited Red Army Faction member Andreas Baader in Stammheim Prison and criticized the harsh conditions of imprisonment.Towards the end of his life, Sartre began to describe himself as a "special kind" of anarchist. === Late life and death === In 1964 Sartre renounced literature in a witty and sardonic account of the first ten years of his life, Les Mots (The Words). The book is an ironic counterblast to Marcel Proust, whose reputation had unexpectedly eclipsed that of André Gide (who had provided the model of littérature engagée for Sartre's generation). Literature, Sartre concluded, functioned ultimately as a bourgeois substitute for real commitment in the world. In October 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but he declined it. He was the first Nobel laureate to voluntarily decline the prize, and remains one of only two laureates to do so. According to Lars Gyllensten, in the book Minnen, bara minnen ("Memories, Only Memories") published in 2000, Sartre himself or someone close to him got in touch with the Swedish Academy in 1975 with a request for the prize money, but was refused. In 1945, he had refused the Légion d'honneur. The Nobel prize was announced on 22 October 1964; on 14 October, Sartre had written a letter to the Nobel Institute, asking to be removed from the list of nominees, and warning that he would not accept the prize if awarded, but the letter went unread; on 23 October, Le Figaro published a statement by Sartre explaining his refusal. He said he did not wish to be "transformed" by such an award, and did not want to take sides in an East vs. West cultural struggle by accepting an award from a prominent Western cultural institution. Nevertheless, he was that year's prizewinner. Though his name was then a household word (as was "existentialism" during the tumultuous 1960s), Sartre remained a simple man with few possessions, actively committed to causes until the end of his life, such as the May 1968 strikes in Paris during the summer of 1968 during which he was arrested for civil disobedience. President Charles de Gaulle intervened and pardoned him, commenting that "you don't arrest Voltaire". In 1975, when asked how he would like to be remembered, Sartre replied: I would like [people] to remember Nausea, [my plays] No Exit and The Devil and the Good Lord, and then my two philosophical works, more particularly the second one, Critique of Dialectical Reason. Then my essay on Genet, Saint Genet. ... If these are remembered, that would be quite an achievement, and I don't ask for more. As a man, if a certain Jean-Paul Sartre is remembered, I would like people to remember the milieu or historical situation in which I lived, ... how I lived in it, in terms of all the aspirations which I tried to gather up within myself. Sartre's physical condition deteriorated, partially because of the merciless pace of work (and the use of amphetamine) he put himself through during the writing of the Critique and a massive analytical biography of Gustave Flaubert (The Family Idiot), both of which remained unfinished. He had hypertension, and became almost completely blind in 1973. Sartre was a notorious chain smoker, which could also have contributed to the deterioration of his health.According to Pierre Victor (a.k.a. Benny Levy), who spent much of his time with the dying Sartre and interviewed him on several of his views, Sartre had a drastic change of mind about the existence of God and started gravitating toward Messianic Judaism. This is Sartre's before-death profession, according to Pierre Victor: "I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to god." Simone de Beauvoir later revealed her anger at his change of mind by stating, "How should one explain this senile act of a turncoat? All my friends, all the Sartreans, and the editorial team of Les Temps Modernes supported me in my consternation." Sartre died on 15 April 1980 in Paris from pulmonary edema. He had not wanted to be buried at Père-Lachaise Cemetery between his mother and stepfather, so it was arranged that he be buried at Montparnasse Cemetery. At his funeral on Saturday, 19 April, 50,000 Parisians descended onto boulevard du Montparnasse to accompany Sartre's cortege. The funeral started at "the hospital at 2:00 p.m., then filed through the fourteenth arrondissement, past all Sartre's haunts, and entered the cemetery through the gate on the Boulevard Edgar Quinet". Sartre was initially buried in a temporary grave to the left of the cemetery gate. Four days later the body was disinterred for cremation at Père-Lachaise Cemetery, and his ashes were reburied at the permanent site in Montparnasse Cemetery, to the right of the cemetery gate. == Thought == Sartre's primary idea is that people, as humans, are "condemned to be free". "This may seem paradoxical because condemnation is normally an external judgment which constitutes the conclusion of a judgment. Here, it is not the human who has chosen to be like this. There is a contingency of human existence. It is a condemnation of their being. Their being is not determined, so it is up to everyone to create their own existence, for which they are then responsible. They cannot not be free, there is a form of necessity for freedom, which can never be given up."This theory relies upon his position that there is no creator, and is illustrated using the example of the paper cutter. Sartre says that if one considered a paper cutter, one would assume that the creator would have had a plan for it: an essence. Sartre said that human beings have no essence before their existence because there is no Creator. Thus: "existence precedes essence". This forms the basis for his assertion that because one cannot explain one's own actions and behavior by referring to any specific human nature, they are necessarily fully responsible for those actions. "We are left alone, without excuse." "We can act without being determined by our past which is always separated from us."Sartre maintained that the concepts of authenticity and individuality have to be earned but not learned. We need to experience "death consciousness" so as to wake up ourselves as to what is really important; the authentic in our lives which is life experience, not knowledge. Death draws the final point when we as beings cease to live for ourselves and permanently become objects that exist only for the outside world. In this way death emphasizes the burden of our free, individual existence. "We can oppose authenticity to an inauthentic way of being. Authenticity consists in experiencing the indeterminate character of existence in anguish. It is also to know how to face it by giving meaning to our actions and by recognizing ourselves as the author of this meaning. On the other hand, an inauthentic way of being consists in running away, in lying to oneself in order to escape this anguish and the responsibility for one's own existence."While Sartre had been influenced by Heidegger, the publication of Being and Nothingness did mark a split in their perspectives, with Heidegger remarking in Letter on Humanism, Existentialism says existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it, he stays with metaphysics, in oblivion of the truth of Being. Herbert Marcuse also had issues with Sartre's opposition to metaphysics in Being and Nothingness and suggested the work projected anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory." Sartre also took inspiration from phenomenological epistemology, explained by Franz Adler in this way: "Man chooses and makes himself by acting. Any action implies the judgment that he is right under the circumstances not only for the actor, but also for everybody else in similar circumstances." Also important is Sartre's analysis of psychological concepts, including his suggestion that consciousness exists as something other than itself, and that the conscious awareness of things is not limited to their knowledge: for Sartre intentionality applies to the emotions as well as to cognitions, to desires as well as to perceptions. "When an external object is perceived, consciousness is also conscious of itself, even if consciousness is not its own object: it is a non-positional consciousness of itself." However his critique of psychoanalysis, particularly of Freud has faced some counter-critique. Richard Wollheim and Thomas Baldwin argued that Sartre's attempt to show that Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious is mistaken was based on a misinterpretation of Freud. == Career as public intellectual == While the broad focus of Sartre's life revolved around the notion of human freedom, he began a sustained intellectual participation in more public matters towards the end of the Second World War, around 1944–1945. Before World War II, he was content with the role of an apolitical liberal intellectual: "Now teaching at a lycée in Laon ... Sartre made his headquarters the Dome café at the crossing of Montparnasse and Raspail boulevards. He attended plays, read novels, and dined [with] women. He wrote. And he was published." Sartre and his lifelong companion, de Beauvoir, existed, in her words, where "the world about us was a mere backdrop against which our private lives were played out".The war opened Sartre's eyes to a political reality he had not yet understood until forced into continual engagement with it: "the world itself destroyed Sartre's illusions about isolated self-determining individuals and made clear his own personal stake in the events of the time." Returning to Paris in 1941 he formed the "Socialisme et Liberté" resistance group. In 1943, after the group disbanded, Sartre joined a writers' Resistance group, in which he remained an active participant until the end of the war. He continued to write ferociously, and it was due to this "crucial experience of war and captivity that Sartre began to try to build up a positive moral system and to express it through literature".The symbolic initiation of this new phase in Sartre's work is packaged in the introduction he wrote for a new journal, Les Temps modernes, in October 1945. Here he aligned the journal, and thus himself, with the Left and called for writers to express their political commitment. Yet, this alignment was indefinite, directed more to the concept of the Left than a specific party of the Left. Sartre's philosophy lent itself to his being a public intellectual. He envisaged culture as a very fluid concept; neither pre-determined, nor definitely finished; instead, in true existential fashion, "culture was always conceived as a process of continual invention and re-invention." This marks Sartre, the intellectual, as a pragmatist, willing to move and shift stance along with events. He did not dogmatically follow a cause other than the belief in human freedom, preferring to retain a pacifist's objectivity. It is this overarching theme of freedom that means his work "subverts the bases for distinctions among the disciplines". Therefore, he was able to hold knowledge across a vast array of subjects: "the international world order, the political and economic organisation of contemporary society, especially France, the institutional and legal frameworks that regulate the lives of ordinary citizens, the educational system, the media networks that control and disseminate information. Sartre systematically refused to keep quiet about what he saw as inequalities and injustices in the world."Sartre always sympathized with the Left, and supported the French Communist Party (PCF) until the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. Following the Liberation the PCF were infuriated by Sartre's philosophy, which appeared to lure young French men and women away from the ideology of communism and into Sartre's own existentialism. From 1956 onwards Sartre rejected the claims of the PCF to represent the French working classes, objecting to its "authoritarian tendencies". In the late 1960s Sartre supported the Maoists, a movement that rejected the authority of established communist parties. However, despite aligning with the Maoists, Sartre said after the May events: "If one rereads all my books, one will realize that I have not changed profoundly, and that I have always remained an anarchist." He would later explicitly allow himself to be called an anarchist.In the aftermath of a war that had for the first time properly engaged Sartre in political matters, he set forth a body of work which "reflected on virtually every important theme of his early thought and began to explore alternative solutions to the problems posed there". The greatest difficulties that he and all public intellectuals of the time faced were the increasing technological aspects of the world that were outdating the printed word as a form of expression. In Sartre's opinion, the "traditional bourgeois literary forms remain innately superior", but there is "a recognition that the new technological 'mass media' forms must be embraced" if Sartre's ethical and political goals as an authentic, committed intellectual are to be achieved: the demystification of bourgeois political practices and the raising of the consciousness, both political and cultural, of the working class. The struggle for Sartre was against the monopolising moguls who were beginning to take over the media and destroy the role of the intellectual. His attempts to reach a public were mediated by these powers, and it was often these powers he had to campaign against. He was skilled enough, however, to circumvent some of these issues by his interactive approach to the various forms of media, advertising his radio interviews in a newspaper column for example, and vice versa.Sartre's role as a public intellectual occasionally put him in physical danger, such as in June 1961, when a plastic bomb exploded in the entrance of his apartment building. His public support of Algerian self-determination at the time had led Sartre to become a target of the campaign of terror that mounted as the colonists' position deteriorated. A similar occurrence took place the next year and he had begun to receive threatening letters from Oran, Algeria.Sartre's role in this conflict included his comments in his preface to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth that, "To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remains a dead man and a free man". This comment led to some criticisms from the right, such as by Brian C. Anderson and Michael Walzer. Writing for the Hoover Institution, Walzer suggested that Sartre, a European, was a hypocrite for not volunteering to be killed.However Sartre's stances regarding post-colonial conflict have not been entirely without controversy on the left; Sartre's preface is omitted from some editions of The Wretched of the Earth printed after 1967. The reason for this is for his public support for Israel in the Six-Day War. Fanon's widow, Josie considered Sartre's pro-Israel stance as inconsistent with the anti-colonialist position of the book so she omitted the preface. When interviewed at Howard University in 1978, she explained "when Israel declared war on the Arab countries [during the Six-Day War], there was a great pro-Zionist movement in favor of Israel among western (French) intellectuals. Sartre took part in this movement. He signed petitions favoring Israel. I felt that his pro-Zionist attitudes were incompatible with Fanon's work". Recent reprints of Fanon's book have generally included Sartre's preface. == Literature == Sartre wrote successfully in a number of literary modes and made major contributions to literary criticism and literary biography. His plays are richly symbolic and serve as a means of conveying his philosophy. The best-known, Huis-clos (No Exit), contains the famous line "L'enfer, c'est les autres", usually translated as "Hell is other people." Aside from the impact of Nausea, Sartre's major work of fiction was The Roads to Freedom trilogy which charts the progression of how World War II affected Sartre's ideas. In this way, Roads to Freedom presents a less theoretical and more practical approach to existentialism. John Huston got Sartre to script his film Freud: The Secret Passion. However it was too long and Sartre withdrew his name from the film's credits. Nevertheless, many key elements from Sartre's script survive in the finished film.Despite their similarities as polemicists, novelists, adapters, and playwrights, Sartre's literary work has been counterposed, often pejoratively, to that of Camus in the popular imagination. In 1948 the Roman Catholic Church placed Sartre's œuvre on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books). == Works == === Novels and Short Story Collection === Nausea / La nausée (1938) The Wall / Le mur (1939) – collection of 5 short stories ==== The Roads to Freedom ==== The Age of Reason / L'âge de raison (1945) The Reprieve / Le sursis (1945) Troubled Sleep (London ed. (Hamilton) has title: Iron in the Soul) / La mort dans l'âme (1949) The Last Chance (1949 and 1981) – unfinished == See also == Sartre's Roads to Freedom Trilogy Situation (Sartre) Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature == References == == Sources == Aronson, Ronald (1980). Jean-Paul Sartre – Philosophy in the World. London: NLB. Aronson, Ronald (2004). Camus & Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-02796-8. Baert, Patrick (2015). The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bondy, Francois (April 1967). "Jean-Paul Sartre and Politics". The Journal of Contemporary History. 2 (2): 25–48. doi:10.1177/002200946700200204. S2CID 150438929. Cohen-Solal, Annie (1987). Narman MacAfee (ed.). Sartre: A Life. Translated by Anna Cancogni. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-394-52525-9. de Beauvoir, Simone (1984). Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre. Translated by Patrick O'Brian. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 9780394530352. Fulton, Ann (1999). Apostles of Sartre: Existentialism in America, 1945–1963. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Gerassi, John (1989). Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century. Volume 1: Protestant or Protester?. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-28797-3. Hayman, Ronald (1992). Sartre: A Biography. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-881-84875-5. (Detailed chronology of Sartre's life on pages 485–510.) Kirsner, Douglas (2003). The Schizoid World of Jean-Paul Sartre and R.D. Laing. New York: Karnac. Malinge, Yoann (2013). "Does our past have a motivational effect? Our reasons for acting: Sartre's philosophy of action". Vol. 4, no. 2. Ethics in Progress. pp. 46–53. Malinge, Yoann (2016). "Sartre, " The Transcendance of the Ego "". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 25 May 2019 – via Academia. Malinge, Yoann (2021). "Sartre, "Existentialism is a humanism"". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12 May 2021 – via Academia. Ousby, Ian (2000). Occupation: The Ordeal of France, 1940–1944. New York: Cooper Square Press. Scriven, Michael (1993). Sartre and the Media. London: MacMillan Press Ltd. Scriven, Michael (1999). Jean-Paul Sartre: Politics and Culture in Postwar France. London: MacMillan Press Ltd. Thody, Philip (1964). Jean-Paul Sartre. London: Hamish Hamilton. == Further reading == Allen, James Sloan, "Condemned to Be Free", Worldly Wisdom: Great Books and the Meanings of Life, Savannah: Frederic C. Beil, 2008. ISBN 978-1-929490-35-6. Joseph S. Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, University of Chicago Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-226-09701-5. L. S. Cattarini, Beyond Sartre and Sterility: Surviving Existentialism (Montreal, 2018: contact argobookshop.ca) ISBN 978-0-9739986-1-0 Steven Churchill and Jack Reynolds (eds.), Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts, London/New York: Routledge, 2014. Wilfrid Desan, The Tragic Finale: An Essay on the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1954). Robert Doran, "Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason and the Debate with Lévi-Strauss", Yale French Studies 123 (2013): 41–62. Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism: The Test Case of Collective Responsibility, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Judaken, Jonathan (2006) Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper, Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre's Philosophy, 1950–1960, New York: Pantheon, 1971. Suzanne Lilar, A propos de Sartre et de l'amour, Paris: Grasset, 1967. Axel Madsen, Hearts and Minds: The Common Journey of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, William Morrow & Co, 1977. Élisabeth Roudinesco, Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Edward Said, 2000: My Encounter with Sartre, London Review of Books Jean-Paul Sartre and Benny Levy, Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews, translated by Adrian van den Hoven, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. P. V. Spade, Class Lecture Notes on Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. 1996. Gianluca Vagnarelli, La democrazia tumultuaria. Sulla filosofia politica di Jean-Paul Sartre, Macerata, EUM, 2010. Jonathan Webber, The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, London: Routledge, 2009. H. Wittmann, Sartre und die Kunst. Die Porträtstudien von Tintoretto bis Flaubert, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1996. H. Wittmann, L'esthétique de Sartre. Artistes et intellectuels, translated from German by N. Weitemeier and J. Yacar, Éditions L'Harmattan (Collection L'ouverture philosophique), Paris, 2001. H. Wittmann, Sartre and Camus in Aesthetics. The Challenge of Freedom, edited by Dirk Hoeges. Dialoghi/Dialogues. Literatur und Kultur Italiens und Frankreichs, vol. 13, Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 2009. ISBN 978-3-631-58693-8. == External links == Jean-Paul Sartre at Curlie Jean-Paul Sartre on Nobelprize.org === By Sartre === Works by or about Jean-Paul Sartre at Internet Archive "Americans and Their Myths"—Sartre's essay in The Nation (18 October 1947 issue) Sartre Texts on Philosophy Archive Sartre Internet Archive on Marxists.org Works by Jean-Paul Sartre at Open Library George H. Bauer Jean Paul Sartre Manuscript Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. === On Sartre === UK Sartre Society Groupe d'études sartriennes, Paris Newspaper clippings about Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Joseph Campbell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth. Since the publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss." He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga.Campbell's approach to folklore topics such as myth and his influence on popular culture has been the subject of criticism, especially from academic folklorists. == Life == === Background === Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, on March 26, 1904, the elder son of hosiery importer and wholesaler Charles William Campbell, from Waltham, Massachusetts, and Josephine (née Lynch), from New York. Campbell was raised in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family; he related that his paternal grandfather Charles had been "a peasant" who came to Boston from County Mayo in Ireland, and became the gardener and caretaker at the Lyman estate at Waltham, where his son Charles William Campbell grew up and became a successful salesman at a department store prior to establishing his hosiery business. During his childhood, he moved with his family to New Rochelle, New York. In 1919, a fire destroyed the family home in New Rochelle, killing his maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who tried to save her.In 1921, Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1925 and a Master of Arts degree in medieval literature in 1927. At Dartmouth he had joined Delta Tau Delta. An accomplished athlete, he received awards in track and field events, and, for a time, was among the fastest half-mile runners in the world.In 1924, Campbell traveled to Europe with his family. On the ship during his return trip he encountered the messiah elect of the Theosophical Society, Jiddu Krishnamurti; they discussed Indian philosophy, sparking in Campbell an interest in Hindu and Indian thought. In 1927, he received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe. Campbell studied Old French, Provençal, and Sanskrit at the University of Paris and the University of Munich. He learned to read and speak French and German.On his return to Columbia University in 1929, Campbell expressed a desire to pursue the study of Sanskrit and modern art in addition to medieval literature. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from graduate studies. Later in life he jested that it is a sign of incompetence to have a PhD in the liberal arts, the discipline covering his work. === The Great Depression === With the arrival of the Great Depression, Campbell spent the next five years (1929–1934) living in a rented shack in Woodstock, New York. There, he contemplated the next course of his life while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. He later said that he "would divide the day into four three-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the three-hour periods, and free one of them ... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight."Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–1932), continuing his independent studies and becoming a close friend of the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. Campbell had met Carol's sister, Idell, on a Honolulu cruise and she introduced him to the Steinbecks. Campbell had an affair with Carol. On the Monterey Peninsula, Campbell, like John Steinbeck, fell under the spell of the marine biologist Ed Ricketts (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels). Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with Xenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the Grampus. Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as a hero but, unlike Steinbeck, did not complete his book.Bruce Robison writes that Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape. ... Campbell, the great chronicler of the "hero's journey" in mythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublished philosophical essays. Echoes of Carl Jung, Robinson Jeffers and James Joyce can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell. Campbell continued his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the Canterbury School in Connecticut, during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction. While teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story Strictly Platonic to Liberty magazine. === Sarah Lawrence College === In 1934, Campbell accepted a position as Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. In 1938, he married one of his former students, the dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman. For most of their 49 years of marriage they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City. In the 1980s they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu and divided their time between the two cities. They did not have any children. Early in World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell was given the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, which he would do over the following decade. In 1955–1956, as the last volume of Zimmer's posthumous (The Art of Indian Asia, Its Mythology and Transformations) was finally about to be published, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College and traveled, for the first time, to Asia. He spent six months in southern Asia (mostly India) and another six in East Asia (mostly Japan). This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and also on the necessity for teaching comparative mythology to a larger, non-academic audience.In 1972, Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years. === Later life and death === Campbell attended a Grateful Dead concert in 1986, and marveled that "Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!" With the Grateful Dead, Campbell put on a conference called "Ritual and Rapture from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead".Campbell died at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, on October 30, 1987, from complications of esophageal cancer. Before his death he had completed filming the series of interviews with Bill Moyers that aired the following spring as The Power of Myth. He is buried in O'ahu Cemetery, Honolulu. == Influences == === Art, literature, philosophy === Campbell often referred to the work of modern writers James Joyce and Thomas Mann in his lectures and writings, as well as to the art of Pablo Picasso. He was introduced to their work during his stay as a graduate student in Paris. Campbell eventually corresponded with Mann.The works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche had a profound effect on Campbell's thinking; he quoted their writing frequently.The "follow your bliss" philosophy attributed to Campbell following the original broadcast of The Power of Myth (see below) derives from the Hindu Upanishads; however, Campbell was possibly also influenced by the 1922 Sinclair Lewis novel Babbitt. In The Power of Myth, Campbell quotes from the novel: === Psychology and anthropology === The anthropologist Leo Frobenius and his disciple Adolf Ellegard Jensen were important to Campbell's view of cultural history. Campbell was also influenced by the psychological work of Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof. Campbell's ideas regarding myth and its relation to the human psyche are dependent in part on the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud, but in particular on the work of Jung, whose studies of human psychology greatly influenced Campbell. Campbell's conception of myth is closely related to the Jungian method of dream interpretation, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation. Jung's insights into archetypes were heavily influenced by the Bardo Thodol (also known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead). In his book The Mythic Image, Campbell quotes Jung's statement about the Bardo Thodol, that it belongs to that class of writings which not only are of interest to specialists in Mahayana Buddhism, but also, because of their deep humanity and still deeper insight into the secrets of the human psyche, make an especial appeal to the layman seeking to broaden his knowledge of life ... For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights. == Comparative mythology and theories == === Monomyth === Campbell's concept of monomyth (one myth) refers to the theory that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great story. The theory is based on the observation that a common pattern exists beneath the narrative elements of most great myths, regardless of their origin or time of creation. Campbell often referred to the ideas of Adolf Bastian and his distinction between what he called "folk" and "elementary" ideas, the latter referring to the prime matter of monomyth while the former to the multitude of local forms the myth takes in order to remain an up-to-date carrier of sacred meanings. The central pattern most studied by Campbell is often referred to as "the hero's journey" and was first described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). An enthusiast of novelist James Joyce, Campbell borrowed the term "monomyth" from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Campbell also made heavy use of Carl Jung's theories on the structure of the human psyche, and he often used terms such as anima, animus and ego consciousness. As a strong believer in the psychic unity of mankind and its poetic expression through mythology, Campbell made use of the concept to express the idea that the whole of the human race can be seen as engaged in the effort of making the world "transparent to transcendence" by showing that underneath the world of phenomena lies an eternal source which is constantly pouring its energies into this world of time, suffering, and ultimately death. To achieve this task one needs to speak about things that existed before and beyond words, a seemingly impossible task, the solution to which lies in the metaphors found in myths. These metaphors are statements that point beyond themselves into the transcendent. The Hero's Journey was the story of the man or woman who, through great suffering, reached an experience of the eternal source and returned with gifts powerful enough to set their society free. As this story spread through space and evolved through time, it was broken down into various local forms (masks), depending on the social structures and environmental pressures that existed for the culture that interpreted it. The basic structure, however, has remained relatively unchanged and can be classified using the various stages of a hero's adventure through the story, stages such as the Call to Adventure, Receiving Supernatural Aid, Meeting with the Goddess/Atonement with the Father and Return. These stages, as well as the symbols one encounters throughout the story, provide the necessary metaphors to express the spiritual truths the story is trying to convey. Metaphors for Campbell, in contrast with similes which make use of the word like, pretend to a literal interpretation of what they are referring to, as in the sentence "Jesus is the Son of God" rather than "the relationship of man to God is like that of a son to a father".In the 1987 documentary Joseph Campbell: A Hero's Journey, he explains God in terms of a metaphor: God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being. Those are categories of thought. I mean it's as simple as that. So it depends on how much you want to think about it. Whether it's doing you any good. Whether it is putting you in touch with the mystery that's the ground of your own being. If it isn't, well, it's a lie. So half the people in the world are religious people who think that their metaphors are facts. Those are what we call theists. The other half are people who know that the metaphors are not facts. And so, they're lies. Those are the atheists. === Functions of myth === Campbell often described mythology as having a fourfold function within human society. These appear at the end of his work The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, as well as various lectures. The Mystical/Metaphysical Function Awakening and maintaining in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude before the 'mystery of being' and his or her participation in it According to Campbell, the absolute mystery of life, what he called transcendent reality, cannot be captured directly in words or images. Symbols and mythic metaphors on the other hand point outside themselves and into that reality. They are what Campbell called "being statements" and their enactment through ritual can give to the participant a sense of that ultimate mystery as an experience. "Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion.... The first function of mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is."The Cosmological Function Explaining the shape of the universe For pre-modern societies, myth also functioned as a proto-science, offering explanations for the physical phenomena that surrounded and affected their lives, such as the change of seasons and the life cycles of animals and plants.The Sociological Function Validate and support the existing social order Ancient societies had to conform to an existing social order if they were to survive at all. This is because they evolved under "pressure" from necessities much more intense than the ones encountered in our modern world. Mythology confirmed that order and enforced it by reflecting it into the stories themselves, often describing how the order arrived from divine intervention. Campbell often referred to these "conformity" myths as the "Right Hand Path" to reflect the brain's left hemisphere's abilities for logic, order and linearity. Together with these myths however, he observed the existence of the "Left Hand Path", mythic patterns like the "Hero's Journey" which are revolutionary in character in that they demand from the individual a surpassing of social norms and sometimes even of morality.The Pedagogical/Psychological Function Guide the individual through the stages of life As a person goes through life, many psychological challenges will be encountered. Myth may serve as a guide for successful passage through the stages of one's life. === Evolution of myth === Campbell's view of mythology was by no means static and his books describe in detail how mythologies evolved through time, reflecting the realities in which each society had to adjust. Various stages of cultural development have different yet identifiable mythological systems. In brief these are: The Way of the Animal Powers Hunting and gathering societies At this stage of evolution religion was animistic, as all of nature was seen as being infused with a spirit or divine presence. At center stage was the main hunting animal of that culture, whether the buffalo for Native Americans or the eland for South African tribes, and a large part of religion focused on dealing with the psychological tension that came from the reality of the necessity to kill versus the divinity of the animal. This was done by presenting the animals as springing from an eternal archetypal source and coming to this world as willing victims, with the understanding that their lives would be returned to the soil or to the Mother through a ritual of restoration. The act of slaughter then becomes a ritual where both parties, animal and mankind, are equal participants. In Mythos and The Power of Myth, Campbell recounts the story he calls "The Buffalo's Wife" as told by the Blackfoot tribe of North America. The story tells of a time when the buffalos stopped coming to the hunting plains, leaving the tribe to starve. The chief's daughter promises to marry the buffalo chief in return for their reappearance, but is eventually spared and taught the buffalo dance by the animals themselves, through which the spirits of their dead will return to their eternal life source. Indeed, Campbell taught that throughout history mankind has held a belief that all life comes from and returns to another dimension which transcends temporality, but which can be reached through ritual.The Way of the Seeded Earth Early agrarian societies Beginning in the fertile grasslands of the Levant and the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age and moving to Europe, the practice of agriculture spread along with a new way of understanding mankind's relationship to the world. At this time the earth was seen as the Mother, and the myths focused around Her life-giving powers. The plant and cultivation cycle was mirrored in religious rituals which often included human sacrifice, symbolic or literal. The main figures of this system were a female Great Goddess, Mother Earth, and her ever-dying and ever-resurrected son/consort, a male God. At this time the focus was to participate in the repetitive rhythm the world moved in expressed as the four seasons, the birth and death of crops and the phases of the moon. At the center of this motion was the Mother Goddess from whom all life springs and to whom all life returns. This often gave Her a dual aspect as both mother and destroyer.The Way of the Celestial Lights The first high civilizations As the first agricultural societies evolved into the high civilisations of Mesopotamia and Babylonia, the observation of the stars inspired them with the idea that life on earth must also follow a similar mathematically predetermined pattern in which individual beings are but mere participants in an eternal cosmic play. The king was symbolised by the Sun with the golden crown as its main metaphor, while his court were the orbiting planets. The Mother Goddess remained, but her powers were now fixed within the rigid framework of a clockwork universe. However, two barbarian incursions changed that. As the Indo-European (Aryan) people descended from the north and the Semites swept up from the Arabian desert, they carried with them a male dominated mythology with a warrior god whose symbol was the thunder. As they conquered, mainly due to the superior technology of iron smithing, their mythology blended with and subjugated the previous system of the Earth Goddess. Many mythologies of the ancient world, such as those of Greece, India, and Persia, are a result of that fusion with gods retaining some of their original traits and character but now belonging to a single system. Figures such as Zeus and Indra are thunder gods who now interact with Demeter and Dionysus, whose ritual sacrifice and rebirth, bearing testament to his pre-Indo-European roots, were still enacted in classical Greece. But for the most part, the focus heavily shifted toward the masculine, with Zeus ascending the throne of the gods and Dionysus demoted to a mere demi-god. This demotion was very profound in the case of the biblical imagery where the female elements were marginalized to an extreme. Campbell believed that Eve and the snake that tempted her were once fertility gods worshipped in their own right, with the tree of knowledge being the Tree of Life. He also found significance in the biblical story of Cain and Abel, with Cain being a farmer whose agrarian offering is not accepted by God, while herder Abel's animal sacrifice is. In the lecture series of Mythos, Campbell speaks of the Mysteries of Eleusis in Ancient Greece, where Demeter's journey in the underworld was enacted for young men and women of the time. There he observed that wheat was presented as the ultimate mystery with wine being a symbol of Dionysus, much like in the Christian mysteries where bread and wine are considered to incarnate the body and blood of Jesus. Both religions carry the same "seeded earth" cosmology in different forms while retaining an image of the ever-dying, ever-resurrected God.The Way of Man Medieval mythology, romantic love, and the birth of the modern spirit Campbell recognized that the poetic form of courtly love, carried through medieval Europe by the traveling troubadours, contained a complete mythology in its own right. In The Power of Myth as well as the "Occidental Mythology" volume of The Masks of God, Campbell describes the emergence of a new kind of erotic experience as a "person to person" affair, in contrast with the purely physical definition given to Eros in the ancient world and the communal agape found in the Christian religion. An archetypal story of this kind is the legend of Tristan and Isolde which, apart from its mystical function, shows the transition from an arranged-marriage society as practiced in the Middle Ages and sanctified by the church, into the form of marriage by "falling in love" with another person that we recognize today. So what essentially started from a mythological theme has since become a social reality, mainly due to a change in perception brought about by a new mythology – and represents a central foundational manifestation of Campbell's overriding interpretive message, "Follow your bliss." Campbell believed that in the modern world the function served by formal, traditional mythological systems has been taken on by individual creators such as artists and philosophers. In the works of some of his favorites, such as Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce, he saw mythological themes that could serve the same life-giving purpose that mythology had once played. Accordingly, Campbell believed the religions of the world to be the various culturally influenced "masks" of the same fundamental, transcendent truths. All religions can bring one to an elevated awareness above and beyond a dualistic conception of reality, or idea of "pairs of opposites" such as being and non-being, or right and wrong. Indeed, he quotes from the Rigveda in the preface to The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names." == Influence == === Joseph Campbell Foundation === In 1991, Campbell's widow, choreographer Jean Erdman, worked with Campbell's longtime friend and editor, Robert Walter, to create the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Initiatives undertaken by the JCF include: The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work; the Erdman Campbell Award; the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion and culture; and the collection of Campbell's library and papers housed at the OPUS Archives and Research Center. === Film and television === George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated, following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell's. The linkage between Star Wars and Campbell was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Luke Skywalker on the cover. Lucas discusses this influence at great length in the authorized biography of Joseph Campbell, A Fire in the Mind: I came to the conclusion after American Graffiti that what's valuable for me is to set standards, not to show people the world the way it is... around the period of this realization… it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology... The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction… so that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books… It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs… So I modified my next draft according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent... I went on to read The Masks of God and many other books. It was not until after the completion of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1983, however, that Lucas met Campbell or heard any of his lectures. In 1984, Campbell gave a lecture at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, with Lucas in the audience, who was introduced through their mutual friend Barbara McClintock. A few years later, Lucas invited Campbell to watch the entire Star Wars trilogy at Skywalker Ranch, which Campbell called "real art". This meeting led to the filming of the 1988 documentary The Power of Myth at Skywalker Ranch. In his interviews with Bill Moyers, Campbell discusses the way in which Lucas used The Hero's Journey in the Star Wars films (IV, V, and VI) to re-invent the mythology for the contemporary viewer. Moyers and Lucas filmed an interview 12 years later in 1999 called the Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas' films. In addition, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped the Star Wars films.Many filmmakers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have acknowledged the influence of Campbell's work on their own craft. Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, created a seven-page company memo based on Campbell's work, A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which led to the development of Disney's 1994 film The Lion King. Among films that many viewers have recognized as closely following the pattern of the monomyth are The Matrix series, the Batman series and the Indiana Jones series. Dan Harmon, the creator of the TV show Community and co-creator of the TV show Rick and Morty, often references Campbell as a major influence. According to him, he uses a "story circle" to formulate every story he writes, in a formulation of Campbell's work. A fictionalized version of Campbell himself appears in the seventh episode of the sixth season of Rick and Morty, "Full Meta Jackrick". === Popular literature === After the explosion of popularity brought on by the Star Wars films and The Power of Myth, creative artists in many media recognized the potential to use Campbell's theories to try to unlock human responses to narrative patterns. Novelists, songwriters, video game designers have studied Campbell's work in order to better understand mythology – in particular, the monomyth – and its impact. The novelist Richard Adams acknowledges a debt to Campbell's work and specifically to the concept of the monomyth. In his best known work, Watership Down, Adams uses extracts from The Hero with a Thousand Faces as chapter epigrams.Dan Brown mentioned in a New York Times interview that Joseph Campbell's works, particularly The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, inspired him to create the character of Robert Langdon. === "Follow your bliss" === One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his maxim to "follow your bliss". He derived this idea from the Upanishads: Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked. He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life: If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s. By the time that The Power of Myth was aired in 1988, six months following Campbell's death, "Follow your bliss" was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public – both religious and secular.During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, "I should have said, 'Follow your blisters.'" == Academic reception and criticism == Campbell's approach to myth, a genre of folklore, has been the subject of criticism from folklorists, academics who specialize in folklore studies. American folklorist Barre Toelken says that few psychologists have taken the time to become familiar with the complexities of folklore, and that, historically, Jung-influenced psychologists and authors have tended to build complex theories around single versions of a tale that support a theory or a proposal. To illustrate his point, Toelken employs Clarissa Pinkola Estés's (1992) Women Who Run with the Wolves, citing its inaccurate representation of the folklore record, and Campbell's "monomyth" approach as another. Regarding Campbell, Toelken writes, "Campbell could construct a monomyth of the hero only by citing those stories that fit his preconceived mold, and leaving out equally valid stories… which did not fit the pattern". Toelken traces the influence of Campbell's monomyth theory into other then-contemporary popular works, such as Robert Bly's Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), which he says suffers from similar source selection bias.Similarly, American folklorist Alan Dundes was highly critical of both Campbell's approach to folklore, designating him as a "non-expert" and gives various examples of what he considers source bias in Campbell's theories, as well as media representation of Campbell as an expert on the subject of myth in popular culture. Dundes writes, "Folklorists have had some success in publicising the results of our efforts in the past two centuries such that members of other disciplines have, after a minimum of reading, believe they are qualified to speak authoritatively of folkloristic matters. It seems that the world is full of self-proclaimed experts in folklore, and a few, such as Campbell, have been accepted as such by the general public (and public television, in the case of Campbell)". According to Dundes, "there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype".According to anthropologist Raymond Scupin, "Joseph Campbell's theories have not been well received in anthropology because of his overgeneralizations, as well as other problems."Campbell's Sanskrit scholarship has been questioned. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former Sanskrit professor at the University of Toronto, said that he once met Campbell, and that the two "hated each other at sight", commenting that, "When I met Campbell at a public gathering he was quoting Sanskrit verses. He had no clue as to what he was talking about; he had the most superficial knowledge of India but he could use it for his own aggrandizement. I remember thinking: this man is corrupt. I know that he was simply lying about his understanding". According to Richard Buchen, librarian of the Joseph Campbell Collection at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Campbell could not translate Sanskrit well, but worked closely with three scholars who did.Ellwood observes that The Masks of God series "impressed literate laity more than specialists"; he quotes Stephen P. Dunn as remarking that in Occidental Mythology Campbell "writes in a curiously archaic style – full of rhetorical questions, exclamations of wonder and delight, and expostulations directed at the reader, or perhaps at the author's other self – which is charming about a third of the time and rather annoying the rest." Ellwood says that "Campbell was not really a social scientist, and those in the latter camp could tell" and records a concern about Campbell's "oversimplification of historical matters and tendency to make myth mean whatever he wanted it to mean". The critic Camille Paglia, writing in Sexual Personae (1990), expressed disagreement with Campbell's "negative critique of fifth-century Athens" in Occidental Mythology, arguing that Campbell missed the "visionary and exalted" androgyny in Greek statues of nude boys. Paglia has written that while Campbell is "a seminal figure for many American feminists", she loathes him for his "mawkishness and bad research." Paglia has called Campbell "mushy" and a "false teacher", and described his work as a "fanciful, showy mishmash".Campbell has also been accused of antisemitism by some authors. In Tikkun Magazine, Tamar Frankiel noted that Campbell called Judaism the "Yahweh Cult" and that he spoke of Judaism in almost exclusively negative terms. In a 1989 New York Review of Books article, Brendan Gill accused Campbell of both antisemitism and prejudice against blacks. Gill's article resulted in a series of letters to the editor, some supporting the charge of antisemitism and others defending him. However, according to Robert S. Ellwood, Gill relied on "scraps of evidence, largely anecdotal" to support his charges. In 1991, Masson also accused Campbell of "hidden anti-Semitism" and "fascination with conservative, semifascistic views". == Works == === Early collaborations === The first published work that bore Campbell's name was Where the Two Came to Their Father (1943), an account of a Navajo ceremony that was performed by singer (medicine man) Jeff King and recorded by artist and ethnologist Maud Oakes, recounting the story of two young heroes who go to the hogan of their father, the Sun, and return with the power to destroy the monsters that are plaguing their people. Campbell provided a commentary. He would use this tale through the rest of his career to illustrate both the universal symbols and structures of human myths and the particulars ("folk ideas") of Native American stories.As noted above, James Joyce was an important influence on Campbell. Campbell's first important book (with Henry Morton Robinson), A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), is a critical analysis of Joyce's final text Finnegans Wake. In addition, Campbell's seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), discusses what Campbell called the monomyth – the cycle of the journey of the hero – a term that he borrowed directly from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. === The Hero with a Thousand Faces === From his days in college through the 1940s, Joseph Campbell turned his hand to writing fiction. In many of his later stories (published in the posthumous collection Mythic Imagination) he began to explore the mythological themes that he was discussing in his Sarah Lawrence classes. These ideas turned him eventually from fiction to non-fiction. Originally titled How to Read a Myth, and based on the introductory class on mythology that he had been teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, The Hero with a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 as Campbell's first foray as a solo author; it established his name outside of scholarly circles and remains, arguably, his most influential work to this day. The book argues that hero stories such as Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus all share a similar mythological basis. Not only did it introduce the concept of the hero's journey to popular thinking, but it also began to popularize the very idea of comparative mythology itself – the study of the human impulse to create stories and images that, though they are clothed in the motifs of a particular time and place, draw nonetheless on universal, eternal themes. Campbell asserted: Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives becomes dissolved. === The Masks of God === Published between 1959 and 1968, Campbell's four-volume work The Masks of God covers mythology from around the world, from ancient to modern. Where The Hero with a Thousand Faces focused on the commonality of mythology (the "elementary ideas"), the Masks of God books focus upon historical and cultural variations the monomyth takes on (the "folk ideas"). In other words, where The Hero with a Thousand Faces draws perhaps more from psychology, the Masks of God books draw more from anthropology and history. The four volumes of Masks of God are as follows: Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology, and Creative Mythology. === Historical Atlas of World Mythology === At the time of his death, Campbell was in the midst of working on a large-format, lavishly illustrated series titled Historical Atlas of World Mythology. This series was to build on Campbell's idea, first presented in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that myth evolves over time through four stages: The Way of the Animal Powers – the myths of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers which focus on shamanism and animal totems. The Way of the Seeded Earth – the myths of Neolithic, agrarian cultures which focus upon a mother goddess and associated fertility rites. The Way of the Celestial Lights – the myths of Bronze Age city-states with pantheons of gods ruling from the heavens, led by a masculine god-king. The Way of Man – religion and philosophy as it developed after the Axial Age (c. 6th century BCE), in which the mythic imagery of previous eras was made consciously metaphorical, reinterpreted as referring to psycho-spiritual, not literal-historical, matters. This transition is evident in the East in Buddhism, Vedanta, and philosophical Taoism; and in the West in the Mystery cults, Platonism, Christianity and Gnosticism.Only the first volume was completed at the time of Campbell's death. Campbell's editor Robert Walter completed the publication of the first three of five parts of the second volume after Campbell's death. The works are now out of print. As of 2014, Joseph Campbell Foundation is currently undertaking to create a new, ebook edition. === The Power of Myth === Campbell's widest popular recognition followed his collaboration with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, the year following Campbell's death. The series discusses mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes. A book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast. === Collected Works === The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series is a project initiated by the Joseph Campbell Foundation to release new, authoritative editions of Campbell's published and unpublished writing, as well as audio and video recordings of his lectures. Working with New World Library and Acorn Media UK, as well as publishing audio recordings and ebooks under its own banner, as of 2014 the project has produced over seventy-five titles. The series's executive editor is Robert Walter, and the managing editor is David Kudler. === Other books === Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial (1943). With Jeff King and Maud Oakes, Old Dominion Foundation The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension (1968). Viking Press Myths to Live By (1972). Viking Press Erotic irony and mythic forms in the art of Thomas Mann (1973; monograph, later included in The Mythic Dimension) The Mythic Image (1974). Princeton University Press The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor As Myth and As Religion (1986). Alfred van der Marck Editions Transformations of Myth Through Time (1990). Harper and Row A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (1991). Editor Robert Walter, from material by Diane K. Osbon Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce (1993). Editor Edmund L. Epstein The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays (1959–1987) (1993). Editor Anthony Van Couvering Baksheesh & Brahman: Indian Journals (1954–1955) (1995). Editors Robin/Stephen Larsen & Anthony Van Couvering Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor (2001). Editor Eugene Kennedy, New World Library ISBN 1-57731-202-3. First volume in the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (2002) Sake & Satori: Asian Journals – Japan (2002). Editor David Kudler Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal (2003). Editor David Kudler Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation (2004). Editor David Kudler Mythic Imagination: Collected Short Fiction of Joseph Campbell ISBN 160868153X (2012) Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine ISBN 1608681823 (2013). Editor Safron Rossi Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth (2015). Editor Evans Lansing Smith The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance (2017). Editor Nancy Allison Correspondence 1927–1987 (2019, 2020). Editors Dennis Patrick Slattery & Evans Lansing Smith === Interview books === The Power of Myth (1988). with Bill Moyers and editor Betty Sue Flowers, Doubleday, hardcover: ISBN 0-385-24773-7 An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms (1989). Editors John Maher and Dennie Briggs, foreword by Jean Erdman Campbell. Larson Publications, Harper Perennial 1990 paperback: ISBN 0-06-097295-5 This business of the gods: Interview with Fraser Boa (Unlicensed – 1989) The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (1990). Editor Phil Cousineau. Harper & Row 1991 paperback: ISBN 0-06-250171-2. Element Books 1999 hardcover: ISBN 1-86204-598-4. New World Library centennial edition with introduction by Phil Cousineau, foreword by executive editor Stuart L. Brown: ISBN 1-57731-404-2 === Audio recordings === Mythology and the Individual The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers) (1987) Transformation of Myth through Time Volume 1–3 (1989) The Hero with a Thousand Faces: The Cosmogonic Cycle (read by Ralph Blum; 1990) The Way of Art (1990–unlicensed) The Lost Teachings of Joseph Campbell Volume 1–9 (with Michael Toms; 1993) On the Wings of Art: Joseph Campbell; Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce (1995) The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell (with Michael Toms; 1997) Audio Lecture Series: Series I – lectures up to 1970 Volume 1: Mythology and the Individual Volume 2: Inward Journey: East and West Volume 3: The Eastern Way Volume 4: Man and Myth Volume 5: Myths and Masks of God Volume 6: The Western Quest Series II – lectures from 1970 to 1978 Volume 1: A Brief History of World Mythology Volume 2: Mythological Perspectives Volume 3: Christian Symbols and Ideas Volume 4: Psychology and Asia Philosophies Volume 5: Your Myth Today Volume 6: Mythic Ideas and Modern Culture Series III – lectures from 1983 to 1986 Volume 1: The Mythic Novels of James Joyce Myth and Metaphor in Society (with Jamake Highwater) (abridged; 2002) === Video recordings === The Hero's Journey: A Biographical Portrait – This film, made shortly before his death in 1987, follows Campbell's personal quest – a pathless journey of questioning, discovery, and ultimately of joy in a life to which he said, "Yes." Sukhavati: A Mythic Journey – This film is a personal, transcendent, and perhaps spiritual portrait of Campbell. Mythos – This series comprises talks that Campbell himself believed summed up his views on "the one great story of mankind." It is essentially a repackaging of the lectures featured in Transformations of Myth Through Time. Psyche & Symbol (12-part telecourse, Bay Area Open College, 1976) Transformations of Myth Through Time (1989) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (1988) Myth and Metaphor in Society (with Jamake Highwater; 1993) === TV appearances === Bill Moyers Journal: Joseph Campbell – Myths to Live By (Part One), April 17, 1981 Bill Moyers Journal: Joseph Campbell – Myths to Live By (Part Two), April 24, 1981 === Edited books === Gupta, Mahendranath. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942) (translation from Bengali by Swami Nikhilananda; Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, with translation assistants; foreword by Aldous Huxley) Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Heinrich Zimmer (1946) The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil. Heinrich Zimmer (1948) Philosophies of India. Heinrich Zimmer (1951) The Portable Arabian Nights (1951) The Art of Indian Asia. Heinrich Zimmer (1955) Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969) Man and Transformation: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969) The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969) The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969) Spirit and Nature: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969) Spiritual Disciplines: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Various authors (1954–1969) Myths, Dreams, Religion. Various authors (1970) The Portable Jung. Carl Jung (1971) == See also == Aarne–Thompson classification systems The Golden Bough Polytheistic myth as psychology Vladimir Propp Religion and mythology Script analysis The Seven Basic Plots Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF) == Notes == == References == === Citations === === Works cited === == Further reading == Books Articles == External links == Joseph Campbell at IMDb Joseph Campbell Foundation The Joseph Campbell Library at Pacifica Graduate Institute

Eugen Fink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Fink

Eugen Fink (11 December 1905 – 25 July 1975) was a German philosopher. == Biography == Fink was born in 1905 as the son of a government official in Germany. He spent his first school years with an uncle who was a Catholic priest. Fink attended a grammar school in Konstanz where he succeeded with his extraordinary memory. After his graduation exam in 1925, he studied philosophy, history, German language and economics, initially at Münster and Berlin and then in Freiburg with Edmund Husserl. == Philosophy == As Husserl's assistant, he was a representative of phenomenological idealism and later a follower of Martin Heidegger. He approached the problem of Being as a manifestation of the cosmic movement with Man being a participant in this movement. Fink called the philosophical problems pre-questions, that will lead to the true philosophy by the way of an ontological practice. == Works == Vom Wesen des Enthusiasmus, Freiburg 1947 Zur ontologischen Frühgeschichte von Raum - Zeit - Bewegung, Den Haag 1957 Alles und Nichts, Den Haag 1959 Spiel als Weltsymbol, Stuttgart 1960 Nietzsches Philosophie, Stuttgart 1960 Metaphysik und Tod, Stuttgart 1969 Heraklit. Seminar mit Martin Heidegger, Frankfurt/Main 1970 Erziehungswissenschaft und Lebenslehre, Freiburg 1970 Natur, Freiheit, Welt : Philosophie der Erziehung, Wuerzburg, 1992 Sein und Mensch. Vom Wesen der ontologischen Erfahrung, Freiburg 1977 Grundfragen der systematischen Pädagogik, Freiburg 1978 Grundphänomene des menschlichen Daseins, Freiburg 1979 Grundfragen der antiken Philosophie, Würzburg 1985 VI. Cartesianische Meditation. I: Die Idee einer Transzendentalen Methodenlehre Dordrecht 1988 Welt und Endlichkeit, Würzburg 1990 Hegel, Frankfurt 2006 Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe edited by Cathrin Nielsen and Hans Rainer Sepp in collaboration with Franz-Anton Schwarz, Freiburg: Alber, 2006- Published volumes: Vol. 1. Nähe und Distanz. Studien zur Phänomenologie (2011); Vol. 3.1 Die Doktorarbeit und erste Assistenzjahre bei Husserl (2006); Vol. 3.3 Grammata: zu Husserls Krisis-Schriften, Dorothy Ott-Seminare, Interpretationen zu Kant und Hegel, Notizen zu Gesprächen im Umkreis der Freiburger Phänomenologie. (2011); Vol. 7 Spiel als Weltsymbol (2010); Vol. 13 Epilegomena zu I. Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (2010). == English translations == Play as Symbol of the World. And Other Writings. Translated with an introduction by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. Sixth Cartesian meditation. The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method with textual notations by Edmund Husserl. Translated with an introduction by Ronald Bruzina, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995 Nietzsche's Philosophy translated by Goetz Richter London, New York: Continuum, 2003 Heraclitus Seminar. with Martin Heidegger, (Winter semester 1966/1967 at Freiburg University), Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993 Cairns, Dorion, Conversations with Husserl and Fink. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976 "Oasis of Happiness: Thoughts toward an Ontology of Play". Translated by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner. Purlieu: A Philosophical Journal 1, no. 4 (2012), pp. 20–42. == References == Ronald Bruzina, Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology 1928-1938, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004 [1] Stuart Elden, "Eugen Fink and the Question of the World", Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy 2008;5:48-59 [2]. == External links == Eugen Fink in the German National Library catalogue Eugen-Fink-Archiv Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology

Kurt Gödel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( GUR-dəl, German: [kʊʁt ˈɡøːdl̩] (listen); April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Frege. Gödel's discoveries in the foundations of mathematics led to the proof of his completeness theorem in 1929 as part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931. The first incompleteness theorem states that for any ω-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example, Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the natural numbers that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms. To prove this, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. The second incompleteness theorem, which follows from the first, states that the system cannot prove its own consistency.Gödel also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, assuming that its axioms are consistent. The former result opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs. He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic. == Early life and education == === Childhood === Gödel was born April 28, 1906, in Brünn (now Brno), Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel (1874–1929), the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh, 1879–1966). At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised Protestant. The ancestors of Kurt Gödel were often active in Brünn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Gödel was a famous singer in his time and for some years a member of the Brünner Männergesangverein (Men's Choral Union of Brünn).Gödel automatically became a citizen of Czechoslovakia at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed following its defeat in the First World War. According to his classmate Klepetař, like many residents of the predominantly German Sudetenländer, "Gödel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". In February 1929, he was granted release from his Czechoslovakian citizenship and then, in April, granted Austrian citizenship. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Gödel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. In 1948, after World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen.In his family, the young Gödel was nicknamed Herr Warum ("Mr. Why") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven, Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Gödel suffered from "frequent episodes of poor health", which would continue for his entire life.Gödel attended the Evangelische Volksschule, a Lutheran school in Brünn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the Deutsches Staats-Realgymnasium from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Gödel had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna, where he attended medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Gödel studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant. === Studies in Vienna === At the age of 18, Gödel joined his brother at the University of Vienna. By that time, he had already mastered university-level mathematics. Although initially intending to study theoretical physics, he also attended courses on mathematics and philosophy. During this time, he adopted ideas of mathematical realism. He read Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, and participated in the Vienna Circle with Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap. Gödel then studied number theory, but when he took part in a seminar run by Moritz Schlick which studied Bertrand Russell's book Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he became interested in mathematical logic. According to Gödel, mathematical logic was "a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences."Attending a lecture by David Hilbert in Bologna on completeness and consistency in mathematical systems may have set Gödel's life course. In 1928, Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: "Are the axioms of a formal system sufficient to derive every statement that is true in all models of the system?" This problem became the topic that Gödel chose for his doctoral work. In 1929, at the age of 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision. In it, he established his eponymous completeness theorem regarding the first-order predicate calculus. He was awarded his doctorate in 1930, and his thesis (accompanied by some additional work) was published by the Vienna Academy of Science. == Career == === Incompleteness theorems === Kurt Gödel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental—indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time. ... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Gödel's achievement. In 1930 Gödel attended the Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, held in Königsberg, 5–7 September. Here he delivered his incompleteness theorems.Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme (called in English "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems"). In that article, he proved for any computable axiomatic system that is powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (e.g., the Peano axioms or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice), that: If a (logical or axiomatic formal) system is omega-consistent, it cannot be syntactically complete. The consistency of axioms cannot be proved within their own system.These theorems ended a half-century of attempts, beginning with the work of Gottlob Frege and culminating in Principia Mathematica and Hilbert's Program, to find a non-relatively consistent axiomatization sufficient for number theory (that was to serve as the foundation for other fields of mathematics). In hindsight, the basic idea at the heart of the incompleteness theorem is rather simple. Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement. That is, for any computably enumerable set of axioms for arithmetic (that is, a set that can in principle be printed out by an idealized computer with unlimited resources), there is a formula that is true of arithmetic, but which is not provable in that system. To make this precise, however, Gödel needed to produce a method to encode (as natural numbers) statements, proofs, and the concept of provability; he did this using a process known as Gödel numbering. In his two-page paper Zum intuitionistischen Aussagenkalkül (1932) Gödel refuted the finite-valuedness of intuitionistic logic. In the proof, he implicitly used what has later become known as Gödel–Dummett intermediate logic (or Gödel fuzzy logic). === Mid-1930s: further work and U.S. visits === Gödel earned his habilitation at Vienna in 1932, and in 1933 he became a Privatdozent (unpaid lecturer) there. In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and over the following years the Nazis rose in influence in Austria, and among Vienna's mathematicians. In June 1936, Moritz Schlick, whose seminar had aroused Gödel's interest in logic, was assassinated by one of his former students, Johann Nelböck. This triggered "a severe nervous crisis" in Gödel. He developed paranoid symptoms, including a fear of being poisoned, and spent several months in a sanitarium for nervous diseases.In 1933, Gödel first traveled to the U.S., where he met Albert Einstein, who became a good friend. He delivered an address to the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society. During this year, Gödel also developed the ideas of computability and recursive functions to the point where he was able to present a lecture on general recursive functions and the concept of truth. This work was developed in number theory, using Gödel numbering. In 1934, Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, titled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems. Stephen Kleene, who had just completed his PhD at Princeton, took notes of these lectures that have been subsequently published. Gödel visited the IAS again in the autumn of 1935. The travelling and the hard work had exhausted him and the next year he took a break to recover from a depressive episode. He returned to teaching in 1937. During this time, he worked on the proof of consistency of the axiom of choice and of the continuum hypothesis; he went on to show that these hypotheses cannot be disproved from the common system of axioms of set theory. He married Adele Nimbursky (née Porkert, 1899–1981), whom he had known for over 10 years, on September 20, 1938. Gödel's parents had opposed their relationship because she was a divorced dancer, six years older than he was. Subsequently, he left for another visit to the United States, spending the autumn of 1938 at the IAS and publishing Consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory, a classic of modern mathematics. In that work he introduced the constructible universe, a model of set theory in which the only sets that exist are those that can be constructed from simpler sets. Gödel showed that both the axiom of choice (AC) and the generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) are true in the constructible universe, and therefore must be consistent with the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms for set theory (ZF). This result has had considerable consequences for working mathematicians, as it means they can assume the axiom of choice when proving the Hahn–Banach theorem. Paul Cohen later constructed a model of ZF in which AC and GCH are false; together these proofs mean that AC and GCH are independent of the ZF axioms for set theory. Gödel spent the spring of 1939 at the University of Notre Dame. === Princeton, Einstein, U.S. citizenship === After the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany. Germany abolished the title Privatdozent, so Gödel had to apply for a different position under the new order. His former association with Jewish members of the Vienna Circle, especially with Hahn, weighed against him. The University of Vienna turned his application down. His predicament intensified when the German army found him fit for conscription. World War II started in September 1939. Before the year was up, Gödel and his wife left Vienna for Princeton. To avoid the difficulty of an Atlantic crossing, the Gödels took the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific, sailed from Japan to San Francisco (which they reached on March 4, 1940), then crossed the US by train to Princeton. There Gödel accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), which he had previously visited during 1933–34.Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gödel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel".Gödel and his wife, Adele, spent the summer of 1942 in Blue Hill, Maine, at the Blue Hill Inn at the top of the bay. Gödel was not merely vacationing but had a very productive summer of work. Using Heft 15 [volume 15] of Gödel's still-unpublished Arbeitshefte [working notebooks], John W. Dawson Jr. conjectures that Gödel discovered a proof for the independence of the axiom of choice from finite type theory, a weakened form of set theory, while in Blue Hill in 1942. Gödel's close friend Hao Wang supports this conjecture, noting that Gödel's Blue Hill notebooks contain his most extensive treatment of the problem. On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship; this has since been dubbed Gödel's Loophole. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. The judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gödel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gödel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gödel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion.Gödel became a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1946. Around this time he stopped publishing, though he continued to work. He became a full professor at the Institute in 1953 and an emeritus professor in 1976.During his time at the institute, Gödel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed timelike curves, to Einstein's field equations in general relativity. He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday. His "rotating universes" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gödel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation). He studied and admired the works of Gottfried Leibniz, but came to believe that a hostile conspiracy had caused some of Leibniz's works to be suppressed. To a lesser extent he studied Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the early 1970s, Gödel circulated among his friends an elaboration of Leibniz's version of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of God's existence. This is now known as Gödel's ontological proof. == Awards and honours == Gödel was awarded (with Julian Schwinger) the first Albert Einstein Award in 1951, and was also awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1974. Gödel was elected a resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1961 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1968. He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Gödel Prize, an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, is named after him. == Later life and death == Later in his life, Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. Following the assassination of his close friend Moritz Schlick, Gödel developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned, and would eat only food prepared by his wife Adele. Adele was hospitalized beginning in late 1977, and in her absence Gödel refused to eat; he weighed 29 kilograms (65 lb) when he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Adele died in 1981. == Religious views == Gödel believed that God was personal, and called his philosophy "rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic, and theological".Gödel believed in an afterlife, saying, "Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today's science and received wisdom haven't any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology." It is "possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning" that it "is entirely consistent with known facts." "If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife]."In an unmailed answer to a questionnaire, Gödel described his religion as "baptized Lutheran (but not member of any religious congregation). My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza." Of religion(s) in general, he said: "Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not". According to his wife Adele, "Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning", while of Islam, he said, "I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded." == Legacy == Douglas Hofstadter wrote the 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach to celebrate the work and ideas of Gödel, M. C. Escher and Johann Sebastian Bach. It partly explores the ramifications of the fact that Gödel's incompleteness theorem can be applied to any Turing-complete computational system, which may include the human brain. The Kurt Gödel Society, founded in 1987, was named in his honor. It is an international organization for the promotion of research in logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics. The University of Vienna hosts the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic. The Association for Symbolic Logic has held an annual Gödel Lecture each year since 1990. Gödel's Philosophical Notebooks Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine are edited at the Kurt Gödel Research Centre Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine which is situated at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany. Lou Jacobi plays Gödel in the 1994 film I.Q. Five volumes of Gödel's collected works have been published. The first two include his publications; the third includes unpublished manuscripts from his Nachlass, and the final two include correspondence. In 2005 John Dawson published a biography of Gödel, Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (A. K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, ISBN 1-56881-256-6). Stephen Budiansky's book about Gödel's life, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, NY, ISBN 978-0-393-35820-9), was a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021.Gödel was also one of four mathematicians examined in David Malone's 2008 BBC documentary Dangerous Knowledge. == Bibliography == === Important publications === In German: 1930, "Die Vollständigkeit der Axiome des logischen Funktionenkalküls." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 37: 349–60. 1931, "Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 38: 173–98. 1932, "Zum intuitionistischen Aussagenkalkül", Anzeiger Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien 69: 65–66.In English: 1940. The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with the Axioms of Set Theory. Princeton University Press. 1947. "What is Cantor's continuum problem?" The American Mathematical Monthly 54: 515–25. Revised version in Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, eds., 1984 (1964). Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings. Cambridge Univ. Press: 470–85. 1950, "Rotating Universes in General Relativity Theory." Proceedings of the international Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge, Vol. 1, pp. 175–81.In English translation: Kurt Gödel, 1992. On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems, tr. B. Meltzer, with a comprehensive introduction by Richard Braithwaite. Dover reprint of the 1962 Basic Books edition. Kurt Gödel, 2000. On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems, tr. Martin Hirzel Jean van Heijenoort, 1967. A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931. Harvard Univ. Press. 1930. "The completeness of the axioms of the functional calculus of logic," 582–91. 1930. "Some metamathematical results on completeness and consistency," 595–96. Abstract to (1931). 1931. "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems," 596–616. 1931a. "On completeness and consistency," 616–17. Collected Works: Oxford University Press: New York. Editor-in-chief: Solomon Feferman. Volume I: Publications 1929–1936 ISBN 978-0-19-503964-1 / Paperback: ISBN 978-0-19-514720-9, Volume II: Publications 1938–1974 ISBN 978-0-19-503972-6 / Paperback: ISBN 978-0-19-514721-6, Volume III: Unpublished Essays and Lectures ISBN 978-0-19-507255-6 / Paperback: ISBN 978-0-19-514722-3, Volume IV: Correspondence, A–G ISBN 978-0-19-850073-5, Volume V: Correspondence, H–Z ISBN 978-0-19-850075-9. Philosophische Notizbücher / Philosophical Notebooks: De Gruyter: Berlin/München/Boston. Editor: Eva-Maria Engelen. Volume 1: Philosophie I Maximen 0 / Philosophy I Maxims 0 ISBN 978-3-11-058374-8. Volume 2: Zeiteinteilung (Maximen) I und II / Time Management (Maxims) I and II ISBN 978-3-11-067409-5. Volume 3: Maximen III / Maxims III ISBN 978-3-11-075325-7 == See also == Gödel machine Gödel fuzzy logic Gödel–Löb logic Gödel Prize Gödel's ontological proof Infinite-valued logic List of Austrian scientists List of pioneers in computer science Mathematical Platonism Original proof of Gödel's completeness theorem Primitive recursive functional Strange loop Tarski's undefinability theorem World Logic Day == Notes == == References == Dawson, John W (1997), Logical dilemmas: The life and work of Kurt Gödel, Wellesley, MA: AK Peters. Goldstein, Rebecca (2005), Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, ISBN 978-0-393-32760-1. Wang, Hao (1987), Reflections on Kurt Gödel, Cambridge: MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-73087-1 Wang, Hao (1996), A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy, Cambridge: MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-23189-1 == Further reading == Stephen Budiansky, 2021. Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel. W.W. Norton & Company. Casti, John L; DePauli, Werner (2000), Gödel: A Life of Logic, Cambridge, MA: Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), ISBN 978-0-7382-0518-2. Dawson, John W, Jr (1996), Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel, AK Peters. Dawson, John W, Jr (1999), "Gödel and the Limits of Logic", Scientific American, 280 (6): 76–81, Bibcode:1999SciAm.280f..76D, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0699-76, PMID 10048234. Franzén, Torkel (2005), Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse, Wellesley, MA: AK Peters. Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton Univ. Press. Hämeen-Anttila, Maria (2020). Gödel on Intuitionism and Constructive Foundations of Mathematics (Ph.D. thesis). Helsinki: University of Helsinki. ISBN 978-951-51-5922-9. Jaakko Hintikka, 2000. On Gödel. Wadsworth. Douglas Hofstadter, 1980. Gödel, Escher, Bach. Vintage. Stephen Kleene, 1967. Mathematical Logic. Dover paperback reprint c. 2001. Stephen Kleene, 1980. Introduction to Metamathematics. North Holland ISBN 0-7204-2103-9 (Ishi Press paperback. 2009. ISBN 978-0-923891-57-2) J.R. Lucas, 1970. The Freedom of the Will. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Ernest Nagel and Newman, James R., 1958. Gödel's Proof. New York Univ. Press. Ed Regis, 1987. Who Got Einstein's Office? Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. Raymond Smullyan, 1992. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. Oxford University Press. Olga Taussky-Todd, 1983. Remembrances of Kurt Gödel. Engineering & Science, Winter 1988. Yourgrau, Palle, 1999. Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe. Chicago: Open Court. Yourgrau, Palle, 2004. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09293-2. (Reviewed by John Stachel in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (54 (7), pp. 861–68). == External links == Weisstein, Eric Wolfgang (ed.). "Gödel, Kurt (1906–1978)". ScienceWorld. Kennedy, Juliette. "Kurt Gödel". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Time Bandits: an article about the relationship between Gödel and Einstein by Jim Holt Notices of the AMS, April 2006, Volume 53, Number 4 Kurt Gödel Centenary Issue Paul Davies and Freeman Dyson discuss Kurt Godel (transcript) "Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth" Edge: A Talk with Rebecca Goldstein on Kurt Gödel. It's Not All In The Numbers: Gregory Chaitin Explains Gödel's Mathematical Complexities. Gödel photo gallery. (archived) Kurt Gödel MacTutor History of Mathematics archive page National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir

Emmanuel Levinas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas (; French: [ɛmanɥɛl levinas]; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to metaphysics and ontology. == Life and career == Emmanuelis Levinas (later adapted to French orthography as Emmanuel Levinas) was born in 1906 into a middle-class Litvak family in Kaunas, in present-day Lithuania, then Kovno district, at the Western edge of the Russian Empire. Because of the disruptions of World War I, the family moved to Charkow in Ukraine in 1916, where they stayed during the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917. In 1920 his family returned to the Republic of Lithuania. Levinas's early education was in secular, Russian-language schools in Kaunas and Charkow. Upon his family's return to the Republic of Lithuania, Levinas spent two years at a Jewish gymnasium before departing for France, where he commenced his university education. Levinas began his philosophical studies at the University of Strasbourg in 1923, and his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to the University of Freiburg for two semesters to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy greatly impressed him. Levinas would in the early 1930s be one of the first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl by translating, in 1931, Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (with the help of Gabrielle Peiffer and with advice from Alexandre Koyré) and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as La théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology; his 1929/30 doctoral thesis), De l'Existence à l'Existant (From Existence to Existents; 1947), and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Discovering Existence with Husserl and Heidegger; first edition, 1949, with additions, 1967). In 1929 he was awarded his doctorate (Doctorat d'université degree) by the University of Strasbourg for his thesis on the meaning of intuition in the philosophy of Husserl, published in 1930. Levinas became a naturalized French citizen in 1939. When France declared war on Germany, he reported for military duty as a translator of Russian and French. During the German invasion of France in 1940, his military unit was surrounded and forced to surrender. Levinas spent the rest of World War II as a prisoner of war in a camp near Hanover in Germany. Levinas was assigned to a special barrack for Jewish prisoners, who were forbidden any form of religious worship. Life in the Fallingbostel camp was difficult, but his status as a prisoner of war protected him from the Holocaust's concentration camps. Other prisoners saw him frequently jotting in a notebook. These jottings were later developed into his book De l'Existence à l'Existant (1947) and a series of lectures published under the title Le Temps et l'Autre (1948). His wartime notebooks have now been published in their original form as Œuvres: Tome 1, Carnets de captivité: suivi de Écrits sur la captivité; et, Notes philosophiques diverses (2009). Meanwhile, Maurice Blanchot helped Levinas's wife and daughter spend the war in a monastery, thus sparing them from the Holocaust. Blanchot, at considerable personal risk, also saw to it that Levinas was able to keep in contact with his immediate family through letters and other messages. Other members of Levinas's family were not so fortunate; his mother-in-law was deported and never heard from again, while his father and brothers were killed by the SS in Lithuania. After the Second World War, he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic Monsieur Chouchani, whose influence he acknowledged only late in his life. Levinas's first book-length essay, Totality and Infinity (1961), was written as his Doctorat d'État primary thesis (roughly equivalent to a Habilitation thesis). His secondary thesis was titled Études sur la phénoménologie (Studies on Phenomenology). After earning his habilitation, Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École normale Israélite orientale (Paris), eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He published his second major philosophical work, Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence, in 1974. He was also a professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Levinas came to regret his early enthusiasm for Heidegger, after the latter joined the Nazis. Levinas explicitly framed several of his mature philosophical works as attempts to respond to Heidegger's philosophy in light of its ethical failings. His son is the composer Michaël Levinas, and his son-in-law is the French mathematician Georges Hansel. Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan (Morocco), who learned Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne, and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world. == Philosophy == In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding the philosopher Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas's terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Levinas called "ontology"). Levinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the "love of wisdom" (the usual translation of the Greek "φιλοσοφία"). In his view, responsibility towards the Other precedes any "objective searching after truth". Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness." At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, and this demand is before one can express or know one's freedom to affirm or deny. One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness. While critical of traditional theology, Levinas does require that a "trace" of the Divine be acknowledged within an ethics of Otherness. This is especially evident in his thematization of debt and guilt. "A face is a trace of itself, given over to my responsibility, but to which I am wanting and faulty. It is as though I were responsible for his mortality, and guilty for surviving." The moral "authority" of the face of the Other is felt in my "infinite responsibility" for the Other. The face of the Other comes towards me with its infinite moral demands while emerging out of the trace. Apart from this morally imposing emergence, the Other’s face might well be adequately addressed as "Thou" (along the lines proposed by Martin Buber) in whose welcoming countenance I might find great comfort, love and communion of souls—but not a moral demand bearing down upon me from a height. "Through a trace the irreversible past takes on the profile of a ‘He.’ The beyond from which a face comes is in the third person." It is because the Other also emerges from the illeity of a He (il in French) that I instead fall into infinite debt vis-à-vis the Other in a situation of utterly asymmetrical obligations: I owe the Other everything, the Other owes me nothing. The trace of the Other is the heavy shadow of God, the God who commands, "Thou shalt not kill!" Levinas takes great pains to avoid straightforward theological language. The very metaphysics of signification subtending theological language is suspected and suspended by evocations of how traces work differently than signs. Nevertheless, the divinity of the trace is also undeniable: "the trace is not just one more word: it is the proximity of God in the countenance of my fellowman." In a sense, it is divine commandment without divine authority. Following Totality and Infinity, Levinas later argued that responsibility for the other is rooted within our subjective constitution. The first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality." This idea appears in his thoughts on recurrence (chapter 4 in Otherwise than Being), in which Levinas maintains that subjectivity is formed in and through our subjection to the other. Subjectivity, Levinas argued, is primordially ethical, not theoretical: that is to say, our responsibility for the other is not a derivative feature of our subjectivity, but instead, founds our subjective being-in-the-world by giving it a meaningful direction and orientation. Levinas's thesis "ethics as first philosophy", then, means that the traditional philosophical pursuit of knowledge is secondary to a basic ethical duty to the other. To meet the Other is to have the idea of Infinity.The elderly Levinas was a distinguished French public intellectual, whose books reportedly sold well. He had a major influence on the younger, but more well-known Jacques Derrida, whose seminal Writing and Difference contains an essay, "Violence and Metaphysics", that was instrumental in expanding interest in Levinas in France and abroad. Derrida also delivered a eulogy at Levinas's funeral, later published as Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas, an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy. In a memorial essay for Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion claimed that "If one defines a great philosopher as someone without whom philosophy would not have been what it is, then in France there are two great philosophers of the 20th Century: Bergson and Lévinas."His work has been a source of controversy since the 1950s, when Simone de Beauvoir criticized his account of the subject as being necessarily masculine, as defined against a feminine other. While other feminist philosophers like Tina Chanter and the artist-thinker Bracha L. Ettinger have defended him against this charge, increasing interest in his work in the 2000s brought a reevaluation of the possible misogyny of his account of the feminine, as well as a critical engagement with his French nationalism in the context of colonialism. Among the most prominent of these are critiques by Simon Critchley and Stella Sandford. However, there have also been responses which argue that these critiques of Levinas are misplaced. == Cultural influence == For three decades, Levinas gave short talks on Rashi, a medieval French rabbi, every Shabbat morning at the Jewish high school in Paris where he was the principal. This tradition strongly influenced many generations of students.Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, renowned Belgian filmmakers, have referred to Levinas as an important underpinning for their filmmaking ethics. In his book Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, author Sam B. Girgus argues that Levinas has dramatically affected films involving redemption.Magician, Derren Brown, A Book of Secrets references Levinas. == Published works == A full bibliography of all Levinas's publications up until 1981 is found in Roger Burggraeve Emmanuel Levinas (1982). A list of works, translated into English but not appearing in any collections, may be found in Critchley, S. and Bernasconi, R. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge UP, 2002), pp. 269–270. Books1929. Sur les « Ideen » de M. E. Husserl 1930. La théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology) 1931. Der Begriff des Irrationalen als philosophisches Problem (with Heinz Erich Eisenhuth) 1931. Fribourg, Husserl et la phénoménologie 1931. Les recherches sur la philosophie des mathématiques en Allemagne, aperçu général (with W. Dubislav) 1931. Méditations cartésiennes. Introduction à la phénoménologie (with Edmund Husserl and Gabrielle Peiffer) 1932. Martin Heidegger et l'ontologie 1934. La présence totale (with Louis Lavelle) 1934. Phénoménologie 1934. Quelques réflexions sur la philosophie de l'hitlérisme 1935. De l'évasion 1935. La notion du temps (with N. Khersonsky) 1935. L'actualité de Maimonide 1935. L'inspiration religieuse de l'Alliance 1936. Allure du transcendental (with Georges Bénézé) 1936. Esquisses d'une énergétique mentale (with J. Duflo) 1936. Fraterniser sans se convertir 1936. Les aspects de l'image visuelle (with R. Duret) 1936. L'esthétique française contemporaine (with Valentin Feldman) 1936. L'individu dans le déséquilibre moderne (with R. Munsch) 1936. Valeur (with Georges Bénézé) 1947. De l'existence à l'existant (Existence and Existents) 1948. Le Temps et l'Autre (Time and the Other) 1949. En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Discovering Existence with Husserl and Heidegger) 1961. Totalité et Infini: essai sur l'extériorité (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority) 1962. De l'Évasion (On Escape) 1963 & 1976. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism 1968. Quatre lectures talmudiques 1972. Humanisme de l'autre homme (Humanism of the Other) 1974. Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence) 1976. Sur Maurice Blanchot 1976. Noms propres (Proper Names) - includes the essay "Sans nom" ("Nameless") 1977. Du Sacré au saint – cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques 1980. Le Temps et l'Autre 1982. L'Au-delà du verset: lectures et discours talmudiques (Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures) 1982. Of God Who Comes to Mind 1982. Ethique et infini (Ethics and Infinity: Dialogues of Emmanuel Levinas and Philippe Nemo) 1984. Transcendence et intelligibilité (Transcendence and Intelligibility) 1988. A l'Heure des nations (In the Time of the Nations) 1991. Entre Nous 1995. Altérité et transcendence (Alterity and Transcendence) 1998. De l’obliteration. Entretien avec Françoise Armengaud à propos de l’œuvre de Sosno (»On Obliteration: Discussing Sacha Sosno, trans. Richard A. Cohen, in: Art and Text (winter 1989), 30-41.) 2006. Œuvres: Tome 1, Carnets de captivité: suivi de Écrits sur la captivité ; et, Notes philosophiques diverses, Posthumously published by Grasset & FasquelleArticles in English"A Language Familiar to Us". Telos 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press. == See also == Alterity Authenticity Face-to-face Ethic of reciprocity Ecstasy in philosophy The Other Jewish philosophy Martin Buber Knud Ejler Løgstrup == References == == Further reading == Herzog, Annabel (2020) Levinas's politics: justice, mercy, universality: Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania == External links == Institute for Levinassian Studies. Complete primary and secondary bibliography, a search engine for Levinas's texts, and more The Levinas Online Bibliography (Prof. dr. Joachim Duyndam, editor-in-chief), levinas.nl Hosted by the University of Humanistics, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Annual Levinas Philosophy Summer Seminar, Director: Richard A. Cohen [1]* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Emmanuel Levinas". Levinas and Anarchism. Mitchell Cowen Verter: https://waste.org/~roadrunner/writing/Levinas

Hannah Arendt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt

Hannah Arendt (, US also , German: [ˌhana ˈaːʁənt] (listen); born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German-born American historian and political philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.Arendt was born to a Jewish family in Linden (now a district of Hanover) in 1906. When she was three, her family moved to the East Prussian capital of Königsberg for her father's health care. Paul Arendt had contracted syphilis in his youth, but was thought to be in remission when Arendt was born. He died when she was seven. Arendt was raised in a politically progressive, secular family, her mother being an ardent Social Democrat. After completing secondary education in Berlin, Arendt studied at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger, with whom she had a four-year affair. She obtained her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1929. Her dissertation was entitled Love and Saint Augustine and her supervisor was the existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers. Hannah Arendt married Günther Stern in 1929, but soon began to encounter increasing antisemitism in 1930s Nazi Germany. In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power, Arendt was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo for performing illegal research into antisemitism. On release, she fled Germany, living in Czechoslovakia and Switzerland before settling in Paris. There she worked for Youth Aliyah, assisting young Jews to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine. She was stripped of her German citizenship in 1937. Divorcing Stern that year, she then married Heinrich Blücher in 1940. When Germany invaded France that year she was detained by the French as an alien. She escaped and made her way to the United States in 1941 via Portugal. She settled in New York, which remained her principal residence for the rest of her life. She became a writer and editor and worked for the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, becoming an American citizen in 1950. With the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, her reputation as a thinker and writer was established and a series of works followed. These included the books The Human Condition in 1958, as well as Eichmann in Jerusalem and On Revolution in 1963. She taught at many American universities, while declining tenure-track appointments. She died suddenly of a heart attack in 1975, at the age of 69, leaving her last work, The Life of the Mind, unfinished. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. In the popular mind she is best remembered for the controversy surrounding the trial of Adolf Eichmann, her attempt to explain how ordinary people become actors in totalitarian systems, which was considered by some an apologia, and for the phrase "the banality of evil." She is commemorated by institutions and journals devoted to her thinking, the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thinking, and on stamps, street names and schools, amongst other things. == Early life and education (1906–1929) == === Family === Hannah Arendt was born as Johanna Arendt in 1906, in the Wilhelmine period. Her German Jewish family were comfortable, educated and secular in Linden, Prussia (now a part of Hanover). They were merchants of Russian extraction from Königsberg. Her grandparents were members of the Reform Jewish community. Her paternal grandfather, Max Arendt (1843–1913), was a prominent businessman, local politician, a leader of the Königsberg Jewish community and a member of the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Organization for German Citizens of the Jewish Faith). Like other members of the Centralverein he primarily saw himself as German, disapproving of Zionist activities including Kurt Blumenfeld (1884–1963), a frequent visitor and later one of Hannah's mentors. Of Max Arendt's children, Paul Arendt (1873–1913) was an engineer and Henriette Arendt (1874–1922) a policewoman and social worker.Hannah was the only child of Paul and Martha Arendt (née Cohn) (1874–1948), who were married on 11 April 1902. She was named after her paternal grandmother. The Cohns had originally come to Königsberg from nearby Russian territory (now Lithuania) in 1852, as refugees from anti-Semitism, and made their living as tea importers, J. N. Cohn & Company being the largest business in the city. The Arendts reached Germany from Russia a century earlier. Hannah's extended family contained many more women, who shared the loss of husbands and children. Hannah's parents were more educated and politically more to the left than her grandparents. The young couple were Social Democrats, rather than the German Democrats that most of their contemporaries supported. Paul Arendt was educated at the Albertina (University of Königsberg). Though he worked as an engineer, he prided himself on his love of Classics, with a large library that Hannah immersed herself in. Martha Cohn, a musician, had studied for three years in Paris.In the first four years of their marriage, the Arendts lived in Berlin, and were supporters of the socialist journal Sozialistische Monatshefte. At the time of Hannah's birth, Paul Arendt was employed by an electrical engineering firm in Linden, and they lived in a frame house on the market square (Marktplatz). They moved back to Königsberg in 1909 because of Paul's deteriorating health. He suffered from chronic syphilis and was institutionalized in the Königsberg psychiatric hospital in 1911. For years afterward, Hannah had to have annual WR tests for congenital syphilis. He died on 30 October 1913, when Hannah was seven, leaving her mother to raise her. They lived at Hannah's grandfather's house at Tiergartenstraße 6, a leafy residential street adjacent to the Königsberg Tiergarten, in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Hufen. Although Hannah's parents were non-religious, they were happy to allow Max Arendt to take Hannah to the Reform synagogue. She also received religious instruction from the rabbi, Hermann Vogelstein, who would come to her school for that purpose. Her family moved in circles that included many intellectuals and professionals. It was a social circle of high standards and ideals. As she recalled it: My early intellectual formation occurred in an atmosphere where nobody paid much attention to moral questions; we were brought up under the assumption: Das Moralische versteht sich von selbst, moral conduct is a matter of course. This time was a particularly favorable period for the Jewish community in Königsberg, an important center of the Haskalah (enlightenment). Arendt's family was thoroughly assimilated ("Germanized") and she later remembered: "With us from Germany, the word 'assimilation' received a 'deep' philosophical meaning. You can hardly realize how serious we were about it." Despite these conditions, the Jewish population lacked full citizenship rights, and although antisemitism was not overt, it was not absent. Arendt came to define her Jewish identity negatively after encountering overt antisemitism as an adult. She came to greatly identify with Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833), the Prussian socialite who desperately wanted to assimilate into German culture, only to be rejected because she was born Jewish. Arendt later said of Varnhagen that she was "my very closest woman friend, unfortunately dead a hundred years now." In the last two years of the First World War, Hannah's mother organized social democratic discussion groups and became a follower of Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) as socialist uprisings broke out across Germany. Luxemburg's writings would later influence Hannah's political thinking. In 1920, Martha Cohn married Martin Beerwald (1869–1941), an ironmonger and widower of four years, and they moved to his home, two blocks away, at Busoldstrasse 6, providing Hannah with improved social and financial security. Hannah was 14 at the time and acquired two older stepsisters, Clara (1901–1932) and Eva (1902–1988). === Education === ==== Early education ==== Hannah Arendt's mother, who considered herself progressive, brought her daughter up on strict Goethean lines. Among other things this involved the reading of Goethe's complete works, summed up as Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages (And just what is your duty? The demands of the day). Goethe, was then considered the essential mentor of Bildung (education), the conscious formation of mind, body and spirit. The key elements were considered to be self-discipline, constructive channeling of passion, renunciation and responsibility for others. Hannah's developmental progress (Entwicklung) was carefully documented by her mother in a book, she called Unser Kind (Our Child), measuring her against the benchmark of what was then considered normale Entwicklung ("normal development").Arendt attended kindergarten from 1910 where her precocity impressed her teachers and enrolled in the Szittnich School, Königsberg (Hufen-Oberlyzeum), on Bahnstraße in August 1913, but her studies there were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, forcing the family to temporarily flee to Berlin on 23 August 1914, in the face of the advancing Russian army. There they stayed with her mother's younger sister, Margarethe Fürst (1884–1942), and her three children, while Hannah attended a girl's Lyzeum school in Berlin-Charlottenburg. After ten weeks, when Königsberg appeared to be no longer threatened, the Arendts were able to return, where they spent the remaining war years at her grandfather's house. Arendt's precocity continued, learning ancient Greek as a child, writing poetry in her teenage years, and starting both a Graecae and philosophy club at her school. She was fiercely independent in her schooling and a voracious reader, absorbing French and German literature and poetry (committing large amounts to heart) and philosophy. By the age of 14, she had read Kierkegaard, Jaspers' Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason). Kant, whose home town was also Königsberg, was an important influence on her thinking, and it was Kant who had written about Königsberg that "such a town is the right place for gaining knowledge concerning men and the world even without travelling".Arendt attended the Königin-Luise-Schule for her secondary education, a girls' Gymnasium on Landhofmeisterstraße. Most of her friends, while at school, were gifted children of Jewish professional families, generally older than she and went on to university education. Among them was Ernst Grumach (1902–1967), who introduced her to his girlfriend, Anne Mendelssohn, who would become a lifelong friend. When Anne moved away, Ernst became Arendt's first romantic relationship. ==== Higher education (1922–1929) ==== ===== Berlin (1922–1924) ===== Arendt was expelled from the Luise-Schule in 1922, at the age of 15, for leading a boycott of a teacher who insulted her. Her mother sent her to Berlin to Social Democrat family friends. She lived in a student residence and audited courses at the University of Berlin (1922–1923), including classics and Christian theology under Romano Guardini. She successfully sat the entrance examination (Abitur) for the University of Marburg, where Ernst Grumach had studied under Martin Heidegger (appointed as a professor in 1922). Her mother had engaged a private tutor, and her aunt Frieda Arendt, a teacher, also helped, while Frieda's husband Ernst Aron provided financial tuition assistance. ===== Marburg (1924–1926) ===== In Berlin, Guardini had introduced her to Kierkegaard, and she resolved to make theology her major field. At Marburg (1924–1926) she studied classical languages, German literature, Protestant theology with Rudolf Bultmann and philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann and Heidegger. She arrived in the fall in the middle of an intellectual revolution led by the young Heidegger, of whom she was in awe, describing him as "the hidden king [who] reigned in the realm of thinking".Heidegger had broken away from the intellectual movement started by Edmund Husserl, whose assistant he had been at University of Freiburg before coming to Marburg. This was a period when Heidegger was preparing his lectures on Kant, which he would develop in the second part of his Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) in 1927 and Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929).In his classes, he and his students struggled with the meaning of "Being" as they studied Aristotle's and Plato's Sophist concept of truth, to which Heidegger opposed the pre-Socratic term ἀλήθεια. Many years later Arendt would describe these classes, how people came to Marburg to hear him, and how, above all he imparted the idea of Denken ("thinking") as activity, which she qualified as "passionate thinking".Arendt was restless, finding her studies neither emotionally or intellectually satisfying. She was ready for passion, finishing her poem Trost (Consolation, 1923) with the lines: Die Stunden verrinnen,Die Tage vergehen,Es bleibt ein GewinnenDas bloße Bestehen. (The hours run downThe days pass on.One achievement remains:Merely being alive) Her encounter with Heidegger represented a dramatic departure from the past. He was handsome, a genius, romantic, and taught that thinking and "aliveness" were but one. The 17-year-old Arendt then began a long romantic relationship with the 35-year-old Heidegger, who was married with two young sons. Arendt later faced criticism for this because of Heidegger's support for the Nazi Party after his election as rector at Freiburg University in 1933. Nevertheless, he remained one of the most profound influences on her thinking, and he would later relate that she had been the inspiration for his work on passionate thinking in those days. They agreed to keep the details of the relationship a secret although preserving their letters. The relationship was unknown until Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's biography of Arendt appeared in 1982. At the time of publishing, Arendt and Heidegger were deceased but Heidegger's wife, Elfride (1893–1992), was still alive. The affair was not well known until 1995, when Elzbieta Ettinger gained access to the sealed correspondence and published a controversial account that was used by Arendt's detractors to cast doubt on her integrity. That account, which caused a scandal, was subsequently refuted.At Marburg, Arendt lived at Lutherstraße 4. Among her friends was Hans Jonas, her only Jewish classmate. Another fellow student of Heidegger's was Jonas' friend, the Jewish philosopher Günther Siegmund Stern (1902–1992) who would later become her first husband. Stern had completed his doctoral dissertation with Edmund Husserl at Freiburg, and was now working on his Habilitation thesis with Heidegger, but Arendt, involved with Heidegger, took little notice of him at the time. ====== Die Schatten (1925) ====== In the summer of 1925, while home at Königsberg, Arendt composed her sole autobiographical piece, Die Schatten (The Shadows), a "description of herself" addressed to Heidegger. In this essay, full of anguish and Heideggerian language, she reveals her insecurities relating to her femininity and Jewishness, writing abstractly in the third person. She describes a state of "Fremdheit" (alienation), on the one hand an abrupt loss of youth and innocence, on the other an "Absonderlichkeit" (strangeness), the finding of the remarkable in the banal. In her detailing of the pain of her childhood and longing for protection she shows her vulnerabilities and how her love for Heidegger had released her and once again filled her world with color and mystery. She refers to her relationship with Heidegger as "Eine starre Hingegebenheit an ein Einziges" ("an unbending devotion to a unique man"). This period of intense introspection was also one of the most productive of her poetic output, such as In sich versunken (Lost in Self-Contemplation). ===== Freiburg and Heidelberg (1926–1929) ===== After a year at Marburg, Arendt spent a semester at Freiburg, attending the lectures of Husserl. In 1926 she moved to the University of Heidelberg, completing her dissertation in 1929 under Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). Jaspers, a friend of Heidegger, was the other leading figure of the then new and revolutionary Existenzphilosophie. Her thesis was entitled Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation (On the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine: Attempt at a philosophical interpretation). She remained a lifelong friend of Jaspers and his wife, Gertrud Mayer (1879–1974), developing a deep intellectual relationship with him. At Heidelberg, her circle of friends included Hans Jonas, who had also moved from Marburg to study Augustine, working on his Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur Genesis der christlich-abendländischen Freiheitsidee (1930), and also a group of three young philosophers: Karl Frankenstein, Erich Neumann and Erwin Loewenson. Other friends and students of Jaspers were the linguists Benno von Wiese and Hugo Friedrich (seen with Hannah, below), with whom she attended lectures by Friedrich Gundolf at Jaspers' suggestion and who kindled in her an interest in German Romanticism. She also became reacquainted, at a lecture, with Kurt Blumenfeld, who introduced her to Jewish politics. At Heidelberg, she lived in the old town (Altstadt) near the castle, at Schlossberg 16. The house was demolished in the 1960s, but the one remaining wall bears a plaque commemorating her time there (see image below). On completing her dissertation, Arendt turned to her Habilitationsschrift, initially on German Romanticism, and thereafter an academic teaching career. However 1929 was also the year of the Depression and the end of the golden years (Goldene Zwanziger) of the Weimar Republic, which was to become increasingly unstable over its remaining four years. Arendt, as a Jew, had little if any chance of obtaining an academic appointment in Germany. Nevertheless, she completed most of the work before she was forced to leave Germany. == Career == === Germany (1929–1933) === ==== Berlin-Potsdam (1929) ==== In 1929, Arendt met Günther Stern again, this time in Berlin at a New Year's masked ball, and began a relationship with him. Within a month she had moved in with him in a one-room studio, shared with a dancing school in Berlin-Halensee. Then they moved to Merkurstraße 3, Nowawes, in Potsdam and were married there on 26 September. They had much in common and the marriage was welcomed by both sets of parents. In the summer, Hannah Arendt successfully applied to the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft for a grant to support her Habilitation, which was supported by Heidegger and Jaspers among others, and in the meantime, with Günther's help was working on revisions to get her dissertation published. ==== Wanderjahre (1929–1931) ==== After Arendt and Stern were married, they began two years of what Christian Dries refers to as the Wanderjahre (years of wandering) with the ultimately fruitless aim of having Stern accepted for an academic appointment. They lived for a while in Drewitz, a southern neighborhood of Potsdam, before moving to Heidelberg, where they lived with the Jaspers. After Heidelberg, where Stern completed the first draft of his Habilitation thesis, the two then moved to Frankfurt where Stern hoped to finish his writing. There, Arendt participated in the university's intellectual life, attending lectures by Karl Mannheim and Paul Tillich, among others. The couple collaborated intellectually, writing an article together on Rilke's Duino Elegies (1923) and both reviewing Mannheim's Ideologie und Utopie (1929). The latter was Arendt's sole contribution in sociology. In both her treatment of Mannheim and Rilke, Arendt found love to be a transcendent principle "Because there is no true transcendence in this ordered world, one also cannot exceed the world, but only succeed to higher ranks". In Rilke she saw a latter day secular Augustine, describing the Elegies as the letzten literarischen Form religiösen Dokumentes (ultimate form of religious document). Later, she would discover the limitations of transcendent love in explaining the historical events that pushed her into political action. Another theme from Rilke that she would develop was the despair of not being heard. Reflecting on Rilke's opening lines, which she placed as an epigram at the beginning of their essay Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?) Arendt and Stern begin by stating The paradoxical, ambiguous, and desperate situation from which standpoint the Duino Elegies may alone be understood has two characteristics: the absence of an echo and the knowledge of futility. The conscious renunciation of the demand to be heard, the despair at not being able to be heard, and finally the need to speak even without an answer–these are the real reasons for the darkness, asperity, and tension of the style in which poetry indicates its own possibilities and its will to form Arendt also published an article on Augustine (354–430) in the Frankfurter Zeitung to mark the 1500th anniversary of his death. She saw this article as forming a bridge between her treatment of Augustine in her dissertation and her subsequent work on Romanticism. When it became evident Stern would not succeed in obtaining an appointment, the Sterns returned to Berlin in 1931. ==== Return to Berlin (1931–1933) ==== In Berlin, where the couple initially lived in the predominantly Jewish area of Bayerisches Viertel (Bavarian Quarter or "Jewish Switzerland") in Schöneberg, Stern obtained a position as a staff-writer for the cultural supplement of the Berliner Börsen-Courier, edited by Herbert Ihering, with the help of Bertold Brecht. There he started writing using the pen name Günther Anders, i.e. "Günther Other". Arendt assisted Günther with his work, but the shadow of Heidegger hung over their relationship. While Günther was working on his Habilitationsschrift, Arendt had abandoned the original subject of German Romanticism for her thesis in 1930, and turned instead to Rahel Varnhagen and the question of assimilation. Anne Mendelssohn had accidentally acquired a copy of Varnhagen's correspondence and excitedly introduced her to Arendt, donating her collection to her. A little later, Arendt's own work on Romanticism led her to a study of Jewish salons and eventually to those of Varnhagen. In Rahel, she found qualities she felt reflected her own, particularly those of sensibility and vulnerability. Rahel, like Hannah, found her destiny in her Jewishness. Hannah Arendt would come to call Rahel Varnhagen's discovery of living with her destiny as being a "conscious pariah". This was a personal trait that Arendt had recognized in herself, although she did not embrace the term until later.Back in Berlin, Arendt found herself becoming more involved in politics and started studying political theory, and reading Marx and Trotsky, while developing contacts at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik. Despite the political leanings of her mother and husband she never saw herself as a political leftist, justifying her activism as being through her Jewishness. Her increasing interest in Jewish politics and her examination of assimilation in her study of Varnhagen led her to publish her first article on Judaism, Aufklärung und Judenfrage ("The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question", 1932). Blumenfeld had introduced her to the "Jewish question", which would be his lifelong concern. Meanwhile, her views on German Romanticism were evolving. She wrote a review of Hans Weil's Die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsprinzips (The Origin of German Educational Principle, 1930), which dealt with the emergence of Bildungselite (educational elite) in the time of Rahel Varnhagen. At the same time she began to be occupied by Max Weber's description of the status of Jewish people within a state as Pariavolk (pariah people) in his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1922), while borrowing Bernard Lazare's term paria conscient (conscious pariah) with which she identified. In both these articles she advanced the views of Johann Herder. Another interest of hers at the time was the status of women, resulting in her 1932 review of Alice Rühle-Gerstel's book Das Frauenproblem in der Gegenwart. Eine psychologische Bilanz (Contemporary Women's Issues: A psychological balance sheet). Although not a supporter of the women's movement, the review was sympathetic. At least in terms of the status of women at that time, she was skeptical of the movement's ability to achieve political change. She was also critical of the movement, because it was a women's movement, rather than contributing with men to a political movement, and abstract rather than striving for concrete goals. In this manner she echoed Rosa Luxemburg. Like Luxemburg, she would later criticize Jewish movements for the same reason. Arendt consistently prioritized political over social questions.By 1932, faced with a deteriorating political situation, Arendt was deeply troubled by reports that Heidegger was speaking at National Socialist meetings. She wrote, asking him to deny that he was attracted to National Socialism. Heidegger replied that he did not seek to deny the rumors (which were true), and merely assured her that his feelings for her were unchanged. As a Jew in Nazi Germany, Arendt was prevented from making a living and discriminated against and confided to Anne Mendelssohn that emigration was probably inevitable. Jaspers had tried to persuade her to consider herself as a German first, a position she distanced herself from, pointing out that she was a Jew and that "Für mich ist Deutschland die Muttersprache, die Philosophie und die Dichtung" (For me, Germany is the mother tongue, philosophy and poetry), rather than her identity. This position puzzled Jaspers, replying "It is strange to me that as a Jew you want to be different from the Germans".By 1933, life for the Jewish population in Germany was becoming precarious. Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler (Chancellor) in January, and the Reichstag was burned down (Reichstagsbrand) the following month. This led to the suspension of civil liberties, with attacks on the left, and, in particular, members of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party: KPD). Stern, who had communist associations, fled to Paris, but Arendt stayed on to become an activist. Knowing her time was limited, she used the apartment at Opitzstraße 6 in Berlin-Steglitz that she had occupied with Stern since 1932 as an underground railway way-station for fugitives. Her rescue operation there is now recognized with a plaque on the wall. Arendt had already positioned herself as a critic of the rising Nazi Party in 1932 by publishing "Adam-Müller-Renaissance?" a critique of the appropriation of the life of Adam Müller to support right wing ideology. The beginnings of anti-Jewish laws and boycott came in the spring of 1933. Confronted with systemic antisemitism, Arendt adopted the motiv "If one is attacked as a Jew one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man." This was Arendt's introduction of the concept of Jew as Pariah that would occupy her for the rest of her life in her Jewish writings. She took a public position by publishing part of her largely completed biography of Rahel Varnhagen as "Originale Assimilation: Ein Nachwort zu Rahel Varnhagen 100 Todestag" ("Original Assimilation: An Epilogue to the One Hundredth Anniversary of Rahel Varnhagen's Death") in the Kölnische Zeitung on 7 March 1933 and a little later also in Jüdische Rundschau. In the article she argues that the age of assimilation that began with Varnhagen's generation had come to an end with an official state policy of antisemitism. She opened with the declaration: Today in Germany it seems Jewish assimilation must declare its bankruptcy. The general social antisemitism and its official legitimation affects in the first instance assimilated Jews, who can no longer protect themselves through baptism or by emphasizing their differences from Eastern Judaism. As a Jew, Arendt was anxious to inform the world of what was happening to her people in 1930–1933. She surrounded herself with Zionist activists, including Kurt Blumenfeld, Martin Buber and Salman Schocken, and started to research antisemitism. Arendt had access to the Prussian State Library for her work on Varnhagen. Blumenfeld's Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland (Zionist Federation of Germany) persuaded her to use this access to obtain evidence of the extent of antisemitism, for a planned speech to the Zionist Congress in Prague. This research was illegal at the time. Her actions led to her being denounced by a librarian for anti-state propaganda, resulting in the arrest of both Arendt and her mother by the Gestapo. They served eight days in prison but her notebooks were in code and could not be deciphered, and she was released by a young, sympathetic arresting officer to await trial. === Exile: France (1933–1941) === ==== Paris (1933–1940) ==== On release, realizing the danger she was now in, Arendt and her mother fled Germany following the established escape route over the Erzgebirge Mountains by night into Czechoslovakia and on to Prague and then by train to Geneva. In Geneva, she made a conscious decision to commit herself to "the Jewish cause". She obtained work with a friend of her mother's at the League of Nations' Jewish Agency for Palestine, distributing visas and writing speeches.From Geneva the Arendts traveled to Paris in the autumn, where she was reunited with Stern, joining a stream of refugees. While Arendt had left Germany without papers, her mother had travel documents and returned to Königsberg and her husband. In Paris, she befriended Stern's cousin, the Marxist literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) and also the Jewish French philosopher Raymond Aron (1905–1983).Arendt was now an émigrée, an exile, stateless, without papers, and had turned her back on the Germany and Germans of the Nazizeit. Her legal status was precarious and she was coping with a foreign language and culture, all of which took its toll on her mentally and physically. In 1934 she started working for the Zionist-funded outreach program Agriculture et Artisanat, giving lectures, and organizing clothing, documents, medications and education for Jewish youth seeking to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine, mainly as agricultural workers. Initially she was employed as a secretary, and then office manager. To improve her skills she studied French, Hebrew and Yiddish. In this way she was able to support herself and her husband. When the organization closed in 1935, her work for Blumenfeld and the Zionists in Germany brought her into contact with the wealthy philanthropist Baroness Germaine Alice de Rothschild (born Halphen, 1884–1975), wife of Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild, becoming her assistant. In this position she oversaw the baroness' contributions to Jewish charities through the Paris Consistoire, although she had little time for the family as a whole.Later in 1935, Arendt joined Youth Aliyah (Youth immigration), an organization similar to Agriculture et Artisanat that was founded in Berlin on the day Hitler seized power. It was affiliated with Hadassah, which later saved many from the Holocaust, and there Arendt eventually became Secretary-General (1935–1939). Her work with Youth Aliyah also involved finding food, clothing, social workers and lawyers, but above all, fund raising. She made her first visit to British Mandate of Palestine in 1935, accompanying one of these groups and meeting with her cousin Ernst Fürst there. With the Nazi annexation of Austria and invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Paris was flooded with refugees, and she became the special agent for the rescue of the children from those countries. In 1938, Arendt completed her biography of Rahel Varnhagen, although this was not published until 1957. In April 1939, following the devastating Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, Martha Beerwald realized her daughter would not return and made the decision to leave her husband and join Arendt in Paris. One stepdaughter had died and the other had moved to England, Martin Beerwald would not leave and she no longer had any close ties to Königsberg. ===== Heinrich Blücher ===== In 1936, Arendt met the self-educated Berlin poet and Marxist philosopher Heinrich Blücher (1899–1970) in Paris. Blücher had been a Spartacist and then a founding member of the KPD, but had been expelled due to his work in the Versöhnler (Conciliator faction). Although Arendt had rejoined Stern in 1933, their marriage existed in name only, with their having separated in Berlin. She fulfilled her social obligations and used the name Hannah Stern, but the relationship effectively ended when Stern, perhaps recognizing the danger better than she, emigrated to America with his parents in 1936. In 1937, Arendt was stripped of her German citizenship and she and Stern divorced. She had begun seeing more of Blücher, and eventually they began living together. It was Blücher's long political activism that began to move Arendt's thinking towards political action. Arendt and Blücher married on 16 January 1940, shortly after their divorces were finalized. ==== Internment and escape (1940–1941) ==== On 5 May 1940, in anticipation of the German invasion of France and the Low Countries that month, the military governor of Paris issued a proclamation ordering all "enemy aliens" between 17 and 55 who had come from Germany (predominantly Jews) to report separately for internment. The women were gathered together in the Vélodrome d'Hiver on 15 May, so Hannah Arendt's mother, being over 55, was allowed to stay in Paris. Arendt described the process of making refugees as "the new type of human being created by contemporary history ... put into concentration camps by their foes and into internment camps by their friends". The men, including Blücher, were sent to Camp Vernet in southern France, close to the Spanish border. Arendt and the other women were sent to Camp Gurs, to the west of Gurs, a week later. The camp had earlier been set up to accommodate refugees from Spain. On 22 June, France capitulated and signed the Compiègne armistice, dividing the country. Gurs was in the southern Vichy controlled section. Arendt describes how, "in the resulting chaos we succeeded in getting hold of liberation papers with which we were able to leave the camp", which she did with about 200 of the 7,000 women held there, about four weeks later. There was no Résistance then, but she managed to walk and hitchhike north to Montauban, near Toulouse where she knew she would find help.Montauban had become an unofficial capital for former detainees, and Arendt's friend Lotta Sempell Klembort was staying there. Blücher's camp had been evacuated in the wake of the German advance, and he managed to escape from a forced march, making his way to Montauban, where the two of them led a fugitive life. Soon they were joined by Anne Mendelssohn and Arendt's mother. Escape from France was extremely difficult without official papers; their friend Walter Benjamin had taken his own life after being apprehended trying to escape to Spain. One of the best known illegal routes operated out of Marseilles, where Varian Fry, an American journalist, worked to raise funds, forge papers and bribe officials with Hiram Bingham, the American vice-consul there. Fry and Bingham secured exit papers and American visas for thousands, and with help from Günther Stern, Arendt, her husband, and her mother managed to secure the requisite permits to travel by train in January 1941 through Spain to Lisbon, Portugal, where they rented a flat at Rua da Sociedade Farmacêutica, 6b. They eventually secured passage to New York in May on the Companhia Colonial de Navegação's S/S Guiné II. A few months later, Fry's operations were shut down and the borders sealed. === New York (1941–1975) === ==== World War II (1941–1945) ==== Upon arriving in New York City on 22 May 1941 with very little, Hannah's family received assistance from the Zionist Organization of America and the local German immigrant population, including Paul Tillich and neighbors from Königsberg. They rented rooms at 317 West 95th Street and Martha Arendt joined them there in June. There was an urgent need to acquire English, and it was decided that Hannah Arendt should spend two months with an American family in Winchester, Massachusetts, through Self-Help for Refugees, in July. She found the experience difficult but formulated her early appraisal of American life, Der Grundwiderspruch des Landes ist politische Freiheit bei gesellschaftlicher Knechtschaft (The fundamental contradiction of the country is political freedom coupled with social slavery).On returning to New York, Arendt was anxious to resume writing and became active in the German-Jewish community, publishing her first article, "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today" (in translation from her German) in July 1941. While she was working on this article, she was looking for employment and in November 1941 was hired by the New York German-language Jewish newspaper Aufbau and from 1941 to 1945, she wrote a political column for it, covering anti-semitism, refugees and the need for a Jewish army. She also contributed to the Menorah Journal, a Jewish-American magazine, and other German émigré publications. Arendt's first full-time salaried job came in 1944, when she became the director of research and executive director for the newly emerging Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, a project of the Conference on Jewish Relations. She was recruited "because of her great interest in the Commission's activities, her previous experience as an administrator, and her connections with Germany". There she compiled lists of Jewish cultural assets in Germany and Nazi occupied Europe, to aid in their recovery after the war. Together with her husband, she lived at 370 Riverside Drive in New York City and at Kingston, New York, where Blücher taught at nearby Bard College for many years. ==== Post-war (1945–1975) ==== In July 1946, Arendt left her position at the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction to become an editor at Schocken Books, which later published some of her works. In 1948, she became engaged with the campaign of Judah Magnes for a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. She famously opposed the establishment of a Jewish nation state in Palestine and initially also opposed the establishment of a binational Arab-Jewish state. Instead, she advocated for the inclusion of Palestine into a multi-ethnic federation. Only in 1948 in an effort to forestall partition did she support a binational one-state solution. She returned to the Commission in August 1949. In her capacity as executive secretary, she traveled to Europe, where she worked in Germany, Britain and France (December 1949 to March 1950) to negotiate the return of archival material from German institutions, an experience she found frustrating, but provided regular field reports. In January 1952, she became secretary to the Board, although the work of the organization was winding down and she was simultaneously pursuing her own intellectual activities; she retained this position until her death. Arendt's work on cultural restitution provided further material for her study of totalitarianism.In the 1950s Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958) followed by On Revolution (1963). Arendt began corresponding with the American author Mary McCarthy, six years her junior, in 1950 and they soon became lifelong friends. In 1950, Arendt also became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The same year, she started seeing Martin Heidegger again, and had what the American writer Adam Kirsch called a "quasi-romance", lasting for two years, with the man who had previously been her mentor, teacher, and lover. During this time, Arendt defended him against critics who noted his enthusiastic membership in the Nazi Party. She portrayed Heidegger as a naïve man swept up by forces beyond his control, and pointed out that Heidegger's philosophy had nothing to do with National Socialism. In 1961 she traveled to Jerusalem to report on Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. This report strongly influenced her popular recognition, and raised much controversy (see below). Her work was recognized by many awards, including the Danish Sonning Prize in 1975 for Contributions to European Civilization.A few years later she spoke in New York City on the legitimacy of violence as a political act: "Generally speaking, violence always rises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power to find a substitute for it and this hope, I think, is in vain. Violence can destroy power, but it can never replace it." ===== Teaching ===== Arendt taught at many institutions of higher learning from 1951 onwards, but, preserving her independence, consistently refused tenure-track positions. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University (where she was the first woman to be appointed a full professor in 1959) and Northwestern University. She also taught at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1967, where she was a member of the Committee on Social Thought, Yale University, where she was a fellow and the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University (1961–62, 1962–63). From 1967 she was a professor at the New School for Social research in Manhattan, New York City.She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1964. In 1974, Arendt was instrumental in the creation of Structured Liberal Education (SLE) at Stanford University. She wrote a letter to the president of Stanford to persuade the university to enact Stanford history professor Mark Mancall's vision of a residentially-based humanities program. At the time of her death, she was University Professor of Political Philosophy at The New School. == Relationships == In addition to her affair with Heidegger, and her two marriages, Arendt had close friendships. Since her death, her correspondence with many of them has been published, revealing much information about her thinking. To her friends she was both loyal and generous, dedicating several of her works to them. Freundschaft (friendship) she described as being one of "tätigen Modi des Lebendigseins" (the active modes of being alive), and, to her, friendship was central both to her life and to the concept of politics. Hans Jonas described her as having a "genius for friendship", and, in her own words, "der Eros der Freundschaft" (love of friendship).Her philosophy-based friendships were male and European, while her later American friendships were more diverse, literary, and political. Although she became an American citizen in 1950, her cultural roots remained European, and her language remained her German "Muttersprache" (mother tongue). She surrounded herself with German-speaking émigrés, sometimes referred to as "The Tribe". To her, wirkliche Menschen (real people) were "pariahs", not in the sense of outcasts, but in the sense of outsiders, unassimilated, with the virtue of "social nonconformism ... the sine qua non of intellectual achievement", a sentiment she shared with Jaspers.Arendt always had a beste Freundin. In her teens she had formed a lifelong relationship with her Jugendfreundin, Anne Mendelssohn Weil ("Ännchen"). After her emigration to America, Hilde Fränkel, Paul Tillich's secretary and mistress, filled that role until the latter's death in 1950. After the war, Arendt was able to return to Germany and renew her relationship with Weil, who made several visits to New York, especially after Blücher's death in 1970. Their last meeting was in Tegna, Switzerland in 1975, shortly before Arendt's death. With Fränkel's death, Mary McCarthy became Arendt's closest friend and confidante. == Final illness and death == Heinrich Blücher had survived a cerebral aneurysm in 1961 and remained unwell after 1963, sustaining a series of heart attacks. On 31 October 1970 he died of a massive heart attack. A devastated Arendt had previously told Mary McCarthy, "Life without him would be unthinkable". Arendt was also a heavy smoker and was frequently depicted with a cigarette in her hand. She sustained a near fatal heart attack while lecturing in Scotland in May 1974, and although she recovered, she remained in poor health afterwards, and continued to smoke. On the evening of 4 December 1975, shortly after her 69th birthday, she had a further heart attack in her apartment while entertaining friends, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Her ashes were buried alongside those of Blücher at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in May 1976.After Arendt's death the title page of the final part of The Life of the Mind ("Judging") was found in her typewriter, which she had just started, consisting of the title and two epigraphs. This has subsequently been reproduced in the edited version of her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy.(see image). == Work == Arendt wrote works on intellectual history as a political theorist, using events and actions to develop insights into contemporary totalitarian movements and the threat to human freedom presented by scientific abstraction and bourgeois morality. Intellectually, she was an independent thinker, a loner not a "joiner," separating herself from schools of thought or ideology. In addition to her major texts she published anthologies, including Between Past and Future (1961), Men in Dark Times (1968) and Crises of the Republic (1972). She also contributed to many publications, including The New York Review of Books, Commonweal, Dissent and The New Yorker. She is perhaps best known for her accounts of Adolf Eichmann and his trial, because of the intense controversy that it generated. === Political theory and philosophical system === While Arendt never developed a systematic political theory and her writing does not easily lend itself to categorization, the tradition of thought most closely identified with Arendt is that of civic republicanism, from Aristotle to Tocqueville. Her political concept is centered around active citizenship that emphasizes civic engagement and collective deliberation. She believed that no matter how bad, government could never succeed in extinguishing human freedom, despite holding that modern societies frequently retreat from democratic freedom with its inherent disorder for the relative comfort of administrative bureaucracy. Some have claimed her political legacy is her strong defence of freedom in the face of an increasingly less than free world. She does not adhere to a single systematic philosophy, but rather spans a range of subjects covering totalitarianism, revolution, the nature of freedom and the faculties of thought and judgment.While she is best known for her work on "dark times", the nature of totalitarianism and evil, she imbued this with a spark of hope and confidence in the nature of mankind: That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination might well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given to them. Men in Dark Times (1968) === Love and Saint Augustine (1929) === Arendt's doctoral thesis, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin. Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation (Love and Saint Augustine. Towards a philosophical interpretation), was published in 1929 and attracted critical interest, although an English translation did not appear until 1996. In this work she combined approaches of both Heidegger and Jaspers. Arendt's interpretation of love in the work of Augustine deals with three concepts, love as craving or desire (Amor qua appetitus), love in the relationship between man (creatura) and creator (Creator – Creatura), and neighborly love (Dilectio proximi). Love as craving anticipates the future, while love for the Creator deals with the remembered past. Of the three, dilectio proximi or caritas is perceived as the most fundamental, to which the first two are oriented, which she treats as vita socialis (social life) - the second of the Great Commandments (or Golden Rule) "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" uniting and transcending the former. Augustine's influence (and Jaspers' views on his work) persisted in Arendt's writings for the rest of her life. Some of the leitmotifs of her canon were apparent, introducing the concept of Natalität (Natality) as a key condition of human existence and its role in the development of the individual, developing this further in The Human Condition (1958). She explained that the construct of natality was implied in her discussion of new beginnings and man's elation to the Creator as nova creatura. The centrality of the theme of birth and renewal is apparent in the constant reference to Augustinian thought, and specifically the innovative nature of birth, from this, her first work, to her last, The Life of the Mind.Love is another connecting theme. In addition to the Augustinian loves expostulated in her dissertation, the phrase amor mundi (love of the world) is one often associated with Arendt and both permeates her work and was an absorbing passion throughout her work. She took the phrase from Augustine's homily on the first epistle of St John, "If love of the world dwell in us". Amor mundi was her original title for The Human Condition (1958), the subtitle of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's biography (1982), the title of a collection of writing on faith in her work and is the newsletter of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. === The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) === Arendt's first major book, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), examined the roots of Stalinism and Nazism, structured as three essays, "Antisemitism", "Imperialism" and "Totalitarianism". Arendt argues that totalitarianism was a "novel form of government," that "differs essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship" in that it applied terror to subjugate mass populations rather than just political adversaries. Arendt also maintained that Jewry was not the operative factor in the Holocaust, but merely a convenient proxy because Nazism was about terror and consistency, not merely eradicating Jews. Arendt explained the tyranny using Kant's phrase "radical evil", by which their victims became "superfluous people". In later editions she enlarged the text to include her work on "Ideology and Terror: A novel form of government" and the Hungarian Revolution, but then published the latter separately.Criticism of Origins has often focused on its portrayal of the two movements, Hitlerism and Stalinism, as equally tyrannical. === Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (1957) === Arendt's Habilitationsschrift on Rahel Varnhagen was completed while she was living in exile in Paris in 1938, but not published till 1957, in the United Kingdom by East and West Library, part of the Leo Baeck Institute. This biography of a 19th-century Jewish socialite, formed an important step in her analysis of Jewish history and the subjects of assimilation and emancipation, and introduced her treatment of the Jewish diaspora as either pariah or parvenu. In addition it represents an early version of her concept of history. The book is dedicated to Anne Mendelssohn, who first drew her attention to Varnhagen. Arendt's relation to Varnhagen permeates her subsequent work. Her account of Varnhagen's life was perceived during a time of the destruction of German-Jewish culture. It partially reflects Arendt's own view of herself as a German-Jewish woman driven out of her own culture into a stateless existence, leading to the description "biography as autobiography". === The Human Condition (1958) === In what is arguably her most influential work, The Human Condition (1958), Arendt differentiates political and social concepts, labor and work, and various forms of actions; she then explores the implications of those distinctions. Her theory of political action, corresponding to the existence of a public realm, is extensively developed in this work. Arendt argues that, while human life always evolves within societies, the social part of human nature, political life, has been intentionally realized in only a few societies as a space for individuals to achieve freedom. Conceptual categories, which attempt to bridge the gap between ontological and sociological structures, are sharply delineated. While Arendt relegates labor and work to the realm of the social, she favors the human condition of action as that which is both existential and aesthetic. Of human actions, Arendt identifies two that she considers essential. These are forgiving past wrong (or unfixing the fixed past) and promising future benefit (or fixing the unfixed future).Arendt had first introduced the concept of "natality" in her Love and Saint Augustine (1929) and in The Human Condition starts to develop this further. In this, she departs from Heidegger's emphasis on mortality. Arendt's positive message is one of the "miracle of beginning", the continual arrival of the new to create action, that is to alter the state of affairs brought about by previous actions. "Men", she wrote "though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin". She defined her use of "natality" as: The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Natality would go on to become a central concept of her political theory, and also what Karin Fry considers its most optimistic one. === Between Past and Future (1954...1968) === Between Past and Future is an anthology of eight essays written between 1954 and 1968, dealing with a variety of different but connected philosophical subjects. These essays share the central idea that humans live between the past and the uncertain future. Man must permanently think to exist, but must learn thinking. Humans have resorted to tradition, but are abandoning respect for this tradition and culture. Arendt tries to find solutions to help humans think again, since modern philosophy has not succeeded in helping humans to live correctly. === On Revolution (1963) === Arendt's book On Revolution presents a comparison of two of the main revolutions of the 18th century, the American and French Revolutions. She goes against a common impression of both Marxist and leftist views when she argues that France, while well-studied and often emulated, was a disaster and that the largely ignored American Revolution was a success. The turning point in the French Revolution occurred when the leaders rejected their goals of freedom in order to focus on compassion for the masses. In the United States, the founders never betray the goal of Constitutio Libertatis. Arendt believes the revolutionary spirit of those men had been lost, however, and advocates a "council system" as an appropriate institution to regain that spirit. === Men in Dark Times (1968) === The anthology of essays Men in Dark Times presents intellectual biographies of some creative and moral figures of the 20th century, such as Walter Benjamin, Karl Jaspers, Rosa Luxemburg, Hermann Broch, Pope John XXIII, and Isak Dinesen. === Crises of the Republic (1972) === Crises of the Republic was the third of Arendt's anthologies, consisting of four essays. These related essays deal with contemporary American politics and the crises it faced in the 1960s and 1970s. "Lying in Politics" looks for an explanation behind the administration's deception regarding the Vietnam War, as revealed in the Pentagon Papers. "Civil Disobedience" examines the opposition movements, while the final "Thoughts on Politics and Revolution" is a commentary, in the form of an interview on the third essay, "On Violence". In "On Violence" Arendt substantiates that violence presupposes power which she understands as a property of groups. Thus, she breaks with the predominant conception of power as derived from violence. ==== The Life of the Mind (1978) ==== Arendt's last major work, The Life of the Mind remained incomplete at the time of her death in 1975, but marked a return to moral philosophy. The outline of the book was based on her graduate level political philosophy class, Philosophy of the Mind, and her Gifford Lectures in Scotland. She conceived of the work as a trilogy based on the mental activities of thinking, willing, and judging. Her most recent work had focused on the first two, but went beyond this in terms of vita activa. Her discussion of thinking was based on Socrates and his notion of thinking as a solitary dialogue between oneself, leading her to novel concepts of conscience.Arendt died suddenly five days after completing the second part, with the first page of Judging still in her typewriter, and McCarthy then edited the first two parts and provided some indication of the direction of the third. Arendt's exact intentions for the third part are unknown but she left several manuscripts (such as Thinking and Moral Considerations, Some Questions on Moral Philosophy and Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy) relating to her thoughts on the mental faculty of Judging. These have since been published separately. ==== Collected works ==== After Arendt's death in 1975, her essays and notes have continued to be collected, edited and published posthumously by friends and colleagues, mainly under the editorship of Jerome Kohn, including those that give some insight into the unfinished third part of The Life of the Mind. Some dealt with her Jewish identity. The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age (1978), is a collection of 15 essays and letters from the period 1943–1966 on the situation of Jews in modern times, to try and throw some light on her views on the Jewish world, following the backlash to Eichmann, but proved to be equally polarizing. A further collection of her writings on being Jewish was published as The Jewish Writings (2007). Her work on moral philosophy appeared as Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (1982) and Responsibility and Judgment (2003), and her literary works as Reflections on Literature and Culture (2007).. Other work includes the collection of forty, largely fugitive, essays, addresses, and reviews covering the period 1930–1954, entitled Essays in Understanding 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism (1994). These presaged her monumental The Origins of Totalitarianism, in particular On the Nature of Totalitarianism (1953) and The Concern with Politics in Contemporary European Philosophical Thought (1954). However these attracted little attention. However after a new version of Origins of Totalitarianism appeared in 2004 followed by The Promise of Politics in 2005 there appeared a new interest in Arendtiana. This led to a second series of her remaining essays, Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975, published in 2018. Her notebooks which form a series of memoirs, were published as Denktagebuch in 2002. ==== Correspondence ==== Some further insight into her thinking is provided in the continuing posthumous publication of her correspondence with many of the important figures in her life, including Karl Jaspers (1992), Mary McCarthy (1995), Heinrich Blücher (1996), Martin Heidegger (2004), Alfred Kazin (2005), Walter Benjamin (2006), Gershom Scholem (2011) and Günther Stern (2016). Other correspondences that have been published include those with women friends such as Hilde Fränkel and Anne Mendelsohn Weil (see Relationships). === Arendt and the Eichmann trial (1961–1963) === In 1960, on hearing of Adolf Eichmann's capture and plans for his trial, Hannah Arendt contacted The New Yorker and offered to travel to Israel to cover it when it opened on 11 April 1961. Arendt was anxious to test her theories, developed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, and see how justice would be administered to the sort of man she had written about. Also she had witnessed "little of the Nazi regime directly" and this was an opportunity to witness an agent of totalitarianism first hand. The offer was accepted and she attended six weeks of the five-month trial with her young Israeli cousin, Edna Brocke. On arrival she was treated as a celebrity, meeting with the trial chief judge, Moshe Landau, and the foreign minister, Golda Meir. In her subsequent 1963 report, based on her observations and transcripts, and which evolved into the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the Eichmann phenomenon. She, like others, was struck by his very ordinariness and the demeanor he exhibited of a small, slightly balding, bland bureaucrat, in contrast to the horrific crimes he stood accused of. He was, she wrote, "terribly and terrifyingly normal." She examined the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions. Arendt's argument was that Eichmann was not a monster, contrasting the immensity of his actions with the very ordinariness of the man himself. Eichmann, she stated, not only called himself a Zionist, having initially opposed the Jewish persecution, but also expected his captors to understand him. She pointed out that his actions were not driven by malice, but rather blind dedication to the regime and his need to belong, to be a "joiner." On this, Arendt would later state "Going along with the rest and wanting to say 'we' were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible". What Arendt observed during the trial was a bourgeois sales clerk who found a meaningful role for himself and a sense of importance in the Nazi movement. She noted that his addiction to clichés and use of bureaucratic morality clouded his ability to question his actions, "to think". This led her to set out her most debated dictum: "the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil." By stating that Eichmann did not think, she did not imply lack of conscious awareness of his actions, but by "thinking" she implied reflective rationality, that was lacking. Arendt was critical of the way the trial was conducted by the Israelis as a "show trial" with ulterior motives other than simply trying evidence and administering justice. Arendt was also critical of the way Israel depicted Eichmann's crimes as crimes against a nation state, rather than against humanity itself. She objected to the idea that a strong Israel was necessary to protect world Jewry being again placed where "they'll let themselves be slaughtered like sheep," recalling the biblical phrase. She portrayed the prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, as employing hyperbolic rhetoric in the pursuit of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's political agenda. Arendt, who believed she could maintain her focus on moral principles in the face of outrage, became increasingly frustrated with Hausner, describing his parade of survivors as having "no apparent bearing on the case". She was particularly concerned that Hausner repeatedly asked "why did you not rebel?" rather than question the role of the Jewish leaders. On this point, Arendt argued that during the Holocaust some of them cooperated with Eichmann "almost without exception" in the destruction of their own people. These leaders, notably M. C. Rumkowski, constituted the Jewish Councils (Judenräte). She had expressed concerns on this point prior to the trial. She described this as a moral catastrophe. While her argument was not to allocate blame, rather she mourned what she considered a moral failure of compromising the imperative that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. She describes the cooperation of the Jewish leaders in terms of a disintegration of Jewish morality: "This role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter in the whole dark story". Widely misunderstood, this caused an even greater controversy and particularly animosity toward her in the Jewish community and in Israel. For Arendt, the Eichmann trial marked a turning point in her thinking in the final decade of her life, becoming increasingly preoccupied with moral philosophy. ==== Reception ==== Arendt's five-part series "Eichmann in Jerusalem" appeared in The New Yorker in February 1963 some nine months after Eichmann was hanged on 31 May 1962. By this time his trial was largely forgotten in the popular mind, superseded by intervening world events. However, no other account of either Eichmann or National Socialism has aroused so much controversy. Prior to its publication, Arendt was considered a brilliant humanistic original political thinker. However her mentor, Karl Jaspers, warned her about a possible adverse outcome, "The Eichmann trial will be no pleasure for you. I'm afraid it cannot go well". On publication, three controversies immediately occupied public attention: the concept of Eichmann as banal, her criticism of the role of Israel and her description of the role played by the Jewish people themselves.Arendt was profoundly shocked by the response, writing to Karl Jaspers "People are resorting to any means to destroy my reputation ... They have spent weeks trying to find something in my past that they can hang on me". Now she was being called arrogant, heartless and ill-informed. She was accused of being duped by Eichmann, of being a "self-hating Jewess", and even an enemy of Israel. Her critics included The Anti-Defamation League and many other Jewish groups, editors of publications she was a contributor to, faculty at the universities she taught at and friends from all parts of her life. Her friend Gershom Scholem, a major scholar of Jewish mysticism, broke off relations with her, publishing their correspondence without her permission. Arendt was criticized by many Jewish public figures, who charged her with coldness and lack of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust. Because of this lingering criticism neither this book nor any of her other works were translated into Hebrew until 1999. Arendt responded to the controversies in the book's Postscript. Although Arendt complained that she was being criticized for telling the truth – "what a risky business to tell the truth on a factual level without theoretical and scholarly embroidery" – the criticism was largely directed to her theorizing on the nature of mankind and evil and that ordinary people were driven to commit the inexplicable not so much by hatred and ideology as ambition, and inability to empathize. Equally problematic was the suggestion that the victims deceived themselves and complied in their own destruction. Prior to Arendt's depiction of Eichmann, his popular image had been, as The New York Times put it "the most evil monster of humanity" and as a representative of "an atrocious crime, unparalleled in history", "the extermination of European Jews". As it turned out Arendt and others were correct in pointing out that Eichmann's characterization by the prosecution as the architect and chief technician of the Holocaust was not entirely credible.While much has been made of Arendt's treatment of Eichmann, Ada Ushpiz, in her 2015 documentary Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, placed it in a much broader context of the use of rationality to explain seemingly irrational historical events. ==== Kein Mensch hat das Recht zu gehorchen ==== In an interview with Joachim Fest in 1964, Arendt was asked about Eichmann's defense that he had made Kant's principle of the duty of obedience his guiding principle all his life. Arendt replied that that was outrageous and that Eichmann was misusing Kant, by not considering the element of judgement required in assessing one's own actions – "Kein Mensch hat bei Kant das Recht zu gehorchen" (No man has, according to Kant, the right to obey), she stated, paraphrasing Kant. The reference was to Kant's Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason 1793) in which he states: Der Satz 'man muß Gott mehr gehorchen, als den Menschen' bedeutet nur, daß, wenn die letzten etwas gebieten, was an sich böse (dem Sittengesetz unmittelbar zuwider) ist, ihnen nicht gehorcht werden darf und soll (The saying, "We must hearken to God, rather than to man," signifies no more than this, viz. that should any earthly legislation enjoin something immediately contradictory of the moral law, obedience is not to be rendered) Kant clearly defines a higher moral duty than rendering merely unto Caesar. Arendt herself had written in her book "This was outrageous, on the face of it, and also incomprehensible, since Kant's moral philosophy is so closely bound up with man's faculty of judgment, which rules out blind obedience." Arendt's reply to Fest was subsequently corrupted to read Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen (No one has the right to obey), which has been widely reproduced, although it does encapsulate an aspect of her moral philosophy.The phrase Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen has become one of her iconic images, appearing on the wall of the house in which she was born (see Commemorations), among other places. A fascist bas-relief on the Palazzo degli Uffici Finanziari (1942), in the Piazza del Tribunale, Bolzano, Italy celebrating Mussolini, read Credere, Obbedire, Combattere (Believe, Obey, Combat). In 2017 it was altered to read Hannah Arendt's original words on obedience in the three official languages of the region.The phrase has been appearing in other artistic work featuring political messages, such as the 2015 installation by Wilfried Gerstel, which has evoked the concept of resistance to dictatorship, as expressed in her essay "Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship" (1964). === List of selected publications === == Views == In 1961, while covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt wrote a letter to Karl Jaspers that Adam Kirsch described as reflecting "pure racism" toward Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. She wrote: Fortunately, Eichmann's three judges were of German origin, indeed the best of German Jewry. [Attorney General Gideon] Hausner is a typical Galician Jew, still European, very unsympathetic... boring... constantly making mistakes. Probably one of those people who don't know any language. Everything is organized by a police force which gives me the creeps, speaks only Hebrew, and looks Arabic. Some downright brutal types among them. They would obey any order. And outside the doors, the oriental mob, as if one were in Istanbul or some other half-Asiatic country. Although Arendt remained a Zionist both during and after World War II, she made it clear that she favored the creation of a Jewish-Arab federated state in British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel and the Palestinian territories), rather than a purely Jewish state. She believed that this was a way to address Jewish statelessness and to avoid the pitfalls of nationalism. === Accusations of racism === It was not just Arendt's analysis of the Eichmann trial that drew accusations of racism. In her 1958 essay in Dissent entitled Reflections on Little Rock she expressed opposition to desegregation following the 1957 Little Rock Integration Crisis in Arkansas. As she explains in the preface, for a long time the magazine was reluctant to print her contribution, so far did it appear to differ from the publication's liberal values. Eventually it was printed alongside critical responses. Later The New Yorker would express similar hesitancy over the Eichmann papers. So vehement was the response, that Arendt felt obliged to defend herself in a sequel. The debate over this essay has continued since. William Simmons devotes a whole section of his 2011 text on human rights (Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other) to a critique of Arendt's position and in particular on Little Rock. While many critics feel she was fundamentally racist, many of those who have defended Arendt's position have pointed out that her concerns were for the welfare of the children, a position she maintained throughout her life. She felt that white children were being thrown into a racially disharmonious "jungle" to serve a broader political strategy of forcible integration.While over time Arendt conceded some ground to her critics, namely that she argued as an outsider, she remained committed to her central critique that children should not be thrust into the front-lines of geopolitical conflict. === Feminism === Embraced by feminists as a pioneer in a world dominated by men up to her time, Arendt did not call herself a feminist and would be very surprised to hear herself described as a feminist, remaining opposed to the social dimensions of Women's Liberation, urging independence, but always keeping in mind Vive la petite différence! On becoming the first woman to be appointed a professor at Princeton in 1953, the media were much engaged in this exceptional achievement, but she never wanted to be seen as an exception, either as a woman (an "exception woman") or a Jew, stating emphatically "I am not disturbed at all about being a woman professor, because I am quite used to being a woman". In 1972, discussing women's liberation, she observed "the real question to ask is, what will we lose if we win?". She rather enjoyed what she saw as the privileges of being feminine as opposed to feminist, "Intensely feminine and therefore no feminist", stated Hans Jonas. Arendt considered some professions and positions unsuitable for women, particularly those involving leadership, telling Günter Gaus "It just doesn't look good when a woman gives orders". Despite these views, and having been labelled "anti-feminist", much space has been devoted to examining Arendt's place in relation to feminism. In the last years of her life, Virginia Held noted that Arendt's views evolved with the emergence of a new feminism in America in the 1970s to recognize the importance of the women's movement. === Critique of human rights === In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt devotes a lengthy chapter (The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man) to a critical analysis of human rights, in what has been described as "the most widely read essay on refugees ever published". Arendt is not skeptical of the notion of political rights in general, but instead defends a national or civil conception of rights. Human rights, or the Rights of Man as they were commonly called, are universal, inalienable, and possessed simply by virtue of being human. In contrast, civil rights are possessed by virtue of belonging to a political community, most commonly by being a citizen. Arendt's primary criticism of human rights is that they are ineffectual and illusory because their enforcement is in tension with national sovereignty. She argued that since there is no political authority above that of sovereign nations, state governments have little incentive to respect human rights when such policies conflict with national interests. This can be seen most clearly by examining the treatment of refugees and other stateless people. Since the refugee has no state to secure their civil rights, the only rights they have to fall back on are human rights. In this way Arendt uses the refugee as a test case for examining human rights in isolation from civil rights.Arendt's analysis draws on the refugee upheavals in the first half of the 20th century along with her own experience as a refugee fleeing Nazi Germany. She argued that as state governments began to emphasize national identity as a prerequisite for full legal status, the number of minority resident aliens increased along with the number of stateless persons whom no state was willing to recognize legally. The two potential solutions to the refugee problem, repatriation and naturalization, both proved incapable of solving the crisis. Arendt argued that repatriation failed to solve the refugee crisis because no government was willing to take them in and claim them as their own. When refugees were forcibly deported to neighboring countries, such immigration was deemed illegal by the receiving country, and so failed to change the fundamental status of the migrants as stateless. Attempts at naturalizing and assimilating refugees also had little success. This failure was primarily the result of resistance from both state governments and the majority of citizens, since both tended to see the refugees as undesirables who threatened their national identity. Resistance to naturalization also came from the refugees themselves who resisted assimilation and attempted to maintain their own ethnic and national identities. Arendt contends that neither naturalization nor the tradition of asylum was capable of handling the sheer number of refugees. Instead of accepting some refugees with legal status, the state often responded by denaturalizing minorities who shared national or ethnic ties with stateless refugees.Arendt argues that the consistent mistreatment of refugees, most of whom were placed in internment camps, is evidence against the existence of human rights. If the notion of human rights as universal and inalienable is to be taken seriously, the rights must be realizable given the features of the modern liberal state. She concluded "The Rights of Man, supposedly inalienable, proved to be unenforceable–even in countries whose constitutions were based upon them–whenever people appeared who were no longer citizens of any sovereign state". Arendt contends that they are not realizable because they are in tension with at least one feature of the liberal state—national sovereignty. One of the primary ways in which a nation exercises sovereignty is through control over national borders. State governments consistently grant their citizens free movement to traverse national borders. In contrast, the movement of refugees is often restricted in the name of national interests. This restriction presents a dilemma for liberalism because liberal theorists typically are committed to both human rights and the existence of sovereign nations.In one of her most quoted passages, she puts forward the concept that human rights are little more than an abstraction: The conception of human rights based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships – except that they were still human. The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human. == In popular culture == Several authors have written biographies that focus on the relationship between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. In 1999, the French feminist philosopher Catherine Clément wrote a novel, Martin and Hannah, speculating on the triangular relationship between Heidegger and the two women in his life, Arendt and Heidegger's wife Elfriede Petri. In addition to the relationships, the novel is a serious exploration of philosophical ideas, that centers on Arendt's last meeting with Heidegger in Freiburg in 1975. The scene is based on Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's description in Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (1982), but reaches back to their childhoods, and Heidegger's role in encouraging the relationship between the two women. The novel explores Heidegger's embrace of Nazism as a proxy for that of Germany and, as in Arendt's treatment of Eichmann, the difficult relationship between collective guilt and personal responsibility. Clément also brings Hannah's other mentor and confidante, Karl Jaspers, into the matrix of relationships.She is portrayed in the 2023 TV series Transatlantic. === Hannah Arendt (2012) === Arendt's life remains part of current culture and thought. In 2012 the German film, Hannah Arendt, directed by Margarethe von Trotta was released. The film, with Barbara Sukowa in the title role, depicted the controversy over Arendt's coverage of the Eichmann trial and subsequent book, in which she was widely misunderstood as defending Eichmann and blaming Jewish leaders for the Holocaust. == Legacy == Hannah Arendt is considered one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. In 1998 Walter Laqueur stated "No twentieth-century philosopher and political thinker has at the present time as wide an echo", as philosopher, historian, sociologist and also journalist. Arendt's legacy has been described as a cult. In a 2016 review of a documentary about Arendt, the journalist A. O. Scott describes Hannah Arendt as "of unmatched range and rigor" as a thinker, although she is primarily known for the series of articles known as Eichmann in Jerusalem that she wrote for The New Yorker, and in particular for the one phrase "the banality of evil".She shunned publicity, never expecting, as she explained to Karl Jaspers in 1951, to see herself as a "cover girl" on the newsstands. In Germany, there are tours available of sites associated with her life.The study of the life and work of Hannah Arendt, and of her political and philosophical theory is described as Arendtian. In her will she established the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust as the custodian of her writings and photographs. Her personal library was deposited at Bard College at the Stevenson Library in 1976, and includes approximately 4,000 books, ephemera, and pamphlets from Arendt's last apartment as well as her desk (in McCarthy House). The college has begun archiving some of the collection digitally, which is available at The Hannah Arendt Collection. Most of her papers were deposited at the Library of Congress and her correspondence with her German friends and mentors, such as Heidegger, Blumenfeld and Jaspers, at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach. The Library of Congress listed more than 50 books written about her in 1998, and that number has continued to grow, as have the number of scholarly articles, estimated as 1000 at that time.Her life and work is recognized by the institutions most closely associated with her teaching, by the creation of Hannah Arendt Centers at both Bard (Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities) and The New School, both in New York State. In Germany, her contributions to understanding authoritarianism is recognised by the Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung (Hannah Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism) in Dresden. There are Hannah Arendt Associations (Hannah Arendt Verein) such as the Hannah Arendt Verein für politisches Denken in Bremen that awards the annual Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken (Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking) established in 1995. In Oldenburg, the Hannah Arendt Center at Carl von Ossietzky University was established in 1999, and holds a large collection of her work (Hannah Arendt Archiv), and administers the internet portal HannahArendt.net (A Journal for Political Thinking) as well as a monograph series, the Hannah Arendt-Studien. In Italy, the Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies is situated at the University of Verona for Arendtian studies.In 2017 a journal, Arendt Studies, was launched to publish articles related to the study of the life, work, and legacy of Hannah Arendt. Many places associated with her, have memorabilia of her on display, such as her student card at the University of Heidelberg (see image). 2006, the centennial of her birth, saw commemorations of her work in conferences and celebrations around the world.In 2015, the filmmaker Ada Ushpiz produced a documentary on Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt. The New York Times designated it a New York Times critics pick. Of the many photographic portraits of Arendt, that taken in 1944 by Fred Stein (see image), whose work she greatly admired, has become iconic, and has been described as better known than the photographer himself, having appeared on a German postage stamp.(see image) Among organizations that have recognized Arendt's contributions to civilization and human rights, is the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). === Contemporary interest === The rise of nativism, such as the election of Donald Trump in the United States, and concerns regarding an increasingly authoritarian style of governance has led to a surge of interest in Arendt and her writings, including radio broadcasts and writers, including Jeremy Adelman and Zoe Williams, to revisit Arendt's ideas to seek the extent to which they inform our understanding of such movements, which are being described as "Dark Times". At the same time Amazon reported that it had sold out of copies of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Michiko Kakutani has addressed what she refers to as "the death of truth". In her 2018 book, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, she argues that the rise of totalitarianism has been founded on the violation of truth. She begins her book with an extensive quote from The Origins of Totalitarianism: The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist Kakutani and others believed that Arendt's words speak not just events of a previous century but apply equally to the contemporary cultural landscape populated with fake news and lies. She also draws on Arendt's essay "Lying in Politics" from Crises in the Republic pointing to the lines: The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes, or denied and distorted, often carefully covered up by reams of falsehoods or simply allowed to fall into oblivion. Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling place in the domain of human affairs Arendt drew attention to the critical role that propaganda plays in gaslighting populations, Kakutani observes, citing the passage: In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true . ... The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness It is also relevant that Arendt took a broader perspective on history than merely totalitarianism in the early 20th century, stating "the deliberate falsehood and the outright lie have been used as legitimate means to achieve political ends since the beginning of recorded history." Contemporary relevance is also reflected in the increasing use of the phrase, attributed to her, "No one has the right to obey" to reflect that actions result from choices, and hence judgement, and that we cannot disclaim responsibility for that which we have the power to act upon. In addition those centers established to promote Arendtian studies continue to seek solutions to a wide range of contemporary issues in her writing.Arendt's teachings on obedience have also been linked to the controversial psychology experiments by Stanley Milgram, that implied that ordinary people can easily be induced to commit atrocities. Milgram himself drew attention to this in 1974, stating that he was testing the theory that Eichmann like others would merely follow orders, but unlike Milgram she argued that actions involve responsibility.Arendt's theories on the political consequences of how nations deal with refugees has remained relevant and compelling. Arendt had observed first hand the displacement of large stateless and rightsless populations, treated not so much as people in need than as problems to solve, and in many cases, resist. She wrote about this in her 1943 essay "We refugees". Another Arendtian theme that finds an echo in contemporary society is her observation, inspired by Rilke, of the despair of not being heard, the futility of tragedy that finds no listener that can bring comfort, assurance and intervention. An example of this being gun violence in America and the resulting political inaction.In Search of the Last Agora, an illustrated documentary film by Lebanese director Rayyan Dabbous about Hannah Arendt's 1958 work The Human Condition, was released in 2018 to mark the book's 50th anniversary. Screened at Bard College, the experimental film is described as finding "new meaning in the political theorist's conceptions of politics, technology and society in the 1950s", particularly in her prediction of abuses of phenomena unknown in Arendt's time, including social media, intense globalization, and obsessive celebrity culture. === Commemorations === Hannah Arendt's life and work continue to be commemorated in many different ways, including plaques (Gedenktafeln) indicating places she has lived. Public places and institutions bear her name, including schools. There is also a Hannah Arendt Day (Hannah Arendt Tag) in her birthplace. Objects named after her vary from asteroids to trains and she has been commemorated in stamps. Museums and foundations include her name. === Arendt Studies === Arendt Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal that examines the life, work, and legacy of Hannah Arendt. Established in 2017, it publishes research articles and translations, including the first English translation of Hannah Arendt's "Nation-State and Democracy" (1963) Notable contributors include Andrew Benjamin, Peg Birmingham, Adriana Cavarero, Robert P. Crease, and Celso Lafer. Articles published in this journal are covered in the international Hannah Arendt Bibliographie. Arendt Studies is also included in JSTOR. The journal is edited by James Barry at Indiana University and published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. == Family tree == == See also == == Notes == == References == == Bibliography == == External links == Hannah Arendt: "Zur Person". Full Interview (with English subtitles) (video) (in German) (published 8 April 2013). 28 October 1964. Archived from the original on 15 November 2021 – via YouTube. "Hannah Arendt Contributions". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 11 August 2018. [Category:Intellectual historians]

H.L.A. Hart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._A._Hart

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (; 18 July 1907 – 19 December 1992) was an English legal philosopher. He was the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University and the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. His most famous work is The Concept of Law, which has been hailed as "the most important work of legal philosophy written in the twentieth century". He is considered one of the world's foremost legal philosophers in the twentieth century. == Early life and education == Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was born on 18 July 1907, the son of Rose Samson Hart and Simeon Hart, in Harrogate, to which his parents had moved from the East End of London. His father was a Jewish tailor of German and Polish origin; his mother, of Polish origin, daughter of successful retailers in the clothing trade, handled customer relations and the finances of their firm. Hart had an elder brother, Albert, and a younger sister, Sybil. Hart was educated at Cheltenham College, Bradford Grammar School and at New College, Oxford. He took a first in classical greats in 1929. Hart became a barrister and practised successfully at the Chancery Bar from 1932 to 1940. He was good friends with Richard Wilberforce, Douglas Jay, and Christopher Cox, among others. He received a Harmsworth Scholarship to the Middle Temple and also wrote literary journalism for the periodical John O'London's Weekly. === World War II === During the Second World War, Hart worked with MI5, a division of British military intelligence concerned with unearthing spies who had penetrated Britain, where he renewed Oxford friendships including working with the philosophers Gilbert Ryle and Stuart Hampshire. He worked closely with Dick White, later head of MI5 and then of MI6. Hart worked at Bletchley Park and was a colleague of the mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing.Hart's war work took him on occasion to MI5 offices at Blenheim Palace, family home of the Dukes of Marlborough and the place where Winston Churchill had been born. He enjoyed telling the story that there he was able to read the diaries of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the founder of the dynasty John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Hart's wit and humanity are demonstrated by the fact that he particularly enjoyed the passage where Sarah tells that John had been away for a long time, had arrived suddenly, and "enjoyed me straight way in his boots". Another incident of life at Blenheim which Hart enjoyed recounting was that he shared an office with one of the famous Cambridge spies, Anthony Blunt, a fellow member of MI5. Hart wondered which of the papers on his desk Blunt had managed to read and to pass on to his Soviet controllers. Hart did not return to his legal practice after the war, preferring instead to accept the offer of a teaching fellowship (in philosophy, not law) at New College, Oxford. Hart cites J. L. Austin as particularly influential during this time. The two jointly taught from 1948 a seminar on 'Legal and Moral Responsibility'. Among Hart's publications at this time were the essays 'A Logician's Fairytale', 'Is There Knowledge by Acquaintance?', 'Law and Fact' and 'The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights'. == Academic career == In 1952, Hart was elected Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford and was a fellow at University College, Oxford, from 1952 to 1973. It was in the summer of that year that he began writing his most famous book, The Concept of Law, though it was not published until 1961. In the interim, he published another major work, Causation in the Law (with Tony Honoré) (1959). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1959 to 1960. He gave the 1962 Master-Mind Lecture.Hart married Jenifer Fischer Williams, a civil servant, later a senior civil servant, in the Home Office and, still later, Oxford historian at St Anne's College (specialising in the history of the police). Jenifer Hart was, for some years in the mid-1930s and fading out totally by decade's end, a 'sleeper' member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Three decades later she was interviewed by Peter Wright as having been in a position to have passed information to the Soviets, and to Wright, MI5's official spy hunter, she explained her situation; Wright took no action. In fact her work as civil servant was in fields such as family policy and so would have been of no interest to the Soviets. The person who recruited her, Bernard Floud, interviewed by Wright shortly after, maintained that he was unable to remember ever having done so. Nor was her husband in a position to convey to her information of use, despite vague newspaper suggestions, given the sharp separation of his work from that of foreign affairs and its focus on German spies and British turncoats rather than on matters related to the Soviet ally. In fact, Hart was anticommunist. The marriage contained "incompatible personalities", though it lasted right to the end of their lives and gave joy to both at times. Hart did joke with his daughter at one point, however, that "[t]he trouble with this marriage is that one of us doesn't like sex and the other doesn't like food", and according to LSE law professor Nicola Lacey, Hart was, by his own account, a "suppressed homosexual". Jenifer Hart was believed by her contemporaries to have had an affair of long duration with Isaiah Berlin, a close friend of Hart's. Jenifer published her memoirs under the title Ask Me No More in 1998. The Harts had four children, including, late in life, a son who was disabled, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck having deprived his brain of oxygen. Hart's granddaughter Mojo Mathers became New Zealand's first deaf Member of Parliament in 2011.There is a description of the Harts' household by the writer on religion Karen Armstrong, who lodged with them for a time to help take care of their disabled son. The description appears in her book The Spiral Staircase.Hart retired from the Chair of Jurisprudence in 1969 and was succeeded by Ronald Dworkin. He subsequently became principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. Hart died in Oxford on 19 December 1992, aged 85. He is buried there in Wolvercote Cemetery, which also contains Isaiah Berlin's grave. == Hart's students == Many of Hart's former students have become important legal, moral, and political philosophers, including Brian Barry, Ronald Dworkin, John Finnis, John Gardner, Kent Greenawalt, Peter Hacker, David Hodgson, Neil MacCormick, Joseph Raz, Chin Liew Ten and William Twining. Hart also had a strong influence on the young John Rawls in the 1950s, when Rawls was a visiting scholar at Oxford shortly after finishing his PhD. == Philosophical method == Hart strongly influenced the application of methods in his version of Anglo-American positive law to jurisprudence and the philosophy of law in the English-speaking world. Influenced by John Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hans Kelsen, Hart brought the tools of analytic, and especially linguistic, philosophy to bear on the central problems of legal theory. Hart's method combined the careful analysis of twentieth-century analytic philosophy with the jurisprudential tradition of Jeremy Bentham, the great English legal, political, and moral philosopher. Hart's conception of law had parallels to the Pure Theory of Law formulated by Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, though Hart rejected several distinctive features of Kelsen's theory. Significant in the differences between Hart and Kelsen was the emphasis on the British version of positive law theory which Hart was defending as opposed to the Continental version of positive law theory which Kelsen was defending. This was studied in the University of Toronto Law Journal in an article titled "Leaving the Hart-Dworkin Debate" which maintained that Hart insisted in his book The Concept of Law on the expansive reading of positive law theory to include philosophical and sociological domains of assessment rather than the more focused attention of Kelsen who considered Continental positive law theory as more limited to the domain of jurisprudence itself.Hart drew, among others, on Glanville Williams who had demonstrated his legal philosophy in a five-part article, "Language and the Law" and in a paper, "International Law and the Controversy Concerning the Word 'Law'". In the paper on international law, he sharply attacked the many jurists and international lawyers who had debated whether international law was "really" law. They had been wasting everyone's time, for the question was not a factual one, the many differences between municipal and international law being undeniable, but was simply one of conventional verbal usage, about which individual theorists could please themselves, but had no right to dictate to others. This approach was to be refined and developed by Hart in the last chapter of The Concept of Law (1961), which showed how the use in respect of different social phenomena of an abstract word like law reflected the fact that these phenomena each shared, without necessarily all possessing in common, some distinctive features. Glanville had himself said as much when editing a student text on jurisprudence and he had adopted essentially the same approach to "The Definition of Crime". == The Concept of Law == Hart's most famous work is The Concept of Law, first published in 1961, and with a second edition (including a new postscript) published posthumously in 1994. The book emerged from a set of lectures that Hart began to deliver in 1952, and it is presaged by his Holmes lecture, Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals, delivered at Harvard Law School. The Concept of Law developed a sophisticated view of legal positivism. Among the many ideas developed in this book are: A critique of John Austin's theory that law is the command of the sovereign backed by the threat of punishment. A distinction between primary and secondary legal rules, such that a primary rule governs conduct, such as criminal law, and secondary rules govern the procedural methods by which primary rules are enforced, prosecuted and so on. Hart specifically enumerates three secondary rules; they are:The Rule of Recognition, the rule by which any member of society may check to discover what the primary rules of the society are. In a simple society, Hart states, the recognition rule might only be what is written in a sacred book or what is said by a ruler. Hart claimed the concept of rule of recognition as an evolution from Hans Kelsen's "Grundnorm", or "basic norm". The Rule of Change, the rule by which existing primary rules might be created, altered or deleted. The Rule of Adjudication, the rule by which the society might determine when a rule has been violated and prescribe a remedy.A distinction between the internal and external points of view of law and rules, close to (and influenced by) Max Weber's distinction between legal and sociological perspectives in description of law. A concept of "open-textured" terms in law, along the lines of Wittgenstein and Waisman, and "defeasible" terms (later famously disavowed): both are ideas popular in Artificial intelligence and law A late reply (published as a postscript to the second edition) to Ronald Dworkin, a rights-oriented legal philosopher (and Hart's successor at Oxford) who criticised Hart's version of legal positivism in Taking Rights Seriously (1977), A Matter of Principle (1985) and Law's Empire (1986). == Other work == With Tony Honoré, Hart wrote and published Causation in the Law (1959, second edition 1985), which is regarded as one of the important academic discussions of causation in the legal context. The early chapters deal philosophically with the concept of cause and are clearly the work of Hart, while later chapters deal with individual cases in English law and are clearly his co-author's. As a result of his famous debate with Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin, on the role of the criminal law in enforcing moral norms, Hart wrote Law, Liberty and Morality (1963), which consisted of three lectures he gave at Stanford University. He also wrote The Morality of the Criminal Law (1965). Hart said that he believed Devlin's view of Mill's harm principle as it related to the decriminalisation of homosexuality was "perverse". He later stated that he believed the reforms to the law regarding homosexuality that followed the Wolfenden report "didn't go far enough". Despite this, Hart reported later that he got on well personally with Devlin.Hart gave lectures to the Labour Party on closing tax loopholes which were being used by the "super-rich". Hart considered himself to be "on the Left, the non-communist Left", and expressed animosity towards Margaret Thatcher. == Writings == "The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1949) Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence (1953) Causation in the Law (with Tony Honoré) (1959) The Concept of Law (1961; 2nd edn 1994; 3rd edn 2012) Law, Liberty and Morality (1963) The Morality of the Criminal Law (1964) Punishment and Responsibility (1968) Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory (1982) Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (1983) == Festschrift == Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honour of H. L. A. Hart, edited by P. M. S. Hacker and Joseph Raz (1977) == See also == Hart–Dworkin debate Hart–Fuller debate Legal interpretivism Natural law Lon Fuller == Notes == == References == == Sources == Nicola Lacey, A Life of H. L. A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream, Oxford University Press: 2004 ISBN 0199274975. Frederick Schauer, "(Re)Taking Hart," 119 Harv. L. Rev. 852 (2006) (reviewing Lacey, "A Life of H. L. A. Hart"). Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase, Harper Collins, 2004 ISBN 0007122284 Carlin Romano, "A Philosopher's Humanity", Chronicle of Higher Education vol. 51 (2005) (reviewing Lacey, "A Life of H. L. A. Hart") link Matthew Kramer, H.L.A. Hart The Nature of Law, Polity: 2018 ISBN 1509520732. == External links == Short Biography by Tony Honoré [Archived by Wayback Machine] Obituary: Professor Herbert Hart in The Independent by Zenon Bankowski Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart 1970–1992 British Academy In Memoriam by Tony Honoré Works by or about H. L. A. Hart at Internet Archive

C.L. Stevenson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stevenson_(philosopher)

Charles Leslie Stevenson (June 27, 1908 – March 14, 1979) was an American analytic philosopher best known for his work in ethics and aesthetics. == Biography == Stevenson was born on June 27, 1908, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was educated at Yale, receiving in 1930 a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in English literature, at Jesus College, Cambridge, where in 1933 he was awarded a BA degree in moral sciences (philosophy), and at Harvard, getting his Doctor of Philosophy degree there in 1935. While at Cambridge he studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. He was an instructor at Yale University from 1939 to 1944, spending some of that time teaching mathematics to wartime naval recruits. His post was not renewed in 1944 because the department did not approve of his emotivist views. After a period on a Guggenheim fellowship at Berkeley, Pomona, and Chicago, he was appointed to the University of Michigan where he taught from 1946 to 1977. Among his students was Joel Feinberg. He gave the most sophisticated defense of emotivism in the post-war period. In his papers "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937) and "Persuasive Definitions" (1938), and his book Ethics and Language (1944), he developed a theory of emotive meaning; which he then used to provide a foundation for his theory of a persuasive definition. He furthermore advanced emotivism as a meta-ethical theory that sharply delineated between cognitive, scientific uses of language (used to state facts and to give reasons, and subject to the laws of science) and non-cognitive uses (used to state feelings and exercise influence). Stevenson died on March 14, 1979, in Bennington, Vermont. == Contributions to philosophy == Stevenson's work has been seen both as an elaboration upon A. J. Ayer's views and as a representation of one of "two broad types of ethical emotivism." An analytic philosopher, Stevenson suggested in his 1937 essay "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" that any ethical theory should explain three things: that intelligent disagreement can occur over moral questions, that moral terms like good are "magnetic" in encouraging action, and that the scientific method is insufficient for verifying moral claims. Stevenson's own theory was fully developed in his 1944 book Ethics and Language. In it, he agrees with Ayer that ethical sentences express the speaker's feelings, but he adds that they also have an imperative component intended to change the listener's feelings and that this component is of greater importance. Where Ayer spoke of values, or fundamental psychological inclinations, Stevenson speaks of attitudes, and where Ayer spoke of disagreement of fact, or rational disputes over the application of certain values to a particular case, Stevenson speaks of differences in belief; the concepts are the same. Terminology aside, Stevenson interprets ethical statements according to two patterns of analysis. === First pattern analysis === Under his first pattern of analysis, an ethical statement has two parts: a declaration of the speaker's attitude and an imperative to mirror it, so "'This is good' means I approve of this; do so as well." The first half of the sentence is a proposition, but the imperative half is not, so Stevenson's translation of an ethical sentence remains a noncognitive one. Imperatives cannot be proved, but they can still be supported so that the listener understands that they are not wholly arbitrary: If told to close the door, one may ask "Why?" and receive some such reason as "It is too drafty," or "The noise is distracting." … These reasons cannot be called "proofs" in any but a dangerously extended sense, nor are they demonstratively or inductively related to an imperative; but they manifestly do support an imperative. They "back it up," or "establish it," or "base it on concrete references to fact." The purpose of these supports is to make the listener understand the consequences of the action they are being commanded to do. Once they understand the command's consequences, they can determine whether or not obedience to the command will have desirable results. The imperative is used to alter the hearer's attitudes or actions. … The supporting reason then describes the situation which the imperative seeks to alter, or the new situation which the imperative seeks to bring about; and if these facts disclose that the new situation will satisfy a preponderance of the hearer's desires, he will hesitate to obey no longer. More generally, reasons support imperatives by altering such beliefs as may in turn alter an unwillingness to obey. === Second pattern analysis === Stevenson's second pattern of analysis is used for statements about types of actions, not specific actions. Under this pattern, 'This is good' has the meaning of 'This has qualities or relations X, Y, Z … ,' except that 'good' has as well a laudatory meaning which permits it to express the speaker's approval, and tends to evoke the approval of the hearer. In second-pattern analysis, rather than judge an action directly, the speaker is evaluating it according to a general principle. For instance, someone who says "Murder is wrong" might mean "Murder decreases happiness overall"; this is a second-pattern statement which leads to a first-pattern one: "I disapprove of anything which decreases happiness overall. Do so as well." === Methods of argumentation === For Stevenson, moral disagreements may arise from different fundamental attitudes, different moral beliefs about specific cases, or both. The methods of moral argumentation he proposed have been divided into three groups, known as logical, rational psychological and nonrational psychological forms of argumentation.Logical methods involve efforts to show inconsistencies between a person's fundamental attitudes and their particular moral beliefs. For example, someone who says "Edward is a good person" who has previously said "Edward is a thief" and "No thieves are good people" is guilty of inconsistency until she retracts one of her statements. Similarly, a person who says "Lying is always wrong" might consider lies in some situations to be morally permissible, and if examples of these situations can be given, his view can be shown to be logically inconsistent.Rational psychological methods examine the facts which relate fundamental attitudes to particular moral beliefs; the goal is not to show that someone has been inconsistent, as with logical methods, but only that they are wrong about the facts which connect their attitudes to their beliefs. To modify the former example, consider the person who holds that all thieves are bad people. If she sees Edward pocket a wallet found in a public place, she may conclude that he is a thief, and there would be no inconsistency between her attitude (that thieves are bad people) and her belief (that Edward is a bad person because he is a thief). However, it may be that Edward recognized the wallet as belonging to a friend, to whom he promptly returned it. Such a revelation would likely change the observer's belief about Edward, and even if it did not, the attempt to reveal such facts would count as a rational psychological form of moral argumentation.Non-rational psychological methods revolve around language with psychological influence but no necessarily logical connection to the listener's attitudes. Stevenson called the primary such method "'persuasive,' in a somewhat broadened sense", and wrote: [Persuasion] depends on the sheer, direct emotional impact of words—on emotive meaning, rhetorical cadence, apt metaphor, stentorian, stimulating, or pleading tones of voice, dramatic gestures, care in establishing rapport with the hearer or audience, and so on. … A redirection of the hearer's attitudes is sought not by the mediating step of altering his beliefs, but by exhortation, whether obvious or subtle, crude or refined. Persuasion may involve the use of particular emotion-laden words, like "democracy" or "dictator", or hypothetical questions like "What if everyone thought the way you do?" or "How would you feel if you were in their shoes?" == Bibliography == Ethics and Language (1944) Facts and Values (1963) ISBN 0-8371-8212-3 == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers == References == == Sources == Boisvert, Daniel R. "Charles Leslie Stevenson". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Thomas Mautner. Penguin Putnam Inc. ISBN 0-14-051250-0 == External links == Philosophy Pages: C. L. Stevenson Philosophy Pages: Emotivism Notes by Dr. Doug Portmore on Stevenson's Emotivism

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (French: [mɔʁis mɛʁlo pɔ̃ti, moʁ-]; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in the human experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science. Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the perceiving body and its perceived world could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call "indirect ontology" or the ontology of "the flesh of the world" (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, "Eye and Mind". Merleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely understood as defense of the Soviet farce trials. Slavoj Zizek opines that it avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps modernes. == Life == Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (diplôme d'études supérieures, roughly equivalent to a M.A. thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930. Merleau-Ponty was raised as a Roman Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist author and philosopher Gabriel Marcel and wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Catholic Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political doctrine of the Catholic Church.An article published in the French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.Merleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the Caisse nationale de la recherche scientifique. From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology. In the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France declared war on Nazi Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French Army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called "Under the Boot". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazi forces during the liberation of Paris. After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair. Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist journal Les Temps modernes from its founding in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth, he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. E. K. Kuby states that while Merleau-Ponty was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet farce trials and political violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. Kuby states that, about three years after that, however, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, rejected Marxism, and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces. Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne. == Thought == === Consciousness === In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming". The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world. === The primacy of perception === From the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the "Lebenswelt"). This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism). The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis. === Corporeity === Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension. Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: "Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose" (1962, p. 440). === Spatiality === The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory. === Language === The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life. He carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry, and music. This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought. As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology. === Art === Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language (le langage parlé et le langage parlant) (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (le langage parlé), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (le langage parlant), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense. It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions. The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.) For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature. === Science === In his essay Cézanne's Doubt, in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain. Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena". == Influence == === Anticognitivist cognitive science === Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science. Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition. With the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including Ron McClamrock, Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995) Andy Clark, Being There (1997) Jean Petitot et al. (eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology (1999) Alva Noë, Action in Perception (2004) Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005) Franck Grammont, Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.), Naturalizing Intention in Action (2010) The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences === Feminist philosophy === Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and Sara Heinämaa. Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.) Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay "Throwing Like a Girl," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot". === Ecophenomenology === Ecophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003). This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" (chair) as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh" and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth", "the breathing biosphere" or "the more-than-human natural world". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that "language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest".Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')." This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on "econtology" as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of "ecophenomenology", ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking. == Bibliography == The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation. == See also == == Notes == == References == Abram, D. (1988). "Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20. Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press. Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press. Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, ISBN 978-1-138-83149-0. Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993. Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury. Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press. Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press. == External links == Quotations related to Maurice Merleau-Ponty at Wikiquote Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian O'Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty's Corrective to Postmodernism's "Subjects" of Education." Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O'Loughlin." Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.' The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org

Simone de Beauvoir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (UK: , US: ; French: [simɔn də bovwaʁ] (listen); 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy", The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She was also known for her novels, the most known including She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954). Her most enduring contribution to literature is her memoirs, notably the first volume, Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée (1958), which has a warmth and descriptive power. She also was a highly awarded woman, some of the most notable prizes being: 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature. Her life was not without controversy: she briefly lost her teaching job after being accused of sexually abusing some of her students. She and her long-time lover, Jean-Paul Sartre, along with numerous other French intellectuals, campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offenses and signed a petition which advocated the abolition of age of consent laws in France. == Early years == Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908 into a bourgeois Parisian family in the 6th arrondissement. Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a lawyer, who once aspired to be an actor, and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic. Simone had a sister, Hélène, who was born two years later on June 6, 1910. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school. Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!" Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on her dowry, and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself.She first worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss, when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure in preparation for the agrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination that serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for it that she met École Normale students Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or "beaver"). The jury for the agrégation narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam. Additionally, Beauvoir finished an exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" second to Simone Weil. Writing of her youth in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter she said: "...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual." === Secondary and post-secondary education === Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years at Lycée Fenelon. After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie. She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote her Diplôme d'Études Supérieures Spécialisées (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]). Her studies of political philosophy through university influenced her to start thinking of societal concerns. === Religious upbringing === Beauvoir was raised in a strict Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir questioned her faith as she saw many changes in the world after witnessing tragedies throughout her life. Consequently, she abandoned her faith in her early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of her life. To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself." == Middle years == From 1929 through 1943, Beauvoir taught at the lycée level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the Lycée Montgrand (Marseille), the Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc (Rouen), and the Lycée Molière (Paris) (1936–39).Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he intended to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so. During October 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became a couple. After they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis: One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease". Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in The Second Sex and elsewhere bore little resemblances to the marriage standards of the day. Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent". However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz. The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness. == Personal life == Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar lecturing with her chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life." Beginning in 1929, Beauvoir and Sartre were partners and remained so for 51 years, until his death in 1980. She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers. She lived with Claude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959.Perhaps her most famous lover was American author Nelson Algren. She met him in Chicago in 1947, she wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband." Algren won the National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's most prestigious literary prize for The Mandarins, in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring.When Beauvoir visited Algren in Chicago, Art Shay took well-known nude and portrait photos of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote a play based on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship. The play was stage read in 1999 in Chicago. === Allegations of sexual abuse === Beauvoir was bisexual, and her relationships with young women were controversial. French author Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (published in English under the title A Disgraceful Affair) that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s. Sartre and Beauvoir both groomed and sexually abused Lamblin. In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in 1939. Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 15), and Beauvoir's licence to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.In 1977, Beauvoir signed a petition seeking to completely remove the age of consent in France, a move which would ultimately lead to the loss of her teaching license. She, along with other French intellectuals, supported the freeing of three arrested paedophiles. The petition also explicitly addresses the 'Affaire de Versailles', where three adult men, Dejager (age 45), Gallien (age 43), and Burckhardt (age 39) raped minors from both genders aged 12–13. == Notable works == === She Came to Stay === Beauvoir published her first novel She Came to Stay in 1943. It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during the early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and married Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation – the relationship between the self and the other.In the novel, set just before the outbreak of World War II, Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.She Came to Stay was followed by many others, including The Blood of Others, which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in the Resistance in World War II. === Existentialist ethics === In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); it is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as Being and Nothingness. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance. === Les Temps Modernes === At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps Modernes, a political journal that Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death. === Sexuality, existentialist feminism and The Second Sex === The Second Sex, first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient"). With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes. Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential" Other.Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined as inferior to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", while Thomas Aquinas referred to women as "imperfect men" and the "incidental" being. She quotes "In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.Chapters of The Second Sex were originally published in Les Temps modernes, in June 1949. The second volume came a few months after the first in France. It was published soon after in America due to the quick translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with the French language, and a minimal understanding of philosophy (he was a professor of biology at Smith College), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message. For years, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars.Only in 2009 was there a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in 2010, reinstating a third of the original work.In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of The Second Sex, Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by the application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.Despite her contributions to the feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and her beliefs in women's economic independence and equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to call herself a feminist. However, after observing the resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beauvoir stated she no longer believed a socialist revolution to be enough to bring about women's liberation. She publicly declared herself a feminist in 1972 in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.In 2018 the manuscript pages of Le Deuxième Sexe were published. At the time her adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon-Beauvoir, a philosophy professor, described her mother's writing process: Beauvoir wrote every page of her books longhand first and only after that would hire typists. === The Mandarins === Published in 1954, The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. It is a roman à clef set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, to whom the book is dedicated.Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies. Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death. === Les Inséparables === Beauvoir's early novel Les Inséparables, long suppressed, was published in French in 2020 and two different English translations in 2021, by Sandra Smith in the US and Lauren Elkin in the UK. Written in 1954, the book describes her first love, a classmate named Elisabeth Lacoin ("Zaza") who died before age 22, and had as a teenager a "passionate and tragic" relationship with Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, then teaching at the same school. Disapproved by Sartre, the novel was deemed "too intimate" to be published during Beauvoir's lifetime. == Later years == Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in the United States and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She published several volumes of short stories, including The Woman Destroyed, which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging. 1980 saw the publication of When Things of the Spirit Come First, a set of short stories centered on and based upon women important to her earlier years. Though written long before the novel She Came to Stay, Beauvoir did not at the time consider the stories worth publishing, allowing some forty years to pass before doing so.Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to leave Les Temps modernes. Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's later years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to force to offer his opinions.Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Force of Circumstance (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: After the War and Hard Times), and All Said and Done. In 1964 Beauvoir published a novella-length autobiography, A Very Easy Death, covering the time she spent visiting her aging mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships. Her 1970 long essay La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age) is a rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about the age of 60.In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement. She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Some argue most of the women had not had abortions, including Beauvoir. Signatories were diverse as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, and Beauvoir's sister Poupette. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France. In a 1975 interview with Betty Friedan Beauvoir said "No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one."In about 1976 Beauvoir and Sylvie Le Bon made a trip to New York City in the United States to visit Kate Millett on her farm. In 1981 she wrote La Cérémonie des adieux (A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of Adieux, Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication. She contributed the piece "Feminism - Alive, Well, and in Constant Danger" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir Sylvie Le Bon, unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren. Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78. She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing. == Legacy == Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is considered a foundational work in the history of feminism. Beauvoir had denied being feminist multiple times but ultimately admitted that she was one after The Second Sex became crucial in the world of feminism. The work has had a profound influence, opening the way for second-wave feminism in the United States, Canada, Australia, and around the world. Although Beauvoir has been quoted as saying "There is a certain unreasonable demand that I find a little stupid because it would enclose me, immobilize me completely in a sort of feminist concrete block," her works on feminism have paved the way for all future feminists. The founders of the second-wave read The Second Sex in translation, including Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Ann Oakley and Germaine Greer. All acknowledged their profound debt to Beauvoir, including visiting her in France, consulting with her at crucial moments, and dedicating works to her. Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often regarded as the opening salvo of second-wave feminism in the United States, later said that reading The Second Sex in the early 1950s "led me to whatever original analysis of women's existence I have been able to contribute to the Women's movement and its unique politics. I looked to Simone de Beauvoir for a philosophical and intellectual authority."At one point in the early seventies, Beauvoir also aligned herself with the French League for Women's Rights as a means to campaign and fight against sexism in French society. Beauvoir's influence goes beyond just her impact on second-wave founders, and extends to numerous aspects of feminism, including literary criticism, history, philosophy, theology, criticism of scientific discourse, and psychotherapy. When Beauvoir first became involved with the feminism movement, one of her objectives was legalizing abortion. Donna Haraway wrote that, "despite important differences, all the modern feminist meanings of gender have roots in Simone de Beauvoir's claim that 'one is not born a woman [one becomes one].'" This "most famous feminist sentence ever written" is echoed in the title of Monique Wittig's 1981 essay One Is Not Born a Woman. Judith Butler took the concept a step further, arguing that Beauvoir's choice of the verb to become suggests that gender is a process, constantly being renewed in an ongoing interaction between the surrounding culture and individual choice.In Paris, Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir is a square where Beauvoir's legacy lives on. It is one of the few squares in Paris to be officially named after a couple. The pair lived close to the square at 42 rue Bonaparte. == Prizes == Prix Goncourt, 1954 Jerusalem Prize, 1975 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 1978 == Works == === List of publications (non-exhaustive) === L'Invitée (1943) (English – She Came to Stay) [novel] Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) [nonfiction] Le Sang des autres (1945) (English – The Blood of Others) [novel] Les Bouches inutiles (1945) (English - Who Shall Die?) [drama] Tous les hommes sont mortels (1946) (English – All Men Are Mortal) [novel] Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté (1947) (English – The Ethics of Ambiguity) [nonfiction] America Day by Day (1948) (English – 1999 – Carol Cosman (Translator and Douglas Brinkley (Foreword) [nonfiction] Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) (English – The Second Sex) [nonfiction] L'Amérique au jour le jour (1954) (English – America Day by Day) Les Mandarins (1954) (English – The Mandarins) [novel] Must We Burn Sade? (1955) The Long March (1957) [nonfiction] Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958) The Prime of Life (1960) Force of Circumstance (1963) A Very Easy Death (1964) Les Belles Images (1966) [novel] The Woman Destroyed (1967) [short stories] The Coming of Age (1970) [nonfiction] All Said and Done (1972) Old Age (1972) [nonfiction] When Things of the Spirit Come First (1979) [novel] Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (1981) Letters to Sartre (1990) Journal de guerre, Sept 1939 – Jan 1941 (1990); English – Wartime Diary (2009) A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren (1998) Diary of a Philosophy Student, 1926–27 (2006) Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 (2008) === Selected translations === Patrick O'Brian was Beauvoir's principal English translator, until he attained commercial success as a novelist. Beauvoir, Simone (1997), ""Introduction" to The Second Sex", in Nicholson, Linda (ed.), The second wave: a reader in feminist theory, New York: Routledge, pp. 11–18, ISBN 9780415917612. Philosophical Writings (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004, edited by Margaret A. Simons et al.) contains a selection of essays by Beauvoir translated for the first time into English. Among those are: "Pyrrhus and Cineas", discussing the futility or utility of action, two previously unpublished chapters from her novel She Came to Stay and an introduction to The Ethics of Ambiguity. == See also == List of women's rights activists French feminism == References == == Sources == Appignanesi, Lisa, 2005, Simone de Beauvoir, London: Haus, ISBN 1-904950-09-4. Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Thinking gender. Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-415-90042-3. OCLC 318223176.. Bair, Deirdre, 1990. Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. New York: Summit Books, ISBN 0-671-60681-6. Rowley, Hazel, 2005. Tête-a-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: HarperCollins. Suzanne Lilar, 1969. Le Malentendu du Deuxième Sexe (with collaboration of Prof. Dreyfus). Paris, University Presses of France (Presses Universitaires de France). Fraser, M., 1999. Identity Without Selfhood: Simone de Beauvoir and Bisexuality, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Axel Madsen, Hearts and Minds: The Common Journey of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, William Morrow & Co, 1977. Hélène Rouch, 2001–2002, Trois conceptions du sexe: Simone de Beauvoir entre Adrienne Sahuqué et Suzanne Lilar, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, n° 18, pp. 49–60. Seymour-Jones, Carole (2008). A Dangerous Liaison. Arrow Books. ISBN 978-0-09-948169-0.. Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Yourcenar, Nathalie Sarraute, 2002. Conférence Élisabeth Badinter, Jacques Lassalle & Lucette Finas, ISBN 2717722203. == Further reading == Le Malentendu du Deuxième Sexe by Suzanne Lilar, 1969. Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir by Toril Moi, 1990. Beauvoir, Simone de (2005), "Introduction from The Second Sex", in Cudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.), Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, Oxford, UK Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 27–36, ISBN 9781405116619. Appignanesi, Lisa. Simone de Beauvoir. London: Penguin. 1988. ISBN 0140087370. Bair, Deirdre. Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. New York: Summit Books. 1990. ISBN 0671606816. Coffin, Judith G. Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 2020. ISBN 9781501750540. Francis, Claude. Simone de Beauvoir: A Life, A Love Story. Lisa Nesselson (translator). New York: St. Martin's, 1987. ISBN 0312001894. Green, Karen (2022). Simone de Beauvoir. Cambridge University Press. Okely, Judith. Simone de Beauvoir. New York: Pantheon. 1986. ISBN 0394747658. == External links == Bergoffen, Debra. "Simone de Beauvoir". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Mussett, Shannon. "Simone de Beauvoir". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Works by or about Simone de Beauvoir at Internet Archive Madeleine Gobeil (Spring–Summer 1965). "Simone de Beauvoir, The Art of Fiction No. 35". Paris Review. Spring-Summer 1965 (34). Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles. Petri Liukkonen. "Simone de Beauvoir". Books and Writers Victoria Brittain et al discuss Simone de Beauvoir's lasting influence, ICA 1989 Mim Udovitch (6 December 1988). "Hot and Epistolary: 'Letters to Nelson Algren', by Simone de Beauvoir". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 June 2012. Louis Menand (26 September 2005). "Stand By Your Man: The strange liaison of Sartre and Beauvoir (Book review of the republished The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir)". newyorker.com. Retrieved 9 June 2012. Murray, Jenni (22 January 2008). "Simone de Beauvoir". Woman's Hour. BBC Radio 4. "Simone de Beauvoir", Great Lives, BBC Radio 4, 22 April 2011 Kate Kirkpatrick. (6 November 2017) "What is authentic love? A View from Simone de Beauvoir" . IAI News.

Willard van Orman Quine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine

Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". From 1930 until his death, Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978. Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. Quine was famous for his position that first order logic is the only kind worthy of the name, and developed his own system of mathematics and set theory, known as New Foundations. In philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities. However, he was the main proponent of the view that philosophy is not conceptual analysis, but continuous with science; the abstract branch of the empirical sciences. This led to his famous quip that "philosophy of science is philosophy enough". He led a "systematic attempt to understand science from within the resources of science itself" and developed an influential naturalized epistemology that tried to provide "an improved scientific explanation of how we have developed elaborate scientific theories on the basis of meager sensory input". He also advocated ontological relativity in science, known as the Duhem–Quine thesis. His major writings include the papers "On What There Is" (1948), which elucidated Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions and contains Quine's famous dictum of ontological commitment, "To be is to be the value of a variable", and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951), which attacked the traditional analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism, undermining the then-popular logical positivism, advocating instead a form of semantic holism. They also include the books The Web of Belief, which advocates a kind of coherentism, and Word and Object (1960), which further developed these positions and introduced Quine's famous indeterminacy of translation thesis, advocating a behaviorist theory of meaning. A 2009 poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries. He won the first Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy in 1993 for "his systematical and penetrating discussions of how learning of language and communication are based on socially available evidence and of the consequences of this for theories on knowledge and linguistic meaning". In 1996 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for his "outstanding contributions to the progress of philosophy in the 20th century by proposing numerous theories based on keen insights in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of language". Quine was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the United States National Academy of Sciences. == Biography == Quine grew up in Akron, Ohio, where he lived with his parents and older brother Robert Cloyd. His father, Cloyd Robert, was a manufacturing entrepreneur (founder of the Akron Equipment Company, which produced tire molds) and his mother, Harriett E., was a schoolteacher and later a housewife. Quine was an atheist when he was a teenager. === Education === Quine received his B.A. summa cum laude in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1930, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. His thesis supervisor was Alfred North Whitehead. He was then appointed a Harvard Junior Fellow, which excused him from having to teach for four years. During the academic year 1932–33, he travelled in Europe thanks to a Sheldon fellowship, meeting Polish logicians (including Stanislaw Lesniewski and Alfred Tarski) and members of the Vienna Circle (including Rudolf Carnap), as well as the logical positivist A. J. Ayer. It was in Prague that Quine developed a passion for philosophy, thanks to Carnap, whom he defined as his "true and only maître à penser". === World War II === Quine arranged for Tarski to be invited to the September 1939 Unity of Science Congress in Cambridge, for which the Jewish Tarski sailed on the last ship to leave Danzig before Nazi Germany invaded Poland and triggered World War II. Tarski survived the war and worked another 44 years in the US. During the war, Quine lectured on logic in Brazil, in Portuguese, and served in the United States Navy in a military intelligence role, deciphering messages from German submarines, and reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. Quine could lecture in French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, as well as his native English. === Personal === He had four children by two marriages. Guitarist Robert Quine was his nephew. Quine was politically conservative, but the bulk of his writing was in technical areas of philosophy removed from direct political issues. He did, however, write in defense of several conservative positions: for example, he wrote in defense of moral censorship; while, in his autobiography, he made some criticisms of American postwar academics. === Harvard === At Harvard, Quine helped supervise the Harvard graduate theses of, among others, David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Hao Wang, Hugues LeBlanc, Henry Hiz and George Myro. For the academic year 1964–1965, Quine was a fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University. In 1980 Quine received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden.Quine's student Dagfinn Føllesdal noted that Quine suffered from memory loss towards his final years. The deterioration of his short-term memory was so severe that he struggled to continue following arguments. Quine also had considerable difficulty in his project to make the desired revisions to Word and Object. Before passing away, Quine noted to Morton White: "I do not remember what my illness is called, Althusser or Alzheimer, but since I cannot remember it, it must be Alzheimer." He died from the illness on Christmas Day in 2000. == Work == Quine's Ph.D. thesis and early publications were on formal logic and set theory. Only after World War II did he, by virtue of seminal papers on ontology, epistemology and language, emerge as a major philosopher. By the 1960s, he had worked out his "naturalized epistemology" whose aim was to answer all substantive questions of knowledge and meaning using the methods and tools of the natural sciences. Quine roundly rejected the notion that there should be a "first philosophy", a theoretical standpoint somehow prior to natural science and capable of justifying it. These views are intrinsic to his naturalism. Like the majority of analytic philosophers, who were mostly interested in systematic thinking, Quine evinced little interest in the philosophical canon: only once did he teach a course in the history of philosophy, on David Hume, in 1946. === Logic === Over the course of his career, Quine published numerous technical and expository papers on formal logic, some of which are reprinted in his Selected Logic Papers and in The Ways of Paradox. His most well-known collection of papers is From A Logical Point of View. Quine confined logic to classical bivalent first-order logic, hence to truth and falsity under any (nonempty) universe of discourse. Hence the following were not logic for Quine: Higher-order logic and set theory. He referred to higher-order logic as "set theory in disguise"; Much of what Principia Mathematica included in logic was not logic for Quine. Formal systems involving intensional notions, especially modality. Quine was especially hostile to modal logic with quantification, a battle he largely lost when Saul Kripke's relational semantics became canonical for modal logics.Quine wrote three undergraduate texts on formal logic: Elementary Logic. While teaching an introductory course in 1940, Quine discovered that extant texts for philosophy students did not do justice to quantification theory or first-order predicate logic. Quine wrote this book in 6 weeks as an ad hoc solution to his teaching needs. Methods of Logic. The four editions of this book resulted from a more advanced undergraduate course in logic Quine taught from the end of World War II until his 1978 retirement. Philosophy of Logic. A concise and witty undergraduate treatment of a number of Quinian themes, such as the prevalence of use-mention confusions, the dubiousness of quantified modal logic, and the non-logical character of higher-order logic.Mathematical Logic is based on Quine's graduate teaching during the 1930s and 1940s. It shows that much of what Principia Mathematica took more than 1000 pages to say can be said in 250 pages. The proofs are concise, even cryptic. The last chapter, on Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Tarski's indefinability theorem, along with the article Quine (1946), became a launching point for Raymond Smullyan's later lucid exposition of these and related results. Quine's work in logic gradually became dated in some respects. Techniques he did not teach and discuss include analytic tableaux, recursive functions, and model theory. His treatment of metalogic left something to be desired. For example, Mathematical Logic does not include any proofs of soundness and completeness. Early in his career, the notation of his writings on logic was often idiosyncratic. His later writings nearly always employed the now-dated notation of Principia Mathematica. Set against all this are the simplicity of his preferred method (as exposited in his Methods of Logic) for determining the satisfiability of quantified formulas, the richness of his philosophical and linguistic insights, and the fine prose in which he expressed them. Most of Quine's original work in formal logic from 1960 onwards was on variants of his predicate functor logic, one of several ways that have been proposed for doing logic without quantifiers. For a comprehensive treatment of predicate functor logic and its history, see Quine (1976). For an introduction, see ch. 45 of his Methods of Logic. Quine was very warm to the possibility that formal logic would eventually be applied outside of philosophy and mathematics. He wrote several papers on the sort of Boolean algebra employed in electrical engineering, and with Edward J. McCluskey, devised the Quine–McCluskey algorithm of reducing Boolean equations to a minimum covering sum of prime implicants. === Set theory === While his contributions to logic include elegant expositions and a number of technical results, it is in set theory that Quine was most innovative. He always maintained that mathematics required set theory and that set theory was quite distinct from logic. He flirted with Nelson Goodman's nominalism for a while but backed away when he failed to find a nominalist grounding of mathematics.Over the course of his career, Quine proposed three axiomatic set theories. New Foundations, NF, creates and manipulates sets using a single axiom schema for set admissibility, namely an axiom schema of stratified comprehension, whereby all individuals satisfying a stratified formula compose a set. A stratified formula is one that type theory would allow, were the ontology to include types. However, Quine's set theory does not feature types. The metamathematics of NF are curious. NF allows many "large" sets the now-canonical ZFC set theory does not allow, even sets for which the axiom of choice does not hold. Since the axiom of choice holds for all finite sets, the failure of this axiom in NF proves that NF includes infinite sets. The consistency of NF relative to other formal systems adequate for mathematics is an open question, albeit that a number of candidate proofs are current in the NF community suggesting that NF is equiconsistent with Zermelo set theory without Choice. A modification of NF, NFU, due to R. B. Jensen and admitting urelements (entities that can be members of sets but that lack elements), turns out to be consistent relative to Peano arithmetic, thus vindicating the intuition behind NF. NF and NFU are the only Quinean set theories with a following. For a derivation of foundational mathematics in NF, see Rosser (1952); The set theory of Mathematical Logic is NF augmented by the proper classes of von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory, except axiomatized in a much simpler way; The set theory of Set Theory and Its Logic does away with stratification and is almost entirely derived from a single axiom schema. Quine derived the foundations of mathematics once again. This book includes the definitive exposition of Quine's theory of virtual sets and relations, and surveyed axiomatic set theory as it stood circa 1960.All three set theories admit a universal class, but since they are free of any hierarchy of types, they have no need for a distinct universal class at each type level. Quine's set theory and its background logic were driven by a desire to minimize posits; each innovation is pushed as far as it can be pushed before further innovations are introduced. For Quine, there is but one connective, the Sheffer stroke, and one quantifier, the universal quantifier. All polyadic predicates can be reduced to one dyadic predicate, interpretable as set membership. His rules of proof were limited to modus ponens and substitution. He preferred conjunction to either disjunction or the conditional, because conjunction has the least semantic ambiguity. He was delighted to discover early in his career that all of first order logic and set theory could be grounded in a mere two primitive notions: abstraction and inclusion. For an elegant introduction to the parsimony of Quine's approach to logic, see his "New Foundations for Mathematical Logic", ch. 5 in his From a Logical Point of View. === Metaphysics === Quine has had numerous influences on contemporary metaphysics. He coined the term "abstract object". He also coined the term "Plato's beard" to refer to the problem of empty names. ==== Rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction ==== In the 1930s and 40s, discussions with Rudolf Carnap, Nelson Goodman and Alfred Tarski, among others, led Quine to doubt the tenability of the distinction between "analytic" statements—those true simply by the meanings of their words, such as "No bachelor is married"— and "synthetic" statements, those true or false by virtue of facts about the world, such as "There is a cat on the mat." This distinction was central to logical positivism. Although Quine is not normally associated with verificationism, some philosophers believe the tenet is not incompatible with his general philosophy of language, citing his Harvard colleague B. F. Skinner and his analysis of language in Verbal Behavior. But Quine believes, with all due respect to his "great friend" Skinner, that the ultimate reason is to be found in neurology and not in behavior. For him, behavioral criteria establish only the terms of the problem, the solution of which, however, lies in neurology.Like other analytic philosophers before him, Quine accepted the definition of "analytic" as "true in virtue of meaning alone". Unlike them, however, he concluded that ultimately the definition was circular. In other words, Quine accepted that analytic statements are those that are true by definition, then argued that the notion of truth by definition was unsatisfactory. Quine's chief objection to analyticity is with the notion of cognitive synonymy (sameness of meaning). He argues that analytical sentences are typically divided into two kinds; sentences that are clearly logically true (e.g. "no unmarried man is married") and the more dubious ones; sentences like "no bachelor is married". Previously it was thought that if you can prove that there is synonymity between "unmarried man" and "bachelor", you have proved that both sentences are logically true and therefore self evident. Quine however gives several arguments for why this is not possible, for instance that "bachelor" in some contexts mean a Bachelor of Arts, not an unmarried man. ==== Confirmation holism and ontological relativity ==== Colleague Hilary Putnam called Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis "the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories". The central theses underlying it are ontological relativity and the related doctrine of confirmation holism. The premise of confirmation holism is that all theories (and the propositions derived from them) are under-determined by empirical data (data, sensory-data, evidence); although some theories are not justifiable, failing to fit with the data or being unworkably complex, there are many equally justifiable alternatives. While the Greeks' assumption that (unobservable) Homeric gods exist is false, and our supposition of (unobservable) electromagnetic waves is true, both are to be justified solely by their ability to explain our observations. The gavagai thought experiment tells about a linguist, who tries to find out, what the expression gavagai means, when uttered by a speaker of a yet unknown, native language upon seeing a rabbit. At first glance, it seems that gavagai simply translates with rabbit. Now, Quine points out that the background language and its referring devices might fool the linguist here, because he is misled in a sense that he always makes direct comparisons between the foreign language and his own. However, when shouting gavagai, and pointing at a rabbit, the natives could as well refer to something like undetached rabbit-parts, or rabbit-tropes and it would not make any observable difference. The behavioural data the linguist could collect from the native speaker would be the same in every case, or to reword it, several translation hypotheses could be built on the same sensoric stimuli. Quine concluded his "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" as follows: As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer …. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits. Quine's ontological relativism (evident in the passage above) led him to agree with Pierre Duhem that for any collection of empirical evidence, there would always be many theories able to account for it, known as the Duhem–Quine thesis. However, Duhem's holism is much more restricted and limited than Quine's. For Duhem, underdetermination applies only to physics or possibly to natural science, while for Quine it applies to all of human knowledge. Thus, while it is possible to verify or falsify whole theories, it is not possible to verify or falsify individual statements. Almost any particular statement can be saved, given sufficiently radical modifications of the containing theory. For Quine, scientific thought forms a coherent web in which any part could be altered in the light of empirical evidence, and in which no empirical evidence could force the revision of a given part. ==== Existence and its contrary ==== The problem of non-referring names is an old puzzle in philosophy, which Quine captured when he wrote, A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put into three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, moreover, in a word—'Everything'—and everyone will accept this answer as true. More directly, the controversy goes: How can we talk about Pegasus? To what does the word 'Pegasus' refer? If our answer is, 'Something', then we seem to believe in mystical entities; if our answer is, 'nothing', then we seem to talk about nothing and what sense can be made of this? Certainly when we said that Pegasus was a mythological winged horse we make sense, and moreover we speak the truth! If we speak the truth, this must be truth about something. So we cannot be speaking of nothing. Quine resists the temptation to say that non-referring terms are meaningless for reasons made clear above. Instead he tells us that we must first determine whether our terms refer or not before we know the proper way to understand them. However, Czesław Lejewski criticizes this belief for reducing the matter to empirical discovery when it seems we should have a formal distinction between referring and non-referring terms or elements of our domain. Lejewski writes further: This state of affairs does not seem to be very satisfactory. The idea that some of our rules of inference should depend on empirical information, which may not be forthcoming, is so foreign to the character of logical inquiry that a thorough re-examination of the two inferences [existential generalization and universal instantiation] may prove worth our while. Lejewski then goes on to offer a description of free logic, which he claims accommodates an answer to the problem. Lejewski also points out that free logic additionally can handle the problem of the empty set for statements like ∀ x F x → ∃ x F x \forall x\,Fx\rightarrow \exists x\,Fx . Quine had considered the problem of the empty set unrealistic, which left Lejewski unsatisfied. ==== Ontological commitment ==== The notion of ontological commitment plays a central role in Quine's contributions to ontology. A theory is ontologically committed to an entity if that entity must exist in order for the theory to be true. Quine proposed that the best way to determine this is by translating the theory in question into first-order predicate logic. Of special interest in this translation are the logical constants known as existential quantifiers ('∃'), whose meaning corresponds to expressions like "there exists..." or "for some...". They are used to bind the variables in the expression following the quantifier. The ontological commitments of the theory then correspond to the variables bound by existential quantifiers. For example, the sentence "There are electrons" could be translated as "∃x Electron(x)", in which the bound variable x ranges over electrons, resulting in an ontological commitment to electrons. This approach is summed up by Quine's famous dictum that "[t]o be is to be the value of a variable". Quine applied this method to various traditional disputes in ontology. For example, he reasoned from the sentence "There are prime numbers between 1000 and 1010" to an ontological commitment to the existence of numbers, i.e. realism about numbers. This method by itself is not sufficient for ontology since it depends on a theory in order to result in ontological commitments. Quine proposed that we should base our ontology on our best scientific theory. Various followers of Quine's method chose to apply it to different fields, for example to "everyday conceptions expressed in natural language". ==== Indispensability argument for mathematical realism ==== In philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability thesis, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities.The form of the argument is as follows. One must have ontological commitments to all entities that are indispensable to the best scientific theories, and to those entities only (commonly referred to as "all and only"). Mathematical entities are indispensable to the best scientific theories. Therefore, One must have ontological commitments to mathematical entities.The justification for the first premise is the most controversial. Both Putnam and Quine invoke naturalism to justify the exclusion of all non-scientific entities, and hence to defend the "only" part of "all and only". The assertion that "all" entities postulated in scientific theories, including numbers, should be accepted as real is justified by confirmation holism. Since theories are not confirmed in a piecemeal fashion, but as a whole, there is no justification for excluding any of the entities referred to in well-confirmed theories. This puts the nominalist who wishes to exclude the existence of sets and non-Euclidean geometry, but to include the existence of quarks and other undetectable entities of physics, for example, in a difficult position. === Epistemology === Just as he challenged the dominant analytic–synthetic distinction, Quine also took aim at traditional normative epistemology. According to Quine, traditional epistemology tried to justify the sciences, but this effort (as exemplified by Rudolf Carnap) failed, and so we should replace traditional epistemology with an empirical study of what sensory inputs produce what theoretical outputs: Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input—certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance—and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history. The relation between the meager input and the torrential output is a relation that we are prompted to study for somewhat the same reasons that always prompted epistemology: namely, in order to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one's theory of nature transcends any available evidence... But a conspicuous difference between old epistemology and the epistemological enterprise in this new psychological setting is that we can now make free use of empirical psychology. As previously reported, in other occasions Quine used the term "neurology" instead of "empirical psychology".Quine's proposal is controversial among contemporary philosophers and has several critics, with Jaegwon Kim the most prominent among them. == In popular culture == A computer program whose output is its own source code is called a "quine" after Quine. This usage was introduced by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Quine is a recurring character in the webcomic "Existential Comics". Quine was selected for inclusion in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's "Pantheon of Skeptics", which celebrates contributors to the cause of scientific skepticism. == Bibliography == === Selected books === 1934 A System of Logistic. Harvard Univ. Press. 1951 (1940). Mathematical Logic. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-55451-5. 1980 (1941). Elementary Logic. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-24451-6. 1982 (1950). Methods of Logic. Harvard Univ. Press. 1980 (1953). From a Logical Point of View. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-32351-3. Contains "Two dogmas of Empiricism." 1960 Word and Object. MIT Press; ISBN 0-262-67001-1. The closest thing Quine wrote to a philosophical treatise. Ch. 2 sets out the indeterminacy of translation thesis. 1969 (1963). Set Theory and Its Logic. Harvard Univ. Press. 1966. Selected Logic Papers. New York: Random House. 1976 (1966). The Ways of Paradox. Harvard Univ. Press. 1969 Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. Columbia Univ. Press. ISBN 0-231-08357-2. Contains chapters on ontological relativity, naturalized epistemology, and natural kinds. 1970 (2nd ed., 1978). With J. S. Ullian. The Web of Belief. New York: Random House. 1986 (1970). The Philosophy of Logic. Harvard Univ. Press. 1974 (1971). The Roots of Reference. Open Court Publishing Company ISBN 0-8126-9101-6 (developed from Quine's Carus Lectures). 1981. Theories and Things. Harvard Univ. Press. 1985. The Time of My Life: An Autobiography. Cambridge, The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-17003-5. 1987. Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-14-012522-1. A work of essays, many subtly humorous, for lay readers, very revealing of the breadth of his interests. 1992 (1990). Pursuit of Truth. Harvard Univ. Press. A short, lively synthesis of his thought for advanced students and general readers not fooled by its simplicity. ISBN 0-674-73951-5. 1995. From Stimulus to Science. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-32635-0. 2004. Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W V Quine. Harvard Univ. Press. 2008. Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays. Harvard Univ. Press. === Important articles === 1946, "Concatenation as a basis for arithmetic". Reprinted in his Selected Logic Papers. Harvard Univ. Press. 1948, "On What There Is", Review of Metaphysics 2(5) (JSTOR). Reprinted in his 1953 From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press. 1951, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", The Philosophical Review 60: 20–43. Reprinted in his 1953 From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press. 1956, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes", Journal of Philosophy 53. Reprinted in his 1976 Ways of Paradox. Harvard Univ. Press: 185–196. 1969, "Epistemology Naturalized" in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press: 69–90. "Truth by Convention", first published in 1936. Reprinted in the book, Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars, pp. 250–273, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949. == Filmography == Bryan Magee (host), Men of Ideas: "The Ideas of Quine", BBC, 1978. Rudolf Fara (host), In conversation: W.V. Quine (7 videocassettes), Philosophy International, Centre for Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics, 1994. == See also == Definitions of philosophy List of American philosophers == Notes == == Further reading == Gibson, Roger F., ed. (2004). The Cambridge companion to Quine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521639492. Gibson, Roger F. (1988). The Philosophy of W. V. Quine: An Expository Essay. Tampa: University of South Florida. Gibson, Roger F. (1988). Enlightened Empiricism: An Examination of W. V. Quine's Theory of Knowledge. Tampa: University of South Florida. Gibson, Roger F. (2004). Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine. Harvard University Press. Gibson, Roger F.; Barrett, R., eds. (1990). Perspectives on Quine. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Gochet, Paul, 1978. Quine en perspective, Paris, Flammarion. Godfrey-Smith, Peter, 2003. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton University Press. Grice, Paul and Peter Strawson. "In Defense of a Dogma". The Philosophical Review 65 (1965). Hahn, L. E., and Schilpp, P. A., eds., 1986. The Philosophy of W. V. O. Quine (The Library of Living Philosophers). Open Court. Köhler, Dieter, 1999/2003. Sinnesreize, Sprache und Erfahrung: eine Studie zur Quineschen Erkenntnistheorie. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Heidelberg. MacFarlane, Alistair (March–April 2013). "W. V. O. Quine (1908-2000)". Philosophy Now. 95: 35–36. Murray Murphey, The Development of Quine's Philosophy (Heidelberg, Springer, 2012) (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 291). Orenstein, Alex (2002). W.V. Quine. Princeton University Press. Putnam, Hilary. "The Greatest Logical Positivist". Reprinted in Realism with a Human Face, ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Rosser, John Barkley, "The axiom of infinity in Quine's new foundations", Journal of Symbolic Logic 17 (4):238–242, 1952. Valore, Paolo, 2001. Questioni di ontologia quineana, Milano: Cusi. Verhaeg, Sander (2018). Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quine's Naturalism. Oxford University Press. == External links == WVQuine.org Willard Van Orman Quine at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Quine's Rejection of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Quine's Philosophy of Science" at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Quine's New Foundations at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Willard Van Orman Quine at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Obituary from The Guardian Summary and Explanation of "On What There Is" "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" "On Simple Theories Of A Complex World"

A.J. Ayer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Ayer

Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer ( AIR; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). Ayer was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford, after which he studied the philosophy of logical positivism at the University of Vienna. From 1933 to 1940 he lectured on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford.During the Second World War Ayer was a Special Operations Executive and MI6 agent.Ayer was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London from 1946 until 1959, after which he returned to Oxford to become Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952 and knighted in 1970. He was known for his advocacy of humanism, and was the second president of the British Humanist Association (now known as Humanists UK). Ayer was president of the Homosexual Law Reform Society for a time; he remarked, "as a notorious heterosexual I could never be accused of feathering my own nest." == Life == Ayer was born in St John's Wood, in north west London, to Jules Louis Cyprien Ayer and Reine (née Citroen), wealthy parents from continental Europe. His mother was from the Dutch-Jewish family that founded the Citroën car company in France; his father was a Swiss Calvinist financier who worked for the Rothschild family, including for their bank and as secretary to Alfred Rothschild.Ayer was educated at Ascham St Vincent's School, a former boarding preparatory school for boys in the seaside town of Eastbourne in Sussex, where he started boarding at the relatively early age of seven for reasons to do with the First World War, and at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar. At Eton Ayer first became known for his characteristic bravado and precocity. Though primarily interested in his intellectual pursuits, he was very keen on sports, particularly rugby, and reputedly played the Eton Wall Game very well. In the final examinations at Eton, Ayer came second in his year, and first in classics. In his final year, as a member of Eton's senior council, he unsuccessfully campaigned for the abolition of corporal punishment at the school. He won a classics scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. He graduated with a BA with first-class honours. After graduating from Oxford, Ayer spent a year in Vienna, returned to England and published his first book, Language, Truth and Logic, in 1936. The first exposition in English of logical positivism as newly developed by the Vienna Circle, this made Ayer at age 26 the enfant terrible of British philosophy. As a newly famous intellectual, he played a prominent role in the Oxford by-election campaign of 1938. Ayer campaigned first for the Labour candidate Patrick Gordon Walker, and then for the joint Labour-Liberal "Independent Progressive" candidate Sandie Lindsay, who ran on an anti-appeasement platform against the Conservative candidate, Quintin Hogg, who ran as the appeasement candidate. The by-election, held on 27 October 1938, was quite close, with Hogg winning narrowly.In the Second World War, Ayer served as an officer in the Welsh Guards, chiefly in intelligence (Special Operations Executive (SOE) and MI6). He was commissioned second lieutenant into the Welsh Guards from Officer Cadet Training Unit on 21 September 1940.After the war, Ayer briefly returned to the University of Oxford where he became a fellow and Dean of Wadham College. He then taught philosophy at London University from 1946 until 1959, when he also started to appear on radio and television. He was an extrovert and social mixer who liked dancing and attending clubs in London and New York. He was also obsessed with sport: he had played rugby for Eton, and was a noted cricketer and a keen supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football team, where he was for many years a season ticket holder. For an academic, Ayer was an unusually well-connected figure in his time, with close links to 'high society' and the establishment. Presiding over Oxford high-tables, he is often described as charming, but could also be intimidating.Ayer was married four times to three women. His first marriage was from 1932 to 1941, to (Grace Isabel) Renée, with whom he had a son—allegedly in fact the son of Ayer's friend and colleague Stuart Hampshire—and a daughter. Renée subsequently married Hampshire. In 1960, Ayer married Alberta Constance (Dee) Wells, with whom he had one son. That marriage was dissolved in 1983, and the same year, Ayer married Vanessa Salmon, the former wife of politician Nigel Lawson. She died in 1985, and in 1989 Ayer remarried Wells, who survived him. He also had a daughter with Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham Westbrook.In 1950, Ayer attended the founding meeting of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in West Berlin, though he later said he went only because of the offer of a "free trip". He gave a speech on why John Stuart Mill's conceptions of liberty and freedom were still valid in the 20th century. Together with the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ayer fought against Arthur Koestler and Franz Borkenau, arguing that they were far too dogmatic and extreme in their anti-communism, in fact proposing illiberal measures in the defense of liberty. Adding to the tension was the location in West Berlin, together with the fact that the Korean War began on 25 June 1950, the fourth day of the congress, giving a feeling that the world was on the brink of war.From 1959 to his retirement in 1978, Ayer held the Wykeham Chair, Professor of Logic at Oxford. He was knighted in 1970. After his retirement, Ayer taught or lectured several times in the United States, including as a visiting professor at Bard College in 1987. At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer confronted Mike Tyson, who was forcing himself upon the then little-known model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, Tyson reportedly asked, "Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world", to which Ayer replied, "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both preeminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men". Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, allowing Campbell to slip out. Ayer was also involved in politics, including anti-Vietnam War activism, supporting the Labour Party (and later the Social Democratic Party), chairing the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination in Sport, and serving as president of the Homosexual Law Reform Society.In 1988, a year before his death, Ayer wrote an article titled "What I saw when I was dead", describing an unusual near-death experience. Of the experience, he first said that it "slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death ... will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be." A few weeks later, he revised this, saying, "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief".Ayer died on 27 June 1989. From 1980 to 1989 he lived at 51 York Street, Marylebone, where a memorial plaque was unveiled on 19 November 1995. == Philosophical ideas == In Language, Truth and Logic (1936), Ayer presents the verification principle as the only valid basis for philosophy. Unless logical or empirical verification is possible, statements like "God exists" or "charity is good" are not true or untrue but meaningless, and may thus be excluded or ignored. Religious language in particular is unverifiable and as such literally nonsense. He also criticises C. A. Mace's opinion that metaphysics is a form of intellectual poetry. The stance that a belief in God denotes no verifiable hypothesis is sometimes referred to as igtheism (for example, by Paul Kurtz). In later years, Ayer reiterated that he did not believe in God and began to call himself an atheist. He followed in the footsteps of Bertrand Russell by debating religion with the Jesuit scholar Frederick Copleston. Ayer's version of emotivism divides "the ordinary system of ethics" into four classes: "Propositions that express definitions of ethical terms, or judgements about the legitimacy or possibility of certain definitions" "Propositions describing the phenomena of moral experience, and their causes" "Exhortations to moral virtue" "Actual ethical judgments"He focuses on propositions of the first class—moral judgments—saying that those of the second class belong to science, those of the third are mere commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered normative ethics as opposed to meta-ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy. Ayer argues that moral judgments cannot be translated into non-ethical, empirical terms and thus cannot be verified; in this he agrees with ethical intuitionists. But he differs from intuitionists by discarding appeals to intuition of non-empirical moral truths as "worthless" since the intuition of one person often contradicts that of another. Instead, Ayer concludes that ethical concepts are "mere pseudo-concepts": The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that money," I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, "You stole that money." In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, "You stole that money," in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks. … If now I generalise my previous statement and say, "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence that has no factual meaning—that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. … I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments. Between 1945 and 1947, together with Russell and George Orwell, Ayer contributed a series of articles to Polemic, a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater.Ayer was closely associated with the British humanist movement. He was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from 1947 until his death. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. In 1965, he became the first president of the Agnostics' Adoption Society and in the same year succeeded Julian Huxley as president of the British Humanist Association, a post he held until 1970. In 1968 he edited The Humanist Outlook, a collection of essays on the meaning of humanism. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. == Works == Ayer is best known for popularising the verification principle, in particular through his presentation of it in Language, Truth, and Logic. The principle was at the time at the heart of the debates of the so-called Vienna Circle, which Ayer had visited as a young guest. Others, including the circle's leading light, Moritz Schlick, were already writing papers on the issue. Ayer's formulation was that a sentence can be meaningful only if it has verifiable empirical import; otherwise, it is either "analytical" if tautologous or "metaphysical" (i.e. meaningless, or "literally senseless"). He started to work on the book at the age of 23 and it was published when he was 26. Ayer's philosophical ideas were deeply influenced by those of the Vienna Circle and David Hume. His clear, vibrant and polemical exposition of them makes Language, Truth and Logic essential reading on the tenets of logical empiricism; the book is regarded as a classic of 20th-century analytic philosophy and is widely read in philosophy courses around the world. In it, Ayer also proposes that the distinction between a conscious man and an unconscious machine resolves itself into a distinction between "different types of perceptible behaviour", an argument that anticipates the Turing test published in 1950 to test a machine's capability to demonstrate intelligence. Ayer wrote two books on the philosopher Bertrand Russell, Russell and Moore: The Analytic Heritage (1971) and Russell (1972). He also wrote an introductory book on the philosophy of David Hume and a short biography of Voltaire. Ayer was a strong critic of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. As a logical positivist, Ayer was in conflict with Heidegger's vast, overarching theories of existence. Ayer considered them completely unverifiable through empirical demonstration and logical analysis, and this sort of philosophy an unfortunate strain in modern thought. He considered Heidegger the worst example of such philosophy, which Ayer believed entirely useless. In Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Ayer accuses Heidegger of "surprising ignorance" or "unscrupulous distortion" and "what can fairly be described as charlatanism."In 1972–73, Ayer gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews, later published as The Central Questions of Philosophy. In the book's preface, he defends his selection to hold the lectureship on the basis that Lord Gifford wished to promote "natural theology, in the widest sense of that term", and that non-believers are allowed to give the lectures if they are "able reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers of and earnest inquirers after truth". He still believed in the viewpoint he shared with the logical positivists: that large parts of what was traditionally called philosophy—including metaphysics, theology and aesthetics—were not matters that could be judged true or false, and that it was thus meaningless to discuss them. In The Concept of a Person and Other Essays (1963), Ayer heavily criticized Wittgenstein's private language argument. Ayer's sense-data theory in Foundations of Empirical Knowledge was famously criticised by fellow Oxonian J. L. Austin in Sense and Sensibilia, a landmark 1950s work of common language philosophy. Ayer responded in the essay "Has Austin Refuted the Sense-datum Theory?", which can be found in his Metaphysics and Common Sense (1969). == Awards == Ayer was awarded a Knighthood as Knight Bachelor in the London Gazette on 1 January 1970. == Selected publications == 1936, Language, Truth, and Logic, London: Gollancz., 2nd ed., with new introduction (1946) OCLC 416788667 ISBN 978-0-14-118604-7 1936, "Causation and free will," The Aryan Path. 1940, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, London: Macmillan. OCLC 2028651 1954, Philosophical Essays, London: Macmillan. (Essays on freedom, phenomenalism, basic propositions, utilitarianism, other minds, the past, ontology.) OCLC 186636305 1957, "The conception of probability as a logical relation", in S. Korner, ed., Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics, New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications. 1956, The Problem of Knowledge, London: Macmillan. OCLC 557578816 1957, "Logical Positivism - A Debate" (with F. C. Copleston) in: Edwards, Paul, Pap, Arthur (eds.), A Modern Introduction to Philosophy; readings from classical and contemporary sources 1963, The Concept of a Person and Other Essays, London: Macmillan. (Essays on truth, privacy and private languages, laws of nature, the concept of a person, probability.) OCLC 3573935 1967, "Has Austin Refuted the Sense-Datum Theory?" Synthese vol. XVIII, pp. 117–140. (Reprinted in Ayer 1969). 1968, The Origins of Pragmatism, London: Macmillan. OCLC 641463982 1969, Metaphysics and Common Sense, London: Macmillan. (Essays on knowledge, man as a subject for science, chance, philosophy and politics, existentialism, metaphysics, and a reply to Austin on sense-data theory [Ayer 1967].) ISBN 978-0-333-10517-7 1971, Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage, London: Macmillan. OCLC 464766212 1972, Probability and Evidence, London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-12756-8 1972, Russell, London: Fontana Modern Masters. OCLC 186128708 1973, The Central Questions of Philosophy, London: Weidenfeld. ISBN 978-0-297-76634-6 1977, Part of My Life, London: Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-216017-9 1979, "Replies", in G. F. Macdonald, ed., Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer, With His Replies, London: Macmillan; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1980, Hume, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, London: Weidenfeld. 1984, Freedom and Morality and Other Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1984, More of My Life, London: Collins. 1986, Ludwig Wittgenstein, London: Penguin. 1986, Voltaire, New York: Random House. 1988, Thomas Paine, London: Secker & Warburg. 1990, The Meaning of Life and Other Essays, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1991, "A Defense of Empiricism" in: Griffiths, A. Phillips (ed.), A. J. Ayer: Memorial Essays (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements). Cambridge University Press. 1992, "Intellectual Autobiography" and Repiies in: Lewis Edwin Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of A.J. Ayer (The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXI), Open Court Publishing Co.*For more complete publication details see "The Philosophical Works of A. J. Ayer" (1979) and "Bibliography of the writings of A.J. Ayer" (1992). == See also == A priori knowledge List of British philosophers == References == === Footnotes === === Works cited === Ayer, A.J. (1989). "That undiscovered country", New Humanist, Vol. 104 (1), May, pp. 10–13. Rogers, Ben (1999). A.J. Ayer: A Life. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-3869-9. (Chapter one and a review by Hilary Spurling, The New York Times, 24 December 2000.) Wollheim, Richard (January 2011) [2004]. "Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules [Freddie]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39796. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) == Further reading == Jim Holt, "Positive Thinking" (review of Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 449 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 74–76. Ted Honderich, Ayer's Philosophy and its Greatness. Anthony Quinton, Alfred Jules Ayer. Proceedings of the British Academy, 94 (1996), pp. 255–282. Graham Macdonald, Alfred Jules Ayer, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 7 May 2005. Foster, John (1985), Ayer, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ISBN 0-7102-0602-X, 071020602X == External links == "Logical Positivism" (video) Men of Ideas interview with Bryan Magee (1978) "Frege, Russell, and Modern Logic" (video) The Great Philosophers interview with Bryan Magee (1987) Ayer's Elizabeth Rathbone Lecture on Philosophy & Politics Ayer entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy A.J. Ayer: Out of time by Alex Callinicos Works by A. J. Ayer at Open Library Works by or about A. J. Ayer at Internet Archive Appearance on Desert Island Discs - 3 August 1984 A. J. Ayer at IMDb

J.L. Austin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin

John Langshaw Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.Austin pointed out that we use language to do things as well as to assert things, and that the utterance of a statement like "I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as doing something—making a promise—rather than making an assertion about anything. Hence the name of one of his best-known works How to Do Things with Words. Austin, in providing his theory of speech acts, makes a significant challenge to the philosophy of language, far beyond merely elucidating a class of morphological sentence forms that function to do what they name. Austin's work ultimately suggests that all speech and all utterance is the doing of something with words and signs, challenging a metaphysics of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning. == Life == Austin was born in Lancaster, England, the second son of Geoffrey Langshaw Austin (1884–1971), an architect, and Mary Hutton Bowes-Wilson (1883–1948; née Wilson). In 1921 the family moved to Scotland, where Austin's father became the secretary of St Leonards School, St Andrews. Austin was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1924, earning a scholarship in Classics, and went on to study classics at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1929. In 1930 he received a First in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) and in the following year won the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose. In finals in 1933 he received a first in Literae Humaniores (Philosophy and Ancient History). Literae Humaniores introduced him to serious philosophy and gave him a lifelong interest in Aristotle. He undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford. Austin's early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Plato (especially the Theaetetus). His more contemporary influences included especially G. E. Moore, John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. The contemporary influences shaped their views about general philosophical questions on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgements we make. They took our specific judgements to be more secure than more general judgements. According to Guy Longworth writing in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "It's plausible that some aspects of Austin's distinctive approach to philosophical questions derived from his engagement with the last three [i.e., Moore, Wilson, and Prichard]."During World War II Austin served in the British Intelligence Corps. It has been said of him that, "he more than anybody was responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day intelligence" (reported in Warnock 1963: 9). Austin left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was honored for his intelligence work with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.After the war Austin became White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, as a Professorial Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Publishing little, his influence would largely make itself felt through his teaching in lectures and tutorials and, especially, his famous 'Saturday morning meetings'.Austin visited Harvard and Berkeley in the mid-fifties, in 1955 delivering the William James Lectures at Harvard that would become How to Do Things With Words, and offering a seminar on excuses whose material would find its way into "A Plea for Excuses". It was at this time that he met and befriended Noam Chomsky. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1956 to 1957. Austin died, shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer, at the age of 48. At the time of his death, he was developing a semantic theory based on sound symbolism, using the English gl-words as data. == Work == === How to Do Things with Words === How to Do Things with Words (1955/1962) is perhaps Austin's most influential work. In contrast to the positivist view, he argues, sentences with truth-values form only a small part of the range of utterances. After introducing several kinds of sentences which he asserts are neither true nor false, he turns in particular to one of these kinds of sentences, which he calls performative utterances or just "performatives". These he characterises by two features: Again, though they may take the form of a typical indicative sentence, performative sentences are not used to describe (or "constate") and are thus not true or false; they have no truth-value. Second, to utter one of these sentences in appropriate circumstances is not just to "say" something, but rather to perform a certain kind of action.He goes on to say that when something goes wrong in connection with a performative utterance it is, as he puts it, "infelicitous", or "unhappy" rather than false.The action which is performed when a 'performative utterance' is issued belongs to what Austin later calls a speech-act (more particularly, the kind of action Austin has in mind is what he subsequently terms the illocutionary act). For example, if you say "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," and the circumstances are appropriate in certain ways, then you will have done something special, namely, you will have performed the act of naming the ship. Other examples include: "I take this man as my lawfully wedded husband," used in the course of a marriage ceremony, or "I bequeath this watch to my brother," as occurring in a will. In all three cases the sentence is not being used to describe or state what one is 'doing', but being used to actually 'do' it. After numerous attempts to find more characteristics of performatives, and after having met with many difficulties, Austin makes what he calls a "fresh start", in which he considers "more generally the senses in which to say something may be to do something, or in saying something we do something". For example: John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says 'Is Jeff's shirt red?', to which Sue replies 'Yes'. John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John's utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English—that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff's shirt, and to the colour red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution—it is the act of saying something. John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue. Asking a question is an example of what Austin called an illocutionary act. Other examples would be making an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something. Eliciting an answer is an example of what Austin calls a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution. In the theory of speech acts, attention has especially focused on the illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, and only rarely on the subdivision of the locution into phone, pheme and rheme. How to Do Things With Words is based on lectures given at Oxford between 1951 and 1954, and then at Harvard in 1955. === Performative utterance === According to J. L. Austin, "performative utterance" refers to a not truth-valuable action of "performing", or "doing" a certain action. For example, when people say "I promise to do so and so", they are generating the action of making a promise. In this case, without any flaw (the promise is flawlessly fulfilled), the "performative utterance" is "happy", or to use J. L. Austin's word, "felicitous"; if on the other hand, one fails to do what he or she promised, it can be "unhappy", or "infelicitous". Notice that performative utterance is not truth-valuable, which means nothing said can be judged based on truth or falsity. There are four types of performatives according to Austin: explicit, implicit, primitive, and inexplicit. "How to Do Things With Words", edited by J. O. Urmson and Marina Bissau, records Austin's lectures on this topic. In this book, Austin offers examples for each type of performative mentioned above. For explicit performative, he mentioned "I apologize", "I criticize" (Page 83), which are so explicit to receivers that it would not make sense for someone to ask "Does he really mean that?". Inexplicit performatives are the opposite, where the receiver will have understandable doubts. For a primary performative, the example Austin gave is "I shall be there". Compared with explicit performatives, there is uncertainty in implicit performatives. People might ask if he or she is promising to be there with primary performatives, however, this uncertainty is not strong enough as in explicit performatives. Most examples given are explicit because they are easy to identify and observe, and identifying other performatives requires comparison and contrast with explicit performatives. === Sense and Sensibilia === In the posthumously published Sense and Sensibilia (the title is Austin's own, and wittily echoes the title of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first book, just as his name echoes hers), Austin criticizes the claims put forward by A. J. Ayer's The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940), and to a lesser extent, H. H. Price's Perception (1932) and G. J. Warnock's Berkeley (1953), concerning the sense-data theory. He states that perceptual variation, which can be attributed to physical causes, does not involve a figurative disconnection between sense and reference, due to an unreasonable separation of parts from the perceived object. Central to his argument, he shows that "there is no one kind of thing that we 'perceive' but many different kinds, the number being reducible if at all by scientific investigation and not by philosophy" (Austin 1962a, 4). Austin argues that Ayer fails to understand the proper function of such words as "illusion", "delusion", "hallucination", "looks", "appears" and "seems", and uses them instead in a "special way...invented by philosophers." According to Austin, normally these words allow us to express reservations about our commitment to the truth of what we are saying, and that the introduction of sense-data adds nothing to our understanding of or ability to talk about what we see. As an example, Austin examines the word 'real' and contrasts the ordinary meanings of that word based on everyday language and the ways it is used by sense-data theorists. In order to determine the meaning of 'real' we have to consider, case by case, the ways and contexts in which it is used. By observing that it is (i) a substantive-hungry word that is sometimes (ii) an adjuster-word, as well as (iii) a dimension-word and (iv) a word whose negative use "wears the trousers," Austin highlights its complexities. Only by doing so, according to Austin, can we avoid introducing false dichotomies. === Philosophical Papers === Austin's papers were collected and published posthumously as Philosophical Papers by J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock. The book originally contained ten papers, two more being added in the second edition and one in the third. His paper Excuses has had a massive impact on criminal law theory. Chapters 1 and 3 study how a word may have different, but related, senses. Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the nature of knowledge, focusing on performative utterance. Chapters 5 and 6 study the correspondence theory, where a statement is true when it corresponds to a fact. Chapters 6 and 10 concern the doctrine of speech acts. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 reflect on the problems that language encounters in discussing actions and considering the cases of excuses, accusations, and freedom. === "Are there A Priori Concepts?" === This early paper contains a broad criticism of Idealism. The question set dealing with the existence of a priori concepts is treated only indirectly, by dismissing the concept of concept that underpins it. The first part of this paper takes the form of a reply to an argument for the existence of Universals: from observing that we do use words such as "grey" or "circular" and that we use a single term in each case, it follows that there must be a something that is named by such terms—a universal. Furthermore, since each case of "grey" or "circular" is different, it follows that universals themselves cannot be sensed. Austin carefully dismantles this argument, and in the process other transcendental arguments. He points out first that universals are not "something we stumble across", and that they are defined by their relation to particulars. He continues by pointing out that, from the observation that we use "grey" and "circular" as if they were the names of things, it simply does not follow that there is something that is named. In the process he dismisses the notion that "words are essentially proper names", asking "...why, if 'one identical' word is used, must there be 'one identical object' present which it denotes". In the second part of the article, he generalizes this argument against universals to address concepts as a whole. He points out that it is "facile" to treat concepts as if they were "an article of property". Such questions as "Do we possess such-and-such a concept" and "how do we come to possess such-and-such a concept" are meaningless, because concepts are not the sort of thing that one possesses. In the final part of the paper, Austin further extends the discussion to relations, presenting a series of arguments to reject the idea that there is some thing that is a relation. His argument likely follows from the conjecture of his colleague, S. V. Tezlaf, who questioned what makes "this" "that". === "The Meaning of a Word" === The Meaning of a Word is a polemic against doing philosophy by attempting to pin down the meaning of the words used, arguing that 'there is no simple and handy appendage of a word called "the meaning of the word (x)"'. Austin warns us to take care when removing words from their ordinary usage, giving numerous examples of how this can lead to error. === "Other Minds" === In Other Minds, one of his most highly acclaimed pieces, Austin criticizes the method that philosophers have used since Descartes to analyze and verify statements of the form "That person S feels X." This method works from the following three assumptions: (1) We can know only if we intuit and directly feel what he feels. (2) It is impossible to do so. (3) It may be possible to find strong evidence for belief in our impressions.Although Austin agrees with (2), quipping that "we should be in a pretty predicament if I did", he found (1) to be false and (3) to be therefore unnecessary. The background assumption to (1), Austin claims, is that if I say that I know X and later find out that X is false, I did not know it. Austin believes that this is not consistent with the way we actually use language. He claims that if I was in a position where I would normally say that I know X, if X should turn out to be false, I would be speechless rather than self-corrective. He gives an argument that this is so by suggesting that believing is to knowing as intending is to promising— knowing and promising are the speech-act versions of believing and intending respectively. === "A Plea for Excuses" === A Plea for Excuses is both a demonstration by example, and a defense of the methods of ordinary language philosophy, which proceeds on the conviction that: "...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth marking, in the lifetime of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonable practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchair of an afternoon—the most favourite alternative method."An example of such a distinction Austin describes in a footnote is that between the phrases "by mistake" and "by accident". Although their uses are similar, Austin argues that with the right examples we can see that a distinction exists in when one or the other phrase is appropriate. Austin proposes some curious philosophical tools. For instance, he uses a sort of word game for developing an understanding of a key concept. This involves taking up a dictionary and finding a selection of terms relating to the key concept, then looking up each of the words in the explanation of their meaning. This process is iterated until the list of words begins to repeat, closing in a "family circle" of words relating to the key concept. == Quotes == "The theory of truth is a series of truisms" - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. xxiv (1950). Philosophical Papers, p. 121, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970) "Sentences are not as such either true or false" - Sense and Sensibilia (1962), p. 111 "It is, of course, not really correct that a sentence ever is a statement: rather, it is used in making a statement, and the statement itself is a 'logical construction' out of the makings of statements." - How to Do Things with Words (1955): Lecture 1, page 1 footnote 1 The William James Lectures at Harvard University. Oxford at the Clarendon press. "Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with 'motive' or 'impulse', but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity." - A Plea for Excuses (1956) Published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956-7. Transcribed into hypertext by Andrew Chrucky, 23 August 2004. "A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. xxiv (1950) - Philosophical Papers, p. 120, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970) "We walk along the cliff, and I feel a sudden impulse to push you over, which I promptly do: I acted on impulse, yet I certainly intended to push you over, and may even have devised a little ruse to achieve it; yet even then I did not act deliberately, for I did not (stop to) ask myself whether to do it or not." - Philosophical Papers, "The Meaning of a Word," p. 195, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970). "You are more than entitled not to know what the word 'performative' means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favor, it is not a profound word." - "Performative Utterances." Philosophical Papers, p. 233, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970). "Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us." - Philosophical Papers, "Three Ways of Spilling Ink," p. 273, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970). "Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called 'vague.'" - Sense and Sensibilia, p. 126, Oxford University Press (1962). "But then we have to ask, of course, what this class comprises. We are given, as examples, 'familiar objects'--chairs, tables, pictures, books, flowers, pens, cigarettes; the expression 'material thing' is not here (or anywhere else in Ayer's text) further defined. But does the ordinary man believe that what he perceives is (always) something like furniture, or like these other 'familiar objects'—moderate-sized specimens of dry goods?" - Sense and Sensibilia, p. 8, Oxford University Press (1962). During a lecture at Columbia University attended by American philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah." (Some have quoted it as "Yeah, right.") == Publications == === Books === ==== Authored ==== Philosophical Papers, 1961, 1970, 1979, (eds. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock), Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-824627-7 (= Austin 1979) How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, 1962 (eds. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà), Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-674-41152-8 Sense and Sensibilia, 1962 (ed. G. J. Warnock), Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-824579-3 ==== Translated ==== The Foundations of Arithmetic. A logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1950) by Gottlob Frege, Translation J. L. Austin. UIN: BLL01001320611. === Papers and articles === 1930s–1940s, "The Line and the Cave in Plato's Republic," reconstructed from notes by J. O. Urmson, in Austin 1979. 1938ms, extracts in: Price, A. (2018) "J. L. Austin's Lecture Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics: Making Sense of Aristotle on Akrasia." In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, V. 55. 1939ms/1967, "Agathon and Eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle," in J. M. E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle, New York: Doubleday. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1939, "Are There A Priori Concepts?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 18: 83–105. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1940ms, "The Meaning of Words," in Austin 1979. 1946, "Other Minds," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 20: 148–187. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1950, "Truth," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24: 111–128. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1953, "How to Talk—some simple ways" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 53: 227–246. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1954ms, "Unfair to Facts," in Austin 1979. 1956a, "Ifs and Cans," Proceedings of the British Academy. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1956b, "Performative Utterances," corrected transcript of an unscripted radio talk delivered in the Third Programme of the BBC. In Austin 1979. 1957, "A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57: 1–30. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1958, "Pretending" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 32: 261–278. Reprinted in Austin 1979. 1962, "Performatif-Constatif," in Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie No. IV, La Philosophie Analytique, Les Editions de Minuit. Translated in 1963 as"Performative-Constative" by G. J. Warnock, in C. E. Caton ed., Philosophy and Ordinary Language, University of Illinois Press. 1966, "Three Ways of Spilling Ink", L. W. Forguson (ed.), The Philosophical Review, 75 (4): 427–440. Reprinted in Austin 1979. == See also == == References == == Further reading == Berlin, I. et al., (ed.) (1973) Essays on J.L. Austin, Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Cavell, S. (1990), The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York: Oxford University Press. (The major work by one of Austin's most prominent heirs. Takes ordinary language approaches to issues of skepticism, but also makes those approaches a subject of scrutiny). Fann, K.T., ed. (1969), Symposium on J.L. Austin, New York: Humanities Press. Friggieri, Joe (1993), " Linguaggio e azione. Saggio su J. L. Austin", Milano: Vita e Pensiero Friggieri, Joe (1991), "Actions and Speech Actions: In the Philosophy of J. L. Austin", Msida: Mireva Publications Garvey, Brian, ed. (2004), J. L. Austin on Language, Palgrave, Houndmills (UK). (Includes Remembering J. L. Austin by Austin's younger sister, Ann Lendrum, and Recollections of J. L. Austin by John Searle). Gustafsson, M. and Sørli, R. (2011), The Philosophy of J. L. Austin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (anthology of philosophical essays on Austin's work). Kirkham, R. (1992, reprinted 1995), Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-61108-2. (Chapter 4 contains a detailed discussion of Austin's theory of truth). Passmore, J. (1966), A Hundred Years of Philosophy, rev. ed. New York: Basic Books. (Chapter 18 includes a perceptive exposition of Austin's philosophical project). Pitcher, G. (1973), "Austin: a personal memoir" in Essays on J.L. Austin, ed. Berlin, I. et al. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Putnam, H. (1999), "The Importance of Being Austin: The Need of a 'Second Näivetē'" Lecture Two in The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World New York: Columbia University Press. (In arguing for "naive realism", Putnam invokes Austin's handling of sense-data theories and their reliance on arguments from perceptual illusion in Sense and Sensibilia, which Putnam calls "one of the most unjustly neglected classics of analytics philosophy"). Rowe, M. W. (2023), J.L. Austin: Philosopher and D-Day Intelligence Officer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Searle, J. (1969), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Searle's has been the most notable of attempts to extend and adjust Austin's conception of speech acts). Searle, J. (1979), Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Soames, S. (2005), Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume II: The Age of Meaning. Princeton: Princeton UP. (Contains a large section on ordinary language philosophy, and a chapter on Austin's treatment of skepticism and perception in Sense and Sensibilia). Warnock, G. J. (1969) "John Langshaw Austin, a biographical sketch", in Symposium on J. L. Austin, K.T. Fann (ed), New York: Humanities Press. Warnock, G. J. (1979), Philosophical Papers, Oxford: OUP (Clarendon Paperbacks), ISBN 019283021X Warnock, G. J. (1973), "Saturday Mornings" in Essays on J.L. Austin I. Berlin et al. (ed) Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Warnock, G. J. (1992), J. L. Austin, London: Routledge. == External links == J. L. Austin The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "John Langshaw Austin". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "J. L. Austin: A return to common sense" TLS Online 'Footnotes to Plato' article by Guy Longworth (on 'Austin's view that philosophers fail to understand everyday speech'). "Guy Longworth on J.L. Austin and Ordinary Language" Philosophy Bites (audio) interview. Lecture and Q&A session by J. L. Austin in Sweden (October 1959), uploaded by Harvard Philosophy Department to YouTube

Marshall McLuhan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives. == Life and career == McLuhan was born on July 21, 1911, in Edmonton, Alberta, and was named "Marshall" from his maternal grandmother's surname. His brother, Maurice, was born two years later. His parents were both also born in Canada: his mother, Elsie Naomi (née Hall), was a Baptist school teacher who later became an actress; and his father, Herbert Ernest McLuhan, was a Methodist with a real-estate business in Edmonton. When the business failed at the start of World War I, McLuhan's father enlisted in the Canadian Army. After a year of service, he contracted influenza and remained in Canada, away from the front lines. After Herbert's discharge from the army in 1915, the McLuhan family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Marshall grew up and went to school, attending Kelvin Technical School before enrolling in the University of Manitoba in 1928. === Undergraduate education === After studying for one year as an engineering student, he changed majors and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree (1933), winning a University Gold Medal in Arts and Sciences. He went on to receive a Master of Arts degree (1934) in English from the university as well. He had long desired to pursue graduate studies in England and was accepted by Trinity Hall, Cambridge, having failed to secure a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. Though having already earned his B.A. and M.A. in Manitoba, Cambridge required him to enroll as an undergraduate "affiliated" student, with one year's credit towards a three-year bachelor's degree, before entering any doctoral studies. He went up to Cambridge in the autumn of 1934, studied under I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis, and was influenced by New Criticism. Years afterward, upon reflection, he credited the faculty there with influencing the direction of his later work because of their emphasis on the "training of perception", as well as such concepts as Richards' notion of "feedforward". These studies formed an important precursor to his later ideas on technological forms. He received the required bachelor's degree from Cambridge in 1936 and entered their graduate program. === Conversion to Catholicism === At the University of Manitoba, McLuhan explored his conflicted relationship with religion and turned to literature to "gratify his soul's hunger for truth and beauty," later referring to this stage as agnosticism. While studying the trivium at Cambridge, he took the first steps toward his eventual conversion to Catholicism in 1937, founded on his reading of G. K. Chesterton. In 1935, he wrote to his mother:Had I not encountered Chesterton I would have remained agnostic for many years at least. Chesterton did not convince me of religious faith, but he prevented my despair from becoming a habit or hardening into misanthropy. He opened my eyes to European culture and encouraged me to know it more closely. He taught me the reasons for all that in me was simply blind anger and misery.At the end of March 1937, McLuhan completed what was a slow but total conversion process, when he was formally received into the Catholic Church. After consulting a minister, his father accepted the decision to convert. His mother, however, felt that his conversion would hurt his career and was inconsolable. McLuhan was devout throughout his life, but his religion remained a private matter. He had a lifelong interest in the number three (e.g., the trivium, the Trinity) and sometimes said that the Virgin Mary provided intellectual guidance for him. For the rest of his career, he taught in Catholic institutions of higher education. === Early career, marriage, and doctorate === Unable to find a suitable job in Canada, he went to the United States to take a job as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for the 1936–37 academic year. From 1937 to 1944, he taught English at Saint Louis University (with an interruption from 1939 to 1940 when he returned to Cambridge). There he taught courses on Shakespeare, eventually tutoring and befriending Walter J. Ong, who would write his doctoral dissertation on a topic that McLuhan had called to his attention, as well as become a well-known authority on communication and technology.McLuhan met Corinne Lewis in St. Louis, a teacher and aspiring actress from Fort Worth, Texas, whom he married on August 4, 1939. They spent 1939–40 in Cambridge, where he completed his master's degree (awarded in January 1940) and began to work on his doctoral dissertation on Thomas Nashe and the verbal arts. While the McLuhans were in England, World War II had erupted in Europe. For this reason, he obtained permission to complete and submit his dissertation from the United States, without having to return to Cambridge for an oral defence. In 1940, the McLuhans returned to Saint Louis University, where they started a family as he continued teaching. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in December 1943.He next taught at Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, from 1944 to 1946, then moved to Toronto in 1946 where he joined the faculty of St. Michael's College, a Catholic college of the University of Toronto, where Hugh Kenner would be one of his students. Canadian economist and communications scholar Harold Innis was a university colleague who had a strong influence on his work. McLuhan wrote in 1964: "I am pleased to think of my own book The Gutenberg Galaxy as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences, first of writing then of printing." === Later career and reputation === In the early 1950s, McLuhan began the Communication and Culture seminars at the University of Toronto, funded by the Ford Foundation. As his reputation grew, he received a growing number of offers from other universities. During this period, he published his first major work, The Mechanical Bride (1951), in which he examines the effect of advertising on society and culture. Throughout the 1950s, he and Edmund Carpenter also produced an important academic journal called Explorations. McLuhan and Carpenter have been characterized as the Toronto School of communication theory, together with Harold Innis, Eric A. Havelock, and Northrop Frye. During this time, McLuhan supervised the doctoral thesis of modernist writer Sheila Watson on the subject of Wyndham Lewis. Hoping to keep him from moving to another institute, the University of Toronto created the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCT) in 1963.From 1967 to 1968, McLuhan was named the Albert Schweitzer Chair in Humanities at Fordham University in the Bronx. While at Fordham, he was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, which was treated successfully. He returned to Toronto where he taught at the University of Toronto for the rest of his life and lived in Wychwood Park, a bucolic enclave on a hill overlooking the downtown where Anatol Rapoport was his neighbour.In 1970, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1975, the University of Dallas hosted him from April to May, appointing him to the McDermott Chair. Marshall and Corinne McLuhan had six children: Eric, twins Mary and Teresa, Stephanie, Elizabeth, and Michael. The associated costs of a large family eventually drove him to advertising work and accepting frequent consulting and speaking engagements for large corporations, including IBM and AT&T.Woody Allen's Oscar-winning Annie Hall (1977) featured McLuhan in a cameo as himself. In the film, a pompous academic is arguing with Allen in a cinema queue when McLuhan suddenly appears and silences him, saying, "You know nothing of my work." This was one of McLuhan's most frequent statements to and about those who disagreed with him. === Death === In September 1979, McLuhan suffered a stroke which affected his ability to speak. The University of Toronto's School of Graduate Studies tried to close his research centre shortly thereafter, but was deterred by substantial protests. McLuhan never fully recovered from the stroke and died in his sleep on December 31, 1980. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Thornhill, Ontario, Canada. == Major works == During his years at Saint Louis University (1937–1944), McLuhan worked concurrently on two projects: his doctoral dissertation and the manuscript that was eventually published in 1951 as a book, titled The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, which included only a representative selection of the materials that McLuhan had prepared for it. McLuhan's 1942 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation surveys the history of the verbal arts (grammar, logic, and rhetoric—collectively known as the trivium) from the time of Cicero down to the time of Thomas Nashe. In his later publications, McLuhan at times uses the Latin concept of the trivium to outline an orderly and systematic picture of certain periods in the history of Western culture. McLuhan suggests that the Late Middle Ages, for instance, were characterized by the heavy emphasis on the formal study of logic. The key development that led to the Renaissance was not the rediscovery of ancient texts, but a shift in emphasis from the formal study of logic to rhetoric and grammar. Modern life is characterized by the re-emergence of grammar as its most salient feature—a trend McLuhan felt was exemplified by the New Criticism of Richards and Leavis.McLuhan also began the academic journal Explorations with anthropologist Edmund "Ted" Carpenter. In a letter to Walter Ong, dated 31 May 1953, McLuhan reports that he had received a two-year grant of $43,000 from the Ford Foundation to carry out a communication project at the University of Toronto involving faculty from different disciplines, which led to the creation of the journal.At a Fordham lecture in 1999, Tom Wolfe suggested that a major under-acknowledged influence on McLuhan's work is the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose ideas anticipated those of McLuhan, especially the evolution of the human mind into the "noosphere." In fact, McLuhan warns against outright dismissing or whole-heartedly accepting de Chardin's observations early on in his second published book The Gutenberg Galaxy: This externalization of our senses creates what de Chardin calls the "noosphere" or a technological brain for the world. Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as in an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and super-imposed co-existence. In his private life, McLuhan wrote to friends saying: "I am not a fan of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The idea that anything is better because it comes later is surely borrowed from pre-electronic technologies." Further, McLuhan noted to a Catholic collaborator: "The idea of a Cosmic thrust in one direction ... is surely one of the lamest semantic fallacies ever bred by the word 'evolution'.… That development should have any direction at all is inconceivable except to the highly literate community."Some of McLuhan's main ideas were influenced or prefigured by anthropologists like Edward Sapir and Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguably with a more complex historical and psychological analysis. The idea of the retribalization of Western society by the far-reaching techniques of communication, the view on the function of the artist in society, and the characterization of means of transportation, like the railroad and the airplane, as means of communication, are prefigured in Sapir's 1933 article on Communication in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, while the distinction between "hot" and "cool" media draws from Lévi-Strauss' distinction between hot and cold societies. === The Mechanical Bride (1951) === McLuhan's first book, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951), is a pioneering study in the field now known as popular culture. In the book, McLuhan turns his attention to analysing and commenting on numerous examples of persuasion in contemporary popular culture. This followed naturally from his earlier work as both dialectic and rhetoric in the classical trivium aimed at persuasion. At this point, his focus shifted dramatically, turning inward to study the influence of communication media independent of their content. His famous aphorism "the medium is the message" (elaborated in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964) calls attention to this intrinsic effect of communications media.His interest in the critical study of popular culture was influenced by the 1933 book Culture and Environment by F. R. Leavis and Denys Thompson, and the title The Mechanical Bride is derived from a piece by the Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp. Like his later The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), The Mechanical Bride is composed of a number of short essays that may be read in any order—what he styled the "mosaic approach" to writing a book. Each essay begins with a newspaper or magazine article, or an advertisement, followed by McLuhan's analysis thereof. The analyses bear on aesthetic considerations as well as on the implications behind the imagery and text. McLuhan chose these ads and articles not only to draw attention to their symbolism, as well as their implications for the corporate entities who created and disseminated them, but also to mull over what such advertising implies about the wider society at which it is aimed. Roland Barthes's essays 1957 Mythologies, echoes McLuhan's Mechanical Bride, as a series of exhibits of popular mass culture (like advertisements, newspaper articles and photographs) that are analyzed in a semiological way. === The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) === Written in 1961 and first published by University of Toronto Press, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) is a pioneering study in the fields of oral culture, print culture, cultural studies, and media ecology. Throughout the book, McLuhan makes efforts to reveal how communication technology (i.e., alphabetic writing, the printing press, and the electronic media) affects cognitive organization, which in turn has profound ramifications for social organization: [I]f a new technology extends one or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all of our senses will occur in that particular culture. It is comparable to what happens when a new note is added to a melody. And when the sense ratios alter in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque, and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent. ==== Movable type ==== McLuhan's episodic history takes the reader from pre-alphabetic, tribal humankind to the electronic age. According to McLuhan, the invention of movable type greatly accelerated, intensified, and ultimately enabled cultural and cognitive changes that had already been taking place since the invention and implementation of the alphabet, by which McLuhan means phonemic orthography. (McLuhan is careful to distinguish the phonetic alphabet from logographic or logogramic writing systems, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs or ideograms.) Print culture, ushered in by the advance in printing during the middle of the 15th century when the Gutenberg press was invented, brought about the cultural predominance of the visual over the aural/oral. Quoting (with approval) an observation on the nature of the printed word from William Ivins' Prints and Visual Communication, McLuhan remarks: In this passage [Ivins] not only notes the ingraining of lineal, sequential habits, but, even more important, points out the visual homogenizing of experience of print culture, and the relegation of auditory and other sensuous complexity to the background.…The technology and social effects of typography incline us to abstain from noting interplay and, as it were, "formal" causality, both in our inner and external lives. Print exists by virtue of the static separation of functions and fosters a mentality that gradually resists any but a separative and compartmentalizing or specialist outlook. The main concept of McLuhan's argument (later elaborated upon in The Medium Is the Massage) is that new technologies (such as alphabets, printing presses, and even speech) exert a gravitational effect on cognition, which in turn, affects social organization: print technology changes our perceptual habits—"visual homogenizing of experience"—which in turn affects social interactions—"fosters a mentality that gradually resists all but a…specialist outlook". According to McLuhan, this advance of print technology contributed to and made possible most of the salient trends in the modern period in the Western world: individualism, democracy, Protestantism, capitalism, and nationalism. For McLuhan, these trends all reverberate with print technology's principle of "segmentation of actions and functions and principle of visual quantification." ==== Global village ==== In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called "electronic interdependence" wherein electronic media replaces visual culture with aural/oral culture. In this new age, humankind would move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a "tribal base." McLuhan's coinage for this new social organization is the global village.The term is sometimes described as having negative connotations in The Gutenberg Galaxy, but McLuhan was interested in exploring effects, not making value judgments: Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.… Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time.…In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture. Key to McLuhan's argument is the idea that technology has no per se moral bent—it is a tool that profoundly shapes an individual's and, by extension, a society's self-conception and realization: Is it not obvious that there are always enough moral problems without also taking a moral stand on technological grounds?…Print is the extreme phase of alphabet culture that detribalizes or decollectivizes man in the first instance. Print raises the visual features of alphabet to highest intensity of definition. Thus, print carries the individuating power of the phonetic alphabet much further than manuscript culture could ever do. Print is the technology of individualism. If men decided to modify this visual technology by an electric technology, individualism would also be modified. To raise a moral complaint about this is like cussing a buzz-saw for lopping off fingers. "But", someone says, "we didn't know it would happen." Yet even witlessness is not a moral issue. It is a problem, but not a moral problem; and it would be nice to clear away some of the moral fogs that surround our technologies. It would be good for morality. The moral valence of technology's effects on cognition is, for McLuhan, a matter of perspective. For instance, McLuhan contrasts the considerable alarm and revulsion that the growing quantity of books aroused in the latter 17th century with the modern concern for the "end of the book." If there can be no universal moral sentence passed on technology, McLuhan believes that "there can only be disaster arising from unawareness of the causalities and effects inherent in our technologies".Though the World Wide Web was invented almost 30 years after The Gutenberg Galaxy, and 10 years after his death, McLuhan prophesied the web technology seen today as early as 1962: The next medium, whatever it is—it may be the extension of consciousness—will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind. Furthermore, McLuhan coined and certainly popularized the usage of the term surfing to refer to rapid, irregular, and multidirectional movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge, e.g., statements such as "Heidegger surf-boards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave." Paul Levinson's 1999 book Digital McLuhan explores the ways that McLuhan's work may be understood better through using the lens of the digital revolution.McLuhan frequently quoted Walter Ong's Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (1958), which evidently had prompted McLuhan to write The Gutenberg Galaxy. Ong wrote a highly favorable review of this new book in America. However, Ong later tempered his praise, by describing McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy as "a racy survey, indifferent to some scholarly detail, but uniquely valuable in suggesting the sweep and depth of the cultural and psychological changes entailed in the passage from illiteracy to print and beyond." McLuhan himself said of the book, "I'm not concerned to get any kudos out of [The Gutenberg Galaxy]. It seems to me a book that somebody should have written a century ago. I wish somebody else had written it. It will be a useful prelude to the rewrite of Understanding Media [the 1960 NAEB report] that I'm doing now."McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy won Canada's highest literary award, the Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction, in 1962. The chairman of the selection committee was McLuhan's colleague at the University of Toronto and oftentime intellectual sparring partner, Northrop Frye. === Understanding Media (1964) === McLuhan's most widely-known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is a seminal study in media theory. Dismayed by the way in which people approach and use new media such as television, McLuhan famously argues that in the modern world "we live mythically and integrally…but continue to think in the old, fragmented space and time patterns of the pre-electric age."McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as "the medium is the message." McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of this concept. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles, or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence." More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society—in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example—the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it. ==== "Hot" and "cool" media ==== In the first part of Understanding Media, McLuhan states that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to consume a medium. Using a terminology derived from French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss' distinction between hot and cold societies, McLuhan argues that a cool medium requires increased involvement due to decreased description, while a hot medium is the opposite, decreasing involvement and increasing description. In other words, a society that appears to be actively participating in the streaming of content but not considering the effects of the tool is not allowing an "extension of ourselves." A movie is thus said to be "high definition," demanding a viewer's attention, while a comic book to be "low definition," requiring much more conscious participation by the reader to extract value: "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue."Some media, such as movies, are hot—that is, they enhance one single sense, in this case vision, in such a manner that a person does not need to exert much effort to perceive a detailed moving image. Hot media usually, but not always, provide complete involvement with considerable stimulus. In contrast, "cool" print may also occupy visual space, using visual senses, but requires focus and comprehension to immerse its reader. Hot media creation favour analytical precision, quantitative analysis and sequential ordering, as they are usually sequential, linear, and logical. They emphasize one sense (for example, of sight or sound) over the others. For this reason, hot media also include film (especially silent films), radio, the lecture, and photography. McLuhan contrasts hot media with cool—specifically, television [of the 1960s i.e. small black-and-white screens], which he claims requires more effort on the part of the viewer to determine meaning; and comics, which, due to their minimal presentation of visual detail, require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. Cool media are usually, but not always, those that provide little involvement with substantial stimulus. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Therefore, in addition to television, cool media include the seminar and cartoons. McLuhan describes the term cool media as emerging from jazz and popular music used, in this context, to mean "detached."This concept appears to force media into binary categories. However, McLuhan's hot and cool exist on a continuum: they are more correctly measured on a scale than as dichotomous terms. ==== Critiques of Understanding Media ==== Some theorists have attacked McLuhan's definition and treatment of the word "medium" for being too simplistic. Umberto Eco, for instance, contends that McLuhan's medium conflates channels, codes, and messages under the overarching term of the medium, confusing the vehicle, internal code, and content of a given message in his framework.In Media Manifestos, Régis Debray also takes issue with McLuhan's envisioning of the medium. Like Eco, he is ill at ease with this reductionist approach, summarizing its ramifications as follows: The list of objections could be and has been lengthened indefinitely: confusing technology itself with its use of the media makes of the media an abstract, undifferentiated force and produces its image in an imaginary "public" for mass consumption; the magical naivete of supposed causalities turns the media into a catch-all and contagious "mana"; apocalyptic millenarianism invents the figure of a homo mass-mediaticus without ties to historical and social context, and so on. Furthermore, when Wired magazine interviewed him in 1995, Debray stated that he views McLuhan "more as a poet than a historian, a master of intellectual collage rather than a systematic analyst.… McLuhan overemphasizes the technology behind cultural change at the expense of the usage that the messages and codes make of that technology."Dwight Macdonald, in turn, reproached McLuhan for his focus on television and for his "aphoristic" style of prose, which he believes leaves Understanding Media filled with "contradictions, non-sequiturs, facts that are distorted and facts that are not facts, exaggerations, and chronic rhetorical vagueness."Additionally, Brian Winston's Misunderstanding Media, published in 1986, chides McLuhan for what he sees as his technologically deterministic stances. Raymond Williams furthers this point of contention, claiming: The work of McLuhan was a particular culmination of an aesthetic theory which became, negatively, a social theory ... It is an apparently sophisticated technological determinism which has the significant effect of indicating a social and cultural determinism.… For if the medium – whether print or television – is the cause, all other causes, all that men ordinarily see as history, are at once reduced to effects. David Carr states that there has been a long line of "academics who have made a career out of deconstructing McLuhan’s effort to define the modern media ecosystem", whether it be due to what they see as McLuhan's ignorance toward sociohistorical context or the style of his argument.While some critics have taken issue with McLuhan's writing style and mode of argument, McLuhan himself urged readers to think of his work as "probes" or "mosaics" offering a toolkit approach to thinking about the media. His eclectic writing style has also been praised for its postmodern sensibilities and suitability for virtual space. === The Medium Is the Massage (1967) === The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, published in 1967, was McLuhan's best seller, "eventually selling nearly a million copies worldwide." Initiated by Quentin Fiore, McLuhan adopted the term "massage" to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, taking inventory of the "effects" of numerous media in terms of how they "massage" the sensorium.Fiore, at the time a prominent graphic designer and communications consultant, set about composing the visual illustration of these effects which were compiled by Jerome Agel. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a media effect was presented with a textual synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers—from "reading" typographic print to "scanning" photographic facsimiles—reinforcing McLuhan's overarching argument in this book: namely, that each medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium. In The Medium Is the Massage, McLuhan also rehashed the argument—which first appeared in the Prologue to 1962's The Gutenberg Galaxy—that all media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds. Finally, McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]", brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while "[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century," brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movies and television.The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backward into the future. Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land.An audio recording version of McLuhan's famous work was made by Columbia Records. The recording consists of a pastiche of statements made by McLuhan interrupted by other speakers, including people speaking in various phonations and falsettos, discordant sounds and 1960s incidental music in what could be considered a deliberate attempt to translate the disconnected images seen on TV into an audio format, resulting in the prevention of a connected stream of conscious thought. Various audio recording techniques and statements are used to illustrate the relationship between spoken, literary speech and the characteristics of electronic audio media. McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand called the recording "the 1967 equivalent of a McLuhan video.""I wouldn't be seen dead with a living work of art."—'Old man' speaking "Drop this jiggery-pokery and talk straight turkey."—'Middle aged man' speaking === War and Peace in the Global Village (1968) === In War and Peace in the Global Village, McLuhan used James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, an inspiration for this study of war throughout history, as an indicator as to how war may be conducted in the future. Joyce's Wake is claimed to be a gigantic cryptogram which reveals a cyclic pattern for the whole history of man through its Ten Thunders. Each "thunder" below is a 100-character portmanteau of other words to create a statement he likens to an effect that each technology has on the society into which it is introduced. In order to glean the most understanding out of each, the reader must break the portmanteau into separate words (and many of these are themselves portmanteaus of words taken from multiple languages other than English) and speak them aloud for the spoken effect of each word. There is much dispute over what each portmanteau truly denotes. McLuhan claims that the ten thunders in Wake represent different stages in the history of man: Thunder 1: Paleolithic to Neolithic. Speech. Split of East/West. From herding to harnessing animals. Thunder 2: Clothing as weaponry. Enclosure of private parts. First social aggression. Thunder 3: Specialism. Centralism via wheel, transport, cities: civil life. Thunder 4: Markets and truck gardens. Patterns of nature submitted to greed and power. Thunder 5: Printing. Distortion and translation of human patterns and postures and pastors. Thunder 6: Industrial Revolution. Extreme development of print process and individualism. Thunder 7: Tribal man again. All characters end up separate, private man. Return of choric. Thunder 8: Movies. Pop art, pop Kulch via tribal radio. Wedding of sight and sound. Thunder 9: Car and Plane. Both centralizing and decentralizing at once create cities in crisis. Speed and death. Thunder 10: Television. Back to tribal involvement in tribal mood-mud. The last thunder is a turbulent, muddy wake, and murk of non-visual, tactile man. === From Cliché to Archetype (1970) === Collaborating with Canadian poet Wilfred Watson in From Cliché to Archetype (1970), McLuhan approaches the various implications of the verbal cliché and of the archetype. One major facet in McLuhan's overall framework introduced in this book that is seldom noticed is the provision of a new term that actually succeeds the global village: the global theater. In McLuhan's terms, a cliché is a "normal" action, phrase, etc. which becomes so often used that we are "anesthetized" to its effects. McLuhan provides the example of Eugène Ionesco's play The Bald Soprano, whose dialogue consists entirely of phrases Ionesco pulled from an Assimil language book: "Ionesco originally put all these idiomatic English clichés into literary French which presented the English in the most absurd aspect possible."McLuhan's archetype "is a quoted extension, medium, technology, or environment." Environment would also include the kinds of "awareness" and cognitive shifts brought upon people by it, not totally unlike the psychological context Carl Jung described. McLuhan also posits that there is a factor of interplay between the cliché and the archetype, or a "doubleness:" Another theme of the Wake [Finnegans Wake] that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is 'past time are pastimes.' The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the 20th century, the number of 'past times' that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist's role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of 'doubleness' or 'interplay' because this type of hendiadys dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy. McLuhan relates the cliché-to-archetype process to the Theater of the Absurd: Pascal, in the seventeenth century, tells us that the heart has many reasons of which the head knows nothing. The Theater of the Absurd is essentially a communicating to the head of some of the silent languages of the heart which in two or three hundred years it has tried to forget all about. In the seventeenth century world the languages of the heart were pushed down into the unconscious by the dominant print cliché. The "languages of the heart," or what McLuhan would otherwise define as oral culture, were thus made archetype by means of the printing press, and turned into cliché. The satellite medium, McLuhan states, encloses the Earth in a man-made environment, which "ends 'Nature' and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed." All previous environments (book, newspaper, radio, etc.) and their artifacts are retrieved under these conditions ("past times are pastimes"). McLuhan thereby meshes this into the term global theater. It serves as an update to his older concept of the global village, which, in its own definitions, can be said to be subsumed into the overall condition described by that of the global theater. === The Global Village (1989) === In his posthumous book, The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (1989), McLuhan, collaborating with Bruce R. Powers, provides a strong conceptual framework for understanding the cultural implications of the technological advances associated with the rise of a worldwide electronic network. This is a major work of McLuhan's as it contains the most extensive elaboration of his concept of acoustic space, and provides a critique of standard 20th-century communication models such as the Shannon–Weaver model. McLuhan distinguishes between the existing worldview of visual space—a linear, quantitative, classically geometric model—and that of acoustic space—a holistic, qualitative order with an intricate, paradoxical topology: "Acoustic Space has the basic character of a sphere whose focus or center is simultaneously everywhere and whose margin is nowhere." The transition from visual to acoustic space was not automatic with the advent of the global network, but would have to be a conscious project. The "universal environment of simultaneous electronic flow" inherently favors right-brain Acoustic Space, yet we are held back by habits of adhering to a fixed point of view. There are no boundaries to sound. We hear from all directions at once. Yet Acoustic and Visual Space are, in fact, inseparable. The resonant interval is the invisible borderline between Visual and Acoustic Space. This is like the television camera that the Apollo 8 astronauts focused on the Earth after they had orbited the Moon. McLuhan illustrates how it feels to exist within acoustic space by quoting from the autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light. Lusseyran lost his eyesight in a violent accident as a child, and the autobiography describes how a reordering of his sensory life and perception followed:When I came upon the myth of objectivity in certain modern thinkers, it made me angry. So, there was only one world for these people, the same for everyone. And all the other worlds were to be counted as illusions left over from the past. Or why not call them by their name - hallucinations? I had learned to my cost how wrong they were. From my own experience I knew very well that it was enough to take from a man a memory here, an association there, to deprive him of hearing or sight, for the world to undergo immediate transformation, and for another world, entirely different, but entirely coherent, to be born. Another world? Not really. The same world, rather, but seen from a different angle, and counted in entirely new measures. When this happened all the hierarchies they called objective were turned upside down, scattered to the four winds, not even theories but like whims.Reading, writing, and hierarchical ordering are associated with the left brain and visual space, as are the linear concept of time and phonetic literacy. The left brain is the locus of analysis, classification, and rationality. The right brain and acoustic space are the locus of the spatial, tactile, and musical. "Comprehensive awareness" results when the two sides of the brain are in true balance. Visual Space is associated with the simplified worldview of Euclidean geometry, the intuitive three dimensions useful for the architecture of buildings and the surveying of land. It is linearly rational and has no grasp of the acoustic. Acoustic Space is multisensory. McLuhan writes about robotism in the context of Japanese Zen Buddhism and how it can offer us new ways of thinking about technology. The Western way of thinking about technology is too much related to the left hemisphere of our brain, which has a rational and linear focus. What he called robotism might better be called androidism in the wake of Blade Runner and the novels of Philip K. Dick. Robotism-androidism emerges from the further development of the right hemisphere of the brain, creativity and a new relationship to spacetime (most humans are still living in 17th-century classical Newtonian physics spacetime). Robots-androids will have much greater flexibility than humans have had until now, in both mind and body. Robots-androids will teach humanity this new flexibility. And this flexibility of androids (what McLuhan calls robotism) has a strong affinity with Japanese culture and life. McLuhan quotes from Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, an anthropological study of Japanese culture published in 1946:Occidentals cannot easily credit the ability of the Japanese to swing from one behavior to another without psychic cost. Such extreme possibilities are not included in our experience. Yet in Japanese life the contradictions, as they seem to us, are as deeply based in their view of life as our uniformities are in ours.The ability to live in the present and instantly readjust. ==== Beyond existing communication models ==== "All Western scientific models of communication are—like the Shannon–Weaver model—linear, sequential, and logical as a reflection of the late medieval emphasis on the Greek notion of efficient causality." McLuhan and Powers criticize the Shannon-Weaver model of communication as emblematic of left-hemisphere bias and linearity, descended from a print-era perversion of Aristotle's notion of efficient causality. A third term of The Global Village that McLuhan and Powers develop at length is The Tetrad. McLuhan had begun development on the Tetrad as early as 1974. The tetrad an analogical, simultaneous, four-fold pattern of transformation. "At full maturity the tetrad reveals the metaphoric structure of the artifact as having two figures and two grounds in dynamic and analogical relationship to each other." Like the camera focused on the Earth by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the tetrad reveals figure (Moon) and ground (Earth) simultaneously. The right-brain hemisphere thinking is the capability of being in many places at the same time. Electricity is acoustic. It is simultaneously everywhere. The Tetrad, with its fourfold Möbius topological structure of enhancement, reversal, retrieval and obsolescence, is mobilized by McLuhan and Powers to illuminate the media or technological inventions of cash money, the compass, the computer, the database, the satellite, and the global media network. == Key concepts == === Tetrad of media effects === In Laws of Media (1988), published posthumously by his son Eric, McLuhan summarized his ideas about media in a concise tetrad of media effects. The tetrad is a means of examining the effects on society of any technology (i.e., any medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium: What does the medium enhance? What does the medium make obsolete? What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departs from his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats," or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.Visually, a tetrad can be depicted as four diamonds forming an X, with the name of a medium in the centre. The two diamonds on the left of a tetrad are the Enhancement and Retrieval qualities of the medium, both Figure qualities. The two diamonds on the right of a tetrad are the Obsolescence and Reversal qualities, both Ground qualities. Using the example of radio: Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. Radio amplifies news and music via sound. Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces the importance of print and the visual. Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront. Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV. === Figure and ground === McLuhan adapted the Gestalt psychology idea of a figure and a ground, which underpins the meaning of "the medium is the message." He used this concept to explain how a form of communications technology, the medium, or figure, necessarily operates through its context, or ground. McLuhan believed that in order to grasp fully the effect of a new technology, one must examine figure (medium) and ground (context) together, since neither is completely intelligible without the other. McLuhan argued that we must study media in their historical context, particularly in relation to the technologies that preceded them. The present environment, itself made up of the effects of previous technologies, gives rise to new technologies, which, in their turn, further affect society and individuals.All technologies have embedded within them their own assumptions about time and space. The message which the medium conveys can only be understood if the medium and the environment in which the medium is used—and which, simultaneously, it effectively creates—are analysed together. He believed that an examination of the figure-ground relationship can offer a critical commentary on culture and society. === Opposition between optic and haptic perception === In McLuhan's (and Harley Parker's) work, electric media have an affinity with haptic and hearing perception, while mechanical media have an affinity with visual perception. This opposition between optic and haptic had been previously formulated by art historians Alois Riegl (in his 1901 Late Roman art industry) and then Erwin Panofsky (in his 1927 Perspective as Symbolic Form). Also Walter Benjamin, in his The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), observed how, in the scenario of perceptions of modern Western culture, from about the 19th century a shift began from the optic towards the haptic. This shift is one of the main recurring topics in McLuhan work, which McLuhan attributes to the advent of the electronic era. == Legacy == === Influence === After the publication of Understanding Media, McLuhan received an astonishing amount of publicity, making him perhaps the most publicized English teacher in the twentieth century and arguably the most controversial. This publicity began with the work of two California advertising executives, Howard Gossage and Gerald Feigen who used personal funds to fund their practice of "genius scouting". Much enamoured with McLuhan's work, Feigen and Gossage arranged for McLuhan to meet with editors of several major New York magazines in May 1965 at the Lombardy Hotel in New York. Philip Marchand reports that, as a direct consequence of these meetings, McLuhan was offered the use of an office in the headquarters of both Time and Newsweek, any time he needed it.In August 1965, Feigen and Gossage held what they called a "McLuhan festival" in the offices of Gossage's advertising agency in San Francisco. During this "festival", McLuhan met with advertising executives, members of the mayor's office, and editors from the San Francisco Chronicle and Ramparts magazine. More significant was the presence at the festival of Tom Wolfe, who wrote about McLuhan in a subsequent article, "What If He Is Right?", published in New York magazine and Wolfe's own The Pump House Gang. According to Feigen and Gossage, their work had only a moderate effect on McLuhan's eventual celebrity: they claimed that their work only "probably speeded up the recognition of [McLuhan's] genius by about six months." In any case, McLuhan soon became a fixture of media discourse. Newsweek magazine did a cover story on him; articles appeared in Life, Harper's, Fortune, Esquire, and others. Cartoons about him appeared in The New Yorker. In 1969, Playboy magazine published a lengthy interview with him. In a running gag on the popular sketch comedy Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the "poet" Henry Gibson would randomly say, "Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin'?"McLuhan was credited with coining the phrase Turn on, tune in, drop out by its popularizer, Timothy Leary, in the 1960s. In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary stated that the slogan was "given to him" by McLuhan during a lunch in New York City. Leary said McLuhan "was very much interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that’s a lot,' to the tune of a Pepsi commercial. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out.'"During his lifetime and afterward, McLuhan heavily influenced cultural critics, thinkers, and media theorists such as Neil Postman, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, William Irwin Thompson, Paul Levinson, Douglas Rushkoff, Jaron Lanier, Hugh Kenner, and John David Ebert, as well as political leaders such as Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jerry Brown. Andy Warhol was paraphrasing McLuhan with his now famous "15 minutes of fame" quote. When asked in the 1970s for a way to sedate violences in Angola, he suggested a massive spread of TV devices. Douglas Coupland argued that McLuhan "was conservative, socially, but he never let politics enter his writing or his teaching". === Popular culture === The character "Brian O'Blivion" in David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is a "media oracle" based on McLuhan.In 1991, McLuhan was named as the "patron saint" of Wired magazine and a quote of his appeared on the masthead for the first ten years of its publication.He is mentioned by name in a Peter Gabriel–penned lyric in the song "Broadway Melody of 1974". This song appears on the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, from progressive rock band Genesis. The lyric is: "Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin' head buried in the sand."McLuhan is jokingly referred to during an episode of The Sopranos entitled "House Arrest".Despite his death in 1980, someone claiming to be McLuhan was posting on a Wired mailing list in 1996. The information this individual provided convinced one writer for Wired that "if the poster was not McLuhan himself, it was a bot programmed with an eerie command of McLuhan's life and inimitable perspective."McLuhan is the subject of the 1993 play The Medium, the first major work from the influential Saratoga International Theater Institute and director Anne Bogart. The play was revived by SITI Company for a farewell tour in 2022. === Recognition === A new centre known as the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, formed soon after his death in 1980, was the successor to McLuhan's Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. Since 1994, it has been part of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information. In 2008, the centre incorporated in the Coach House Institute, which was subsequently renamed The McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology. In 2011, at the time of his centenary, the centre established a "Marshall McLuhan Centenary Fellowship" program in his honour, and each year appoints up to four fellows for a maximum of two years.In Toronto, Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School is named after him.The media room at Canada House in Berlin is called the Marshall McLuhan Salon. It includes a multimedia information centre and an auditorium, and hosts a permanent exhibition dedicated to McLuhan, based on its collection of film and audio items by and about him. == Bibliography of major works == This is a partial list of works cited in this article. 1951. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1st ed.). New York: Vanguard Press. reissued by Gingko Press, 2002. ISBN 978-1-58423-050-2. 1962. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. (1st ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. reissued by Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-7100-1818-2. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1st ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. reissued by MIT Press, 1994, with introduction by Lewis H. Lapham; reissued by Gingko Press, 2003. ISBN 978-1-58423-073-1. 1967. The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1st ed.), with Quentin Fiore, produced by Jerome Agel. Random House. reissued by Gingko Press, 2001. ISBN 978-1-58423-070-0. 1968. War and Peace in the Global Village (1st ed.), with design/layout by Quentin Fiore, produced by Jerome Agel. New York: Bantam. reissued by Gingko Press, 2001. ISBN 978-1-58423-074-8. 1970. From Cliché to Archetype, with Wilfred Watson. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-33093-5. 1988. Laws of Media, edited by Eric McLuhan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-5782-2. 2016 The Future of the Library: From Electronic Media to Digital Media, edited by Robert K. Logan. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-3264-3. == See also == Neuroplasticity Cortical remapping Social interface == Notes == == References == === Footnotes === === Works cited === == Further reading == == External links == Official website Marshall McLuhan at IMDb Marshall McLuhan bibliography at Monoskop "James Feeley fonds". University of St. Michael's College, John M. Kelly Library. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 15 October 2015. "The Marshall McLuhan Collection". University of St. Michael's College, John M. Kelly Library. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 15 October 2015.

Wilfrid Sellars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Sellars

Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". == Life and career == His father was the Canadian-American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, a leading American philosophical naturalist in the first half of the twentieth-century. Wilfrid was educated at the University of Michigan (BA, 1933), the University at Buffalo, and Oriel College, Oxford (1934–1937), where he was a Rhodes Scholar, obtaining his highest earned degree, an MA, in 1940. During World War II, he served in military intelligence. He then taught at the University of Iowa (1938–1946), the University of Minnesota (1947–1958), Yale University (1958–1963), and from 1963 until his death, at the University of Pittsburgh. He served as president of the Metaphysical Society of America in 1977. He was a founder of the journal Philosophical Studies. Sellars is well known as a critic of foundationalist epistemology—the "Myth of the Given" as he called it. However, his philosophical works are more generally directed toward the ultimate goal of reconciling intuitive ways of describing the world (both those of common sense and traditional philosophy) with a thoroughly naturalist, scientific account of reality. He is widely regarded both for great sophistication of argument and for his assimilation of many and diverse subjects in pursuit of a synoptic vision. Sellars was perhaps the first philosopher to synthesize elements of American pragmatism with elements of British and American analytic philosophy and Austrian and German logical positivism. His work also reflects a sustained engagement with the German tradition of transcendental idealism, most obviously in his book Science and Metaphysics: Kantian Variations. == Philosophical work == Sellars coined certain now-common idioms in philosophy, such as the "space of reasons". This idiom refers to two things. It: Describes the conceptual and behavioral web of language that humans use to get intelligently around their world, Denotes the fact that talk of reasons, epistemic justification, and intention is not the same as, and cannot necessarily be mapped onto, talk of causes and effects in the sense that physical science speaks of them.Note: (2) corresponds in part to the distinction Sellars makes between the manifest image and the scientific image. === "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" === Sellars's most famous work is "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956). In it, he criticizes the view that knowledge of what we perceive can be independent of the conceptual processes which result in perception. He named this "The Myth of the Given," attributing it to sense-data theories of knowledge. The work targets several theories at once, especially C. I. Lewis' Kantian pragmatism and Rudolf Carnap's positivism. He draws out "The Myth of Jones," to defend the possibility of a strict behaviorist world-view. The parable explains how thoughts, intelligent action, and even subjective inner experience can be attributed to people within a scientific model. Sellars used a fictional tribe, the "Ryleans," since he wanted to address Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind. Sellars's idea of "myth", heavily influenced by Ernst Cassirer, is not necessarily negative. He saw it as something that can be useful or otherwise, rather than true or false. He aimed to unite the conceptual behavior of the "space of reasons" with the concept of a subjective sense experience. This was one of his most central goals, which his later work described as Kantian. === "The Language of Theories" === In his paper "The Language of Theories“ (1961), Sellars introduces the concept of Kantian empiricism. Kantian empiricism features a distinction between (1) claims whose revision requires abandonment or modification of the system of concepts in terms of which they are framed (i.e., modification of the fallible set of constitutive principles underlying knowledge, otherwise known as framework-relative a priori truths) and (2) claims revisable on the basis of observations formulated in terms of a system of concepts which remained fixed throughout. === "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" === In his "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" (1962), Sellars distinguishes between the "manifest image" and the "scientific image" of the world. The manifest image includes intentions, thoughts, and appearances. Sellars allows that the manifest image may be refined through 'correlational induction', but he rules out appeal to imperceptible entities. The scientific image describes the world in terms of the theoretical physical sciences. It includes notions such as causality and theories about particles and forces. The two images sometimes complement one another, and sometimes conflict. For example, the manifest image includes practical or moral claims, whereas the scientific image does not. There is conflict, e.g. where science tells us that apparently solid objects are mostly empty space. Sellars favours a synoptic vision, wherein the scientific image takes ultimate precedence in cases of conflict, at least with respect to empirical descriptions and explanations. == Politics == The son of a socialist, Sellars was involved in left-wing politics. As a student at the University of Michigan, Wilfrid Sellars was one of the founding members of the first North-American cooperative house for university students, which was then called "Michigan Socialist House" (and which was later renamed "Michigan Cooperative House"). He also campaigned for the socialist candidate Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party of America. == Legacy == Robert Brandom, his junior colleague at Pittsburgh, named Sellars and Willard Van Orman Quine as the two most profound and important philosophers of their generation. Sellars's goal of a synoptic philosophy that unites the everyday and scientific views of reality is the foundation and archetype of what is sometimes called the Pittsburgh School, whose members include Brandom, John McDowell, and John Haugeland. Especially Brandom introduced a Hegelian variety of the Pittsburgh School, often called analytic Hegelianism.Other philosophers strongly influenced by Sellars span the full spectrum of contemporary English-speaking philosophy, from neopragmatism (Richard Rorty) to eliminative materialism (Paul Churchland) to rationalism (Laurence BonJour). Sellars's philosophical heirs also include Ruth Millikan, Héctor-Neri Castañeda, Bruce Aune, Jay Rosenberg, Johanna Seibt, Matthew Burstein, Ray Brassier, Andrew Chrucky, Jeffrey Sicha, Pedro Amaral, Thomas Vinci, Willem A. de Vries, David Rosenthal, Ken Wilber and Michael Williams. Sellars's work has been drawn upon in feminist standpoint theory, for example in the work of Quill Kukla.Sellars's death in 1989 was the result of long-term alcohol use. A collection of essays devoted to 'Sellars and his Legacy' was published by Oxford University Press in 2016 (James O'Shea, ed., Wilfrid Sellars and his Legacy), with contributions from Brandom, deVries, Kraut, Kukla, Lance, McDowell, Millikan, O'Shea, Rosenthal, Seibt, and Williams. == Bibliography == Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds-The Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, [PPPW], ed. by Jeffrey F. Sicha, (Ridgeview Publishing Co; Atascadero, CA; 1980). [Contains a long introductory essay by Sicha and an extensive bibliography of Sellars's work through 1979.] Science, Perception and Reality, [SPR], (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd; London, and The Humanities Press: New York; 1963) [Reissued in 1991 by Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero, CA. This edition contains a complete bibliography of Sellars's published work through 1989.] Philosophical Perspectives, [PP], (Charles C. Thomas: Springfield, IL; 1967). Reprinted in two volumes, Philosophical Perspectives: History of Philosophy and Philosophical Perspective: Metaphysics and Epistemology, (Ridgeview Publishing Co.; Atascadero, CA; 1977). Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes. [S&M], (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd; London, and The Humanities Press; New York; 1968). The 1966 John Locke Lectures. [Reissued in 1992 by Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero, CA. This edition contains a complete bibliography of Sellars's published work through 1989, a register of Sellars's philosophical correspondence, and a listing of circulated but unpublished papers and lectures.] Essays in Philosophy and Its History, [EPH], (D. Reidel Publishing Co.; Dordrecht, Holland; 1975). Naturalism and Ontology, [N&O], (Ridgeview Publishing Co.; Atascadero, CA: 1979). [An expanded version of the 1974 John Dewey Lectures] The Metaphysics of Epistemology: Lectures by Wilfrid Sellars, edited by Pedro Amaral, (Ridgeview Publishing Co.; Atascadero, CA; 1989). [Contains a complete bibliography of Sellars's published work through 1989.] Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind [EPM*], edited by Robert Brandom, (Harvard University Press.; Cambridge, Massachusetts; 1997). [The original, 1956, version of [EPM] (see below), lacking footnotes added in [SPR], with an Introduction by Richard Rorty and Study Guide by Brandom.] Kant and Pre-Kantian Themes: Lectures by Wilfrid Sellars, edited by Pedro Amaral, (Ridgeview Publishing Co.; Atascadero, CA: 2002). [A transcription of Sellars's Kant lectures, plus essays on Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, and Leibniz.] Kant's Transcendental Metaphysics: Cassirer Lecture Notes and Other Essays, edited by Jeffrey F. Sicha, (Ridgeview Publishing Co.; Atascadero, CA: 2002). [Contains a complete bibliography of Sellars's published work, philosophical correspondence, and circulated manuscripts through 2002.] == See also == American philosophy Definitions of philosophy List of American philosophers The Myth of the Framework Transcendental empiricism == References == == Further reading == McDowell, John. Mind and World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. == External links == Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Wilfrid Sellars – Willem deVries. "Wilfrid Sellars: Philosophy of Mind". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wilfrid Sellars web site. Includes complete bibliography of his writings, some readable online, and a list of the Ph.Ds he supervised. Autobiographical Reflections. Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind – Wilfrid Sellars – Article by Christopher Gauker on Sellars's contributions to the philosophy of mind. Finding Aid for the Wilfrid S. Sellars Archive at the University of Pittsburgh Notre Dame Lectures 1969-1986 – Transcribed from recordings by Sellars's student Pedro Amaral. The Wilfrid Sellars Society – Homepage of the Wilfrid Sellars Society. Wilfrid Sellars L'immagine scientifica e l'immagine manifesta a cura di: Carlo Marletti, Giacomo Turbanti, Edizioni ETS 2013 Wilfrid S. Sellars Papers (Wilfrid S. Sellars Papers, 1899–1990, ASP.1991.01, Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.)

Paul Ricœur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ric%C5%93ur

Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (; French: [ʁikœʁ]; 27 February 1913 – 20 May 2005) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Gabriel Marcel. In 2000, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for having "revolutionized the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology, expanding the study of textual interpretation to include the broad yet concrete domains of mythology, biblical exegesis, psychoanalysis, theory of metaphor, and narrative theory." == Life == === 1913–1945: Birth to war years === Paul Ricœur was born in 1913 in Valence, Drôme, France, to Léon "Jules" Ricœur (23 December 1881 – 26 September 1915) and Florentine Favre (17 September 1878 – 3 October 1913), who were married on 30 December 1910 in Lyon. He came from a family of devout Huguenots (French Reformed Protestants), a religious minority in France. Paul's father Jules, who served as a sergeant in the 75th Infantry Regiment of the French army during World War I, went missing in Perthes-lès-Hurlus near the beginning of the Second Battle of Champagne (25 September – 6 November 1915). On 26 September 1915, French military authorities declared that Jules had probably been killed in the battle. His body was not found until 1932, when a field was being ploughed, and the body was identified by its tags. Some writers have stated that before World War I began, Paul's father (Léon "Jules" Ricœur) was a professor of English at the Lycée Emile Loubet in Valence. However, it was a different person (Jules Paul Ricœur (1887–1918)) who held that position. Paul's father's death occurred when Paul was only two years old. Subsequently, Paul was raised in Rennes, France by his paternal grandparents Louis Ricœur (1856–1932) and his wife Marie Sarradet (1856–1928), and by his father's sister Juliette "Adèle" Ricœur (20 December 1892 – 1968), with a small stipend afforded to Paul as a war orphan. Paul, whose penchant for study was fueled by his family's Protestant emphasis on Bible study, was bookish and intellectually precocious. He discovered philosophy while attending the Lycée de Rennes (now Lycée Émile-Zola de Rennes), where he studied under Roland Dalbiez (1893–1976), who was professor of philosophy at the lycée. Ricœur received his bachelor's degree in 1932 from the University of Rennes and began studying philosophy, and especially phenomenology, at the Sorbonne in 1933–34, where he was influenced by Gabriel Marcel. In 1934 he completed a DES thesis (diplôme d'études supérieures, roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) titled Problème de Dieu chez Lachelier et Lagneau (The Problem of God in Lachelier and Lagneau), concerning some of the theological views of French philosophers Jules Lachelier (1832–1918) and Jules Lagneau (1851–1894). In 1935, Paul was awarded the second-highest agrégation mark in the nation for philosophy, presaging a bright future. On 14 August 1935, in Rennes, Paul married Simone Lejas (23 October 1911 – 7 January 1998), with whom he had five children: Jean-Paul (born 15 January 1937), Marc (born 22 February 1938), Noëlle (born 30 November 1940), Olivier (10 July 1947 – 22 March 1986), and Etienne (born 1953). In 1936–37, he fulfilled his military service.World War II interrupted Ricœur's career, and he was drafted to serve in the French army in 1939. His unit was captured during the German invasion of France in 1940 and he spent the next five years as a prisoner of war in Oflag II-D. His detention camp was filled with other intellectuals such as Mikel Dufrenne, who organized readings and classes sufficiently rigorous that the camp was accredited as a degree-granting institution by the Vichy government. During that time he read Karl Jaspers, who was to have a great influence on him. He also began a translation of Edmund Husserl's Ideas I. === 1946–2005: Strasbourg University to death === Ricœur taught at the University of Strasbourg between 1948 and 1956, the only French university with a Protestant faculty of theology. In 1950, he received his State doctorate, submitting (as is customary in France) two theses: a "minor" thesis translating Husserl's Ideas I into French for the first time, with commentary, and a "major" thesis that he published the same year as Philosophie de la Volonté I: Le Volontaire et l'Involontaire (Philosophy of the Will I: The Voluntary and the Involuntary). Ricœur soon acquired a reputation as an expert on phenomenology, then the ascendent philosophy in France. In 1956, Ricœur took up a position at the Sorbonne as the Chair of General Philosophy. This appointment signaled Ricœur's emergence as one of France's most prominent philosophers. While at the Sorbonne, he wrote three works that cemented his reputation: Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil published in 1960, and Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation published in 1965. Jacques Derrida was an assistant to Ricœur during that time (early 1960s).From 1965 to 1970, Ricœur was an administrator at the newly founded University of Nanterre in suburban Paris. Nanterre was intended as an experiment in progressive education, and Ricœur hoped that he could create a university in accordance with his vision, free of the stifling atmosphere of the tradition-bound Sorbonne and its overcrowded classes. Nevertheless, Nanterre became a hotbed of protest during the student uprisings of May 1968 in France. Ricœur was derided as an "old clown" (vieux clown) and tool of the French government.Disenchanted with French academic life, Ricœur taught briefly at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, before taking a position at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1970 to 1985. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971. His study culminated in The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language published in 1975 and the three-volume Time and Narrative published in 1983, 1984, 1985 Ricœur gave the Gifford Lectures in 1985/86, published in 1990 as Oneself as Another. This work built on his discussion of narrative identity and his continuing interest in the self. Time and Narrative secured Ricœur's return to France in 1985 as a notable intellectual. His late work was characterised by a continuing cross-cutting of national intellectual traditions; for example, some of his latest writing engaged the thought of the American political philosopher John Rawls. In 1995 he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 1999, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy, the citation being "[f]or his capacity in bringing together all the most important themes and indications of 20th-century philosophy, and re-elaborating them into an original synthesis which turns language – in particular, that which is poetic and metaphoric – into a chosen place revealing a reality that we cannot manipulate, but interpret in diverse ways, and yet all coherent. Through the use of metaphor, language draws upon that truth which makes of us that what we are, deep in the profundity of our own essence". That same year, he and his co-author André LaCocque (professor emeritus of Hebrew Bible at Chicago Theological Seminary) were awarded the Gordon J. Laing Award by the University of Chicago's Board of University Publications for their book Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies. On 29 November 2004, he was awarded with the second John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences (shared with Jaroslav Pelikan).Ricœur died on 20 May 2005, aged 92, at his home in Châtenay-Malabry, France, of natural causes. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin declared that "the humanist European tradition is in mourning for one of its most talented exponents". Paul Ricœur was buried in the Châtenay-Malabry New Cemetery, Châtenay-Malabry, Department des Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France. == Thought == === Hermeneutic phenomenology === One of Ricœur's major contributions to the field of hermeneutics was the entwining of hermeneutical processes with phenomenology. In this union, Ricœur applies the hermeneutical task to more than just textual analysis, but also to how each self relates to anything that is outside of the self. For Ricœur, hermeneutics is understanding the link between the self and the symbol—neither things in themselves, but the dialectical engagement between the two. Moreover, Ricœur, on the goal of hermeneutics, puts emphasis upon self-understanding as the outcome of the hermeneutical process: "In proposing to relate symbolic language to self-understanding, I think I fulfill the deepest wish of hermeneutics. The purpose of all interpretation is to conquer a remoteness, a distance between the past cultural epoch to which the text belongs and the interpreter himself. By overcoming this distance, by making himself contemporary with the text, the exegete can appropriate its meaning to himself: foreign, he makes it familiar, that is, he makes it his own. It is thus the growth of his own understanding of himself that he pursues through his understanding of others. Every hermeneutics is thus, explicitly or implicitly, self-understanding by means of understanding others."Ricoeur maintains that the hermeneutical task is a coming together of the self and an other, in a meaningful way. This explication of self-meaning and other-meaning is principally bound up and manifested in existence itself. Thus, Ricoeur depicts philosophy as a hermeneutical activity seeking to uncover the meaning of existence through the interpretation of phenomena (which can only emerge as) embedded in the world of culture: "This is why philosophy remains a hermeneutics, that is, a reading of the hidden meaning inside the text of the apparent meaning. It is the task of this hermeneutics to show that existence arrives at expression, at meaning, and at reflection only through the continual exegesis of all the significations that come to light in the world of culture. Existence becomes a self – human and adult – only by appropriating this meaning, which first resides "outside," in works, institutions, and cultural movements in which the life of the spirit is justified."Furthermore, the process of hermeneutics, and extracting meaning, is a reflective task. The emphasis is not on the external meaning, but the meaning or insight of the self which is gained through encountering the external text—or other. The self-knowledge gained through the hermeneutical process is, thus, indirectly attained. This is in opposition to the Cartesian cogito, "which grasps itself directly in the experience of doubt," and is "a truth as vain as it is invincible." In point of fact, the difference Ricœur aims to distinguish is the means by which the self is discovered, which for him is only by means of interpreting the signified. According to Ricœur, the aim of hermeneutics is to recover and to restore the meaning. The French philosopher chooses the model of the phenomenology of religion, in relation to psychoanalysis, stressing that it is characterized by a concern on the object. This object is the sacred, which is seen in relation to the profane.Ricœur's hermeneutical work Freud and Philosophy contains the famous assertion that Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud are masters of the school of suspicion (maîtres du soupçon/école du soupçon). Marx is reductionist, because he reduces society to economy, particularly to means of production; Nietzsche is a reductionist, because he reduces man to the 'will-to-power' and an arbitrary concept of superman; Freud is a reductionist because he reduces human nature to sexual instinct. Ricœur's theory has been particularly influential to postcritique, a scholarly movement in literary criticism and cultural studies that seeks for new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. The literary critic Rita Felski, for instance, argues that he is a crucial figure in the history of this tradition. She claims that his influential analysis of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" "invites us to think about how we read and to what end." === Philosophy of language === In The Rule of Metaphor and in Time and Narrative, vol. 1, Ricœur argues that there exists a linguistic productive imagination that generates/regenerates meaning through the power of metaphoricity by way of stating things in novel ways and, as a consequence, he sees language as containing within itself resources that allow it to be used creatively. == Works == Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers. Philosophie du mystère et philosophie du paradoxe [Gabriel Marcel & Karl Jaspers: Philosophy of mystery & Philosophy of paradox] (in French), Paris, Temps Présent, 1947. History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley. Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1965 [1955]{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link). Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim Kohak. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966 (1950). Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967 The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan. New York: Harper and Row, 1967 (1960). Entretiens sur l'Art et la Psychanalyse (sous la direction de Andre Berge, Anne Clancier, Paul Ricoeur et Lothair Rubinstein, Paris, La Haye: Mouton, 1968 (1964). Le Conflit des interprétations. Essais d'herméneutique I, Le Seuil, 1969. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970 (1965). The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde, trans. Willis Domingo et al. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974 (1969). Political and Social Essays, ed. David Stewart and Joseph Bien, trans. Donald Stewart et al. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, S. J., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978 (1975). Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian Press, 1976. The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur: An Anthology of his Work, ed. Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978. Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980) Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, ed., trans. John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Time and Narrative (Temps et Récit), 3 vols. trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1985, 1988 (1983, 1984, 1985). Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed., trans. George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Du texte à l'action. Essais d'herméneutique II, Le Seuil, 1986. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991 (1986). À l'école de la phenomenologie. Paris: J. Vrin, 1986. Le mal: Un défi à la philosophie et à la théologie. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1986. Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, with an introduction by Walter J. Lowe, New York: Fordham University Press, 1986 (1960). A Ricœur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Lectures I: Autour du politique. Paris: Seuil, 1991. Lectures II: La Contrée des philosophes. Paris: Seuil, 1992. Oneself as Another (Soi-même comme un autre), trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (1990). Lectures III: Aux frontières de la philosophie. Paris: Seuil, 1994. Réflexion faite. Autobiographie intellectuelle. Esprit, 1995. The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur, ed. Lewis E. Hahn (The Library of Living Philosophers 22) (Chicago; La Salle: Open Court, 1995). The Just, trans. David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 (1995). Critique and Conviction, trans. Kathleen Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 (1995). Thinking Biblically, (with André LaCocque). University of Chicago Press, 1998. La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli. Paris: Seuil, 2000. Le Juste II. Paris: Esprit, 2001. Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 2004. The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer. Harvard University Press, 2005. Reflections on the Just, trans. David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 2007. Living Up to Death, trans. David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 2009. == See also == Metaphor in philosophy Postmodern theology Theopoetics Esprit == Notes == == References == == Sources == François Dosse. Paul Ricœur. Les Sens d'une Vie. Paris: La Découverte, 1997. ——— (2014), Castoriadis. Une vie [Castoriadis, a life] (in French), Paris: La Découverte. David M. Kaplan, 2003. Ricœur's Critical Theory. Albany, SUNY Press. ———, ed. (2008), Reading Ricoeur, Albany: SUNY Press. Charles E. Reagan, 1996. Paul Ricœur: His Life and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. John Cesar "Sasing" Caalem-Nguyen'Her Life in Encantadia'. Tagum: University of Blood Washed Band == Further reading == Books Don Ihde, 1971. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. David E. Klemm, 1983. The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Pamela Sue Anderson, 1993. Ricœur and Kant: philosophy of the will. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Bernard P. Dauenhauer, 1998. Paul Ricœur: The Promise and Risk of Politics. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield. Richard Kearney, ed., 1996. Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action. SAGE. Kuruvilla Pandikattu, 2000. Idols to Die, Symbols to Live: Dynamic Interaction between Language, Reality, and the Divine. New Delhi: Intercultural Publications. Henry Isaac Venema, 2000. Identifying Selfhood: Imagination, Narrative, and Hermeneutics in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Mcgill Studies in the History of Religions), SUNY Press. Dan Stiver, 2001. Theology after Ricœur, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Karl Simms, 2002. Paul Ricœur, Routledge Critical Thinkers. New York: Routledge. Gregory J. Laughery, 2002. Living Hermeneutics in Motion: An Analysis and Evaluation of Paul Ricoeur's Contribution to Biblical Hermeneutics. Lanham: University Press of America. Richard Kearney, 2004. On Paul Ricœur: The Owl of Minerva. Hants, England: Ashgate. John Wall, 2005 "Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility". New York: Oxford University Press. Salvioli, Marco, 2006, "Il Tempo e le Parole. Ricoeur e Derrida a "margine" della fenomenologia", ESD, Bologna. W. David Hall, 2007. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. Albany: SUNY Press. Gaëlle Fiasse, 2008. Paul Ricœur. De l'homme faillible à l'homme capable. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France. Alison Scott-Baumann, 2009. Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. Continuum. Fredric Jameson, 2009. "The Valences of History." In Valences of the Dialectic. London and New York: Verso. 475–612. Larisa Cercel (ed.), "Übersetzung und Hermeneutik / Traduction et herméneutique" (Zeta Series in Translation Studies 1), Bucharest, Zeta Books 2009, ISBN 978-973-199-706-3 (paperback), 978-973-1997-07-0 (ebook). Boyd Blundell, 2010. Paul Ricoeur between Theology and Philosophy: Detour and Return. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Haggag Ali, 2011. Paul Ricoeur and the Challenge of Semiology. Saarbrücken:VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. William C. Dowling, 2011. Ricoeur on Time and Narrative: an Introduction to Temps et Recit. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press (online excerpt). Francis J. Mootz III and George H. Taylor (eds.), 2011. Gadamer and Ricoeur: Critical Horizons for Contemporary Hermeneutic. Continuum. Kuruvilla Pandikattu, 2013. Between Before and Beyond: An Exploration of the Human Condition Inspired by Paul Ricoeur. Pune: CreatiVentures. Fr Phillip J. Linden Jr., SSJ, 2019. Slavery, Religion and Regime: The Political Theory of Paul Ricoeur as a Conceptual Framework for a Critical Theological Interpretation of the Modern State. United States: Xlibris.Articles Ruthellen Josselson, "The hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion", Narrative Inquiry, 14(1), 1–28. Gaëlle Fiasse, Paul Ricoeur, lecteur d'Aristote, in Éthique à Nicomaque VIII-IX, ed. Guy Samama, Paris: Ellipses, 185–189, 2001. George H. Taylor, "Ricoeur's Philosophy of Imagination", Journal of French Philosophy, vol. 16, p. 93, 2006. Gaëlle Fiasse, Paul Ricœur et le pardon comme au-delà de l'action, Laval théologique et philosophique 63/2 363–376, 2007. Gaëlle Fiasse, The Golden Rule and Forgiveness. In A Passion for the Possible. Thinking with Paul Ricœur, ed. Brian Treanor and Henry Venema, Series: Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, New York: Fordham University Press, 77–89, 2010. Gaëlle Fiasse, Ricœur's Medical Ethics: the Encounter between the Physician and the Patient, in Reconceiving Medical Ethics, ed. by C. Cowley, New York: Continuum Press, 30–42, 2012. Rita Felski, "Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion", M/C Journal, vol. 15, No. 1, 2012. Gaëlle Fiasse, Ricœur's Hermeneutics of the Self. On the In-Between of the Involuntary and the Voluntary, and Narrative Identity, Philosophy Today, 58, 39–51, 2014. == External links == Quotations related to Paul Ricœur at Wikiquote Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Paul Ricoeur" by Bernard Dauenhauer Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Paul Ricoeur" by Kim Atkins Ricoeur's Hermeneutics (introductory lecture by Henk de Berg, 2015) List of principal works by Ricœur Archived 16 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies The Society for Ricoeur Studies Irish Theological Association Subhasis Chattopadhyay, Review of Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology by Paul Ricœur, Prabuddha Bharata, 121(6) (June 2016): 529–30 "Ricœur et Lévinas" by Henri Duthu Paul Ricoeur: A Hermeneutical Theologian in The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology

J. L. Mackie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Mackie

John Leslie Mackie (25 August 1917 – 12 December 1981) was an Australian philosopher. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Mackie had influential views on metaethics, including his defence of moral scepticism and his sophisticated defence of atheism. He wrote six books. His most widely known, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), opens by boldly stating, "There are no objective values." It goes on to argue that because of this, ethics must be invented rather than discovered. His posthumously published The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1982) has been called a tour de force in contemporary analytic philosophy. The atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen described it as "one of the most, probably the most, distinguished articulation of an atheistic point of view given in the twentieth century." In 1980 Time magazine described him as "perhaps the ablest of today's atheistic philosophers." == Life == Mackie was born 25 August 1917 in Killara, Sydney, son of Alexander Mackie, professor of education at the University of Sydney and principal of the Sydney Teachers College, influential in the educational system of New South Wales. and Annie Burnett (née Duncan), who was a schoolteacher.Mackie graduated from the University of Sydney in 1938 after studying under John Anderson, sharing the medal in philosophy with Harold Glass. Mackie received the Wentworth Travelling Fellowship to study greats at Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in 1940.During the Second World War Mackie served with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in the Middle East and Italy, and was mentioned in dispatches. He was professor of philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand from 1955 to 1959 and succeeded Anderson as the Challis Professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1959 to 1963. In 1963, he moved to the United Kingdom, becoming the inaugural holder of the chair of philosophy in the University of York, a position he held until 1967, when he was elected a fellow of University College, Oxford, where he served as praelector. In 1969, he gave a lecture, "What's Really Wrong with Phenomenalism?", at the British Academy as part of its annual Philosophical Lectures series. In 1974, he became a fellow of the British Academy.Mackie died in Oxford on 12 December 1981. === Character and family === Mackie is said to have been capable of expressing total disagreement in such a genial way that the person being addressed might mistake his comment for a compliment. This personal style is exemplified by the following words from the preface to Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong: I am nowhere mainly concerned to refute any individual writer. I believe that all those to whom I have referred, even those with whom I disagree most strongly, have contributed significantly to our understanding of ethics: where I have quoted their actual words, it is because they have presented views or arguments more clearly or more forcefully than I could put them myself. Mackie married Joan Meredith in 1947. One of their three children, Penelope Mackie, also became a philosopher. She lectured in philosophy at the University of Birmingham from 1994 to 2004, and then at the University of Nottingham from 2004 until her death in 2022. Mackie's son David is also a philosopher and graduated from Oxford University, where he held lectureships at Exeter College, Corpus Christi College, and Christ Church before being appointed a Fellow and Tutor at Oriel College. He is Head of Philosophy at D'Overbroeck's College, Oxford. His daughter Hilary is a classicist at Rice University. == Philosophical work == Mackie is best known for his contributions to metaethics, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics. In metaethics, he took a position called moral scepticism, arguing against the objective existence of right and wrong as intrinsically normative entities on fundamental grounds. He was unsure what kinds of thing they would be if they existed.His most widely known work, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, bluntly begins with the sentence "There are no objective values". He uses several arguments to support this claim. He argues that some aspects of moral thought are relative, and that objective morals require an absurd intrinsic action-guiding feature. Most of all, he thinks it is very unclear how objective values could supervene on features of the natural world (see the Argument from queerness), and argues it would be difficult to justify our knowledge of "value entities" or account for any links or consequences they would have. Finally, he thinks it possible to show that even without any objective values, people would still have reason to firmly believe in them (hence he claims that it is possible for people to be mistaken or fooled into believing that objective values exist). The Times called the book "a lucid discussion of moral theory which, although aimed at the general reader, has attracted a good deal of professional attention." Concerning religion, he was well known for vigorously defending atheism, and also arguing that the problem of evil made untenable the main monotheistic religions. His criticisms of the free will theodicy are particularly significant. He argued that the idea of human free will is no defence for those who wish to believe in an omnicompetent being in the face of evil and suffering, as such a being could have given us both free will and moral perfection, thus resulting in us choosing the good in every situation. In 1955 he published "Evil and Omnipotence", which summarized his view that belief in the existence of evil and an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god is "positively irrational".Mackie's views on this so-called logical problem of evil prompted Alvin Plantinga to respond with the "free-will defense", which Mackie later responded in his The Miracle of Theism. In metaphysics, Mackie made significant contributions relating to the nature of causal relationships, especially conditional statements describing them (see, for example, Mackie 1974) and the notion of an INUS condition. After being given a copy of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene as a Christmas present, in 1978 Mackie wrote an article in the journal Philosophy praising the book and discussing how its ideas might be applied to moral philosophy. The philosopher Mary Midgley responded in 1979 with "Gene-Juggling", an article arguing that The Selfish Gene was about psychological egoism rather than evolution. This started a dispute between Mackie, Midgley, and Dawkins that was ongoing at the time of Mackie's death. == Publications == === Books === Truth, Probability, and Paradox (1973), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824402-9. The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (1980 [1974]), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824642-0. Problems from Locke (1976), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824555-6. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), Viking Press, ISBN 0-14-013558-8. (1978 Reprint Available for loan at Open Library) Hume's Moral Theory (1980), Routledge Keegan & Paul, ISBN 0-7100-0525-3. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (1982), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824682-X. === Anthologies === Logic and Knowledge: Selected Papers, Volume I (1985), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824679-X. Persons and Values: Selected Papers, Volume II (1985), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824678-1.For a more complete list of works see "The publications of J. L. Mackie" compiled by Joan Mackie. == References == == Further reading == McDowell, John. (1991) "Mackie, John Leslie, 1917–1981" in Proceedings of the British Academy 76 ISBN 0-19-726107-8 Franklin, James. (2003) Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia, Macleay Press, ISBN 1-876492-08-2, ch. 5. (author shared eprint) Honderich, Ted. (ed). (1985) Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J. L. Mackie, Routledge Kegan & Paul, ISBN 0-7100-9991-6. Brown, Stuart C.; Collinson, Diane; Wilkinson, Robert (2002). Biographical dictionary of twentieth-century philosophers. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-92796-8. OCLC 1100433484. Campbell, Keith (2014) [2010]. "Mackie, J. L.". In Oppy, Graham; Trakakis, Nick (eds.). A companion to philosophy in Australia & New Zealand (PDF) (Second ed.). Clayton, Victoria. ISBN 978-1-925495-26-3. OCLC 904689134.

Louis Althusser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser

Louis Pierre Althusser (UK: , US: ; French: [altysɛʁ]; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was an Algerian-born French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member and sometimes a strong critic of the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français, PCF). His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European communist parties, as well as the problem of the cult of personality and of ideology. Althusser is commonly referred to as a structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he was critical of many aspects of structuralism. Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In 1980, he killed his wife, the sociologist Hélène Rytmann, by strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did little further academic work, dying in 1990. == Biography == === Early life: 1918–1948 === Althusser was born in French Algeria in the town of Birmendreïs, near Algiers, to a pied-noir petit-bourgeois family from Alsace, France. His father, Charles-Joseph Althusser, was a lieutenant in the French army and a bank clerk, while his mother, Lucienne Marthe Berger, a devout Roman Catholic, worked as a schoolteacher. According to his own memoirs, his Algerian childhood was prosperous; historian Martin Jay said that Althusser, along with Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida, was "a product of the French colonial culture in Northern Africa." In 1930, his family moved to the French city of Marseille as his father was to be the director of the Compagnie Algérienne (Algerian Banking Company) branch in the city. Althusser spent the rest of his childhood there, excelling in his studies at the Lycée Saint-Charles and joining a scout group. A second displacement occurred in 1936 when Althusser settled in Lyon as a student at the Lycée du Parc. Later he was accepted by the highly regarded higher-education establishment (grande école) École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. At the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was influenced by Catholic professors, joined the Catholic youth movement Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne, and wanted to be a Trappist. His interest in Catholicism coexisted with his communist ideology, and some critics argued that his early Catholic introduction affected the way he interpreted Karl Marx. After a two-year period of preparation (Khâgne) under Jean Guitton at the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was admitted into the ENS in July 1939. But his attendance was deferred by many years because he was drafted into the French Army in September of that year in the run-up to World War II and, like most French soldiers following the Fall of France, was captured by the Germans. Seized in Vannes in June 1940, he was held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Schleswig-Holstein, in Northern Germany, for the five remaining years of the war. In the camp, he was at first drafted to hard labour but ultimately reassigned to work in the infirmary after falling ill. This second occupation allowed him to read philosophy and literature. In his memoirs, Althusser described the experiences of solidarity, political action, and community in the camp as the moment he first understood the idea of communism. Althusser recalled: "It was in prison camp that I first heard Marxism discussed by a Parisian lawyer in transit—and that I actually met a communist". His experience in the camp also affected his lifelong bouts of mental instability, reflected in constant depression that lasted until the end of life. Psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco has argued that the absurd war experience was essential for Althusser's philosophical thought.Althusser resumed his studies at the ENS in 1945 to prepare himself for the agrégation, an exam to teach philosophy in secondary schools. In 1946, Althusser met sociologist Hélène Rytmann, a Jewish former French Resistance member with whom he was in a relationship until he killed her by strangulation in 1980. That same year, he started a close friendly relationship with Jacques Martin, a translator of G. W. F. Hegel and Herman Hesse. Martin, to whom Althusser dedicated his first book, would later commit suicide. Martin was influential on Althusser's interest on reading the bibliography of Jean Cavaillès, Georges Canguilhem and Hegel. Although Althusser remained a Catholic, he became more associated with left-wing groups, joining the "worker priests" movement and embracing a synthesis of Christian and Marxist thought. This combination may have led him to adopt German Idealism and Hegelian thought, as did Martin's influence and a renewed interest in Hegel in the 1930s and 1940s in France. In consonance, Althusser's master thesis to obtain his diplôme d'études supèrieures was "On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel" ("Du contenu dans la pensée de G. W. F. Hegel", 1947). Based on The Phenomenology of Spirit, and under Gaston Bachelard's supervision, Althusser wrote a dissertation on how Marx's philosophy refused to withdraw from the Hegelian master–slave dialectic. According to the researcher Gregory Elliott, Althusser was a Hegelian at that time but only for a short period. === Academic life and Communist Party affiliation: 1948–1959 === In 1948, he was approved to teach in secondary schools but instead made a tutor at the ENS to help students prepare for their own agrégation. His performance on the exam—he was the best ranked on the writing part and second on the oral module—guaranteed this change on his occupation. He was responsible for offering special courses and tutorials on particular topics and on particular figures from the history of philosophy. In 1954, he became secrétaire de l'école litteraire (secretary of the literary school), assuming responsibilities for management and direction of the school. Althusser was deeply influential at the ENS because of the lectures and conferences he organized with participation of leading French philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan. He also influenced a generation of French philosophers and French philosophy in general—among his students were Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Michel Serres. In total, Althusser spent 35 years in the ENS, working there until November 1980.Parallel to his academic life, Althusser joined the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français, PCF) in October 1948. In the early postwar years, the PCF was one of the most influential political forces and many French intellectuals joined it. Althusser himself declared, "Communism was in the air in 1945, after the German defeat, the victory at Stalingrad, and the hopes and lessons of the Resistance." Althusser was primarily active on the "Peace Movement" section and kept for a few years his Catholic beliefs; in 1949, he published in the L'Évangile captif (The captive gospel), the tenth book of the Jeunesse de l'Église (the youth wing of Church), an article on the historic situation of Catholicism in response to the question: "Is the good news preached to the men today?" In it, he wrote about the relationship between the Catholic Church and the labour movement, advocating at the same time for social emancipation and the Church "religious reconquest". There was mutual hostility between these two organizations—in the early 1950s, the Vatican prohibited Catholics from membership in the worker priests and left-wing movements—and it certainly affected Althusser since he firmly believed in this combination.Initially afraid of joining the party because of ENS's opposition to communists, Althusser did so when he was made a tutor—when membership became less likely to affect his employment—and he even created at ENA the Cercle Politzer, a Marxist study group. Althusser also introduced colleagues and students to the party and worked closely with the communist cell of the ENS. But his professionalism made him avoid Marxism and Communism in his classes; instead, he helped students depending on the demands of their agrégation. In the early 1950s, Althusser distanced himself from his youthful political and philosophical ideals and from Hegel, whose teachings he considered a "bourgeois" philosophy. Starting from 1948, he studied history of philosophy and gave lectures on it; the first was about Plato in 1949. In 1949–1950, he gave a lecture about René Descartes, and wrote a thesis titled "Politics and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century" and a small study on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Second Discourse". He presented the thesis to Jean Hyppolite and Vladimir Jankélévitch in 1950 but it was rejected. These studies were nonetheless valuable because Althusser later used them to write his book about Montesquieu's philosophy and an essay on Rousseau's The Social Contract. Indeed, his first and the only book-length study published during his lifetime was Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire ("Montesquieu: Politics and History") in 1959. He also lectured on Rousseau from 1950 to 1955, and changed his focus to philosophy of history, also studying Voltaire, Condorcet, and Helvétius, which resulted in a 1955–1956 lecture on "Les problèmes de la philosophie de l'histoire". This course along with others on Machiavelli (1962), 17th- and 18th-century political philosophy (1965–1966), Locke (1971), and Hobbes (1971–1972) were later edited and released as a book by François Matheron in 2006. From 1953 to 1960, Althusser basically did not publish on Marxist themes, which in turn gave him time to focus on his teaching activities and establish himself as a reputable philosopher and researcher. === Major works, For Marx and Reading Capital: 1960–1968 === Althusser resumed his Marxist-related publications in 1960 as he translated, edited, and published a collection directed by Hyppolite about Ludwig Feuerbach's works. The objective of this endeavour was to identify Feuerbach's influence on Marx's early writings, contrasting it with the absence of his thought on Marx's mature works. This work spurred him to write "On the Young Marx: Theoretical Questions" ("Sur le jeune Marx – Questions de théorie", 1961). Published in the journal La Pensée, it was the first in a series of articles about Marx that were later collected in his most famous book For Marx. He inflamed the French debate on Marx and Marxist philosophy, and gained a considerable number of supporters. Inspired by this recognition, he started to publish more articles on Marxist thought; in 1964, Althusser published an article titled "Freud and Lacan" in the journal La Nouvelle Critique, which greatly influenced the Freudo-Marxism thought. At the same time, he invited Lacan to a lecture on Baruch Spinoza and the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. The impact of the articles led Althusser to change his teaching style at the ENS, and he started to minister a series of seminars on the following topics: "On the Young Marx" (1961–1962), "The Origins of Structuralism" (1962–1963; it versed on Foucault's History of Madness, which Althusser highly appreciated), "Lacan and Psychoanalysis" (1963–1964), and Reading Capital (1964–1965). These seminars aimed for a "return to Marx" and were attended by a new generation of students.For Marx (a collection of works published between 1961 and 1965) and Reading Capital (in collaboration with some of his students), both published in 1965, brought international fame to Althusser. Despite being criticized widely, these books made Althusser a sensation in French intellectual circles and one of the leading theoreticians of the PCF. He supported a structuralist view of Marx's work, influenced by Cavaillès and Canguilhem, affirming that Marx laid the "cornerstones" of a new science, incomparable to all non-Marxist thought, of which, from 1960 to 1966, he espoused the fundamental principles. Critiques were done to Stalin's cult of personality and Althusser defended what he called "theoretical anti-humanism", as an alternative to Stalinism and the Marxist humanism—both popular at the time. At mid-decade, his popularity grew to the point that it was virtually impossible to have an intellectual debate about political or ideological theoretical questions without mentioning his name. Althusser's ideas were influential enough to arouse the creation of a young militants group to dispute the power within the PCF. Nevertheless, the official position of the party was still Stalinist Marxism, which was criticized both from Maoist and humanist groups. Althusser was initially careful not to identify with Maoism but progressively agreed with its critique of Stalinism. At the end of 1966, Althusser even published an unsigned article titled "On the Cultural Revolution", in which he considered the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as "a historical fact without precedent" and of "enormous theoretical interest". Althusser mainly praised the non-bureaucratic, non-party, mass organizations in which, in his opinion, the "Marxist principles regarding the nature of the ideological' were fully applied.Key events in the theoretical struggle took place in 1966. In January, there was a conference of communist philosophers in Choisy-le-Roi; Althusser was absent but Roger Garaudy, the official philosopher of the party, read an indictment that opposed the "theoretical anti-humanism". The controversy was the pinnacle of a long conflict between the supporters of Althusser and Garaudy. In March, in Argenteuil, the theses of Garaudy and Althusser were formally confronted by the PCF Central Committee, chaired by Louis Aragon. The Party decided to keep Garaudy's position as the official one, and even Lucien Sève—who was a student of Althusser at the beginning of his teaching at the ENS—supported it, becoming the closest philosopher to the PCF leadership. General secretary of the party, Waldeck Rochet said that "Communism without humanism would not be Communism". Even if he was not publicly censured nor expelled from the PCF, as were 600 Maoist students, the support of Garaudy resulted in a further reduction of Althusser's influence in the party.Still in 1966, Althusser published in the Cahiers pour l'Analyse the article "On the 'Social Contract'" ("Sur le 'Contrat Social'"), a course about Rousseau he had given at the ENS, and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract" ("Cremonini, peintre de l'abstrait") about Italian painter Leonardo Cremonini. In the following year, he wrote a long article titled "The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy" ("La tâche historique de la philosophie marxiste") that was submitted to the Soviet journal Voprossi Filosofii; it was not accepted but was published a year later in a Hungarian journal. In 1967–1968, Althusser and his students organized an ENS course titled "Philosophy Course for Scientists" ("Cours de philosophie pour scientifiques") that would be interrupted by May 1968 events. Some of the material of the course was reused in his 1974 book Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists (Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants). Another Althusser's significant work from this period was "Lenin and Philosophy", a lecture first presented in February 1968 at the French Society of Philosophy. === May 1968, Eurocommunism debates, and auto-critique: 1968–1978 === During May 68, the tumultuous events of May 1968 in France, Althusser was hospitalized because of a depressive breakdown and was absent from the Latin Quarter. Many of his students participated in the events, and Régis Debray in particular became an international celebrity revolutionary. Althusser's initial silence was met with criticism by the protesters, who wrote on walls: "Of what use is Althusser?" ("A quoi sert Althusser?"). Later, Althusser was ambivalent about it; on the one hand, he was not supportive of the movement and he criticized the movement as an "ideological revolt of the mass", adopting the PCF official argument that an "infantile disorder" of anarchistic utopianism that had infiltrated the student movement. On the other hand, he called it "the most significant event in Western history since the Resistance and the victory over Nazism" and wanted to reconcile the students and the PCF. Nevertheless, the Maoist journal La Cause du peuple called him a revisionist, and he was condemned by former students, mainly by Jacques Rancière. After it, Althusser went through a phase of "self-criticism" that resulted in the book Essays in Self-criticism (Éléments d'autocritique, 1974) in which he revisited some of his old positions, including his support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1969, Althusser started an unfinished work that was only released in 1995 as Sur la reproduction ("On the Reproduction"). However, from these early manuscripts, he developed "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", which was published in the journal La Pensée in 1970, and became very influential on ideology discussions. In the same year, Althusser wrote "Marxism and Class Struggle" ("Marxisme et lutte de classe") that would be the foreword to the book The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism of his former student, the Chilean Marxist sociologist Marta Harnecker. By this time, Althusser was very popular in Latin America: some leftist activists and intellectuals saw him almost as a new Marx, although his work has been the subject of heated debates and sharp criticism. As an example of this popularity, some of his works were first translated to Spanish than into English, and others were released in book format first in Spanish and then in French. At the turn from the 1960s to the 1970s, Althusser's major works were translated into English—For Marx, in 1969, and Reading Capital in 1970—disseminating his ideas among the English-speaking Marxists.In the early 1970s, the PCF was, as most of European Communist parties, in a period of internal conflicts on strategic orientation that occurred against the backdrop of the emergence of Eurocommunism. In this context, Althusserian structuralist Marxism was one of the more or less defined strategic lines. Althusser participated in various public events of the PCF, most notably the public debate "Communists, Intellectuals and Culture" ("Les communistes, les intellectuels et la culture") in 1973. He and his supporters contested the party's leadership over its decision to abandon the notion of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" during its twenty-second congress in 1976. The PCF considered that in European condition it was possible to have a peaceful transition to socialism, which Althusser saw as "a new opportunistic version of Marxist Humanism". In a lecture given to the Union of Communist Students in the same year, he criticized above all the form in which this decision was taken. According to Althusser—echoing his notion of "French misery" exposed on For Marx—the party demonstrated a contempt for the materialist theory when it suppressed a "scientific concept". This struggle ultimately resulted in the debacle of the fraction "Union of the Left" and an open letter written by Althusser and five other intellectuals in which they asked for "a real political discussion in the PCF". That same year, Althusser also published a series of articles in the newspaper Le Monde under the title of "What Must Change in the Party". Published between 25 and 28 April, they were expanded and reprinted in May 1978 by François Maspero as the book Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le parti communiste. Between 1977 and 1978, Althusser mainly elaborated texts criticizing Eurocommunism and the PCF. "Marx in his Limits" ("Marx dans ses limits"), an abandoned manuscript written in 1978, argued that there was no Marxist theory of the state; it was only published in 1994 in the Écrits philosophiques et politiques I. The Italian Communist newspaper Il manifesto allowed Althusser to develop new ideas on a conference held in Venice about "Power and Opposition in Post-Revolutionary Societies" in 1977. His speeches resulted into the articles "The Crisis of Marxism" ("La crisi del marxismo") and "Marxism as a 'finite' theory" in which he stressed "something vital and alive can be liberated by this crisis": the perception of Marxism as a theory that originally only reflected Marx's time and then needed to be completed by a state theory. The former was published as "Marxism Today" ("Marxismo oggi") in the 1978 Italian Enciclopedia Europea. The latter text was included in a book published in Italy, Discutere lo Stato, and he criticized the notion of "government party" and defended the notion of a revolutionary party "out of state".During the 1970s, Althusser's institutional roles at the ENS increased but he still edited and published his and other works in the series Théorie, with François Maspero. Among the essays published, there was "Response to John Lewis", a 1973 reply of an English Communist's defence of Marxist Humanism. Two years later, he concluded his Doctorat d'État (State doctorate) in the University of Picardie Jules Verne and acquired the right to direct research on the basis of his previously published work. Some time after this recognition, Althusser married Hélène Rytmann. In 1976, he compiled several of his essays written between 1964 and 1975 to publish Positions. These years would be a period in which his work was very intermittent; he gave a conference titled "The Transformation of Philosophy" ("La transformation de la philosophie") in two Spanish cities, first Granada and then in Madrid, in March 1976. The same year he gave a lecture in Catalonia titled "Quelques questions de la crise de la théorie marxiste et du mouvement communiste international" ("Some Questions on the Crisis of Marxist Theory and the International Communist Movement") in which Althusser outlined empiricism as the main enemy of class struggle. He also started a rereading of Machiavelli that would influence his later work; he worked between 1975 and 1976 on "Machiavel et nous" ("Machiavelli and Us"), a draft, only published posthumously, based on a 1972 lecture, and also wrote for the National Foundation of Political Science a piece titled "Machiavelli's Solitude" ("Solitude de Machiavel", 1977). In Spring 1976, requested by Léon Chertok to write for the International Symposium on the Unconscious at Tbilisi, he drafted a presentation titled "The Discovery of Dr. Freud" ("La découverte du docteur Freud"). After sending it to Chertok and some friends, he was unsettled by the requested criticism he received by Jacques Nassif and Roudinesco, and then, by December, he wrote a new essay, "On Marx and Freud". He could not attend the event in 1979 and asked Chertok to replace the texts, but Chertok published the first without his consent. This would become a public "affair" in 1984 when Althusser finally noticed it by the time Chertok republished it in a book titled Dialogue franco-soviétique, sur la psychanalyse. === Killing of Rytmann and late years: 1978–1990 === After the PCF and the left were defeated in the French legislative elections of 1978, Althusser's bouts of depression became more severe and frequent. In March 1980, Althusser interrupted the dissolution session of the École Freudienne de Paris, and, "in the name of the analysts", called Lacan a "beautiful and pitiful harlequin." Later, he went through a hiatal hernia-removal surgery as he had difficulties breathing while eating. According to Althusser himself, the operation caused his physical and mental state to deteriorate; in particular, he developed a persecution complex and suicidal thoughts. He would recall later: I wanted not only to destroy myself physically but to wipe out all trace of my time on earth: in particular, to destroy every last one of my books and all my notes, and burn the École Normale, and also, "if possible," suppress Hélène herself while I still could. After the surgery, in May, he was hospitalized for most of the summer in a Parisian clinic. His condition did not improve, but in early October he was sent home. Upon returning, he wanted to get away from ENS and even proposed to buy Roudinesco's house. He and Rytmann were also convinced about the "human decline", and so he tried to talk to the Pope John Paul II through his former professor Jean Guitton. Most of the time, however, he and his wife spent locked in their ENS apartment. In the fall of 1980, Althusser's psychiatrist René Diatkine, who by now was also treating Althusser's wife Hélène Rytmann, recommended that Althusser be hospitalized, but the couple refused. Before me: Hélène lying on her back, also wearing a dressing gown. ... Kneeling beside her, leaning over her body, I am engaged in massaging her neck. ... I press my two thumbs into the hollow of flesh that borders the top of the sternum, and, applying force, I slowly reach, one thumb toward the right, one thumb toward the left at an angle, the firmer area below the ears. ... Hélène's face is immobile and serene, her open eyes are fixed on the ceiling. And suddenly I am struck with terror: her eyes are interminably fixed, and above all here is the tip of her tongue lying, unusually and peacefully, between her teeth and her lips. I had certainly seen corpses before, but I had never seen the face of a strangled woman in my life. And yet I know that this is a strangled woman. What is happening? I stand up and scream: I've strangled Hélène! On 16 November 1980, Althusser strangled Rytmann in their ENS room. He himself reported the murder to the doctor in residence who contacted psychiatric institutions. Even before the police arrival, the doctor and the director of ENS decided to hospitalize him in the Sainte-Anne hospital and a psychiatric examination was conducted on him. Due to his mental state, Althusser was deemed to not understand the charges or the process to which he was to be submitted, so he remained at the hospital. The psychiatric assessment concluded he should not be criminally charged, based on article 64 of the French Penal Code, which stated that "there is neither crime nor delict where the suspect was in a state of dementia at the time of the action". The report said Althusser killed Rytmann in the course of an acute crisis of melancholy, without even realizing it, and that the "wife-murder by manual strangulation was committed without any additional violence, in the course of [an] iatrogenic hallucinatory episode complicated by melancholic depression." As a result, he lost his civil rights, entrusted to a representative of the law, and he was forbidden to sign any documents. In February 1981, the court ruled Althusser as having been mentally irresponsible when he committed the murder, therefore he could not be prosecuted and was not charged. Nonetheless, a warrant of confinement was subsequently issued by the Paris police prefecture; the Ministry of National Education mandated his retirement from the ENS; and the ENS requested his family and friends to clear out his apartment. In June, he was transferred to the L'Eau-Vive clinic at Soisy-sur-Seine.The murder of Rytmann attracted much media attention, and there were several requests to treat Althusser as an ordinary criminal. The newspaper Minute, journalist Dominique Jamet and Minister of Justice Alain Peyrefitte were among those who accused Althusser of having "privileges" because of the fact he was Communist. From this point of view, Roudinesco wrote, Althusser was three times a criminal. First, the philosopher had legitimated the current of thought judged responsible for the Gulag; second, he praised the Chinese Cultural Revolution as an alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism; and finally because he had, it was said, corrupted the elite of French youth by introducing the cult of a criminal ideology into the heart of one of the best French institutions. Philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff went further on claiming Althusser taught his students to perceive crimes positively, as akin to a revolution. Five years after the murder, a critique by Le Monde's Claude Sarraute would have a great impact on Althusser. She compared his case to the situation of Issei Sagawa, who killed and cannibalized a woman in France, but whose psychiatric diagnosis absolved him. Sarraute criticized the fact that, when prestigious names are involved, a lot is written about them but that little is written about the victim. Althusser's friends persuaded him to speak in his defense, and the philosopher wrote an autobiography in 1985. He showed the result, L'avenir dure longtemps, to some of his friends and considered publishing it, but he never sent it to a publisher and locked it in his desk drawer. The book was only published posthumously in 1992.Despite the critics, some of his friends, such as Guitton and Debray, defended Althusser, saying the murder was an act of love—as Althusser argued too. Rytmann had bouts of melancholy and self-medicated because of this. Guitton said, "I sincerely think that he killed his wife out of love of her. It was a crime of mystical love". Debray compared it to an altruistic suicide: "He suffocated her under a pillow to save her from the anguish that was suffocating him. A beautiful proof of love ... that one can save one's skin while sacrificing oneself for the other, only to take upon oneself all the pain of living". In his autobiography, written to be the public explanation he could not provide in court, Althusser stated that "she matter-of-factly asked me to kill her myself, and this word, unthinkable and intolerable in its horror, caused my whole body to tremble for a long time. It still makes me tremble ... We were living shut up in the cloister of our hell, both of us." I killed a woman who was everything to me during a crisis of mental confusion, she who loved me to the point of wanting only to die because she could not continue living. And no doubt in my confusion and unconsciousness I 'did her this service,' which she did not try to prevent, but from which she died. The crime seriously tarnished Althusser's reputation. As Roudinesco wrote, from 1980, he lived his life as a "specter, a dead man walking". Althusser was forced to live in various public and private clinics until 1983, when he became a voluntary patient. He was able to start an untitled manuscript during this time, in 1982; it was later published as "The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter" ("Le courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre"). From 1984 to 1986, he stayed at an apartment in the north of Paris, where he remained confined most of his time, but he also received visits from some friends, such as philosopher and theologian Stanislas Breton, who had also been a prisoner in the German stalags; from Guitton, who converted him into a "mystic monk" in Roudinesco's words; and from Mexican philosopher Fernanda Navarro during six months, starting from the winter of 1984. Althusser and Navarro exchanged letters until February 1987, and he also wrote a preface in July 1986 for the resulting book, Filosofía y marxismo, a collection of her interviews with Althusser that was released in Mexico in 1988. These interviews and correspondence were collected and published in France in 1994 as Sur la philosophie. In this period he formulated his "materialism of the encounter" or "aleatory materialism", talking to Breton and Navarro about it, that first appeared in Écrits philosophiques et politiques I (1994) and later in the 2006 Verso book Philosophy of the Encounter. In 1987, after Althusser underwent an emergency operation because of the obstruction of the esophagus, he developed a new clinical case of depression. First brought to the Soisy-sur-Seine clinic, he was transferred to the psychiatric institution MGEN in La Verrière. There, following a pneumonia contracted during the summer, he died of a heart attack on 22 October 1990. == Personal life == === Romantic life === Althusser was such a homebody that biographer William S. Lewis affirmed, "Althusser had known only home, school, and P.O.W. camp" by the time he met his future wife. In contrast, when he first met Rytmann in 1946, she was a former member of the French resistance and a Communist activist. After fighting along with Jean Beaufret in the group "Service Périclès", she joined the PCF. However, she was expelled from the party accused of being a double agent for the Gestapo, for "Trotskyist deviation" and "crimes", which probably referred to the execution of former Nazi collaborators. Although high-ranking party officials instructed him to sever relations with Rytmann, Althusser tried to restore her reputation in the PCF for a long time by making inquiries into her wartime activities. Although he did not succeed in reinserting her into the party, his relationship with Rytmann nonetheless deepened during this period. Their relationship "was traumatic from the outset, so Althusser claims", wrote Elliott. Among the reasons were his almost total inexperience with women and the fact she was eight years older than him. I had never embraced a woman, and above all I had never been embraced by a woman (at age thirty!). Desire mounted in me, we made love on the bed, it was new, exciting, exalting, and violent. When she (Hélène) had left, an abysm of anguish opened up in me, never again to close. His feelings toward her were contradictory from the very beginning; it is suggested that the strong emotional impact she caused in him led him to deep depression. Roudinesco wrote that, for Althusser, Rytmann represented the opposite of himself: she had been in the Resistance while he was remote from the anti-Nazi combat; she was a Jew who carried the stamp of the Holocaust, whereas he, despite his conversion to Marxism, never escaped the formative effect of Catholicism; she suffered under Stalinism at the very moment when he was joining the party; and, in opposition to his petit-bourgeois background, her childhood was not prosperous—at the age of 13 she became the sexual abuse victim of a family doctor who, in addition, instructed her to give her terminally ill parents a dose of morphine. However, this story could have been invented by Althusser, who admitted to incorporating "imagined memories" into his "traumabiography." According to Roudinesco, she embodied for Althusser his "displaced conscience", "pitiless superego", "damned part", "black animality".Althusser considered that Rytmann gave him "a world of solidarity and struggle, a world of reasoned action, ... a world of courage". According to him, they performed an indispensable maternal and paternal function for one another: "She loved me as a mother loves a child ... and at the same time like a good father in that she introduced me ... to the real world, that vast arena I had never been able to enter. ... Through her desire for me she also initiated me ... into my role as a man, into my masculinity. She loved me as a woman loves a man!" Roudinesco argued that Rytmann represented for him "the sublimated figure of his own hated mother to whom he remained attached all his life". In his autobiography, he wrote: "If I was dazzled by Hélène's love and the miraculous privilege of knowing her and having her in my life, I tried to give that back to her in my own way, intensely and, if I may put it this way, as a religious offering, as I had done for my mother."Although Althusser was really in love with Rytmann, he also had affairs with other women. Roudinesco commented that "unlike Hélène, the other women loved by Louis Althusser were generally of great physical beauty and sometimes exceptionally sensitive to intellectual dialogue". She gives as an example of the latter case a woman named Claire Z., with whom he had a long relationship until he was forty-two. They broke up when he met Franca Madonia, a philosopher, translator, and playwright from a well-off Italian bourgeois family from Romagna. Madonia was married to Mino, whose sister Giovanna was married to the Communist painter Leonardo Cremonini. Every summer the two families gathered in a residence in the village of Bertinoro, and, according to Roudinesco, "It was in this magical setting ... that Louis Althusser fell in love with Franca, discovering through her everything he had missed in his own childhood and that he lacked in Paris: a real family, an art of living, a new manner of thinking, speaking, desiring". She influenced him to appreciate modern theatre (Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett), and, Roudinesco wrote, also on his detachment of Stalinism and "his finest texts (For Marx especially) but also his most important concepts". In her company in Italy in 1961, as Elliott affirmed, was also when he "truly discovered" Machiavelli. Between 1961 and 1965, they exchanged letters and telephone calls, and they also went on trips together, in which they talk about the current events, politics, and theory, as well made confidences on the happiness and unhappiness of daily life. However, Madonia had an explosive reaction when Althusser tried to make her Rytmann's friend, and seek to bring Mino into their meetings. They nevertheless continued to exchange letters until 1973; these were published in 1998 into an 800-page book Lettres à Franca. === Mental condition === Althusser underwent psychiatric hospitalisations throughout his life, the first time after receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He suffered from bipolar disorder, and because of it he had frequent bouts of depression that started in 1938 and became regular after his five-year stay in German captivity. From the 1950s onward, he was under constant medical supervision, often undergoing, in Lewis' words, "the most aggressive treatments post-war French psychiatry had to offer", which included electroconvulsive therapy, narco-analysis, and psychoanalysis. Althusser did not limit himself to prescribed medications and practised self-medication. The disease affected his academic productivity; in 1962, he began to write a book about Machiavelli during a depressive exacerbation but was interrupted by a three-months stay in a clinic. The main psychoanalyst he attended was the anti-Lacanian René Diatkine, starting from 1964, after he had a dream about killing his own sister. The sessions became more frequent in January 1965, and the real work of exploring the unconscious was launched in June. Soon Althusser recognized the positive side of non-Lacanian psychoanalysis; although sometimes tried to ridicule Diatkine giving him lessons in Lacanianism, by July 1966, he considered the treatment was producing "spectacular results". In 1976, Althusser estimated that he had spent fifteen of the previous thirty years in hospitals and psychiatric clinics.Althusser analysed the prerequisites of his illness with the help of psychoanalysis and found them in complex relationships with his family (he devoted to this topic half of the autobiography). Althusser believed that he did not have a genuine "I", which was caused by the absence of real maternal love and the fact that his father was emotionally reserved and virtually absent for his son. Althusser deduced the family situation from the events before his birth, as told to him by his aunt: Lucienne Berger, his mother, was to marry his father's brother, Louis Althusser, who died in World War I near Verdun, while Charles, his father, was engaged with Lucienne's sister, Juliette. Both families followed the old custom of the levirate, which obliged an older, still unmarried, brother to wed the widow of a deceased younger brother. Lucienne then married Charles, and the son was named after the deceased Louis. In Althusser's memoirs, this marriage was "madness", not so much because of the tradition itself, but because of the excessive submission, as Charles was not forced to marry Lucienne since his younger brother had not yet married her. As a result, Althusser concluded, his mother did not love him, but loved the long-dead Louis. The philosopher described his mother as a "castrating mother" (a term from psychoanalysis), who, under the influence of her phobias, established a strict regime of social and sexual "hygiene" for Althusser and his sister Georgette. His "feeling of fathomless solitude" could only be mitigated by communicating with his mother's parents who lived in Morvan. His relationship with his mother and the desire to deserve her love, in his memoirs, largely determined his adult life and career, including his admission to the ENS and his desire to become a "well-known intellectual". According to his autobiography, ENS was for Althusser a kind of refuge of intellectual "purity" from the big "dirty" world that his mother was so afraid of.The facts of his autobiography have been critically evaluated by researchers. According to its own editors, L'avenir dure longtemps is "an inextricable tangle of 'facts' and 'phantasies'". His friend and biographer Yann Moulier-Boutang, after a careful analysis of the early period of Althusser's life, concluded that the autobiography was "a re-writing of a life through the prism of its wreckage". Moulier-Boutang believed that it was Rytmann who played a key role in creating a "fatalistic" account of the history of the Althusser family, largely shaping his vision in a 1964 letter. According to Elliott, the autobiography produces primarily an impression of "destructiveness and self-destructiveness". Althusser, most likely, postdated the beginning of his depression to a later period (post-war), having not mentioned earlier manifestations of the disease in school and in the concentration camp. According to Moulier-Boutang, Althusser had a close psychological connection with Georgette from an early age, and although he did not often mention it in his autobiography, her "nervous illness" may have tracked his own. His sister also had depression, and despite their living separately from each other for almost their entire adult lives, their depression often coincided in time. Also, Althusser focused on describing family circumstances, not considering, for example, the influence of ENS on his personality. Moulier-Boutang connected the depression not only with events in his personal life, but also with political disappointments. == Thought == Althusser's earlier works include the influential volume Reading Capital (1965), which collects the work of Althusser and his students in an intensive philosophical rereading of Marx's Capital. The book reflects on the philosophical status of Marxist theory as a "critique of political economy", and on its object. Althusser would later acknowledge that many of the innovations in this interpretation of Marx attempt to assimilate concepts derived from Baruch Spinoza into Marxism. The original English translation of this work includes only the essays of Althusser and Étienne Balibar, while the original French edition contains additional contributions from Jacques Rancière, Pierre Macherey, and Roger Establet. A full translation was published in 2016. Several of Althusser's theoretical positions have remained influential in Marxist philosophy. His essay "On the Materialist Dialectic" proposes a great "epistemological break" between Marx's early writings (1840–45) and his later, properly Marxist texts, borrowing a term from the philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard. His essay "Marxism and Humanism" is a strong statement of anti-humanism in Marxist theory, condemning ideas like "human potential" and "species-being", which are often put forth by Marxists, as outgrowths of a bourgeois ideology of "humanity". His essay "Contradiction and Overdetermination" borrows the concept of overdetermination from psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple causality in political situations (an idea closely related to Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony).Althusser is also widely known as a theorist of ideology. His best-known essay, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation", establishes the concept of ideology. Althusser's theory of ideology draws on Marx and Gramsci, but also on Freud's and Lacan's psychological concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that enable the concept of self. For Althusser, these structures are both agents of repression and inevitable: it is impossible to escape ideology and avoid being subjected to it. On the other hand, the collection of essays from which "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" is drawn contains other essays which confirm that Althusser's concept of ideology is broadly consistent with the classic Marxist theory of class struggle. Althusser's thought evolved during his lifetime. It has been the subject of argument and debate, especially within Marxism and specifically concerning his theory of knowledge (epistemology). === Epistemological break === Althusser argues that Marx's thought has been fundamentally misunderstood and underestimated. He fiercely condemns various interpretations of Marx's works—historicism, idealism and economism—on grounds that they fail to realize that with the "science of history", historical materialism, Marx has constructed a revolutionary view of social change. Althusser believes these errors result from the notion that Marx's entire body of work can be understood as a coherent whole. Rather, Marx's thought contains a radical "epistemological break". Although the works of the young Marx are bound by the categories of German philosophy and classical political economy, The German Ideology (written in 1845) makes a sudden and unprecedented departure. This break represents a shift in Marx's work to a fundamentally different "problematic", i.e., a different set of central propositions and questions posed, a different theoretical framework. Althusser believes that Marx himself did not fully comprehend the significance of his own work, and was able to express it only obliquely and tentatively. The shift can be revealed only by a careful and sensitive "symptomatic reading". Thus, Althusser's project is to help readers fully grasp the originality and power of Marx's extraordinary theory, giving as much attention to what is not said as to the explicit. Althusser holds that Marx has discovered a "continent of knowledge", History, analogous to the contributions of Thales to mathematics or Galileo to physics, in that the structure of his theory is unlike anything posited by his predecessors. Althusser believes that Marx's work is fundamentally incompatible with its antecedents because it is built on a groundbreaking epistemology (theory of knowledge) that rejects the distinction between subject and object. In opposition to empiricism, Althusser claims that Marx's philosophy, dialectical materialism, counters the theory of knowledge as vision with a theory of knowledge as production. On the empiricist view, a knowing subject encounters a real object and uncovers its essence by means of abstraction. On the assumption that thought has a direct engagement with reality, or an unmediated vision of a "real" object, the empiricist believes that the truth of knowledge lies in the correspondence of a subject's thought to an object that is external to thought itself. By contrast, Althusser claims to find latent in Marx's work a view of knowledge as "theoretical practice". For Althusser, theoretical practice takes place entirely within the realm of thought, working upon theoretical objects and never coming into direct contact with the real object that it aims to know. Knowledge is not discovered, but rather produced by way of three "Generalities": (I) the "raw material" of pre-scientific ideas, abstractions and facts; (II) a conceptual framework (or "problematic") brought to bear upon these; and (III) the finished product of a transformed theoretical entity, concrete knowledge. In this view, the validity of knowledge does not lie in its correspondence to something external to itself. Marx's historical materialism is a science with its own internal methods of proof. It is therefore not governed by interests of society, class, ideology, or politics, and is distinct from the superstructure. In addition to its unique epistemology, Marx's theory is built on concepts—such as forces and relations of production—that have no counterpart in classical political economy. Even when existing terms are adopted—for example, the theory of surplus value, which combines David Ricardo's concepts of rent, profit, and interest—their meaning and relation to other concepts in the theory is significantly different. However, more fundamental to Marx's "break" is a rejection of homo economicus, or the idea held by the classical economists that the needs of individuals can be treated as a fact or "given" independent of any economic organization. For the classical economists, individual needs can serve as a premise for a theory explaining the character of a mode of production and as an independent starting point for a theory about society. Where classical political economy explains economic systems as a response to individual needs, Marx's analysis accounts for a wider range of social phenomena in terms of the parts they play in a structured whole. Consequently, Marx's Capital has greater explanatory power than does political economy because it provides both a model of the economy and a description of the structure and development of a whole society. In Althusser's view, Marx does not merely argue that human needs are largely created by their social environment and thus vary with time and place; rather, he abandons the very idea that there can be a theory about what people are like that is prior to any theory about how they come to be that way.Although Althusser insists that there was an epistemological break, he later states that its occurrence around 1845 is not clearly defined, as traces of humanism, historicism, and Hegelianism are found in Capital. He states that only Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and some marginal notes on a book by Adolph Wagner are fully free from humanist ideology. In line with this, Althusser replaces his earlier definition of Marx's philosophy as the "theory of theoretical practice" with a new belief in "politics in the field of history" and "class struggle in theory". Althusser considers the epistemological break to be a process instead of a clearly defined event — the product of incessant struggle against ideology. Thus, the distinction between ideology and science or philosophy is not assured once and for all by the epistemological break. === Practices === Because of Marx's belief that the individual is a product of society, Althusser holds that it is pointless to try to build a social theory on a prior conception of the individual. The subject of observation is not individual human elements, but rather "structure". As he sees it, Marx does not explain society by appealing to the properties of individual persons—their beliefs, desires, preferences, and judgements. Rather, Marx defines society as a set of fixed "practices". Individuals are not actors who make their own history, but are instead the "supports" (Träger) of these practices.Althusser uses this analysis to defend Marx's historical materialism against the charge that it crudely posits a base (economic level) and superstructure (culture/politics) "rising upon it" and then attempts to explain all aspects of the superstructure by appealing to features of the (economic) base (the well known architectural metaphor). For Althusser, it is a mistake to attribute this economic determinist view to Marx. Just as Althusser criticises the idea that a social theory can be founded on an historical conception of human needs, so does he reject the idea that economic practice can be used in isolation to explain other aspects of society. Althusser believes that the base and the superstructure are interdependent, although he keeps to the classic Marxist materialist understanding of the determination of the base "in the last instance" (albeit with some extension and revision). The advantage of practices over human individuals as a starting point is that although each practice is only a part of a complex whole of society, a practice is a whole in itself in that it consists of a number of different kinds of parts. Economic practice, for example, contains raw materials, tools, individual persons, etc., all united in a process of production.Althusser conceives of society as an interconnected collection of these wholes: economic practice, ideological practice, and politico-legal practice. Although each practice has a degree of relative autonomy, together they make up one complex, structured whole (social formation). In his view, all practices are dependent on each other. For example, among the relations of production of capitalist societies are the buying and selling of labour power by capitalists and workers respectively. These relations are part of economic practice, but can only exist within the context of a legal system which establishes individual agents as buyers and sellers. Furthermore, the arrangement must be maintained by political and ideological means. From this it can be seen that aspects of economic practice depend on the superstructure and vice versa. For him this was the moment of reproduction and constituted the important role of the superstructure. === Contradiction and overdetermination === An analysis understood in terms of interdependent practices helps us to conceive of how society is organized, but also permits us to comprehend social change and thus provides a theory of history. Althusser explains the reproduction of the relations of production by reference to aspects of ideological and political practice; conversely, the emergence of new production relations can be explained by the failure of these mechanisms. Marx's theory seems to posit a system in which an imbalance in two parts could lead to compensatory adjustments at other levels, or sometimes to a major reorganization of the whole. To develop this idea, Althusser relies on the concepts of contradiction and non-contradiction, which he claims are illuminated by their relation to a complex structured whole. Practices are contradictory when they "grate" on one another and non-contradictory when they support one another. Althusser elaborates on these concepts by reference to Lenin's analysis of the Russian Revolution of 1917.Lenin posited that despite widespread discontent throughout Europe in the early 20th century, Russia was the country in which revolution occurred because it contained all the contradictions possible within a single state at the time. In his words, it was the "weakest link in a chain of imperialist states". He explained the revolution in relation to two groups of circumstances: firstly, the existence within Russia of large-scale exploitation in cities, mining districts, etc., a disparity between urban industrialization and medieval conditions in the countryside, and a lack of unity amongst the ruling class; secondly, a foreign policy which played into the hands of revolutionaries, such as the elites who had been exiled by the Tsar and had become sophisticated socialists.For Althusser, this example reinforces his claim that Marx's explanation of social change is more complex than the result of a single contradiction between the forces and the relations of production. The differences between events in Russia and Western Europe highlight that a contradiction between forces and relations of production may be necessary, but not sufficient, to bring about revolution. The circumstances that produced revolution in Russia were heterogeneous, and cannot be seen to be aspects of one large contradiction. Each was a contradiction within a particular social totality. From this, Althusser concludes that Marx's concept of contradiction is inseparable from the concept of a complex structured social whole. To emphasize that changes in social structures relate to numerous contradictions, Althusser describes these changes as "overdetermined", using a term taken from Sigmund Freud. This interpretation allows us to account for the way in which many different circumstances may play a part in the course of events, and how these circumstances may combine to produce unexpected social changes or "ruptures".However, Althusser does not mean to say that the events that determine social changes all have the same causal status. While a part of a complex whole, economic practice is a "structure in dominance": it plays a major part in determining the relations between other spheres, and has more effect on them than they have on it. The most prominent aspect of society (the religious aspect in feudal formations and the economic aspect in capitalist formations) is called the "dominant instance", and is in turn determined "in the last instance" by the economy. For Althusser, the economic practice of a society determines which other formation of that society dominates the society as a whole. Althusser's understanding of contradiction in terms of the dialectic attempts to rid Marxism of the influence and vestiges of Hegelian (idealist) dialectics, and is a component part of his general anti-humanist position. In his reading, the Marxist understanding of social totality is not to be confused with the Hegelian. Where Hegel sees the different features of each historical epoch – its art, politics, religion, etc. – as expressions of a single essence, Althusser believes each social formation to be "decentred", i.e., that it cannot be reduced or simplified to a unique central point. === Ideological state apparatuses === Because Althusser held that a person's desires, choices, intentions, preferences, judgements, and so forth are the effects of social practices, he believed it necessary to conceive of how society makes the individual in its own image. Within capitalist societies, the human individual is generally regarded as a subject—a self-conscious, "responsible" agent whose actions can be explained by their beliefs and thoughts. For Althusser, a person's capacity to perceive themselves in this way is not innate. Rather, it is acquired within the structure of established social practices, which impose on individuals the role (forme) of a subject. Social practices both determine the characteristics of the individual and give them an idea of the range of properties they can have, and of the limits of each individual. Althusser argues that many of our roles and activities are given to us by social practice: for example, the production of steelworkers is a part of economic practice, while the production of lawyers is part of politico-legal practice. However, other characteristics of individuals, such as their beliefs about the good life or their metaphysical reflections on the nature of the self, do not easily fit into these categories. In Althusser's view, our values, desires, and preferences are inculcated in us by ideological practice, the sphere which has the defining property of constituting individuals as subjects. Ideological practice consists of an assortment of institutions called "ideological state apparatuses" (ISAs), which include the family, the media, religious organizations, and most importantly in capitalist societies, the education system, as well as the received ideas that they propagate. No single ISA produces in us the belief that we are self-conscious agents. Instead, we derive this belief in the course of learning what it is to be a daughter, a schoolchild, black, a steelworker, a councillor, and so forth. Despite its many institutional forms, the function and structure of ideology is unchanging and present throughout history; as Althusser states, "ideology has no history". All ideologies constitute a subject, even though he or she may differ according to each particular ideology. Memorably, Althusser illustrates this with the concept of "hailing" or "interpellation". He compares ideology to a policeman shouting "Hey you there!" toward a person walking on the street. Upon hearing this call, the person responds by turning around and in doing so, is transformed into a subject. The person being hailed recognizes themselves as the subject of the hail, and knows to respond. Althusser calls this recognition a "mis-recognition" (méconnaissance), because it works retroactively: a material individual is always already an ideological subject, even before he or she is born. The "transformation" of an individual into a subject has always already happened; Althusser here acknowledges a debt to Spinoza's theory of immanence.To highlight this, Althusser offers the example of Christian religious ideology, embodied in the Voice of God, instructing a person on what their place in the world is and what he must do to be reconciled with Christ. From this, Althusser draws the point that in order for that person to identify as a Christian, he must first already be a subject; that is, by responding to God's call and following His rules, he affirms himself as a free agent, the author of the acts for which he assumes responsibility. We cannot recognize ourselves outside ideology, and in fact, our very actions reach out to this overarching structure. Althusser's theory draws heavily from Jacques Lacan and his concept of the Mirror Stage—we acquire our identities by seeing ourselves mirrored in ideologies. === Aleatory materialism === In various short papers drafted from 1982 to 1986 and published posthumously, Althusser is critical of the relation of Marxist science to the philosophy of dialectical materialism and materialist philosophy in general. Althusser rejects dialectical materialism and introduces a new concept: the Philosophy of the Encounter, renamed Aleatory Materialism in 1986. To develop this idea, Althusser holds that there exists an “underground” or barely recognized philosophical current of Aleatory Materialism, articulated by Marx, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida.He argues that it was an idealist and teleological mistake to think that there are general laws of history and that social relations are determined in the same manner as physical relations. Emphasising the role of contingency in history over laws of development he states that reconstructed historical materialism has as its object complex historical singularities or conjunctures, The conjuncture is the pivotal point, where political practice may intervene, and Aleatory Materialism is a materialist philosophy to understand this conjuncture. == Reception and influence == While Althusser's writings were born of an intervention against reformist and ecumenical tendencies within Marxist theory, the eclecticism of his influences reflected a move away from the intellectual isolation of the Stalin era. He drew as much from pre-Marxist systems of thought and contemporary schools such as structuralism, philosophy of science and psychoanalysis as he did from thinkers in the Marxist tradition. Furthermore, his thought was symptomatic of Marxism's growing academic respectability and of a push towards emphasizing Marx's legacy as a philosopher rather than only as an economist or sociologist. Tony Judt saw this as a criticism of Althusser's work, saying he removed Marxism "altogether from the realm of history, politics and experience, and thereby ... render[ed] it invulnerable to any criticism of the empirical sort."Althusser has had broad influence in the areas of Marxist philosophy and post-structuralism: interpellation has been popularized and adapted by the feminist philosopher and critic Judith Butler, and elaborated further by Göran Therborn; the concept of ideological state apparatuses has been of interest to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek; the attempt to view history as a process without a subject garnered sympathy from Jacques Derrida; historical materialism was defended as a coherent doctrine from the standpoint of analytic philosophy by G. A. Cohen; the interest in structure and agency sparked by Althusser was to play a role in sociologist Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration. Althusser's influence is also seen in the work of economists Richard D. Wolff and Stephen Resnick, who have interpreted that Marx's mature works hold a conception of class different from the normally understood ones. For them, in Marx class refers not to a group of people (for example, those that own the means of production versus those that do not), but to a process involving the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labour. Their emphasis on class as a process is consistent with their reading and use of Althusser's concept of overdetermination in terms of understanding agents and objects as the site of multiple determinations. Althusser's work has also been criticized from a number of angles. In a 1971 paper for Socialist Register, Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski undertook a detailed critique of structural Marxism, arguing that the concept was seriously flawed on three main points: I will argue that the whole of Althusser's theory is made up of the following elements: 1. common sense banalities expressed with the help of unnecessarily complicated neologisms; 2. traditional Marxist concepts that are vague and ambiguous in Marx himself (or in Engels) and which remain, after Althusser's explanation, exactly as vague and ambiguous as they were before; 3. some striking historical inexactitudes. Kołakowski further argued that, despite Althusser's 'verbal claims to "scientificity"', is himself "building a gratuitous ideological project". In 1980, sociologist Axel van den Berg described Kołakowski's critique as "devastating", proving that "Althusser retains the orthodox radical rhetoric by simply severing all connections with verifiable facts". G. A. Cohen, in his essay 'Complete Bullshit', has cited the 'Althusserian school' as an example of 'bullshit' and a factor in his co-founding the 'Non-Bullshit Marxism Group'. He says that 'the ideas that the Althusserians generated, for example, of the interpellation of the subject, or of contradiction and overdetermination, possessed a surface allure, but it often seemed impossible to determine whether or not the theses in which those ideas figured were true, and, at other times, those theses seemed capable of just two interpretations: on one of them they were true but uninteresting, and, on the other, they were interesting, but quite obviously false'.Althusser was vehemently attacked by British Marxist historian E. P. Thompson in his book The Poverty of Theory. Thompson claimed that Althusserianism was Stalinism reduced to the paradigm of a theory. Where the Soviet doctrines that existed during the lifetime of the dictator lacked systematisation, Althusser's theory gave Stalinism "its true, rigorous and totally coherent expression". As such, Thompson called for "unrelenting intellectual war" against the Marxism of Althusser. == Legacy == Since his death, the reassessment of Althusser's work and influence has been ongoing. The first wave of retrospective critiques and interventions ("drawing up a balance sheet") began outside of Althusser's own country, France, because, as Étienne Balibar pointed out in 1988, "there is an absolute taboo now suppressing the name of this man and the meaning of his writings." Balibar's remarks were made at the "Althusserian Legacy" Conference organized at Stony Brook University by Michael Sprinker. The proceedings of this conference were published in September 1992 as the Althusserian Legacy and included contributions from Balibar, Alex Callinicos, Michele Barrett, Alain Lipietz, Warren Montag, and Gregory Elliott, among others. It also included an obituary and an extensive interview with Derrida.Eventually, a colloquium was organized in France at the University of Paris VIII by Sylvain Lazarus on May 27, 1992. The general title was Politique et philosophie dans l'oeuvre de Louis Althusser, the proceedings of which were published in 1993.In retrospect, Althusser's continuing influence can be seen through his students. A dramatic example of this points to the editors and contributors of the 1960s journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse: "In many ways, the 'Cahiers' can be read as the critical development of Althusser's own intellectual itinerary when it was at its most robust." This influence continues to guide much philosophical work, as many of these same students became eminent intellectuals in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s: Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière in philosophy, Pierre Macherey in literary criticism and Nicos Poulantzas in sociology. The prominent Guevarist Régis Debray also studied under Althusser, as did the aforementioned Derrida (with whom he at one time shared an office at the ENS), noted philosopher Michel Foucault, and the pre-eminent Lacanian psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller.Badiou has lectured and spoken on Althusser on several occasions in France, Brazil, and Austria since Althusser's death. Badiou has written many studies, including "Althusser: Subjectivity without a Subject", published in his book Metapolitics in 2005. Most recently, Althusser's work has been given prominence again through the interventions of Warren Montag and his circle; see for example the special issue of borderlands e-journal edited by David McInerney (Althusser & Us) and "Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal", edited by Montag. (See "External links" below for access to both of these journals.) In 2011 Althusser continued to spark controversy and debate with the publication in August of that year of Jacques Rancière's first book, Althusser's Lesson (1974). It marked the first time this groundbreaking work was to appear in its entirety in an English translation. In 2014, On the Reproduction of Capitalism was published, which is an English translation of the full text of the work from which the ISAs text was drawn.The publication of Althusser's posthumous memoir cast some doubt on his own scholarly practices. For example, although he owned thousands of books, Althusser revealed that he knew very little about Kant, Spinoza, and Hegel. While he was familiar with Marx's early works, he had not read Capital when he wrote his own most important Marxist texts. Additionally, Althusser had "contrived to impress his first teacher, the Catholic theologian Jean Guitton, with a paper whose guiding principles he had simply filched from Guitton's own corrections of a fellow student's essay," and "he concocted fake quotations in the thesis he wrote for another major contemporary philosopher, Gaston Bachelard." == Selected bibliography == === French books === === English collections === === Selected articles in translation === "Our Jean-Jacques Rousseau". Telos 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press == Notes == == References == === Citations === === Bibliography === == Further reading == Althusser: A Critical Reader (ed. Gregory Elliott). Backer, David I. (2019). The Gold and Dross: Althusser for Educators (Boston: Brill). ISBN 978-90-04-39468-1. Barker, Jason and G. M. Goshgarian (eds.), "Other Althussers", Special issue of diacritics (43 (2), 2015), ISSN 0300-7162. Callari, Antonio and David Ruccio (eds.) "Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in Althusserian Tradition" (Wesleyan University Press, 1995). Angioni, Giulio, Rapporti di produzione e cultura subalterna, Cagliari, EDeS, 1974. Assiter, Alison (June 1984). "Althusser and structuralism". British Journal of Sociology. London School of Economics. 35 (2): 272–296. doi:10.2307/590235. JSTOR 590235. Archived from the original on 2 October 2018. Retrieved 15 July 2013. Assiter, Alison (1990). Althusser and feminism. London Winchester, Mass: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745302942. Callinicos, Alex, Althusser's Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 1976). de Ípola, Emilio. Althusser, el infinito adiós (2009) James, Susan, 'Louis Althusser' in Skinner, Q. (ed.) The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences Henry, Chris, “The Ethics of Political Resistance: Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze” (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019) Judt, Tony, "The Paris Strangler," in The New Republic, Vol. 210, No. 10, March 7, 1994, pp. 33–7. Waters, Malcolm, Modern Sociological Theory, 1994, page 116. Lewis, William, Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism. Lexington books, 2005. McInerney, David (ed.), Althusser & Us, special issue of borderlands e-journal, October 2005. Montag, Warren, Louis Althusser, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003. Montag, Warren (2013). Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy's Perpetual War. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-822-35400-0. Resch, Robert Paul. Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. (link) Heartfield, James, The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained, Sheffield Hallam UP, 2002, James Heartfield (19 December 1980). "Postmodernism and the 'Death of the Subject' by James Heartfield". Marxists.org. Retrieved 18 June 2011. Lahtinen, Mikko, "Politics and Philosophy: Niccolò Machiavelli and Louis Althusser's Aleatory Materialism", Brill, 2009 (forthcoming in paperback via Haymarket, 2011). Tedman, Gary, Aesthetics and Alienation Archived 6 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine Zero Books 2012 Thomas, Peter D., "The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism", Brill, 2009 (forthcoming in paperback via Haymarket, 2011). == External links == The Louis Althusser Internet Archive at Marxists.org Texts by or on Althusser at Generation-Online Louis Althusser (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Texts on Althusser on the site of the Sorbonne Marx Seminar Texts from Althusser & texts about him – in French on Multitudes website. Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal Marginal Thinking: A Forum on Louis Althusser at the Los Angeles Review of Books website.

R. M. Hare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._M._Hare

Richard Mervyn Hare (21 March 1919 – 29 January 2002), usually cited as R. M. Hare, was a British moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. He subsequently taught for a number of years at the University of Florida. His meta-ethical theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century. Hare is best known for his development of prescriptivism as a meta-ethical theory, which he argues is supported by analysis of formal features of moral discourse, and for his defence of preference utilitarianism based on his prescriptivism. Some of Hare's students, such as Brian McGuinness, John Lucas, and Bernard Williams went on to become well-known philosophers. Peter Singer, known for his involvement with the animal liberation movement (who studied Hare's work as an honours student at the University of Melbourne and came to know Hare personally whilst he was an Oxford BPhil graduate student), has explicitly adopted some elements of Hare's thought, though not his doctrine of universal prescriptivism. == Life and career == Richard Hare was born on 21 March 1919 in Backwell, Somerset. He attended Rugby School in Warwickshire, followed in 1937 by Balliol College, Oxford, where he read greats (classics). Having joined the officer training corps whist still at Rugby, on the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered to serve with the Royal Artillery.Hare was taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese from the fall of Singapore in 1942 to the end of the Second World War. Hare's wartime experience had a lasting impact on his philosophical views, particularly his view that moral philosophy has an obligation to help people live their lives as moral beings. His earliest work in philosophy, which has never been published, dates from this period, and in it, he tried to develop a system that might "serve as a guide to life in the harshest conditions", according to C. C. W. Taylor.He returned to Oxford after the war, and in 1947, married Catherine Verney, a marriage that produced a son and three daughters. (Hare's son, John E. Hare, is also a philosopher.) He was elected fellow and tutor in philosophy at Balliol from 1947 to 1966; honorary fellow at Balliol from 1974 to 2002; and was appointed Wilde Lecturer in Natural Religion, 1963–66; and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, 1966–1983, which accompanied a move to Corpus Christi. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1972 to 1973. He left Oxford in 1983 to become Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida at Gainesville, a post he held until 1994.After suffering a series of strokes, R. M. Hare died in Ewelme, Oxfordshire, on 29 January 2002.At his memorial service held at St Mary's Church, Oxford, in May of that year, Peter Singer delivered (as he felt Hare would have wished) a lecture on Hare's "Achievements in Moral Philosophy" which concluded by giving three "major, lasting" ones, namely, "restoring reason to moral argument, distinguishing intuitive and critical levels of moral thinking, and pioneering the development of ... applied ethics". == Influences == Hare was greatly influenced by the emotivism of A. J. Ayer and Charles L. Stevenson, the ordinary language philosophy of J. L. Austin, a certain reading of the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, utilitarianism, and Immanuel Kant. Hare held that ethical rules should not be based on a principle of utility, though he took into account utilitarian considerations. His hybrid approach to meta-ethics distinguishes him from classical utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham. His book Sorting Out Ethics might be interpreted as saying that Hare is as much a Kantian as he is a utilitarian, but other sources disagree with this assessment. Although Hare used many concepts from Kant, especially the idea of universalisability, he was still a consequentialist, rather than a deontologist, in his normative ethical views. Hare himself addressed the possibility that Kant was a utilitarian like himself, in his "Could Kant Have Been a Utilitarian?" == Universal prescriptivism == In a series of books, especially The Language of Morals (1952), Freedom and Reason (1963), and Moral Thinking (1981), Hare gave shape to a theory that he called universal prescriptivism. According to this, moral terms such as 'good', 'ought' and 'right' have two logical or semantic properties: universalizability and prescriptivity. By the former, he meant that moral judgments must identify the situation they describe according to a finite set of universal terms, excluding proper names, but not definite descriptions. By the latter, he meant that moral agents must perform those acts they consider themselves to have an obligation to perform whenever they are physically and psychologically able to do so. In other words, he argued that it made no sense for someone to say, sincerely: "I ought to do X", and then fail to do X. This was identified by Frankena, Nobis and others as a major flaw in Hare's system, as it appeared to take no account of akrasia, or weakness of the will.Hare argued that the combination of universalizability and prescriptivity leads to a certain form of consequentialism, namely, preference utilitarianism. In brief, this means that we should act in such a way as to maximise the satisfaction of people's preferences. == Importance of specificity == Hare departs from Kant's view that only the most general maxims of conduct be used (for example, "do not steal"), but the consequences ignored, when applying the categorical imperative. To ignore consequences leads to absurdity: for example, that it would be wrong to steal a terrorist's plans to blow up a nuclear facility. All the specific facts of a circumstance must be considered, and these include probable consequences. They also include the relevant, universal properties of the facts: for example, the psychological states of those involved. == Applied ethics and political philosophy == While Hare was primarily interested in meta-ethics, he also made some important contributions to the fields of political philosophy and applied ethics. Among his essays within these fields those on the wrongness of slavery, abortion and the Golden Rule, and on demi-vegetarianism have received the most attention. Hare's most important work in political philosophy and applied ethics is collected in the two volumes Essays on Political Morality (1989) and Essays on Bioethics (1993), both published by Oxford University Press. == Select works == Hare, R. M. (1952). The Language of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 1034413. Hare, R. M. (1972). Essays on Philosophical Method. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520323346. Hare, R. M. (1977). Freedom and Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198810926. Hare, R. M. (1981). Moral Thinking: its levels, method, and point. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198246602. Hare, R. M. (1982). "Ethical theory and Utilitarianism". In Sen, Amartya; Williams, Bernard (eds.). Utilitarianism and beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 22–38. ISBN 9780511611964. Hare, R. M. (1983). Plato. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192875853. Hare, R. M. (1989). Essays in Ethical Theory. Oxford England New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198240716. Hare, R. M. (1989). Essays on Political Morality. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198249955. Hare, R. M. (1992). Essays on Religion and Education. Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198249962. Hare, R. M. (1993). Essays on Bioethics. Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198236788.*For a more complete list of publications see the annotated bibliography by Keith Burgess-Jackson. == See also == Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford Tanner Lectures on Human Values == Notes == == References == == Further reading == Price, A. W. (2004). "Hare, Richard Mervyn" (PDF). Proceedings of the British Academy. 124: 117–37. Price, A. W. "Hare, Richard Mervyn (1919–2002)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/76706. == External links == Anthony Price. "Richard Mervyn Hare". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. R. M. Hare – resources page containing Hare's writings, secondary literature, reviews, obituaries and a bibliography [Archived by Wayback Machine] R. M. Hare in Conversation (on his 80th birthday) [Archived by Wayback Machine] R. M. Hare. (in Italian) [Archived by Wayback Machine]

P. F. Strawson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._F._Strawson

Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that, he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford, in 1947, and became a tutorial fellow the following year, until 1968. On his retirement in 1987, he returned to the college and continued working there until shortly before his death. His portrait was painted by the artists Muli Tang and Daphne Todd.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that Strawson "exerted a considerable influence on philosophy, both during his lifetime and, indeed, since his death". == Early years == Strawson was born in Ealing, west London, and brought up in Finchley, north London, by his parents, both of whom were teachers. He was educated at Christ's College, Finchley, followed by St John's College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. == Philosophical work == Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism of Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions (see also Definite descriptions) that Russell explained in the famous "On Denoting" article (1905). In philosophical methodology, there are (at least) two important and interrelated features of Strawson's work that are worthy of note. The first is the project of a 'descriptive' metaphysics, and the second is his notion of a shared conceptual scheme, composed of concepts operated in everyday life. In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson attempts to give a description of various concepts that form an interconnected web, representing (part of) our common, shared, human conceptual scheme. In particular, he examines our conceptions of basic particulars, and how they are variously brought under general spatio-temporal concepts. What makes this a metaphysical project is that it exhibits, in fine detail, the structural features of our thought about the world, and thus precisely delimits how we, humans, think about reality. Strawson was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960 and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1969 to 1970. He was knighted, in 1977, for services to philosophy. == Personal life == After serving as a captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War II, Strawson married Ann Martin in 1945. They had four children, including the philosopher Galen Strawson. P.F. Strawson lived in Oxford all his adult life and died in hospital on 13 February 2006 after a short illness. He was elder brother to Major General John Strawson. The obituary in The Guardian noted that "Oxford was the world capital of philosophy between 1950 and 1970, and American academics flocked there, rather than the traffic going the other way. That golden age had no greater philosopher than Sir Peter Strawson." In its obituary, The Times of London described him as a "philosopher of matchless range who made incisive, influential contributions to problems of language and metaphysics." The author went on to say: Few scholars achieve lasting fame as dramatically as did the philosopher Sir Peter Strawson. By 1950 Strawson, then a Fellow of University College, Oxford, was already a respected tutor and a promising member of the group of younger Oxford dons whose careful attention to the workings of natural languages marked them out as 'linguistic' philosophers. [He published] extraordinary papers, which are still read and discussed more than 50 years later and which are prescribed to tyros as models of philosophical criticism. == Partial bibliography == === Books === Introduction to Logical Theory. London: Methuen, 1952. Japanese translation by S. Tsunetoshi, et al. (Kyoto: Houritsu Bunkasya, 1994) Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen, 1959. German translation by F. Scholz (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1972) French translation by A. Shalom and P. Drong (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973) Italian translation by E. Bencivenga (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978) Japanese translation by H. Nakamura (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1978) Polish translation by B. Chwedenczuk (Warsaw: Wydawniczy Pax, 1980) Spanish translation by A. Suarez and L. Villanueva (Madrid: Taurus, 1989) Brazilian Portuguese translation by P. J. Smith (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2019) The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. London: Methuen, 1966. Spanish translation by C. Luis Andre (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1975) German translation by E. Lange (Hain, 1981) Italian translation by M. Palumbo (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1985) Japanese translation by T. Kumagai, et al. (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 1987) Logico-Linguistic Papers. London: Methuen, 1971 Freedom and Resentment and other Essays. London: Methuen, 1974 Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar. London: Methuen, 1974 Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Estonian translation by T. Hallap (Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2016) Entity and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Philosophical Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. === Articles === == Notes == == References == Philosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson, ed. Zak Van Straaten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) Leibniz and Strawson: A New Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Clifford Brown (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1990) Ensayos sobre Strawson, ed. Carlos E. Carosi (Montevideo: Universidad de la Republica, 1992) The Philosophy of P. F. Strawson, ed. Pranab Kumar Sen and Roop Rekha Verma (Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995) The Philosophy of P. F. Strawson, Lewis E. Hahn, ed. (Open Court, 1998) Theories of Truth, Richard Kirkham (MIT Press, 1992). (Chapter 10 contains a detailed discussion of Strawson's performative theory of truth.) Strawson & Kant: ensaios comemorativos aos 50 anos de The Bounds of Sense. GELAIN, Itamar Luís & CONTE, Jaimir (Org.) Pelotas: NEPFIL (On-line), 2016. Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson. CONTE, Jaimir & GELAIN, Itamar Luís (Org.). Florianópolis: Editora UFSC, 2015. Strawson and Kant, ed. Hans-Johann Glock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Sir Peter Strawson (1919–2006), Univ Newsletter, Issue 23, page 4, Hilary 2006. Peter Strawson, Clifford Brown (Acumen Publishing, 2006) Free Will and Reactive Attitudes: Perspectives on P. F. Strawson's 'Freedom and Resentment'. edited by Micheal McKenna and Paul Russell, (2016) == External links == Snowdon, Paul "Strawson, Sir Peter Frederick (1919–2006), philosopher". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (19 May 2011) [Archived] Snowdon, Paul, "Strawson, Peter Frederick, 1919-2006", Proceedings of the British Academy, V. 150 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, VI. pp. 221-244 (2008) Sir Peter Strawson - obituary for The Independent by Alan Ryan Peter Frederick Strawson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Snapshot: P. F. Strawson 2019 essay by Anil Gomes for The Philosophers' Magazine P.F. Strawson, The First Edition of "Freedom and Resentment"

John Rawls

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls

John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999. The latter was presented by President Bill Clinton in recognition of how his works "revived the disciplines of political and ethical philosophy with his argument that a society in which the most fortunate help the least fortunate is not only a moral society but a logical one".In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his introduction to the field that "it is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971". Rawls has often been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. Among contemporary political philosophers, he is frequently cited by the courts of law in the United States and Canada and referred to by practising politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom. In a 2008 national survey of political theorists, based on 1,086 responses from professors at accredited, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, Rawls was voted first on the list of "Scholars Who Have Had the Greatest Impact on Political Theory in the Past 20 Years".Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. Rawls's argument for these principles of social justice uses a thought experiment called the "original position", in which people deliberately select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls turned to the question of how political power could be made legitimate given reasonable disagreement about the nature of the good life. == Biography == === Early life and education === Rawls was born on February 21, 1921, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the second of five sons born to William Lee Rawls, a prominent Baltimore attorney, and Anna Abell Stump Rawls. Tragedy struck Rawls at a young age: Two of his brothers died in childhood because they had contracted fatal illnesses from him. ... In 1928, the seven-year-old Rawls contracted diphtheria. His brother Bobby, younger by 20 months, visited him in his room and was fatally infected. The next winter, Rawls contracted pneumonia. Another younger brother, Tommy, caught the illness from him and died. Rawls's biographer Thomas Pogge calls the loss of the brothers the "most important events in John's childhood." Rawls graduated in Baltimore before enrolling in the Kent School, an Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut. Upon graduation in 1939, Rawls attended Princeton University, where he was accepted into The Ivy Club and the American Whig-Cliosophic Society. At Princeton, Rawls was influenced by Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein's student. During his last two years at Princeton, he "became deeply concerned with theology and its doctrines." He considered attending a seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood and wrote an "intensely religious senior thesis (BI)." In his 181-page long thesis titled "Meaning of Sin and Faith," Rawls attacked Pelagianism because it "would render the Cross of Christ to no effect." His argument was partly drawn from Karl Marx's article On the Jewish Question, which criticized the idea that natural inequality in ability could be a just determiner of the distribution of wealth in society. Even after Rawls became an atheist, many of the anti-Pelagian arguments he used were repeated in A Theory of Justice. Rawls graduated from Princeton in 1943 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. === Military service, 1943–46 === Rawls enlisted in the U.S. Army in February 1943. During World War II, Rawls served as an infantryman in the Pacific, where he served a tour of duty in New Guinea and was awarded a Bronze Star; and the Philippines, where he endured intensive trench warfare and witnessed traumatizing scenes of violence and bloodshed. It was there that he lost his Christian faith and became an atheist.Following the surrender of Japan, Rawls became part of General MacArthur's occupying army and was promoted to sergeant. But he became disillusioned with the military when he saw the aftermath of the atomic blast in Hiroshima. Rawls then disobeyed an order to discipline a fellow soldier, "believing no punishment was justified," and was "demoted back to a private." Disenchanted, he left the military in January 1946. === Academic career === In early 1946, Rawls returned to Princeton to pursue a doctorate in moral philosophy. He married Margaret Warfield Fox, a Brown University graduate, in 1949. They had four children: Anne Warfield, Robert Lee, Alexander Emory, and Elizabeth Fox.Rawls received his PhD from Princeton in 1950 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character. His PhD included a year of study at Cornell. Rawls taught at Princeton until 1952 when he received a Fulbright Fellowship to Christ Church at Oxford University, where he was influenced by the liberal political theorist and historian Isaiah Berlin and the legal theorist H. L. A. Hart. After returning to the United States he served first as an assistant and then associate professor at Cornell University. In the fall of 1953 Rawls became an assistant professor at Cornell University, joining his mentor Norman Malcolm in the Philosophy Department. Three years later Rawls received tenure at Cornell. During the 1959–60 academic year Rawls was a visiting professor at Harvard, and he was appointed in 1960 as a professor in the humanities division at MIT. Two years later he returned to Harvard as a professor of philosophy, and he remained there until reaching mandatory retirement age in 1991. In 1962, he achieved a tenured position at MIT. That same year, he moved to Harvard University, where he taught for almost forty years and where he trained some of the leading contemporary figures in moral and political philosophy, including Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, Thomas Nagel, Allan Gibbard, Onora O'Neill, Adrian Piper, Arnold Davidson, Elizabeth S. Anderson, Christine Korsgaard, Susan Neiman, Claudia Card, Rainer Forst, Thomas Pogge, T. M. Scanlon, Barbara Herman, Joshua Cohen, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Gurcharan Das, Andreas Teuber, Henry S. Richardson, Nancy Sherman, Samuel Freeman and Paul Weithman. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard.Rawls was, for a time, a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society. He was put forward for membership by Milton Friedman in 1968, and withdrew from the society three years later, just before his A Theory of Justice was published. === Later life === Rawls rarely gave interviews and, having both a stutter (partially caused by the deaths of two of his brothers, who died through infections contracted from Rawls) and a "bat-like horror of the limelight," did not become a public intellectual despite his fame. He instead remained committed mainly to his academic and family life.In 1995, he had the first of several strokes, severely impeding his ability to continue to work. He was nevertheless able to complete The Law of Peoples, the most complete statement of his views on international justice, and published in 2001 shortly before his death Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, a response to criticisms of A Theory of Justice. Rawls died from heart failure at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on November 24, 2002, at age 81. He was buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife, Mard Rawls, and their four children, and four grandchildren. == Philosophical thought == Rawls published three main books. The first, A Theory of Justice, focused on distributive justice and attempted to reconcile the competing claims of the values of freedom and equality. The second, Political Liberalism, addressed the question of how citizens divided by intractable religious and philosophical disagreements could come to endorse a constitutional democratic regime. The third, The Law of Peoples, focused on the issue of global justice. === A Theory of Justice === A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, aimed to resolve the seemingly competing claims of freedom and equality. The shape Rawls's resolution took, however, was not that of a balancing act that compromised or weakened the moral claim of one value compared with the other. Rather, his intent was to show that notions of freedom and equality could be integrated into a seamless unity he called justice as fairness. By attempting to enhance the perspective which his readers should take when thinking about justice, Rawls hoped to show the supposed conflict between freedom and equality to be illusory. Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) includes a thought experiment he called the "original position." The intuition motivating its employment is this: the enterprise of political philosophy will be greatly benefited by a specification of the correct standpoint a person should take in his or her thinking about justice. When we think about what it would mean for a just state of affairs to obtain between persons, we eliminate certain features (such as hair or eye color, height, race, etc.) and fixate upon others. Rawls's original position is meant to encode all of our intuitions about which features are relevant, and which irrelevant, for the purposes of deliberating well about justice. The original position is Rawls's hypothetical scenario in which a group of persons is set the task of reaching an agreement about the kind of political and economic structure they want for a society, which they will then occupy. Each individual, however, deliberates behind a "veil of ignorance": each lacks knowledge, for example, of his or her gender, race, age, intelligence, wealth, skills, education and religion. The only thing that a given member knows about themselves is that they are in possession of the basic capacities necessary to fully and wilfully participate in an enduring system of mutual cooperation; each knows they can be a member of the society. Rawls posits two basic capacities that the individuals would know themselves to possess. First, individuals know that they have the capacity to form, pursue and revise a conception of the good, or life plan. Exactly what sort of conception of the good this is, however, the individual does not yet know. It may be, for example, religious or secular, but at the start, the individual in the original position does not know which. Second, each individual understands him or herself to have the capacity to develop a sense of justice and a generally effective desire to abide by it. Knowing only these two features of themselves, the group will deliberate in order to design a social structure, during which each person will seek his or her maximal advantage. The idea is that proposals that we would ordinarily think of as unjust—such as that black people or women should not be allowed to hold public office—will not be proposed, in this, Rawls's original position, because it would be irrational to propose them. The reason is simple: one does not know whether he himself would be a woman or a black person. This position is expressed in the difference principle, according to which, in a system of ignorance about one's status, one would strive to improve the position of the worst off, because he might find himself in that position. Rawls develops his original position by modelling it, in certain respects at least, after the "initial situations" of various social contract thinkers who came before him, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Each social contractarian constructs his/her initial situation somewhat differently, having in mind a unique political morality s/he intends the thought experiment to generate. Iain King has suggested the original position draws on Rawls's experiences in post-war Japan, where the US Army was challenged with designing new social and political authorities for the country, while "imagining away all that had gone before."In social justice processes, each person early on makes decisions about which features of persons to consider and which to ignore. Rawls's aspiration is to have created a thought experiment whereby a version of that process is carried to its completion, illuminating the correct standpoint a person should take in his or her thinking about justice. If he has succeeded, then the original position thought experiment may function as a full specification of the moral standpoint we should attempt to achieve when deliberating about social justice. In setting out his theory, Rawls described his method as one of "reflective equilibrium," a concept which has since been used in other areas of philosophy. Reflective equilibrium is achieved by mutually adjusting one's general principles and one's considered judgements on particular cases, to bring the two into line with one another. ==== Principles of justice ==== Rawls derives two principles of justice from the original position. The first of these is the Liberty Principle, which establishes equal basic liberties for all citizens. 'Basic' liberty entails the (familiar in the liberal tradition) freedoms of conscience, association and expression as well as democratic rights; Rawls also includes a personal property right, but this is defended in terms of moral capacities and self-respect, rather than an appeal to a natural right of self-ownership (this distinguishes Rawls's account from the classical liberalism of John Locke and the libertarianism of Robert Nozick). Rawls argues that a second principle of equality would be agreed upon to guarantee liberties that represent meaningful options for all in society and ensure distributive justice. For example, formal guarantees of political voice and freedom of assembly are of little real worth to the desperately poor and marginalized in society. Demanding that everyone have exactly the same effective opportunities in life would almost certainly offend the very liberties that are supposedly being equalized. Nonetheless, we would want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: wherever one ends up in society, one wants life to be worth living, with enough effective freedom to pursue personal goals. Thus participants would be moved to affirm a two-part second principle comprising Fair Equality of Opportunity and the famous (and controversial) difference principle. This second principle ensures that those with comparable talents and motivation face roughly similar life chances and that inequalities in society work to the benefit of the least advantaged. Rawls held that these principles of justice apply to the "basic structure" of fundamental social institutions (such as the judiciary, the economic structure and the political constitution), a qualification that has been the source of some controversy and constructive debate (see the work of Gerald Cohen). Rawls's theory of justice stakes out the task of equalizing the distribution of primary social goods to those least advantaged in society and thus may be seen as a largely political answer to the question of justice, with matters of morality somewhat conflated into a political account of justice and just institutions. Relational approaches to the question of justice, by contrast, seek to examine the connections between individuals and focuses on their relations in societies, with respect to how these relationships are established and configured.Rawls further argued that these principles were to be 'lexically ordered' to award priority to basic liberties over the more equality-oriented demands of the second principle. This has also been a topic of much debate among moral and political philosophers. Finally, Rawls took his approach as applying in the first instance to what he called a "well-ordered society ... designed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice." In this respect, he understood justice as fairness as a contribution to "ideal theory," the determination of "principles that characterize a well-ordered society under favorable circumstances." Much recent work in political philosophy has asked what justice as fairness might dictate (or indeed, whether it is very useful at all) for problems of "partial compliance" under "nonideal theory." === Political Liberalism === In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls turned towards the question of political legitimacy in the context of intractable philosophical, religious, and moral disagreement amongst citizens regarding the human good. Such disagreement, he insisted, was reasonable—the result of the free exercise of human rationality under the conditions of open enquiry and free conscience that the liberal state is designed to safeguard. The question of legitimacy in the face of reasonable disagreement was urgent for Rawls because his own justification of Justice as Fairness relied upon a Kantian conception of the human good that can be reasonably rejected. If the political conception offered in A Theory of Justice can only be shown to be good by invoking a controversial conception of human flourishing, it is unclear how a liberal state ordered according to it could possibly be legitimate. The intuition animating this seemingly new concern is actually no different from the guiding idea of A Theory of Justice, namely that the fundamental charter of a society must rely only on principles, arguments and reasons that cannot be reasonably rejected by the citizens whose lives will be limited by its social, legal, and political circumscriptions. In other words, the legitimacy of a law is contingent upon its justification being impossible to reasonably reject. This old insight took on a new shape, however, when Rawls realized that its application must extend to the deep justification of Justice as Fairness itself, which he had presented in terms of a reasonably rejectable (Kantian) conception of human flourishing as the free development of autonomous moral agency. The core of Political Liberalism is its insistence that in order to retain its legitimacy, the liberal state must commit itself to the "ideal of public reason." This roughly means that citizens in their public capacity must engage one another only in terms of reasons whose status as reasons is shared between them. Political reasoning, then, is to proceed purely in terms of "public reasons." For example: a Supreme Court justice deliberating on whether or not the denial to homosexuals of the ability to marry constitutes a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause may not advert to his religious convictions on the matter, but he may take into account the argument that a same-sex household provides sub-optimal conditions for a child's development. This is because reasons based upon the interpretation of sacred text are non-public (their force as reasons relies upon faith commitments that can be reasonably rejected), whereas reasons that rely upon the value of providing children with environments in which they may develop optimally are public reasons—their status as reasons draws upon no deep, controversial conception of human flourishing. Rawls held that the duty of civility—the duty of citizens to offer one another reasons that are mutually understood as reasons—applies within what he called the "public political forum." This forum extends from the upper reaches of government—for example the supreme legislative and judicial bodies of the society—all the way down to the deliberations of a citizen deciding for whom to vote in state legislatures or how to vote in public referendums. Campaigning politicians should also, he believed, refrain from pandering to the non-public religious or moral convictions of their constituencies. The ideal of public reason secures the dominance of the public political values—freedom, equality, and fairness—that serve as the foundation of the liberal state. But what about the justification of these values? Since any such justification would necessarily draw upon deep (religious or moral) metaphysical commitments which would be reasonably rejectable, Rawls held that the public political values may only be justified privately by individual citizens. The public liberal political conception and its attendant values may and will be affirmed publicly (in judicial opinions and presidential addresses, for example) but its deep justifications will not. The task of justification falls to what Rawls called the "reasonable comprehensive doctrines" and the citizens who subscribe to them. A reasonable Catholic will justify the liberal values one way, a reasonable Muslim another, and a reasonable secular citizen yet another way. One may illustrate Rawls's idea using a Venn diagram: the public political values will be the shared space upon which overlap numerous reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Rawls's account of stability presented in A Theory of Justice is a detailed portrait of the compatibility of one—Kantian—comprehensive doctrine with justice as fairness. His hope is that similar accounts may be presented for many other comprehensive doctrines. This is Rawls's famous notion of an "overlapping consensus." Such a consensus would necessarily exclude some doctrines, namely, those that are "unreasonable", and so one may wonder what Rawls has to say about such doctrines. An unreasonable comprehensive doctrine is unreasonable in the sense that it is incompatible with the duty of civility. This is simply another way of saying that an unreasonable doctrine is incompatible with the fundamental political values a liberal theory of justice is designed to safeguard—freedom, equality and fairness. So one answer to the question of what Rawls has to say about such doctrines is—nothing. For one thing, the liberal state cannot justify itself to individuals (such as religious fundamentalists) who hold to such doctrines, because any such justification would—as has been noted—proceed in terms of controversial moral or religious commitments that are excluded from the public political forum. But, more importantly, the goal of the Rawlsian project is primarily to determine whether or not the liberal conception of political legitimacy is internally coherent, and this project is carried out by the specification of what sorts of reasons persons committed to liberal values are permitted to use in their dialogue, deliberations and arguments with one another about political matters. The Rawlsian project has this goal to the exclusion of concern with justifying liberal values to those not already committed—or at least open—to them. Rawls's concern is with whether or not the idea of political legitimacy fleshed out in terms of the duty of civility and mutual justification can serve as a viable form of public discourse in the face of the religious and moral pluralism of modern democratic society, not with justifying this conception of political legitimacy in the first place. Rawls also modified the principles of justice as follows (with the first principle having priority over the second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter half): Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. The first principle now reads "equal claim" instead of "equal right", and he also replaces the phrase "system of basic liberties" with "a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties". The two parts of the second principle are also switched, so that the difference principle becomes the latter of the three. === The Law of Peoples === Although there were passing comments on international affairs in A Theory of Justice, it was not until late in his career that Rawls formulated a comprehensive theory of international politics with the publication of The Law of Peoples. He claimed there that "well-ordered" peoples could be either "liberal" or "decent". Rawls's basic distinction in international politics is that his preferred emphasis on a society of peoples is separate from the more conventional and historical discussion of international politics as based on relationships between states. Rawls argued that the legitimacy of a liberal international order is contingent on tolerating decent peoples, which differ from liberal peoples, among other ways, in that they might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold positions of power within the state, and might organize political participation via consultation hierarchies rather than elections. However, no well-ordered peoples may violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner. Peoples that fail to meet the criteria of "liberal" or "decent" peoples are referred to as 'outlaw states', 'societies burdened by unfavourable conditions' or 'benevolent absolutisms', depending on their particular failings. Such peoples do not have the right to mutual respect and toleration possessed by liberal and decent peoples. Rawls's views on global distributive justice as they were expressed in this work surprised many of his fellow egalitarian liberals. For example, Charles Beitz had previously written a study that argued for the application of Rawls's Difference Principles globally. Rawls denied that his principles should be so applied, partly on the grounds that a world state does not exist and would not be stable. This notion has been challenged, as a comprehensive system of global governance has arisen, amongst others in the form of the Bretton Woods system, that serves to distribute primary social goods between human beings. It has thus been argued that a cosmopolitan application of the theory of justice as fairness is the more reasonable alternative to the application of The Law of Peoples, as it would be more legitimate towards all persons over whom political coercive power is exercised.According to Rawls however, nation states, unlike citizens, were self-sufficient in the cooperative enterprises that constitute domestic societies. Although Rawls recognized that aid should be given to governments which are unable to protect human rights for economic reasons, he claimed that the purpose for this aid is not to achieve an eventual state of global equality, but rather only to ensure that these societies could maintain liberal or decent political institutions. He argued, among other things, that continuing to give aid indefinitely would see nations with industrious populations subsidize those with idle populations and would create a moral hazard problem where governments could spend irresponsibly in the knowledge that they will be bailed out by those nations who had spent responsibly. Rawls's discussion of "non-ideal" theory, on the other hand, included a condemnation of bombing civilians and of the American bombing of German and Japanese cities in World War II, as well as discussions of immigration and nuclear proliferation. He also detailed here the ideal of the statesman, a political leader who looks to the next generation and promotes international harmony, even in the face of significant domestic pressure to act otherwise. Rawls also controversially claimed that violations of human rights can legitimize military intervention in the violating states, though he also expressed the hope that such societies could be induced to reform peacefully by the good example of liberal and decent peoples. == Influence and reception == Despite the exacting, academic tone of Rawls's writing and his reclusive personality, his philosophical work has exerted an enormous impact on not only contemporary moral and political philosophy but also public political discourse. During the student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, copies of "A Theory of Justice" were brandished by protesters in the face of government officials. Despite being approximately 600 pages long, over 300,000 copies of that book have been sold, stimulating critical responses from utilitarian, feminist, conservative, libertarian, Catholic, communitarian, Marxist and Green scholars, which Rawls welcomed. Although having a profound influence on theories of distributive justice both in theory and in practice, the generally anti-meritocratic sentiment of Rawls's thinking has not been widely accepted by the political left. He consistently held the view that naturally developed skills and endowments could not be neatly distinguished from inherited ones, and that neither could be used to justify moral desert. Instead, he held the view that individuals could "legitimately expect" entitlements to the earning of income or development of abilities based on institutional arrangements. This aspect of Rawls's work has been instrumental in the development of such ideas as luck egalitarianism and unconditional basic income, which have themselves been criticized. The strictly egalitarian quality of Rawls's second principle of justice has called into question the type of equality that fair societies ought to embody.In a 2008 national survey of political theorists, based on 1,086 responses from professors at accredited, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, Rawls was voted first on the list of "Scholars Who Have Had the Greatest Impact on Political Theory in the Past 20 Years". === Communitarian critique === Charles Taylor, Alasdair Macintyre, Michael Sandel, and Michael Walzer produced a range of critical responses contesting the universalist basis of Rawls' original position. While these criticisms, which emphasise the cultural and social roots of normative political principles, are typically described as communitarian critiques of Rawlsian liberalism, none of their authors identified with philosophical communitarianism. In his later works, Rawls attempted to reconcile his theory of justice with the possibility that its normative foundations may not be universally applicable. === September Group === The late philosopher G. A. Cohen, along with political scientist Jon Elster, and John Roemer, used Rawls's writings extensively to inaugurate the Analytical Marxism movement in the 1980s. === Frankfurt School === In the later part of Rawl's career, he engaged with the scholarly work of Jürgen Habermas (see Habermas-Rawls debate). Habermas's reading of Rawls led to an appreciation of Rawls's work and other analytical philosophers by the Frankfurt School of critical theory, and many of Habermas's own students and associates were expected to be familiar with Rawls by the late 1980s. Rainer Forst, who was described in 2012 as the "most important political philosopher of his generation", was advised both by Rawls and Habermas in completing his PhD. Axel Honneth, Fabian Freyenhagen, and James Gordon Finlayson have also drawn on Rawls's work in comparison to Habermas. === Feminist political philosophy === Philosopher Eva Kittay has extended the work of John Rawls to address the concerns of women and cognitively disabled people. == Awards and honors == Bronze Star for radio work behind enemy lines in World War II. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966) Ralph Waldo Emerson Award (1972) Elected to the American Philosophical Society (1974) Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1992) Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy (1999) National Humanities Medal (1999) Asteroid 16561 Rawls is named in his honor. == In popular culture == John Rawls is featured as the protagonist of A Theory of Justice: The Musical!, an award-nominated musical comedy, which premiered at Oxford in 2013 and was revived for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. == Publications == === Bibliography === A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1950. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. The revised edition of 1999 incorporates changes that Rawls made for translated editions of A Theory of Justice. Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation TJ to refer to this work. Political Liberalism. The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy, 4. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. The hardback edition published in 1993 is not identical. The paperback adds a valuable new introduction and an essay titled "Reply to Habermas." Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation PL to refer to this work. The Law of Peoples: with "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. This slim book includes two works; a further development of his essay entitled "The Law of Peoples" and another entitled "Public Reason Revisited," both published earlier in his career. Collected Papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. This collection of shorter papers was edited by Samuel Freeman. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2000. This collection of lectures was edited by Barbara Herman. It has an introduction on modern moral philosophy from 1600 to 1800 and then lectures on Hume, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2001. This shorter summary of the main arguments of Rawls's political philosophy was edited by Erin Kelly. Many versions of this were circulated in typescript and much of the material was delivered by Rawls in lectures when he taught courses covering his own work at Harvard University. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Collection of lectures on Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Joseph Butler, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, edited by Samuel Freeman. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2010. With introduction and commentary by Thomas Nagel, Joshua Cohen and Robert Merrihew Adams. Senior thesis, Princeton, 1942. This volume includes a brief late essay by Rawls entitled On My Religion. === Articles === "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics." Philosophical Review (April 1951), 60 (2): 177–197. "Two Concepts of Rules." Philosophical Review (January 1955), 64 (1):3–32. "Justice as Fairness." Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653–362. "Justice as Fairness." Philosophical Review (April 1958), 67 (2): 164–194. "The Sense of Justice." Philosophical Review (July 1963), 72 (3): 281–305. "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" Nomos VI (1963) "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda." Natural Law Forum (1968), 13: 51–71. "Reply to Lyons and Teitelman." Journal of Philosophy (October 5, 1972), 69 (18): 556–557. "Reply to Alexander and Musgrave." Quarterly Journal of Economics (November 1974), 88 (4): 633–655. "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion." American Economic Review (May 1974), 64 (2): 141–146. "Fairness to Goodness." Philosophical Review (October 1975), 84 (4): 536–554. "The Independence of Moral Theory." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (November 1975), 48: 5–22. "A Kantian Conception of Equality." Cambridge Review (February 1975), 96 (2225): 94–99. "The Basic Structure as Subject." American Philosophical Quarterly (April 1977), 14 (2): 159–165. "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory." Journal of Philosophy (September 1980), 77 (9): 515–572. "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical." Philosophy & Public Affairs (Summer 1985), 14 (3): 223–251. "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus." Oxford Journal for Legal Studies (Spring 1987), 7 (1): 1–25. "The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good." Philosophy & Public Affairs (Fall 1988), 17 (4): 251–276. "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus." New York University Law Review (May 1989), 64 (2): 233–255. "Roderick Firth: His Life and Work." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (March 1991), 51 (1): 109–118. "The Law of Peoples." Critical Inquiry (Fall 1993), 20 (1): 36–68. "Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas." Journal of Philosophy (March 1995), 92 (3):132–180. "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." Chicago Law Review (1997), 64 (3): 765–807. [PRR] === Book chapters === "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice." In Carl J. Friedrich and John W. Chapman, eds., Nomos, VI: Justice, pp. 98–125. Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. New York: Atherton Press, 1963. "Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play." In Sidney Hook, ed., Law and Philosophy: A Symposium, pp. 3–18. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Proceedings of the 6th Annual New York University Institute of Philosophy. "Distributive Justice." In Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series, pp. 58–82. London: Blackwell; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967. "The Justification of Civil Disobedience." In Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice, pp. 240–255. New York: Pegasus Books, 1969. "Justice as Reciprocity." In Samuel Gorovitz, ed., Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill: With Critical Essays, pp. 242–268. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971. "Author's Note." In Thomas Schwartz, ed., Freedom and Authority: An Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy, p. 260. Encino & Belmont, California: Dickenson, 1973. "Distributive Justice." In Edmund S. Phelps, ed., Economic Justice: Selected Readings, pp. 319–362. Penguin Modern Economics Readings. Harmondsworth & Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973. "Personal Communication, January 31, 1976." In Thomas Nagel's "The Justification of Equality." Critica (April 1978), 10 (28): 9n4. "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority." In Sterling M. McMurrin, ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, III (1982), pp. 1–87. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. "Social unity and primary goods" in Sen, Amartya; Williams, Bernard, eds. (1982). Utilitarianism and beyond. Cambridge / Paris: Cambridge University Press / Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. pp. 159–185. ISBN 978-0511611964. "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy." In Eckhart Forster, ed., Kant's Transcendental Deductions: The Three Critiques and the Opus postumum, pp. 81–113, 253–256. Stanford Series in Philosophy. Studies in Kant and German Idealism. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989. === Reviews === Review of Axel Hägerström's Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals (C.D. Broad, tr.). Mind (July 1955), 64 (255):421–422. Review of Stephen Toulmin's An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950). Philosophical Review (October 1951), 60 (4): 572–580. Review of A. Vilhelm Lundstedt's Legal Thinking Revised. Cornell Law Quarterly (1959), 44: 169. Review of Raymond Klibansky, ed., Philosophy in Mid-Century: A Survey. Philosophical Review (January 1961), 70 (1): 131–132. Review of Richard B. Brandt, ed., Social Justice (1962). Philosophical Review (July 1965), 74(3): 406–409. == See also == List of American philosophers List of liberal theorists Philosophy of economics A Theory of Justice: The Musical! == Notes == == References == Freeman, S. (2007) Rawls (Routledge, Abingdon) Freeman, Samuel (2009) "Original Position" (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Original Position) Pols, Paul (2010). Applying Rawls in a Globalizing World (Thesis). University of Utrecht. hdl:1874/179525. Archived from the original on August 13, 2021. Retrieved May 27, 2021. Rawls, J. (1993/1996/2005) Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, New York) Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice (Original ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674017726. Rawls, John (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674005112. Rogers, B. (27.09.02) "Obituary: John Rawls" Obituary: John Rawls Tampio, N. (2011) "A Defense of Political Constructivism" (Contemporary Political Theory, A defense of political constructivism(subscription required)) Wenar, Leif (2008) "John Rawls" (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Rawls) Wilkinson, Will (2008). "Rawls, John (1921–2002)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 415–416. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n255. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024. == External links == Audio recordings of Rawls's 1983 lecture course "Modern Political Philosophy" Cambridge Rawls Lexicon Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on John Rawls by Henry S. Richardson Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Political Constructivisim by Michael Buckley Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on John Rawls by Leif Wenar Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Original Position by Fred D'Agostino Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Reflective Equilibrium by Norman Daniels John Rawls Archived April 17, 2019, at the Wayback Machine on Google Scholar

Stephen Toulmin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Toulmin

Stephen Edelston Toulmin (; 25 March 1922 – 4 December 2009) was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind moral issues. His works were later found useful in the field of rhetoric for analyzing rhetorical arguments. The Toulmin model of argumentation, a diagram containing six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments, and published in his 1958 book The Uses of Argument, was considered his most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric and communication, and in computer science. == Biography == Stephen Toulmin was born in London, UK, on 25 March 1922 to Geoffrey Edelson Toulmin and Doris Holman Toulmin. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from King's College, Cambridge in 1943, where he was a Cambridge Apostle. Soon after, Toulmin was hired by the Ministry of Aircraft Production as a junior scientific officer, first at the Malvern Radar Research and Development Station and later at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Germany. At the end of World War II, he returned to England to earn a Master of Arts degree in 1947 and a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge University, subsequently publishing his dissertation as An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950). While at Cambridge, Toulmin came into contact with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose examination of the relationship between the uses and the meanings of language shaped much of Toulmin's own work. After graduating from Cambridge, he was appointed University Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at Oxford University from 1949 to 1954, during which period he wrote a second book, The Philosophy of Science: an Introduction (1953). Soon after, he was appointed to the position of Visiting Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Melbourne University in Australia from 1954 to 1955, after which he returned to England, and served as Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Leeds from 1955 to 1959. While at Leeds, he published one of his most influential books in the field of rhetoric, The Uses of Argument (1958), which investigated the flaws of traditional logic. Although it was poorly received in England and satirized as "Toulmin's anti-logic book" by Toulmin's fellow philosophers at Leeds, the book was applauded by the rhetoricians in the United States, where Toulmin served as a visiting professor at New York, Stanford, and Columbia Universities in 1959. While in the States, Wayne Brockriede and Douglas Ehninger introduced Toulmin's work to communication scholars, as they recognized that his work provided a good structural model useful for the analysis and criticism of rhetorical arguments. In 1960, Toulmin returned to London to hold the position of director of the Unit for History of Ideas of the Nuffield Foundation. In 1965, Toulmin returned to the United States, where he held positions at various universities. In 1967, Toulmin served as literary executor for close friend N.R. Hanson, helping in the posthumous publication of several volumes. While at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Toulmin published Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972), which examines the causes and the processes of conceptual change. In this book, Toulmin uses a novel comparison between conceptual change and Charles Darwin's model of biological evolution to analyse the process of conceptual change as an evolutionary process. The book confronts major philosophical questions as well. In 1973, while a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he collaborated with Allan Janik, a philosophy professor at La Salle University, on the book Wittgenstein's Vienna, which advanced a thesis that underscores the significance of history to human reasoning: Contrary to philosophers who believe the absolute truth advocated in Plato's idealized formal logic, Toulmin argues that truth can be a relative quality, dependent on historical and cultural contexts (what other authors have termed "conceptual schemata"). From 1975 to 1978, he worked with the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, established by the United States Congress. During this time, he collaborated with Albert R. Jonsen to write The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988), which demonstrates the procedures for resolving moral cases. One of his most recent works, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1990), written while Toulmin held the position of the Avalon Foundation Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University, specifically criticizes the practical use and the thinning morality underlying modern science. Toulmin held distinguished professorships at numerous universities, including Columbia, Dartmouth College, Michigan State, Northwestern, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the University of Southern California School of International Relations. In 1997 the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) selected Toulmin for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, "A Dissenter's Story" (alternatively entitled "A Dissenter's Life"), discussed the roots of modernity in rationalism and humanism, the "contrast of the reasonable and the rational", and warned of the "abstractions that may still tempt us back into the dogmatism, chauvinism and sectarianism our needs have outgrown". The NEH report of the speech further quoted Toulmin on the need to "make the technical and the humanistic strands in modern thought work together more effectively than they have in the past".On 2 March 2006 Toulmin received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.He was married four times, once to June Goodfield and collaborated with her on a series of books on the history of science. His children are Greg, of McLean, Va., Polly Macinnes of Skye, Scotland, Camilla Toulmin in the UK and Matthew Toulmin of Melbourne, Australia. On 4 December 2009 Toulmin died of a heart failure at the age of 87 in Los Angeles, California. == Meta-philosophy == === Objection to absolutism and relativism === Throughout many of his works, Toulmin pointed out that absolutism (represented by theoretical or analytic arguments) has limited practical value. Absolutism is derived from Plato's idealized formal logic, which advocates universal truth; accordingly, absolutists believe that moral issues can be resolved by adhering to a standard set of moral principles, regardless of context. By contrast, Toulmin contends that many of these so-called standard principles are irrelevant to real situations encountered by human beings in daily life. To develop his contention, Toulmin introduced the concept of argument fields. In The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin claims that some aspects of arguments vary from field to field, and are hence called "field-dependent", while other aspects of argument are the same throughout all fields, and are hence called "field-invariant". The flaw of absolutism, Toulmin believes, lies in its unawareness of the field-dependent aspect of argument; absolutism assumes that all aspects of argument are field invariant. In Human Understanding (1972), Toulmin suggests that anthropologists have been tempted to side with relativists because they have noticed the influence of cultural variations on rational arguments. In other words, the anthropologist or relativist overemphasizes the importance of the "field-dependent" aspect of arguments, and neglects or is unaware of the "field-invariant" elements. In order to provide solutions to the problems of absolutism and relativism, Toulmin attempts throughout his work to develop standards that are neither absolutist nor relativist for assessing the worth of ideas. In Cosmopolis (1990), he traces philosophers' "quest for certainty" back to René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, and lauds John Dewey, Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, and Richard Rorty for abandoning that tradition. === Humanizing modernity === In Cosmopolis Toulmin seeks the origins of the modern emphasis on universality (philosophers' "quest for certainty"), and criticizes both modern science and philosophers for having ignored practical issues in preference for abstract and theoretical issues. The pursuit of absolutism and theoretical arguments lacking practicality, for example, is, in his view, one of the main defects of modern philosophy. Similarly, Toulmin sensed a thinning of morality in the field of sciences, which has diverted its attention from practical issues concerning ecology to the production of the atomic bomb. To solve this problem, Toulmin advocated a return to humanism consisting of four returns: a return to oral communication and discourse, a plea which has been rejected by modern philosophers, whose scholarly focus is on the printed page; a return to the particular or individual cases that deal with practical moral issues occurring in daily life (as opposed to theoretical principles that have limited practicality); a return to the local, or to concrete cultural and historical contexts; and, finally, a return to the timely, from timeless problems to things whose rational significance depends on the time lines of our solutions. He follows up on this critique in Return to Reason (2001), where he seeks to illuminate the ills that, in his view, universalism has caused in the social sphere, discussing, among other things, the discrepancy between mainstream ethical theory and real-life ethical quandaries. == Argumentation == === The Toulmin model of argument === Arguing that absolutism lacks practical value, Toulmin aimed to develop a different type of argument, called practical arguments (also known as substantial arguments). In contrast to absolutists' theoretical arguments, Toulmin's practical argument is intended to focus on the justificatory function of argumentation, as opposed to the inferential function of theoretical arguments. Whereas theoretical arguments make inferences based on a set of principles to arrive at a claim, practical arguments first find a claim of interest, and then provide justification for it. Toulmin believed that reasoning is less an activity of inference, involving the discovering of new ideas, and more a process of testing and sifting already existing ideas—an act achievable through the process of justification. Toulmin believed that for a good argument to succeed, it needs to provide good justification for a claim. This, he believed, will ensure it stands up to criticism and earns a favourable verdict. In The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin proposed a layout containing six interrelated components for analyzing arguments: Claim (Conclusion) A conclusion whose merit must be established. In argumentative essays, it may be called the thesis. For example, if a person tries to convince a listener that he is a British citizen, the claim would be "I am a British citizen" (1).Ground (Fact, Evidence, Data) A fact one appeals to as a foundation for the claim. For example, the person introduced in 1 can support his claim with the supporting data "I was born in Bermuda" (2).Warrant A statement authorizing movement from the ground to the claim. In order to move from the ground established in 2, "I was born in Bermuda", to the claim in 1, "I am a British citizen", the person must supply a warrant to bridge the gap between 1 and 2 with the statement "A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British citizen" (3).Backing Credentials designed to certify the statement expressed in the warrant; backing must be introduced when the warrant itself is not convincing enough to the readers or the listeners. For example, if the listener does not deem the warrant in 3 as credible, the speaker will supply the legal provisions: "I trained as a barrister in London, specialising in citizenship, so I know that a man born in Bermuda will legally be a British citizen".Rebuttal (Reservation) Statements recognizing the restrictions which may legitimately be applied to the claim. It is exemplified as follows: "A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British citizen, unless he has betrayed Britain and has become a spy for another country".Qualifier Words or phrases expressing the speaker's degree of force or certainty concerning the claim. Such words or phrases include "probably", "possible", "impossible", "certainly", "presumably", "as far as the evidence goes", and "necessarily". The claim "I am definitely a British citizen" has a greater degree of force than the claim "I am a British citizen, presumably". (See also: Defeasible reasoning.)The first three elements, claim, ground, and warrant, are considered as the essential components of practical arguments, while the second triad, qualifier, backing, and rebuttal, may not be needed in some arguments. When Toulmin first proposed it, this layout of argumentation was based on legal arguments and intended to be used to analyze the rationality of arguments typically found in the courtroom. Toulmin did not realize that this layout could be applicable to the field of rhetoric and communication until his works were introduced to rhetoricians by Wayne Brockriede and Douglas Ehninger. Their Decision by Debate (1963) streamlined Toulmin's terminology and broadly introduced his model to the field of debate. Only after Toulmin published Introduction to Reasoning (1979) were the rhetorical applications of this layout mentioned in his works. One criticism of the Toulmin model is that it does not fully consider the use of questions in argumentation. The Toulmin model assumes that an argument starts with a fact or claim and ends with a conclusion, but ignores an argument's underlying questions. In the example "Harry was born in Bermuda, so Harry must be a British subject", the question "Is Harry a British subject?" is ignored, which also neglects to analyze why particular questions are asked and others are not. (See Issue mapping for an example of an argument-mapping method that emphasizes questions.) Toulmin's argument model has inspired research on, for example, goal structuring notation (GSN), widely used for developing safety cases, and argument maps and associated software. == Ethics == === Good reasons approach === In Reason in Ethics (1950), his doctoral dissertation, Toulmin sets out a Good Reasons approach of ethics, and criticizes what he considers to be the subjectivism and emotivism of philosophers such as A. J. Ayer because, in his view, they fail to do justice to ethical reasoning. === The revival of casuistry === By reviving casuistry (also known as case ethics), Toulmin sought to find the middle ground between the extremes of absolutism and relativism. Casuistry was practiced widely during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to resolve moral issues. Although casuistry largely fell silent during the modern period, in The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988), Toulmin collaborated with Albert R. Jonsen to demonstrate the effectiveness of casuistry in practical argumentation during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, effectively reviving it as a permissible method of argument. Casuistry employs absolutist principles, called "type cases" or "paradigm cases", without resorting to absolutism. It uses the standard principles (for example, sanctity of life) as referential markers in moral arguments. An individual case is then compared and contrasted with the type case. Given an individual case that is completely identical to the type case, moral judgments can be made immediately using the standard moral principles advocated in the type case. If the individual case differs from the type case, the differences will be critically assessed in order to arrive at a rational claim. Through the procedure of casuistry, Toulmin and Jonsen identified three problematic situations in moral reasoning: first, the type case fits the individual case only ambiguously; second, two type cases apply to the same individual case in conflicting ways; third, an unprecedented individual case occurs, which cannot be compared or contrasted to any type case. Through the use of casuistry, Toulmin demonstrated and reinforced his previous emphasis on the significance of comparison to moral arguments, a significance not addressed in theories of absolutism or relativism. == Philosophy of science == === The evolutionary model === In 1972, Toulmin published Human Understanding, in which he asserts that conceptual change is an evolutionary process. In this book, Toulmin attacks Thomas Kuhn's account of conceptual change in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn believed that conceptual change is a revolutionary process (as opposed to an evolutionary process), during which mutually exclusive paradigms compete to replace one another. Toulmin criticized the relativist elements in Kuhn's thesis, arguing that mutually exclusive paradigms provide no ground for comparison, and that Kuhn made the relativists' error of overemphasizing the "field variant" while ignoring the "field invariant" or commonality shared by all argumentation or scientific paradigms. In contrast to Kuhn's revolutionary model, Toulmin proposed an evolutionary model of conceptual change comparable to Darwin's model of biological evolution. Toulmin states that conceptual change involves the process of innovation and selection. Innovation accounts for the appearance of conceptual variations, while selection accounts for the survival and perpetuation of the soundest conceptions. Innovation occurs when the professionals of a particular discipline come to view things differently from their predecessors; selection subjects the innovative concepts to a process of debate and inquiry in what Toulmin considers as a "forum of competitions". The soundest concepts will survive the forum of competition as replacements or revisions of the traditional conceptions. From the absolutists' point of view, concepts are either valid or invalid regardless of contexts. From the relativists' perspective, one concept is neither better nor worse than a rival concept from a different cultural context. From Toulmin's perspective, the evaluation depends on a process of comparison, which determines whether or not one concept will improve explanatory power more than its rival concepts. == Works == An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950) ISBN 0-226-80843-2 The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction (1953) The Uses of Argument (1958) 2nd edition 2003: ISBN 0-521-53483-6 Metaphysical Beliefs, Three Essays (1957) with Ronald W. Hepburn and Alasdair MacIntyre The Riviera (1961) Seventeenth century science and the arts (1961) Foresight and Understanding: An Enquiry into the Aims of Science (1961) ISBN 0-313-23345-4 The Fabric of the Heavens (The Ancestry of Science, volume 1) (1961) with June Goodfield ISBN 0-226-80848-3 The Architecture of Matter (The Ancestry of Science, volume 2) (1962) with June Goodfield ISBN 0-226-80840-8 Night Sky at Rhodes (1963) The Discovery of Time (The Ancestry of Science, volume 3) (1965) with June Goodfield ISBN 0-226-80842-4 Physical Reality (1970) Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) ISBN 0-691-01996-7 Wittgenstein's Vienna (1973) with Allan Janik On the Nature of the Physician's Understanding (1976) Knowing and Acting: An Invitation to Philosophy (1976) ISBN 0-02-421020-X An Introduction to Reasoning with Allan Janik and Richard D. Rieke (1979), 2nd ed. 1984; 3rd edition 1997: ISBN 0-02-421160-5 The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (1985) ISBN 0-520-05465-2 The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988) with Albert R. Jonsen ISBN 0-520-06960-9 Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1990) ISBN 0-226-80838-6 Social Impact of AIDS in the United States (1993) with Albert R. Jonsen Beyond theory – changing organizations through participation (1996) with Björn Gustavsen (editors) Return to Reason (2001) ISBN 0-674-01235-6 == Pantheon of skeptics == At a meeting of the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) in Denver, Colorado in April 2011, Toulmin was selected for inclusion in CSI's Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism. == See also == Argumentation theory Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club == Notes == == References == == Further reading == Hitchcock, David; Verheij, Bart, eds. (2006). Arguing on the Toulmin Model: New Essays in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Springer-Verlag Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4938-5_3. ISBN 978-1-4020-4937-8. OCLC 82229075. == External links == Stephen Toulmin: An Intellectual Odyssey at the Wayback Machine (archived 15 February 2006) Stephen Toulmin Interview with Stephen Toulmin in JAC Obituary in The Guardian

Zygmunt Bauman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman (; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later Emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity. == Life and career == Bauman was born to non-observant Polish Jewish family in Poznań, Second Polish Republic, in 1925. In 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, his family escaped eastwards into the USSR.During World War II, Bauman enlisted in the Soviet-controlled First Polish Army, working as a political instructor. He took part in the Battle of Kolberg (1945) and the Battle of Berlin. In May 1945, he was awarded the Military Cross of Valour. After World War II he became one of the Polish Army's youngest majors.According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, from 1945 to 1953 Bauman was a political officer in the Internal Security Corps (KBW), a military intelligence unit formed to combat the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the remnants of the Polish Home Army. However, the nature and extent of his collaboration remain unknown, as well as the exact circumstances under which it was terminated. In an interview with The Guardian, Bauman confirmed he had been a committed Communist during and after World War II and had never made a secret of it. He admitted that joining the military intelligence service at age 19 was a mistake although he had a "dull" desk job and did not remember informing on anyone. While serving in the Internal Security Corps, Bauman first studied sociology at the Warsaw Academy of Political and Social Science. In 1953, Bauman, already in the rank of major, was suddenly dishonourably discharged, after his father had approached the Israeli embassy in Warsaw with a view to emigrating to Israel. As Bauman did not share his father's Zionist tendencies and was indeed strongly anti-Zionist, his dismissal caused a severe, though temporary estrangement from his father. During the period of unemployment that followed, he completed his M.A. and in 1954 became a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, where he remained until 1968.While at the London School of Economics, where his supervisor was Robert McKenzie, he prepared a comprehensive study on the British socialist movement, his first major book. Published originally in Polish in 1959, a revised edition appeared in English in 1972. Bauman went on to publish other books, including Socjologia na co dzień ("Everyday Sociology", 1964), which reached a large popular audience in Poland and later formed the foundation for the English-language text-book Thinking Sociologically (1990). Initially, Bauman remained close to orthodox Marxist doctrine, but, influenced by Georg Simmel and Antonio Gramsci, he became increasingly critical of Poland's Communist government. Owing to this he was never awarded a professorship even after he completed his habilitation. But after his former teacher, Julian Hochfeld, was made vice-director of UNESCO's Department for Social Sciences in Paris in 1962, Bauman did in fact inherit Hochfeld's chair.Faced with increasing political pressure connected with a political purge led by Mieczysław Moczar, the Chief of the Polish Communist Security Police, Bauman renounced his membership of the governing Polish United Workers' Party in January 1968. The March 1968 events culminated in a purge that drove many remaining Communist Poles of Jewish descent out of the country, including those intellectuals who had fallen from grace with the Communist government. Bauman, who had lost his chair at the University of Warsaw, was among them. He had to give up Polish citizenship to be allowed to leave the country. In 1968, he went to Israel to teach at Tel Aviv University. In 1970, he moved to Great Britain, where he accepted the chair of sociology at the University of Leeds. There he intermittently also served as head of the department. After his appointment, he published almost exclusively in English, his third language, and his reputation grew. From the late 1990s, Bauman exerted a considerable influence on the anti- or alter-globalization movement.In a 2011 interview in the Polish weekly Polityka, Bauman criticised Zionism and Israel, saying Israel was not interested in peace and that it was "taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts". He compared the Israeli West Bank barrier to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, where thousands of Jews died in the Holocaust. The Israeli ambassador to Poland, Zvi Bar, called Bauman's comments "half truths" and "groundless generalizations."In 2013 Bauman made his first visit to Israel after he left it in 1970: he accepted an invitation offered by the Israeli Sociological Society to give a keynote lecture at the ISS Annual Meeting and conduct a seminar with Israeli PhD sociology students.Bauman was a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which advocates for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system. == Family == Bauman was married to writer Janina Bauman, née Lewinson; 18 August 1926 – 29 December 2009. They had three daughters, painter Lydia Bauman, architect Irena Bauman, and professor Anna Sfard, a leading theorist of education at the University of Haifa. His grandson Michael Sfard is a prominent civil rights activist and author in Israel. Zygmunt Bauman died in Leeds on 9 January 2017. == Work == Bauman's published work extends to 57 books and well over a hundred articles. Most of these address a number of common themes, among which are globalisation, modernity and postmodernity, consumerism, and morality. === Early work === Bauman's earliest publication in English is a study of the British labour movement and its relationship to class and social stratification, originally published in Poland in 1960. He continued to publish on the subject of class and social conflict until the early 1980s. His last book was on the subject of Memories of Class. Whilst his later books do not address issues of class directly, he continued to describe himself as a socialist, and he never rejected Marxism entirely. The Neo-Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci in particular remained one of his most profound influences, along with Neo-Kantian sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel. === Modernity and rationality === In the late 1980s and early 1990s Bauman published a number of books that dealt with the relationship between modernity, bureaucracy, rationality and social exclusion. Bauman, following Freud, came to view European modernity as a trade off: European society, he argued, had agreed to forego a level of freedom to receive the benefits of increased individual security. Bauman argued that modernity, in what he later came to term its 'solid' form, involved removing unknowns and uncertainties. It involved control over nature, hierarchical bureaucracy, rules and regulations, control and categorisation — all of which attempted to remove gradually personal insecurities, making the chaotic aspects of human life appear well-ordered and familiar. Later in a number of books Bauman began to develop the position that such order-making never manages to achieve the desired results.When life becomes organised into familiar and manageable categories, he argued, there are always social groups who cannot be administered, who cannot be separated out and controlled. In his book Modernity and Ambivalence Bauman began to theorise about such indeterminate persons in terms of an allegorical figure he called, 'the stranger.' Drawing upon Georg Simmel's sociology and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, Bauman came to write of the stranger as the person who is present yet unfamiliar, society's undecidable. In Modernity and Ambivalence Bauman attempted to give an account of the different approaches modern society adopts toward the stranger. He argued that, on the one hand, in a consumer-oriented economy the strange and the unfamiliar is always enticing; in different styles of food, different fashions and in tourism it is possible to experience the allure of what is unfamiliar. Yet this strange-ness also has a more negative side. The stranger, because he cannot be controlled or ordered, is always the object of fear; he is the potential mugger, the person outside of society's borders who is a constant threat.Bauman's most famous book, Modernity and the Holocaust, is an attempt to give a full account of the dangers of those kinds of fears. Drawing upon Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno's books on totalitarianism and the Enlightenment, Bauman developed the argument that the Holocaust should not simply be considered to be an event in Jewish history, nor a regression to pre-modern barbarism. Rather, he argued, the Holocaust should be seen as deeply connected to modernity and its order-making efforts. Procedural rationality, the division of labour into smaller and smaller tasks, the taxonomic categorisation of different species, and the tendency to view obedience to rules as morally good, all played their role in the Holocaust coming to pass. He argued that for this reason modern societies have not fully grasped the lessons of the Holocaust; it tends to be viewed—to use Bauman's metaphor—like a picture hanging on the wall, offering few lessons. In Bauman's analysis the Jews became 'strangers' par excellence in Europe. The Final Solution was pictured by him as an extreme example of the attempt made by society to excise the uncomfortable and indeterminate elements that exist within it. Bauman, like the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, contended that the same processes of exclusion that were at work in the Holocaust could, and to an extent do, still come into play today. === Postmodernity and consumerism === In the mid-to-late 1990s, Bauman began to explore postmodernity and consumerism. He posited that a shift had taken place in modern society in the latter half of the 20th century. It had changed from a society of producers into a society of consumers. According to Bauman, this change reversed Freud's "modern" tradeoff—i.e., security was given up in exchange for more freedom, freedom to purchase, consume, and enjoy life. In his books in the 1990s Bauman wrote of this as being a shift from "modernity" to "post-modernity". Since the turn of the millennium, his books have tried to avoid the confusion surrounding the term "postmodernity" by using the metaphors of "liquid" and "solid" modernity. In his books on modern consumerism, Bauman still writes of the same uncertainties that he portrayed in his writings on "solid" modernity; but in these books he writes of fears becoming more diffuse and harder to pin down. Indeed, they are, to use the title of one of his books, "liquid fears" – fears about paedophilia, for instance, which are amorphous and have no easily identifiable reference.Bauman is credited with coining the term allosemitism to encompass both philo-Semitic and anti-Semitic attitudes towards Jews as the other. Bauman reportedly predicted the negative political effect that social media have on voter's choice by denouncing them as 'trap' where people only "see reflections of their own face". === Art: a liquid element? === One of Bauman works focuses on the concept of art as influenced by the liquidity of appreciation. The author puts forward the idea that "we desire and seek a realization that usually consists of a constant becoming, in a permanent disposition of becoming". In essence, our aim is not the object of our longing but the action of longing itself, and the worst peril is reaching complete satisfaction. In this framework, Bauman explores how art can position itself in a world where the fleeting is the dominant paradigm. Art is substantially something that contributes to giving immortality to virtually anything: hence the philosopher wonders, "can art transform the ephemeral into an eternal matter?". Bauman concludes that the current reality is characterized by individuals who do not have time nor space to relate with the everlasting, with absolute and established values. Art and the relation of people with them, both in creating it and in participating in it, is dramatically changing. Citing Hannah Arendt, he asserts that "an object is cultural if it persists; its temporary aspect, its permanence, is opposite to the functional [...] culture sees itself threatened when all the objects in the world, those produced today and those of the past, are exclusively considered from the point of view of utility for the social process of survival". Withal, the concept of culture and art can only find a sense in the liquid society if it abandons its traditional understanding and adopts the deconstructive approach. Bauman gives as examples artworks by Manolo Valdés, Jacques Villeglé and Herman Braun-Vega. == Awards and honours == Bauman was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1992, the Theodor W. Adorno Award of the city of Frankfurt in 1998 and the The VIZE 97 Prize in 2006. He was awarded in 2010, jointly with Alain Touraine, the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and the Humanities.The University of Leeds established 'The Bauman Institute' within its School of Sociology and Social Policy in his honour in September 2010. The University of Lower Silesia, a small private higher education institution in Lower Silesia, Poland, planned to award Bauman an honorary doctorate in October 2013. However, as a reaction to a major anti-communist and what Bauman supporters allege "anti-semitic" uproar against him, he eventually rejected the award.In 2015 the University of Salento awarded Bauman an honorary degree in Modern Languages, Literature and Literary Translation. == Plagiarism allegations == In 2014, Peter Walsh, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, accused Bauman of plagiarism from several websites, including Wikipedia, in his book Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? (2013). In this book Bauman is said to have copied verbatim paragraphs from Wikipedia articles on Slow Food and steady-state economy, along with their bibliography, without attributing sources, authors or the fact that they were copied from Wikipedia. He did use a paragraph from the article on the golden handshake, but this citation was properly attributed to Wikipedia.In a response, Bauman suggested that "obedience" to "technical" rules was unnecessary, and that he "never once failed to acknowledge the authorship of the ideas or concepts that I deployed, or that inspired the ones I coined". In a detailed critique of Walsh and co-author David Lehmann, cultural critics Brad Evans and Henry A. Giroux concluded: "This charge against Bauman is truly despicable. It's a reactionary ideological critique dressed up as the celebration of method and a back-door defence of sterile empiricism and culture of positivism. This is a discourse that enshrines data, correlations, and performance, while eschewing matters of substance, social problems, and power." == Bibliography == === Warsaw period === 1957: Zagadnienia centralizmu demokratycznego w pracach Lenina [Questions of Democratic Centralism in Lenin's Works]. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza. 1959: Socjalizm brytyjski: Źródła, filozofia, doktryna polityczna [British Socialism: Sources, Philosophy, Political Doctrine]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1960: Klasa, ruch, elita: Studium socjologiczne dziejów angielskiego ruchu robotniczego [Class, Movement, Elite: A Sociological Study on the History of the British Labour Movement]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1960: Z dziejów demokratycznego ideału [From the History of the Democratic Ideal]. Warszawa: Iskry. 1960: Kariera: cztery szkice socjologiczne [Career: Four Sociological Sketches]. Warszawa: Iskry. 1961: Z zagadnień współczesnej socjologii amerykańskiej [Questions of Modern American Sociology]. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza. 1962 (with Szymon Chodak, Juliusz Strojnowski, Jakub Banaszkiewicz): Systemy partyjne współczesnego kapitalizmu [The Party Systems of Modern Capitalism]. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza. 1962: Spoleczeństwo, w ktorym żyjemy [The Society we inhabit]. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza. 1962: Zarys socjologii. Zagadnienia i pojęcia [Outline of Sociology. Questions and Concepts]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1963: Idee, ideały, ideologie [Ideas, Ideals, Ideologies]. Warszawa: Iskry. 1964: Zarys marksistowskiej teorii spoleczeństwa [ An Outline of the Marxist Theory of Society]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1964: Socjologia na co dzień [Everyday Sociology]. Warszawa: Iskry. 1965: Wizje ludzkiego świata. Studia nad społeczną genezą i funkcją socjologii [Visions of a Human World: Studies on the genesis of society and the function of sociology]. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza. 1966: Kultura i społeczeństwo. Preliminaria [Culture and Society, Preliminaries]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 2017: Szkice z teorii kultury [Essays in cultural theory]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar. ISBN 978-83-7383-878-9 [First edition of a manuscript originally completed in 1967] === Leeds period === 1972: Between Class and Elite. The Evolution of the British Labour Movement. A Sociological Study. Manchester: Manchester University Press ISBN 0-7190-0502-7 (Polish original 1960) 1973: Culture as Praxis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7619-5989-0 1976: Socialism: The Active Utopia. New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers. ISBN 0-8419-0240-2 1976: Towards a Critical Sociology: An Essay on Common-Sense and Emancipation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7100-8306-8 1978: Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-132531-5 1982: Memories of Class: The Pre-History and After-Life of Class. London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7100-9196-6 c. 1985 Stalin and the Peasant Revolution: A Case Study in the Dialectics of Master and Slave. Leeds: University of Leeds Department of Sociology. ISBN 0-907427-18-9 1987: Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity, Intellectuals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2104-7 1988: Freedom. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15592-8 1989: Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1989. ISBN 0-8014-2397-X 1990: Paradoxes of Assimilation. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. 1990: Thinking Sociologically. An Introduction for Everyone. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16361-1 1991: Modernity and Ambivalence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2603-0 1992: Intimations of Postmodernity. London, New York: Routhledge. ISBN 0-415-06750-2 1992: Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-1016-1 1993: Postmodern Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18693-X 1994: Dwa szkice o moralności ponowoczesnej [Two sketches on postmodern morality]. Warszawa: IK. 1995: Life in Fragments. Essays in Postmodern Morality. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19267-0 1996: Alone Again – Ethics After Certainty. London: Demos. ISBN 1-898309-40-X 1997: Postmodernity and its Discontents. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-7456-1791-3 1995: Ciało i przemoc w obliczu ponowoczesności [Body and Violence in the Face of Postmodernity]. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika. ISBN 83-231-0654-1 1997 (with Roman Kubicki, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska): Humanista w ponowoczesnym świecie – rozmowy o sztuce życia, nauce, życiu sztuki i innych sprawach [A Humanist in the Postmodern World – Conversations on the Art of Life, Science, the Life of Art and Other Matters]. Warszawa: Zysk i S-ka. ISBN 83-7150-313-X 1998: Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-20155-5 1998: Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-7456-2012-4 1999: In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-2172-4 2000: Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity ISBN 0-7456-2409-X 2000 (Peter Beilharz ed.): The Bauman Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-21492-5) 2001: Community. Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-2634-3 2001: The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-2506-1 2001 (with Keith Tester): Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-2664-5 2001 (with Tim May): Thinking Sociologically, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-21929-3 2002: Society Under Siege. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-2984-9 2003: Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-2489-8 2003: City of Fears, City of Hopes. London: Goldsmiths College. ISBN 1-904158-37-4 2004: Wasted Lives. Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-3164-9 2004: Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-3403-6 2004: Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-3308-0 2005: Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-3514-8 2006: Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-3680-2 2006: Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-3987-9 2006: Moralność w niestabilnym świecie [Morality in an instable World]. Poznań: Księgarnia św. Wojciecha. ISBN 83-7015-863-3 2007: Consuming Life. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-4002-8 2008: Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-02780-9 2008: The Art of Life. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-4326-4 2009: Living on Borrowed Time: Conversations with Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-4738-8 2009: (with Roman Kubicki, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska) Życie w kontekstach. Rozmowy o tym, co za nami i o tym, co przed nami. [Life in contexts. Conversations about what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us.] Warszawa: WAiP. ISBN 978-83-61408-77-2 2010: 44 Letters from the Liquid Modern World. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-5056-2 2011: Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-5294-8 2011: Culture in a Liquid Modern World. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-5355-6 2012: This is Not a Diary. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-5570-3 2012: (with David Lyon) Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-6282-4 2013 (with Leonidas Donskis): Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-6274-9 2013 (with Stanisław Obirek): O bogu i człowieku. Rozmowy. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. ISBN 978-83-08-05089-7 translated as Of God and Man. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-9568-6 2013 (with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester): What use is sociology? Conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-7124-6 2013: Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-7109-3 2014: (with Carlo Bordoni) State of Crisis. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-8095-8 2015: (with Rein Raud) Practices of Selfhood. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-9017-9 2015: (with Irena Bauman, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, and Monika Kostera) Management in a Liquid Modern World. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-0222-6 2015: (with Stanisław Obirek) Of God and Man, Cambridge: Polity Press.ISBN 978-0-7456-9568-6. 2015: (with Stanisław Obirek) On the World and Ourselves, Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-8711-7. 2016: (with Leonidas Donskis) Liquid Evil. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-0812-9 2016: (with Ezio Mauro) Babel. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-0760-3 2016: Strangers at Our Door. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-1217-1 2017: Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-1531-8 2017: (with Thomas Leoncini) Nati Liquidi. Sperling & Kupfler. ISBN 978-88-200-6266-8 2017: Zygmunt Bauman. Das Vertraute unvertraut machen. Ein Gespräch mit Peter Haffner, Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-455-00153-2 2017: A Chronicle of Crisis: 2011–2016. Social Europe Editions. ISBN 1-9997151-0-1 == See also == Leszek Kołakowski == Notes == == References == == Further reading == 1995: Richard Kilminster, Ian Varcoe (eds.), Culture, Modernity and Revolution: Essays in Honour of Zygmunt Bauman. London: Routledge; ISBN 0-415-08266-8 2000: Peter Beilharz, Zygmunt Bauman: Dialectic of Modernity. London: Sage; ISBN 0-7619-6735-4 2000: Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity (Key Contemporary Thinkers). Cambridge: Polity; ISBN 0-7456-1899-5 2004: Keith Tester, The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman. Palgrave MacMillan; ISBN 1-4039-1271-8 2005: Tony Blackshaw, Zygmunt Bauman (Key Sociologists). London/New York: Routledge; ISBN 0-415-35504-4 2006: Keith Tester, Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Bauman Before Postmodernity: Invitation, Conversations and Annotated Bibliography 1953–1989. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press; ISBN 87-7307-738-0 2007: Keith Tester, Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Sophia Marshman, Bauman Beyond Postmodernity: Conversations, Critiques and Annotated Bibliography 1989–2005. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press; ISBN 87-7307-783-6 2007: Anthony Elliott (ed.), The Contemporary Bauman. London: Routledge; ISBN 0-415-40969-1 2008: Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Poul Poder (eds.), The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman: Challenges and Critique. London: Ashgate; ISBN 0-7546-7060-0. 2008: Mark Davis, Freedom and Consumerism: A Critique of Zygmunt Bauman's Sociology. Aldershot: Ashgate; ISBN 978-0-7546-7271-5. 2010: Mark Davis, Keith Tester (eds), Bauman's Challenge: Sociological Issues for the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; ISBN 978-0-230-22134-5 2013: Pierre-Antoine Chardel, Zygmunt Bauman. Les illusions perdues de la modernité. Paris: CNRS Editions; ISBN 978-2-271-07542-0 2013: Shaun Best, Zygmunt Bauman: Why Good People Do Bad Things. Farnham: Ashgate; ISBN 978-1-4094-3588-4 2013: Mark Davis (ed.), Liquid Sociology: Metaphor in Zygmunt Bauman's Analysis of Modernity. Farnham: Ashgate; ISBN 978-1-4094-3887-8 2013: Paulo Fernando da Silva, Conceito de ética na contemporaneidade segundo Bauman. São Paulo: Cultura Acadêmica; ISBN 978-85-7983-427-1 2016: Michael Hviid Jacobsen (Ed), "Beyond Bauman: Critical Engagements and Creative Excursions"? London: Routledge; ISBN 978-1-4724-7611-1 (hardback); 978-1-315-56917-8 (ebook) 2016: Tony Blackshaw (Ed)," The New Bauman Reader: Thinking Sociologically in Liquid Modern Times", Manchester: Manchester University Press; ISBN 978-1-5261-0079-5 (hardback); 978-1-7849-9403-7 (paperback) 2016: Carlo Bordoni (Ed), "Zygmunt Bauman. With an original contribution", in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, n. 3, vol. 70, ISBN 978-2-930560-28-1 2017: Ali Rattansi, "Bauman and Contemporary Sociology: A Critical Analysis", Manchester: Manchester University Press (in press, to be published Spring 2017). 2017: Sociedade, Linguagem e Modernidade Líquida. Interview By Leo Peruzzo; in Journal Diálogo Educacional, n. 6, vol. 47. 2020: Shaun Best, Zygmunt Bauman on Education in Liquid Modernity, London, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-138-54514-4 2020: Shaun Best, The Emerald Guide to Zygmunt Bauman (Emerald Guides to Social Thought), Bingley, Emerald Publishing Limited {978-1839097416} 2020: Izabela Wagner, Bauman: A Biography. Cambridge: Polity; ISBN 978-1-5095-2686-4 2020: Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Whatever Made Him" (review of Izabela Wagner, Bauman: A Biography, Polity, June 2020, ISBN 978-1-5095-2686-4, 510 pp.), London Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 17 (10 September 2020), pp. 9–11. "[This biography's] leitmotif is the dichotomy between Bauman's Polish and Jewish identities, the first being the one he chose, the second the one fixed on him by others, in particular other Poles. [p. 9.] [F]or all the difficulties and uprootings of his life, he not only stubbornly refused the role of victim but also managed to achieve the rare status – rare at least in interesting biographies – of being a happy man." (p. 11.) == External links == Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman dies, hotrecentnews.com Inhumanity is part of human nature, salon.eu.sk Free full-text download of Alone Again – Ethics After Certainty (1996) from the official publisher Demos (PDF) "The Global Factory of Wasted Humans" – filmed conference of Z. Bauman (2003), archivesaudiovisuelles.fr Bauman interview (2011), vimeo.com Video: The Ambiance of Uncertainty – Interview on Reset – Dialogues on Civilizations, resetdoc.org Zygmunt Bauman: Behind the World's 'crisis of humanity', youtube.com (23 July 2016)

Frantz Fanon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon

Frantz Omar Fanon (, US: ; French: [fʁɑ̃ts fanɔ̃]; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961) was a Francophone Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, political philosopher, and Marxist from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have become influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As well as being an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, Pan-Africanist, and Marxist humanist concerned with the psychopathology of colonization and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.In the course of his work as a physician and psychiatrist, Fanon supported the Algerian War of independence from France and was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. Fanon has been described as "the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time". For more than five decades, the life and works of Fanon have inspired national liberation movements and other freedom and political movements in Palestine, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the United States. He formulated a model for community psychology, believing that many mental health patients would do better if they were integrated into their family and community instead of being treated with institutionalized care. He also helped found the field of institutional psychotherapy while working at Saint-Alban under Francois Tosquelles and Jean Oury. == Biography == === Early life === Frantz Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, which was then a French colony and is now a French single territorial collectivity. His father, Félix Casimir Fanon, was a descendant of African slaves, and worked as a customs agent. His mother, Eléanore Médélice, was of Afro-Martinican and white Alsatian descent, and worked as a shopkeeper. Frantz was the third of four sons in a family of eight children. Two of them died young, including his sister Gabrielle, with whom Frantz was very close. His family was socio-economically middle-class. They could afford the fees for the Lycée Schoelcher, at the time the most prestigious high school in Martinique, where Fanon came to admire one of the school's teachers, poet and writer Aimé Césaire. Fanon left Martinique in 1943, when he was 18 years old, in order to join the Free French forces. === Martinique and World War II === After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Vichy French naval troops were blockaded on Martinique. Forced to remain on the island, French sailors took over the government from the Martiniquan people and established a collaborationist Vichy regime. In the face of economic distress and isolation under the blockade, they instituted an oppressive regime; Fanon described them as taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists". Residents made many complaints of harassment and sexual misconduct by the sailors. The abuse of the Martiniquan people by the French Navy influenced Fanon, reinforcing his feelings of alienation and his disgust with colonial racism. At the age of seventeen, Fanon fled the island as a "dissident" (a term used for Frenchmen joining Gaullist forces), traveling to Dominica to join the Free French Forces.: 24  After three attempts, he made it to Dominica, but it was too late to enlist. After the pro-Vichy Robert regime was deposed in Martinique in June 1943, Fanon returned to Fort-de-France to join the newly created, all black 5e Bataillon de marche des Antilles.He enlisted in the Free French army and joined an Allied convoy that reached Casablanca. He was later transferred to an army base at Béjaïa on the Kabylia coast of Algeria. Fanon left Algeria from Oran and served in France, notably in the battles of Alsace. In 1944 he was wounded at Colmar and received the Croix de guerre. When the Nazis were defeated and Allied forces crossed the Rhine into Germany along with photojournalists, Fanon's regiment was "bleached" of all non-white troops as Fanon and his fellow Afro-Caribbean soldiers were sent to Toulon (Provence). Later, they were transferred to Normandy to await repatriation.During the war, Fanon was exposed to more white European racism. For example, European women liberated by black soldiers often preferred to dance with fascist Italian prisoners, rather than fraternize with their liberators.In 1945, Fanon returned to Martinique. He lasted a short time there. He worked for the parliamentary campaign of his friend and mentor Aimé Césaire, who would be a major influence in his life. Césaire ran on the communist ticket as a parliamentary delegate from Martinique to the first National Assembly of the Fourth Republic. Fanon stayed long enough to complete his baccalaureate and then went to France, where he studied medicine and psychiatry. === France === Fanon was educated in Lyon, where he also studied literature, drama and philosophy, sometimes attending Merleau-Ponty's lectures. During this period, he wrote three plays, of which two survive. After qualifying as a psychiatrist in 1951, Fanon did a residency in psychiatry at Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole under the radical Catalan psychiatrist François Tosquelles, who invigorated Fanon's thinking by emphasizing the role of culture in psychopathology. In 1948 Fanon started a relationship with Michelle, a medical student, who soon became pregnant. He left her for an 18-year-old high school student, Josie, whom he married in 1952. At urging of his friends he later recognized his daughter, Mireille, although he did not have contact with her.In France while completing his residency, Fanon wrote and published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people. Originally, the manuscript was the doctoral dissertation, submitted at Lyon, entitled "Essay on the Disalienation of the Black", which was a response to the racism that Fanon experienced while studying psychiatry and medicine at university in Lyon; the rejection of the dissertation prompted Fanon to publish it as a book. For his doctor of philosophy degree, he submitted another dissertation of narrower scope and different subject. Left-wing philosopher Francis Jeanson, leader of the pro-Algerian independence Jeanson network, read Fanon's manuscript and as a senior book editor at Éditions du Seuil in Paris, gave the book its new title and wrote its epilogue.After receiving Fanon's manuscript at Seuil, Jeanson invited him to an editorial meeting. Amid Jeanson's praise of the book, Fanon exclaimed: "Not bad for a nigger, is it?" Insulted, Jeanson dismissed Fanon from his office. Later, Jeanson learned that his response had earned him the writer's lifelong respect, and Fanon acceded to Jeanson's suggestion that the book be entitled Black Skin, White Masks.In the book, Fanon described the unfair treatment of black people in France and how they were disapproved of by white people. Black people also had a sense of inferiority when facing white people. Fanon believed that even though they could speak French, they could not fully integrate into the life and environment of white people. (See further discussion of Black Skin, White Masks under Work, below.) === Algeria === After his residency, Fanon practised psychiatry at Pontorson, near Mont Saint-Michel, for another year and then (from 1953) in Algeria. He was chef de service at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria. He worked there until his deportation in January 1957.Fanon's methods of treatment started evolving, particularly by beginning socio-therapy to connect with his patients' cultural backgrounds. He also trained nurses and interns. Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, after having made contact with Pierre Chaulet at Blida in 1955. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French soldiers and officers who carried out torture in order to suppress anti-colonial resistance. Additionally, Fanon was also responsible for treating Algerian torture victims. Fanon made extensive trips across Algeria, mainly in the Kabylia region, to study the cultural and psychological life of Algerians. His lost study of "The marabout of Si Slimane" is an example. These trips were also a means for clandestine activities, notably in his visits to the ski resort of Chrea which hid an FLN base. === Joining the FLN and exile from Algeria === By summer 1956 Fanon realized that he could no longer continue to support French efforts, even indirectly via his hospital work. In November he submitted his "Letter of resignation to the Resident Minister", which later became an influential text of its own in anti-colonialist circles. There comes a time when silence becomes dishonesty. The ruling intentions of personal existence are not in accord with the permanent assaults on the most commonplace values. For many months my conscience has been the seat of unpardonable debates. And the conclusion is the determination not to despair of man, in other words, of myself. The decision I have reached is that I cannot continue to bear a responsibility at no matter what cost, on the false pretext that there is nothing else to be done. Shortly afterwards, Fanon was expelled from Algeria and moved to Tunis where he joined the FLN openly. He was part of the editorial collective of Al Moudjahid, for which he wrote until the end of his life. He also served as Ambassador to Ghana for the Provisional Algerian Government (GPRA). He attended conferences in Accra, Conakry, Addis Ababa, Leopoldville, Cairo and Tripoli. Many of his shorter writings from this period were collected posthumously in the book Toward the African Revolution. In this book Fanon reveals war tactical strategies; in one chapter he discusses how to open a southern front to the war and how to run the supply lines.Upon his return to Tunis, after his exhausting trip across the Sahara to open a Third Front, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. He went to the Soviet Union for treatment and experienced some remission of his illness. When he came back to Tunis once again, he dictated his testament The Wretched of the Earth. When he was not confined to his bed, he delivered lectures to Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN) officers at Ghardimao on the Algerian–Tunisian border. He traveled to Rome for a three-day meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre who had greatly influenced his work. Sartre agreed to write a preface to Fanon's last book, The Wretched of the Earth. === Death and aftermath === With his health declining, Fanon's comrades urged him to seek treatment in the U.S. as his Soviet doctors had suggested. In 1961, the CIA arranged a trip under the promise of stealth for further leukemia treatment at a National Institutes of Health facility. During his time in the United States, Fanon was handled by CIA agent Oliver Iselin. As Lewis R. Gordon points out, the circumstances of Fanon's stay are somewhat disputed: "What has become orthodoxy, however, is that he was kept in a hotel without treatment for several days until he contracted pneumonia."Fanon subsequently died from double pneumonia in Bethesda, Maryland, on 6 December 1961 after finally having begun his leukemia treatment. He had been admitted under the name of Ibrahim Omar Fanon, a Libyan nom de guerre he had assumed in order to enter a hospital in Rome after being wounded in Morocco during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front. He was buried in Algeria after lying in state in Tunisia. Later, his body was moved to a martyrs' (Chouhada) graveyard at Aïn Kerma in eastern Algeria. Frantz Fanon was survived by his French wife, Josie (née Dublé), their son, Olivier Fanon, and his daughter from a previous relationship, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France. Josie Fanon later became disillusioned with the government and after years of depression and drinking died by suicide in Algiers in 1989. Mireille became a professor of international law and conflict resolution and serves as president of the Frantz Fanon Foundation. Olivier became president of the Frantz Fanon National Association, which was created in Algiers in 2012. == Work == === Black Skin, White Masks === Black Skin, White Masks was first published in French as Peau noire, masques blancs in 1952 and is one of Fanon's most important works. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon psychoanalyzes the oppressed Black person who is perceived to have to be a lesser creature in the White world that they live in, and studies how they navigate the world through a performance of White-ness. Particularly in discussing language, he talks about how the black person's use of a colonizer's language is seen by the colonizer as predatory, and not transformative, which in turn may create insecurity in the black's consciousness. He recounts that he himself faced many admonitions as a child for using Creole French instead of "real French", or "French French", that is, "white" French. Ultimately, he concludes that "mastery of language [of the white/colonizer] for the sake of recognition as white reflects a dependency that subordinates the black's humanity". ==== "The Negro and Language" ==== Chapter 1 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled "The Negro and Language". In this chapter, Fanon discusses how colored people were perceived by the whites. He says that the black man has two dimensions: One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro behaves differently with a white man than with another Negro. Fanon claimed that whether this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question. To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is. Fanon concludes his theorizing by saying: "Historically, it must be understood that the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors which were still barred to him fifty years ago. In the Antilles Negro who comes within this study we find a quest for subtleties, for refinements of language—so many further means of proving to himself that he has measured up to the culture." ==== "The Woman of Color and the White Man" ==== Chapter 2 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled “The woman of color and the white man”. The focus of the chapter is on the extent to which authentic love between women of color and European males is hindered by unconscious tensions. It discusses how a feeling of inferiority has manifested in women of color because of colonialism. Fanon introduces the reader to the cases of two women from novels, Mayotte Capécia's semi-autobiographical I Am a Martinican Woman (1948) and Abdoulaye Sadji's Nini, mulâtresse du Sénégal (1954). Mayotte Capécia is a black woman who Fanon claims has idealized whiteness. She wants above all to be with a white man, and strives to be as close to communities of white people as possible. Fanon also discusses how mulatto women see themselves as superior to black men. This is the case with the black man Mactar´s love letter to Nini (a mulatto woman), where he acknowledges his inferiority as a black man, but argues that his devotion to her is reason enough to choose him. The idealization of whiteness both in white people and people of color is discussed. ==== "The Man of Color and the White Woman" ==== Chapter 3 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled “The man of color and the white woman”. In this chapter Fanon discusses the desire of the black man to be white. Firstly by telling the story of the Antillean man who upon arrival has one goal: to sleep with a white woman. For the black man, an unconscious need to prove that their worth is similar to the white man is fulfilled through sexual interaction with the white woman. Fanon then analyzes the story of Jean Veneuse written by René Maran, a work believed to be autobiographic. Jean Veneuse is a black man from the Antilles living in Bourdeaux. He is a part of the social and cultural elite and falls in love with a white woman. He is aware of the stereotype of the black man´s desire to sleep with a white woman and is therefore hesitant to become one of them thereby confirming the stereotype. Fanon goes on to explore the psychodynamics of Venuese´s personality type – the negative-aggressive abandonment-neurotic, and what role his personality type has in his romantic interactions. The negative-aggressive abandonment-neurotic displays a “fear of showing oneself as one actually is” resulting from a doubt that one can be loved as one is, as they had experiences of abandonment in childhood. Towards the end of the chapter, Fanon emphasizes the lack of generalizability for the findings on Jean Veneuse to the experiences of all black men in France, as the course of his development to a great extent is also part of his personality type. As Fanon writes “… we would like to think that we have discouraged any attempt to connect the failure of Jean Veneuse to the amount of melanin in his epidermis.” ==== "The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized" ==== Chapter 4 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled “The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized”. The chapter envelopes Fanon´s critique of Octave Mannoni's book “Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization”. Mannoni launches a theory that the colonized Malagasies suffer from an inferiority complex which further leads to a dependency complex. Fanon criticizes the implication that this inferiority complex is innate in the colonized, and argues for the effect of human attitudes. He sees this complex as an effect of interactions in the colony: “The feelings of inferiority in the colonized are correlative to the feelings of superiority in the European… Let´s have the courage to say it upright. It is the racist who creates his inferior”, he writes. Mannoni is further criticized for not considering the Malagasies´ agency and ability to choose action for their own independence. ==== "The Fact of Blackness" ==== Chapter 5 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled "The Fact of Blackness". In this chapter, Fanon tackles many theories. One theory he addresses is the different schemas that are said to exist within a person, and how they exist differently for Black people. He talks about one's "bodily schema" (83), and theorizes that because of both the "historical-racial schema" (84),-- one that exists because of the history of racism and makes it so there is no one bodily-schema because of the context that comes with Blackness—and one's "epidermal-racial schema" (84), -- where Black people cannot be seen for their single bodily-schema because they are seen to represent their race and the history and therefore cannot be seen past their flesh—there is no universal Black schema. He describes this experience as "no longer a question of being aware of my body in the third person but in a triple person." Fanon concludes this theorizing by saying: "As long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion, except in minor internal conflicts, to experience his being through others." Fanon also addresses Ontology, stating that it "—does not permit us to understand the being of the black man" (82). He says that because Blackness was created in, and continues to exist in, negation to whiteness, that ontology is not a philosophy that can be used to understand the Black experience. Fanon states that this ontology can't be used to understand the Black experience because it ignores the "lived experience". He argues that a black man has to be black, while also being black in relation to the white man. (90) ==== "The Negro and Psychopathology" ==== Chapter 6 of Black Skin, White Masks is entitled "The Negro and Psychopathology". In this chapter, Fanon discussed how being Black can and does affect one's psyche. He makes it clear that the treatment of Black people causes emotional trauma. Fanon argues that as a result of one's skin color being Black, Black people are unable to truly process this trauma or "make it unconscious" (466). Black people are unable to not think about the fact that they are Black and all of the historical and current stigma that come with that. Fanon's work in this chapter specifically shows the short-comings of major names in psychology such as Sigmund Freud. However, Fanon repeatedly mentions the importance of Jacques Lacan's theory of language. Fanon discusses the mental health of Black people to show that "traditional" psychology was created and founded without thinking about Black people and their experiences. Although Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks while still in France, most of his work was written in North Africa. It was during this time that he produced works such as L'An Cinq, de la Révolution Algérienne in 1959 (Year Five of the Algerian Revolution), later republished as Sociology of a Revolution and later still as A Dying Colonialism. Fanon's original title was "Reality of a Nation"; however the publisher, François Maspero, refused to accept this title. Fanon is best known for the classic analysis of colonialism and decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth. The Wretched of the Earth was first published in 1961 by Éditions Maspero, with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. In it Fanon analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. The book includes an article which focuses on the ideas of violence and decolonization. He claims that decolonization is inherently a violent process, because the relationship between the settler and the native is a binary of opposites. In fact, he uses the Biblical metaphor, "The last shall be first, and the first, last", to describe the moment of decolonization. The situation of settler colonialism creates within the native a tension which grows over time and in many ways is fostered by the settler. This tension is initially released among the natives, but eventually it becomes a catalyst for violence against the settler. His work would become an academic and theoretical foundation for many revolutions.Fanon uses the Jewish people to explain how the prejudice expressed towards blacks can not be generalized to other races or ethnicities. He discusses this in Black Skin, White Masks, and pulls from Jean-Paul Sartre's Reflections on the Jewish Question to inform his understanding of French colonialism's relationship with the Jewish people and how it can be compared and contrasted with the oppressions of Blacks across the world. In his seminal book, Fanon issues many rebuttals to Octave Mannoni's Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. Mannoni asserts that "colonial exploitation is not the same as other forms of exploitation, and colonial racialism is different from other kinds of racialism." Fanon responds by arguing that racism or anti-Semitism, colonial or otherwise, are not different because they rip away a person's ability to feel human. He says: "I am deprived of the possibility of being a man. I cannot disassociate myself from the future that is proposed for my brother. Every one of my acts commits me as a man. Every one of my silences, every one of my cowardices reveals me as a man." In this same vein, Fanon echoes the philosophies of Maryse Choisy, who believed that remaining neutral in times of great injustice implied unforgivable complicity. Specifically, Fanon mentions the ravages of racism and anti-Semitism because he believes that those who are one are necessarily the other as well. Yet he is careful to distinguish between the causes of the two. Fanon argues that the reasons for hating "The Jew" are born from a different fear than those for hating Blacks. Bigots are scared of Jews because they are threatened by what the Jew represents. The many tropes and stereotypes of Jewish cruelty, laziness, and cunning are the antithesis of the Western work ethic. The Black man is feared for perhaps similar traits, but the impetus is different. Essentially, "The Jew" is simply an idea, but Blacks are feared for their physical attributes. Jewishness is not easily detectable to the naked eye, but race is.Both books established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World as the leading anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century. Fanon's three books were supplemented by numerous psychiatry articles as well as radical critiques of French colonialism in journals such as Esprit and El Moudjahid. The reception of his work has been affected by English translations which are recognized to contain numerous omissions and errors, while his unpublished work, including his doctoral thesis, has received little attention. As a result, it has been argued Fanon has often been portrayed as an advocate of violence (it would be more accurate to characterize him as a dialectical opponent of nonviolence) and that his ideas have been extremely oversimplified. This reductionist vision of Fanon's work ignores the subtlety of his understanding of the colonial system. For example, the fifth chapter of Black Skin, White Masks translates, literally, as "The Lived Experience of the Black" ("L'expérience vécue du Noir"), but Markmann's translation is "The Fact of Blackness", which leaves out the massive influence of phenomenology on Fanon's early work. ==== Fanon and the Lived Experiences of the Black Subject. ==== In Frantz Fanon’s first book, Black Skin, White Masks, he tasks himself with exploring the experiences of the black subject. Fanon does not look at the lived experiences in the ordinary sense of the term, but rather considers a domain of experience that is rooted in the context of the world the experience takes place in. The Lived experiences of the black person is the profound sense of feeling and living through the social conditions that define a particular time and place. Fanon navigates the lived experiences of the black subject by drawing inspiration from psychoanalysis, literary texts, medical terminology, philosophy, negritude, and political consciousness. Fanon placed emphasis on the concepts of Political Consciousness and Negritude in the navigation of the experiences of black subjects. Political Consciousness is the way in which one is crucially a part of the world and its conditions, and how one should attempt to change the world through carefully considered political projects. Political consciousness thus includes a careful consideration of facticity. These include the concrete factors that define your situation in the world, such as the actual physical environment in which you live, the place and time of birth, class membership, nationality, gender, and race, which cannot be transcended. Fanon used the concept of political consciousness to show that the field of psychological phenomena, and the experiences of the black individual, always deserve a political level of analysis.Negritude is both the celebration of black culture and forms of expression, as well as a resistance to the politics of assimilation. Fanon is aware that the colonised individual accepts art of their white -scripted history and in some ways actively participate in it. However, he rejects the idea that human freedom and the capacity for resistance are extinguished in structurally oppressive social circumstances, such as those in which the colonized and enslaved people lived. Fanon recognises Negritudes positive reinvention of “blackness” as social reality, constructed by the oppressed for specific socio-political, emancipatory, and therapeutic aims.In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon echoes the concepts of Political Consciousness and Negritude by recounting the experiences of the colonised individual. The entirety of the book is a recounting of the lived experiences of a black subject. In the book Fanon places importance on the freedom and agency that the black subject maintains. === A Dying Colonialism === A Dying Colonialism is a 1959 book by Fanon that provides an account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as “primitive,” in order to destroy those oppressors. Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression. The militant book describes Fanon's understanding that for the colonized, “having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death.” It also contains one of his most influential articles, "Unveiled Algeria", that signifies the fall of imperialism and describes how oppressed people struggle to decolonize their "mind" to avoid assimilation. === The Wretched of the Earth === In The Wretched of the Earth (1961, Les damnés de la terre), published shortly before Fanon's death, Fanon defends the right of a colonized people to use violence to gain independence. In addition, he delineated the processes and forces leading to national independence or neocolonialism during the decolonization movement that engulfed much of the world after World War II. In defence of the use of violence by colonized peoples, Fanon argued that human beings who are not considered as such (by the colonizer) shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the colonizer. His book was censored by the French government. For Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the colonizer's presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only "language" the colonizer speaks. Thus, violent resistance is a necessity imposed by the colonists upon the colonized. The relevance of language and the reformation of discourse pervades much of his work, which is why it is so interdisciplinary, spanning psychiatric concerns to encompass politics, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and literature.His participation in the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale from 1955 determined his audience as the Algerian colonized. It was to them that his final work, Les damnés de la terre (translated into English by Constance Farrington as The Wretched of the Earth) was directed. It constitutes a warning to the oppressed of the dangers they face in the whirlwind of decolonization and the transition to a neo-colonialist, globalized world.An often overlooked aspect of Fanon's work is that he did not like to physically write his pieces. Instead, he would dictate to his wife, Josie, who did all of the writing and, in some cases, contributed and edited. ==== Fanon, Violence and Apartheid ==== In the first chapter of Fanon's book, The Wretched of the Earth he writes about violence and how this is a tool to fight against colonisation. Fanon expresses in this chapter that freedom can not be achieved if violence is not a part of the process. Fanon made this claim by arguing that the nature of colonisation was violent, in the way that black individuals were stripped of their land and treated as lesser people, so the retaliation for achieving freedom needed to be violent. Fanon argued that for colonisers to expect the colonised to achieve freedom through peaceful means was a double standard. Fanon continued to argue that there were two types of violence in a colonial setting. One, he claimed, was the violence that the colonisers had used and the counter-violence which was used by the colonised. Drawing reference to the Apartheid era in South Africa, this bookmark in history will be used as an example to express the thinking of Fanon. Apartheid was legislation put in place by the white minority in South Africa to oppress the black majority of South Africa. The legislation was used to implement racial segregation between whites and non-whites. This practice was done through the group areas act of 1950, which eventually, along with two other acts, was known as the land acts. The land acts led to people of colour being removed from specific areas that were now considered white occupations. The acts were used to set aside 80% of the land in South Africa for the white minority. The fight against apartheid is often resembled by one major party, the ANC. During this period, many protests were organised in order to fight against the apartheid laws; however, many of these protests were met with violent retaliation from the South African police. One of the most remembered protests was the Sharpeville massacre. The Sharpeville massacre was an organised protest in retaliation to the pass law, which stated that individuals of colour were required to carry a pass in South Africa. The protest led to a total of 249 victims who were attacked by the police. Sixty-nine people of colour were killed, while 180 were injured during this protest. With protests making no progress in combating apartheid, the ANC had concluded that another method would be violence and terrorist acts, which led to the ANC forming their militant group. In 1961 the Umkhonto we Sizwe military group was formed. The head of the group was Nelson Mandela. The first acts of violence were intended to be non-lethal, as bombings occurred in buildings related to the apartheid legislation but were empty at the time of the bombings. Later the MK group continued to commit more acts of violence to combat apartheid. The estimate states that the incident rate of violent attacks ranged from 23 incidents in 1977 to an estimated 136 incidents in 1985. During the latter half of the 1980s, the group continued to commit acts of violence in which South African citizens were killed. Fatal attacks include the church street boming of 1983, the Amanzimtoti bombing of 1985, the Magoo's Bar bombing of 1986 and the Johannesburg Magistrate Court boming of 1987. These acts of violence contrast significantly with the earlier point, which states that the ANC were reluctant to use violence in the fight against apartheid. The acts of violence also led to the ANC being branded a terrorist group by the Government.Apartheid is mentioned in this piece on Fanon because it incorporates Fanon's philosophy on violence, showing that to break colonisation, it must be met with violence due to the nature of the oppression. Apartheid is a clear example of this as the ANC, whose initial methods were to steer away from violence; however, this had not shown any results. Instead, their non-violent protests were met with mass shootings by the South African police force. The mass shootings and killing of people of colour led to the ANC and their turn to violence to fight against apartheid and break the cycle of oppression and colonisation. == Influences == Fanon was influenced by a variety of thinkers and intellectual traditions including Jean-Paul Sartre, Lacan, Négritude, and Marxism.Aimé Césaire was a particularly significant influence in Fanon's life. Césaire, a leader of the Négritude movement, was teacher and mentor to Fanon on the island of Martinique. Fanon was first introduced to Négritude during his lycée days in Martinique when Césaire coined the term and presented his ideas in Tropiques, the journal that he edited with Suzanne Césaire, his wife, in addition to his now classic Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Journal of a Homecoming). Fanon referred to Césaire's writings in his own work. He quoted, for example, his teacher at length in "The Lived Experience of the Black Man", a heavily anthologized essay from Black Skins, White Masks. == Legacy == Fanon has had an influence on anti-colonial and national liberation movements. In particular, Les damnés de la terre was a major influence on the work of revolutionary leaders such as Ali Shariati in Iran, Steve Biko in South Africa, Malcolm X in the United States and Ernesto Che Guevara in Cuba. Of these only Guevara was primarily concerned with Fanon's theories on violence; for Shariati and Biko the main interest in Fanon was "the new man" and "black consciousness" respectively.With regard to the American liberation struggle more commonly known as The Black Power Movement, Fanon's work was especially influential. His book Wretched of the Earth is quoted directly in the preface of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton's book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation which was published in 1967, shortly after Carmichael left the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In addition, Carmichael and Hamilton include much of Fanon's theory on Colonialism in their work, beginning by framing the situation of former slaves in America as a colony situated inside a nation. "To put it another way, there is no "American dilemma" because black people in this country form a colony, and it is not in the interest of the colonial power to liberate them" (Ture Hamilton, 5). Another example is the indictment of the black middle class or what Fanon called the "colonized intellectual" as the indoctrinated followers of the colonial power. Fanon states, "The native intellectual has clothed his aggressiveness in his barely veiled desire to assimilate himself to the colonial world" (47). A third example is the idea that the natives (African Americans) should be constructing new social systems rather than participating in the systems created by the settler population. Ture and Hamilton contend that "black people should create rather than imitate" (144). The Black Power group that Fanon had the most influence on was the Black Panther Party (BPP). In 1970 Bobby Seale, the Chairman of the BPP, published a collection of recorded observations made while he was incarcerated entitled Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. This book, while not an academic text, is a primary source chronicling the history of the BPP through the eyes of one of its founders. While describing one of his first meetings with Huey P. Newton, Seale describes bringing him a copy of Wretched of the Earth. There are at least three other direct references to the book, all of them mentioning ways in which the book was influential and how it was included in the curriculum required of all new BPP members. Beyond just reading the text, Seale and the BPP included much of the work in their party platform. The Panther 10 Point Plan contained 6 points which either directly or indirectly referenced ideas in Fanon's work including their contention that there must be an end to the "robbery by the white man", and "education that teaches us our true history and our role in present day society" (67). One of the most important elements adopted by the BPP was the need to build the "humanity" of the native. Fanon claimed that the realization by the native that s/he was human would mark the beginning of the push for freedom (33). The BPP embraced this idea through the work of their Community Schools and Free Breakfast Programs. Bolivian indianist Fausto Reinaga also had some Fanon influence and he mentions The Wretched of the Earth in his magnum opus La Revolución India, advocating for decolonisation of native South Americans from European influence. In 2015 Raúl Zibechi argued that Fanon had become a key figure for the Latin American left. In August 2021 Fanon's book Voices of liberation was one of those brought by Elisa Loncón to the new "plurinational library" of the Constitutional Convention of Chile.Fanon's influence extended to the liberation movements of the Palestinians, the Tamils, African Americans and others. His work was a key influence on the Black Panther Party, particularly his ideas concerning nationalism, violence and the lumpenproletariat. More recently, radical South African poor people's movements, such as Abahlali baseMjondolo (meaning 'people who live in shacks' in Zulu), have been influenced by Fanon's work. His work was a key influence on Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire, as well. Fanon has also profoundly affected contemporary African literature. His work serves as an important theoretical gloss for writers including Ghana's Ayi Kwei Armah, Senegal's Ken Bugul and Ousmane Sembène, Zimbabwe's Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Kenya's Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Ngũgĩ goes so far to argue in Decolonizing the Mind (1992) that it is "impossible to understand what informs African writing" without reading Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.The Caribbean Philosophical Association offers the Frantz Fanon Prize for work that furthers the decolonization and liberation of mankind.Fanon's writings on black sexuality in Black Skin, White Masks have garnered critical attention by a number of academics and queer theory scholars. Interrogating Fanon's perspective on the nature of black homosexuality and masculinity, queer theory academics have offered a variety of critical responses to Fanon's words, balancing his position within postcolonial studies with his influence on the formation of contemporary black queer theory.Fanon's legacy has expanded even further into Black Studies and more specifically, into the theories of Afro-pessimism and Black Critical Theory. Thinkers such as Sylvia Wynter, David Marriott, Frank B. Wilderson III, Jared Sexton, Calvin Warren, and Zakkiyah Iman Jackson have taken up Fanon's ontological, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic analyses of the Negro and the "zone of non-being" in order to develop theories of anti-Blackness. Putting Fanon in conversation with prominent thinkers such as Sylvia Wynter, Saidiya Hartman, and Hortense Spillers, and focusing primarily on the Charles Lam Markmann translation of Black Skin, White Masks, Black Critical Theorists and Afropessimists take seriously the ontological implications of the "Fact of Blackness" and "The Negro and Psychopathology", formulating the Black or the Slave as the non-relational, phobic object that constitutes civil society. === Fanon's writings === Black Skin, White Masks (1952), (1967 translation by Charles Lam Markmann: New York: Grove Press) A Dying Colonialism (1959), (1965 translation by Haakon Chevalier: New York, Grove Press) The Wretched of the Earth (1961), (1963 translation by Constance Farrington: New York: Grove Weidenfeld) Toward the African Revolution (1964), (1969 translation by Haakon Chevalier: New York: Grove Press) Alienation and Freedom (2018), eds Jean Khalfa and Robert J. C. Young, revised edition (translation by Steve Corcoran: London: Bloomsbury) === Books on Fanon === Anthony Alessandrini (ed.), Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives (1999, New York: Routledge) Gavin Arnall, Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change (2020, New York: Columbia University Press) Stefan Bird-Pollan, Hegel, Freud and Fanon: The Dialectic of Emancipation (2014, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.) Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology Of Oppression (1985, New York: Plenum Press), ISBN 0-306-41950-5 David Caute, Frantz Fanon (1970, London: Wm. Collins and Co.) Alice Cherki, Frantz Fanon. Portrait (2000, Paris: Éditions du Seuil) Patrick Ehlen, Frantz Fanon: A Spiritual Biography (2001, New York: Crossroad 8th Avenue), ISBN 0-8245-2354-7 Joby Fanon, Frantz Fanon, My Brother: Doctor, Playwright, Revolutionary (2014, United States: Lexington Books) Peter Geismar, Fanon (1971, Grove Press) Irene Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study (1974, London: Wildwood House), ISBN 0-7045-0002-7 Nigel C. Gibson (ed.), Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue (1999, Amherst, New York: Humanity Books) Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (2003, Oxford: Polity Press) Nigel C. Gibson, Fanonian Practices in South Africa (2011, London: Palgrave Macmillan) Nigel C. Gibson (ed.), Living Fanon: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2011, London: Palgrave Macmillan and the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press) Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics (2017, London: Rowman and Littlefield International and The University of Witwatersrand Press) Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (1995, New York: Routledge) Lewis Gordon, What Fanon Said (2015, New York, Fordham) ISBN 9780823266081 Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, & Renee T. White (eds), Fanon: A Critical Reader (1996, Oxford: Blackwell) Peter Hudis, Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades (2015, London: Pluto Press) Christopher J. Lee, Frantz Fanon: Toward a Revolutionary Humanism (2015, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press) David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography (2012, 2nd ed., London: Verso), ISBN 978-1-844-67773-3 David Marriott, Whither Fanon?: Studies in the Blackness of Being (2018, Palo Alto, Stanford UP), ISBN 9780804798709 Richard C. Onwuanibe, A Critique of Revolutionary Humanism: Frantz Fanon (1983, St. Louis: Warren Green) Ato Sekyi-Otu, Fanon's Dialectic of Experience (1996, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press) T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (1998, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.) Renate Zahar, Frantz Fanon: Colonialism and Alienation (1969, trans. 1974, Monthly Review Press) Alexander V. Gordon, Frantz Fanon and the Fight for National Liberation (1977, Moscow: Nauka, in Russian) === Films on Fanon === Isaac Julien, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask (a documentary) (1996, San Francisco: California Newsreel) Frantz Fanon, une vie, un combat, une œuvre, a 2001 documentary Concerning Violence: Nine scenes from the Anti-Imperialist Self-Defense, a 2014 documentary film written and directed by Göran Olsson that is based on Frantz Fanon's essay "Concerning Violence", from his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth. Luce: The main character of the movie wrote a paper about Frantz Fanon and is said to be inspired by his ideology. == See also == By any means necessary == References == == Further reading == Staniland, Martin (January 1969). "Frantz Fanon and the African political class". African Affairs. 68 (270): 4–25. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a095826. JSTOR 719495. Hansen, Emmanuel (1974). "Frantz Fanon: portrait of a revolutionary intellectual". Transition. 46 (46): 25–36. doi:10.2307/2934953. JSTOR 2934953. Decker, Jeffrey Louis (1990). "Terrorism (un) veiled: Frantz Fanon and the women of Algiers". Cultural Critique. 17 (17): 177–95. doi:10.2307/1354144. JSTOR 1354144. Mazrui, Alamin (1993). "Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon". Third World Quarterly. 14 (2): 351–63. doi:10.1080/01436599308420329. Adam, Hussein M. (October 1993). "Frantz Fanon as a democratic theorist". African Affairs. 92 (369): 499–518. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098663. JSTOR 723236. Gibson, Nigel (1999). "Beyond manicheanism: Dialectics in the thought of Frantz Fanon". Journal of Political Ideologies. 4 (3): 337–64. doi:10.1080/13569319908420802. Grohs, G. K. (2008). "Frantz Fanon and the African revolution". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 6 (4): 543–56. doi:10.1017/S0022278X00017778. S2CID 145286728. Hudis, Peter (December 2020). 2The Revolutionary Humanism of Frantz Fanon", Jacobin, 26 December 2020. Lopes, Rui; Barros, Víctor (2019). "Amílcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: International, Transnational, and Global Dimensions". The International History Review. 42 (6): 1230–1237. doi:10.1080/07075332.2019.1703118. hdl:10362/94384. S2CID 214034536. Morgan, W. John and Guilherme, Alexandre, (2016), "The Contrasting Philosophies of Martin Buber and Frantz Fanon: The political in Education as dialogue or as defiance2, Diogenes, Vol. 61(1) 28–43, DOI: 10.1177/0392192115615789. First published in French in 2013. Tronto, Joan (December 2004). "Frantz Fanon" (PDF). Contemporary Political Theory. 3 (3): 245–52. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300182. S2CID 195282851. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2016. von Holdt, Karl (March 2013). "The violence of order, orders of violence: Between Fannon and Bourdieu". Current Sociology. 61 (2): 112–31. doi:10.1177/0011392112456492. S2CID 220701604. Shatz, Adam (January 2017). "Where Life Is Seized", London Review of Books, Vol. 39, No. 2, pages 19–27. == External links == The Frantz Fanon collection which includes correspondence and manuscripts of Fanon's work is held at L'Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC), in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, France.

Gilles Deleuze

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze

Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( də-LOOZ, French: [ʒil dəløz]; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.An important part of Deleuze's oeuvre is devoted to the reading of other philosophers: the Stoics, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bergson, with particular influence derived from Spinoza. A. W. Moore, citing Bernard Williams's criteria for a great thinker, ranks Deleuze among the "greatest philosophers". Although he once characterized himself as a "pure metaphysician", his work has influenced a variety of disciplines across the humanities, including philosophy, art, and literary theory, as well as movements such as post-structuralism and postmodernism. == Life == === Early life === Gilles Deleuze was born into a middle-class family in Paris and lived there for most of his life. His mother was Odette Camaüer and his father, Louis, was an engineer. His initial schooling was undertaken during World War II, during which time he attended the Lycée Carnot. He also spent a year in khâgne at the Lycée Henri IV. During the Nazi occupation of France, Deleuze's brother, three years his senior, Georges, was arrested for his participation in the French Resistance, and died while in transit to a concentration camp. In 1944, Deleuze went to study at the Sorbonne. His teachers there included several noted specialists in the history of philosophy, such as Georges Canguilhem, Jean Hyppolite, Ferdinand Alquié, and Maurice de Gandillac. Deleuze's lifelong interest in the canonical figures of modern philosophy owed much to these teachers. === Career === Deleuze passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1948, and taught at various lycées (Amiens, Orléans, Louis le Grand) until 1957, when he took up a position at the University of Paris. In 1953, he published his first monograph, Empiricism and Subjectivity, on David Hume. This monograph was based on his 1947 DES (diplôme d'études supérieures) thesis, roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis, which was conducted under the direction of Jean Hyppolite and Georges Canguilhem. From 1960 to 1964, he held a position at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. During this time he published the seminal Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) and befriended Michel Foucault. From 1964 to 1969, he was a professor at the University of Lyon. In 1968, Deleuze defended his two DrE dissertations amid the ongoing May 68 demonstrations; he later published his two dissertations under the titles Difference and Repetition (supervised by Gandillac) and Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (supervised by Alquié). In 1969, he was appointed to the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes/St. Denis, an experimental school organized to implement educational reform. This new university drew a number of well-known academics, including Foucault (who suggested Deleuze's hiring) and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. Deleuze taught at Paris VIII until his retirement in 1987. === Personal life === Deleuze's outlook on life was sympathetic to transcendental ideas, "nature as god" ethics, and the monist experience. Some of the important ideas he advocated for and found inspiration in include his personally coined expression pluralism = monism, as well as the concepts of Being and Univocity. His thoughts were shaped by Spinoza's leanings and inclinations; for Deleuze, Spinoza was the "prince" or even the “Christ” of philosophers.He married Denise Paul "Fanny" Grandjouan in 1956 and they had two children. According to James Miller, Deleuze portrayed little visible interest in actually doing many of the risky things he so vividly conjured up in his lectures and writing. Married, with two children, he outwardly lived the life of a conventional French professor. He kept his fingernails untrimmed because, as he once explained, he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and therefore could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain".When once asked to talk about his life, he replied: "Academics' lives are seldom interesting." Deleuze concludes his reply to this critic thus: What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write. ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments. === Death === Deleuze, who had suffered from respiratory ailments from a young age, developed tuberculosis in 1968 and underwent lung removal. He suffered increasingly severe respiratory symptoms for the rest of his life. In the last years of his life, simple tasks such as writing required laborious effort. Overwhelmed by his respiratory problems, he committed suicide on 4 November 1995, throwing himself from the window of his apartment.Before his death, Deleuze had announced his intention to write a book entitled La Grandeur de Marx (The Greatness of Marx), and left behind two chapters of an unfinished project entitled Ensembles and Multiplicities (these chapters have been published as the essays "Immanence: A Life" and "The Actual and the Virtual"). He is buried in the cemetery of the village of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat. == Philosophy == Deleuze's works fall into two groups: on the one hand, monographs interpreting the work of other philosophers (Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Michel Foucault) and artists (Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Francis Bacon); on the other, eclectic philosophical tomes organized by concept (e.g., difference, sense, events, schizophrenia, economy, cinema, desire, philosophy). However, both of these aspects are seen by his critics and analysts as often overlapping, in particular, due to his prose and the unique mapping of his books that allow for multifaceted readings. === Metaphysics === Deleuze's main philosophical project in the works he wrote prior to his collaborations with Guattari can be summarized as an inversion of the traditional metaphysical relationship between identity and difference. Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities (as in Plato's forms). On the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus." That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x ′ {\displaystyle ^{\prime }} ", and "x ′ {\displaystyle ^{\prime }} " = "the difference between...", and so forth. Difference, in other words, goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly, Deleuze argues, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain what he calls "difference in itself." "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference."Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.Thus, Deleuze at times refers to his philosophy as a transcendental empiricism (empirisme transcendantal), alluding to Kant. In Kant's transcendental idealism, experience only makes sense when organized by intuitions (namely, space and time) and concepts (such as causality). Assuming the content of these intuitions and concepts to be qualities of the world as it exists independently of our perceptual access, according to Kant, spawns seductive but senseless metaphysical beliefs (for example, extending the concept of causality beyond possible experience results in unverifiable speculation about a first cause). Deleuze inverts the Kantian arrangement: experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking (see Epistemology). Simultaneously, Deleuze claims that being is univocal, i.e., that all of its senses are affirmed in one voice. Deleuze borrows the doctrine of ontological univocity from the medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus. In medieval disputes over the nature of God, many eminent theologians and philosophers (such as Thomas Aquinas) held that when one says that "God is good", God's goodness is only analogous to human goodness. Scotus argued to the contrary that when one says that "God is good", the goodness in question is exactly the same sort of goodness that is meant when one says "Jane is good". That is, God only differs from us in degree, and properties such as goodness, power, reason, and so forth are univocally applied, regardless of whether one is talking about God, a person, or a flea. Deleuze adapts the doctrine of univocity to claim that being is, univocally, difference. "With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a univocal Being." Here Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one substance, God or Nature. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating process, an origami cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "pluralism = monism".Difference and Repetition (1968) is Deleuze's most sustained and systematic attempt to work out the details of such a metaphysics, but his other works develop similar ideas. In Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), for example, reality is a play of forces; in Anti-Oedipus (1972), a "body without organs"; in What is Philosophy? (1991), a "plane of immanence" or "chaosmos". === Epistemology === Deleuze's unusual metaphysics entails an equally atypical epistemology, or what he calls a transformation of "the image of thought". According to Deleuze, the traditional image of thought, found in philosophers such as Aristotle, René Descartes, and Edmund Husserl, misconceives thinking as a mostly unproblematic business. Truth may be hard to discover—it may require a life of pure theorizing, or rigorous computation, or systematic doubt—but thinking is able, at least in principle, to correctly grasp facts, forms, ideas, etc. It may be practically impossible to attain a God's-eye, neutral point of view, but that is the ideal to approximate: a disinterested pursuit that results in a determinate, fixed truth; an orderly extension of common sense. Deleuze rejects this view as papering over the metaphysical flux, instead claiming that genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories. Truth changes what we think; it alters what we think is possible. By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them. "All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. It's just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the immaculate conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."The Logic of Sense, published in 1969, is one of Deleuze's most peculiar works in the field of epistemology. Michel Foucault, in his essay "Theatrum Philosophicum" about the book, attributed this to how he begins with his metaphysics but approaches it through language and truth; the book is focused on "the simple condition that instead of denouncing metaphysics as the neglect of being, we force it to speak of extrabeing". In it, he refers to epistemological paradoxes: in the first series, as he analyzes Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, he remarks that "the personal self requires God and the world in general. But when substantives and adjectives begin to dissolve, when the names of pause and rest are carried away by the verbs of pure becoming and slide into the language of events, all identity disappears from the self, the world, and God."Deleuze's peculiar readings of the history of philosophy stem from this unusual epistemological perspective. To read a philosopher is no longer to aim at finding a single, correct interpretation, but is instead to present a philosopher's attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality. "Philosophers introduce new concepts, they explain them, but they don't tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. [...] The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say."Likewise, rather than seeing philosophy as a timeless pursuit of truth, reason, or universals, Deleuze defines philosophy as the creation of concepts. For Deleuze, concepts are not identity conditions or propositions, but metaphysical constructions that define a range of thinking, such as Plato's ideas, Descartes's cogito, or Kant's doctrine of the faculties. A philosophical concept "posits itself and its object at the same time as it is created." In Deleuze's view, then, philosophy more closely resembles practical or artistic production than it does an adjunct to a definitive scientific description of a pre-existing world (as in the tradition of John Locke or Willard Van Orman Quine). In his later work (from roughly 1981 onward), Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy, and science as three distinct disciplines, each relating to reality in different ways. While philosophy creates concepts, the arts create novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling (what Deleuze calls "percepts" and "affects"), and the sciences create quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference such as the speed of light or absolute zero (which Deleuze calls "functives"). According to Deleuze, none of these disciplines enjoy primacy over the others: they are different ways of organizing the metaphysical flux, "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another." For example, Deleuze does not treat cinema as an art representing an external reality, but as an ontological practice that creates different ways of organizing movement and time. Philosophy, science, and art are equally, and essentially, creative and practical. Hence, instead of asking traditional questions of identity such as "is it true?" or "what is it?", Deleuze proposes that inquiries should be functional or practical: "what does it do?" or "how does it work?" === Values === In ethics and politics, Deleuze again echoes Spinoza, albeit in a sharply Nietzschean key. In a classical liberal model of society, morality begins from individuals, who bear abstract natural rights or duties set by themselves or a God. Following his rejection of any metaphysics based on identity, Deleuze criticizes the notion of an individual as an arresting or halting of differentiation (as the etymology of the word "individual" suggests). Guided by the naturalistic ethics of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze instead seeks to understand individuals and their moralities as products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers.In the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Deleuze and Guattari describe history as a congealing and regimentation of "desiring-production" (a concept combining features of Freudian drives and Marxist labor) into the modern individual (typically neurotic and repressed), the nation-state (a society of continuous control), and capitalism (an anarchy domesticated into infantilizing commodification). Deleuze, following Karl Marx, welcomes capitalism's destruction of traditional social hierarchies as liberating but inveighs against its homogenization of all values to the aims of the market. The first part of Capitalism and Schizophrenia undertakes a universal history and posits the existence of a separate socius (the social body that takes credit for production) for each mode of production: the earth for the tribe, the body of the despot for the empire, and capital for capitalism."In his 1990 essay "Postscript on the Societies of Control" ("Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle"), Deleuze builds on Foucault's notion of the society of discipline to argue that society is undergoing a shift in structure and control. Where societies of discipline were characterized by discrete physical enclosures (such as schools, factories, prisons, office buildings, etc.), institutions and technologies introduced since World War II have dissolved the boundaries between these enclosures. As a result, social coercion and discipline have moved into the lives of individuals considered as "masses, samples, data, markets, or 'banks'." The mechanisms of modern societies of control are described as continuous, following and tracking individuals throughout their existence via transaction records, mobile location tracking, and other personally identifiable information.But how does Deleuze square his pessimistic diagnoses with his ethical naturalism? Deleuze claims that standards of value are internal or immanent: to live well is to fully express one's power, to go to the limits of one's potential, rather than to judge what exists by non-empirical, transcendent standards. Modern society still suppresses difference and alienates people from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can become—though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary, because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?" === Deleuze's interpretations === Deleuze's studies of individual philosophers and artists are purposely heterodox. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example, Deleuze claims that Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is an attempt to rewrite Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781), even though Nietzsche nowhere mentions the First Critique in the Genealogy, and the Genealogy's moral topics are far removed from the epistemological focus of Kant's book. Likewise, Deleuze claims that univocity is the organizing principle of Spinoza's philosophy, despite the total absence of the term from any of Spinoza's works. Deleuze once famously described his method of interpreting philosophers as "buggery (enculage)", as sneaking behind an author and producing an offspring which is recognizably his, yet also monstrous and different.The various monographs thus are not attempts to present what Nietzsche or Spinoza strictly intended, but re-stagings of their ideas in different and unexpected ways. Deleuze's peculiar readings aim to enact the creativity he believes is the acme of philosophical practice. A parallel in painting Deleuze points to is Francis Bacon's Study after Velázquez—it is quite beside the point to say that Bacon "gets Velasquez wrong". Similar considerations apply, in Deleuze's view, to his own uses of mathematical and scientific terms, pace critics such as Alan Sokal: "I'm not saying that Resnais and Prigogine, or Godard and Thom, are doing the same thing. I'm pointing out, rather, that there are remarkable similarities between scientific creators of functions and cinematic creators of images. And the same goes for philosophical concepts, since there are distinct concepts of these spaces."Along with several French and Italian Marxist-inspired thinkers like Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Antonio Negri, he was one of the central figures in a great flowering of Spinoza studies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries continental philosophy (or the rise of French-inspired post-structuralist Neo-Spinozism) that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after highly significant Neo-Spinozism in German philosophy and literature of approximately the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A fervent Spinozist in many respects, Deleuze's preoccupation with and reverence for Spinoza are well known in contemporary philosophy. === Philosophical similarities with Heidegger === From the 1930s onward, German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in a series of manuscripts and books on concepts of Difference, Identity, Representation, and Event; notably among these the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (Written 1936-38; published posthumously 1989); none of the relevant texts were translated into French by Deleuze's death in 1995, excluding any strong possibility of appropriation. However, Heidegger's early work can be traced through mathematician Albert Lautman, who drew heavily from Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and Vom Wesen des Grundes (1928), which James Bahoh describes as having "...decisive influence on the twentieth century mathematician and philosopher [...] whose theory of dialectical Ideas Deleuze appropriated and modified for his own use." The similarities between Heidegger's later, post-turn, 1930-1976 thought and Deleuze's early works in the 60s and 70s are generally described by Deleuze-scholar Daniel W. Smith in the following way: "Difference and Repetition could be read as a response to Being and Time (for Deleuze, Being is difference, and time is repetition)."Bahoh continues in saying that: "...then Beiträge could be read as Difference and Repetition's unknowing and anachronistic doppelgänger." Deleuze and Heidegger's philosophy is considered to converge on the topics of Difference and the Event. Where, for Heidegger, an evental being is constituted in part by difference as "...an essential dimension of the concept of event"; for Deleuze, being is difference, and difference "differentiates by way of events." In contrast, to this, however, Jussi Backman argues that, for Heidegger, being is united only insofar as it consists of and is difference, or rather as the movement of difference, not too dissimilar to Deleuze's later claims:"...the unity and univocity of being (in the sense of being), its 'selfsameness,' paradoxically consists exclusively in difference."This mutual apprehension of a differential, Evental ontology lead both thinkers into an extended critique of the representation characteristic to Platonic, Aristotelian, and Cartesian thought; as Joe Hughes states: "Difference and Repetition is a detective novel. It tells the story of what some readers of Deleuze might consider a horrendous crime [...]: the birth of representation." Heidegger formed his critiques most decisively in the concept of the fourfold [German: das Geviert], a non-metaphysical grounding for the thing (as opposed to "object") as "ungrounded, mediated, meaningful, and shared" united in an "event of appropriation" [Ereignis]. This evental ontology continues in Identität und Differenz, where the fundamental concept expressed in Difference and Repetition, of dethroning the primacy of identity, can be seen throughout the text. Even in earlier Heideggerian texts such as Sein und Zeit, however, the critique of representation is "...cast in terms of the being of truth, or the processes of uncovering and covering (grounded in Dasein's existence) whereby beings come into and withdraw from phenomenal presence." In parallel, Deleuze's extended critique of representation (in the sense of detailing a "genealogy" of the antiquated beliefs as well) is given "...in terms of being or becoming as difference and repetition, together with genetic processes of individuation whereby beings come to exist and pass out of existence."Time and space, for both thinkers, is also constituted in nearly identical ways. Time-space in the Beiträge and the three syntheses in Difference and Repetition both apprehend time as grounded in difference, whilst the distinction between the time-space of the world [Welt] and the time-space as the evental production of such a time-space is mirrored by Deleuze's categorization between the temporality of what is actual and temporality of the virtual in the first and the second/third syntheses respectively. Another parallel can be found in their utilization of so-called "generative paradoxes," or rather problems whose fundamental problematic element is constantly outside the categorical grasp fond of formal, natural, and human sciences. For Heidegger, this is the Earth in the fourfold, something which has as one of its traits the behaviour of "resisting articulation," what he characterizes as a "strife"; for Deleuze, a similar example can be spotted in the paradox of regress, or of indefinite proliferation in the Logic of Sense. == Reception == In the 1960s, Deleuze's portrayal of Nietzsche as a metaphysician of difference rather than a reactionary mystic contributed greatly to the plausibility and popularity of "left-wing Nietzscheanism" as an intellectual stance. His books Difference and Repetition (1968) and The Logic of Sense (1969) led Michel Foucault to declare that "one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian." (Deleuze, for his part, said Foucault's comment was "a joke meant to make people who like us laugh, and make everyone else livid.") In the 1970s, the Anti-Oedipus, written in a style by turns vulgar and esoteric, offering a sweeping analysis of the family, language, capitalism, and history via eclectic borrowings from Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, and dozens of other writers, was received as a theoretical embodiment of the anarchic spirit of May 1968. In 1994 and 1995, L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, an eight-hour series of interviews between Deleuze and Claire Parnet, aired on France's Arte Channel.In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all of Deleuze's books were translated into English. Deleuze's work is frequently cited in English-speaking academia (in 2007, e.g., he was the 11th most frequently cited author in English-speaking publications in the humanities, between Freud and Kant). Like his contemporaries Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard, Deleuze's influence has been most strongly felt in North American humanities departments, particularly in literary theory, where Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are oft regarded as major statements of post-structuralism and postmodernism, though neither Deleuze nor Guattari described their work in those terms. Likewise in the English-speaking academy, Deleuze's work is typically classified as continental philosophy.However, some French and some Anglophone philosophers criticised Deleuze's work. According to Pascal Engel, Deleuze's metaphilosophical approach makes it impossible to reasonably disagree with a philosophical system, and so destroys meaning, truth, and philosophy itself. Engel summarizes Deleuze's metaphilosophy thus: "When faced with a beautiful philosophical concept you should just sit back and admire it. You should not question it."American philosopher Stanley Rosen objects to Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche's eternal return.Vincent Descombes argues that Deleuze's account of a difference that is not derived from identity (in Nietzsche and Philosophy) is incoherent.Slavoj Žižek states that the Deleuze of Anti-Oedipus ("arguably Deleuze's worst book"), the "political" Deleuze under the "'bad' influence" of Guattari, ends up, despite protestations to the contrary, as "the ideologist of late capitalism". === Allegations of idealism and negligence of material conditions === Peter Hallward argues that Deleuze's insistence that being is necessarily creative and always-differentiating entails that his philosophy can offer no insight into, and is supremely indifferent to, the material, actual conditions of existence. Thus Hallward claims that Deleuze's thought is literally other-worldly, aiming only at a passive contemplation of the dissolution of all identity into the theophanic self-creation of nature.Descombes argues that his analysis of history in Anti-Oedipus is 'utter idealism', criticizing reality for falling short of a non-existent ideal of schizophrenic becoming.Žižek claims that Deleuze's ontology oscillates between materialism and idealism. === Relation with monism === Alain Badiou claims that Deleuze's metaphysics only apparently embraces plurality and diversity, remaining at bottom monist. Badiou further argues that, in practical matters, Deleuze's monism entails an ascetic, aristocratic fatalism akin to ancient Stoicism.American philosopher Todd May argues that Deleuze's claim that difference is ontologically primary ultimately contradicts his embrace of immanence, i.e., his monism. However, May believes that Deleuze can discard the primacy-of-difference thesis, and accept a Wittgensteinian holism without significantly altering his practical philosophy. === Subjectivity and individuality === Other European philosophers have criticized Deleuze's theory of subjectivity. For example, Manfred Frank claims that Deleuze's theory of individuation as a process of bottomless differentiation fails to explain the unity of consciousness.Žižek also calls Deleuze to task for allegedly reducing the subject to "just another" substance and thereby failing to grasp the nothingness that, according to Lacan and Žižek, defines subjectivity. What remains worthwhile in Deleuze's oeuvre, Žižek finds, are precisely Deleuze's engagements with virtuality as the product of negativity. === Science wars === In Fashionable Nonsense (1997), physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont accuse Deleuze of abusing mathematical and scientific terms, particularly by sliding between accepted technical meanings and his own idiosyncratic use of those terms in his works. Sokal and Bricmont state that they don't object to metaphorical reasoning, including with mathematical concepts, but mathematical and scientific terms are useful only insofar as they are precise. They give examples of mathematical concepts being "abused" by taking them out of their intended meaning, rendering the idea into normal language reduces it to truism or nonsense. In their opinion, Deleuze used mathematical concepts about which the typical reader might be not knowledgeable, and thus served to display erudition rather than enlightening the reader. Sokal and Bricmont state that they only deal with the "abuse" of mathematical and scientific concepts and explicitly suspend judgment about Deleuze's wider contributions. == Influence == Other scholars in continental philosophy, feminist studies and sexuality studies have taken Deleuze's analysis of the sexual dynamics of sadism and masochism with a level of uncritical celebration following the 1989 Zone Books translation of the 1967 booklet on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Le froid et le cruel (Coldness and Cruelty). As sexuality historian Alison M. Moore notes, Deleuze's own value placed on difference is poorly reflected in this booklet which fails to differentiate between Masoch's own view of his desire and that imposed upon him by the pathologizing forms of psychiatric thought prevailing in the late nineteenth century which produced the concept of 'masochism' (a term Masoch himself emphatically rejected).Smith, Protevi and Voss note "Sokal and Bricmont’s 1999 intimations" underestimated Deleuze's awareness of mathematics and pointed out several "positive views of Deleuze’s use of mathematics as provocations for [...] his philosophical concepts", and that Deleuze's epistemology and ontology can be "brought together" with dynamical systems theory, chaos theory, biology, and geography. == Bibliography == Single-authored In collaboration with Félix GuattariCapitalisme et Schizophrénie 1. L'Anti-Œdipe (1972). Trans. Anti-Oedipus (1977). On the Line, New York: Semiotext(e), translated by John Johnson (1983). Kafka: Pour une Littérature Mineure (1975). Trans. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1986). Rhizome (1976). Trans., in revised form, in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Nomadology: The War Machine (1986). Trans. in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2. Mille Plateaux (1980). Trans. A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991). Trans. What is Philosophy? (1994). Part I: Deleuze and Guattari on Anti-Oedipus of Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–77 (2009) Edited by Sylvere Lotringer. (pp. 35–118). In collaboration with Michel Foucault"Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault". Telos 16 (Summer 1973). New York: Telos Press (reprinted in L'île déserte et autres textes / Desert Islands and Other Texts; see above) == Documentaries == L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, with Claire Parnet, produced by Pierre-André Boutang. Éditions Montparnasse. == Audio (lectures) == Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: Immortalité et éternité [double CD]. (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2001) Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 1, 2 December 1980. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7DF6PDS Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 2, 9 December 1980. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R78P5XP2 Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 3, 16 December 1980. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R74X560K Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 4, 6 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R71834PG Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 5, 13 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7WH2N66 Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 6, 20 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7RR1WF1 Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 7, 27 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7N014Q0 Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 8, 3 February 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7H70D0P Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 9, 10 February 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7CF9N8D Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 10, 17 February 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R77P8WK4 Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 11, 10 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7416V70 Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 12, 17 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7VH5M1C Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 13, 24 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R7QR4V9N Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 14, 31 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) doi:10.4231/R70863HN. «Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought» («Spinoza: Des vitesses de la pensée») was a 14-lecture seminar given by Deleuze at the University of Paris 8 from December 1980 to March 1981. Deleuze had previously published two books on Spinoza, including Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (Spinoza et le problème de l'expression, 1968), and Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (Spinoza: Philosophie pratique, 1970, 2nd ed. 1981). The majority of these lectures were given the same year as the publication of the second edition of the latter title. == See also == == Notes == == References == == External links == Webdeleuze – Courses & audio (in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese), etc. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Gilles Deleuze", by Daniel Smith & John Protevi. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gilles Deleuze", by Jon Roffe. Near complete bibliography including various translations Alain Badiou, "The Event in Deleuze." (English translation). Lectures and notes on work by Deleuze and Guattari. Rhizomes. Online journal inspired by Deleuzian thought. Web resources from Wayne State University. Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium (1995). Institute of Art and Ideas: "Deleuze and the Time for Non-Reason", by James R. Williams.

Michel Foucault

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

Paul-Michel Foucault (UK: , US: ; French: [pɔl miʃɛl fuko]; 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory. Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology". From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society. Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory. == Early life == === Early years: 1926–1938 === Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in the city of Poitiers, west-central France, as the second of three children in a prosperous, socially conservative, upper-middle-class family. Family tradition prescribed naming him after his father, Paul Foucault (1893–1959), but his mother insisted on the addition of Michel; referred to as Paul at school, he expressed a preference for "Michel" throughout his life.His father, a successful local surgeon born in Fontainebleau, moved to Poitiers, where he set up his own practice. He married Anne Malapert, the daughter of prosperous surgeon Dr. Prosper Malapert, who owned a private practice and taught anatomy at the University of Poitiers' School of Medicine. Paul Foucault eventually took over his father-in-law's medical practice, while Anne took charge of their large mid-19th-century house, Le Piroir, in the village of Vendeuvre-du-Poitou. Together the couple had three children—a girl named Francine and two boys, Paul-Michel and Denys—who all shared the same fair hair and bright blue eyes. The children were raised to be nominal Catholics, attending mass at the Church of Saint-Porchair, and while Michel briefly became an altar boy, none of the family was devout. Michel is not related to the physicist Léon Foucault. In later life, Foucault revealed very little about his childhood. Describing himself as a "juvenile delinquent", he said his father was a "bully" who sternly punished him. In 1930, two years early, Foucault began his schooling at the local Lycée Henry-IV. There he undertook two years of elementary education before entering the main lycée, where he stayed until 1936. Afterwards, he took his first four years of secondary education at the same establishment, excelling in French, Greek, Latin, and history, though doing poorly at mathematics, including arithmetic. === Teens to young adulthood: 1939–1945 === In 1939, the Second World War began, followed by Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1940. Foucault's parents opposed the occupation and the Vichy regime, but did not join the Resistance. That year, Foucault's mother enrolled him in the Collège Saint-Stanislas, a strict Catholic institution run by the Jesuits. Although he later described his years there as an "ordeal", Foucault excelled academically, particularly in philosophy, history, and literature. In 1942 he entered his final year, the terminale, where he focused on the study of philosophy, earning his baccalauréat in 1943.Returning to the local Lycée Henry-IV, he studied history and philosophy for a year, aided by a personal tutor, the philosopher Louis Girard. Rejecting his father's wishes that he become a surgeon, in 1945 Foucault went to Paris, where he enrolled in one of the country's most prestigious secondary schools, which was also known as the Lycée Henri-IV. Here he studied under the philosopher Jean Hyppolite, an existentialist and expert on the work of 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hyppolite had devoted himself to uniting existentialist theories with the dialectical theories of Hegel and Karl Marx. These ideas influenced Foucault, who adopted Hyppolite's conviction that philosophy must develop through a study of history. === University studies: 1946–1951 === I wasn't always smart, I was actually very stupid in school ... [T]here was a boy who was very attractive who was even stupider than I was. And to ingratiate myself with this boy who was very beautiful, I began to do his homework for him—and that's how I became smart, I had to do all this work to just keep ahead of him a little bit, to help him. In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys. In autumn 1946, attaining excellent results, Foucault was admitted to the élite École Normale Supérieure (ENS), for which he undertook exams and an oral interrogation by Georges Canguilhem and Pierre-Maxime Schuhl to gain entry. Of the hundred students entering the ENS, Foucault ranked fourth based on his entry results, and encountered the highly competitive nature of the institution. Like most of his classmates, he lived in the school's communal dormitories on the Parisian Rue d'Ulm.He remained largely unpopular, spending much time alone, reading voraciously. His fellow students noted his love of violence and the macabre; he decorated his bedroom with images of torture and war drawn during the Napoleonic Wars by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, and on one occasion chased a classmate with a dagger. Prone to self-harm, in 1948 Foucault allegedly attempted suicide; his father sent him to see the psychiatrist Jean Delay at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center. Obsessed with the idea of self-mutilation and suicide, Foucault attempted the latter several times in ensuing years, praising suicide in later writings. The ENS's doctor examined Foucault's state of mind, suggesting that his suicidal tendencies emerged from the distress surrounding his homosexuality, because same-sex sexual activity was socially taboo in France. At the time, Foucault engaged in homosexual activity with men whom he encountered in the underground Parisian gay scene, also indulging in drug use; according to biographer James Miller, he enjoyed the thrill and sense of danger that these activities offered him.Although studying various subjects, Foucault soon gravitated towards philosophy, reading not only Hegel and Marx but also Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl and most significantly, Martin Heidegger. He began reading the publications of philosopher Gaston Bachelard, taking a particular interest in his work exploring the history of science. He graduated from the ENS with a B.A. (licence) in Philosophy in 1948 and a DES (diplôme d'études supérieures, roughly equivalent to an M.A.) in Philosophy in 1949. His DES thesis under the direction of Hyppolite was titled La Constitution d'un transcendental dans La Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel (The Constitution of a Historical Transcendental in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit).In 1948, the philosopher Louis Althusser became a tutor at the ENS. A Marxist, he influenced both Foucault and a number of other students, encouraging them to join the French Communist Party. Foucault did so in 1950, but never became particularly active in its activities, and never adopted an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, rejecting core Marxist tenets such as class struggle. He soon became dissatisfied with the bigotry that he experienced within the party's ranks; he personally faced homophobia and was appalled by the anti-semitism exhibited during the 1952–53 "Doctors' plot" in the Soviet Union. He left the Communist Party in 1953, but remained Althusser's friend and defender for the rest of his life. Although failing at the first attempt in 1950, he passed his agrégation in philosophy on the second try, in 1951. Excused from national service on medical grounds, he decided to start a doctorate at the Fondation Thiers in 1951, focusing on the philosophy of psychology, but he relinquished it after only one year in 1952.Foucault was also interested in psychology and he attended Daniel Lagache's lectures at the University of Paris, where he obtained a B.A. (licence) in psychology in 1949 and a Diploma in Psychopathology (Diplôme de psychopathologie) from the university's institute of psychology (now Institut de psychologie de l'université Paris Descartes) in June 1952. == Early career (1951–1960) == === France: 1951-1955 === Over the following few years, Foucault embarked on a variety of research and teaching jobs. From 1951 to 1955, he worked as a psychology instructor at the ENS at Althusser's invitation. In Paris, he shared a flat with his brother, who was training to become a surgeon, but for three days in the week commuted to the northern town of Lille, teaching psychology at the Université de Lille from 1953 to 1954. Many of his students liked his lecturing style. Meanwhile, he continued working on his thesis, visiting the Bibliothèque Nationale every day to read the work of psychologists like Ivan Pavlov, Jean Piaget and Karl Jaspers. Undertaking research at the psychiatric institute of the Sainte-Anne Hospital, he became an unofficial intern, studying the relationship between doctor and patient and aiding experiments in the electroencephalographic laboratory. Foucault adopted many of the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, undertaking psychoanalytical interpretation of his dreams and making friends undergo Rorschach tests.Embracing the Parisian avant-garde, Foucault entered into a romantic relationship with the serialist composer Jean Barraqué. Together, they tried to produce their greatest work, heavily used recreational drugs and engaged in sado-masochistic sexual activity. In August 1953, Foucault and Barraqué holidayed in Italy, where the philosopher immersed himself in Untimely Meditations (1873–1876), a set of four essays by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Later describing Nietzsche's work as "a revelation", he felt that reading the book deeply affected him, being a watershed moment in his life. Foucault subsequently experienced another groundbreaking self-revelation when watching a Parisian performance of Samuel Beckett's new play, Waiting for Godot, in 1953.Interested in literature, Foucault was an avid reader of the philosopher Maurice Blanchot's book reviews published in Nouvelle Revue Française. Enamoured of Blanchot's literary style and critical theories, in later works he adopted Blanchot's technique of "interviewing" himself. Foucault also came across Hermann Broch's 1945 novel The Death of Virgil, a work that obsessed both him and Barraqué. While the latter attempted to convert the work into an epic opera, Foucault admired Broch's text for its portrayal of death as an affirmation of life. The couple took a mutual interest in the work of such authors as the Marquis de Sade, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka and Jean Genet, all of whose works explored the themes of sex and violence. I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance. Interested in the work of Swiss psychologist Ludwig Binswanger, Foucault aided family friend Jacqueline Verdeaux in translating his works into French. Foucault was particularly interested in Binswanger's studies of Ellen West who, like himself, had a deep obsession with suicide, eventually killing herself. In 1954, Foucault authored an introduction to Binswanger's paper "Dream and Existence", in which he argued that dreams constituted "the birth of the world" or "the heart laid bare", expressing the mind's deepest desires. That same year, Foucault published his first book, Maladie mentale et personalité (Mental Illness and Personality), in which he exhibited his influence from both Marxist and Heideggerian thought, covering a wide range of subject matter from the reflex psychology of Pavlov to the classic psychoanalysis of Freud. Referencing the work of sociologists and anthropologists such as Émile Durkheim and Margaret Mead, he presented his theory that illness was culturally relative. Biographer James Miller noted that while the book exhibited "erudition and evident intelligence", it lacked the "kind of fire and flair" which Foucault exhibited in subsequent works. It was largely critically ignored, receiving only one review at the time. Foucault grew to despise it, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent its republication and translation into English. === Sweden, Poland, and West Germany: 1955–1960 === Foucault spent the next five years abroad, first in Sweden, working as cultural diplomat at the University of Uppsala, a job obtained through his acquaintance with historian of religion Georges Dumézil. At Uppsala he was appointed a Reader in French language and literature, while simultaneously working as director of the Maison de France, thus opening the possibility of a cultural-diplomatic career. Although finding it difficult to adjust to the "Nordic gloom" and long winters, he developed close friendships with two Frenchmen, biochemist Jean-François Miquel and physicist Jacques Papet-Lépine, and entered into romantic and sexual relationships with various men. In Uppsala he became known for his heavy alcohol consumption and reckless driving in his new Jaguar car. In spring 1956 Barraqué broke from his relationship with Foucault, announcing that he wanted to leave the "vertigo of madness". In Uppsala, Foucault spent much of his spare time in the university's Carolina Rediviva library, making use of their Bibliotheca Walleriana collection of texts on the history of medicine for his ongoing research. Finishing his doctoral thesis, Foucault hoped that Uppsala University would accept it, but Sten Lindroth, a positivistic historian of science there, remained unimpressed, asserting that it was full of speculative generalisations and was a poor work of history; he refused to allow Foucault to be awarded a doctorate at Uppsala. In part because of this rejection, Foucault left Sweden. Later, Foucault admitted that the work was a first draft with certain lack of quality.Again at Dumézil's behest, in October 1958 Foucault arrived in the capital of the Polish People's Republic, Warsaw and took charge of the University of Warsaw's Centre Français. Foucault found life in Poland difficult due to the lack of material goods and services following the destruction of the Second World War. Witnessing the aftermath of the Polish October of 1956, when students had protested against the governing communist Polish United Workers' Party, he felt that most Poles despised their government as a puppet regime of the Soviet Union, and thought that the system ran "badly". Considering the university a liberal enclave, he traveled the country giving lectures; proving popular, he adopted the position of de facto cultural attaché. Like France and Sweden, Poland legally tolerated but socially frowned on homosexual activity, and Foucault undertook relationships with a number of men; one was with a Polish security agent who hoped to trap Foucault in an embarrassing situation, which therefore would reflect badly on the French embassy. Wracked in diplomatic scandal, he was ordered to leave Poland for a new destination. Various positions were available in West Germany, and so Foucault relocated to the Institut français Hamburg (where he served as director in 1958–1960), teaching the same courses he had given in Uppsala and Warsaw. Spending much time in the Reeperbahn red light district, he entered into a relationship with a transvestite. == Growing career (1960–1970) == === Madness and Civilization: 1960 === Histoire de la folie is not an easy text to read, and it defies attempts to summarise its contents. Foucault refers to a bewildering variety of sources, ranging from well-known authors such as Erasmus and Molière to archival documents and forgotten figures in the history of medicine and psychiatry. His erudition derives from years pondering, to cite Poe, 'over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore', and his learning is not always worn lightly. In West Germany, Foucault completed in 1960 his primary thesis (thèse principale) for his State doctorate, titled Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (trans. "Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age"), a philosophical work based upon his studies into the history of medicine. The book discussed how West European society had dealt with madness, arguing that it was a social construct distinct from mental illness. Foucault traces the evolution of the concept of madness through three phases: the Renaissance, the later 17th and 18th centuries, and the modern experience. The work alludes to the work of French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud, who exerted a strong influence over Foucault's thought at the time.Histoire de la folie was an expansive work, consisting of 943 pages of text, followed by appendices and a bibliography. Foucault submitted it at the University of Paris, although the university's regulations for awarding a State doctorate required the submission of both his main thesis and a shorter complementary thesis. Obtaining a doctorate in France at the period was a multi-step process. The first step was to obtain a rapporteur, or "sponsor" for the work: Foucault chose Georges Canguilhem. The second was to find a publisher, and as a result Folie et déraison was published in French in May 1961 by the company Plon, whom Foucault chose over Presses Universitaires de France after being rejected by Gallimard. In 1964, a heavily abridged version was published as a mass market paperback, then translated into English for publication the following year as Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.Folie et déraison received a mixed reception in France and in foreign journals focusing on French affairs. Although it was critically acclaimed by Maurice Blanchot, Michel Serres, Roland Barthes, Gaston Bachelard, and Fernand Braudel, it was largely ignored by the leftist press, much to Foucault's disappointment. It was notably criticised for advocating metaphysics by young philosopher Jacques Derrida in a March 1963 lecture at the University of Paris. Responding with a vicious retort, Foucault criticised Derrida's interpretation of René Descartes. The two remained bitter rivals until reconciling in 1981. In the English-speaking world, the work became a significant influence on the anti-psychiatry movement during the 1960s; Foucault took a mixed approach to this, associating with a number of anti-psychiatrists but arguing that most of them misunderstood his work.Foucault's secondary thesis (thèse complémentaire), written in Hamburg between 1959 and 1960, was a translation and commentary on German philosopher Immanuel Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798); the thesis was titled Introduction à l'Anthropologie. Largely consisting of Foucault's discussion of textual dating—an "archaeology of the Kantian text"—he rounded off the thesis with an evocation of Nietzsche, his biggest philosophical influence. This work's rapporteur was Foucault's old tutor and then-director of the ENS, Hyppolite, who was well acquainted with German philosophy. After both theses were championed and reviewed, he underwent his public defense of his doctoral thesis (soutenance de thèse) on 20 May 1961. The academics responsible for reviewing his work were concerned about the unconventional nature of his major thesis; reviewer Henri Gouhier noted that it was not a conventional work of history, making sweeping generalisations without sufficient particular argument, and that Foucault clearly "thinks in allegories". They all agreed however that the overall project was of merit, awarding Foucault his doctorate "despite reservations". === University of Clermont-Ferrand, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things: 1960–1966 === In October 1960, Foucault took a tenured post in philosophy at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, commuting to the city every week from Paris, where he lived in a high-rise block on the rue du Dr Finlay. Responsible for teaching psychology, which was subsumed within the philosophy department, he was considered a "fascinating" but "rather traditional" teacher at Clermont. The department was run by Jules Vuillemin, who soon developed a friendship with Foucault. Foucault then took Vuillemin's job when the latter was elected to the Collège de France in 1962. In this position, Foucault took a dislike to another staff member whom he considered stupid: Roger Garaudy, a senior figure in the Communist Party. Foucault made life at the university difficult for Garaudy, leading the latter to transfer to Poitiers. Foucault also caused controversy by securing a university job for his lover, the philosopher Daniel Defert, with whom he retained a non-monogamous relationship for the rest of his life. Foucault maintained a keen interest in literature, publishing reviews in literary journals, including Tel Quel and Nouvelle Revue Française, and sitting on the editorial board of Critique. In May 1963, he published a book devoted to poet, novelist, and playwright Raymond Roussel. It was written in under two months, published by Gallimard, and was described by biographer David Macey as "a very personal book" that resulted from a "love affair" with Roussel's work. It was published in English in 1983 as Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel. Receiving few reviews, it was largely ignored. That same year he published a sequel to Folie et déraison, titled Naissance de la Clinique, subsequently translated as The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Shorter than its predecessor, it focused on the changes that the medical establishment underwent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Like his preceding work, Naissance de la Clinique was largely critically ignored, but later gained a cult following. It was of interest within the field of medical ethics, as it considered the ways in which the history of medicine and hospitals, and the training that those working within them receive, bring about a particular way of looking at the body: the 'medical gaze'. Foucault was also selected to be among the "Eighteen Man Commission" that assembled between November 1963 and March 1964 to discuss university reforms that were to be implemented by Christian Fouchet, the Gaullist Minister of National Education. Implemented in 1967, they brought staff strikes and student protests.In April 1966, Gallimard published Foucault's Les Mots et les choses ('Words and Things'), later translated as The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Exploring how man came to be an object of knowledge, it argued that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as scientific discourse. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, from one period's épistémè to another. Although designed for a specialist audience, the work gained media attention, becoming a surprise bestseller in France. Appearing at the height of interest in structuralism, Foucault was quickly grouped with scholars such as Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes, as the latest wave of thinkers set to topple the existentialism popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre. Although initially accepting this description, Foucault soon vehemently rejected it. Foucault and Sartre regularly criticised one another in the press. Both Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir attacked Foucault's ideas as "bourgeois", while Foucault retaliated against their Marxist beliefs by proclaiming that "Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else." === University of Tunis and Vincennes: 1966–1970 === I lived [in Tunisia] for two and a half years. It made a real impression. I was present for large, violent student riots that preceded by several weeks what happened in May in France. This was March 1968. The unrest lasted a whole year: strikes, courses suspended, arrests. And in March, a general strike by the students. The police came into the university, beat up the students, wounded several of them seriously, and started making arrests ... I have to say that I was tremendously impressed by those young men and women who took terrible risks by writing or distributing tracts or calling for strikes, the ones who really risked losing their freedom! It was a political experience for me. In September 1966, Foucault took a position teaching psychology at the University of Tunis in Tunisia. His decision to do so was largely because his lover, Defert, had been posted to the country as part of his national service. Foucault moved a few kilometres from Tunis, to the village of Sidi Bou Saïd, where fellow academic Gérard Deledalle lived with his wife. Soon after his arrival, Foucault announced that Tunisia was "blessed by history", a nation which "deserves to live forever because it was where Hannibal and St. Augustine lived". His lectures at the university proved very popular, and were well attended. Although many young students were enthusiastic about his teaching, they were critical of what they believed to be his right-wing political views, viewing him as a "representative of Gaullist technocracy", even though he considered himself a leftist.Foucault was in Tunis during the anti-government and pro-Palestinian riots that rocked the city in June 1967, and which continued for a year. Although highly critical of the violent, ultra-nationalistic and anti-semitic nature of many protesters, he used his status to try to prevent some of his militant leftist students from being arrested and tortured for their role in the agitation. He hid their printing press in his garden, and tried to testify on their behalf at their trials, but was prevented when the trials became closed-door events. While in Tunis, Foucault continued to write. Inspired by a correspondence with the surrealist artist René Magritte, Foucault started to write a book about the impressionist artist Édouard Manet, but never completed it.In 1968, Foucault returned to Paris, moving into an apartment on the Rue de Vaugirard. After the May 1968 student protests, Minister of Education Edgar Faure responded by founding new universities with greater autonomy. Most prominent of these was the Centre Expérimental de Vincennes in Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. A group of prominent academics were asked to select teachers to run the centre's departments, and Canguilheim recommended Foucault as head of the Philosophy Department. Becoming a tenured professor of Vincennes, Foucault's desire was to obtain "the best in French philosophy today" for his department, employing Michel Serres, Judith Miller, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, François Regnault, Henri Weber, Étienne Balibar, and François Châtelet; most of them were Marxists or ultra-left activists.Lectures began at the university in January 1969, and straight away its students and staff, including Foucault, were involved in occupations and clashes with police, resulting in arrests. In February, Foucault gave a speech denouncing police provocation to protesters at the Maison de la Mutualité. Such actions marked Foucault's embrace of the ultra-left, undoubtedly influenced by Defert, who had gained a job at Vincennes' sociology department and who had become a Maoist. Most of the courses at Foucault's philosophy department were Marxist–Leninist oriented, although Foucault himself gave courses on Nietzsche, "The end of Metaphysics", and "The Discourse of Sexuality", which were highly popular and over-subscribed. While the right-wing press was heavily critical of this new institution, new Minister of Education Olivier Guichard was angered by its ideological bent and the lack of exams, with students being awarded degrees in a haphazard manner. He refused national accreditation of the department's degrees, resulting in a public rebuttal from Foucault. == Later life (1970–1984) == === Collège de France and Discipline and Punish: 1970–1975 === Foucault desired to leave Vincennes and become a fellow of the prestigious Collège de France. He requested to join, taking up a chair in what he called the "history of systems of thought", and his request was championed by members Dumézil, Hyppolite, and Vuillemin. In November 1969, when an opening became available, Foucault was elected to the Collège, though with opposition by a large minority. He gave his inaugural lecture in December 1970, which was subsequently published as L'Ordre du discours (The Discourse of Language). He was obliged to give 12 weekly lectures a year—and did so for the rest of his life—covering the topics that he was researching at the time; these became "one of the events of Parisian intellectual life" and were repeatedly packed out events. On Mondays, he also gave seminars to a group of students; many of them became a "Foulcauldian tribe" who worked with him on his research. He enjoyed this teamwork and collective research, and together they published a number of short books. Working at the Collège allowed him to travel widely, giving lectures in Brazil, Japan, Canada, and the United States over the next 14 years. In 1970 and 1972, Foucault served as a professor in the French Department of the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York.In May 1971, Foucault co-founded the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons (GIP) along with historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet and journalist Jean-Marie Domenach. The GIP aimed to investigate and expose poor conditions in prisons and give prisoners and ex-prisoners a voice in French society. It was highly critical of the penal system, believing that it converted petty criminals into hardened delinquents. The GIP gave press conferences and staged protests surrounding the events of the Toul prison riot in December 1971, alongside other prison riots that it sparked off; in doing so it faced a police crackdown and repeated arrests. The group became active across France, with 2,000 to 3,000, members, but disbanded before 1974. Also campaigning against the death penalty, Foucault co-authored a short book on the case of the convicted murderer Pierre Rivière. After his research into the penal system, Foucault published Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison) in 1975, offering a history of the system in western Europe. In it, Foucault examines the penal evolution away from corporal and capital punishment to the penitentiary system that began in Europe and the United States around the end of the 18th century. Biographer Didier Eribon described it as "perhaps the finest" of Foucault's works, and it was well received.Foucault was also active in anti-racist campaigns; in November 1971, he was a leading figure in protests following the perceived racist killing of Arab migrant Djellali Ben Ali. In this he worked alongside his old rival Sartre, the journalist Claude Mauriac, and one of his literary heroes, Jean Genet. This campaign was formalised as the Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Immigrants, but there was tension at their meetings as Foucault opposed the anti-Israeli sentiment of many Arab workers and Maoist activists. At a December 1972 protest against the police killing of Algerian worker Mohammad Diab, both Foucault and Genet were arrested, resulting in widespread publicity. Foucault was also involved in founding the Agence de Press-Libération (APL), a group of leftist journalists who intended to cover news stories neglected by the mainstream press. In 1973, they established the daily newspaper Libération, and Foucault suggested that they establish committees across France to collect news and distribute the paper, and advocated a column known as the "Chronicle of the Workers' Memory" to allow workers to express their opinions. Foucault wanted an active journalistic role in the paper, but this proved untenable, and he soon became disillusioned with Libération, believing that it distorted the facts; he did not publish in it until 1980. In 1975 he had an LSD experience with Simeon Wade and Michael Stoneman in Death Valley, California and later wrote "it was the greatest experience of his life, and that it profoundly changed his life and his work". In front of Zabriskie Point they took LSD while listening to a well-prepared music program: Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, followed by Charles Ives's Three Places in New England, ending with a few avant-garde pieces by Stockhausen. According to Wade, as soon as he came back to Paris, Foucault scrapped the second History of Sexuality's manuscript, and totally rethought the whole project. === The History of Sexuality and Iranian Revolution: 1976–1979 === In 1976, Gallimard published Foucault's Histoire de la sexualité: la volonté de savoir (The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge), a short book exploring what Foucault called the "repressive hypothesis". It revolved largely around the concept of power, rejecting both Marxist and Freudian theory. Foucault intended it as the first in a seven-volume exploration of the subject. Histoire de la sexualité was a best-seller in France and gained positive press, but lukewarm intellectual interest, something that upset Foucault, who felt that many misunderstood his hypothesis. He soon became dissatisfied with Gallimard after being offended by senior staff member Pierre Nora. Along with Paul Veyne and François Wahl, Foucault launched a new series of academic books, known as Des travaux (Some Works), through the company Seuil, which he hoped would improve the state of academic research in France. He also produced introductions for the memoirs of Herculine Barbin and My Secret Life.Foucault's Histoire de la sexualité concentrates on the relation between truth and sex. He defines truth as a system of ordered procedures for the production, distribution, regulation, circulation, and operation of statements. Through this system of truth, power structures are created and enforced. Though Foucault's definition of truth may differ from other sociologists before and after him, his work with truth in relation to power structures, such as sexuality, has left a profound mark on social science theory. In his work, he examines the heightened curiosity regarding sexuality that induced a "world of perversion" during the elite, capitalist 18th and 19th century in the western world. According to Foucault in History of Sexuality, society of the modern age is symbolized by the conception of sexual discourses and their union with the system of truth. In the "world of perversion", including extramarital affairs, homosexual behavior, and other such sexual promiscuities, Foucault concludes that sexual relations of the kind are constructed around producing the truth. Sex became not only a means of pleasure, but an issue of truth. Sex is what confines one to darkness, but also what brings one to light.Similarly, in The History of Sexuality, society validates and approves people based on how closely they fit the discursive mold of sexual truth. As Foucault reminds us, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Church was the epitome of power structure within society. Thus, many aligned their personal virtues with those of the Church, further internalizing their beliefs on the meaning of sex. However, those who unify their sexual relation to the truth become decreasingly obliged to share their internal views with those of the Church. They will no longer see the arrangement of societal norms as an effect of the Church's deep-seated power structure. There exists an international citizenry that has its rights, and has its duties, and that is committed to rise up against every abuse of power, no matter who the author, no matter who the victims. After all, we are all ruled, and as such, we are in solidarity. Foucault remained a political activist, focusing on protesting government abuses of human rights around the world. He was a key player in the 1975 protests against the Spanish government who were set to execute 11 militants sentenced to death without fair trial. It was his idea to travel to Madrid with six others to give a press conference there; they were subsequently arrested and deported back to Paris. In 1977, he protested the extradition of Klaus Croissant to West Germany, and his rib was fractured during clashes with riot police. In July that year, he organised an assembly of Eastern Bloc dissidents to mark the visit of Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev to Paris. In 1979, he campaigned for Vietnamese political dissidents to be granted asylum in France.In 1977, Italian newspaper Corriere della sera asked Foucault to write a column for them. In doing so, in 1978 he travelled to Tehran in Iran, days after the Black Friday massacre. Documenting the developing Iranian Revolution, he met with opposition leaders such as Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari and Mehdi Bazargan, and discovered the popular support for Islamism. Returning to France, he was one of the journalists who visited the Ayatollah Khomeini, before visiting Tehran. His articles expressed awe of Khomeini's Islamist movement, for which he was widely criticised in the French press, including by Iranian expatriates. Foucault's response was that Islamism was to become a major political force in the region, and that the West must treat it with respect rather than hostility. In April 1978, Foucault traveled to Japan, where he studied Zen Buddhism under Omori Sogen at the Seionji temple in Uenohara. === Final years: 1980–1984 === Although remaining critical of power relations, Foucault expressed cautious support for the Socialist Party government of François Mitterrand following its electoral victory in 1981. But his support soon deteriorated when that party refused to condemn the Polish government's crackdown on the 1982 demonstrations in Poland orchestrated by the Solidarity trade union. He and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu authored a document condemning Mitterrand's inaction that was published in Libération, and they also took part in large public protests on the issue. Foucault continued to support Solidarity, and with his friend Simone Signoret traveled to Poland as part of a Médecins du Monde expedition, taking time out to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp. He continued his academic research, and in June 1984 Gallimard published the second and third volumes of Histoire de la sexualité. Volume two, L'Usage des plaisirs, dealt with the "techniques of self" prescribed by ancient Greek pagan morality in relation to sexual ethics, while volume three, Le Souci de soi, explored the same theme in the Greek and Latin texts of the first two centuries CE. A fourth volume, Les Aveux de la chair, was to examine sexuality in early Christianity, but it was not finished.In October 1980, Foucault became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, giving the Howison Lectures on "Truth and Subjectivity", while in November he lectured at the Humanities Institute at New York University. His growing popularity in American intellectual circles was noted by Time magazine, while Foucault went on to lecture at UCLA in 1981, the University of Vermont in 1982, and Berkeley again in 1983, where his lectures drew huge crowds. Foucault spent many evenings in the San Francisco gay scene, frequenting sado-masochistic bathhouses, engaging in unprotected sex. He praised sado-masochistic activity in interviews with the gay press, describing it as "the real creation of new possibilities of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously". Foucault contracted HIV and eventually developed AIDS. Little was known of the virus at the time; the first cases had only been identified in 1980. Foucault initially referred to AIDS as a "dreamed-up disease". In summer 1983, he developed a persistent dry cough, which concerned friends in Paris, but Foucault insisted it was just a pulmonary infection. Only when hospitalized was Foucault correctly diagnosed as being HIV-positive; treated with antibiotics, he delivered a final set of lectures at the Collège de France. Foucault entered Paris' Hôpital de la Salpêtrière—the same institution that he had studied in Madness and Civilisation—on 10 June 1984, with neurological symptoms complicated by sepsis. He died in the hospital on 25 June. == Death == On 26 June 1984, Libération announced Foucault's death, mentioning the rumour that it had been brought on by AIDS. The following day, Le Monde issued a medical bulletin cleared by his family that made no reference to HIV/AIDS. On 29 June, Foucault's la levée du corps ceremony was held, in which the coffin was carried from the hospital morgue. Hundreds attended, including activists and academic friends, while Gilles Deleuze gave a speech using excerpts from The History of Sexuality. His body was then buried at Vendeuvre-du-Poitou in a small ceremony. Soon after his death, Foucault's partner Daniel Defert founded the first national HIV/AIDS organisation in France, AIDES; a play on the French word for "help" (aide) and the English- language acronym for the disease. On the second anniversary of Foucault's death, Defert publicly revealed in The Advocate that Foucault's death was AIDS-related. == Personal life == Foucault's first biographer, Didier Eribon, described the philosopher as "a complex, many-sided character", and that "under one mask there is always another". He also noted that he exhibited an "enormous capacity for work". At the ENS, Foucault's classmates unanimously summed him up as a figure who was both "disconcerting and strange" and "a passionate worker". As he aged, his personality changed: Eribon noted that while he was a "tortured adolescent", post-1960, he had become "a radiant man, relaxed and cheerful", even being described by those who worked with him as a dandy. He noted that in 1969, Foucault embodied the idea of "the militant intellectual".Foucault was an atheist. He loved classical music, particularly enjoying the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and became known for wearing turtleneck sweaters. After his death, Foucault's friend Georges Dumézil described him as having possessed "a profound kindness and goodness", also exhibiting an "intelligence [that] literally knew no bounds". His life-partner Daniel Defert inherited his estate, whose archive was sold in 2012 to the National Library of France for €3.8 million ($4.5 million in April 2021). === Politics === Politically, Foucault was a leftist throughout much of his life, though his particular stance within the left often changed. In the early 1950s, while never adopting an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, Foucault had been a member of the French Communist Party, leaving the party after three years as he expressed disgust in the prejudice within its ranks against Jews and homosexuals. After spending some time working in Poland, which was a Communist state ostensibly governed by the Polish United Workers' Party but actually was an abject police-state satellite of the Soviet Union, he became further disillusioned with communist ideology. As a result, in the early 1960s, Foucault was considered to be "violently anticommunist" by some of his detractors, even though he was involved in leftist campaigns along with most of his students and colleagues. === Views on underage sex === Foucault argued that children could give sexual consent. In 1977, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and other intellectuals, Foucault signed a petition to the French parliament calling for the decriminalization of all "consensual" sexual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen, the age of consent in France. === Allegations of child sex abuse === Foucault has been accused, by Guy Sorman, of being a paedophile who raped Arab children while living in Tunisia in the late 1960s. Faced with some inaccuracies in his claim, Sorman later adapted his statement, admitting having only a "convergence of troubling evidence". Mark R. G. Kelly, writing in Telos, argues that Sorman's claims are without merit. == Philosophical work == Foucault's colleague Pierre Bourdieu summarized the philosopher's thought as "a long exploration of transgression, of going beyond social limits, always inseparably linked to knowledge and power". The theme that underlies all Foucault's work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in the eighteenth century 'madness' was used to categorize and stigmatize not just the mentally ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, indeed, anyone whose expressions of individuality were unwelcome. Philosopher Philip Stokes of the University of Reading noted that overall, Foucault's work was "dark and pessimistic". Though it does, however, leave some room for optimism, in that it illustrates how the discipline of philosophy can be used to highlight areas of domination. In doing so, as Stokes claimed, the ways in which we are being dominated become better understood, so that we may strive to build social structures that minimise this risk of domination. In all of this development there had to be close attention to detail; it is the detail which eventually individualizes people.Later in his life, Foucault explained that his work was less about analyzing power as a phenomenon than about trying to characterize the different ways in which contemporary society has expressed the use of power to "objectivise subjects". These have taken three broad forms: one involving scientific authority to classify and 'order' knowledge about human populations; the second has been to categorize and 'normalise' human subjects (by identifying madness, illness, physical features, and so on); and the third relates to the manner in which the impulse to fashion sexual identities and train one's own body to engage in routines and practices ends up reproducing certain patterns within a given society. === Literature === In addition to his philosophical work, Foucault also wrote on literature. Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel, published in 1963 and translated in English in 1986, is Foucault's only book-length work on literature. He described it as "by far the book I wrote most easily, with the greatest pleasure, and most rapidly". Foucault explores theory, criticism, and psychology with reference to the texts of Raymond Roussel, one of the first notable experimental writers. Foucault also gave a lecture responding to Roland Barthes' famous essay "The Death of the Author" titled "What Is an Author?" in 1969, later published in full. According to literary theoretician Kornelije Kvas, for Foucault, "denying the existence of a historical author on account of his/her irrelevance for interpretation is absurd, for the author is a function of the text that organizes its sense". === Power === Foucault's analysis of power comes in two forms: empirical and theoretical. The empirical analyses concern themselves with historical (and modern) forms of power and how these emerged from previous forms of power. Foucault describes three types of power in his empirical analyses: sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower.Foucault is generally critical of "theories" that try to give absolute answers to "everything". Therefore, he considered his own "theory" of power to be closer to a method than a typical "theory". According to Foucault, most people misunderstand power. For this reason, he makes clear that power cannot be completely described as: A group of institutions and/or mechanisms whose aim it is for a citizen to obey and yield to the state (a typical liberal definition of power); Yielding to rules (a typical psychoanalytical definition of power); or A general and oppressing system where one societal class or group oppresses another (a typical feminist or Orthodox Marxist definition of power).Foucault is not critical of considering these phenomena as "power", but claims that these theories of power cannot completely describe all forms of power. Foucault also claims that a liberal definition of power has effectively hidden other forms of power to the extent that people have uncritically accepted them.Foucault's power analysis begins on micro-level, with singular "force relations". Richard A. Lynch defines Foucault's concept of "force relation" as "whatever in one's social interactions that pushes, urges or compels one to do something". According to Foucault, force relations are an effect of difference, inequality or unbalance that exists in other forms of relationships (such as sexual or economic). Force, and power, is however not something that a person or group "holds" (such as in the sovereign definition of power), instead power is a complex group of forces that comes from "everything" and therefore exists everywhere. That relations of power always result from inequality, difference or unbalance also means that power always has a goal or purpose. Power comes in two forms: tactics and strategies. Tactics is power on the micro-level, which can for example be how a person chooses to express themselves through their clothes. Strategies on the other hand, is power on macro-level, which can be the state of fashion at any moment. Strategies consist of a combination of tactics. At the same time, power is non-subjective according to Foucault. This posits a paradox, according to Lynch, since "someone" has to exert power, while at the same time there can be no "someone" exerting this power. According to Lynch this paradox can be solved with two observations: By looking at power as something which reaches further than the influence of single people or groups. Even if individuals and groups try to influence fashion, for example, their actions will often get unexpected consequences. Even if individuals and groups have a free choice, they are also affected and limited by their context/situation.According to Foucault, force relations are constantly changing, constantly interacting with other force relations which may weaken, strengthen or change one another. Foucault writes that power always includes resistance, which means there is always a possibility that power and force relations will change in some way. According to Richard A. Lynch, the purpose of Foucault's work on power is to increase peoples' awareness of how power has shaped their way of being, thinking and acting, and by increasing this awareness making it possible for them to change their way of being, thinking and acting. ==== Sovereign power ==== With "sovereign power" Foucault alludes to a power structure that is similar to a pyramid, where one person or a group of people (at the top of the pyramid) holds the power, while the "normal" (and oppressed) people are at the bottom of the pyramid. In the middle parts of the pyramid are the people who enforce the sovereign's orders. A typical example of sovereign power is absolute monarchy.In historical absolute monarchies, crimes had been considered a personal offense against the sovereign and his/her power. The punishment was often public and spectacular, partly to deter others from committing crimes, but also to reinstate the sovereign's power. This was however both expensive and ineffective—it led far too often to people sympathizing with the criminal. In modern times, when disciplinary power is dominant, criminals are instead subjected to various disciplinary techniques to "remold" the criminal into a "law abiding citizen".According to Chloë Taylor, a characteristic for sovereign power is that the sovereign has the right to take life, wealth, services, labor and products. The sovereign has a right to subtract—to take life, to enslave life, etc.—but not the right to control life in the way that later happens in disciplinary systems of power. According to Taylor, the form of power that the philosopher Thomas Hobbes is concerned about, is sovereign power. According to Hobbes, people are "free" so long they are not literally placed in chains. ==== Disciplinary power ==== What Foucault calls "disciplinary power" aims to use bodies' skills as effectively as possible. The more useful the body becomes, the more obedient it also has to become. The purpose of this is not only to use the bodies' skills, but also prevent these skills from being used to revolt against the power.Disciplinary power has "individuals" as its object, target and instrument. According to Foucault, "individual" is however a construct created by disciplinary power. The disciplinary power's techniques create a "rational self-control", which in practice means that the disciplinary power is internalized and therefore doesn't continuously need external force. Foucault says that disciplinary power is primarily not an oppressing form of power, but rather so a productive form of power. Disciplinary power doesn't oppress interests or desires, but instead subjects bodies to reconstructed patterns of behavior to reconstruct their thoughts, desires and interests. According to Foucault this happens in factories, schools, hospitals and prisons. Disciplinary power creates a certain type of individual by producing new movements, habits and skills. It focuses on details, single movements, their timing and speed. It organizes bodies in time and space, and controls every movement for maximal effect. It uses rules, surveillance, exams and controls. The activities follow certain plans, whose purpose it is to lead the bodies to certain pre-determined goals. The bodies are also combined with each other, to reach a productivity that is greater than the sum of all bodies activities.Disciplinary power has according to Foucault been especially successful due to its usage of three technologies: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and exams. By hierarchical observation, the bodies become constantly visible to the power. The observation is hierarchical since there is not a single observer, but rather so a "hierarchy" of observers. An example of this is mental asylums during the 19th century, when the psychiatrist was not the only observer, but also nurses and auxiliary staff. From these observations and scientific discourses, a norm is established and used to judge the observed bodies. For the disciplinary power to continue to exist, this judgement has to be normalized. Foucault mentions several characteristics of this judgement: (1) all deviations, even small ones, from correct behavior are punished, (2) repeated rule violations are punished extra, (3) exercises are used as a behavior correcting technique and punishment, (4) rewards are used together with punishment to establish a hierarchy of good and bad behavior/people, (5) rank/grades/etc. are used as punishment and reward. Examinations combine the hierarchical observation with judgement. Exams objectify and individualize the observed bodies by creating extensive documentation about every observed body. The purpose of the exams is therefore to gather further information about each individual, track their development and compare their results to the norm.According to Foucault, the "formula" for disciplinary power can be seen in philosopher Jeremy Bentham's plan for the "optimal prison": the panopticon. Such a prison consists of a circle-formed building where every cell is inhabited by only one prisoner. In every cell there are two windows—one to let in light from outside and one pointing to the middle of the circle-formed building. In this middle there is a tower where a guard can be placed to observe the prisoners. Since the prisoners will never be able to know whether they are being watched or not at a given moment, they will internalize the disciplinary power and regulate their own behavior (as if they were constantly being watched). Foucault says this construction (1) creates an individuality by separating prisoners from each other in the physical room, (2) since the prisoners cannot know if they are being watched at any given moment, they internalize the disciplinary power and regulate their own behavior as if they were always watched, (3) the surveillance makes it possible to create extensive documentation about each prisoner and their behavior. According to Foucault the panopticon has been used as a model also for other disciplinary institutions, such as mental asylums in the 19th century. ==== Biopower ==== With "biopower" Foucault refers to power over bios (life)—power over populations. Biopower primarily rests on norms which are internalized by people, rather than external force. It encourages, strengthens, controls, observes, optimizes and organize the forces below it. Foucault has sometimes described biopower as separate from disciplinary power, but at other times he has described disciplinary power as an expression of biopower. Biopower can use disciplinary techniques, but in contrast to disciplinary power its target is populations rather than individuals.Biopower studies populations regarding (for example) number of births, life expectancy, public health, housing, migration, crime, which social groups are over-represented in deviations from the norm (regarding health, crime, etc.) and tries to adjust, control or eliminate these norm deviations. One example is the age distribution in a population. Biopower is interested in age distribution to compensate for future (or current) lacks of labor power, retirement homes, etc. Yet another example is sex: because sex is connected to population growth, sex and sexuality have been of great interest to biopower. On a disciplinary level, people who engaged in non-reproductive sexual acts have been treated for psychiatric diagnoses such as "perversion", "frigidity" and "sexual dysfunction". On a biopower-level, the usage of contraceptives has been studied, some social groups have (by various means) been encouraged to have children, while others (such as poor, sick, unmarried women, criminals or people with disabilities) have been discouraged or prevented from having children.In the era of biopower, death has become a scandal and a catastrophe, but despite this biopower has according to Foucault killed more people than any other form of power has ever done before it. Under sovereign power, the sovereign king could kill people to exert his power or start wars simply to extend his kingdom, but during the era of biopower wars have instead been motivated by an ambition to "protect life itself". Similar motivations has also been used for genocide. For example, Nazi Germany motivated its attempt to eradicate Jews, the mentally ill and disabled with the motivation that Jews were "a threat to the German health", and that the money spent on healthcare for mentally ill and disabled people would be better spent on "viable Germans". Chloë Taylor also mentions the Iraq War was motivated by similar tenets. The motivation was at first that Iraq was thought to have weapons of mass destruction and connections to Al-Qaeda. However, when the Bush and Blair administrations didn't find any evidence to support either of these theories, the motivation for the war was changed. In the new motivation, the cause of the war was said to be that Saddam Hussein had committed crimes against his own population. Taylor means that in modern times, war has to be "concealed" under a rhetoric of humanitarian aid, despite the fact that these wars often cause humanitarian crises.During the 19th century, slums were increasing in number and size across the western world. Criminality, illness, alcoholism and prostitution was common in these areas, and the middle class considered the people who lived in these slums as "unmoral" and "lazy". The middle class also feared that this underclass sooner or later would "take over" because the population growth was greater in these slums than it was in the middle class. This fear gave rise to the scientific study of eugenics, whose founder Francis Galton had been inspired by Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection. According to Galton, society was preventing natural selection by helping "the weak", thus causing a spread of the "negative qualities" into the rest of the population. === The body and sexuality === According to Foucault, the body is not something objective that stands outside history and culture. Instead, Foucault argues, the body has been and is continuously shaped by society and history—by work, diet, body ideals, exercise, medical interventions, etc. Foucault presents no "theory" of the body, but does write about it in Discipline and Punish as well as in The History of Sexuality. Foucault was critical of all purely biological explanations of phenomena such as sexuality, madness and criminality. Further, Foucault argues, that the body is not sufficient as a basis for self-understanding and understanding of others.In Discipline and Punish, Foucault shows how power and the body are tied together, for example by the disciplinary power primarily focusing on individual bodies and their behavior. Foucault argues that power, by manipulating bodies/behavior, also manipulates people's minds. Foucault turns the common saying "the body is the prison of the soul" and instead posits that "the soul is the prison of the body".According to Foucault, sexology has tried to exert itself as a "science" by referring to the material (the body). In contrast to this, Foucault argues that sexology is a pseudoscience, and that "sex" is a pseudo-scientific idea. For Foucault the idea of a natural, biologically grounded and fundamental sexuality is a normative historical construct that has also been used as an instrument of power. By describing sex as the biological and fundamental cause to peoples' gender identity, sexual identity and sexual behavior, power has effectively been able to normalize sexual and gendered behavior. This has made it possible to evaluate, pathologize and "correct" peoples' sexual and gendered behavior, by comparing bodies behaviors to the constructed "normal" behavior. For Foucault, a "normal sexuality" is as much of a construct as a "natural sexuality". Therefore, Foucault was also critical of the popular discourse that dominated the debate over sexuality during the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, the popular discourse argued for a "liberation" of sexuality from a cultural, moral and capitalistic oppression. Foucault, however, argues that peoples' opinions about and experiences of sexuality are always a result of cultural and power mechanisms. To "liberate" sexuality from one group of norms only means that another group of norms takes its place. This, however, does not mean that Foucault considers resistance to be futile. What Foucault argues for is rather that it is impossible to become completely free from power, and that there is simply no "natural" sexuality. Power always involves a dimension of resistance, and therefore also a possibility for change. Although Foucault considers it impossible to step outside of power-networks, it is always possible to change these networks or navigate them differently.According to Foucault, the body is not only an "obedient and passive object" that is dominated by discourses and power. The body is also the "seed" to resistance against dominant discourses and power techniques. The body is never fully compliant, and experiences can never fully be reduced to linguistic descriptions. There is always a possibility to experience something that is not possible to describe with words, and in this discrepancy there is also a possibility for resistance against dominant discourses.Foucault's view of the historical construction of the body has influenced many feminist and queer-theorists. According to Johanna Oksala, Foucault's influence on queer theory has been so great than he can be considered one of the founders of queer theory. The fundamental idea behind queer theory is that there is no natural fundament that lies behind identities such as gay, lesbian, heterosexual, etc. Instead these identities are considered cultural constructions that have been constructed through normative discourses and relations of power. Feminists have with the help of Foucault's ideas studied different ways that women form their bodies: through plastic surgery, diet, eating disorders, etc. Foucault's historization of sex has also affected feminist theorists such as Judith Butler, who used Foucault's theories about the relation between subject, power and sex to question gendered subjects. Butler follows Foucault by saying that there is no "true" gender behind gender identity that constitutes its biological and objective fundament. However, Butler is critical of Foucault. She argues Foucault "naively" presents bodies and pleasures as a ground for resistance against power, without extending his historization of sexuality to gendered subjects/bodies. Foucault has received criticism from other feminists, such as Susan Bordo and Kate Soper.Johanna Oksala argues that Foucault, by saying that sex/sexuality are constructed, doesn't deny the existence of sexuality. Oksala also argues that the goal of critical theories such as Foucault is not to liberate the body and sexuality from oppression, but rather to question and deny the identities that are posited as "natural" and "essential" by showing how these identities are historical and cultural constructions. === Subjectivity === Foucault considered his primary project to be the investigation of how people through history have been made into "subjects". Subjectivity, for Foucault, is not a state of being, but a practice—an active "being". According to Foucault, "the subject" has, by western philosophers, usually been considered as something given; natural and objective. On the contrary, Foucault considers subjectivity to be a construction created by power. Foucault talks of "assujettissement", which is a French term that for Foucault refers to a process where power creates subjects while also oppressing them using social norms. For Foucault "social norms" are standards that people are encouraged to follow, that are also used to compare and define people. As an example of "assujettissement", Foucault mentions "homosexual", a historically contingent type of subjectivity that was created by sexology. Foucault writes that sodomy was previously considered a serious sexual deviation, but a temporary one. Homosexuality, however, became a "species", a past, a childhood and a type of life. "Homosexuals" has by the same power that created this subjectivity been discriminated against, due to homosexuality being considered as a deviation from the "normal" sexuality. However, Foucault argues, the creation of a subjectivity such as "homosexuality" does not only have negative consequences for the people who are subjectivised—subjectivity of homosexuality has also led to the creation of gay bars and the pride parade.According to Foucault, scientific discourses have played an important role in the disciplinary power system, by classifying and categorizing people, observing their behavior and "treating" them when their behavior has been considered "abnormal". He defines discourse as a form of oppression that does not require physical force. He identifies its production as "controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a certain number of procedures", which are driven by individuals' aspiration of knowledge to create "rules" and "systems" that translate into social codes. Moreover, discourse creates a force that extends beyond societal institutions and could be found in social and formal fields such as health care systems, educational and law enforcement. The formation of these fields may seem to contribute to social development; however, Foucault warns against discourses' harmful aspects on society. Sciences such as psychiatry, biology, medicine, economy, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, ethnology, pedagogy and criminology have all categorized behaviors as rational, irrational, normal, abnormal, human, inhuman, etc. By doing so, they have all created various types of subjectivity and norms, which are then internalized by people as "truths". People have then adapted their behavior to get closer to what these sciences has labeled as "normal". For example, Foucault claims that psychological observation/surveillance and psychological discourses has created a type of psychology-centered subjectivity, which has led to people considering unhappiness a fault in their psychology rather than in society. This has also, according to Foucault, been a way for society to resist criticism—criticism against society has been turned against the individual and their psychological health. ==== Self-constituting subjectivity ==== According to Foucault, subjectivity is not necessarily something that is forced upon people externally—it is also something that is established in a person's relation to themselves. This can, for example, happen when a person is trying to "find themselves" or "be themselves", something Edward McGushin describes as a typical modern activity. In this quest for the "true self", the self is established in two levels: as a passive object (the "true self" that is searched for) and as an active "searcher". The ancient Cynics and the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche posited that the "true self" can only be found by going through great hardship and/or danger. The ancient Stoics and 17th-century philosopher René Descartes, however, argued that the "self" can be found by quiet and solitary introspection. Yet another example is Socrates, who argued that self-awareness can only be found by having debates with others, where the debaters question each other's foundational views and opinions. Foucault, however, argued that "subjectivity" is a process, rather than a state of being. As such, Foucault argued that there is no "true self" to be found. Rather so, the "self" is constituted/created in activities such as the ones employed to "find" the "self". In other words, exposing oneself to hardships and danger does not "reveal" the "true self", according to Foucault, but rather creates a particular type of self and subjectivity. However, according to Foucault the "form" for the subject is in great part already constituted by power, before these self-constituting practices are employed. Schools, workplaces, households, government institutions, entertainment media and the healthcare sector all, through disciplinary power, contribute to forming people into being particular types of subjects. === Freedom === Todd May defines Foucault's concept of freedom as: that which we can do of ourselves within our specific historical context. A condition for this, according to Foucault, is that we are aware of our situation and how it has been created/affected (and is still being affected) by power. According to May, two of the aspects of how power has shaped peoples′ way of being, thinking and acting is described in the books where Foucault describes disciplinary power and the history of sexuality. However, May argues, there will always be aspects of peoples′ formation that will be unknown to them, hence the constant necessity for the type of analyses that Foucault did.Foucault argues that the forces that have affected people can be changed; people always have the capacity to change the factors that limit their freedom. Freedom is thus not a state of being, but a practice—a way of being in relation to oneself, to others and to the world. According to Todd May Foucault's concept of freedom also includes constructing histories like the ones Foucault did about the history of disciplinary power and sexuality—histories that investigate and describe the forces that have influenced people into becoming who they are. From the knowledge that is reached from such investigations, people can thereafter decide which forces they believe are acceptable and which they consider to be intolerable and has to be changed. Freedom is for Foucault a type of "experimentation" with different "transformations". Since these experiments cannot be controlled completely, May argues they may lead to the reconstruction of intolerable power relations or the creation of new ones. Thus, May argues, it is always necessary to continue with such experimentation and Foucauldian analyses. ==== Practice of critique ==== Foucault's "alternative" to the modern subjectivity is described by Cressida Heyes as "critique". For Foucault there are no "good" and "bad" forms of subjectivity, since they are all a result of power relations. In the same way, Foucault argues there are no "good" and "bad" norms. All norms and institutions are at the same time enabling as they are oppressing. Therefore, Foucault argues, it is always crucial to continue with the practice of "critique". Critique is for Foucault a practice that searches for the processes and events that led to our way of being—a questioning of who we "are" and how this "we" came to be. Such a "critical ontology of the present" shows that peoples′ current "being" is in fact a historically contingent, unstable and changeable construction. Foucault emphasizes that since the current way of being is not a necessity, it is also possible to change it. Critique also includes investigating how and when people are being enabled and when they are being oppressed by the current norms and institutions, finding ways to reduce limitations on freedom, resist normalization and develop new and different way of relating to oneself and others. Foucault argues that it is impossible to go beyond power relations, but that it is always possible to navigate power relations in a different way. ==== Epimeleia heautou, "care for the self" ==== As an alternative to the modern "search" for the "true self", and as a part of "the work of freedom", Foucault discusses the antique Greek term epimeleia heautou, "care for the self" (ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ). According to Foucault, among the ancient Greek philosophers, self-awareness was not a goal in itself, but rather something that was sought after in order to "care for oneself". Care for the self consists of what Foucault calls "the art of living" or "technologies of the self". The goal of these techniques was, according to Foucault, to transform oneself into a more ethical person. As an example of this, Foucault mentions meditation, the stoic activity of contemplating past and future actions and evaluating if these actions are in line with one's values and goals, and "contemplation of nature". Contemplation of nature is another stoic activity, that consists of reflecting on how "small" one's existence is when compared to the greater cosmos. === Knowledge === Foucault is described by Mary Beth Mader as an epistemological constructivist and historicist. Foucault is critical of the idea that humans can reach "absolute" knowledge about the world. A fundamental goal in many of Foucault's works is to show how that which has traditionally been considered as absolute, universal and true in fact are historically contingent. To Foucault, even the idea of absolute knowledge is a historically contingent idea. This does however not lead to epistemological nihilism; rather, Foucault argues that we "always begin anew" when it comes to knowledge. At the same time Foucault is critical of modern western philosophy for lacking "spirituality". With "spirituality" Foucault refers to a certain type of ethical being, and the processes that lead to this state of being. Foucault argues that such a spirituality was a natural part of the ancient Greek philosophy, where knowledge was considered as something that was only accessible to those that had an ethical character. According to Foucault this changed in the "cartesian moment", the moment when René Descartes reached the "insight" that self-awareness was something given (Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am"), and from this "insight" Descartes drew conclusions about God, the world, and knowledge. According to Foucault, since Descartes knowledge has been something separate from ethics. In modern times, Foucault argues, anyone can reach "knowledge", as long as they are rational beings, educated, willing to participate in the scientific community and use a scientific method. Foucault is critical of this "modern" view of knowledge.Foucault describes two types of "knowledge": "savoir" and "connaissance", two French terms that both can be translated as "knowledge" but with separate meanings for Foucault. By "savoir" Foucault is referring to a process where subjects are created, while at the same time these subjects also become objects for knowledge. An example of this can be seen in criminology and psychiatry. In these sciences, subjects such as "the rational person", "the mentally ill person", "the law abiding person", "the criminal", etc. are created, and these sciences center their attention and knowledge on these subjects. The knowledge about these subjects is "connaissance", while the process in which subjects and knowledge is created is "savoir". A similar term in Foucaults corpus is "pouvoir/savoir" (power/knowledge). With this term Foucault is referring to a type of knowledge that is considered "common sense", but that is created and withheld in that position (as "common sense") by power. The term power/knowledge comes from Jeremy Bentham's idea that panopticons wouldn't only be prisons, but would be used for experiments where the criminals′ behaviour would be studied. Power/knowledge thus refers to forms of power where the power compares individuals, measures differences, establishes a norm and then forces this norm unto the subjects. This is especially successful when the established norm is internalized and institutionalized (by "institutionalized" Foucault refers to when the norm is omnipresent). Because then, when the norm is internalized and institutionalized, it has effectively become a part of peoples' "common sense"—the "obvious", the "given", the "natural". When this has happened, this "common sense" also affects the explicit knowledge (scientific knowledge), Foucault argues. Ellen K. Feder states that the premise "the world consists of women and men" is an example of this. This premise, Feder argues, has been considered "common sense", and has led to the creation of the psychiatric diagnosis gender identity disorder (GID). For example, during the 1970s, children with behavior that was not considered appropriate for their gender was diagnosed with GID. The treatment then consisted of trying to make the child adapt to the prevailing gender norms. Feder argues that this is an example of power/knowledge since psychiatry, from the "common sense" premise "the world consists of women and men" (a premise which is upheld in this status by power), created a new diagnosis, a new type of subject and a whole body of knowledge surrounding this new subject. == Influence and reception == Foucault's works have exercised a powerful influence over numerous humanistic and social scientific disciplines as one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period. According to a London School of Economics' analysis in 2016, his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality were among the 25 most cited books in the social sciences of all time, at just over 100,000 citations. In 2007, Foucault was listed as the single most cited scholar in the humanities by the ISI Web of Science among a large quantity of French philosophers, the compilation's author commenting that "What this says of modern scholarship is for the reader to decide—and it is imagined that judgments will vary from admiration to despair, depending on one's view". According to Gary Gutting, Foucault's "detailed historical remarks on the emergence of disciplinary and regulatory biopower have been widely influential". Leo Bersani wrote that:"[Foucault] is our most brilliant philosopher of power. More originally than any other contemporary thinker, he has attempted to define the historical constraints under which we live, at the same time that he has been anxious to account for—if possible, even to locate—the points at which we might resist those constraints and counter some of the moves of power. In the present climate of cynical disgust with the exercise of political power, Foucault's importance can hardly be exaggerated." Foucault's work on "biopower" has been widely influential within the disciplines of philosophy and political theory, particularly for such authors as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Antonio Negri, and Michael Hardt. His discussions on power and discourse have inspired many critical theorists, who believe that Foucault's analysis of power structures could aid the struggle against inequality. They claim that through discourse analysis, hierarchies may be uncovered and questioned by way of analyzing the corresponding fields of knowledge through which they are legitimated. This is one of the ways that Foucault's work is linked to critical theory. His work Discipline and Punish influenced his friend and contemporary Gilles Deleuze, who published the paper "Postscript on the Societies of Control", praising Foucault's work but arguing that contemporary western society has in fact developed from a 'disciplinary society' into a 'society of control'. Deleuze went on to publish a book dedicated to Foucault's thought in 1988 under the title Foucault. Foucault's discussions of the relationship between power and knowledge has influenced postcolonial critiques in explaining the discursive formation of colonialism, particularly in Edward Said's work Orientalism. Foucault's work has been compared to that of Erving Goffman by the sociologist Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Soren Kristiansen, who list Goffman as an influence on Foucault. Foucault's writings, particularly The History of Sexuality, have also been very influential in feminist philosophy and queer theory, particularly the work of the major Feminist scholar Judith Butler due to his theories regarding the genealogy of maleness and femaleness, power, sexuality, and bodies. === Critiques and engagements === Douglas Murray, writing in his book The War on The West, argued that "Foucault's obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a transactional, punitive and meaningless dystopia". ==== Crypto-normativity, self-refutation, defeatism ==== A prominent critique of Foucault's thought concerns his refusal to propose positive solutions to the social and political issues that he critiques. Since no human relation is devoid of power, freedom becomes elusive—even as an ideal. This stance which critiques normativity as socially constructed and contingent, but which relies on an implicit norm to mount the critique led philosopher Jürgen Habermas to describe Foucault's thinking as "crypto-normativist", covertly reliant on the very Enlightenment principles he attempts to argue against. A similar critique has been advanced by Diana Taylor, and by Nancy Fraser who argues that "Foucault's critique encompasses traditional moral systems, he denies himself recourse to concepts such as 'freedom' and 'justice', and therefore lacks the ability to generate positive alternatives." ==== Genealogy as historical method and defeatism ==== The philosopher Richard Rorty has argued that Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge" is fundamentally negative, and thus fails to adequately establish any "new" theory of knowledge per se. Rather, Foucault simply provides a few valuable maxims regarding the reading of history. Rorty writes: As far as I can see, all he has to offer are brilliant redescriptions of the past, supplemented by helpful hints on how to avoid being trapped by old historiographical assumptions. These hints consist largely of saying: "do not look for progress or meaning in history; do not see the history of a given activity, of any segment of culture, as the development of rationality or of freedom; do not use any philosophical vocabulary to characterize the essence of such activity or the goal it serves; do not assume that the way this activity is presently conducted gives any clue to the goals it served in the past". Foucault has frequently been criticized by historians for what they consider to be a lack of rigor in his analyses. For example, Hans-Ulrich Wehler harshly criticized Foucault in 1998. Wehler regards Foucault as a bad philosopher who wrongfully received a good response by the humanities and by social sciences. According to Wehler, Foucault's works are not only insufficient in their empiric historical aspects, but also often contradictory and lacking in clarity. For example, Foucault's concept of power is "desperatingly undifferentiated", and Foucault's thesis of a "disciplinary society" is, according to Wehler, only possible because Foucault does not properly differentiate between authority, force, power, violence and legitimacy. In addition, his thesis is based on a one-sided choice of sources (prisons and psychiatric institutions) and neglects other types of organizations as e.g. factories. Also, Wehler criticizes Foucault's "francocentrism" because he did not take into consideration major German-speaking theorists of social sciences like Max Weber and Norbert Elias. In all, Wehler concludes that Foucault is "because of the endless series of flaws in his so-called empirical studies ... an intellectually dishonest, empirically absolutely unreliable, crypto-normativist seducer of Postmodernism". ==== Feminist critiques ==== Though American feminists have built on Foucault's critiques of the historical construction of gender roles and sexuality, some feminists note the limitations of the masculinist subjectivity and ethical orientation that he describes. A related issue raised by scholars Elizabeth Povinelli and Kathryn Yusoff is the almost complete absence of any discussion of race in his writings. Yusoff (2018, p. 211) says "Povinelli draws our attention to the provinciality of Foucault’s project in its conceptualization of a Western European genealogy". ==== Sexuality ==== The philosopher Roger Scruton argues in Sexual Desire (1986) that Foucault was incorrect to claim, in The History of Sexuality, that sexual morality is culturally relative. He criticizes Foucault for assuming that there could be societies in which a "problematisation" of the sexual did not occur, concluding that, "No history of thought could show the 'problematisation' of sexual experience to be peculiar to certain specific social formations: it is characteristic of personal experience generally, and therefore of every genuine social order."Foucault's approach to sexuality, which he sees as socially constructed, has become influential in queer theory. Foucault's resistance to identity politics, and his rejection of the psychoanalytic concept of "object choice", stands at odds with some theories of queer identity. ==== Social constructionism and human nature ==== Foucault is sometimes criticized for his purported social constructionism, which some see as an affront to the concept of truth. In Foucault's 1971 televised debate with Noam Chomsky, Foucault argued against the possibility of any fixed human nature, as posited by Chomsky's concept of innate human faculties. Chomsky argued that concepts of justice were rooted in human reason, whereas Foucault rejected the universal basis for a concept of justice. Following the debate, Chomsky was stricken with Foucault's total rejection of the possibility of a universal morality, stating "He struck me as completely amoral, I'd never met anyone who was so totally amoral [...] I mean, I liked him personally, it's just that I couldn't make sense of him. It's as if he was from a different species, or something." ==== Defeatism in Education and authority ==== Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, while acknowledging that Foucault contributed to give a right of citizenship in cultural life to certain marginal and eccentric experiences (of sexuality, of cultural repression, of madness), asserts that his radical critique of authority was detrimental to education. ==== Psychology of the self ==== One of Foucault's claims regarding the subjectivity of the self has been disputed. Opposing Foucault's view of subjectivity, Terje Sparby, Friedrich Edelhäuser, and Ulrich W. Weger argue that other factors, such as biological, environmental, and cultural are explanations for the self. ==== Forget Foucault ==== Jean Baudrillard, in his 1977 tract Oublier Foucault (trans. Forget Foucault), asserted that "Foucault's discourse is a mirror of the powers it describes.": 30  Since "it is possible at last to talk with such definitive understanding about power, sexuality, the body, and discipline [...] it is because at some point all this is here and now over with." Therefore, with "the coincidence between this new version of power and the new version of desire proposed by Deleuze and Lyotard [...] [which was] not accidental: it's simply that in Foucault power takes the place of desire [...] That is why there is no desire in Foucault: its place is already taken [...] When power blends into desire and desire blends into power, let's forget them both." == References == === Sources === == Further reading == Artières, Philippe, Jean-François Bert, Frédéric Gros, and Judith Revel, eds. 2011. Cahier Foucault. France: L'Herne. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. "Cogito and the History of Madness". pp. 31–63 in Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Dreyfus, Herbert L. and Paul Rabinow. 1983. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (2nd ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. "Sexual Morality and the Law", [originally published as "La loi de la pudeur"]. pp. 271–285 in Politics, philosophy, Culture. Foucault, Michel, Ignacio Ramonet, Daniel Mermet, Jorge Majfud, and Federico Kukso. 2018. Cinco entrevistas a Noam Chomsky (in Spanish). Santiago: Aun Creemos en los Sueños. ISBN 978-956-340-126-4. Garland, David. 1997. "'Governmentality' and the Problem of Crime: Foucalt, Criminology, Sociology". Theoretical Criminology 1(2):173–214. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. 2016. Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Foucault. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved via U of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1983. Anti-Oedipus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved via U of Minnesota Press. Kuznicki, Jason (2008). "Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 180–181. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n110. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1990. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Merquior, J. G. 1987. Foucault. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. A critical view of Foucault's work. Mills, Sara (2003). Michel Foucault. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-24569-2. Olssen, M. 2009. Toward a Global Thin Community: Nietzsche, Foucault and the Cosmopolitan Commitment. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press. Roudinesco, Élisabeth. 2008. Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida. New York: Columbia University Press. Veyne, Paul. 2008. Foucault. Sa pensée, sa personne. Paris: Éditions Albin Michel. Wolin, Richard. 1987. Telos 67, Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism. New York: Telos Press Ltd. == External links == Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Foucault. By Johanna Oksala Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Foucault. By Mark Kelly Foucault.info. Large resource site which includes extracts from Foucault's work and a comprehensive bibliography of all of Foucault's work in French Foucault News. Large resource site, which includes a blog with news related to Foucault research, bibliographies and other resources Foucault bibliographies. Bibliographies and links to bibliographies of, and relating to Foucault, on the Foucault News site Progressive Geographies. Stuart Elden's blog and resource site. Includes extensive resources on Foucault Wikipedia Bibliography of Foucault's books in English

Hilary Putnam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam

Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.Putnam was known for his willingness to apply equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam is known for his argument against the type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, and for the concept of functionalism, an influential theory regarding the mind–body problem. In philosophy of language, along with Saul Kripke and others, he developed the causal theory of reference, and formulated an original theory of meaning, introducing the notion of semantic externalism based on a thought experiment called Twin Earth.In philosophy of mathematics, Putnam and W. V. O. Quine developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities, later espousing the view that mathematics is not purely logical, but "quasi-empirical". In epistemology, Putnam is known for his critique of the well-known "brain in a vat" thought experiment. This thought experiment appears to provide a powerful argument for epistemological skepticism, but Putnam challenges its coherence. In metaphysics, he originally espoused a position called metaphysical realism, but eventually became one of its most outspoken critics, first adopting a view he called "internal realism", which he later abandoned. Despite these changes of view, throughout his career Putnam remained committed to scientific realism, roughly the view that mature scientific theories are approximately true descriptions of ways things are.In his later work, Putnam became increasingly interested in American pragmatism, Jewish philosophy, and ethics, engaging with a wider array of philosophical traditions. He also displayed an interest in metaphilosophy, seeking to "renew philosophy" from what he identified as narrow and inflated concerns. He was at times a politically controversial figure, especially for his involvement with the Progressive Labor Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. == Life == Hilary Whitehall Putnam was born on July 31, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Samuel Putnam, was a scholar of Romance languages, columnist, and translator who wrote for the Daily Worker, a publication of the American Communist Party, from 1936 to 1946. Because of his father's commitment to communism, Putnam had a secular upbringing, although his mother, Riva, was Jewish. In early 1927, six months after Hilary's birth, the family moved to France, where Samuel was under contract to translate the surviving works of François Rabelais. In a 2015 autobiographical essay, Putnam said that his first childhood memories were from his life in France, and his first language was French.Putnam completed the first two years of his primary education in France before he and his parents returned to the U.S. in 1933, settling in Philadelphia. There, he attended Central High School, where he met Noam Chomsky, who was a year behind him.: 8  The two remained friends—and often intellectual opponents—for the rest of Putnam's life. Putnam studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. degree and becoming a member of the Philomathean Society, the country's oldest continually existing collegiate literary society. He did graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University and later at UCLA's philosophy department, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951 for his dissertation, The Meaning of the Concept of Probability in Application to Finite Sequences. Putnam's dissertation supervisor Hans Reichenbach was a leading figure in logical positivism, the dominant school of philosophy of the day; one of Putnam's most consistent positions was his rejection of logical positivism as self-defeating. Over the course of his life, Putnam was his own philosophical adversary, changing his positions on philosophical questions and critiquing his previous views.After obtaining his PhD, Putnam taught at Northwestern University (1951–52), Princeton University (1953–61), and MIT (1961–65). In 1962, he married fellow philosopher Ruth Anna Putnam (born Ruth Anna Jacobs), who took a teaching position in philosophy at Wellesley College. Rebelling against the antisemitism they experienced during their youth, the Putnams decided to establish a traditional Jewish home for their children. Since they had no experience with the rituals of Judaism, they sought out invitations to other Jewish homes for Seder. They began to study Jewish rituals and Hebrew, became more interested in Judaism, self-identified as Jews, and actively practiced Judaism. In 1994, Hilary celebrated a belated bar mitzvah service; Ruth Anna's bat mitzvah was celebrated four years later.In the 1960s and early 1970s, Putnam was an active supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement and he was also an active opponent of the Vietnam War. In 1963, he organized one of MIT's first faculty and student anti-war committees. After moving to Harvard in 1965, he organized campus protests and began teaching courses on Marxism. Putnam became an official faculty advisor to the Students for a Democratic Society and in 1968 a member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965. After 1968, his political activities centered on the PLP. The Harvard administration considered these activities disruptive and attempted to censure Putnam. Putnam permanently severed his relationship with the PLP in 1972. In 1997, at a meeting of former draft resistance activists at Boston's Arlington Street Church, he called his involvement with the PLP a mistake. He said he had been impressed at first with the PLP's commitment to alliance-building and its willingness to attempt to organize from within the armed forces.In 1976, Putnam was elected president of the American Philosophical Association. The next year, he was selected as Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Mathematical Logic in recognition of his contributions to the philosophy of logic and mathematics. While breaking with his radical past, Putnam never abandoned his belief that academics have a particular social and ethical responsibility toward society. He continued to be forthright and progressive in his political views, as expressed in the articles "How Not to Solve Ethical Problems" (1983) and "Education for Democracy" (1993).Putnam was a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He retired from teaching in June 2000, becoming Cogan University Professor Emeritus, but as of 2009 continued to give a seminar almost yearly at Tel Aviv University. He also held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in 2001. His corpus includes five volumes of collected works, seven books, and more than 200 articles. Putnam's renewed interest in Judaism inspired him to publish several books and essays on the topic. With his wife, he co-authored several essays and a book on the late-19th-century American pragmatist movement.For his contributions in philosophy and logic, Putnam was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in 2011 and the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy in 2015. Putnam died at his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, on March 13, 2016. At the time of his death, Putnam was Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. == Philosophy of mind == === Multiple realizability === Putnam's best-known work concerns philosophy of mind. His most noted original contributions to that field came in several key papers published in the late 1960s that set out the hypothesis of multiple realizability. In these papers, Putnam argues that, contrary to the famous claim of the type-identity theory, pain may correspond to utterly different physical states of the nervous system in different organisms even if they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain". Putnam cited examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. He asked whether it was likely that the brain structures of diverse types of animals realize pain, or other mental states, the same way. If they do not share the same brain structures, they cannot share the same mental states and properties, in which case mental states must be realized by different physical states in different species. Putnam then took his argument a step further, asking about such things as the nervous systems of alien beings, artificially intelligent robots and other silicon-based life forms. These hypothetical entities, he contended, should not be considered incapable of experiencing pain just because they lack human neurochemistry. Putnam concluded that type-identity theorists had been making an "ambitious" and "highly implausible" conjecture that could be disproved by one example of multiple realizability. This is sometimes called the "likelihood argument", as it focuses on the claim that multiple realizability is more likely than type-identity theory.: 640 Putnam also formulated an a priori argument in favor of multiple realizability based on what he called "functional isomorphism". He defined the concept in these terms: "Two systems are functionally isomorphic if 'there is a correspondence between the states of one and the states of the other that preserves functional relations'." In the case of computers, two machines are functionally isomorphic if and only if the sequential relations among states in the first exactly mirror the sequential relations among states in the other. Therefore, a computer made of silicon chips and one made of cogs and wheels can be functionally isomorphic but constitutionally diverse. Functional isomorphism implies multiple realizability.: 637 Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and others argued that along with being an effective argument against type-identity theories, multiple realizability implies that any low-level explanation of higher-level mental phenomena is insufficiently abstract and general. Functionalism, which identifies mental kinds with functional kinds that are characterized exclusively in terms of causes and effects, abstracts from the level of microphysics, and therefore seemed to be a better explanation of the relation between mind and body. In fact, there are many functional kinds, including mousetraps and eyes, that are multiply realized at the physical level.: 648–649 : 6 Multiple realizability has been criticized on the grounds that, if it were true, research and experimentation in the neurosciences would be impossible. According to William Bechtel and Jennifer Mundale, to be able to conduct such research in the neurosciences, universal consistencies must either exist or be assumed to exist in brain structures. It is the similarity (or homology) of brain structures that allows us to generalize across species. If multiple realizability were an empirical fact, results from experiments conducted on one species of animal (or one organism) would not be meaningful when generalized to explain the behavior of another species (or organism of the same species). Jaegwon Kim, David Lewis, Robert Richardson and Patricia Churchland have also criticized metaphysical realism. === Machine state functionalism === Putnam himself put forth the first formulation of such a functionalist theory. This formulation, now called "machine-state functionalism", was inspired by analogies Putnam and others made between the mind and Turing machines. The point for functionalism is the nature of the states of the Turing machine. Each state can be defined in terms of its relations to the other states and to the inputs and outputs, and the details of how it accomplishes what it accomplishes and of its material constitution are completely irrelevant. According to machine-state functionalism, the nature of a mental state is just like the nature of a Turing machine state. Just as "state one" simply is the state in which, given a particular input, such-and-such happens, so being in pain is the state which disposes one to cry "ouch", become distracted, wonder what the cause is, and so forth. === Rejection of functionalism === In the late 1980s, Putnam abandoned his adherence to functionalism and other computational theories of mind. His change of mind was primarily due to the difficulties computational theories have in explaining certain intuitions with respect to the externalism of mental content. This is illustrated by Putnam's own Twin Earth thought experiment (see Philosophy of language). In 1988 he also developed a separate argument against functionalism based on Fodor's generalized version of multiple realizability. Asserting that functionalism is really a watered-down identity theory in which mental kinds are identified with functional kinds, Putnam argued that mental kinds may be multiply realizable over functional kinds. The argument for functionalism is that the same mental state could be implemented by the different states of a universal Turing machine.Despite Putnam's rejection of functionalism, it has continued to flourish and been developed into numerous versions by Fodor, David Marr, Daniel Dennett, and David Lewis, among others. Functionalism helped lay the foundations for modern cognitive science and is the dominant theory of mind in philosophy today.By 2012 Putnam accepted a modification of functionalism called "liberal functionalism". The view holds that "what matters for consciousness and for mental properties generally is the right sort of functional capacities and not the particular matter that subserves those capacities". The specification of these capacities may refer to what goes on outside the organism's "brain", may include intentional idioms, and need not describe a capacity to compute something or other.Putnam himself formulated one of the main arguments against functionalism: the Twin Earth thought experiment. But there have been other criticisms. John Searle's Chinese room argument (1980) is a direct attack on the claim that thought can be represented as a set of functions. The thought experiment is designed to show that it is possible to mimic intelligent action with a purely functional system, without any interpretation or understanding. Searle describes a situation in which a person who speaks only English is locked in a room with Chinese symbols in baskets and a rule book in English for moving the symbols around. The person is instructed, by people outside the room, to follow the rule book for sending certain symbols out of the room when given certain symbols. The people outside the room speak Chinese and are communicating with the person inside via the Chinese symbols. According to Searle, it would be absurd to claim that the English speaker inside "knows" Chinese based on these syntactic processes alone. This argument attempts to show that systems that operate merely on syntactic processes cannot realize any semantics (meaning) or intentionality (aboutness). Searle thus attacks the idea that thought can be equated with following a set of syntactic rules and concludes that functionalism is an inadequate theory of the mind. Ned Block has advanced several other arguments against functionalism. == Philosophy of language == === Semantic externalism === One of Putnam's contributions to philosophy of language is his semantic externalism, the claim that terms' meanings are determined by factors outside the mind, encapsulated in his slogan that "meaning just ain't in the head". His views on meaning, first laid out in Meaning and Reference (1973), then in The Meaning of "Meaning" (1975), use his "Twin Earth" thought experiment to defend this thesis.Twin Earth shows this, according to Putnam, since on Twin Earth everything is identical to Earth, except that its lakes, rivers and oceans are filled with XYZ rather than H2O. Consequently, when an earthling, Fredrick, uses the Earth-English word "water", it has a different meaning from the Twin Earth-English word "water" when used by his physically identical twin, Frodrick, on Twin Earth. Since Fredrick and Frodrick are physically indistinguishable when they utter their respective words, and since their words have different meanings, meaning cannot be determined solely by what is in their heads. This led Putnam to adopt a version of semantic externalism with regard to meaning and mental content. The philosopher of mind and language Donald Davidson, despite his many differences of opinion with Putnam, wrote that semantic externalism constituted an "anti-subjectivist revolution" in philosophers' way of seeing the world. Since Descartes's time, philosophers had been concerned with proving knowledge from the basis of subjective experience. Thanks to Putnam, Saul Kripke, Tyler Burge and others, Davidson said, philosophy could now take the objective realm for granted and start questioning the alleged "truths" of subjective experience. === Theory of meaning === Along with Kripke, Keith Donnellan, and others, Putnam contributed to what is known as the causal theory of reference. In particular, he maintained in The Meaning of "Meaning" that the objects referred to by natural kind terms—such as "tiger", "water", and "tree"—are the principal elements of the meaning of such terms. There is a linguistic division of labor, analogous to Adam Smith's economic division of labor, according to which such terms have their references fixed by the "experts" in the particular field of science to which the terms belong. So, for example, the reference of the term "lion" is fixed by the community of zoologists, the reference of the term "elm tree" is fixed by the community of botanists, and chemists fix the reference of the term "table salt" as sodium chloride. These referents are considered rigid designators in the Kripkean sense and are disseminated outward to the linguistic community.Putnam specifies a finite sequence of elements (a vector) for the description of the meaning of every term in the language. Such a vector consists of four components: the object to which the term refers, e.g., the object individuated by the chemical formula H2O; a set of typical descriptions of the term, referred to as "the stereotype", e.g., "transparent", "colorless", and "hydrating"; the semantic indicators that place the object into a general category, e.g., "natural kind" and "liquid"; the syntactic indicators, e.g., "concrete noun" and "mass noun".Such a "meaning-vector" provides a description of the reference and use of an expression within a particular linguistic community. It provides the conditions for its correct usage and makes it possible to judge whether a single speaker attributes the appropriate meaning to it or whether its use has changed enough to cause a difference in its meaning. According to Putnam, it is legitimate to speak of a change in the meaning of an expression only if the reference of the term, and not its stereotype, has changed.: 339–340  But since no possible algorithm can determine which aspect—the stereotype or the reference—has changed in a particular case, it is necessary to consider the usage of other expressions of the language. Since there is no limit to the number of such expressions to be considered, Putnam embraced a form of semantic holism.Despite the many changes in his other positions, Putnam consistently adhered to semantic holism. Michael Dummett, Jerry Fodor, Ernest Lepore, and others have identified problems with this position. In the first place, they suggest that, if semantic holism is true, it is impossible to understand how a speaker of a language can learn the meaning of an expression in the language. Given the limits of our cognitive abilities, we will never be able to master the whole of the English (or any other) language, even based on the (false) assumption that languages are static and immutable entities. Thus, if one must understand all of a natural language to understand a single word or expression, language learning is simply impossible. Semantic holism also fails to explain how two speakers can mean the same thing when using the same expression, and therefore how any communication is possible between them. Given a sentence P, since Fred and Mary have each mastered different parts of the English language and P is related in different ways to the sentences in each part, P means one thing to Fred and something else to Mary. Moreover, if P derives its meaning from its relations with all the sentences of a language, as soon as the vocabulary of an individual changes by the addition or elimination of a sentence, the totality of relations changes, and therefore also the meaning of P. As this is a common phenomenon, the result is that P has two different meanings in two different moments in the life of the same person. Consequently, if one accepts the truth of a sentence and then rejects it later on, the meaning of what one rejected and what one accepted are completely different and therefore one cannot change opinions with regard to the same sentences. == Philosophy of mathematics == In the philosophy of mathematics, Putnam has utilized indispensability arguments to argue for a realist interpretation of mathematics. In his 1971 book Philosophy of Logic, he presented what has since been called the locus classicus of the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument. The argument, which he attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine, is presented in the book as "quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable for science, both formal and physical; therefore we should accept such quantification; but this commits us to accepting the existence of the mathematical entities in question." According to Charles Parsons, Putnam "very likely" endorsed this version of the argument in his early work, but later came to deny some of the views present in it.: 128 In 1975, Putnam formulated his own indispensability argument based on the no miracles argument in the philosophy of science, saying, "I believe that the positive argument for realism [in science] has an analogue in the case of mathematical realism. Here too, I believe, realism is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of the science a miracle". According to Putnam, Quine's version of the argument was an argument for the existence of abstract mathematical objects, while Putnam's own argument was simply for a realist interpretation of mathematics, which he believed could be provided by a "mathematics as modal logic" interpretation that need not imply the existence of abstract objects.: 61–62 Putnam also held the view that mathematics, like physics and other empirical sciences, uses both strict logical proofs and "quasi-empirical" methods.: 150  For example, Fermat's Last Theorem states that for no integer n > 2 n>2 are there positive integer values of x, y, and z such that x n + y n = z n x^{n}+y^{n}=z^{n} . Before Andrew Wiles proved this for all n > 2 n>2 in 1995, it had been proved for many values of n. These proofs inspired further research in the area, and formed a quasi-empirical consensus for the theorem. Even though such knowledge is more conjectural than a strictly proved theorem, it was still used in developing other mathematical ideas.The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument has been extremely influential in the philosophy of mathematics, inspiring continued debate and development of the argument in contemporary philosophy of mathematics. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, many in the field consider it the best argument for mathematical realism. Prominent counterarguments come from Hartry Field, who argues that mathematics is not indispensable to science, and Penelope Maddy and Elliott Sober, who dispute whether we are committed to mathematical realism even if it is indispensable to science. == Mathematics and computer science == Putnam has contributed to scientific fields not directly related to his work in philosophy. As a mathematician, he contributed to the resolution of Hilbert's tenth problem in mathematics. This problem (now known as Matiyasevich's theorem or the MRDP theorem) was settled by Yuri Matiyasevich in 1970, with a proof that relied heavily on previous research by Putnam, Julia Robinson and Martin Davis.In computability theory, Putnam investigated the structure of the ramified analytical hierarchy, its connection with the constructible hierarchy and its Turing degrees. He showed that there are many levels of the constructible hierarchy that add no subsets of the integers. Later, with his student George Boolos, he showed that the first such "non-index" is the ordinal β 0 \beta _{0} of ramified analysis (this is the smallest β \beta such that L β L_{\beta } is a model of full second-order comprehension). Also, together with a separate paper with his student Richard Boyd and Gustav Hensel, he demonstrated how the Davis–Mostowski–Kleene hyperarithmetical hierarchy of arithmetical degrees can be naturally extended up to β 0 \beta _{0} .In computer science, Putnam is known for the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT), developed with Martin Davis in 1960. The algorithm finds whether there is a set of true or false values that satisfies a given Boolean expression so that the entire expression becomes true. In 1962, they further refined the algorithm with the help of George Logemann and Donald W. Loveland. It became known as the DPLL algorithm. It is efficient and still forms the basis of most complete SAT solvers. == Epistemology == In epistemology, Putnam is known for his argument against skeptical scenarios based on the "brain in a vat" thought experiment (a modernized version of Descartes's evil demon hypothesis). The argument is that one cannot coherently suspect that one is a disembodied "brain in a vat" placed there by some "mad scientist".This follows from the causal theory of reference. Words always refer to the kinds of things they were coined to refer to, the kinds of things their user, or the user's ancestors, experienced. So, if some person, Mary, is a "brain in a vat", whose every experience is received through wiring and other gadgetry created by the mad scientist, then Mary's idea of a brain does not refer to a real brain, since she and her linguistic community have never encountered such a thing. To her a brain is actually an image fed to her through the wiring. Nor does her idea of a vat refer to a real vat. So if, as a brain in a vat, she says, "I'm a brain in a vat", she is actually saying, "I'm a brain-image in a vat-image", which is incoherent. On the other hand, if she is not a brain in a vat, then saying that she is a brain in a vat is still incoherent, because she actually means the opposite. This is a form of epistemological externalism: knowledge or justification depends on factors outside the mind and is not solely determined internally.Putnam has clarified that his real target in this argument was never skepticism, but metaphysical realism, which he thought implied such skeptical scenarios were possible. Since realism of this kind assumes the existence of a gap between how one conceives the world and the way the world really is, skeptical scenarios such as this one (or Descartes's evil demon) present a formidable challenge. By arguing that such a scenario is impossible, Putnam attempts to show that this notion of a gap between one's concept of the world and the way it is absurd. One cannot have a "God's-eye" view of reality. One is limited to one's conceptual schemes, and metaphysical realism is therefore false.Putnam's brain in a vat argument has been criticized. Crispin Wright argues that Putnam's formulation of the brain-in-a-vat scenario is too narrow to refute global skepticism. The possibility that one is a recently disembodied brain in a vat is not undermined by semantic externalism. If a person has lived her entire life outside the vat—speaking the English language and interacting normally with the outside world—prior to her "envatment" by a mad scientist, when she wakes up inside the vat, her words and thoughts (e.g., "tree" and "grass") will still refer to the objects or events in the external world that they referred to before her envatment. == Metaphilosophy and ontology == In the late 1970s and the 1980s, stimulated by results from mathematical logic and by some of Quine's ideas, Putnam abandoned his long-standing defense of metaphysical realism—the view that the categories and structures of the external world are both causally and ontologically independent of the conceptualizations of the human mind—and adopted a rather different view, which he called "internal realism" or "pragmatic realism".: 404  Internal realism is the view that, although the world may be causally independent of the human mind, the world's structure—its division into kinds, individuals and categories—is a function of the human mind, and hence the world is not ontologically independent. The general idea is influenced by Immanuel Kant's idea of the dependence of our knowledge of the world on the categories of thought.According to Putnam, the problem with metaphysical realism is that it fails to explain the possibility of reference and truth. According to the metaphysical realist, our concepts and categories refer because they match up in some mysterious manner with the categories, kinds and individuals inherent in the external world. But how is it possible that the world "carves up" into certain structures and categories, the mind carves up the world into its own categories and structures, and the two carvings perfectly coincide? The answer must be that the world does not come pre-structured but that the human mind and its conceptual schemes impose structure on it. In Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam identified truth with what he termed "idealized rational acceptability." The theory is that a belief is true if it would be accepted by anyone under ideal epistemic conditions.: §7.1 Nelson Goodman formulated a similar notion in Fact, Fiction and Forecast (1956). "We have come to think of the actual as one among many possible worlds. We need to repaint that picture. All possible worlds lie within the actual one", Goodman wrote. Putnam rejected this form of social constructivism, but retained the idea that there can be many correct descriptions of reality. None of these descriptions can be scientifically proven to be the "one, true" description of the world. He thus accepted "conceptual relativity"—the view that it may be a matter of choice or convention, e.g., whether mereological sums exist, or whether spacetime points are individuals or mere limits.Curtis Brown has criticized Putnam's internal realism as a disguised form of subjective idealism, in which case it is subject to the traditional arguments against that position. In particular, it falls into the trap of solipsism. That is, if existence depends on experience, as subjective idealism maintains, and if one's consciousness ceased to exist, then the rest of the universe would also cease to exist. In his reply to Simon Blackburn in the volume Reading Putnam, Putnam renounced internal realism because it assumed a "cognitive interface" model of the relation between the mind and the world. Under the increasing influence of William James and the pragmatists, he adopted a direct realist view of this relation.: 23–24  Although he abandoned internal realism, Putnam still resisted the idea that any given thing or system of things can be described in exactly one complete and correct way. He came to accept metaphysical realism in a broader sense, rejecting all forms of verificationism and all talk of our "making" the world.In the philosophy of perception, Putnam came to endorse direct realism, according to which perceptual experiences directly present one with the external world. He once further held that there are no mental representations, sense data, or other intermediaries between the mind and the world. By 2012, however, he rejected this commitment in favor of "transactionalism", a view that accepts both that perceptual experiences are world-involving transactions, and that these transactions are functionally describable (provided that worldly items and intentional states may be referred to in the specification of the function). Such transactions can further involve qualia. == Quantum mechanics == During his career, Putnam espoused various positions on the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the 1960s and 1970s, he contributed to the quantum logic tradition, holding that the way to resolve quantum theory's apparent paradoxes is to modify the logical rules by which propositions' truth values are deduced. Putnam's first foray into this topic was "A Philosopher Looks at Quantum Mechanics" in 1965, followed by his 1969 essay "Is Logic Empirical?". He advanced different versions of quantum logic over the years, and eventually turned away from it in the 1990s, due to critiques by Nancy Cartwright, Michael Redhead, and others.: 265–280  In 2005, he wrote that he rejected the many-worlds interpretation because he could see no way for it to yield meaningful probabilities. He found both de Broglie–Bohm theory and the spontaneous collapse theory of Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber to be promising, yet also dissatisfying, since it was not clear that either could be made fully consistent with special relativity's symmetry requirements. == Neopragmatism and Wittgenstein == In the mid-1970s, Putnam became increasingly disillusioned with what he perceived as modern analytic philosophy's "scientism" and focus on metaphysics over ethics and everyday concerns.: 186–190  He also became convinced by his readings of James and John Dewey that there is no fact–value dichotomy; that is, normative (e.g., ethical and aesthetic) judgments often have a factual basis, while scientific judgments have a normative element.: 240  For a time, under Ludwig Wittgenstein's influence, Putnam adopted a pluralist view of philosophy itself and came to view most philosophical problems as no more than conceptual or linguistic confusions philosophers created by using ordinary language out of context. A book of articles on pragmatism by Ruth Anna Putnam and Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey, edited by David Macarthur, was published in 2017.Many of Putnam's last works addressed the concerns of ordinary people, particularly social problems. For example, he wrote about the nature of democracy, social justice and religion. He also discussed Jürgen Habermas's ideas, and wrote articles influenced by continental philosophy. == Major works and bibliography == Vincent C. Müller compiled a detailed bibliography of Putnam's writings, citing 16 books and 198 articles, published in 1993 in PhilPapers. Putnam, H. (1964). Benacerraf, Paul (ed.). Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. OCLC 1277244158. 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-521-29648-X Putnam, H. (March 1967). "The 'Innateness Hypothesis' and Explanatory Models in Linguistics". Synthese. 17 (1): 12–22. doi:10.1007/BF00485014. JSTOR 20114532. S2CID 17124615. Putnam, H. (1971). Philosophy of Logic. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-04-160009-6. Putnam, H. (1975). Mathematics, Matter and Method. Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-20665-5. OCLC 59168146. 2nd. ed., 1985 paperback: ISBN 0-521-29550-5 Putnam, H. (1975). Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 88-459-0257-9. 2003 paperback: ISBN 0-521-29551-3 Putnam, H. (1978). Meaning and the Moral Sciences. Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 123–140. ISBN 978-0-710-08754-6. OCLC 318417931. Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23035-3. OCLC 442822274. 2004 paperback: ISBN 0-521-29776-1 Putnam, H. (1983). Realism and Reason. Philosophical Papers, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24672-9. OCLC 490070776. 2002 paperback: ISBN 0-521-31394-5 Hempel, Carl G.; Putnam, H.; Essler, Wilhelm K., eds. (1983). Methodology, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honour of Wolfgang Stegmüller. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. ISBN 978-9-027-71646-0. OCLC 299388752. Essler, Wilhelm K.; Putnam, H.; Stegmüller, Wolfgang, eds. (1985). Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honour of Carl G. Hempel. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. OCLC 793401994. Putnam, H. (1987). The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9043-5. Putnam, H. (1988). Representation and Reality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-66074-7. OCLC 951364040. Putnam, H. (1990). Conant, J. F. (ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-74945-0. OCLC 1014989000. Putnam, H. (1992). Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-76094-8. Putnam, H.; Cohen, Ted; Guyer, Paul, eds. (1993). Pursuits of Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavell. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. ISBN 0-89672-266-X. Putnam, H. (1994). Conant, J. F. (ed.). Words and Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-95607-9. Putnam, H. (1995). Pragmatism: An Open Question. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19343-X. Based on the Gifford Lectures that Putnam delivered at the University of St Andrews in 1990 and 1991. Putnam, H. (1999). The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-10286-5. OCLC 868429895. Putnam, H. (2001). Enlightenment and Pragmatism. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum. ISBN 978-9-023-23739-6. OCLC 248668591. Putnam, H. (2002). The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01380-8. Putnam, H. (2002). Ethics Without Ontology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01851-6. Putnam, H. (2008). Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35133-3. OCLC 819172227. Putnam, H. (2012). De Caro, M.; Macarthur, D. (eds.). Philosophy in an Age of Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05013-6. OCLC 913024858. Putnam, H. (2016). De Caro, Mario (ed.). Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-65969-8. Putnam, H.; Putnam, R. A. (2017). Macarthur, David (ed.). Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-96750-2. == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers == References == == Further reading == Conant, James; Chakraborty, Sanjit, eds. (2022). Engaging Putnam. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-110-76916-6. OCLC 1302581520. Ben-Menahem, Y., ed. (2005). Hilary Putnam. Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81311-2. OCLC 912352048. == External links == Hilary Putnam's blog, Sardonic comment, as stated by Putnam in "Hookway and Quine", Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 51, no. 4, 2015, pp. 495–507. doi:10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.51.4.07 Hilary Putnam at PhilPapers Hilary Putnam at IMDb Hilary Putnam at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project London Review of Books contributor page Hilary Putnam: On Mind, Meaning and Reality Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Interview by Josh Harlan, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, Spring 1992. "To Think with Integrity" Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Hilary Putnam's Farewell Lecture, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, Spring 2000. A short film about the Putnam-Rorty debate and its influence on the pragmatist revival on YouTube Quotations related to Hilary Putnam at Wikiquote

David Malet Armstrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Malet_Armstrong

David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.Keith Campbell said that Armstrong's contributions to metaphysics and epistemology "helped to shape philosophy's agenda and terms of debate", and that Armstrong's work "always concerned to elaborate and defend a philosophy which is ontically economical, synoptic, and compatibly continuous with established results in the natural sciences". == Life and career == After studying at the University of Sydney, Armstrong undertook a B.Phil. at the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne. He taught at Birkbeck College in 1954–55, then at the University of Melbourne from 1956 to 1963. In 1964, he became Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where he stayed until his retirement in 1991. During his career, he was a visiting lecturer at a number of institutions including Yale, Stanford, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Texas at Austin and Franklin and Marshall College.In 1974, when the University of Sydney's Philosophy department split into two departments—the Department for General Philosophy and the Department for Traditional and Modern Philosophy—Armstrong joined the latter along with David Stove and Keith Campbell, while the former department pursued more radical politics and taught courses on Marxism and feminism. The two departments were reunified in 2000.Armstrong married Jennifer Mary de Bohun Clark in 1982 and had step children. He previously married Madeleine Annette Haydon in 1950. He also served in the Royal Australian Navy, in which his father had been a commodore.In 1950, Armstrong formed an Anti-Conscription Committee with David Stove and Eric Dowling (R. E. Dowling), all three former students of John Anderson, the Australian philosopher, and all later to be academic philosophers, who then began to support conscription and also believed that anti-conscription opinions ought to be suppressed.To mark the 50th anniversary in 2014 of Armstrong's appointment to the Challis Chair of Philosophy at Sydney University, Quadrant magazine published a tribute to him (originally written in 1991) by David Stove and an overview of Armstrong's work by Andrew Irvine. == Philosophy == Armstrong's philosophy is broadly naturalistic. In Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics, Armstrong states that his philosophical system rests upon "the assumption that all that exists is the space time world, the physical world as we say". He justifies this by saying that the physical world "seems obviously to exist" while other things "seem much more hypothetical". From this fundamental assumption flows a rejection of abstract objects including Platonic forms.Armstrong's development as a philosopher was influenced heavily by John Anderson, David Lewis, and J. J. C. Smart, as well as by Ullin Place, Herbert Feigl, Gilbert Ryle and G. E. Moore. Armstrong collaborated with C. B. Martin on a collection of critical essays on John Locke and George Berkeley.Armstrong's philosophy, while systematic, does not spend any time on social or ethical matters, and also does not attempt to build a philosophy of language. He once described his slogan as 'Put semantics last' and, in Universals & Scientific Realism, he rebuts an argument in favour of Plato's theory of forms that rely on semantics by describing "a long but, I think, on the whole discreditable tradition which tries to settle ontological questions on the basis of semantic considerations". === Metaphysics === ==== Universals ==== In metaphysics, Armstrong defends the view that universals exist (although Platonic uninstantiated universals do not exist). Those universals match up with the fundamental particles that science tells us about. Armstrong describes his philosophy as a form of scientific realism.Armstrong's universals are "sparse": not every predicate will have an accompanying property, but only those which are deemed basic by scientific investigation. The ultimate ontology of universals would only be realised with the completion of physical science. Mass would thus be a universal (subject to mass not being discarded by future physicists). Armstrong realises that we will need to refer to and use properties that are not considered universals in his sparse ontology—for instance, being able to refer to something being a game (to use the example from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations). Armstrong then suggests that a supervenience relation exists between these second order properties and the ontologically authentic universals given to us by physics.Armstrong's theory of universals treats relations as having no particular ontological difficulty, they can be treated in the same way non-relational properties are. How Armstrong's theory of universals deals with relations with varying adicities has been raised as an issue by Fraser MacBride. MacBride argues that there can be relations where the number of terms in the relation varies across instances. Armstrong's response is to affirm a theory he describes as the Principle of Instantial Invariance, wherein the adicity of properties are essential and invariant. According to Armstrong, complex relations which seem to challenge the principle are not ontologically real but are second-order properties that can be reduced to more basic properties that subscribe to the Principle of Instantial Invariance.Armstrong rejects nominalist accounts of properties that attempt to align properties simply with classes. Coextension is a problem they face: if properties are simply classes, in a world where all blue things are also wet, and all wet things are also blue, class nominalists are unable to draw a distinction between the property of being blue and being wet. He provides an analogy to the argument in Euthyphro: to say that electrons are electrons because they are part of the class of electrons puts the cart before the horse. They are part of the class of electrons because they are electrons.In Armstrong's view, nominalisms can also be criticised for producing a blob theory of reality. Objects have structure: they have parts, those parts are made of molecules, which are in turn made up of atoms standing in relation to one another, which are in turn made up of subatomic particles and so on. Blobbiness also threatens Platonic universals: a particular instantiating a universal in a world of Platonic universals becomes a matter of the blob-particular having a relation to a universal elsewhere (in the Platonic heaven, say), rather than having an internal relation in the way that a chemical element does to a constituent atom.Armstrong further rejects nominalisms that deny that properties and relations exist in reality because he suggests that these sorts of nominalisms, specifically referring to what he calls class nominalism, and resemblance nominalism, postulate primitives of either class membership or resemblance. This primitive results in a vicious regress for both kinds of nominalisms, Armstrong suggests, thus motivating his states-of-affairs based system that unites properties by postulating a primitive tie of instantiation based on a fact-ontology, called states of affairs.In terms of the origin of Armstrong's view of universals, Armstrong says his view of universals is "relatively unexplored territory" but points to Hilary Putnam's 1970 paper 'On Properties' as a possible forerunner. He also says that "Plato in his later works, Aristotle and the Scholastic Realists were ahead of contemporary philosophy in this matter, although handicapped by the relative backwardness of the science and the scientific methodology of their day". ==== States of affairs ==== Central to Armstrong's philosophy is the idea of states of affairs ("facts" in Russell's terminology): in Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics, Armstrong claims that states of affairs are "the fundamental structures in reality". A state of affairs roughly put is an instantiation of a particular and a universal: a state of affairs might be that a particular atom exists, instantiating a universal (say, that it is of a particular element, if chemical elements are ultimately accepted as part of Armstrong's universals). The particulars in Armstrong's ontology must have at least one universal—just as he rejects uninstantiated universals, he also rejects "unpropertied particulars".Armstrong argues that states of affairs are distinct things in ontology because they are more than the sum of their parts. If some particular a has a non-symmetric relation R to another particular b, then R (a, b) differs from R (b, a). It may be the case that R (a, b) obtains in the world but R (b, a) does not. Without states of affairs instantiating the particulars and universals (including relations), we cannot account for the truth of the one case and the falsity of the other. ==== Laws of nature ==== Armstrong's theory of universals gives him the basis for an understanding of laws of nature as being relations between universals, a non-Humean account of laws of nature proposed independently by Armstrong, Michael Tooley, and Fred Dretske. This account posits that the relations between universals are truthmakers for the statements about physical laws, and it is realist as it accepts that laws of nature are a feature of the world rather than just a way we talk about the world. Armstrong identifies the laws as holding between universals rather than particulars as an account of laws involving just particulars rather than universals would not adequately explain how laws of nature operate in the case of counterfactuals.To illustrate the theory, Stephen Mumford gives the example of all ravens are black. Under the theory of Armstrong, Tooley and Dretske, there is a relation of necessity between the universals ravenhood and blackness, rather than there being a relationship with every single raven. This allows the explanation of laws of nature that have not been instantiated. Mumford cites the frequently-used example of the moa bird: "It is supposed that every bird of this now-extinct species died at a young age, though not because of anything in its genetic makeup. Rather, it died mainly because of some virus that just happened to sweep through the population. One bird could have escaped the virus only to be eaten by a predator on the day before its fiftieth birthday." Under the theory of Armstrong, Tooley and Dretske, such a coincidence would not be a law of nature. ==== Dispositions ==== Armstrong rejects dispositionalism, the idea that dispositional properties (or powers as they are sometimes referred to) are ontologically significant and have an important role in explaining laws of nature. Armstrong believes that the challenge that dispositionalism presents for his account of laws of nature is not in the case of manifested dispositions (say, a glass dropping on the ground and breaking) but unmanifested dispositions (the fact that counter factually if one were to drop the glass on the ground, it would break). Armstrong simply states that the disposition is simply in the nature of the instantiated properties of the thing which is supposed to have the disposition. ==== Truth and truthmakers ==== Regarding truth, Armstrong holds to what he describes as a "maximalist version" of truthmaker theory: he believes that every truth has a truthmaker, although there doesn't necessarily exist a one-to-one mapping between truth and truthmaker. The possibility of one to many relations between truths and truthmakers is a feature that Armstrong believes allows truthmaker theory to answer some of the criticisms levelled at older correspondence theories of truth (of which he believes truthmaker theory to be an improved version). Negative truths have truthmakers in Armstrong's account: he gives the example of a wall that is painted green. The wall being painted green is a truth for the proposition that it is not painted white and the proposition that it is not painted red and so on.The difficulty in providing an adequate account of truthmakers for events in the past is one reason Armstrong gives for rejecting presentism—the view that only the present exists (another reason being the incompatibility of such a view with special relativity). Presentists, Armstrong argues, must either deny that truthmakers are needed for statements about the past, or account for them "by postulating rather strange truthmakers". ==== Mind ==== Armstrong holds to a physicalist, functionalist theory of the mind. He initially was attracted to Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind and the rejection of Cartesian dualism. Armstrong did not accept behaviourism and instead defended a theory he referred to as the "central-state theory" which identifies mental states with the state of the central nervous system. In A Materialist Theory of the Mind, he accepted that mental states such as consciousness exist, but stated that they can be explained as physical phenomena. Armstrong attributes his adoption of the central-state theory to the work of J. J. C. Smart—specifically the paper 'Sensations and Brain Processes'—and traces the lineage from there to Ullin Place's 1956 paper 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process?'Stephen Mumford said that Armstrong's A Materialist Theory of the Mind "represents an authoritative statement of Australian materialism and was, and still is, a seminal piece of philosophy". === Epistemology === Armstrong's view of knowledge is that the conditions of knowledge are satisfied when you have a justified true belief that you arrived at through a reliable process: that is, the belief was caused by some factor in the external world (hence the label of externalism). Armstrong uses the analogy of a thermometer: as a thermometer changes to reflect the temperature of the environment it is in, so must one's beliefs if they are reliably formed. The connection between knowledge and the external world, for Armstrong, is a nomological relationship (that is, a law of nature relationship). Here, Armstrong's view is broadly similar to that of Alvin Goldman and Robert Nozick. The intuitions that lead to this kind of externalism led Alvin Plantinga towards an account of knowledge that added the requirement for 'properly-functioning' cognitive systems operating according to a design plan. ==== Belief ==== On the question of the relationship between beliefs and knowledge, Armstrong defends a "weak acceptance" of the belief condition, namely that if a person can be said to know some thing p, he or she believes p. In a paper for the Aristotelian Society, Armstrong rejects a series of linguistic arguments for a rejection of the belief condition which argue that one can have knowledge without having belief because a common usage of the word 'belief' is to imply lack of knowledge—Armstrong gives the example of if you asked a man on a railway station whether the train has just left and he said "I believe it has", you would take from this that he does not know that it has.Armstrong also argues that contradictory beliefs show that there is a connection between beliefs and knowledge. He gives the example of a woman who has learned her husband is dead but cannot bring herself to believe her husband is dead. She both believes and disbelieves her husband is dead: it just happens that one of her two beliefs is justified, true and satisfies some knowledge conditions.Armstrong presents a response to Colin Radford's modified version of the "unconfident examinee" example. A student is asked when Queen Elizabeth I died, and he hesitatingly answers "1603" and exhibits no confidence in his answer. He has forgotten that at some point previously, he studied English history. Radford presents this as an example of knowledge without belief. But Armstrong differs on this: the unconfident examinee has a belief that Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, he knows that she died in 1603, but he does not know that he knows. Armstrong rejects the KK Principle—that to know some thing p, one must know that one knows p. Armstrong's rejection of the KK Principle is consistent with his wider externalist project. == Bibliography == === Books === —— (1960). Berkeley's Theory of Vision. Melbourne University Press. OL 2981233W. —— (1961). Perception and the Physical World. Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-7100-3603-2. —— (1962). Bodily Sensations. Routledge & Kegan Paul. OL 5873805M. —— (1968). A Materialist Theory of the Mind. Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-415-10031-1. —— (1973). Belief, Truth and Knowledge. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-08706-3. —— (1978). Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-21741-5. —— (1981). The Nature of Mind and Other Essays. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-1353-7. —— (1983). What is a Law of Nature?. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-25343-7. —— (1989). A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-37427-9. —— (1989). Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-0772-5. —— (1997). A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-58064-9. —— (1999). The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-9056-7. —— (2004). Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83832-0. —— (2010). Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959061-2. === Selected articles === —— (1963). "Is Introspective Knowledge Incorrigible?". Philosophical Review. 72 (4): 417–432. doi:10.2307/2183028. JSTOR 2183028. —— (1971). "Meaning and Communication". Philosophical Review. 80 (4): 427–447. doi:10.2307/2183752. JSTOR 2183752. —— (1984). Alan Ker Stout, 1900–1983 (PDF). Proceedings of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Vol. 12. pp. 106–109. ISBN 978-0-909897-07-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 September 2015. Forrest, P.; —— (1984). "An Argument against David Lewis' Theory of Possible Worlds". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 62 (2): 164–168. doi:10.1080/00048408412341351. —— (1991). "Classes are States of Affairs". Mind. 100 (2): 189–200. doi:10.1093/mind/C.398.189. JSTOR 2254866. —— (2000). "Black Swans: The formative influences in Australian philosophy". In Brogaard, B.; Smith, B. (eds.). Proceedings of the 23rd International Wittgenstein Symposium. === Miscellaneous === —— (2001). "Interview". In Jobling, Lee; Runcie, Catherine (eds.). Matters of the Mind: Poems, Essays and Interviews in Honour of Leonie Kramer. University of Sydney. pp. 322–332. ISBN 978-1-86487-362-7. Maurin, Anna-Sofia; Brinck, Ingar (2005). "Revisionary Metaphysics: An interview with D. M. Armstrong". Theoria. 71 (1): 3–19. doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.2005.tb01001.x. == See also == Moderate realism "The Nature of Mind" == References == == Further reading == Anstey, P.; Braddon-Mitchell, D., eds. (2021). Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192843722. Bacon, J.; Campbell, K.; Reinhardt, L., eds. (1993). Ontology, Causality, and Mind: Essays in Honour of D.M. Armstrong. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-41562-0. Bogdan, R. J., ed. (1984). D.M. Armstrong. D. Reidel. ISBN 978-90-277-1657-6. Franklin, J. (2003). Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia. Macleay Press. Chapters 9, 11, 12. ISBN 978-1-876492-08-3. Irvine, A. (1 March 2014). "David Armstrong and Australian Materialism". Quadrant. pp. 36–39. Irvine, A. (1 March 2014). "David Armstrong: A Reader's Guide". Quadrant. pp. 40–41. Mumford, S. (2007). David Armstrong. Acumen Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84465-100-9. Stove, D. (1 March 2014). "A Tribute to David Armstrong". Quadrant. pp. 42–43. == External links == Guide to the Papers of David Armstrong David Armstrong's Curriculum Vitae P. Forrest, 'Armstrong, D.M.' in A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (archived) David Armstrong (1926-2014), Sydney philosopher (video) Armstrong's Pufendorf Lectures 2004 Armstrong speaks about his teacher John Anderson

Eugene Gendlin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin

Eugene Tovio Gendlin (born Eugen Gendelin; 25 December 1926 – 1 May 2017) was an American philosopher who developed ways of thinking about and working with living process, the bodily felt sense and the "philosophy of the implicit". Though he had no degree in the field of psychology, his advanced study with Carl Rogers, his longtime practice of psychotherapy and his extensive writings in the field of psychology have made him perhaps better known in that field than in philosophy. He studied under Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy, at the University of Chicago and received his PhD in philosophy in 1958. Gendlin's theories impacted Rogers' own beliefs and played a role in Rogers' view of psychotherapy. From 1958 to 1963 Gendlin was Research Director at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute of the University of Wisconsin. He served as an associate professor in the departments of Philosophy and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago from 1964 until 1995. Gendlin is best known for Focusing, a psychotherapy technique, and for "Thinking at the Edge", a general procedure for "thinking with more than patterns". In the 1950s and 60s, under the guidance of Rogers, Gendlin did research demonstrating that a client's ability to realize lasting positive change in psychotherapy depended on their ability to access a nonverbal, bodily feel of the issues that brought them into therapy. Gendlin gave the name "felt sense" to this intuitive body-feel for unresolved issues. Realizing that people could be taught this skill, in 1978 Gendlin published his best-selling book Focusing, which presented a six step method for discovering one's felt sense and drawing on it for personal development. Gendlin founded The Focusing Institute in 1985 (now the International Focusing Institute) to facilitate training and education in Focusing for academic and professional communities and to share the practice with the public. In the mid-1980s, Gendlin served on the original editorial board for the journal The Humanistic Psychologist, published by Division 32 of the American Psychological Association (APA). He has been honored by the APA four times, and was the first recipient of their Distinguished Professional Award in Psychology and Psychotherapy (given by Division 29, this award is now called the Distinguished Psychologist Award for Contributions to Psychology and Psychotherapy). He was awarded the Viktor Frankl prize by the Viktor Frankl Family Foundation in 2008. In 2016, he was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the World Association for Person Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling and another lifetime achievement award was given to him that same year by the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. Gendlin was a founder and longtime editor of the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice as well as the in-house journal of the Focusing Institute called the Folio, and is the author of a number of books, including Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method. The mass-market edition of his popular classic Focusing has been translated into 17 languages and sold more than a half million copies. == Philosophy == Gendlin regarded himself first and foremost as a philosopher and he brought a rigorous philosophical perspective to psychology, presented in his early book Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning and later developed into a comprehensive theory of the deep nature of life processes, articulated in his masterwork A Process Model. From 1968 to 1995 he taught at the University of Chicago, where he taught a course on theory-building that later gave rise to a new practice called "Thinking at the Edge", a fourteen-step method for drawing on one's non-conceptual, experiential knowing about any topic to create novel theory and concepts. Gendlin asserts that an organism's living interaction with its environment is prior (temporally and philosophically) to abstract knowledge about its environment. Living is an intricate, ordered interaction with the environment, and as such, is a kind of knowing. Abstract knowledge is a development of this more basic knowing.The fact that concepts change does not mean that they are arbitrary; concepts can be formulated in many diverse and incompatible ways, but to the extent that they are rooted in experience, each formulation has its own precise relationship to experience. Thus Gendlin's philosophy goes beyond relativism and postmodernism. He agrees with postmodernists that culture and language are always already implicit in experiencing and in concepts. Empirical testing is crucial, but it does not keep science from changing every few years. No assertions are simply "objective".Gendlin points out that the universe (and everything in it) is implicitly more intricate than concepts, because a) it includes them, and b) all concepts and logical units are generated in a wider, more than conceptual process (which Gendlin calls implicit intricacy). This wider process is more than logical, in a way that has a number of characteristic regularities. Gendlin has shown that it is possible to refer directly to this process in the context of a given problem or situation and systematically generate new concepts and more precise logical units.Because human beings are in an ongoing interaction with the world (they breathe, eat, and interact with others in every context and in any field in which they work), their bodies are a "knowing" which is more than conceptual and which implies further steps. Thus, it is possible for one to drive a car while carrying on an animated conversation; and it is possible for Einstein to say that he had a "feel" for his theory years before he could formulate it.Human beings' ongoing interaction with the world provides ongoing validity. Each move, from pumping blood to discussing philosophy, implies a next step, an organic carrying forward. Humans feel this carrying forward both in the move itself and in the feedback it generates: at each moment, it is possible to feel how things are moving and what is implied next. With specific training, one can learn to attend to this feeling more deeply, so that a holistic felt sense of the whole situation can form.A felt sense is quite different from "feeling" in the sense of emotions; it is one's bodily awareness of the ongoing life process. Because a felt sense is a living interaction in the world, it is not relative in the way that concepts are. A felt sense is more ordered than concepts and has its own properties, different from those of logic; for example, it is very precise, more intricate, and can be conceptualized in a variety of non-arbitrary ways. Much of Gendlin's philosophy is concerned with showing how this implicit bodily knowing functions in relation to logic. For example, Gendlin has found that when the felt sense is allowed to function in relation to concepts, each carries the other forward, through steps of deeper feel and new formulation.Gendlin underlines that one can (and often does) "progress" in one's understanding, and that this involves transitions in which existing conceptual models are disrupted, but that one can "feel" when a carrying forward in insight is (or is not) occurring. One can "feel" this because human logical conceptions are dependent on a more intricate order, which is living-in-the-world. Useful concepts derive from and are relative to this sense more than logical, intricate order, not the other way round. == Focusing == Focusing emerged from Gendlin's collaboration with psychologist Carl Rogers. Gendlin developed a way of measuring the extent to which an individual refers to a felt sense; and he found in a series of studies that therapy clients who have positive outcomes do much more of this. He then developed a way to teach people to refer to their felt sense, so clients could do better in therapy. This training is called 'Focusing'. Further research showed that Focusing can be used outside therapy to address a variety of issues. It is described in Gendlin's book, Focusing, which has sold over 500,000 copies and is printed in twelve languages. In Focusing he wrote: When I use the word "body," I mean more than the physical machine. Not only do you physically live the circumstances around you but also those you only think of in your mind. Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people–in fact, the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside. In 1970, Gendlin was the first person to receive the "Distinguished Professional Award in Psychology and Psychotherapy" from the Psychotherapy Division (Division 29) of the American Psychological Association. In 2000, Gendlin also received, along with The Focusing Institute, the Charlotte and Karl Bühler Award from the Society of Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association). In 2007, he was a recipient of the Viktor Frankl Award of the City of Vienna for outstanding achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy.The worldwide dissemination of Focusing has been facilitated by The International Focusing Institute. This nonprofit organization defines itself as "an international, cross-cultural organization dedicated to supporting individuals and groups world-wide who are practicing, teaching and developing Focusing and its underlying philosophy". Their 2010 Membership Directory listed about 2,000 members in over 40 countries. Its website houses the Gendlin Online Library. == Thinking at the Edge == Thinking at the Edge (TAE), a practice initially developed by Mary N. Hendricks on the basis of Eugene Gendlin's philosophy of the implicit, is a way of developing one's implicit knowing into an articulated theory. For example, a professional might have had an inchoate felt sense for a problem for many years. Using TAE, it is possible to develop concepts that explicate the felt sense very precisely so that what was implicit knowledge can generate an explicit theory that can contribute to the field. == Personal life == Gendlin was born in Vienna, Austria, on December 25, 1926. He lived with his parents in the 9th district of Vienna, a very Jewish district at that time. His mother was Sylvia Gendelin-Tobell. His father, Leonid Gendelin, had earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Graz. Dr. Gendelin had a dry cleaning business in Vienna. The family left Austria due to the rise of the Nazi party and the danger to Jewish families such as his. They first fled to the Netherlands and later emigrated to the United States on the SS Paris (1916) on its last voyage to New York, arriving January 11, 1939. The family changed their name to Gendlin upon their arrival in the United States, and in English it is pronounced JEHND-lin (not with the hard "g" as in German pronunciation). Gendlin went on to serve in the United States Navy and to become a U.S. citizen.Gendlin lived in New York state until his death. He had three children: Gerry and Judith from his first marriage with wife Fran; and a daughter, Elissa, with his second wife, Mary Hendricks-Gendlin. Gerry Gendlin was an expert on Russia and served as an associate professor in the department of History, Politics, Languages and Cultures at Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Mary worked closely with Gendlin and served for many years as the director of The Focusing Institute. Mary Hendricks-Gendlin died in 2015. == Awards == 1970: "Distinguished Professional Award in Psychology and Psychotherapy", from Division 29 of the American Psychological Association (Division of Psychotherapy) 2000: "Charlotte and Karl Bühler Award" (given jointly to Gendlin and The Focusing Institute), from Division 32 of the American Psychological Association (the Society for Humanistic Psychology) 2007: "Viktor Frankl Award of the City of Vienna for outstanding achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy", from the Viktor Frankl Foundation 2011: "Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology", from Division 24 of the American Psychological Association (The Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) 2016: "Lifetime Achievement", from the World Association for Person Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling 2016: "Lifetime Achievement", from the US Association for Body Psychotherapy 2021: "Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement", from Division 24 of the American Psychological Association (The Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) == Bibliography == Gendlin's philosophical works include: Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: a Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective (1962) Thinking Beyond Patterns: Body, Language, and Situations (1991) The Primacy of the body, not the primacy of perception: How the body knows the situation and philosophy (1992) Crossing and Dipping: Some Terms for Approaching the Interface between Natural Understanding and Logical Formulation (1995) A Process Model (1997) The Responsive Order: A New Empiricism (1997) How philosophy cannot appeal to experience, and how it can (1997) (in D.M. Levin [Ed.], Language beyond postmodernism: saying and thinking in Gendlin's philosophy, pp. 3–41 & 343). "Introduction to Thinking At The Edge" (2004) (in The Folio, Vol 19 No 1, 2004). Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, Volume 1: Books I & II; Volume 2: Book III. Spring Valley, New York: The Focusing Institute (2012).His writings on focusing and psychotherapy include: Focusing (1978) Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (1986) Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy (1996)Many of Gendlin's writings are available online at the Focusing Institute and the Gendlin Online Library. == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers == References == == External links == Gendlin keynote presentation and discussion at the Psychology of Trust and Feeling Conference at Stony Brook University Gendlin Online Library with many texts written by Gendlin: all documents International Focusing Institute Memorial site for Eugene Gendlin

John Howard Yoder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Yoder

John Howard Yoder (December 27, 1927 – December 30, 1997) was an American Mennonite theologian and ethicist best known for his defense of Christian pacifism. His most influential book was The Politics of Jesus, which was first published in 1972. Yoder was a Mennonite and wrote from an Anabaptist perspective. He spent the latter part of his career teaching at the University of Notre Dame. In 1992, media reports emerged that Yoder had sexually abused women in preceding decades, with as many as over 50 complainants. The Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary acknowledged in a statement from 2014 that sexual abuse had taken place and it had been tolerated partly because he was the leading Mennonite theologian of his day and partly because there were not the safeguards in place that there are today. == Life == Yoder was born on December 29, 1927, near Smithville, Ohio. He earned his undergraduate degree from Goshen College where he studied under the Mennonite theologian Harold S. Bender. He completed his Doctor of Theology degree at the University of Basel, Switzerland, studying under Karl Barth, Oscar Cullmann, Walther Eichrodt, and Karl Jaspers. After the Second World War, Yoder traveled to Europe to direct relief efforts for the Mennonite Central Committee. Yoder was instrumental in reviving European Mennonites following the war. Upon returning to the United States, he spent a year working at his father's greenhouse business in Wooster, Ohio. Yoder began his teaching career at Goshen Biblical Seminary. He was Professor of Theology at Goshen Biblical Seminary and Mennonite Biblical Seminary (the two seminaries that formed what is now called Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary) from 1958 to 1961 and from 1965 to 1984. While still teaching at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, he also began teaching at the University of Notre Dame, where he became a Professor of Theology and eventually a Fellow of the Institute for International Peace Studies. Yoder sexually abused over 100 women during the 1970s and 1980s while at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The abuse was widely rumored, but not acted upon even when board members became aware of the numerous accusations. The Elkhart Truth first reported on the allegations June 29, 1992. The seminary has acknowledged Yoder's crimes against women and has apologized for not acting on them at the time.Yoder died on December 30, 1997, one day after his 70th birthday. His personal papers are housed at the Mennonite Church USA Archives. == Thought == Yoder is best remembered for his work related to Christian ethics. Rejecting the assumption that human history is driven by coercive power, Yoder argued that it was rather God – working in, with, and through the nonviolent, nonresistant community of disciples of Jesus – who has been the ultimate motivational force in human affairs. When a Christian church in the past made alliances with political rulers, it was because it had lost confidence in this truth. He called the arrangement whereby the state and the church each supported the goals of the other Constantinianism, and he regarded this arrangement as a dangerous and constant temptation. He argued that the early Church was a socially subversive community because of their shared life focusing on the Kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of any mere man, but later after the rise of Constantine the Great the more worldly focused Church came to covet temporal power and political influence. Yoder called this the Constantinian shift. He further argued that Jesus himself rejected this temptation, even to the point of dying a horrible and cruel death. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead was, in this view, God's way of vindicating Christ's unwavering obedience, as well as setting the example of a life laid down in serving and loving others, for all who claim to follow Jesus. Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate (2013), edited by John D. Roth, is a collection of essays by Christian pacifists addressing the scholarly debate between Yoder and Peter Leithart about the nature of the Emperor Constantine's impact on Christianity. In his book Constantine Revisited, Leithart opposed Yoder's argument that God preferred Christians to focus on the spiritual needs around them and to build the Kingdom of God, rejecting coercion for a life of service, thereby remaining a politically powerless, physically defenseless minority.Likewise, Yoder argued, the primary responsibility of Christians is not to take over society and impose their convictions and values on people who don't share their faith, but to "be the church." By refusing to return evil for evil, by living in peace, sharing goods, and doing deeds of charity such as caring for widows and orphans as opportunities arise, the church witnesses, says Yoder, to the fact that an alternative to a society based on violence or the threat of violence has been made possible by the life, death, resurrection and teachings of Jesus. The Kingdom of God comes to rule in a different way, by one heart at a time yielding to the love of God. Yoder claims that the church thus lives in the conviction that God calls Christians to imitate the way of Christ in his absolute obedience, even if it leads to their deaths, for they, too, will finally be vindicated in resurrection. In bringing traditional Mennonite convictions to the attention of a wider critical audience, Yoder reenergized stale theological debates over foundational Christian ecclesiological, Christological, and ethical beliefs. Yoder rejected Enlightenment presuppositions, epitomized by Immanuel Kant, about the possibility of a universal, rational ethic. Abandoning the search for a universal ethic underlying Christian and non-Christian morality, as well as attempts to "translate" Christian convictions into a common moral parlance, he argued that what is expected of Christians, morally, need not be binding for all people. Yoder defended himself against charges of incoherence and hypocrisy by arguing for the legitimacy of moral double standards, and by pointing out that since world affairs are ultimately governed by God's providence, Christians are better off being the Church, than following compromised moral systems that try to reconcile biblical revelation with the necessities of governance. == The Politics of Jesus == Of his many books, the most widely recognized has undoubtedly been The Politics of Jesus (1972); it has been translated into at least ten languages. In it, Yoder argues against popular views of Jesus, particularly those views held by Reinhold Niebuhr, which he believed to be dominant at the time. Niebuhr argued for a realist philosophy, which Yoder felt failed to take seriously the call or person of Jesus Christ. After showing what he believed to be inconsistencies of Niebuhr's perspective, Yoder attempted to demonstrate by an exegesis of the Gospel of Luke and parts of Paul's letter to the Romans that, in his view, a radical Christian pacifism was the most faithful approach for the disciple of Christ. Yoder argued that being Christian is a political standpoint and that Christians ought not ignore that calling. The Politics of Jesus was ranked by the evangelical magazine Christianity Today as the fifth most important religious book of the 20th century. == Sexual abuse == According to articles in The Elkhart Truth, allegations that Yoder had sexually abused, harassed, and assaulted women circulated for decades and became known in wider Christian circles, but were never publicly acknowledged until 1992. After repeated institutional failures to address these abuses a group of victims threatened to engage in a public protest at a Bethel College (in North Newton, Kansas) conference where Yoder was to be a speaker. The college President rescinded Yoder's invitation, the student newspaper reported the story, and one of the victims reported that Bethel was "the first institution in the church that has taken this seriously". The Elkhart Truth articles detail extensive allegations of harassment of students and others.From the summer of 1992 to the summer of 1996, Yoder submitted to the discipline of the Indiana–Michigan Conference of the Mennonite Church for allegations of sexual misconduct. Yoder's writing in the unpublished 1995 book The Case for Punishment suggested he believed he was the innocent scapegoat of a conspiracy. Upon the conclusion of the process, the church urged Yoder "to use his gifts of writing and teaching."Despite the allegations of abuse, Yoder's obituary in The New York Times did not mention any improprieties. Sixteen years after his death, in October 2013, The New York Times ran an article discussing the allegations, quoting one of the complainants Carolyn Heggen who claimed that more than 50 women "said that Mr. Yoder had touched them or made advances." The article also discussed the recent formation of a support group for victims.More recently, the Mennonite church and Christian peace theologians are actively trying to come to grips with the sexual abuse – and apparent institutional cover-up – which taints the legacy of John Howard Yoder.In October 2014, the governing board of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) released the following statement: With a desire to contribute to the larger church discernment process and to own the specific responsibility of the seminary, the AMBS board in their October 23–25 meeting approved a statement acknowledging the pain suffered by women who were victimized by Yoder: As an AMBS Board, we lament the terrible abuse many women suffered from John Howard Yoder. We also lament that there has not been transparency about how the seminary's leadership responded at that time or any institutional public acknowledgement of regret for what went so horribly wrong. We commit to an ongoing, transparent process of institutional accountability which the president along with the board chair initiated, including work with the historian who will provide a scholarly analysis of what transpired. We will respond more fully once the historical account is published. We also support the planning of an AMBS-based service of lament, acknowledgement and hope in March 2015. Seminary leaders held an AMBS-based gathering, including a Service of Lament, Confession, and Hope on the weekend of March 21–22, 2015.The historian Rachel Waltner Goossen was commissioned by Mennonite Church USA to produce a complete report chronicling Yoder's sexual abuse and church responses to it, which was published in January 2015. == Selected works == The Christian and Capital Punishment (1961) Christ and the Powers (translator) by Hendrik Berkhof (1962) The Christian Pacifism of Karl Barth (1964) The Christian Witness to the State (1964) Discipleship as Political Responsibility (1964) Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Pacifism (1968) Karl Barth and the Problem of War (1970) The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (1971) Nevertheless: The Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism (1971) The Politics of Jesus (1972) The Legacy of Michael Sattler, editor and translator (1973) The Schleitheim Confession, editor and translator (1977) Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution: A Companion to Bainton (1983) What Would You Do? A Serious Answer to a Standard Question (1983) God's Revolution: The Witness of Eberhard Arnold, editor (1984) The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (1984) When War Is Unjust: Being Honest In Just-War Thinking (1984) He Came Preaching Peace (1985) The Fullness of Christ: Paul's Revolutionary Vision of Universal Ministry (1987) The Death Penalty Debate: Two Opposing Views of Capital Punishment (1991) A Declaration of Peace: In God's People the World's Renewal Has Begun (with Douglas Gwyn, George Hunsinger, and Eugene F. Roop) (1991) Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (1991) The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical (1994) Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (with Glen Stassen and Diane Yeager) (1996) For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public (1997) To Hear the Word (2001) Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method (2002) Karl Barth and the Problem of War, and Other Essays on Barth (2003) The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited (2003) Anabaptism and Reformation in Switzerland: An Historical and Theological Analysis of the Dialogues Between Anabaptists and Reformers (2004) The War of the Lamb: The Ethics of Nonviolence and Peacemaking (2009) Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution (2009) Nonviolence: A Brief History – The Warsaw Lectures (2010) Theology of Mission: A Believers Church Perspective (2014) === Articles and book chapters === (1988) The Evangelical Round Table: The Sanctity of Life (Volume 3) (1991) Declaration on Peace: In God's People the World's Renewal Has Begun (1997) God's Revolution: Justice, Community, and the Coming Kingdom == See also == Christian anarchism Disciple (Christianity) § Radical discipleship Liberation theology List of peace activists Oak Grove Mennonite Church Peace and conflict studies Peace churches Radical Christianity == References == === Footnotes === === Bibliography === == External links == The Yoder Index. "A searchable index of the writings of John Howard Yoder" by John Nugent, Branson Parler, and Jason Vance. A simplified summary of John H. Yoder's book: The Politics of Jesus at the Wayback Machine (archived March 18, 2008) by Nathan Hobby with James Patton Remembering John Howard Yoder, by Stanley Hauerwas, First Things Articles and video of John Howard Yoder, New online articles and video of Yoder, by Jesus Radicals John H. Yoder Reading Room, Online texts by and on Yoder (Tyndale Seminary) John Howard Yoder Digital Collection, Primarily unpublished works by Yoder, (by Goshen College Mennonite Historical Library, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and Mennonite Church USA Archives)

Noam Chomsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner. An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. Chomsky began teaching at the University of Arizona in 2017. Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. == Life == === Childhood: 1928–1945 === Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents, William Chomsky and Elsie Simonofsky, were Jewish immigrants. William had fled the Russian Empire in 1913 to escape conscription and worked in Baltimore sweatshops and Hebrew elementary schools before attending university. After moving to Philadelphia, William became principal of the Congregation Mikveh Israel religious school and joined the Gratz College faculty. He placed great emphasis on educating people so that they would be "well integrated, free and independent in their thinking, concerned about improving and enhancing the world, and eager to participate in making life more meaningful and worthwhile for all", a mission that shaped and was subsequently adopted by his son. Elsie, who also taught at Mikveh Israel, shared her leftist politics and care for social issues with her sons.Noam's only sibling, David Eli Chomsky (1934–2021), was born five years later, and worked as a cardiologist in Philadelphia. The brothers were close, though David was more easygoing while Noam could be very competitive. They were raised Jewish, being taught Hebrew and regularly involved with discussing the political theories of Zionism; the family was particularly influenced by the Left Zionist writings of Ahad Ha'am. Chomsky has called his parents "dedicated Hebraists". He faced antisemitism as a child, particularly from Philadelphia's Irish and German communities.Chomsky attended the independent, Deweyite Oak Lane Country Day School and Philadelphia's Central High School, where he excelled academically and joined various clubs and societies, but was troubled by the school's hierarchical and domineering teaching methods. He also attended Hebrew High School at Gratz College, where his father taught. Chomsky has said that his father's doctoral dissertation on the medieval Hebrew grammarian David Kimhi influenced his later thinking on linguistics.Chomsky has described his parents as "normal Roosevelt Democrats" with center-left politics, but relatives involved in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union exposed him to socialism and far-left politics. He was substantially influenced by his uncle and the Jewish leftists who frequented his New York City newspaper stand to debate current affairs. Chomsky himself often visited left-wing and anarchist bookstores when visiting his uncle in the city, voraciously reading political literature. He became absorbed in the story of the 1939 fall of Barcelona and suppression of the Spanish anarchosyndicalist movement, writing his first article on the topic at the age of 10. That he came to identify with anarchism first rather than another leftist movement, he described as a "lucky accident". Chomsky was firmly anti-Bolshevik by his early teens. === University: 1945–1955 === In 1945, at the age of 16, Chomsky began a general program of study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he explored philosophy, logic, and languages and developed a primary interest in learning Arabic. Living at home, he funded his undergraduate degree by teaching Hebrew. Frustrated with his experiences at the university, he considered dropping out and moving to a kibbutz in Mandatory Palestine, but his intellectual curiosity was reawakened through conversations with the linguist Zellig Harris, whom he first met in a political circle in 1947. Harris introduced Chomsky to the field of theoretical linguistics and convinced him to major in the subject. Chomsky's BA honors thesis, "Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew", applied Harris's methods to the language. Chomsky revised this thesis for his MA, which he received from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951; it was subsequently published as a book. He also developed his interest in philosophy while at university, in particular under the tutelage of Nelson Goodman.From 1951 to 1955 Chomsky was a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, where he undertook research on what became his doctoral dissertation. Having been encouraged by Goodman to apply, Chomsky was attracted to Harvard in part because the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine was based there. Both Quine and a visiting philosopher, J. L. Austin of the University of Oxford, strongly influenced Chomsky. In 1952, Chomsky published his first academic article in The Journal of Symbolic Logic. Highly critical of the established behaviorist currents in linguistics, in 1954, he presented his ideas at lectures at the University of Chicago and Yale University. He had not been registered as a student at Pennsylvania for four years, but in 1955 he submitted a thesis setting out his ideas on transformational grammar; he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree for it, and it was privately distributed among specialists on microfilm before being published in 1975 as part of The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. Harvard professor George Armitage Miller was impressed by Chomsky's thesis and collaborated with him on several technical papers in mathematical linguistics. Chomsky's doctorate exempted him from compulsory military service, which was otherwise due to begin in 1955.In 1947, Chomsky began a romantic relationship with Carol Doris Schatz, whom he had known since early childhood. They married in 1949. After Chomsky was made a Fellow at Harvard, the couple moved to the Allston area of Boston and remained there until 1965, when they relocated to the suburb of Lexington. The couple took a Harvard travel grant to Europe in 1953. He enjoyed living in Hashomer Hatzair's HaZore'a kibbutz while in Israel, but was appalled by his interactions with Jewish nationalism, anti-Arab racism and, within the kibbutz's leftist community, Stalinism. On visits to New York City, Chomsky continued to frequent the office of the Yiddish anarchist journal Fraye Arbeter Shtime and became enamored with the ideas of Rudolf Rocker, a contributor whose work introduced Chomsky to the link between anarchism and classical liberalism. Chomsky also read other political thinkers: the anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Diego Abad de Santillán, democratic socialists George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, and Dwight Macdonald, and works by Marxists Karl Liebknecht, Karl Korsch, and Rosa Luxemburg. His politics were reaffirmed by Orwell's depiction of Barcelona's functioning anarchist society in Homage to Catalonia (1938). Chomsky read the leftist journal Politics, which furthered his interest in anarchism, and the council communist periodical Living Marxism, though he rejected the Marxist orthodoxy of its editor, Paul Mattick. === Early career: 1955–1966 === Chomsky befriended two linguists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—Morris Halle and Roman Jakobson—the latter of whom secured him an assistant professor position there in 1955. At MIT, Chomsky spent half his time on a mechanical translation project and half teaching a course on linguistics and philosophy. He described MIT as open to experimentation where he was free to pursue his idiosyncratic interests. MIT promoted him to the position of associate professor in 1957, and over the next year he was also a visiting professor at Columbia University. The Chomskys had their first child, Aviva, that same year. He also published his first book on linguistics, Syntactic Structures, a work that radically opposed the dominant Harris–Bloomfield trend in the field. Responses to Chomsky's ideas ranged from indifference to hostility, and his work proved divisive and caused "significant upheaval" in the discipline. The linguist John Lyons later asserted that Syntactic Structures "revolutionized the scientific study of language". From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Chomsky's provocative critique of B. F. Skinner, who viewed language as learned behavior, and its challenge to the dominant behaviorist paradigm thrust Chomsky into the limelight. Chomsky argued that behaviorism underplayed the role of human creativity in learning language and overplayed the role of external conditions in influencing verbal behavior. He proceeded to found MIT's graduate program in linguistics with Halle. In 1961, Chomsky received tenure and became a full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. He was appointed plenary speaker at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, held in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which established him as the de facto spokesperson of American linguistics. Between 1963 and 1965 he consulted on a military-sponsored project to teach computers to understand natural English commands from military generals.Chomsky continued to publish his linguistic ideas throughout the decade, including in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar (1966), and Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966). Along with Halle, he also edited the Studies in Language series of books for Harper and Row. As he began to accrue significant academic recognition and honors for his work, Chomsky lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1966. These lectures were published as Language and Mind in 1968. In the late 1960s, a high-profile intellectual rift later known as the linguistic wars developed between Chomsky and some of his colleagues and doctoral students—including Paul Postal, John Ross, George Lakoff, and James D. McCawley—who contended that Chomsky's syntax-based, interpretivist linguistics did not properly account for semantic context (general semantics). A post hoc assessment of this period concluded that the opposing programs ultimately were complementary, each informing the other. === Anti-war activism and dissent: 1967–1975 === Chomsky joined protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1962, speaking on the subject at small gatherings in churches and homes. His 1967 critique of U.S. involvement, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", among other contributions to The New York Review of Books, debuted Chomsky as a public dissident. This essay and other political articles were collected and published in 1969 as part of Chomsky's first political book, American Power and the New Mandarins. He followed this with further political books, including At War with Asia (1970), The Backroom Boys (1973), For Reasons of State (1973), and Peace in the Middle East? (1974), published by Pantheon Books. These publications led to Chomsky's association with the American New Left movement, though he thought little of prominent New Left intellectuals Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm and preferred the company of activists to that of intellectuals. Chomsky remained largely ignored by the mainstream press throughout this period.He also became involved in left-wing activism. Chomsky refused to pay half his taxes, publicly supported students who refused the draft, and was arrested while participating in an anti-war teach-in outside the Pentagon. During this time, Chomsky co-founded the anti-war collective RESIST with Mitchell Goodman, Denise Levertov, William Sloane Coffin, and Dwight Macdonald. Although he questioned the objectives of the 1968 student protests, Chomsky gave many lectures to student activist groups and, with his colleague Louis Kampf, ran undergraduate courses on politics at MIT independently of the conservative-dominated political science department. When student activists campaigned to stop weapons and counterinsurgency research at MIT, Chomsky was sympathetic but felt that the research should remain under MIT's oversight and limited to systems of deterrence and defense. Chomsky has acknowledged that his MIT lab's funding at this time came from the military. He later said he considered resigning from MIT during the Vietnam War. There has since been a wide-ranging debate about what effects Chomsky's employment at MIT had on his political and linguistic ideas. Because of his anti-war activism, Chomsky was arrested on multiple occasions and included on President Richard Nixon's master list of political opponents. Chomsky was aware of the potential repercussions of his civil disobedience, and his wife began studying for her own doctorate in linguistics to support the family in the event of Chomsky's imprisonment or joblessness. Chomsky's scientific reputation insulated him from administrative action based on his beliefs. In 1970 he visited southeast Asia to lecture at Vietnam's Hanoi University of Science and Technology and toured war refugee camps in Laos. In 1973 he helped lead a committee commemorating the 50th anniversary of the War Resisters League.His work in linguistics continued to gain international recognition as he received multiple honorary doctorates. He delivered public lectures at the University of Cambridge, Columbia University (Woodbridge Lectures), and Stanford University. His appearance in a 1971 debate with French continental philosopher Michel Foucault positioned Chomsky as a symbolic figurehead of analytic philosophy. He continued to publish extensively on linguistics, producing Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972), an enlarged edition of Language and Mind (1972), and Reflections on Language (1975). In 1974 Chomsky became a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. === Edward S. Herman and the Faurisson affair: 1976–1980 === In the late 1970s and 1980s, Chomsky's linguistic publications expanded and clarified his earlier work, addressing his critics and updating his grammatical theory. His political talks often generated considerable controversy, particularly when he criticized the Israeli government and military. In the early 1970s Chomsky began collaborating with Edward S. Herman, who had also published critiques of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Together they wrote Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda, a book that criticized U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia and the mainstream media's failure to cover it. Warner Modular published it in 1973, but its parent company disapproved of the book's contents and ordered all copies destroyed.While mainstream publishing options proved elusive, Chomsky found support from Michael Albert's South End Press, an activist-oriented publishing company. In 1979, South End published Chomsky and Herman's revised Counter-Revolutionary Violence as the two-volume The Political Economy of Human Rights, which compares U.S. media reactions to the Cambodian genocide and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. It argues that because Indonesia was a U.S. ally, U.S. media ignored the East Timorese situation while focusing on events in Cambodia, a U.S. enemy. Chomsky's response included two testimonials before the United Nations' Special Committee on Decolonization, successful encouragement for American media to cover the occupation, and meetings with refugees in Lisbon. Marxist academic Steven Lukes most prominently publicly accused Chomsky of betraying his anarchist ideals and acting as an apologist for Cambodian leader Pol Pot. Herman said that the controversy "imposed a serious personal cost" on Chomsky, who considered the personal criticism less important than the evidence that "mainstream intelligentsia suppressed or justified the crimes of their own states".Chomsky had long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism more generally, but his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial. Without Chomsky's knowledge, his plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as the preface to the latter's 1980 book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire. Chomsky was widely condemned for defending Faurisson, and France's mainstream press accused Chomsky of being a Holocaust denier himself, refusing to publish his rebuttals to their accusations. Critiquing Chomsky's position, sociologist Werner Cohn later published an analysis of the affair titled Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers. The Faurisson affair had a lasting, damaging effect on Chomsky's career, especially in France. === Critique of propaganda and international affairs === In 1985, during the Nicaraguan Contra War—in which the U.S. supported the contra militia against the Sandinista government—Chomsky traveled to Managua to meet with workers' organizations and refugees of the conflict, giving public lectures on politics and linguistics. Many of these lectures were published in 1987 as On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures. In 1983 he published The Fateful Triangle, which argued that the U.S. had continually used the Israeli–Palestinian conflict for its own ends. In 1988, Chomsky visited the Palestinian territories to witness the impact of Israeli occupation.Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) outlines their propaganda model for understanding mainstream media. Even in countries without official censorship, they argued, the news is censored through five filters that greatly influence both what and how news is presented. The book received a 1992 film adaptation. In 1989, Chomsky published Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, in which he suggests that a worthwhile democracy requires that its citizens undertake intellectual self-defense against the media and elite intellectual culture that seeks to control them. By the 1980s, Chomsky's students had become prominent linguists who, in turn, expanded and revised his linguistic theories. In the 1990s, Chomsky embraced political activism to a greater degree than before. Retaining his commitment to the cause of East Timorese independence, in 1995 he visited Australia to talk on the issue at the behest of the East Timorese Relief Association and the National Council for East Timorese Resistance. The lectures he gave on the subject were published as Powers and Prospects in 1996. As a result of the international publicity Chomsky generated, his biographer Wolfgang Sperlich opined that he did more to aid the cause of East Timorese independence than anyone but the investigative journalist John Pilger. After East Timor attained independence from Indonesia in 1999, the Australian-led International Force for East Timor arrived as a peacekeeping force; Chomsky was critical of this, believing it was designed to secure Australian access to East Timor's oil and gas reserves under the Timor Gap Treaty.Chomsky was widely interviewed after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as the American public attempted to make sense of the attacks. He argued that the ensuing War on Terror was not a new development but a continuation of U.S. foreign policy and concomitant rhetoric since at least the Reagan era. He gave the D.T. Lakdawala Memorial Lecture in New Delhi in 2001, and in 2003 visited Cuba at the invitation of the Latin American Association of Social Scientists. Chomsky's 2003 Hegemony or Survival articulated what he called the United States' "imperial grand strategy" and critiqued the Iraq War and other aspects of the War on Terror. Chomsky toured internationally with greater regularity during this period. === Retirement === Chomsky retired from MIT in 2002, but continued to conduct research and seminars on campus as an emeritus. That same year he visited Turkey to attend the trial of a publisher who had been accused of treason for printing one of Chomsky's books; Chomsky insisted on being a co-defendant and amid international media attention, the Security Courts dropped the charge on the first day. During that trip Chomsky visited Kurdish areas of Turkey and spoke out in favor of the Kurds' human rights. A supporter of the World Social Forum, he attended its conferences in Brazil in both 2002 and 2003, also attending the Forum event in India. Chomsky supported the 2011 Occupy movement, speaking at encampments and publishing on the movement, which he called a reaction to a 30-year class war. The 2015 documentary Requiem for the American Dream summarizes his views on capitalism and economic inequality through a "75-minute teach-in".Chomsky taught a short-term politics course at the University of Arizona in 2017 and was later hired as a part-time professor in the linguistics department there, his duties including teaching and public seminars. His salary is covered by philanthropic donations.In March 2022, Chomsky called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a "major war crime", ranking alongside the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the German–Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. == Linguistic theory == The basis of Chomsky's linguistic theory lies in biolinguistics, the linguistic school that holds that the principles underpinning the structure of language are biologically preset in the human mind and hence genetically inherited. He argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of sociocultural differences. In adopting this position Chomsky rejects the radical behaviorist psychology of B. F. Skinner, who viewed speech, thought, and all behavior as a completely learned product of the interactions between organisms and their environments. Accordingly, Chomsky argues that language is a unique evolutionary development of the human species and distinguished from modes of communication used by any other animal species. Chomsky's nativist, internalist view of language is consistent with the philosophical school of "rationalism" and contrasts with the anti-nativist, externalist view of language consistent with the philosophical school of "empiricism", which contends that all knowledge, including language, comes from external stimuli. === Universal grammar === Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that syntactic knowledge is at least partially inborn, implying that children need only learn certain language-specific features of their native languages. He bases his argument on observations about human language acquisition and describes a "poverty of the stimulus": an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic competence they attain. For example, although children are exposed to only a very small and finite subset of the allowable syntactic variants within their first language, they somehow acquire the highly organized and systematic ability to understand and produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never before been uttered, in that language. To explain this, Chomsky reasoned that the primary linguistic data must be supplemented by an innate linguistic capacity. Furthermore, while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky referred to this difference in capacity as the language acquisition device, and suggested that linguists needed to determine both what that device is and what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that result from these constraints would constitute "universal grammar". Multiple scholars have challenged universal grammar on the grounds of the evolutionary infeasibility of its genetic basis for language, the lack of universal characteristics between languages, and the unproven link between innate/universal structures and the structures of specific languages. Scholar Michael Tomasello has challenged Chomsky's theory of innate syntactic knowledge as based on theory and not behavioral observation. Although it was influential from 1960s through 1990s, Chomsky's nativist theory was ultimately rejected by the mainstream child language acquisition research community owing to its inconsistency with research evidence. It was also argued by linguists including Robert Freidin, Geoffrey Sampson, Geoffrey K. Pullum and Barbara Scholz that Chomsky's linguistic evidence for it had been false. === Transformational-generative grammar === Transformational-generative grammar is a broad theory used to model, encode, and deduce a native speaker's linguistic capabilities. These models, or "formal grammars", show the abstract structures of a specific language as they may relate to structures in other languages. Chomsky developed transformational grammar in the mid-1950s, whereupon it became the dominant syntactic theory in linguistics for two decades. "Transformations" refers to syntactic relationships within language, e.g., being able to infer that the subject between two sentences is the same person. Chomsky's theory posits that language consists of both deep structures and surface structures: Outward-facing surface structures relate phonetic rules into sound, while inward-facing deep structures relate words and conceptual meaning. Transformational-generative grammar uses mathematical notation to express the rules that govern the connection between meaning and sound (deep and surface structures, respectively). By this theory, linguistic principles can mathematically generate potential sentence structures in a language. Chomsky is commonly credited with inventing transformational-generative grammar, but his original contribution was considered modest when he first published his theory. In his 1955 dissertation and his 1957 textbook Syntactic Structures, he presented recent developments in the analysis formulated by Zellig Harris, who was Chomsky's PhD supervisor, and by Charles F. Hockett. Their method is derived from the work of the Danish structural linguist Louis Hjelmslev, who introduced algorithmic grammar to general linguistics. Based on this rule-based notation of grammars, Chomsky grouped logically possible phrase-structure grammar types into a series of four nested subsets and increasingly complex types, together known as the Chomsky hierarchy. This classification remains relevant to formal language theory and theoretical computer science, especially programming language theory, compiler construction, and automata theory.Transformational grammar was the dominant research paradigm through the mid-1970s. The derivative government and binding theory replaced it and remained influential through the early 1990s, when linguists turned to a "minimalist" approach to grammar. This research focused on the principles and parameters framework, which explained children's ability to learn any language by filling open parameters (a set of universal grammar principles) that adapt as the child encounters linguistic data. The minimalist program, initiated by Chomsky, asks which minimal principles and parameters theory fits most elegantly, naturally, and simply. In an attempt to simplify language into a system that relates meaning and sound using the minimum possible faculties, Chomsky dispenses with concepts such as "deep structure" and "surface structure" and instead emphasizes the plasticity of the brain's neural circuits, with which come an infinite number of concepts, or "logical forms". When exposed to linguistic data, a hearer-speaker's brain proceeds to associate sound and meaning, and the rules of grammar we observe are in fact only the consequences, or side effects, of the way language works. Thus, while much of Chomsky's prior research focused on the rules of language, he now focuses on the mechanisms the brain uses to generate these rules and regulate speech. == Political views == Chomsky is a prominent political dissident. His political views have changed little since his childhood, when he was influenced by the emphasis on political activism that was ingrained in Jewish working-class tradition. He usually identifies as an anarcho-syndicalist or a libertarian socialist. He views these positions not as precise political theories but as ideals that he thinks best meet human needs: liberty, community, and freedom of association. Unlike some other socialists, such as Marxists, Chomsky believes that politics lies outside the remit of science, but he still roots his ideas about an ideal society in empirical data and empirically justified theories.In Chomsky's view, the truth about political realities is systematically distorted or suppressed by an elite corporatocracy, which uses corporate media, advertising, and think tanks to promote its own propaganda. His work seeks to reveal such manipulations and the truth they obscure. Chomsky believes this web of falsehood can be broken by "common sense", critical thinking, and understanding the roles of self-interest and self-deception, and that intellectuals abdicate their moral responsibility to tell the truth about the world in fear of losing prestige and funding. He argues that, as such an intellectual, it is his duty to use his social privilege, resources, and training to aid popular democracy movements in their struggles.Although he has participated in direct action demonstrations—joining protests, being arrested, organizing groups—Chomsky's primary political outlet is education, i.e., free public lessons. He is a longtime member of the Industrial Workers of the World international union, as was his father. === United States foreign policy === Chomsky has been a prominent critic of American imperialism but is not a pacifist, believing World War II was justified as America's last defensive war. He believes that U.S. foreign policy's basic principle is the establishment of "open societies" that are economically and politically controlled by the U.S. and where U.S.-based businesses can prosper. He argues that the U.S. seeks to suppress any movements within these countries that are not compliant with U.S. interests and to ensure that U.S.-friendly governments are placed in power. When discussing current events, he emphasizes their place within a wider historical perspective. He believes that official, sanctioned historical accounts of U.S. and British extraterritorial operations have consistently whitewashed these nations' actions in order to present them as having benevolent motives in either spreading democracy or, in older instances, spreading Christianity; by criticizing these accounts, he seeks to correct them. Prominent examples he regularly cites are the actions of the British Empire in India and Africa and U.S. actions in Vietnam, the Philippines, Latin America, and the Middle East.Chomsky's political work has centered heavily on criticizing the actions of the United States. He has said he focuses on the U.S. because the country has militarily and economically dominated the world during his lifetime and because its liberal democratic electoral system allows the citizenry to influence government policy. His hope is that, by spreading awareness of the impact U.S. foreign policies have on the populations affected by them, he can sway the populations of the U.S. and other countries into opposing the policies. He urges people to criticize their governments' motivations, decisions, and actions, to accept responsibility for their own thoughts and actions, and to apply the same standards to others as to themselves.Chomsky has been critical of U.S. involvement in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, arguing that it has consistently blocked a peaceful settlement. Chomsky also criticizes the U.S.'s close ties with Saudi Arabia and involvement in Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, highlighting that Saudi Arabia has "one of the most grotesque human rights records in the world". === Capitalism and socialism === In his youth, Chomsky developed a dislike of capitalism and the pursuit of material wealth. At the same time, he developed a disdain for authoritarian socialism, as represented by the Marxist–Leninist policies of the Soviet Union. Rather than accepting the common view among U.S. economists that a spectrum exists between total state ownership of the economy and total private ownership, he instead suggests that a spectrum should be understood between total democratic control of the economy and total autocratic control (whether state or private). He argues that Western capitalist countries are not really democratic, because, in his view, a truly democratic society is one in which all persons have a say in public economic policy. He has stated his opposition to ruling elites, among them institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and GATT (precursor to the WTO).Chomsky highlights that, since the 1970s, the U.S. has become increasingly economically unequal as a result of the repeal of various financial regulations and the unilateral rescinding of the Bretton Woods financial control agreement by the U.S. He characterizes the U.S. as a de facto one-party state, viewing both the Republican Party and Democratic Party as manifestations of a single "Business Party" controlled by corporate and financial interests. Chomsky has said that he considers Franklin D. Roosevelt the best U.S. president. Chomsky highlights that, within Western capitalist liberal democracies, at least 80% of the population has no control over economic decisions, which are instead in the hands of a management class and ultimately controlled by a small, wealthy elite.Noting the entrenchment of such an economic system, Chomsky believes that change is possible through the organized cooperation of large numbers of people who understand the problem and know how they want to reorganize the economy more equitably. Acknowledging that corporate domination of media and government stifles any significant change to this system, he sees reason for optimism in historical examples such as the social rejection of slavery as immoral, the advances in women's rights, and the forcing of government to justify invasions. He views violent revolution to overthrow a government as a last resort to be avoided if possible, citing the example of historical revolutions where the population's welfare has worsened as a result of upheaval.Chomsky sees libertarian socialist and anarcho-syndicalist ideas as the descendants of the classical liberal ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, arguing that his ideological position revolves around "nourishing the libertarian and creative character of the human being". He envisions an anarcho-syndicalist future with direct worker control of the means of production and government by workers' councils, who would select temporary and revocable representatives to meet together at general assemblies. The point of this self-governance is to make each citizen, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "a direct participator in the government of affairs." He believes that there will be no need for political parties. By controlling their productive life, he believes that individuals can gain job satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment and purpose. He argues that unpleasant and unpopular jobs could be fully automated, carried out by workers who are specially remunerated, or shared among everyone. === Israeli–Palestinian conflict === Chomsky has written prolifically on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, aiming to raise public awareness of it. He has long endorsed a left binationalist program in Israel and Palestine, seeking to create a democratic state in the Levant that is home to both Jews and Arabs. He has called the adoption of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine "a very bad decision". Nevertheless, given the realpolitik of the situation, he has also considered a two-state solution on the condition that the nation-states exist on equal terms. Chomsky was denied entry to the West Bank in 2010 because of his criticisms of Israel. He had been invited to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University and was to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman later said that Chomsky was denied entry by mistake. === Mass media and propaganda === Chomsky's political writings have largely focused on ideology, social and political power, mass media, and state policy. One of his best-known works, Manufacturing Consent, dissects the media's role in reinforcing and acquiescing to state policies across the political spectrum while marginalizing contrary perspectives. Chomsky asserts that this version of censorship, by government-guided "free market" forces, is subtler and harder to undermine than was the equivalent propaganda system in the Soviet Union. As he argues, the mainstream press is corporate-owned and thus reflects corporate priorities and interests. Acknowledging that many American journalists are dedicated and well-meaning, he argues that the mass media's choices of topics and issues, the unquestioned premises on which that coverage rests, and the range of opinions expressed are all constrained to reinforce the state's ideology: although mass media will criticize individual politicians and political parties, it will not undermine the wider state-corporate nexus of which it is a part. As evidence, he highlights that the U.S. mass media does not employ any socialist journalists or political commentators. He also points to examples of important news stories that the U.S. mainstream media has ignored because reporting on them would reflect badly upon the country, including the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton with possible FBI involvement, the massacres in Nicaragua perpetrated by U.S.-funded Contras, and the constant reporting on Israeli deaths without equivalent coverage of the far larger number of Palestinian deaths in that conflict. To remedy this situation, Chomsky calls for grassroots democratic control and involvement of the media.Chomsky considers most conspiracy theories fruitless, distracting substitutes for thinking about policy formation in an institutional framework, where individual manipulation is secondary to broader social imperatives. He separates his Propaganda Model from conspiracy in that he is describing institutions following their natural imperatives rather than collusive forces with secret controls. Instead of supporting the educational system as an antidote, he believes that most education is counterproductive. Chomsky describes mass education as a system solely intended to turn farmers from independent producers into unthinking industrial employees. === Reactions of critics: 1980s–present === For the conservative public policy think tank the Hoover Institution, Peter Schweizer wrote in January 2006, "Chomsky favors the estate tax and massive income redistribution—just not the redistribution of his income." Schweizer criticized Chomsky for setting up an estate plan and protecting his own intellectual property as it relates to his published works, as well as the high speaking fees that Chomsky received on a regular basis, around $9,000–$12,000 per talk at that time. Chomsky has been accused of treating socialist or communist regimes with credulity and examining capitalist regimes with greater scrutiny or criticism:Chomsky's analysis of U.S. actions plunged deep into dark U.S. machinations, but when traveling among the Communists he rested content with appearances. The countryside outside Hanoi, he reported in The New York Review of Books, displayed "a high degree of democratic participation at the village and regional levels." But how could he tell? Chomsky did not speak Vietnamese, and so he depended on government translators, tour guides, and handlers for information. In [Communist] Vietnamese hands, the clear-eyed skepticism turned into willing credulousness.According to Nikolas Kozloff, writing for Al Jazeera in September 2012, Chomsky, "has drawn the world's attention to the various misdeeds of the US and its proxies around the world, and for that he deserves credit. Yet, in seeking to avoid controversy at all costs Chomsky has turned into something of an ideologue. Scour the Chomsky web site and you won't find significant discussion of Belarus or Latin America's flirtation with outside authoritarian leaders, for that matter."Others have countered that Chomsky has been censored or left out of public debate. Claims of this nature date back to the 1980s Reagan era. Writing for The Washington Post in February 1988, Saul Landau wrote, "It is unhealthy that Chomsky's insights are excluded from the policy debate. His relentless prosecutorial prose, with a hint of Talmudic whine and the rationalist anarchism of Tom Paine, may reflect a justified frustration. == Philosophy == Chomsky has also been active in a number of philosophical fields, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. In these fields he is credited with ushering in the "cognitive revolution", a significant paradigm shift that rejected logical positivism, the prevailing philosophical methodology of the time, and reframed how philosophers think about language and the mind. Chomsky views the cognitive revolution as rooted in 17th-century rationalist ideals. His position—the idea that the mind contains inherent structures to understand language, perception, and thought—has more in common with rationalism than behaviorism. He named one of his key works Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966). This sparked criticism from historians and philosophers who disagreed with Chomsky's interpretations of classical sources and use of philosophical terminology. In the philosophy of language, Chomsky is particularly known for his criticisms of the notion of reference and meaning in human language and his perspective on the nature and function of mental representations.Chomsky's famous 1971 debate on human nature with the French philosopher Michel Foucault was a symbolic clash of the analytic and continental philosophy traditions, represented by Chomsky and Foucault, respectively. It showed what appeared to be irreconcilable differences between two moral and intellectual luminaries of the 20th century. Foucault held that any definition of human nature is connected to our present-day conceptions of ourselves; Chomsky held that human nature contained universals such as a common standard of moral justice as deduced through reason. Chomsky criticized postmodernism and French philosophy generally, arguing that the obscure language of postmodern, leftist philosophers gives little aid to the working classes. He has also debated analytic philosophers, including Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, Saul Kripke, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Willard Van Orman Quine, and John Searle.Chomsky's contributions span intellectual and world history, including the history of philosophy. Irony is a recurring characteristic of his writing, such as rhetorically implying that his readers already know something to be true, which engages the reader more actively in assessing the veracity of his claims. == Personal life == Chomsky endeavors to separate his family life, linguistic scholarship, and political activism from each other. An intensely private person, he is uninterested in appearances and the fame his work has brought him. He also has little interest in modern art and music. McGilvray suggests that Chomsky was never motivated by a desire for fame, but impelled to tell what he perceived as the truth and a desire to aid others in doing so. Chomsky acknowledges that his income affords him a privileged life compared to the majority of the world's population; nevertheless, he characterizes himself as a "worker", albeit one who uses his intellect as his employable skill. He reads four or five newspapers daily; in the US, he subscribes to The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and The Christian Science Monitor. Chomsky is non-religious, but has expressed approval of forms of religion such as liberation theology.Chomsky was married to Carol (née Carol Doris Schatz) from 1949 until her death in 2008. They had three children together: Aviva (born 1957), Diane (born 1960), and Harry (born 1967). In 2014, Chomsky married Valeria Wasserman. === Public image === Chomsky is known to use charged language ("corrupt", "fascist", "fraudulent") when describing established political and academic figures, which can polarize his audience but is in keeping with his belief that much scholarship is self-serving. His colleague Steven Pinker has said that he "portrays people who disagree with him as stupid or evil, using withering scorn in his rhetoric", and that this contributes to the extreme reactions he receives. Chomsky avoids academic conferences, including left-oriented ones such as the Socialist Scholars Conference, preferring to speak to activist groups or hold university seminars for mass audiences. His approach to academic freedom has led him to support MIT academics whose actions he deplores; in 1969, when Chomsky heard that Walt Rostow, a major architect of the Vietnam war, wanted to return to work at MIT, Chomsky threatened "to protest publicly" if Rostow were denied a position at MIT. In 1989, when Pentagon adviser John Deutch applied to be president of MIT, Chomsky supported his candidacy. Later, when Deutch became head of the CIA, The New York Times quoted Chomsky as saying, "He has more honesty and integrity than anyone I've ever met. ... If somebody's got to be running the CIA, I'm glad it's him." == Reception and influence == Chomsky has been a defining Western intellectual figure, central to the field of linguistics and definitive in cognitive science, computer science, philosophy, and psychology. In addition to being known as one of the most important intellectuals of his time, Chomsky has a dual legacy as a leader and luminary in both linguistics and the realm of political dissent. Despite his academic success, his political viewpoints and activism have resulted in his being distrusted by mainstream media, and he is regarded as being "on the outer margin of acceptability". Chomsky's public image and social reputation often color his work's public reception. === In academia === McGilvray observes that Chomsky inaugurated the "cognitive revolution" in linguistics, and that he is largely responsible for establishing the field as a formal, natural science, moving it away from the procedural form of structural linguistics dominant during the mid-20th century. As such, some have called Chomsky "the father of modern linguistics". Linguist John Lyons further remarked that within a few decades of publication, Chomskyan linguistics had become "the most dynamic and influential" school of thought in the field. By the 1970s his work had also come to exert a considerable influence on philosophy, and a Minnesota State University Moorhead poll ranked Syntactic Structures as the single most important work in cognitive science. In addition, his work in automata theory and the Chomsky hierarchy have become well known in computer science, and he is much cited in computational linguistics.Chomsky's criticisms of behaviorism contributed substantially to the decline of behaviorist psychology; in addition, he is generally regarded as one of the primary founders of the field of cognitive science. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results; Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.ACM Turing Award winner Donald Knuth credited Chomsky's work with helping him combine his interests in mathematics, linguistics, and computer science. IBM computer scientist John Backus, another Turing Award winner, used some of Chomsky's concepts to help him develop FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level computer programming language. Chomsky's theory of generative grammar has also influenced work in music theory and analysis.Chomsky is among the most cited authors living or dead. He was cited within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992. Chomsky was also extensively cited in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index during the same period. The librarian who conducted the research said that the statistics show that "he is very widely read across disciplines and that his work is used by researchers across disciplines ... it seems that you can't write a paper without citing Noam Chomsky." As a result of his influence, there are dueling camps of Chomskyan and non-Chomskyan linguistics. Their disputes are often acrimonious. Additionally, according to journalist Maya Jaggi, Chomsky is among the most quoted sources in the humanities, ranking alongside Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible. === In politics === Chomsky's status as the "most-quoted living author" is credited to his political writings, which vastly outnumber his writings on linguistics. Chomsky biographer Wolfgang B. Sperlich characterizes him as "one of the most notable contemporary champions of the people"; journalist John Pilger has described him as a "genuine people's hero; an inspiration for struggles all over the world for that basic decency known as freedom. To a lot of people in the margins—activists and movements—he's unfailingly supportive." Arundhati Roy has called him "one of the greatest, most radical public thinkers of our time", and Edward Said thought him "one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions". Fred Halliday has said that by the start of the 21st century Chomsky had become a "guru" for the world's anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. The propaganda model of media criticism that he and Herman developed has been widely accepted in radical media critiques and adopted to some level in mainstream criticism of the media, also exerting a significant influence on the growth of alternative media, including radio, publishers, and the Internet, which in turn have helped to disseminate his work.Sperlich also says that Chomsky has been vilified by corporate interests, particularly in the mainstream press. University departments devoted to history and political science rarely include Chomsky's work on their undergraduate syllabi. Critics have argued that despite publishing widely on social and political issues, Chomsky has no formal expertise in these areas; he has responded that such issues are not as complex as many social scientists claim and that almost everyone is able to comprehend them regardless of whether they have been academically trained to do so. According to McGilvray, many of Chomsky's critics "do not bother quoting his work or quote out of context, distort, and create straw men that cannot be supported by Chomsky's text".Chomsky drew criticism for not calling the Bosnian War's Srebrenica massacre a "genocide". While he did not deny the fact of the massacre, which he called "a horror story and major crime", he felt the massacre did not meet the definition of genocide.Chomsky's far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have raised controversy. A document obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the U.S. government revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) monitored his activities and for years denied doing so. The CIA also destroyed its files on Chomsky at some point, possibly in violation of federal law. He has often received undercover police protection at MIT and when speaking on the Middle East, but has refused uniformed police protection. German news magazine Der Spiegel described Chomsky as "the Ayatollah of anti-American hatred", while American conservative commentator David Horowitz called him "the most devious, the most dishonest and ... the most treacherous intellect in America", whose work is infused with "anti-American dementia" and evidences his "pathological hatred of his own country". Writing in Commentary magazine, the journalist Jonathan Kay described Chomsky as "a hard-boiled anti-American monomaniac who simply refuses to believe anything that any American leader says".Chomsky's criticism of Israel has led to his being called a traitor to the Jewish people and an anti-Semite. Criticizing Chomsky's defense of the right of individuals to engage in Holocaust denial on the grounds that freedom of speech must be extended to all viewpoints, Werner Cohn called Chomsky "the most important patron" of the neo-Nazi movement. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called him a Holocaust denier, describing him as a "dupe of intellectual pride so overweening that he is incapable of making distinctions between totalitarian and democratic societies, between oppressors and victims". In turn, Chomsky has claimed that the ADL is dominated by "Stalinist types" who oppose democracy in Israel. The lawyer Alan Dershowitz has called Chomsky a "false prophet of the left"; Chomsky called Dershowitz "a complete liar" who is on "a crazed jihad, dedicating much of his life to trying to destroy my reputation". In early 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey publicly rebuked Chomsky after he signed an open letter condemning Erdoğan for his anti-Kurdish repression and double standards on terrorism. Chomsky accused Erdoğan of hypocrisy, noting that Erdoğan supports al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front. === Academic achievements, awards, and honors === In 1970, the London Times named Chomsky one of the "makers of the twentieth century". He was voted the world's leading public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll jointly conducted by American magazine Foreign Policy and British magazine Prospect. New Statesman readers listed Chomsky among the world's foremost heroes in 2006.In the United States he is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Linguistic Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Society. Abroad he is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, an honorary member of the British Psychological Society, a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, and a foreign member of the Department of Social Sciences of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He received a 1971 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1984 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology, the 1988 Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the 1996 Helmholtz Medal, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, the 2010 Erich Fromm Prize, and the British Academy's 2014 Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics. He is also a two-time winner of the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (1987 and 1989). He has also received the Rabindranath Tagore Centenary Award from The Asiatic Society.Chomsky received the 2004 Carl-von-Ossietzky Prize from the city of Oldenburg, Germany, to acknowledge his body of work as a political analyst and media critic. He received an honorary fellowship in 2005 from the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin. He received the 2008 President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway. Since 2009, he has been an honorary member of International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI). He received the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship and was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems." Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.In 2011, the US Peace Memorial Foundation awarded Chomsky the US Peace Prize for anti-war activities over five decades. For his work in human rights, peace, and social criticism, he received the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize, the Sretenje Order in 2015, the 2017 Seán MacBride Peace Prize and the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award.Chomsky has received honorary doctorates from institutions including the University of London and the University of Chicago (1967), Loyola University Chicago and Swarthmore College (1970), Bard College (1971), Delhi University (1972), the University of Massachusetts (1973), and the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste (2012) among others. His public lectures have included the 1969 John Locke Lectures, 1975 Whidden Lectures, 1977 Huizinga Lecture, and 1988 Massey Lectures, among others.Various tributes to Chomsky have been dedicated over the years. He is the eponym for a bee species, a frog species, and a building complex at the Indian university Jamia Millia Islamia. Actor Viggo Mortensen and avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2003 album Pandemoniumfromamerica to Chomsky. == Selected bibliography == == See also == == Notes == == References == == Bibliography == == Further reading == == External links == Official website Noam Chomsky personal archives at MIT Noam Chomsky Audio Conservatory at Internet Archive Faculty page at MIT Faculty page at University of Arizona Noam Chomsky at IMDb Noam Chomsky discography at Discogs

Robert M. Pirsig

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig

Robert Maynard Pirsig (; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), and he co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings (2022) along with his wife (now widow) and editor, Wendy Pirsig. == Early life == Pirsig was born on September 6, 1928, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Harriet Marie Sjobeck and Maynard Pirsig. He was of German and Swedish descent. His father was a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, taught in that school from 1934, served as its dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching there in 1970. He subsequently taught at the William Mitchell College of Law until his retirement in 1993.A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine, Pirsig skipped several grades at the Blake School in Minneapolis. In May 1943, Pirsig was awarded a high school diploma at the age of 14 by the University High School (later renamed Marshall-University High School), where he had edited the school yearbook, the Bisbilla. Pirsig then studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he describes the central character, thought to represent himself, as being an atypical student, interested in science in itself rather than a professional career path. In the course of his studies, Pirsig became intrigued by the multiplicity of putative causes for a given phenomenon, and increasingly focused on the role played by hypotheses in the scientific method and sources from which they originate. His preoccupation with these matters led to a decline in his grades and expulsion from the university.In 1946, Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed in South Korea until 1948. Upon his discharge from the Army, he lived for several months in Seattle, Washington, and then returned to the University of Minnesota, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1950. He subsequently studied philosophy at Banaras Hindu University in India and the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods at the University of Chicago. In 1958 he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota. == Career == In 1958, he became a professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, and taught creative writing courses for two years. Shortly thereafter he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago.Pirsig's published writing consists most notably of two books. The better known, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, delves into Pirsig's exploration into the nature of quality. Ostensibly a first-person narrative based on a motorcycle trip he and his young son Chris had taken from Minneapolis to San Francisco, it is an exploration of the underlying metaphysics of Western culture. He also gives the reader a short summary of the history of philosophy, including his interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle as part of an ongoing dispute between universalists, admitting the existence of universals, and the Sophists, opposed by Socrates and his student Plato. Pirsig finds in "Quality" a special significance and common ground between Western and Eastern world views.Pirsig had great difficulty finding a publisher for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig pitched the idea for his book to 121 different publishers, sending them a cover letter along with two sample pages, with 22 responding favorably. Ultimately, an editor at William Morrow accepted the finished manuscript; when he did, his publisher's internal recommendation stated, "This book is brilliant beyond belief, it is probably a work of genius, and will, I'll wager, attain classic stature." In his book review, George Steiner compared Pirsig's writing to Dostoevsky, Broch, Proust, and Bergson, stating that "the assertion itself is valid ... the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent".Pirsig described the development of his ideas and writing his book in a videotaped lecture that can be viewed on YouTube. The talk was at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on May 20, 1974. A transcript of this talk also appears as the introduction to On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence, a 2022 book of Pirsig's unpublished and selected writings. In 1974, Pirsig was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to allow him to write a follow-up, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), in which he developed a value-based metaphysics, Metaphysics of Quality, that challenges our subject–object view of reality. The second book, this time "the captain" of a sailboat, follows on from where Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance left off.Pirsig was vice-president of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center from 1973 to 1975 and also served on the board of directors. == Personal life == Robert Pirsig married Nancy Ann James on May 10, 1954. They had two sons: Chris, born in 1956, and Theodore (Ted), born in 1958.Pirsig had a mental breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated with electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions, a treatment he discusses in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nancy sought a divorce during this time; they formally separated in 1976 and divorced in 1978. On December 28, 1978, Pirsig married Wendy Kimball in Tremont, Maine. In 1979, his son Chris, who figured prominently in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was fatally stabbed in a mugging outside the San Francisco Zen Center at the age of 22. Pirsig discusses this tragedy in an afterword to subsequent editions of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, writing that he and his second wife Wendy Kimball decided not to abort the child they conceived in 1980 because he believed that this unborn child – later their daughter Nell – was a continuation of the "life pattern" that Chris had occupied.Pirsig died aged 88, at his home in South Berwick, Maine, on April 24, 2017, after a period of failing health. == Legacy and recognition == Pirsig received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 for General Nonfiction, which later allowed him to complete his second book. The University of Minnesota conferred an Outstanding Achievement Award in 1975. He won an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1979.On December 15, 2012, Montana State University bestowed upon Pirsig an honorary doctorate in philosophy during the university's fall commencement. Pirsig was also honored in a commencement speech by MSU Regent Professor Michael Sexson. Pirsig had been an instructor in writing at what was then Montana State College from 1958 to 1960.Pirsig did not travel to Bozeman in December 2012 to accept the accolade, allegedly due to frailty of health. However, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig writes about his time at Montana State College as a less than pleasurable experience, and that this limited his ability to teach writing effectively and to develop his own philosophy and writing. In December 2019, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History acquired Pirsig's 1966 Honda CB77F Super Hawk on which the 1968 ride with his son Chris was taken. The donation included a manuscript of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a signed first edition of the book, and tools and clothing from the ride. In 2020, the Smithsonian acquired additional material from the Pirsig family relating to Pirsig's maritime interests and background. In 2020, the Robert M. Pirsig archive was collected by the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; a 2021 article in the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies details the writer's close historic relationship with motorcycles from the age of four to shortly before his death. == See also == James Verne Dusenberry == Notes == == External links == The Motorcycle is Yourself: Revisiting 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' CBC interview Photographs from Pirsig's 1968 trip upon which Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is based NPR interviews with Pirsig: Audio: 1974 and Audio: 1992 Audio excerpt from BBC radio program about cult books

Bernard Williams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Williams

Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include Problems of the Self (1973), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), Shame and Necessity (1993), and Truth and Truthfulness (2002). He was knighted in 1999. As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, Williams became known for his efforts to reorient the study of moral philosophy to psychology, history, and in particular to the Greeks. Described by Colin McGinn as an "analytical philosopher with the soul of a general humanist," he was sceptical about attempts to create a foundation for moral philosophy. Martha Nussbaum wrote that he demanded of philosophy that it "come to terms with, and contain, the difficulty and complexity of human life."Williams was a strong supporter of women in academia; according to Nussbaum, he was "as close to being a feminist as a powerful man of his generation could be." He was also famously sharp in conversation. Gilbert Ryle, one of Williams's mentors at Oxford, said that he "understands what you're going to say better than you understand it yourself, and sees all the possible objections to it, and all the possible answers to all the possible objections, before you've got to the end of your own sentence." == Life == === Early life and education === Williams was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, a suburb of Southend, Essex, to Hilda Amy Williams, née Day, a personal assistant, and Owen Pasley Denny Williams, chief maintenance surveyor for the Ministry of Works. He was educated at Chigwell School, an independent school, where he first discovered philosophy. Reading D. H. Lawrence led him to ethics and the problems of the self. In his first book, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972), he quoted with approval Lawrence's advice to "[f]ind your deepest impulse, and follow that."Awarded a scholarship to Oxford, Williams read Greats (pure Classics followed by Ancient History and philosophy) at Balliol. Among his influences at Oxford were W. S. Watt, Russell Meiggs, R. M. Hare, Elizabeth Anscombe, Eric Dodds, Eduard Fraenkel, David Pears and Gilbert Ryle. He shone in the first part of the course, the pure classics (being particularly fond of writing Latin verses in the style of Ovid) and graduated in 1951 with a congratulatory first in the second part of the course and a prize fellowship at All Souls.After Oxford, Williams spent his two-year national service flying Spitfires in Canada for the Royal Air Force. While on leave in New York, he became close to Shirley Brittain Catlin (born 1930), daughter of the novelist Vera Brittain and the political scientist George Catlin. They had already been friends at Oxford. Catlin had moved to New York to study economics at Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship.Williams returned to England to take up his fellowship at All Souls and in 1954 became a fellow at New College, Oxford, a position he held until 1959. He and Catlin continued seeing each other. She began working for the Daily Mirror and sought election as a Labour MP. Williams, also a member of the Labour Party, helped her with the 1954 by-election in Harwich in which she was an unsuccessful candidate. === First marriage, London === Williams and Catlin were married in London in July 1955 at St James's, Spanish Place, near Marylebone High Street, followed by a honeymoon in Lesbos, Greece.The couple moved into a very basic ground-floor apartment in London, on Clarendon Road, Notting Hill. Given how hard it was to find decent housing, they decided instead to share with Helge Rubinstein and her husband, the literary agent Hilary Rubinstein, who at the time was working for his uncle, Victor Gollancz. In 1955 the four of them bought a four-storey, seven-bedroom house in Phillimore Place, Kensington, for £6,800, a home they lived in together for 14 years. Williams described it as one of the happiest periods of his life.In 1958, Williams spent a term teaching at the University of Ghana in Legon. When he returned to England in 1959, he was appointed lecturer in philosophy at University College London. In 1961, after four miscarriages in four years, Shirley Williams gave birth to their daughter, Rebecca.Williams was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1963, and was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Bedford College, London, in 1964. His wife was elected to parliament that year as the Labour member for Hitchin in Hertfordshire. The Sunday Times described the couple two years later as "the New Left at its most able, most generous, and sometimes most eccentric." Andy Beckett wrote that they "entertained refugees from eastern Europe and politicians from Africa, and drank sherry in noteworthy quantities." Shirley Williams became a junior minister and, in 1971, Shadow Home Secretary. Several newspapers saw her as a future prime minister. She went on to co-found a new centrist party in 1981, the Social Democratic Party; Williams left the Labour Party to join the SDP, although he later returned to Labour. === Cambridge, second marriage === In 1967, at the age of 38, Williams became the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King's College.According to Jane O'Grady, Williams was central to the decision by King's in 1972 to admit women, one of the first three all-male Oxbridge undergraduate colleges to do so. In both his first and second marriages, he supported his wives in their careers and helped with the children more than was common for men at the time. In the 1970s, when Nussbaum's thesis supervisor, G. E. L. Owen, was harassing female students, and she decided nevertheless to support him, Williams told her, during a walk along the backs at Cambridge: "[Y]ou know, there is a price you are paying for this support and encouragement. Your dignity is being held hostage. You really don't have to put up with this."Shirley Williams's political career (the House of Commons regularly sat until 10 pm) meant that the couple spent a lot of time apart. They bought a house in Furneux Pelham, Hertfordshire, near the border with south Cambridgeshire, while she lived in Phillimore Place during the week to be close to the Houses of Parliament. Sunday was often the only day they were together. The differences in their personal values – he was an atheist, she a Catholic – placed a further strain on their relationship. It reached breaking point in 1970 when Williams formed a relationship with Patricia Law Skinner, a commissioning editor for Cambridge University Press and wife of the historian Quentin Skinner. She had approached Williams to write the opposing view of utilitarianism for Utilitarianism: For and Against with J. J. C. Smart (1973), and they had fallen in love.Williams and Skinner began living together in 1971. He obtained a divorce in 1974 (at Shirley Williams' request, the marriage was later annulled). Patricia Williams married him that year, and the couple went on to have two sons, Jacob in 1975 and Jonathan in 1980. Shirley Williams married the political scientist Richard Neustadt in 1987. === Berkeley and Oxford === In 1979 Williams was elected Provost of King's, a position he held until 1987. He spent a semester in 1986 at the University of California, Berkeley as Mills Visiting Professor and in 1988 left England to become Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy there, announcing to the media that he was leaving as part of the "brain drain" of British academics to America. He was also Sather Professor of Classical Literature at Berkeley in 1989; Shame and Necessity (1995) grew out of his six Sather lectures.Williams returned to England in 1990 as White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford and fellow of Corpus Christi. His sons had been "at sea" in California, he said, not knowing what was expected of them, and he had been unable to help. He regretted having made his departure from England so public; he had been persuaded to do so to highlight Britain's relatively low academic salaries. When he retired in 1996, he took up a fellowship again at All Souls. === Royal commissions, committees === Williams served on several royal commissions and government committees: the Public Schools Commission (1965–1970), drug abuse (1971), gambling (1976–1978), the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship (1979), and the Commission on Social Justice (1993–1994). "I did all the major vices," he said. While on the gambling commission, one of his recommendations, ignored at the time, was for a national lottery. (John Major's government introduced one in 1994.) Mary Warnock described Williams's report on pornography in 1979, as chair of the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, as "agreeable, actually compulsive to read." It relied on a "harm condition" that "no conduct should be suppressed by law unless it can be shown to harm someone," and concluded that so long as children were protected from pornography, adults should be free to read and watch it as they see fit. The report rejected the view that pornography tends to cause sexual offences. Two cases in particular were highlighted, the Moors Murders and the Cambridge Rapist, where the influence of pornography had been discussed during the trials. The report argued that both cases appeared to be "more consistent with pre-existing traits being reflected both in a choice of reading matter and in the acts committed against others." === Opera === Williams enjoyed opera from an early age, particularly Mozart and Wagner. Patricia Williams writes that he attended performances of the Carl Rosa Company and Sadler's Wells as a teenager. In an essay on Wagner, he described having been reduced to a "virtually uncontrollable state" during a performance by Jon Vickers as Tristan at Covent Garden. He served on the board of the English National Opera from 1968 to 1986, and wrote an entry, "The Nature of Opera," for The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. A collection of his essays, On Opera, was published posthumously in 2006, edited by Patricia Williams. === Honours and death === Williams became a member of the Institut international de philosophie in 1969, a fellow of the British Academy in 1971 and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. The following year he was made a syndic of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and later the chair. In 1993 he was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts, and in 1999 he was knighted. Several universities awarded him honorary doctorates, including Yale and Harvard.Williams died of heart failure on 10 June 2003 while on holiday in Rome; he had been diagnosed in 1999 with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. He was survived by his wife, their two sons, and his first child, Rebecca. He was cremated in Rome. == Writing == === Approach to ethics === A. W. Moore writes that Williams' work lies within the analytic tradition, although less typical of it "in its breadth, in its erudition, and above all in its profound humanity": Although he was never a vigorous apologist for that tradition, he always maintained the standards of clarity and rigour which it prizes, and his work is a model of all that is best in the tradition. It is brilliant, deep, and imaginative. It is also extraordinarily tight. There cannot be many critics of his work who have not thought of some objection to what he says, only to find, on looking for a relevant quotation to turn into a target, that Williams carefully presents his views in a way that precisely anticipates the objection. Williams did not produce any ethical theory or system; several commentators noted, unfairly in the view of his supporters, that he was largely a critic. Moore writes that Williams was unaffected by this criticism: "He simply refused to allow philosophical system-building to eclipse the subtlety and variety of human ethical experience." He equated ethical theories with "a tidiness, a systematicity, and an economy of ideas," writes Moore, that were not up to describing human lives and motives. Williams tried not to lose touch "with the real concerns that animate our ordinary ethical experience," unlike much of the "arid, ahistorical, second-order" debates about ethics in philosophy departments.In his first book, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972), Williams wrote that whereas "most moral philosophy at most times has been empty and boring ... [c]ontemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all." He argued that the study of ethics should be vital, compelling and difficult, and he sought an approach that was accountable to psychology and history.Williams was not an ethical realist, holding that unlike scientific knowledge, which can approach an "absolute conception of reality," an ethical judgment rests on a point of view. He argued that the "thick" ethical concepts, such as kindness and cruelty, express a "union of fact and value." The idea that our values are not "in the world" was liberating: "[A] radical form of freedom may be found in the fact that we cannot be forced by the world to accept one set of values rather than another" said Williams.Williams frequently emphasised what he saw as the ways in which luck pervades ethical life. He coined and developed the term moral luck, and illustrated the idea of moral luck via a number of enormously influential examples. One of Williams's famous examples of moral luck concerns the painter Paul Gauguin's decision to move to Tahiti. === Critique of Kant === Williams's work throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972), Problems of the Self (1973), Utilitarianism: For and Against with J. J. C. Smart (1973), Moral Luck (1981) and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), outlined his attacks on the twin pillars of ethics: utilitarianism and the moral philosophy of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Martha Nussbaum wrote that his work "denounced the trivial and evasive way in which moral philosophy was being practised in England under the aegis of those two dominant theories." "Both theories simplified the moral life," she wrote, "neglecting emotions and personal attachments and how sheer luck shapes our choices." (Williams said in 1996: "Roughly, if it isn't about obligation or consequences, it doesn't count.")Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) expounded a moral system based on the categorical imperative, one formulation of which is: "Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." Rational agents must act on "principles of pure rational agency," writes Moore; that is, principles that regulate all rational agents. But Williams distinguished between thinking and acting. To think rationally is to think in a way compatible with belief in the truth, and "what it takes for one to believe the truth is the same as what it takes for anyone else to believe the truth," writes Moore. But one can act rationally by satisfying one's own desires (internal reasons for action), and what it takes to do that may not be what it takes for anyone else to satisfy theirs. Kant's approach to treating thinking and acting alike is wrong, according to Williams.Williams argued that Kant had given the "purest, deepest and most thorough representation of morality," but that the "honourable instincts of Kantianism to defend the individuality of individuals against the agglomerative indifference of Utilitarianism" may not be effective against the Kantian "abstract character of persons as moral agents." We should not be expected to act as though we are not who we are in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. === Critique of utilitarianism === Williams set out the case against utilitarianism – a consequentialist position the simplest version of which is that actions are right only insofar as they promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number – in Utilitarianism: For and Against (1973) with J. J. C. Smart. One of the book's thought experiments involves Jim, a botanist doing research in a South American country led by a brutal dictator. Jim finds himself in a small town facing 20 captured Indian rebels. The captain who has arrested them says that if Jim will kill one, the others will be released in honour of Jim's status as a guest, but if he does not, they will all be killed. Simple act utilitarianism would favour Jim killing one of the men.Williams argued that there is a crucial distinction between a person being killed by Jim, and being killed by the captain because of an act or omission of Jim's. The captain, if he chooses to kill, is not simply the medium of an effect Jim is having on the world. He is the moral actor, the person with the intentions and projects. The utilitarian loses that distinction, turning us into empty vessels by means of which consequences occur. Williams argued that moral decisions must preserve our psychological identity and integrity. We should reject any system that reduces moral decisions to a few algorithms. === Reasons for action === Williams argued that there are only internal reasons for action: "A has a reason to φ if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φ-ing." An external reason would be "A has reason to φ," even if nothing in A's "subjective motivational set" would be furthered by her φ-ing. Williams argued that it is meaningless to say that there are external reasons; reason alone does not move people to action.Sophie-Grace Chappell argues that, without external reasons for action, it becomes impossible to maintain that the same set of moral reasons applies to all agents equally. In cases where someone has no internal reason to do what others see as the right thing, they cannot be blamed for failing to do it, because internal reasons are the only reasons, and blame, Williams wrote, "involves treating the person who is blamed like someone who had a reason to do the right thing but did not do it." === Truth === In his final completed book, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (2002), Williams identifies the two basic values of truth as accuracy and sincerity, and tries to address the gulf between the demand for truth and the doubt that any such thing exists. Jane O'Grady wrote in a Guardian obituary of Williams that the book is an examination of those who "sneer at any purported truth as ludicrously naive because it is, inevitably, distorted by power, class bias and ideology."The debt to Friedrich Nietzsche is clear, most obviously in the adoption of a genealogical method as a tool of explanation and critique. Although part of Williams's intention was to attack those he felt denied the value of truth, the book cautions that, to understand it simply in that sense, would be to miss part of its purpose; rather, as Kenneth Baker wrote, it is "Williams' reflection on the moral cost of the intellectual vogue for dispensing with the concept of truth." == Legacy == Williams did not propose any systematic philosophical theory; indeed, he was suspicious of any such attempt. He became known for his dialectical powers, although he was suspicious of them too. Alan Code wrote that Williams had never been "impressed by the display of mere dialectical cleverness, least of all in moral philosophy": On the contrary, one of the most notable features of his philosophical outlook was an unwavering insistence on a series of points that may seem obvious but which are nevertheless all-too-frequently neglected: that moral or ethical thought is part of human life; that in writing about it, philosophers are writing about something of genuine importance; that it is not easy to say anything worth saying about the subject; that what moral philosophers write is answerable to the realities of human history, psychology, and social affairs; and that mere cleverness is indeed not the relevant measure of value." In 1996 Martin Hollis said that Williams had "a good claim to be the leading British philosopher of his day," but that, although he had a "lovely eye for the central questions," he had none of the answers. Alan Thomas identified Williams's contribution to ethics as an overarching scepticism about attempts to create a foundation for moral philosophy, explicitly articulated in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) and Shame and Necessity (1993), in which he argued that moral theories can never reflect the complexities of life, particularly given the radical pluralism of modern societies.Learning to be yourself, to be authentic and to act with integrity, rather than conforming to any external moral system, is arguably the fundamental motif of Williams's work, according to Sophie Grace Chappell. "If there's one theme in all my work it's about authenticity and self-expression," Williams said in 2002. "It's the idea that some things are in some real sense really you, or express what you and others aren't ... The whole thing has been about spelling out the notion of inner necessity." He moved moral philosophy away from the Kantian question, "What is my duty?", and back to the issue that mattered to the Greeks: "How should we live?" == Publications == Selected papers *Complete Bibliography (as of 2011) by A.W. Moore and Jonathan Williams. == Notes == == References == == Further reading == Nagel, Thomas. "Moral Luck", Mortal Questions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Nagel, Thomas. "Sir Bernard Williams", Encyclopædia Britannica. Perry, Alexandra; Herrera, Chris. The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. == External links == Sophie-Grace Chappell, Nicholas Smyth. "Bernard Williams". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "The Spell of Linguistic Philosophy", Byran Magee interviews Bernard Williams, BBC, 1977, from 00:03:32. "Bernard Williams", London Review of Books. "Bernard Williams", The New York Review of Books. "Bernard Williams: Ethics from a Human Point of View", Paul Russell, Times Literary Supplement. "Bernard Williams: Philosopher", Links to articles, interviews, videos and more.

Jean Baudrillard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard (UK: BOHD-rih-yar, US: BOHD-ree-AR, French: [ʒɑ̃ bodʁijaʁ]; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism and had distanced himself from postmodernism. == Biography == Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on 27 July 1929. His grandparents were farm workers and his father a gendarme. During high school (at the Lycée at Reims), he became aware of 'pataphysics via philosophy professor Emmanuel Peillet, which is said to be crucial for understanding Baudrillard's later thought.: 317  He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to Paris to attend the Sorbonne. There he studied German language and literature, which led him to begin teaching the subject at several different lycées, both Parisian and provincial, from 1960 until 1966.: 317  === Teaching career === While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann.: 317–328 While teaching German, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing and publishing in 1968 his doctoral thesis Le Système des Objets (The System of Objects) under the dissertation committee of Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. Subsequently, he began teaching Sociology at the Paris X Nanterre, a university campus just outside Paris which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968.: 2(Introduction)  During this time, Baudrillard worked closely with Philosopher Humphrey De Battenburge, who described Baudrillard as a "visionary". At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his accreditation, L'Autre par lui-même (The Other by Himself). In 1970, Baudrillard made the first of his many trips to the United States (Aspen, Colorado), and in 1973, the first of several trips to Kyoto, Japan. He was given his first camera in 1981 in Japan, which led to him becoming a photographer.: 317–328 In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to move away from sociology as a discipline (particularly in its "classical" form), and, after ceasing to teach full-time, he rarely identified himself with any particular discipline, although he remained linked to academia. During the 1980s and 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity, being published often in the French- and English-speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the Collège de 'Pataphysique. Baudrillard taught at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and collaborated at the Canadian theory, culture, and technology review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. He also purportedly participated in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (as of 2022 hosted on Bishop's University domain) from its inception in 2004 until his death.In 1999–2000, his photographs were exhibited at the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris.: 319  In 2004, Baudrillard attended the major conference on his work, "Baudrillard and the Arts", at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany.: 317–328  === Personal life === Baudrillard enjoyed baroque music; a favorite composer was Claudio Monteverdi. He also favored rock music such as The Velvet Underground & Nico.Baudrillard did his writing using "his old typewriter, never at the computer". He has stated that a computer is not "merely a handier and more complex kind of typewriter", whereas with a typewriter he has a "physical relation to writing".Baudrillard was married twice. He and his first wife Lucile Baudrillard had two children, Gilles and Anne.In 1970 during his first marriage, Baudrillard met 25-year-old Marine Dupuis when she arrived at the Nanterre where he was a professor. Marine went on to be a media artistic director. They married in 1994 when he was 65.Diagnosed with cancer in 2005, Baudrillard battled the disease for two years from his apartment on Rue Sainte-Beuve, Paris, dying at the age of 77. Marine Baudrillard curates Cool Memories, an association of Jean Baudrillard's friends. == Key concepts == Baudrillard's published work emerged as part of a generation of French thinkers including Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan who all shared an interest in semiotics, and he is often seen as a part of the post-structuralist philosophical school.James M. Russell in 2015: 283  stated that "In common with many post-structuralists, his arguments consistently draw upon the notion that signification and meaning are both only understandable in terms of how particular words or 'signs' interrelate". Baudrillard thought, as do many post-structuralists, that meaning is brought about through systems of signs working together. Following on from the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, Baudrillard argued that meaning (value) is created through difference—through what something is not (so "dog" means "dog" because it is not-"cat", not-"goat", not-"tree", etc.). In fact, he viewed meaning as near enough self-referential: objects, images of objects, words and signs are situated in a web of meaning; one object's meaning is only understandable through its relation to the meaning of other objects; for instance, one thing's prestige relates to another's mundanity. From this starting point Baudrillard theorized broadly about human society based upon this kind of self-referentiality. His writing portrays societies always searching for a sense of meaning—or a "total" understanding of the world—that remains consistently elusive. In contrast to Post-structuralism (such as Michel Foucault), for whom the formations of knowledge emerge only as the result of relations of power, Baudrillard developed theories in which the excessive, fruitless search for total knowledge leads almost inevitably to a kind of delusion. In Baudrillard's view, the (human) subject may try to understand the (non-human) object, but because the object can only be understood according to what it signifies (and because the process of signification immediately involves a web of other signs from which it is distinguished) this never produces the desired results. The subject is, rather, seduced (in the original Latin sense: seducere, 'to lead away') by the object. He argued therefore that, in the final analysis, a complete understanding of the minutiae of human life is impossible, and when people are seduced into thinking otherwise they become drawn toward a "simulated" version of reality, or, to use one of his neologisms, a state of "hyperreality". This is not to say that the world becomes unreal, but rather that the faster and more comprehensively societies begin to bring reality together into one supposedly coherent picture, the more insecure and unstable it looks and the more fearful societies become. Reality, in this sense, "dies out."Russell states that Baudrillard argues that "in our present 'global' society, technological communication has created an excessive proliferation of meaning. Because of this, meaning's self-referentiality has prompted, not a 'global village,' but a world where meaning has been obliterated": 283  Accordingly, Baudrillard argued that the excess of signs and of meaning in late 20th century "global" society had caused (quite paradoxically) an effacement of reality. In this world neither liberal nor Marxist utopias are any longer believed in. We live, he argued, not in a "global village", to use Marshall McLuhan's phrase, but rather in a world that is ever more easily petrified by even the smallest event. Because the "global" world operates at the level of the exchange of signs and commodities, it becomes ever more blind to symbolic acts such as, for example, terrorism. In Baudrillard's work the symbolic realm (which he develops a perspective on through the anthropological work of Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille) is seen as quite distinct from that of signs and signification. Signs can be exchanged like commodities; symbols, on the other hand, operate quite differently: they are exchanged, like gifts, sometimes violently as a form of potlatch. Baudrillard, particularly in his later work, saw the "global" society as without this "symbolic" element, and therefore symbolically (if not militarily) defenseless against acts such as the Rushdie Fatwa or, indeed, the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States and its military and economic establishment. === The object value system === In his early books, such as The System of Objects, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, and The Consumer Society, Baudrillard's main focus is upon consumerism, and how different objects are consumed in different ways. At this time Baudrillard's political outlook was loosely associated with Marxism (and Situationism), but in these books he differed from Karl Marx in one significant way. For Baudrillard, as for the situationists, it was consumption rather than production that was the main driver of capitalist society. Baudrillard came to this conclusion by criticising Marx's concept of "use-value". Baudrillard thought that both Marx's and Adam Smith's economic thought accepted the idea of genuine needs relating to genuine uses too easily and too simply. Baudrillard argued, drawing from Georges Bataille, that needs are constructed, rather than innate. He stressed that all purchases, because they always signify something socially, have their fetishistic side. Objects always, drawing from Roland Barthes, "say something" about their users. And this was, for him, why consumption was and remains more important than production: because the "ideological genesis of needs" precedes the production of goods to meet those needs.: 63 He wrote that there are four ways of an object obtaining value. The four value-making processes are: The functional value: an object's instrumental purpose (use value). Example: a pen writes; a refrigerator cools. The exchange value: an object's economic value. Example: One pen may be worth three pencils, while one refrigerator may be worth the salary earned by three months of work. The symbolic value: an object's value assigned by a subject in relation to another subject (i.e., between a giver and receiver). Example: a pen might symbolize a student's school graduation gift or a commencement speaker's gift; or a diamond may be a symbol of publicly declared marital love. The sign value: an object's value within a system of objects. Example: a particular pen may, while having no added functional benefit, signify prestige relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but may suggest particular social values, such as taste or class.Baudrillard's earlier books were attempts to argue that the first two of these values are not simply associated, but are disrupted by the third and, particularly, the fourth. Later, Baudrillard rejected Marxism totally (The Mirror of Production and Symbolic Exchange and Death). But the focus on the difference between sign value (which relates to commodity exchange) and symbolic value (which relates to Maussian gift exchange) remained in his work up until his death. Indeed, it came to play a more and more important role, particularly in his writings on world events. === Simulacra and Simulation === As Baudrillard developed his work throughout the 1980s, he moved from economic theory to mediation and mass communication. Although retaining his interest in Saussurean semiotics and the logic of symbolic exchange (as influenced by anthropologist Marcel Mauss), Baudrillard turned his attention to the work of Marshall McLuhan, developing ideas about how the nature of social relations is determined by the forms of communication that a society employs. In so doing, Baudrillard progressed beyond both Saussure's and Roland Barthes's formal semiology to consider the implications of a historically understood version of structural semiology. According to Kornelije Kvas, "Baudrillard rejects the structuralist principle of the equivalence of different forms of linguistic organization, the binary principle that contains oppositions such as: true-false, real-unreal, center-periphery. He denies any possibility of a (mimetic) duplication of reality; reality mediated through language becomes a game of signs. In his theoretical system all distinctions between the real and the fictional, between a copy and the original, disappear".Simulation, Baudrillard claims, is the current stage of the simulacrum: all is composed of references with no referents, a hyperreality. Baudrillard argues that this is part of a historical progression. In the Renaissance, the dominant simulacrum was in the form of the counterfeit, where people or objects appear to stand for a real referent that does not exist (for instance, royalty, nobility, holiness, etc.). With the Industrial Revolution, the dominant simulacrum becomes the product, which can be propagated on an endless production line. In current times, the dominant simulacrum is the model, which by its nature already stands for endless reproducibility, and is itself already reproduced. === The end of history and meaning === Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, one of Baudrillard's most common themes was historicity, or, more specifically, how present-day societies use the notions of progress and modernity in their political choices. He argued, much like the political theorist Francis Fukuyama, that history had ended or "vanished" with the spread of globalization; but, unlike Fukuyama, Baudrillard averred that this end should not be understood as the culmination of history's progress,The aim of this world order ... is, in a sense, the end of history, not on the basis of a democratic fulfillment, as Fukuyama has it, but on the basis of preventive terror, of a counter-terror that puts an end to any possible events. but as the collapse of the very idea of historical progress. For Baudrillard, the end of the Cold War did not represent an ideological victory; rather, it signaled the disappearance of utopian visions shared between both the political Right and Left. Giving further evidence of his opposition toward Marxist visions of global communism and liberal visions of global civil society, Baudrillard contended that the ends they hoped for had always been illusions; indeed, as The Illusion of the End argues, he thought the idea of an end itself was nothing more than a misguided dream: The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.: 263  Within a society subject to and ruled by fast-paced electronic communication and global information networks the collapse of this façade was always going to be, he thought, inevitable. Employing a quasi-scientific vocabulary that attracted the ire of the physicist Alan Sokal, Baudrillard wrote that the speed society moved at had destabilized the linearity of history: "we have the particle accelerator that has smashed the referential orbit of things once and for all.": 2 Russell stated that this "approach to history demonstrates Baudrillard's affinities with the postmodern philosophy of Jean-François Lyotard", who argued that in the late 20th century there was no longer any room for "metanarratives". (The triumph of a coming communism being one such metanarrative.) But, in addition to simply lamenting this collapse of history, Baudrillard also went beyond Lyotard and attempted to analyse how the idea of positive progress was being employed in spite of the notion's declining validity. Baudrillard argued that although genuine belief in a universal endpoint of history, wherein all conflicts would find their resolution, had been deemed redundant, universality was still a notion used in world politics as an excuse for actions. Universal values which, according to him, no one any longer believed universal were and are still rhetorically employed to justify otherwise unjustifiable choices. The means, he wrote, are there even though the ends are no longer believed in, and are employed to hide the present's harsh realities (or, as he would have put it, unrealities). "In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization is expressed as a forward escape." This involves the notion of "escape velocity" as outlined in The Illusion of the End , which in turn, results in the postmodern fallacy of escape velocity on which the postmodern mind and critical view cannot, by definition, ever truly break free from the all-encompassing "self-referential" sphere of discourse. === Hyperreality === == Political commentary == === On the Bosnian War === Baudrillard reacted to the West's indifference to the Bosnian War in writings, mostly in essays in his column for Libération. More specifically, he expressed his view on Europe's unwillingness to respond to "aggression and genocide in Bosnia", in which "New Europe" revealed itself to be a "sham." He criticized the Western media and intellectuals for their passivity, and for taking the role of bystanders, engaging in ineffective, hypocritical and self-serving action, and the public for its inability to distinguish simulacra from real world happenings, in which real death and destruction in Bosnia seemed unreal. He was determined in his columns to openly name the perpetrators, Serbs, and call their actions in Bosnia aggression and genocide.Baudrillard "had famously attacked Susan Sontag" for directing a play in war-torn Bosnia. === On the Persian Gulf War === Baudrillard's provocative 1991 book, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, raised his public profile as an academic and political commentator. He argued that the first Gulf War was the inverse of the Clausewitzian formula: not "the continuation of politics by other means," but "the continuation of the absence of politics by other means." Accordingly, Saddam Hussein was not fighting the Coalition, but using the lives of his soldiers as a form of sacrifice to preserve his power.: 72  The Coalition fighting the Iraqi military was merely dropping 10,000 tonnes of bombs daily, as if proving to themselves that there was an enemy to fight.: 61  So, too, were the Western media complicit, presenting the war in real time, by recycling images of war to propagate the notion that the U.S.-led Coalition and the Iraqi government were actually fighting, but, such was not the case. Saddam Hussein did not use his military capacity (the Iraqi Air Force). His power was not weakened, evinced by his easy suppression of the 1991 internal uprisings that followed afterwards. Over all, little had changed. Saddam remained undefeated, the "victors" were not victorious, and thus there was no war—i.e., the Gulf War did not occur. The book was originally a series of articles in the British newspaper The Guardian and the French newspaper Libération, published in three parts: "The Gulf War Will Not Take Place," published during the American military and rhetorical buildup; "The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place," published during military action; and "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" published afterwards. Some critics, like Christopher Norris accused Baudrillard of instant revisionism; a denial of the physical action of the conflict (which was related to his denial of reality in general). Consequently, Baudrillard was accused of lazy amoralism, cynical scepticism, and Berkelian subjective idealism. Sympathetic commentators such as William Merrin, in his book Baudrillard and the Media, have argued that Baudrillard was more concerned with the West's technological and political dominance and the globalization of its commercial interests, and what that means for the present possibility of war. Merrin argued that Baudrillard was not denying that something had happened, but merely questioning whether that something was in fact war or a bilateral "atrocity masquerading as a war". Merrin viewed the accusations of amorality as redundant and based on a misreading. In Baudrillard's own words:: 71–2  Saddam liquidates the communists, Moscow flirts even more with him; he gases the Kurds, it is not held against him; he eliminates the religious cadres, the whole of Islam makes peace with him.… Even…the 100,000 dead will only have been the final decoy that Saddam will have sacrificed, the blood money paid in forfeit according to a calculated equivalence... to preserve his power. What is worse is that these dead still serve as an alibi for those who do not want to have been excited for nothing: at least these dead will prove this war was indeed a war and not shameful and pointless. === On the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 === In his essay, "The Spirit of Terrorism", Baudrillard characterises the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York City as the "absolute event". Baudrillard contrasts the "absolute event" of 11 September 2001 with "global events", such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and World Cup. The essay culminates in Baudrillard regarding the U.S.-led Gulf War as a "non-event", or an "event that did not happen". Seeking to understand them as a reaction to the technological and political expansion of capitalist globalization, rather than as a war of religiously based or civilization-based warfare, he described the absolute event and its consequences as follows: This is not a clash of civilisations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based upon force. There is indeed a fundamental antagonism here, but one that points past the spectre of America (which is perhaps the epicentre, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalisation) and the spectre of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either) to triumphant globalisation battling against itself. In accordance with his theory of society, Baudrillard portrayed the attacks as a symbolic reaction to the inexorable rise of a world based on commodity exchange. === Debate with Jacques Derrida === 19 February 2003, with the 2003 invasion of Iraq impending, René Major moderated a debate entitled "Pourquoi La Guerre Aujourd'hui?" between Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, co-hosted by Major's Institute for Advanced Studies in Psychoanalysis and Le Monde Diplomatique. The debate discussed the relation between terrorist attacks and the invasion. "Where Baudrillard situates 9/11 as the primary motivating force" behind the Iraq War, whereas "Derrida argues that the Iraq War was planned long before 9/11, and that 9/11 plays a secondary role". === The Agony of Power === During 2005, Baudrillard wrote three short pieces and gave a brief magazine interview, all treating similar ideas; following his death in 2007, the four pieces were collected and published posthumously as The Agony of Power, a polemic against power itself. The first piece, "From Domination to Hegemony", contrasts its two subjects, modes of power; domination stands for historical, traditional power relations, while hegemony stands for modern, more sophisticated power relations as realized by states and businesses. Baudrillard decried the "cynicism" with which contemporary businesses openly state their business models. For example, he cited French television channel TF1 executive Patrick Le Lay who stated that his business' job was "to help Coca-Cola sell its products.": 37  Baudrillard lamented that such honesty pre-empted and thus robbed the Left of its traditional role of critiquing governments and businesses: "In fact, Le Lay takes away the only power we had left. He steals our denunciation.": 38–9  Consequently, Baudrillard stated that "power itself must be abolished—and not solely in the refusal to be dominated...but also, just as violently, in the refusal to dominate.": 47  The latter pieces included further analysis of the 11 September terrorist attacks, using the metaphor of the Native American potlatch to describe both American and Muslim societies, specifically the American state versus the hijackers. In the pieces' context, "potlatch" referred not to the gift-giving aspect of the ritual, but rather its wealth-destroying aspect: "The terrorists' potlatch against the West is their own death. Our potlatch is indignity, immodesty, obscenity, degradation and abjection.": 67  This criticism of the West carried notes of Baudrillard's simulacrum, the above cynicism of business, and contrast between Muslim and Western societies:: 67–8 We [the West] throw this indifference and abjection at others like a challenge: the challenge to defile themselves in return, to deny their values, to strip naked, confess, admit—to respond to a nihilism equal to our own. == Reception == Jean-François Lyotard's 1974 Économie Libidinale criticised Baudrillard's work. Lotringer notes that Gilles Deleuze, "otherwise known for his generosity", "made it known around Paris" that he saw Baudrillard as "the shame of the profession" after Baudrillard published his views on Foucault's works.: 20 Sontag, responding to Baudrillard's comments on her reactions to the Bosnian war, described him as "ignorant and cynical" and "a political idiot".James M. Russell in 2015 wrote that "The most severe" of Baudrillard's "critics accuse him of being a purveyor of a form of reality-denying irrationalism".: 285–286  One of Baudrillard's editors, critical theory professor Mark Poster, remarked: Baudrillard's writing up to the mid-1980s is open to several criticisms. He fails to define key terms, such as the code; his writing style is hyperbolic and declarative, often lacking sustained, systematic analysis when it is appropriate; he totalizes his insights, refusing to qualify or delimit his claims. He writes about particular experiences, television images, as if nothing else in society mattered, extrapolating a bleak view of the world from that limited base. He ignores contradictory evidence such as the many benefits afforded by the new media But Poster still argued for his contemporary relevance; he also attempted to refute the most extreme of Baudrillard's critics: Baudrillard is not disputing the trivial issue that reason remains operative in some actions, that if I want to arrive at the next block, for example, I can assume a Newtonian universe (common sense), plan a course of action (to walk straight for X meters), carry out the action, and finally fulfill my goal by arriving at the point in question. What is in doubt is that this sort of thinking enables a historically informed grasp of the present in general. According to Baudrillard, it does not. The concurrent spread of the hyperreal through the media and the collapse of liberal and Marxist politics as the master narratives, deprives the rational subject of its privileged access to truth. In an important sense individuals are no longer citizens, eager to maximise their civil rights, nor proletarians, anticipating the onset of communism. They are rather consumers, and hence the prey of objects as defined by the code. Christopher Norris's Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War, to Russell, "seeks to reject his media theory and position on "the real" out of hand".: 285 Frankfurt school critical theorist Douglas Kellner's Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond—seeks rather to analyse Baudrillard's relation to postmodernism (a concept with which Baudrillard has had a continued, if uneasy and rarely explicit, relationship) and to present a Marxist counter. Regarding the former, William Merrin (discussed above) published more than one denunciation of Norris' position. The latter Baudrillard himself characterised as reductive.Kellner stated that "it is difficult to decide whether Baudrillard is best read as science fiction and pataphysics, or as philosophy, social theory, and cultural metaphysics, and whether his post-1970s work should be read under the sign of truth or fiction." To Kellner, Baudrillard during and after the 1970s "falls prey to a technological determinism and semiological idealism which posits an autonomous technology".In 1991, writing for Science Fiction Studies, Vivian Sobchack alleged that "The man [Baudrillard] is really dangerous" for lacking "moral gaze", while J. G. Ballard (whose novel Baudrillard had written on) commented that Baudrillard was "trapped inside your [Baudrillard's] dismal jargon".Sara Ahmed in 1996 remarked that Baudrillard's De la séduction was culpable of "celebrating [...] is precisely women's status as signs and commodities circulated by and for male spectators and consumers". Kellner described De la séduction as an "affront to feminism".Art critic Adrian Searle in 1998 described Baudrillard's photography as "wistful, elegiac and oddly haunting", like "movie stills of unregarded moments". === Tone and attitude === Mark Fisher pointed out that Baudrillard "is condemned, sometimes lionised, as the melancholic observer of a departed reality", asserting that Baudrillard "was certainly melancholic". Poster stated that "As the politics of the sixties receded so did Baudrillard's radicalism: from a position of firm leftism he gradually moved to one of bleak fatalism", a view Felix Guattari echoed. Richard G. Smith, David B. Clarke and Marcus A. Doel instead consider Baudrillard "an extreme optimist". In an exchange between critical theorist McKenzie Wark and EGS professor Geert Lovink, Wark remarked of Baudrillard that "Everything he wrote was marked by a radical sadness and yet invariably expressed in the happiest of forms." Baudrillard himself stated "we have to fight against charges of unreality, lack of responsibility, nihilism, and despair". Chris Turner's English translation of Baudrillard's Cool Memories: 1980–1985 writes, "I accuse myself of... being profoundly carnal and melancholy...AMEN [sic]".: 38 David Macey saw "extraordinary arrogance" in Baudrillard's take on Foucault.: 22  Sontag found Baudrillard 'condescending'.Russell wrote that "Baudrillard's writing, and his uncompromising - even arrogant - stance, have led to fierce criticism which in contemporary social scholarship can only be compared to the criticism received by Jacques Lacan.": 285  === Terrorism comments === Baudrillard's stance on the 11 September 2001 attacks was criticised on two counts. Richard Wolin (in The Seduction of Unreason) forcefully accused Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek of all but celebrating the terrorist attacks, essentially claiming that the United States received what it deserved. Žižek, however, countered that accusation to Wolin's analysis as a form of intellectual barbarism in the journal Critical Inquiry, saying that Wolin failed to see the difference between fantasising about an event and stating that one is deserving of that event. Merrin (in Baudrillard and the Media) argued that Baudrillard's position affords the terrorists a type of moral superiority. In the journal Economy and Society, Merrin further noted that Baudrillard gives the symbolic facets of society unfair privilege above semiotic concerns. Second, authors questioned whether the attacks were unavoidable. Bruno Latour, in Critical Inquiry, argued that Baudrillard believed that their destruction was forced by the society that created them, alluding to the notion that the Towers were "brought down by their own weight." In Latour's view, this was because Baudrillard conceived only of society in terms of a symbolic and semiotic dualism. == Influence and legacy == Native American Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor made extensive use of Baudrillard's concepts of simulation in his critical work. === In popular culture === The Wachowskis said that Baudrillard influenced The Matrix (1999), and Neo hides money and disks containing information in Simulacra and Simulation. Adam Gopnik wondered whether Baudrillard, who had not embraced the movie, was "thinking of suing for a screen credit," but Baudrillard himself disclaimed any connection to The Matrix, calling it at best a misreading of his ideas.Some reviewers have noted that Charlie Kaufman's film Synecdoche, New York seems inspired by Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.The album Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? by rock band Deerhunter was influenced by Baudrillard's essay of the same name. == Bibliography == === Books (English translations) === === Articles and essays === "Jean Baudrillard - Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism - Articles". www.egs.edu. European Graduate School. Archived from the original on 27 May 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2023. 1996. "No Pity for Sarajevo; The West's Serbianization; When the West Stands In for the Dead." Pp. 79–89 in This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia. NYU Press. JSTOR j.ctt9qfngn.7. 2001. "The Spirit of Terrorism." Telos 121(Fall):134–42. 2005. "Divine Europe." Telos 131(Summer):188–90. 2006. "The Pyres of Autumn." New Left Review 2(37). The violence of images, violence against the image. Radical Thought (CTheory) https://web.archive.org/web/20160513042009/http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=67 [1] === Interviews === Jocks, Heinz-Norbert: Die Fotografie und die Dinge. Ein Gespräch mit Jean Baudrillard. In: Kunstforum International., No: 172, Das Ende der Fotografie. Editor: Heinz-Norbert Jocks, 2004, p. 70–83. Smith, Richard G., David B. Clarke, eds. 2015. Jean Baudrillard: From Hyperreality to Disappearance: Uncollected Interviews. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-9429-7. Smith, Richard G., David B. Clarke, eds. 2017. Jean Baudrillard: The Disappearance of Culture: Uncollected Interviews. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-1778-5. === Audio CDs === 1997. Die Illusion des Endes – Das Ende der Illusion [58 minutes + booklet], Jean Baudrillard & Boris Groys. Cologne: supposé. ISBN 3-932513-01-0 2006. Die Macht der Verführung, [55 minutes]. Cologne: supposé. ISBN 978-3-932513-67-1. == See also == Hyper-real Religion – New consumer trend in acquiring and enacting religion Reza Negarestani – Iranian philosopher and writer (born 1977) The Real – Philosophical category of inexpressible reality Code (semiotics) – set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaningPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback Freud's seduction theory – Abandoned 1890s psychological hypothesis Friedrich Nietzsche's views on women Symbolic violence – Term coined by the 20th-century French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu Psychoanalytic sociology == Notes == ^ a: : Baudrillard: "The matter is complicated further by the play of terminology. Neither seduction nor love being precise notions (they have no place in the great conceptual systems, nor in psychoanalysis), they caneasily switch or be confused. So if one takes seduction to be a challenge, a game where the bets are never down, an uninterrupted ritual exchange, an infinite escalation of the ante, a secret complicity, etc., one can always answer: "But so defined, wouldn't seduction be simply love?"... "We can even invert the relation and make love something more decisive, more challenging than seduction." == References == === Sources === == External links == Jean Baudrillard Biography. Archived from the original on 20 December 2009. Faculty page at European Graduate School (biography, bibliography, photos and videos). Kellner, Douglas. "Jean Baudrillard". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Baudrillard, Jean (11 April 2008). Fatal Strategies. Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents (New ed.). Semiotext(e). ISBN 9781584350613. Jean Baudrillard (1981; translated 1994 by Sheila Glaser), Simulacra and Simulation, archived from the original on 21 May 2013. Baudrillard; Cultura, Simulacro y régimen de mortandad en el Sistema de los Objetos | EIKASIA PDF (in Spanish) Adolfo Vásquez Rocca "The world of Jean Baudrillard". Robertexto.com. Retrieved 17 August 2013. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. Retrieved 9 March 2022 Cool Memories, association of Baudrillard's friends Bacon's Essays/Of Simulation and Dissimulation by Anglican philosopher Francis Bacon Terror And Performance – Asymmetric Warfare, Martyrdom, And Necropolitics. An application of Achille Mbembe's study of Necropolitics to Baudrillard's notion of death.

Jürgen Habermas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas

Jürgen Habermas (UK: , US: ; German: [ˈjʏʁɡn̩ ˈhaːbɐmaːs] (listen); born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of epistemology and social theory, the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, albeit within the confines of the natural law tradition, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. Habermas is known for his work on the concept of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. He has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and poststructuralism. Although an atheist, Habermas having seen the rampant deterioration of morality in the West has recently spoke of the need for the West to continue its continuity with traditional Christian ethics stating “religion seems to have the ability to motivate individuals to do good in a manner that secularism cannot.” When he received the Holberg Price Award in Norway in 2005, he addressed the need for a renewed respect for traditional Christian morality. == Biography == Habermas was born in Düsseldorf, Rhine Province, in 1929. He was born with a cleft palate and had corrective surgery twice during childhood. Habermas argues that his speech disability made him think differently about the importance of deep dependence and of communication. He grew up in Gummersbach. As a young teenager, he was profoundly affected by World War II. Until his graduation from grammar school, Habermas lived in Gummersbach, near Cologne. His father, Ernst Habermas, was executive director of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and was described by Habermas as a Nazi sympathizer and, from 1933, a member of the NSDAP. Habermas himself was a Jungvolkführer, a leader of the German Jungvolk, which was a section of the Hitler Youth. He was brought up in a staunchly Protestant milieu, his grandfather being the director of the seminary in Gummersbach. He studied at the universities of Göttingen (1949/50), Zurich (1950/51), and Bonn (1951–54) and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Bonn in 1954 with a dissertation written on the conflict between "the Absolute" and history in Schelling's thought, entitled, Das Absolute und die Geschichte. Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken ("The Absolute and History: On the Schism in Schelling's Thought"). His dissertation committee included Erich Rothacker and Oskar Becker.From 1956 on, he studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research, but because of a rift between the two over his dissertation—Horkheimer had made unacceptable demands for revision—as well as his own belief that the Frankfurt School had become paralyzed with political skepticism and disdain for modern culture, he finished his habilitation in political science at the University of Marburg under the Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth. His habilitation work was entitled Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (published in English translation in 1989 as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society). It is a detailed social history of the development of the bourgeois public sphere from its origins in the 18th century salons up to its transformation through the influence of capital-driven mass media. In 1961 he became a Privatdozent in Marburg, and—in a move that was highly unusual for the German academic scene of that time—he was offered the position of "extraordinary professor" (professor without chair) of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (at the instigation of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Löwith) in 1962, which he accepted. In this same year he gained his first serious public attention, in Germany, with the publication of his habilitation. In 1964, strongly supported by Adorno, Habermas returned to Frankfurt to take over Horkheimer's chair in philosophy and sociology. The philosopher Albrecht Wellmer was his assistant in Frankfurt from 1966 to 1970. He accepted the position of Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg (near Munich) in 1971, and worked there until 1983, two years after the publication of his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.Habermas then returned to his chair at Frankfurt and the directorship of the Institute for Social Research. Since retiring from Frankfurt in 1993, Habermas has continued to publish extensively. In 1986, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. He also holds the position of "permanent visiting" professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and "Theodor Heuss Professor" at The New School, New York. Habermas was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences of 2003. Habermas was also the 2004 Kyoto Laureate in the Arts and Philosophy section. He traveled to San Diego and on 5 March 2005, as part of the University of San Diego's Kyoto Symposium, gave a speech entitled The Public Role of Religion in Secular Context, regarding the evolution of separation of church and state from neutrality to intense secularism. He received the 2005 Holberg International Memorial Prize (about €520,000). In 2007, Habermas was listed as the seventh most-cited author in the humanities (including the social sciences) by The Times Higher Education Guide, ahead of Max Weber and behind Erving Goffman. Bibliometric studies demonstrate his continuing influence and increasing relevance.Jürgen Habermas is the father of Rebekka Habermas, historian of German social and cultural history and professor of modern history at the University of Göttingen. === Teacher and mentor === Habermas was a famed teacher and mentor. Among his most prominent students were the pragmatic philosopher Herbert Schnädelbach (theorist of discourse distinction and rationality), the political sociologist Claus Offe (professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin), the social philosopher Johann Arnason (professor at La Trobe University and chief editor of the journal Thesis Eleven), the social philosopher Hans-Herbert Kögler (Chair of Philosophy at the University of North Florida), the sociological theorist Hans Joas (professor at the University of Erfurt and at the University of Chicago), the theorist of societal evolution Klaus Eder, the social philosopher Axel Honneth, the political theorist David Rasmussen (professor at Boston College and chief editor of the journal "Philosophy & Social Criticism"), the environmental ethicist Konrad Ott, the anarcho-capitalist philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe (who came to reject much of Habermas's thought), the American philosopher Thomas McCarthy, the co-creator of mindful inquiry in social research Jeremy J. Shapiro, the political philosopher Cristina Lafont (Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University), and the assassinated Serbian prime minister Zoran Đinđić. == Philosophy and social theory == Habermas has constructed a comprehensive framework of philosophy and social theory drawing on a number of intellectual traditions: the German philosophical thought of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl and Hans-Georg Gadamer the Marxian tradition—both the theory of Karl Marx himself as well as the critical neo-Marxian theory of the Frankfurt School, i.e. Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. the sociological theories of Max Weber, Émile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead the linguistic philosophy and speech act theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson, Stephen Toulmin and John Searle the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg the American pragmatist tradition of Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey the sociological social systems theory of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann Neo-Kantian thoughtJürgen Habermas considers his major contribution to be the development of the concept and theory of communicative reason or communicative rationality, which distinguishes itself from the rationalist tradition, by locating rationality in structures of interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in the structure of the cosmos. This social theory advances the goals of human emancipation, while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework. This framework rests on the argument called universal pragmatics—that all speech acts have an inherent telos (the Greek word for "purpose")—the goal of mutual understanding, and that human beings possess the communicative competence to bring about such understanding. Habermas built the framework out of the speech-act philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin and John Searle, the sociological theory of the interactional constitution of mind and self of George Herbert Mead, the theories of moral development of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, and the discourse ethics of his Frankfurt colleague and fellow student Karl-Otto Apel. Habermas's works resonate within the traditions of Kant and the Enlightenment and of democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society through the realization of the human potential for reason, in part through discourse ethics. While Habermas has stated that the Enlightenment is an "unfinished project," he argues it should be corrected and complemented, not discarded. In this he distances himself from the Frankfurt School, criticizing it, as well as much of postmodernist thought, for excessive pessimism, radicalism, and exaggerations.Within sociology, Habermas's major contribution was the development of a comprehensive theory of societal evolution and modernization focusing on the difference between communicative rationality and rationalization on one hand and strategic/instrumental rationality and rationalization on the other. This includes a critique from a communicative standpoint of the differentiation-based theory of social systems developed by Niklas Luhmann, a student of Talcott Parsons. His defence of modernity and civil society has been a source of inspiration to others, and is considered a major philosophical alternative to the varieties of poststructuralism. He has also offered an influential analysis of late capitalism. Habermas perceives the rationalization, humanization and democratization of society in terms of the institutionalization of the potential for rationality that is inherent in the communicative competence that is unique to the human species. Habermas contends that communicative competence has developed through the course of evolution, but in contemporary society it is often suppressed or weakened by the way in which major domains of social life, such as the market, the state, and organizations, have been given over to or taken over by strategic/instrumental rationality, so that the logic of the system supplants that of the lifeworld. === Reconstructive science === Habermas introduces the concept of "reconstructive science" with a double purpose: to place the "general theory of society" between philosophy and social science and re-establish the rift between the "great theorization" and the "empirical research". The model of "rational reconstructions" represents the main thread of the surveys about the "structures" of the world of life ("culture", "society" and "personality") and their respective "functions" (cultural reproductions, social integrations and socialization). For this purpose, the dialectics between "symbolic representation" of "the structures subordinated to all worlds of life" ("internal relationships") and the "material reproduction" of the social systems in their complex ("external relationships" between social systems and environment) has to be considered. This model finds an application, above all, in the "theory of the social evolution", starting from the reconstruction of the necessary conditions for a phylogeny of the socio-cultural life forms (the "hominization") until an analysis of the development of "social formations", which Habermas subdivides into primitive, traditional, modern and contemporary formations. "This paper is an attempt, primarily, to formalize the model of "reconstruction of the logic of development" of "social formations" summed up by Habermas through the differentiation between vital world and social systems (and, within them, through the "rationalization of the world of life" and the "growth in complexity of the social systems"). Secondly, it tries to offer some methodological clarifications about the "explanation of the dynamics" of "historical processes" and, in particular, about the "theoretical meaning" of the evolutional theory's propositions. Even if the German sociologist considers that the "ex-post rational reconstructions" and "the models system/environment" cannot have a complete "historiographical application", these certainly act as a general premise in the argumentative structure of the "historical explanation"". === The public sphere === In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas argues that prior to the 18th century, European culture had been dominated by a "representational" culture, where one party sought to "represent" itself on its audience by overwhelming its subjects. As an example of "representational" culture, Habermas argued that Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles was meant to show the greatness of the French state and its King by overpowering the senses of visitors to the Palace. Habermas identifies "representational" culture as corresponding to the feudal stage of development according to Marxist theory, arguing that the coming of the capitalist stage of development marked the appearance of Öffentlichkeit (the public sphere). In the culture characterized by Öffentlichkeit, there occurred a public space outside of the control by the state, where individuals exchanged views and knowledge.In Habermas's view, the growth in newspapers, journals, reading clubs, Masonic lodges, and coffeehouses in 18th-century Europe, all in different ways, marked the gradual replacement of "representational" culture with Öffentlichkeit culture. Habermas argued that the essential characteristic of the Öffentlichkeit culture was its "critical" nature. Unlike "representational" culture where only one party was active and the other passive, the Öffentlichkeit culture was characterized by a dialogue as individuals either met in conversation, or exchanged views via the print media. Habermas maintains that as Britain was the most liberal country in Europe, the culture of the public sphere emerged there first around 1700, and the growth of Öffentlichkeit culture took place over most of the 18th century in Continental Europe. In his view, the French Revolution was in large part caused by the collapse of "representational" culture, and its replacement by Öffentlichkeit culture. Though Habermas's main concern in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was to expose what he regarded as the deceptive nature of free institutions in the West, his book had a major effect on the historiography of the French Revolution.According to Habermas, a variety of factors resulted in the eventual decay of the public sphere, including the growth of a commercial mass media, which turned the critical public into a passive consumer public; and the welfare state, which merged the state with society so thoroughly that the public sphere was squeezed out. It also turned the "public sphere" into a site of self-interested contestation for the resources of the state rather than a space for the development of a public-minded rational consensus. His most known work to date, the Theory of Communicative Action (1981), is based on an adaptation of Talcott Parsons AGIL Paradigm. In this work, Habermas voiced criticism of the process of modernization, which he saw as inflexible direction forced through by economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas outlined how our everyday lives are penetrated by formal systems as parallel to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and mass consumption. These reinforcing trends rationalize public life. Disfranchisement of citizens occurs as political parties and interest groups become rationalized and representative democracy replaces participatory one. In consequence, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating. Democratic public life cannot develop where matters of public importance are not discussed by citizens. An "ideal speech situation" requires participants to have the same capacities of discourse, social equality and their words are not confused by ideology or other errors. In this version of the consensus theory of truth Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation. Habermas has expressed optimism about the possibility of the revival of the public sphere. He discerns a hope for the future where the representative democracy-reliant nation-state is replaced by a deliberative democracy-reliant political organism based on the equal rights and obligations of citizens. In such a direct democracy-driven system, the activist public sphere is needed for debates on matters of public importance as well as the mechanism for that discussion to affect the decision-making process. == Habermas versus postmodernists == Habermas offered some early criticisms in an essay, "Modernity versus Postmodernity" (1981), which has achieved wide recognition. In that essay, Habermas raises the issue of whether, in light of the failures of the twentieth century, we "should try to hold on to the intentions of the Enlightenment, feeble as they may be, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause?" Habermas refuses to give up on the possibility of a rational, "scientific" understanding of the life-world. Habermas has several main criticisms of postmodernism: Postmodernists are equivocal about whether they are producing serious theory or literature; Postmodernists are animated by normative sentiments, but the nature of those sentiments remains concealed from the reader; Postmodernism has a totalizing perspective that fails "to differentiate phenomena and practices that occur within modern society"; Postmodernists ignore everyday life and its practices, which Habermas finds absolutely central. == Key dialogues and engagement with politics == === Positivism dispute === The positivism dispute was a political-philosophical dispute between the critical rationalists (Karl Popper, Hans Albert) and the Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas) in 1961, about the methodology of the social sciences. It grew into a broad discussion within German sociology from 1961 to 1969. === Habermas and Gadamer === There is a controversy between Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer about limits of hermeneutics. Gadamer completed his magnum opus, Truth and Method in 1960, and engaged in his debate with Habermas over the possibility of transcending history and culture in order to find a truly objective position from which to critique society. During the 1960s, Gadamer supported Habermas and advocated for him to be offered a job at Heidelberg before he had completed his Habilitation, despite Max Horkheimer's objections. While they both criticized positivism, a philosophical disagreement arose between them in the 1970s. This disagreement expanded the scope of Gadamer's philosophical influence. Despite fundamental agreements between them, such as starting from the hermeneutic tradition and returning to Greek practical philosophy, Habermas argued that Gadamer's emphasis on tradition and prejudice blinded him to the ideological operation of power. Habermas believed that Gadamer's approach failed to enable critical reflection on the sources of ideology in society. He accused Gadamer of endorsing a dogmatic stance toward tradition, which made it difficult to identify distortions in understanding. Gadamer countered that refusing the universal nature of hermeneutics was the more dogmatic stance because it affirmed the deception that the subject can free itself from the past. === Habermas and Foucault === There is a dispute concerning whether Michel Foucault's ideas of "power analytics" and "genealogy" or Jürgen Habermas's ideas of "communicative rationality" and "discourse ethics" provide a better critique of the nature of power in society. The debate compares and evaluates the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to questions of power, reason, ethics, modernity, democracy, civil society, and social action. === Habermas and Luhmann === Niklas Luhmann proposed that society could be successfully analyzed through systems theory. There is a conflict between Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action and Luhmann's systems theory. === Habermas and Apel === Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel both support a postmetaphysical, universal moral theory, but they disagree on the nature and justification of this principle. Habermas disagrees with Apel's view that the principle is a transcendental condition of human activity, while Apel asserts that it is. They each criticize the other's position. Habermas argues that Apel is too concerned with transcendental conditions, while Apel argues that Habermas doesn't value critical discourse enough. === Habermas and Rawls === There is a debate between Habermas and John Rawls. The debate centers around the question of how to do political philosophy under conditions of cultural pluralism, if the aim of political philosophy is to uncover the normative foundation of a modern liberal democracy. Habermas believes that Rawls's view is inconsistent with the idea of popular sovereignty, while Rawls argues that political legitimacy is solely a matter of sound moral reasoning or that democratic will formation has been unduly downgraded in his theory. === Historikerstreit (Historians' Quarrel) === Habermas is famous as a public intellectual as well as a scholar; most notably, in the 1980s he used the popular press to attack the German historians Ernst Nolte, Michael Stürmer, Klaus Hildebrand and Andreas Hillgruber. Habermas first expressed his views on the above-mentioned historians in the Die Zeit on 11 July 1986 in a feuilleton (a type of culture and arts opinion essay in German newspapers) entitled "A Kind of Settlement of Damages". Habermas criticized Nolte, Hildebrand, Stürmer and Hillgruber for "apologistic" history writing in regard to the Nazi era, and for seeking to "close Germany's opening to the West" that in Habermas's view had existed since 1945.Habermas argued that Nolte, Stürmer, Hildebrand and Hillgruber had tried to detach Nazi rule and the Holocaust from the mainstream of German history, explain away Nazism as a reaction to Bolshevism, and partially rehabilitate the reputation of the Wehrmacht (German Army) during World War II. Habermas wrote that Stürmer was trying to create a "vicarious religion" in German history which, together with the work of Hillgruber, glorifying the last days of the German Army on the Eastern Front, was intended to serve as a "kind of NATO philosophy colored with German nationalism". About Hillgruber's statement that Adolf Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews "because only such a 'racial revolution' could lend permanence to the world-power status of his Reich", Habermas wrote: "Since Hillgruber does not use the verb in the subjunctive, one does not know whether the historian has adopted the perspective of the particulars this time too".Habermas wrote: "The unconditional opening of the Federal Republic to the political culture of the West is the greatest intellectual achievement of our postwar period; my generation should be especially proud of this. This event cannot and should not be stabilized by a kind of NATO philosophy colored with German nationalism. The opening of the Federal Republic has been achieved precisely by overcoming the ideology of Central Europe that our revisionists are trying to warm up for us with their geopolitical drumbeat about "the old geographically central position of the Germans in Europe" (Stürmer) and "the reconstruction of the destroyed European Center" (Hillgruber). The only patriotism that will not estrange us from the West is a constitutional patriotism."The so-called Historikerstreit ("Historians' Quarrel") was not at all one-sided, because Habermas was himself attacked by scholars like Joachim Fest, Hagen Schulze, Horst Möller, Imanuel Geiss and Klaus Hildebrand. In turn, Habermas was supported by historians such as Martin Broszat, Eberhard Jäckel, Hans Mommsen, and Hans-Ulrich Wehler. === Habermas and Derrida === Habermas and Jacques Derrida engaged in a series of disputes beginning in the 1980s and culminating in a mutual understanding and friendship in the late 1990s that lasted until Derrida's death in 2004. They originally came in contact when Habermas invited Derrida to speak at The University of Frankfurt in 1984. The next year Habermas published "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Derrida" in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity in which he described Derrida's method as being unable to provide a foundation for social critique. Derrida, citing Habermas as an example, remarked that, "those who have accused me of reducing philosophy to literature or logic to rhetoric ... have visibly and carefully avoided reading me". After Derrida's final rebuttal in 1989 the two philosophers did not continue, but, as Derrida described it, groups in the academy "conducted a kind of 'war', in which we ourselves never took part, either personally or directly".At the end of the 1990s, Habermas approached Derrida at a party held at an American university where both were lecturing. They then met at Paris over dinner, and participated afterwards in many joint projects. In 2000 they held a joint seminar on problems of philosophy, right, ethics, and politics at the University of Frankfurt. In December 2000, in Paris, Habermas gave a lecture entitled "How to answer the ethical question?" at the Judeities. Questions for Jacques Derrida conference organized by Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly. Following the lecture by Habermas, both thinkers engaged in a very heated debate on Heidegger and the possibility of Ethics. The conference volume was published at the Editions Galilée (Paris) in 2002, and subsequently in English at Fordham University Press (2007). In the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, Derrida and Habermas laid out their individual opinions on 9/11 and the War on Terror in Giovanna Borradori's Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. In early 2003, both Habermas and Derrida were very active in opposing the coming Iraq War; in a manifesto that later became the book Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe, the two called for a tighter unification of the states of the European Union in order to create a power capable of opposing American foreign policy. Derrida wrote a foreword expressing his unqualified subscription to Habermas's declaration of February 2003 ("February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe") in the book, which was a reaction to the Bush administration's demands upon European nations for support in the coming Iraq War. Habermas has offered further context for this declaration in an interview. === Religious dialogue === Habermas's attitudes toward religion have changed throughout the years. Analyst Phillippe Portier identifies three phases in Habermas's attitude towards this social sphere: the first, in the decade of 1980, when the younger Jürgen, in the spirit of Marx, argued against religion seeing it as an "alienating reality" and "control tool"; the second phase, from the mid-1980s to the beginning of the 21st Century, when he stopped discussing it and, as a secular commentator, relegated it to matters of private life; and the third, from then until now, when Habermas saw a positive social role of religion.In an interview in 1999 Habermas had stated: For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. The original German (from the Habermas Forum website) of the disputed quotation is: Das Christentum ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt oder ein Katalysator gewesen. Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral, Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind, ist unmittelbar ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits- und der christlichen Liebesethik. In der Substanz unverändert, ist dieses Erbe immer wieder kritisch angeeignet und neu interpretiert worden. Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative. Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz. Alles andere ist postmodernes Gerede. This statement has been misquoted in a number of articles and books, where Habermas instead is quoted for saying: Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter. In his book Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (Between Naturalism and Religion, 2005), Habermas stated that the forces of religious strength, as a result of multiculturalism and immigration, are stronger than in previous decades, and, therefore, there is a need of tolerance which must be understood as a two-way street: secular people need to tolerate the role of religious people in the public square and vice versa.In early 2007, Ignatius Press published a dialogue between Habermas and the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Holy Office Joseph Ratzinger (elected as Pope Benedict XVI in 2005), entitled The Dialectics of Secularization. The dialogue took place on 14 January 2004 after an invitation to both thinkers by the Catholic Academy of Bavaria in Munich. It addressed contemporary questions such as: Is a public culture of reason and ordered liberty possible in our post-metaphysical age? Is philosophy permanently cut adrift from its grounding in being and anthropology? Does this decline of rationality signal an opportunity or a deep crisis for religion itself?In this debate a shift of Habermas became evident—in particular, his rethinking of the public role of religion. Habermas stated that he wrote as a "methodological atheist," which means that when doing philosophy or social science, he presumed nothing about particular religious beliefs. Yet while writing from this perspective his evolving position towards the role of religion in society led him to some challenging questions, and as a result conceding some ground in his dialogue with the future Pope, that would seem to have consequences which further complicated the positions he holds about a communicative rational solution to the problems of modernity. Habermas believes that even for self-identified liberal thinkers, "to exclude religious voices from the public square is highly illiberal." In addition, Habermas has popularized the concept of "post-secular" society, to refer to current times in which the idea of modernity is perceived as unsuccessful and at times, morally failed, so that, rather than a stratification or separation, a new peaceful dialogue and coexistence between faith and reason must be sought in order to learn mutually. === Socialist dialogue === Habermas has sided with other 20th-century commentators on Marx such as Hannah Arendt who have indicated concerns with the limits of totalitarian perspectives often associated with Marx's apparent over-estimation of the emancipatory potential of the forces of production. Arendt had presented this in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism and Habermas extends this critique in his writings on functional reductionism in the life-world in his Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. As Habermas states: …traditional Marxist analysis… today, when we use the means of the critique of political economy… can no longer make clear predictions: for that, one would still have to assume the autonomy of a self-reproducing economic system. I do not believe in such an autonomy. Precisely for this reason, the laws governing the economic system are no longer identical to the ones Marx analyzed. Of course, this does not mean that it would be wrong to analyze the mechanism which drives the economic system; but in order for the orthodox version of such an analysis to be valid, the influence of the political system would have to be ignored.Habermas reiterated the positions that what refuted Marx and his theory of class struggle was the "pacification of class conflict" by the welfare state, which had developed in the West "since 1945", thanks to "a reformist relying on the instruments of Keynesian economics". Italian philosopher and historian Domenico Losurdo criticised the main point of these claims as "marked by the absence of a question that should be obvious:— Was the advent of the welfare state the inevitable result of a tendency inherent in capitalism? Or was it the result of political and social mobilization by the subaltern classes—in the final analysis, of a class struggle? Had the German philosopher posed this question, perhaps he would have avoided assuming the permanence of the welfare state, whose precariousness and progressive dismantlement are now obvious to everyone". === Controversy about wars === In 1999, Habermas addressed the Kosovo War. Habermas defended NATO's intervention in an article for Die Zeit, which stirred controversy.In 2001, Habermas argued that the United States should not go to war in Iraq. === European Union === During the European debt crisis, Habermas criticized Angela Merkel's leadership in Europe, In 2013, Habermas clashed with Wolfgang Streeck, who argued the kind of European federalism espoused by Habermas as the root of the continent's crisis. == Awards == == Major works == == See also == Foucault–Habermas debate Positivism dispute == References == == Further reading == Gregg Daniel Miller, Mimesis and Reason: Habermas's Political Philosophy. SUNY Press, 2011.A recent analysis which underscores the aesthetic power of intersubjective communication in Habermas's theory of communicative action.Jürgen Habermas: a philosophical—political profile by Marvin Rintala, Perspectives on Political Science, 2002-01-01 Jürgen Habermas by Martin Matuštík (2001) ISBN 0-7425-0796-3 Postnational identity: critical theory and existential philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel by Martin Matuštík (1993) ISBN 0-89862-420-7 Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, MIT Press, 1978.A highly regarded interpretation in English of Habermas's earlier work, written just as Habermas was developing his full-fledged communication theory.Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1981.A clear account of Habermas's early philosophical views.J.G. Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2004.A recent, brief introduction to Habermas, focusing on his communication theory of society.Jane Braaten, Habermas's Critical Theory of Society, State University of New York Press, 1991. ISBN 0-7914-0759-4 Thomas Kupka, Jürgen Habermas' diskurstheoretische Reformulierung des klassischen Vernunftrechts, Kritische Justiz 27 (1994), pp. 461–469Discussing Habermas's legal philosophy in the 1992 original German edition of Between Facts and Norms.Andreas Dorschel: 'Handlungstypen und Kriterien. Zu Habermas' Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 44 (1990), nr. 2, pp. 220–252. A critical discussion of types of action in Habermas. In German. Erik Oddvar Eriksen and Jarle Weigard, Understanding Habermas: Communicative Action and Deliberative Democracy, Continuum International Publishing, 2004 (ISBN 0-8264-7179-X).A recent and comprehensive introduction to Habermas's mature theory and its political implications both national and global.Alexandre Guilherme and W.John Morgan,'Habermas(1929-)-dialogue as communicative rationality', Chapter 9 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 140– 154. ISBN 978-1-138-83149-0. Detlef Horster. Habermas: An Introduction. Pennbridge, 1992 (ISBN 1-880055-01-5) Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas (Chapter 9), University of California Press, 1986. (ISBN 0-520-05742-2) Ernst Piper (ed.) "Historikerstreit": Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistschen Judenvernichtung, Munich: Piper, 1987, translated into English by James Knowlton and Truett Cates as Forever In The Shadow Of Hitler?: Original Documents Of the Historikerstreit, The Controversy Concerning The Singularity Of The Holocaust, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1993 (ISBN 0-391-03784-6) Contains Habermas's essays from the Historikerstreit and the reactions of various scholars to his statements. Edgar, Andrew. The Philosophy of Habermas. Мontreal, McGill-Queen's UP, 2005. Adams, Nicholas. Habermas & Theology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Mike Sandbothe, Habermas, Pragmatism, and the Media, Online publication: sandbothe.net 2008; German original in: Über Habermas. Gespräche mit Zeitgenossen, ed. by Michael Funken, Darmstadt: Primus, 2008. Müller-Doohm, Stefan. Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2008 (Suhrkamp BasisBiographie, 38). Moderne Religion? Theologische und religionsphilosophische Reaktionen auf Jürgen Habermas. Hrsg. v. Knut Wenzel und Thomas M. Schmidt. Freiburg, Herder, 2009. Luca Corchia, Jürgen Habermas. A bibliography: works and studies (1952–2013): With an Introduction by Stefan Müller-Doohm, Arnus Edizioni – Il Campano, Pisa, 2013. Corchia, Luca (April 2018). Jürgen Habermas. A Bibliography. 1. Works of Jürgen Habermas (1952–2018). Department of Political Science, University of Pisa (Italy), 156 pp.. Corchia, Luca (February 2016). Jürgen Habermas. A bibliography. 2. Studies on Jürgen Habermas (1962–2015). Department of Political Science, University of Pisa (Italy), 468 pp.. Peter Koller, Christian Hiebaum, Jürgen Habermas: Faktizität und Geltung, Walter de Gruyter 2016. == External links == Extensive article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Extensive article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Habermas Forum by Thomas Gregersen; updated bibliography, news and literature on Habermas Towards a United States of Europe, by Jürgen Habermas, at signandsight.com, published 27 March 2006 How to save the quality press? Habermas argues for state support for quality newspapers, at signandsight.com, published 21 May 2007 Habermas links collected by Antti Kauppinen (writings; interviews; bibliography; Habermas explained, discussed, reviewed; and other Habermas sites; updated 2004) Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention by Douglas Kellner Jurgen Habermas, On Society and Politics Juergen Habermas gives Memorial Lecture in honor of American Philosopher, Richard Rorty on 2 November 2007 5pm Cubberley Auditorium, at Stanford University. Transcript available here. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida

Jaakko Hintikka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaakko_Hintikka

Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka (12 January 1929 – 12 August 2015) was a Finnish philosopher and logician. == Life and career == Hintikka was born in Helsingin maalaiskunta (now Vantaa). In 1953, he received his doctorate from the University of Helsinki for a thesis entitled Distributive Normal Forms in the Calculus of Predicates. He was a student of Georg Henrik von Wright. Hintikka was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University (1956-1969), and held several professorial appointments at the University of Helsinki, the Academy of Finland, Stanford University, Florida State University and finally Boston University from 1990 until his death. He was the prolific author or co-author of over 30 books and over 300 scholarly articles, Hintikka contributed to mathematical logic, philosophical logic, the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, language theory, and the philosophy of science. His works have appeared in over nine languages. Hintikka edited the academic journal Synthese from 1962 to 2002, and was a consultant editor for more than ten journals. He was the first vice-president of the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie, the Vice-President of the Institut International de Philosophie (1993–1996), as well as a member of the American Philosophical Association, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Association for Symbolic Logic, and a member of the governing board of the Philosophy of Science Association. In 2005, he won the Rolf Schock Prize in logic and philosophy "for his pioneering contributions to the logical analysis of modal concepts, in particular the concepts of knowledge and belief". In 1985, he was president of the Florida Philosophical Association. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. On May 26, 2000 Hintikka received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of History and Philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden == Philosophical work == Hintikka is regarded as the founder of formal epistemic logic and of game semantics for logic. Early in his career, he devised a semantics of modal logic essentially analogous to Saul Kripke's frame semantics, and discovered the now widely taught semantic tableau, independently of Evert Willem Beth. Later, he worked mainly on game semantics, and on independence-friendly logic, known for its "branching quantifiers", which he believed do better justice to our intuitions about quantifiers than does conventional first-order logic. He did important exegetical work on Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Charles Sanders Peirce. Hintikka's work can be seen as a continuation of the analytic tendency in philosophy founded by Franz Brentano and Peirce, advanced by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, and continued by Rudolf Carnap, Willard Van Orman Quine, and by Hintikka's teacher Georg Henrik von Wright. For instance, in 1998 he wrote The Principles of Mathematics Revisited, which takes an exploratory stance comparable to that Russell made with his The Principles of Mathematics in 1903. == Selected books == For a bibliography, see Auxier and Hahn (2006). 1962. Knowledge and Belief – An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions ISBN 1-904987-08-7 1969. Models for Modalities: Selected Essays ISBN 978-90-277-0598-3 1975. The intentions of intentionality and other new models for modalities ISBN 978-90-277-0634-8 1976. The semantics of questions and the questions of semantics: case studies in the interrelations of logic, semantics, and syntax ISBN 978-95-1950-535-0 1989. The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic ISBN 0-7923-0040-8 1996. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths ISBN 0-7923-4091-4 1996. Lingua Universalis vs Calculus Ratiocinator ISBN 0-7923-4246-1 1996. The Principles of Mathematics Revisited ISBN 0-521-62498-3 1998. Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays ISBN 0-7923-4780-3 1998. Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics ISBN 0-7923-4766-8 1999. Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientific Discovery ISBN 0-7923-5477-X 2004. Analyses of Aristotle ISBN 1-4020-2040-6 2007. Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning ISBN 978-0-521-61651-5 == See also == Rudolf Carnap Saul Kripke Charles Sanders Peirce Willard Van Orman Quine Alfred Tarski Ludwig Wittgenstein Doxastic logic Hintikka set == Notes == == Further reading == Auxier, R.E., & Hahn, L. (eds.) 2006. The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka (The Library of Living Philosophers). Open Court. Includes a complete bibliography of Hintikka's publications. ISBN 0-8126-9462-7 Bogdan, Radu (ed.) 1987. Jaakko Hintikka. Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-277-2402-4 Kolak, Daniel 2001. On Hintikka. Wadsworth. ISBN 0-534-58389-X Kolak, Daniel & Symons, John (eds.) 2004. Quantifiers, Questions and Quantum Physics: Essays on the Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka. Springer. ISBN 1-4020-3210-2 Ditmarsch, Hans van; Sandu, Gabriel, eds. (2018). Jaakko Hintikka on Knowledge and Game-Theoretical Semantics. Outstanding Contributions to Logic, 12. Cham: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-62863-9. ISSN 2211-2758. Tanninen, Tuukka (2022). Worlds and Objects of Epistemic Space: A Study of Jaakko Hintikka's Modal Semantics (Ph.D. thesis). The University of Helsinki. ISBN 978-951-51-7884-8. == External links == Media related to Jaakko Hintikka at Wikimedia Commons Jaakko Hintikka's personal website Philosopher Jaakko Hintikka reveals love affair between his wife and JFK. Helsinki Times. Jaakko Hintikka in 375 humanists – 20 May 2015. Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki.

Alasdair MacIntyre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (; born 12 January 1929) is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) is one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century. He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) at London Metropolitan University, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and permanent senior distinguished research fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. During his lengthy academic career, he also taught at Brandeis University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, and Boston University. == Biography == MacIntyre was born on 12 January 1929 in Glasgow, to Eneas and Greta (Chalmers) MacIntyre. He was educated at Queen Mary College, London, and has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Manchester and from the University of Oxford. He began his teaching career in 1951 at Manchester. He married Ann Peri, with whom he had two daughters, Jean and Toni. He taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Essex and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, before moving to the US in around 1969. MacIntyre has been something of an intellectual nomad, having taught at many universities in the US. He has held the following positions: Professor of History of Ideas, Brandeis University (1969 or 1970), Dean of the College of Arts and professor of philosophy, Boston University (1972), Henry Luce Professor, Wellesley College (1980), W. Alton Jones Professor, Vanderbilt University (1982), Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame (1985), Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University (1985), Visiting scholar, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University (1988), McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame (1989), and Arts & Sciences Professor of Philosophy, Duke University (1995–1997).He has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University, and is a former president of the American Philosophical Association. In 2010, he was awarded the Aquinas Medal by the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1985), the British Academy (1994), the Royal Irish Academy (1999), and the American Philosophical Society (2005). From 2000 he was the Rev. John A. O'Brien Senior Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy (emeritus since 2010) at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US. He is also professor emerit and emeritus at Duke University. In July 2010 he became senior research fellow at London Metropolitan University's Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics. Since his retirement from active teaching in 2010, he remains the senior distinguished research fellow of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, where he retains an office. He continues to make public presentations, including an annual keynote as part of the Center for Ethics and Culture's Fall Conference.He has been married three times. From 1953 to 1963 he was married to Ann Peri, with whom he had two daughters. From 1963 to 1977 he was married to former teacher and now poet Susan Willans, with whom he had a son and daughter. Since 1977 he has been married to philosopher Lynn Joy, who is also on the philosophy faculty at Notre Dame. == Philosophical approach == MacIntyre's approach to moral philosophy interweaves a number of complex strands. Although he largely aims to revive an Aristotelian moral philosophy based on the virtues, he claims a "peculiarly modern understanding" of this task.This "peculiarly modern understanding" largely concerns MacIntyre's approach to moral disputes. Unlike some analytic philosophers who try to generate moral consensus on the basis of rationality, MacIntyre uses the historical development of ethics to circumvent the modern problem of "incommensurable" moral notions, whose merits cannot be compared in any common framework. Following Hegel and Collingwood, he offers a "philosophical history" (as opposed to analytical and phenomenological approaches) in which he concedes from the beginning that "there are no neutral standards available by appeal to which any rational agent whatsoever could determine" the conclusions of moral philosophy.In his most famous work, After Virtue, he deprecates the attempt of Enlightenment thinkers to deduce a universal rational morality independent of teleology, whose failure led to the rejection of moral rationality altogether by successors such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Charles Stevenson. He emphasizes how this overestimation of reason led to Nietzsche's utter repudiation of the possibility of moral rationality.By contrast, MacIntyre attempts to reclaim more modest forms of moral rationality and argumentation which claim neither finality nor logical certainty, but which can hold up against relativistic or emotivist denials of any moral rationality whatsoever (the mistaken conclusion of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Stevenson). He revives the tradition of Aristotelian ethics with its teleological account of the good and of moral actions, as fulfilled in the medieval writings of Thomas Aquinas. This Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, he proposes, presents "the best theory so far," both of how things are and how we ought to act. More generally, according to MacIntyre, moral disputes always take place within and between rival traditions of thought relying on an inherited store of ideas, presuppositions, types of arguments and shared understandings and approaches. Even though there is no definitive way for one tradition in moral philosophy to logically refute another, nevertheless opposing views can dispute each others' internal coherence, resolution of imaginative dilemmas and epistemic crises, and achievement of fruitful results. == Major writings == === After Virtue (1981) === Probably his most widely read work, After Virtue was written when MacIntyre was already in his fifties. Up to then, MacIntyre had been a relatively influential analytic philosopher of Marxist bent whose moral inquiries had been conducted in a "piecemeal way, focusing first on this problem and then on that, in a mode characteristic of much analytic philosophy." However, after reading the works of Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos on philosophy of science and epistemology, MacIntyre was inspired to change the entire direction of his thought, tearing up the manuscript he had been working on and deciding to view the problems of modern moral and political philosophy "not from the standpoint of liberal modernity, but instead from the standpoint of… Aristotelian moral and political practice."In general terms, the task of After Virtue is to account both for the dysfunction of modern moral discourse in modern society and to rehabilitate the alternative of teleological rationality in Aristotelian virtue ethics. MacIntyre's philippic articulates a politics of self-defence for local communities who aspire to protect their traditional way of life from the corrosive capitalist free market. === Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) === MacIntyre's second major work of his mature period takes up the problem of giving an account of philosophical rationality within the context of his notion of "traditions," which had still remained under-theorized in After Virtue. Specifically, MacIntyre argues that rival and largely incompatible conceptions of justice are the outcome of rival and largely incompatible forms of practical rationality. These competing forms of practical rationality and their attendant ideas of justice are in turn the result of "socially embodied traditions of rational inquiry." Although MacIntyre's treatment of traditions is quite complex he does give a relatively concise definition: "A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined" in terms of both internal and external debates.Much of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is therefore engaged in the task of not only giving the reader examples of what MacIntyre considers actual rival traditions and the different ways they can split apart, integrate, or defeat one another (e.g. Aristotelian, Augustinian, Thomist, Humean) but also with substantiating how practical rationality and a conception of justice help constitute those traditions. Specifically, according to him, the differing accounts of justice that are presented by Aristotle and Hume are due to the underlying differences in their conceptual schemes. MacIntyre argues that despite their incommensurability there are various ways in which alien traditions might engage one another rationally – most especially via a form of immanent critique which makes use of empathetic imagination to then put the rival tradition into "epistemic crisis" but also by being able to solve shared or analogous problems and dilemmas from within one's own tradition which remain insoluble from the rival approach.MacIntyre's account also defends three further theses: first, that all rational human inquiry is conducted whether knowingly or not from within a tradition; second, that the incommensurable conceptual schemes of rival traditions do not entail either relativism or perspectivism; third, that although the arguments of the book are themselves attempts at universally valid insights they are nevertheless given from within a particular tradition (that of Thomist Aristotelianism) and that this need not imply any philosophical inconsistency. === Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (1990) === Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry was first presented by MacIntyre as part of the Gifford lecture series at the University of Edinburgh in 1988 and is considered by many the third part in a trilogy of philosophical argumentation that commenced with After Virtue. As its title implies, MacIntyre's aim in this book is to examine three major rival traditions of moral inquiry on the intellectual scene today (encyclopaedic, genealogical and traditional) which each in turn was given defence from a canonical piece published in the late nineteenth century (the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Friedrich Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals and Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris, respectively). MacIntyre's book ultimately conducts a complex series of both interior and exterior critiques of the encyclopaedic and genealogical positions in an attempt to vindicate philosophical Thomism as the most persuasive form of moral inquiry currently on offer. His critique in chapter IX of Nietzsche's and Michel Foucault's genealogical mode as implicitly committed to an emancipatory and continuous notion of self which they cannot account for on their own terms has been of particular influence. The tradition-bound account of rational inquiry MacIntyre articulates and deploys throughout these lectures suggests reforms, which he explores in chapter X, both for the lecture as a genre and for the university as an institution. To advance rational inquiry, MacIntyre argues that lectures ought to take account of the tradition-constituted roles both of lecturer and of student. Lecturers as members of explicitly articulated traditions should engage students, recognized as standing in various relationships to the lecturer's own and/or rival traditions, on material situated in the historically-contextualized progress of the lecturer's home tradition. In support of such lectures and of tradition-bound inquiry on the research front, universities should become forums for growing and engaging rival traditions. For students, such forums would invite intentional formation within a tradition, and support learning how to profitably confront rival traditions through imaginative participation in them. For researchers, inquiry at the frontier must advance toward holistic, inter-disciplinary accounts, at once both theoretical and practical, undertaken together by members of communities of practitioners bound together in traditions. Such tradition-bound inquiry contributes to the advancement of researchers' host traditions on their own terms. Moreover, undertaking such inquiry in a reformed university setting would support encounter among host traditions and their rivals, and thus visibility as traditions both to themselves and to others through imaginative engagement with rival perspectives. The public hosting of such engagements at suitably-reformed universities, including opportunities for agreement from complementary perspectives and for sharpening differences, would support both adjudication among the mutual claims to rational superiority among rival traditions, and initiation of students into the skill sets required to profitably join and assess such encounters. === Dependent Rational Animals (1999) === While After Virtue attempted to give an account of the virtues exclusively by recourse to social practices and the understanding of individual selves in light of "quests" and "traditions," Dependent Rational Animals was a self-conscious effort by MacIntyre to ground virtues in an account of biology. MacIntyre writes the following of this shift in the preface to the book: "Although there is indeed good reason to repudiate important elements in Aristotle's biology, I now judge that I was in error in supposing an ethics independent of biology to be possible." More specifically, Dependent Rational Animals tries to make a holistic case on the basis of our best current knowledge (as opposed to an ahistorical, foundational claim) that "human vulnerability and disability" are the "central features of human life" and that Thomistic "virtues of dependency" are needed for individual human beings to flourish in their passage from stages of infancy to adulthood and old age. As MacIntyre puts it: It is most often to others that we owe our survival, let alone our flourishing ... It will be a central thesis of this book that the virtues that we need, if we are to develop from our animal condition into that of independent rational agents, and the virtues that we need, if we are to confront and respond to vulnerability and disability both in ourselves and in others, belong to one and the same set of virtues, the distinctive virtues of dependent rational animals Engaging with scientific texts on human biology as well as works of philosophical anthropology, MacIntyre identifies the human species as existing on a continuous scale of both intelligence and dependency with other animals such as dolphins. One of his main goals is to undermine what he sees as the fiction of the disembodied, independent reasoner who determines ethical and moral questions autonomously and what he calls the "illusion of self-sufficiency" that runs through much of Western ethics culminating in Nietzsche's Übermensch. In its place he tries to show that our embodied dependencies are a definitive characteristic of our species and reveal the need for certain kinds of virtuous dispositions if we are ever to flourish into independent reasoners capable of weighing the intellectual intricacies of moral philosophy in the first place. == Virtue ethics == MacIntyre is a key figure in the recent surge of interest in virtue ethics, which identifies the central question of morality as having to do with the habits and knowledge concerning how to live a good life. His approach seeks to demonstrate that good judgment emanates from good character. Being a good person is not about seeking to follow formal rules. In elaborating this approach, MacIntyre understands himself to be reworking the Aristotelian idea of an ethical teleology. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of moral goods defined in respect to a community engaged in a 'practice'—which he calls 'internal goods' or 'goods of excellence'—rather than focusing on practice-independent obligation of a moral agent (deontological ethics) or the consequences of a particular act (utilitarianism). Before its recent resurgence, virtue ethics in European/American academia had been primarily associated with pre-modern philosophers (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas). MacIntyre has argued that Aquinas' synthesis of Augustinianism with Aristotelianism is more insightful than modern moral theories by focusing upon the telos ('end', or completion) of a social practice and of a human life, within the context of which the morality of acts may be evaluated. His seminal work in the area of virtue ethics can be found in his 1981 book, After Virtue. MacIntyre intends the idea of virtue to supplement, rather than replace, moral rules. Indeed, he describes certain moral rules as 'exceptionless' or unconditional. MacIntyre considers his work to be outside "virtue ethics" due to his affirmation of virtues as embedded in specific, historically grounded, social practices. == Politics == Politically, MacIntyre's ethics informs a defence of the Aristotelian 'goods of excellence' internal to practices against the modern pursuit of 'external goods', such as money, power, and status, that are characteristic of rule-based, utilitarian, Weberian modern institutions. He has been described as a 'revolutionary Aristotelian' because of his attempt to combine historical insights from his Marxist past with those of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle after MacIntyre's conversion to Catholicism. For him, liberalism and postmodern consumerism not only justify capitalism but also sustain and inform it over the long term. At the same time, he says that "Marxists have always fallen back into relatively straightforward versions of Kantianism or utilitarianism" (After Virtue, p.261) and criticises Marxism as just another form of radical individualism. He says about Marxists that "as they move towards power they always tend to become Weberians." Informed by that critique, Aristotelianism loses its sense of elitist complacency; moral excellence ceases to be part of a particular, historical practice in ancient Greece and becomes a universal quality of those who understand that good judgment emanates from good character. In 1951 in student debates at Manchester MacIntyre described himself as a Disraeli Tory but later was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (leaving in 1956), briefly of the Socialist Labour League, and later of the Socialist Review Group/International Socialists. == Religion == MacIntyre converted to Catholicism in the early 1980s, and now does his work against the background of what he calls an "Augustinian Thomist approach to moral philosophy." In an interview with Prospect, MacIntyre explains that his conversion to Catholicism occurred in his fifties as a "result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity." Also, in his book Whose Justice, Which Rationality? there is a section towards the end that is perhaps autobiographical when he explains how one is chosen by a tradition and may reflect his own conversion to Catholicism.Fuller accounts of MacIntyre's view of the relationship between philosophy and religion in general and Thomism and Catholicism in particular can be found in his essays "Philosophy recalled to its tasks" and "Truth as a good" (both found in the collection The Tasks of Philosophy) as well as in the survey of the Catholic philosophical tradition he gives in God, Philosophy and Universities. == Bibliography == 1953. Marxism: An Interpretation. London, SCM Press. 1955. (edited with Antony Flew). New Essays in Philosophical Theology. London: SCM Press. 1958, 2004. The Unconscious: A Conceptual Analysis. Second edition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1959. Difficulties in Christian Belief. London: SCM Press. 1965. Hume's Ethical Writings. (ed.) New York: Collier. 1966, 1998. A Short History of Ethics. Second edition. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1967. Secularization and Moral Change. The Riddell Memorial Lectures. Oxford University Press. 1968, 1995. Marxism and Christianity. Second edition. London: Duckworth. 1969. (with Paul Ricoeur). The Religious Significance of Atheism. New York: Columbia University Press. 1970. Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic. New York: The Viking Press. 1970. Marcuse. Fontana Modern Masters. London: Collins. 1970. Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis (anthology co-edited with Dorothy Emmet). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. 1971. Against the Self-Images of the Age: Essays on Ideology and Philosophy. London: Duckworth. 1972. Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays. (ed.) Doubleday. 1981, 2007. After Virtue. Third edition. University of Notre Dame Press. 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? University of Notre Dame Press. 1990. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. The Gifford Lectures. University of Notre Dame Press. 1990. First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues. The Aquinas Lecture. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 1998. The MacIntyre Reader, Knight, Kelvin, ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 1999. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Chicago: Open Court. 2001. (with Anthony Rudd and John Davenport). Kierkegaard After Macintyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and Virtue. Chicago: Open Court. 2005. Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913–1922. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2006. The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. 2006. Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. 2006. "The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University". Commonweal, 20 October 2006 / Volume CXXXIII, Number 18. 2009. Alasdair MacIntyre's Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings, 1953–1974, Blackledge, Paul and Neil Davidson, eds. Haymarket. 2009. God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2009. "The Nature of The Virtues" in Living Ethics. Minch and Weigel, eds. 2016. Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. == See also == Analytical Thomism == References == == Further reading == D'Andrea, Thomas D., Tradition, Rationality and Virtue: The Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Bielskis, Andrius, Towards a Post-Modern Understanding of the Political: From Genealogy to Hermeneutics, Basingstoke, New York: Palgrame-Macmillan, 2005. Horton, John, and Susan Mendus (eds.), After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Knight, Kelvin, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. Knight, Kelvin, and Paul Blackledge (eds.), Revolutionary Aristotelianism: Ethics, Resistance and Utopia, Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 2008. Lutz, Christopher Stephen, Reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, New York: Continuum, 2012. Lutz, Christopher Stephen, Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism, and Philosophy, Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. Murphy, Mark C. (ed.), Alasdair MacIntyre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Myers, Jesse, "Towards Virtue: Alasdair MacIntyre and the Recovery of the Virtues", 2009 Nicholas, Jeffery L. Reason, Tradition, and the Good: MacIntyre's Tradition-Constituted Reason and Frankfurt School Critical Theory, UNDP 2012. Perreau-Saussine, Emile Department of Polis: PPSIS Faculty, All Academic Contacts: Alasdair MacIntyre: une biographie intellectuelle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005. Seung, T. K., Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. See chapter six: "Aristotelian Revival". Skinner, Quentin. "The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty", Machiavelli and Republicanism, edited by Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 293–309 (critique of MacIntyre's After Virtue) === Interviews with MacIntyre === "The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency" in A. Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009). "Nietzsche or Aristotle?" in Giovanna Borradori, The American philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, Kuhn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 137–152. "Alasdair MacIntyre on Education: In Dialogue with Joseph Dunne" in Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(1), 2002. == External links == Bibliographies of MacIntyre by: Scott Moore, Baylor University. "William Hughes". Archived from the original on 6 September 2007. Retrieved 22 July 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), University of Guelph. Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Clayton, Edward. "Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre" Lutz, Christopher. "Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (overview)" International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry. Schwein, Mark R. (1991) "Alasdair MacIntyre's University", First Things. Review of Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry. Cowling, Maurice (1994) "Alasdair MacIntyre, Religion & the University," The New Criterion 12:6. Oakes, Edward T. (1996) The Achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre," First Things Times Literary Supplement: "Review of Selected Essays Vols. I & II" – by Constantine Sandis. Hauerwas, Stanley (2007) The Virtues of Alasdair MacIntyre," First Things MacIntyre, Alasdair (2004) The Only Vote Worth Casting in November Dahlstrom, Daniel O. (2012) "Independence and the Virtuous Community," critique of MacIntyre's "Dependent Rational Animals" (1999) in Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies 34.2, October 2012, pp. 70–83

Pierre Bourdieu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu (French: [buʁdjø]; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields (e.g. anthropology, media and cultural studies, education, popular culture, and the arts). During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France. Bourdieu's work was primarily concerned with the dynamics of power in society, especially the diverse and subtle ways in which power is transferred and social order is maintained within and across generations. In conscious opposition to the idealist tradition of much of Western philosophy, his work often emphasized the corporeal nature of social life and stressed the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Building upon and criticizing the theories of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Erwin Panofsky and Marcel Mauss among others, his research pioneered novel investigative frameworks and methods, and introduced such influential concepts as cultural, social, and symbolic forms of capital (as opposed to traditional economic forms of capital), the cultural reproduction, the habitus, the field or location, and symbolic violence. Another notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations. Bourdieu was a prolific author, producing hundreds of articles and three dozen books, nearly all of which are now available in English. His best-known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979), in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position, or more precisely, are themselves acts of social positioning. The argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from quantitative surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, Bourdieu attempts to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual. The book was named "the sixth most important sociological work of the twentieth century" by the International Sociological Association (ISA).Pierre Bourdieu's work emphasized how social classes, especially the ruling and intellectual classes, preserve their social privileges across generations despite the myth that contemporary post-industrial society boasts equality of opportunity and high social mobility, achieved through formal education. == Life and career == Pierre Bourdieu was born in Denguin (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), in southern France, to a postal worker and his wife. The household spoke Béarnese, a Gascon dialect. In 1962, Bourdieu married Marie-Claire Brizard, and the couple would go on to have three sons, Jérôme, Emmanuel, and Laurent. Bourdieu was educated at the Lycée Louis-Barthou in Pau before moving to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. From there he gained entrance to the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), also in Paris, where he studied philosophy alongside Louis Althusser. After getting his agrégation, Bourdieu worked as a lycée teacher at Moulins for a year before his conscription into the French Army in 1955.His biographers write that he chose not to enter the Reserve Officer's College like many of his fellow ENS graduates as he wished to stay with people from his own modest social background. Deployed to Algeria in October 1955 during its war of independence from France, Bourdieu served in a unit guarding military installations before being transferred to clerical work.After his year-long military service, Bourdieu stayed on as a lecturer in Algiers. During the Algerian War in 1958–1962, Bourdieu undertook ethnographic research into the clash through a study of the Kabyle peoples of the Berbers, laying the groundwork for his anthropological reputation. The result was his first book, Sociologie de l'Algérie (1958; The Sociology of Algeria), which became an immediate success in France and was published in America in 1962. He later drew heavily on this fieldwork in his 1972 book Outline of a Theory of Practice, a strong intervention into anthropological theory.Bourdieu routinely sought to connect his theoretical ideas with empirical research and his work can be seen as sociology of culture or, as he described it, a "Theory of Practice". His contributions to sociology were both evidential and theoretical (i.e., calculated through both systems). His key terms would be habitus, capital, and field. He extended the idea of capital to categories such as social capital, cultural capital, financial capital, and symbolic capital. For Bourdieu each individual occupies a position in a multidimensional social space; a person is not defined only by social class membership, but by every single kind of capital he can articulate through social relations. That capital includes the value of social networks, which Bourdieu showed could be used to produce or reproduce inequality. In 1960, Bourdieu returned to the University of Paris before gaining a teaching position at the University of Lille, where he remained until 1964. From 1964 onwards Bourdieu held the position of Professor (Directeur d'études) in the VIe section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (the future École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), and from 1981 the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France (held before him by Raymond Aron and Maurice Halbwachs). In 1968, Bourdieu took over the Centre de Sociologie Européenne, founded by Aron, which he directed until his death. In 1975, with the research group he had formed at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne, he launched the interdisciplinary journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, with which he sought to transform the accepted canons of sociological production while buttressing the scientific rigor of sociology. In 1993 he was honored with the "Médaille d'or du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" (CNRS). In 1996 he received the Goffman Prize from the University of California, Berkeley and in 2001 the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Bourdieu died of cancer at the age of 71. == Thought == Much of Bourdieu's work observes the role of educational and cultural resources in the expression of agency. Bourdieu was in practice both influenced by and sympathetic to the Marxist identification of economic command as a principal component of power and agency within capitalist society.Bourdieu's anthropological work was dominated by social hierarchy reproduction analysis. Bourdieu criticized the importance given to economic factors in the analysis of social order and change. He stressed, instead, that the capacity of actors to impose their cultural reproductions and symbolic systems plays an essential role in the reproduction of dominant social structures. Symbolic violence is the self-interested capacity to ensure that the arbitrariness of the social order is either ignored, or argued as natural, thereby justifying the legitimacy of existing social structures. This concept plays an essential part in his sociological analysis, which emphasizes the importance of practices in the social world. Bourdieu was opposed to the intellectualist tradition and stressed that social domination and cultural reproduction were primarily focused on bodily know-how and competent practices in the society. Bourdieu fiercely opposed Rational Choice Theory because he believed it was a misunderstanding of how social agents operate. === Influences === Bourdieu's work is influenced by much of traditional anthropology and sociology which he undertook to synthesize into his own theory. From Max Weber he retained an emphasis on the domination of symbolic systems in social life, as well as the idea of social orders which would ultimately be transformed by Bourdieu from a sociology of religion into a theory of fields.From Marx he gained his understanding of 'society' as the ensemble of social relationships: "what exist in the social world are relations – not interactions between agents or intersubjective ties between individuals, but objective relations which exist 'independently of individual consciousness and will'.": 97  (grounded in the mode and conditions of economic production), and of the need to dialectically develop social theory from social practice. (Arnold Hauser earlier published the orthodox application of Marxist class theory to the fine arts in The Social History of Art (1951).) From Émile Durkheim, through Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss, Bourdieu inherited a certain structuralist interpretation of the tendency of social structures to reproduce themselves, based on the analysis of symbolic structures and forms of classification. However, Bourdieu critically diverged from Durkheim in emphasizing the role of the social agent in enacting, through the embodiment of social structures, symbolic orders. He furthermore emphasized that the reproduction of social structures does not operate according to a functionalist logic. Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, through him, the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl played an essential part in the formulation of Bourdieu's focus on the body, action, and practical dispositions (which found their primary manifestation in Bourdieu's theory of habitus).Bourdieu was also influenced by Wittgenstein (especially with regard to his work on rule-following) stating that "Wittgenstein is probably the philosopher who has helped me most at moments of difficulty. He's a kind of saviour for times of great intellectual distress". Bourdieu's work is built upon an attempt to transcend a series of oppositions which he thought characterized the social sciences (subjectivism/objectivism, micro/macro, freedom/determinism) of his time. His concepts of habitus, capital, and field were conceived with the intention of overcoming such oppositions. === As a public intellectual === During the 1990s, Bourdieu became more and more involved in political debate, becoming one of the most important public faces of intellectual life in France. While a fierce critic of neoliberalism, Bourdieu was also critical of the "total intellectual" role played by Jean-Paul Sartre, and he dismissed Sartre's attempts to intervene in French politics as "irresponsible" and "opportunistic." Bourdieu saw sociology not as a form of "intellectual entertainment" but as a serious discipline of a scientific nature. There is an apparent contradiction between Bourdieu's earlier writings against using sociology for political activism and his later launch into the role of a public intellectual, with some highly "visible political statements." Although much of his early work stressed the importance of treating sociology as a strict scientific discipline,—"La sociologie est un sport de combat" (transl. "Sociology is a Martial Art")—his later career saw him enter the less academic world of political debate in France, raising the issue of whether the sociologist has political responsibilities extending to the public domain. Although Bourdieu earlier faulted public intellectuals such as Sartre, he had strong political views which influenced his sociology from the beginning. By the time of his later work, his main concern had become the effect of globalisation and those who benefited least from it. His politics then became more overt and his role as public intellectual was born, from an "urgency to speak out against neoliberal discourse that had become so dominant within political debate."Bourdieu developed a project to investigate the effects—particularly the harm—of neoliberal reforms in France. The most significant fruit of this project was the 1993 study "The Weight of the World", although his views are perhaps more candidly expressed in his articles. "The Weight of the World" represented a heavyweight scientific challenge to the dominant trends in French politics. Since it was the work of a team of sociologists, it also shows Bourdieu's collaborative character, indicating that he was still in 1993 reluctant to accept being singled out with the category of public intellectual.Nevertheless, Bourdieu's activities as a critical sociologist prepared him for the public stage, fulfilling his "constructionist view of social life" as it relied upon the idea of social actors making change through collective struggles. His relationship with the media was improved through his very public action of organizing strikes and rallies that raised huge media interest in him and his many books became more popular through this new notoriety. One of the main differences between the critical sociologist and public intellectual is the ability to have a relationship with popular media resources outside the academic realm. It is notable that, in his later writings, Bourdieu sounded cautionary notes about such individuals, describing them as "like the Trojan Horse" for the unwanted elements they may bring to the academic world. Again Bourdieu seems wary of accepting the description 'public intellectual', worrying that it might be difficult to reconcile with science and scholarship. Research is needed on what conditions transform particular intellectuals into public intellectuals. == Theory of habitus == Bourdieu developed a theory of the action, around the concept of habitus, which exerted a considerable influence in the social sciences. This theory seeks to show that social agents develop strategies which are adapted to the structures of the social worlds that they inhabit. These strategies are unconscious and act on the level of a bodily logic. In Bourdieu's perspective, each relatively autonomous field of modern life (such as economy, politics, arts, journalism, bureaucracy, science or education), ultimately engenders a specific complex of social relations where the agents will engage their everyday practice. Through this practice, they develop a certain disposition for social action that is conditioned by their position on the field. This disposition, combined with every other disposition the individual develops through their engagement with other fields operating within the social world, will eventually come to constitute a system of dispositions, i.e. habitus: lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and action. Habitus is somewhat reminiscent of some preexisting sociological concepts, such as socialization, though it also differs from the more classic concepts in several key ways. Most notably, a central aspect of the habitus is its embodiment: habitus does not only, or even primarily, function at the level of explicit, discursive consciousness. The internal structures become embodied and work in a deeper, practical and often pre-reflexive way. An illustrative example might be the 'muscle memory' cultivated in many areas of physical education. Consider the way we catch a ball—the complex geometric trajectories are not calculated; it is not an intellectual process. Although it is a skill that requires learning, it is more a physical than a mental process and has to be performed physically to be learned. In this sense, the concept has something in common with Anthony Giddens' concept of practical consciousness. The concept of habitus was inspired by Marcel Mauss's notion of body technique and hexis, as well as Erwin Panofsky's concept of intuitus. The word habitus itself can be found in the works of Mauss, as well as of Norbert Elias, Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Alfred Schutz as re-workings of the concept as it emerged in Aristotle's notion of hexis, which would become habitus through Thomas Aquinas's Latin translation. === Disposition === "Disposition"—a key concept in Bourdieu's work—can be defined as a sense of the game; a partly rational but partly intuitive understanding of fields and of social order in general, a practical sense, a practical reason, giving rise to opinions, tastes, tone of voice, typical body movements and mannerisms and so on. The dispositions constitutive of habitus are therefore conditioned responses to the social world, becoming so ingrained that they come to occur spontaneously, rather like 'knee-jerk' opinions. It follows that the habitus developed by an individual will typify his position in the social space. By doing so, social agents will often acknowledge, legitimate, and reproduce the social forms of domination (including prejudices) and the common opinions of each field as self-evident, clouding from conscience and practice even the acknowledgment of other possible means of production (including symbolic production) and power relations. Though not deterministic, the inculcation of the subjective structures of the habitus can be observed through statistical data, for example, while its selective affinity with the objective structures of the social world explains the continuity of the social order through time. As the individual habitus is always a mix of multiple engagements in the social world through the person's life, while the social fields are put into practice through the agency of the individuals, no social field or order can be completely stable. In other words, if the relation between individual predisposition and social structure is far stronger than common sense tends to believe, it is not a perfect match. Some examples of his empirical results include showing that, despite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts, people's artistic preferences (e.g. classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly tie in with their social position; and showing that subtleties of language such as accent, grammar, spelling and style—all part of cultural capital—are a major factor in social mobility (e.g. getting a higher-paid, higher-status job). Sociologists very often look at either social laws (structure) or the individual minds (agency) in which these laws are inscribed. Sociological arguments have raged between those who argue that the former should be sociology's principal interest (structuralists) and those who argue the same for the latter (phenomenologists). When Bourdieu instead asks that dispositions be considered, he is making a very subtle intervention in sociology, asserting a middle ground where social laws and individual minds meet and is arguing that the proper object of sociological analysis should be this middle ground: dispositions. == Field theory == According to Bourdieu, agents do not continuously calculate according to explicit rational and economic criteria. Rather, social agents operate according to an implicit practical logic—a practical sense—and bodily dispositions. Instead of confining his analysis of social relations and change to voluntaristic agency or strictly in terms of class as a structural relation, Bourdieu uses the agency-structure bridging concept of field. A field can be described as any historical, non-homogeneous social-spatial arena in which people maneuver and struggle in pursuit of desirable resources. In simpler terms, a field refers to any setting in which agents and their social positions are located. Accordingly, the position of each particular agent in the field is a result of interaction between the specific rules of the field, agent's habitus, and agent's capital (social, economic, and cultural). Fields interact with each other, and are hierarchical: most are subordinate to the larger field of power and class relations.For Bourdieu, social activity differences led to various, relatively autonomous, social spaces in which competition centers around particular capital. These fields are treated on a hierarchical basis—with economic power usually governing—wherein the dynamics of fields arise out of the struggle of social actors trying to occupy the dominant positions within the field. Bourdieu embraces prime elements of conflict theory like Marx. Social struggle also occurs within fields hierarchically nested under the economic antagonisms between social classes. The conflicts which take place in each social field have specific characteristics arising from those fields and that involve many social relationships which are not economic.Social agents act according to their "feel for the game", in which the "feel" roughly refers to the habitus, and the "game", to the field. === Media and cultural production === Bourdieu's most significant work on cultural production is available in two books: The Field of Cultural Production (1993) and The Rules of Art (1996). Bourdieu builds his theory of cultural production using his own characteristic theoretical vocabulary of habitus, capital and field. David Hesmondhalgh writes that: By 'cultural production' Bourdieu intends a very broad understanding of culture, in line with the tradition of classical sociology, including science (which in turn includes social science), law and religion, as well as expressive-aesthetic activities such as art, literature and music. However, his work on cultural production focuses overwhelmingly on two types of field or sub-field of cultural production…: literature and art.According to Bourdieu, "the principal obstacle to a rigorous science of the production of the value of cultural goods" is the "charismatic ideology of 'creation'" which can be easily found in studies of art, literature and other cultural fields. In Bourdieu's opinion, charismatic ideology "directs the gaze towards the apparent producer and prevents us from asking who has created this 'creator' and the magic power of transubstantiation with which the 'creator' is endowed.": 167 For Bourdieu, a sociologically informed view of an artist ought to describe: (1) their relations to the field of production (e.g. influences, antagonisms, etc.); and (2) their attitudes to their relations to the field of consumption (e.g. their readers, enthusiasts, or detractors). Further, a work of literature, for example, may not adequately be analysed either as the product of the author's life and beliefs (a naively biographical account), or without any reference to the author's intentions (as Barthes argued). In short, "the subject of a work is a habitus in relationship with a 'post', a position, that is, within a field."According to Bourdieu, cultural revolutions are always dependent on the possibilities present in the positions inscribed in the field. == Objective (field) and subjective (habitus) == For Bourdieu, habitus was essential in resolving a prominent antinomy of the human sciences: objectivism and subjectivism. As mentioned above, Bourdieu used the methodological and theoretical concepts of habitus and field in order to make an epistemological break with the prominent objective-subjective antinomy of the social sciences. He wanted to effectively unite social phenomenology and structuralism. Habitus and field are proposed to do so. The individual agent develops these dispositions in response to the objective conditions it encounters. In this way, Bourdieu theorizes the inculcation of objective social structures into the subjective, mental experience of agents. For the objective social field places requirements on its participants for membership, so to speak, within the field. Having thereby absorbed objective social structure into a personal set of cognitive and somatic dispositions, and the subjective structures of action of the agent then being commensurate with the objective structures and extant exigencies of the social field, a doxic relationship emerges. === Habitus and doxa === Doxa refers to the learned, fundamental, deep-founded, unconscious beliefs, and values, taken as self-evident universals, that inform an agent's actions and thoughts within a particular field. Doxa tends to favor the particular social arrangement of the field, thus privileging the dominant and taking their position of dominance as self-evident and universally favorable. Therefore, the categories of understanding and perception that constitute a habitus, being congruous with the objective organization of the field, tend to reproduce the very structures of the field. A doxic situation may be thought of as a situation characterized by a harmony between the objective, external structures and the 'subjective', internal structures of the habitus. In the doxic state, the social world is perceived as natural, taken-for-granted and even commonsensical. Bourdieu thus sees habitus as an important factor contributing to social reproduction, because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life. Individuals learn to want what conditions make possible for them, and not to aspire to what is not available to them. The conditions in which the individual lives generate dispositions compatible with these conditions (including tastes in art, literature, food, and music), and in a sense pre-adapted to their demands. The most improbable practices are therefore excluded, as unthinkable, by a kind of immediate submission to order that inclines agents to make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is categorically denied and to will the inevitable.: 54  === Reconciling the objective (field) and the subjective (habitus) === Amongst any society of individuals, the constant performance of dispositions, trivial and grand, forms an observable range of preferences and allegiances, points and vectors. This spatial metaphor can be analysed by sociologists and realised in diagrammatic form. Ultimately, conceptualising social relations this way gives rise to an image of society as a web of interrelated spaces. These are the social fields. For Bourdieu, habitus and field can only exist in relation to each other. Although a field is constituted by the various social agents participating in it (and thus their habitus), a habitus, in effect, represents the transposition of objective structures of the field into the subjective structures of action and thought of the agent. The relationship between habitus and field is twofold. First, the field exists only insofar as social agents possess the dispositions and set of perceptual schemata that are necessary to constitute that field and imbue it with meaning. Concomitantly, by participating in the field, agents incorporate into their habitus the proper know-how that will allow them to constitute the field. Habitus manifests the structures of the field, and the field mediates between habitus and practice. Bourdieu attempts to use the concepts of habitus and field to remove the division between the subjective and the objective. Bourdieu asserts that any research must be composed of two "minutes," wherein the first minute is an objective stage of research—where one looks at the relations of the social space and the structures of the field; while the second minute must be a subjective analysis of social agents' dispositions to act and their categories of perception and understanding that result from their inhabiting the field. Proper research, Bourdieu argues, thus cannot do without these two together. === Science and objectivity === Bourdieu contended there is transcendental objectivity, only when certain necessary historical conditions are met. The scientific field is precisely that field in which objectivity may be acquired. Bourdieu's ideal scientific field is one that grants its participants an interest or investment in objectivity. Further, this ideal scientific field is one in which the field's degree of autonomy advances and, in a corresponding process, its "entrance fee" becomes increasingly strict. The scientific field entails rigorous intersubjective scrutinizing of theory and data. This should make it difficult for those within the field to bring in, for example, political influence. However, the autonomy of the scientific field cannot be taken for granted. An important part of Bourdieu's theory is that the historical development of a scientific field, sufficiently autonomous to be described as such and to produce objective work, is an achievement that requires continual reproduction. Having been achieved, it cannot be assumed to be secure. Bourdieu does not discount the possibility that the scientific field may lose its autonomy and therefore deteriorate, losing its defining characteristic as a producer of objective work. In this way, the conditions of possibility for the production of transcendental objectivity could arise and then disappear. === Reflexivity === Bourdieu insists on the importance of a reflexive sociology in which sociologists must at all times conduct their research with conscious attention to the effects of their own position, their own set of internalized structures, and how these are likely to distort or prejudice their objectivity. The sociologist, according to Bourdieu, must engage in a "sociology of sociology" so as not to unwittingly attribute to the object of observation the characteristics of the subject. They ought to conduct their research with one eye continually reflecting back upon their own habitus, their dispositions learned through long social and institutional training. It is only by maintaining such a continual vigilance that the sociologists can spot themselves in the act of importing their own biases into their work. Reflexivity is, therefore, a kind of additional stage in the scientific epistemology. It is not enough for the scientist to go through the usual stages (research, hypothesis, falsification, experiment, repetition, peer review, etc.); Bourdieu recommends also that the scientist purge their work of the prejudices likely to derive from their social position. In a good illustration of the process, Bourdieu chastises academics (including himself) for judging their students' work against a rigidly scholastic linguistic register, favouring students whose writing appears 'polished', marking down those guilty of 'vulgarity'. Without a reflexive analysis of the snobbery being deployed under the cover of those subjective terms, the academic will unconsciously reproduce a degree of class prejudice, promoting the student with high linguistic capital and holding back the student who lacks it—not because of the objective quality of the work but simply because of the register in which it is written. Reflexivity should enable the academic to be conscious of their prejudices, e.g. for apparently sophisticated writing, and impel them to take steps to correct for this bias. Bourdieu also describes how the "scholastic point of view" unconsciously alters how scientists approach their objects of study. Because of the systematicity of their training and their mode of analysis, they tend to exaggerate the systematicity of the things they study. This inclines them to see agents following clear rules where in fact they use less determinate strategies; it makes it hard to theorise the 'fuzzy' logic of the social world, its practical and therefore mutable nature, poorly described by words like 'system', 'structure' and 'logic' which imply mechanisms, rigidity and omnipresence. The scholar can too easily find themselves mistaking "the things of logic for the logic of things"—a phrase of Marx's which Bourdieu is fond of quoting. Again, reflexivity is recommended as the key to discovering and correcting for such errors which would otherwise remain unseen, mistakes produced by an over-application of the virtues that produced also the truths within which the errors are embedded.: 68–70  == Theory of capital and class distinction == Bourdieu introduced the notion of capital, defined as sums of particular assets put to productive use. For Bourdieu, such assets could take various forms, habitually referring to several principal forms of capital: economic, symbolic, cultural and social. Loïc Wacquant would go on to describe Bourdieu's thought further: Capital comes in 3 principal species: economic, cultural and social. A fourth species, symbolic capital, designates the effects of any form of capital when people do not perceive them as such.Bourdieu developed theories of social stratification based on aesthetic taste in his 1979 work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (in French: La Distinction), published by Harvard University Press. Bourdieu claims that how one chooses to present one's social space to the world—one's aesthetic dispositions—depicts one's status and distances oneself from lower groups. Specifically, Bourdieu hypothesizes that children internalize these dispositions at an early age and that such dispositions guide the young towards their appropriate social positions, towards the behaviors that are suitable for them, and foster an aversion towards other behaviors. Bourdieu theorizes that class fractions teach aesthetic preferences to their young. Class fractions are determined by a combination of the varying degrees of social, economic, and cultural capital. Society incorporates "symbolic goods, especially those regarded as the attributes of excellence…[as] the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction.": 66  Those attributes deemed excellent are shaped by the interests of the dominating class. He emphasizes the dominance of cultural capital early on by stating that "differences in cultural capital mark the differences between the classes.": 69 The development of aesthetic dispositions are very largely determined by social origin rather than accumulated capital and experience over time. The acquisition of cultural capital depends heavily on "total, early, imperceptible learning, performed within the family from the earliest days of life.": 66  Bourdieu argues that, in the main, people inherit their cultural attitudes, the accepted "definitions that their elders offer them.": 477 He asserts the primacy of social origin and cultural capital by claiming that social capital and economic capital, though acquired cumulatively over time, depend upon it. Bourdieu claims that "one has to take account of all the characteristics of social condition which are (statistically) associated from earliest childhood with possession of high or low income and which tend to shape tastes adjusted to these conditions.": 177 According to Bourdieu, tastes in food, culture and presentation are indicators of class because trends in their consumption seemingly correlate with an individual's place in society. Each fraction of the dominant class develops its own aesthetic criteria. The multitude of consumer interests based on differing social positions necessitates that each fraction "has its own artists and philosophers, newspapers and critics, just as it has its hairdresser, interior decorator, or tailor.": 231–2  However, Bourdieu does not disregard the importance of social capital and economic capital in the formation of cultural capital. For example, the production of art and the ability to play an instrument "presuppose not only dispositions associated with long establishment in the world of art and culture but also economic means...and spare time.": 75  However, regardless of one's ability to act upon one's preferences, Bourdieu specifies that "respondents are only required to express a status-induced familiarity with legitimate…culture.": 63 [Taste] functions as a sort of social orientation, a 'sense of one's place,' guiding the occupants of a given...social space towards the social positions adjusted to their properties, and towards the practices or goods which befit the occupants of that position.: 466  Thus, different modes of acquisition yield differences in the nature of preferences.: 65  These "cognitive structures…are internalized, 'embodied' social structures," becoming a natural entity to the individual.: 468  Different tastes are thus seen as unnatural and rejected, resulting in "disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance ('feeling sick') of the tastes of others.": 56  Bourdieu himself believes class distinction and preferences are:most marked in the ordinary choices of everyday existence, such as furniture, clothing, or cooking, which are particularly revealing of deep-rooted and long-standing dispositions because, lying outside the scope of the educational system, they have to be confronted, as it were, by naked taste.: 77 Indeed, Bourdieu believes that "the strongest and most indelible mark of infant learning" would probably be in the tastes of food.: 79  Bourdieu thinks that meals served on special occasions are "an interesting indicator of the mode of self-presentation adopted in 'showing off' a life-style (in which furniture also plays a part).": 79  The idea is that their likes and dislikes should mirror those of their associated class fractions. Children from the lower end of the social hierarchy are predicted to choose "heavy, fatty fattening foods, which are also cheap" in their dinner layouts, opting for "plentiful and good" meals as opposed to foods that are "original and exotic.": 177, 179  These potential outcomes would reinforce Bourdieu's "ethic of sobriety for the sake of slimness, which is most recognized at the highest levels of the social hierarchy," that contrasts the "convivial indulgence" characteristic of the lower classes.: 179  Demonstrations of the tastes of luxury (or freedom) and the tastes of necessity reveal a distinction among the social classes. The degree to which social origin affects these preferences surpasses both educational and economic capital. Demonstrably, at equivalent levels of educational capital, social origin remains an influential factor in determining these dispositions.: 63  How one describes one's social environment relates closely to social origin because the instinctive narrative springs from early stages of development.: 78  Also, across the divisions of labor, "economic constraints tend to relax without any fundamental change in the pattern of spending.": 185  This observation reinforces the idea that social origin, more than economic capital, produces aesthetic preferences because regardless of economic capability, consumption patterns remain stable. === Symbolic capital === Bourdieu sees symbolic capital (e.g., prestige, honor, attention) as a crucial source of power. Symbolic capital is any species of capital that is, in Loïc Wacquant's terms "not perceived as such," but which is instead perceived through socially inculcated classificatory schemes. When a holder of symbolic capital uses the power this confers against an agent who holds less, and seeks thereby to alter their actions, they exercise symbolic violence. Research published in Organization Science shows that symbolic capital can be divided along two dimensions - reputability and respectability - and can be transferred by association.Symbolic violence is fundamentally the imposition of categories of thought and perception upon dominated social agents who then take the social order to be just. It is the incorporation of unconscious structures that tend to perpetuate the structures of action of the dominant. The dominated then take their position to be "right." Symbolic violence is in some senses much more powerful than physical violence in that it is embedded in the very modes of action and structures of cognition of individuals, and imposes the spectre of legitimacy of the social order. In his theoretical writings, Bourdieu employs some terminology used in economics to analyze the processes of social and cultural reproduction, of how the various forms of capital tend to transfer from one generation to the next. For Bourdieu, formal education represents the key example of this process. Educational success, according to Bourdieu, entails a whole range of cultural behaviour, extending to ostensibly non-academic features like gait, dress, or accent. Privileged children have learned this behaviour, as have their teachers. Children of unprivileged backgrounds have not. The children of privilege therefore fit the pattern of their teachers' expectations with apparent 'ease'; they are 'docile'. The unprivileged are found to be 'difficult', to present 'challenges'. Yet both behave as their upbringing dictates. Bourdieu regards this 'ease', or 'natural' ability—distinction—as in fact the product of a great social labour, largely on the part of the parents. It equips their children with the dispositions of manner as well as thought which ensure they are able to succeed within the educational system and can then reproduce their parents' class position in the wider social system. === Cultural capital === Cultural capital refers to assets, e.g., competencies, skills, qualifications, which enable holders to mobilise cultural authority and can also be a source of misrecognition and symbolic violence. For example, working class children can come to see the educational success of their middle-class peers as always legitimate, seeing what is often class-based inequality as instead the result of hard work or even 'natural' ability. A key part of this process is the transformation of people's symbolic or economic inheritance (e.g., accent or property) into cultural capital (e.g., university qualifications). Bourdieu argues that cultural capital has developed in opposition to economic capital. Moreover, the conflict between those who mostly hold cultural capital and those who mostly hold economic capital finds expression in the opposed social fields of art and business. The field of art and related cultural fields are seen to have striven historically for autonomy, which in different times and places has been more or less achieved. The autonomous field of art is summed up as "an economic world turned upside down,": 81  highlighting the opposition between economic and cultural capital. === Social capital === For Bourdieu, "social capital is the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.": 119  In order for individuals to gain such capital, they must work for it constantly and it takes time according to Bourdieu. For some families, cultural capital is accumulated over a period of generations as they adopt cultural investment strategies and pass them on to their children. This gives children an opportunity to realize their potential through education and they pass on those same values to their children. Over time, individuals in such families gain cultural currency which gives them an inherent advantage over other groups of people, which is why there is such variation in academic achievement in children of different social classes. Having such cultural currency enables people to compensate for a lack of financial capital by giving them a certain level of respect and status in society. Bourdieu believes that cultural capital may play a role when individuals pursue power and status in society through politics or other means. Social and cultural capital along with economic capital contribute to the inequality we see in the world, according to Bourdieu's argument. ==== Language ==== Bourdieu takes language to be not merely a method of communication, but also a mechanism of power. The language one uses is designated by one's relational position in a field or social space. Different uses of language tend to reiterate the respective positions of each participant. Linguistic interactions are manifestations of the participants' respective positions in social space and categories of understanding, and thus tend to reproduce the objective structures of the social field. This determines who has a "right" to be listened to, to interrupt, to ask questions, and to lecture, and to what degree. The representation of identity in forms of language can be subdivided into language, dialect, and accent. For example, the use of different dialects in an area can represent a varied social status for individuals. A good example of this would be in the case of French. Until the French Revolution, the differences in dialect directly reflected a person's presumed social status. Peasants and the lower classes spoke local dialects, while only nobles and the upper classes were fluent in the official French language. Accents can reflect an area's inner conflict with classifications and authority within a population. The reason language acts as a mechanism of power is through forms of mental representations it is acknowledged and noticed as objective representations: as a sign and/or symbol. These signs and symbols therefore transform language into an agency of power. == Legacy == Bourdieu "was, for many, the leading intellectual of present-day France…a thinker in the same rank as Foucault, Barthes and Lacan." His works have been translated into two dozen languages and have affected the whole gamut of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. They have also been used in pedagogy. Several works of his are considered classics, not only in sociology, but also in anthropology, education, and cultural studies. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction) was named as one of the 20th century's ten most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association. The Rules of Art has significantly affected sociology, history, literature and aesthetics. In France, Bourdieu was seen not as an ivory tower academic or "cloistered don" but as a passionate activist for those he believed to be subordinated by society. In 2001, a documentary film about Bourdieu—Sociology is a Martial Art—"became an unexpected hit in Paris. Its very title stressed how much of a politically engaged intellectual Bourdieu was, taking on the mantle of Émile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life and slugging it out with politicians because he thought that was what people like him should do."For Bourdieu, sociology was a combative effort that sought to expose the un-thought structures that lie beneath the physical (somatic) and thought practices of social agents. He saw sociology as a means of confronting symbolic violence and of exposing those unseen areas in which one could be free. Bourdieu's work continues to be influential. His work is widely cited, and many sociologists and other social scientists work explicitly in a Bourdieusian framework. One example is Loïc Wacquant, who persistently applies the Bourdieusian theoretical and methodological principles to subjects such as boxing, employing what Bourdieu termed participant objectivation (objectivation participante), or what Wacquant calls "carnal sociology." In addition to publishing a book on Bourdieu's lasting influence, novelist Édouard Louis uses the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu as a literary device.Bourdieu also played a crucial role in the popularisation of correspondence analysis and particularly multiple correspondence analysis. Bourdieu held that these geometric techniques of data analysis are, like his sociology, inherently relational. "I use Correspondence Analysis very much, because I think that it is essentially a relational procedure whose philosophy fully expresses what in my view constitutes social reality. It is a procedure that 'thinks' in relations, as I try to do it with the concept of field," Bourdieu said, in the preface to The Craft of Sociology. == Selected publications == == See also == Academic capital Collective narcissism Cultural capital Erotic capital Social capital Structure and agency Symbolic capital Taste (sociology) Constructivist epistemology == References == === Notes === === Citations === == Further reading == Cazier, Jean-Philippe (2006). Abécédaire de Pierre Bourdieu (in French). Mons: Sils Maria Press. ISBN 9782930242552. Corchia, Luca (2006). "La prospettiva relazionale di Pierre Bourdieu (2). I concetti fondamentali." Il Trimestrale del Laboratorio [The Lab's Quarterly] 4. Pisa: Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali. ISSN 1724-451X. Fowler, Bridget (1997). Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. ISBN 9780803976269. Grenfell, Michael (2004). Pierre Bourdieu, Agent Provocateur. London: Continuum. ISBN 9780826467096. — (2007). Pierre Bourdieu: Education and Training. London: Continuum. ISBN 9780826484017. — (2011). Bourdieu, Language and Linguistics. London: Continuum. ISBN 9781441154699. — (2012) [2008]. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9781844655304. — (2022). Bourdieu's Metanoia. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781032192871. Grenfell, Michael; Hardy, Cheryl (2007). Art Rules: Pierre Bourdieu and the Visual Arts. New York: Berg. ISBN 9781847886033. Grenfell, Michael; Lebaron, Frederic (2014). Bourdieu and Data Analysis: Methodological Principles and Practice. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG. ISBN 9783034308786. Grenfell, Michael; LiPuma, Edward; Postone, Moishe (1993). Pierre Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226090931. Grenfell, Michael; Pahl, Kate (2019). Bourdieu, Language Based Ethnographies and Reflexivity: Putting Theory into Practice. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781138652262. Jenkins, Richard (1992). Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415057981. Joseph, John E. (2020). "The agency of habitus: Bourdieu and language at the conjunction of Marxism, phenomenology and structuralism" (PDF). Language & Communication. 71: 108–22. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2020.01.004. S2CID 214032389. Lane, Jeremy F. (2000). Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745315010. Louis, Édouard (2013). Pierre Bourdieu: l'insoumission en héritage (in French). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 9782130619352 Paolucci, Gabriella (ed.), Bourdieu and Marx. Practices of Critique, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. (ISBN 978-3-031-06288-9) Reed-Danahay, Deborah (2005). Locating Bourdieu. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253217325. Sallaz, Jeffrey J.; Zavisca, Jane (2007). "Bourdieu in American Sociology, 1980–2004". Annual Review of Sociology. 33: 21–41. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131627. Shusterman, Richard (1999). Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 9780631188186. Stahl, Garth (2015). Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration: Educating White Working-Class Boys. Abingdon, NY: Routledge. ISBN 9781138025875. Steinmetz, George (2011). "Bourdieu, historicity, and historical sociology". Cultural Sociology. 5 (1): 45–66. doi:10.1177/1749975510389912. S2CID 146483444. von Holdt, Karl (March 2013). "The violence of order, orders of violence: Between Fannon and Bourdieu". Current Sociology. 61 (2): 112–131. doi:10.1177/0011392112456492. S2CID 220701604. Wacquant, Loïc (2005). Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics: The Mystery of Ministry. Cambridge, UK: Polity. ISBN 9780745634883. == External links == Pierre Bourdieu publications indexed by Google Scholar Information on Pierre Bourdieu (life, academia, and influence) — edited by Albert Benschop (University of Amsterdam)

Jacques Derrida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

Jacques Derrida (; French: [ʒak dɛʁida]; born Jackie Élie Derrida; 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disowned the word "postmodernity".During his career, Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence on the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, law, anthropology, historiography, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, music, architecture, and political theory. Into the 2000s, his work retained major academic influence throughout the United States, continental Europe, South America and all other countries where continental philosophy has been predominant, particularly in debates around ontology, epistemology (especially concerning social sciences), ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. In most of the Anglosphere, where analytic philosophy is dominant, Derrida's influence is most presently felt in literary studies due to his longstanding interest in language and his association with prominent literary critics from his time at Yale. He also influenced architecture (in the form of deconstructivism), music (especially in the musical atmosphere of hauntology), art, and art criticism.Particularly in his later writings, Derrida addressed ethical and political themes in his work. Some critics consider Speech and Phenomena (1967) to be his most important work. Others cite: Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Margins of Philosophy (1972). These writings influenced various activists and political movements. He became a well-known and influential public figure, while his approach to philosophy and the notorious abstruseness of his work made him controversial. He was often named - but never awarded - for a Nobel Prize in Literature. == Life == Derrida was born on 15 July 1930, in a summer home in El Biar (Algiers), Algeria, to Haïm Aaron Prosper Charles (known as "Aimé") Derrida (1896–1970), who worked all his life for the wine and spirits company Tachet, including as a travelling salesman (his son reflected the job was "exhausting" and "humiliating", his father forced to be a "docile employee" to the extent of waking early to do the accounts at the dining-room table), and Georgette Sultana Esther (1901–1991), daughter of Moïse Safar. His family was Sephardic Jewish, (originally from Toledo) and became French in 1870 when the Crémieux Decree granted full French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria. His parents named him "Jackie", "which they considered to be an American name", although he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris; some reports indicate that he was named Jackie after the American child actor Jackie Coogan, who had become well-known around the world via his role in the 1921 Charlie Chaplin film The Kid. He was also given the middle name Élie after his paternal uncle Eugène Eliahou, at his circumcision; this name was not recorded on his birth certificate unlike those of his siblings, and he would later call it his "hidden name".Derrida was the third of five children. His elder brother Paul Moïse died at less than three months old, the year before Derrida was born, leading him to suspect throughout his life his role as a replacement for his deceased brother. Derrida spent his youth in Algiers and in El-Biar. On the first day of the school year in 1942, French administrators in Algeria —implementing antisemitism quotas set by the Vichy government—expelled Derrida from his lycée. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students, and also took part in numerous football competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player). In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers (such as Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Gide) an instrument of revolt against family and society. His reading also included Camus and Sartre.In the late 1940s, he attended the Lycée Bugeaud, in Algiers; in 1949 he moved to Paris, attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where his professor of philosophy was Étienne Borne. At that time he prepared for his entrance exam to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure (ENS); after failing the exam on his first try, he passed it on the second, and was admitted in 1952. On his first day at ENS, Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he became friends. A professor of his, Jan Czarnecki, was a progressive Protestant who would become a signer of the Manifesto of the 121. After visiting the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium (1953–1954), he completed his master's degree in philosophy (diplôme d'études supérieures) on Edmund Husserl (see below). He then passed the highly competitive agrégation exam in 1956. Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University, and he spent the 1956–57 academic year reading James Joyce's Ulysses at the Widener Library. In June 1957, he married the psychoanalyst Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston. During the Algerian War of Independence of 1954–1962, Derrida asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching French and English from 1957 to 1959. Following the war, from 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught philosophy at the Sorbonne, where he was an assistant of Suzanne Bachelard (daughter of Gaston), Georges Canguilhem, Paul Ricœur (who in these years coined the term hermeneutics of suspicion), and Jean Wahl. His wife, Marguerite, gave birth to their first child, Pierre, in 1963. In 1964, on the recommendation of Louis Althusser and Jean Hyppolite, Derrida got a permanent teaching position at the ENS, which he kept until 1984. In 1965 Derrida began an association with the Tel Quel group of literary and philosophical theorists, which lasted for seven years. Derrida's subsequent distance from the Tel Quel group, after 1971, was connected to his reservations about their embrace of Maoism and of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.With "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", his contribution to a 1966 colloquium on structuralism at Johns Hopkins University, his work began to gain international prominence. At the same colloquium Derrida would meet Jacques Lacan and Paul de Man, the latter an important interlocutor in the years to come. A second son, Jean, was born in 1967. In the same year, Derrida published his first three books—Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology. In 1980, he received his first honorary doctorate (from Columbia University) and was awarded his State doctorate (doctorat d'État) by submitting to the University of Paris ten of his previously published books in conjunction with a defense of his intellectual project under the title "L'inscription de la philosophie : Recherches sur l'interprétation de l'écriture" ("Inscription in Philosophy: Research on the Interpretation of Writing"). The text of Derrida's defense was based on an abandoned draft thesis he had prepared in 1957 under the direction of Jean Hyppolite at the ENS entitled "The Ideality of the Literary Object" ("L'idéalité de l'objet littéraire"); his 1980 dissertation was subsequently published in English translation as "The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations". In 1983 Derrida collaborated with Ken McMullen on the film Ghost Dance. Derrida appears in the film as himself and also contributed to the script. Derrida traveled widely and held a series of visiting and permanent positions. Derrida became full professor (directeur d'études) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris from 1984 (he had been elected at the end of 1983). With François Châtelet and others he in 1983 co-founded the Collège international de philosophie (CIPH; 'International college of philosophy'), an institution intended to provide a location for philosophical research which could not be carried out elsewhere in the academia. He was elected as its first president. In 1985 Sylviane Agacinski gave birth to Derrida's third child, Daniel.On 8 May 1985, Derrida was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to Class IV - Humanities, Section 3 -Criticism and Philology.In 1986 Derrida became Professor of the Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, where he taught until shortly before his death in 2004. His papers were filed in the university archives. After Derrida's death, his widow and sons said they wanted copies of UCI's archives shared with the Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives in France. The university had sued in an attempt to get manuscripts and correspondence from Derrida's widow and children that it believed the philosopher had promised to UC Irvine's collection, although it dropped the suit in 2007.Derrida was a regular visiting professor at several other major American and European universities, including Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, New York University, Stony Brook University, The New School for Social Research, and European Graduate School.He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Cambridge (1992), Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, the University of Essex, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the University of Silesia, the University of Coimbra, the University of Athens, and many others around the world. In 2001, he received the Adorno-Preis from the University of Frankfurt. Derrida's honorary degree at Cambridge was protested by leading philosophers in the analytic tradition. Philosophers including Quine, Marcus, and Armstrong wrote a letter to the university objecting that "Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour," and "Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university".Late in his life, Derrida participated in making two biographical documentaries, D'ailleurs, Derrida (Derrida's Elsewhere) by Safaa Fathy (1999), and Derrida by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman (2002).Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2002.On 19 February 2003, with the 2003 invasion of Iraq impending, René Major moderated a debate entitled "Pourquoi La Guerre Aujourd'hui?" between Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, co-hosted by Major's Institute for Advanced Studies in Psychoanalysis and Le Monde Diplomatique. The debate discussed the relation between terrorist attacks and the invasion.Derrida died during surgery in a hospital in Paris in the early hours of 9 October 2004.At the time of his death, Derrida had agreed to go for the summer to Heidelberg as holder of the Gadamer professorship, whose invitation was expressed by the hermeneutic philosopher himself before his death. Peter Hommelhoff, Rector at Heidelberg by that time, would summarize Derrida's place as: "Beyond the boundaries of philosophy as an academic discipline he was a leading intellectual figure not only for the humanities but for the cultural perception of a whole age." == Philosophy == Derrida referred to himself as a historian. He questioned assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition and also more broadly Western culture. By questioning the dominant discourses, and trying to modify them, he attempted to democratize the university scene and to politicize it. Derrida called his challenge to the assumptions of Western culture "deconstruction". On some occasions, Derrida referred to deconstruction as a radicalization of a certain spirit of Marxism.With his detailed readings of works from Plato to Rousseau to Heidegger, Derrida frequently argues that Western philosophy has uncritically allowed metaphorical depth models to govern its conception of language and consciousness. He sees these often unacknowledged assumptions as part of a "metaphysics of presence" to which philosophy has bound itself. This "logocentrism", Derrida argues, creates "marked" or hierarchized binary oppositions that have an effect on everything from our conception of speech's relation to writing to our understanding of racial difference. Deconstruction is an attempt to expose and undermine such "metaphysics". Derrida approaches texts as constructed around binary oppositions which all speech has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This approach to text is, in a broad sense, influenced by the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure, considered to be one of the fathers of structuralism, posited that terms get their meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language.Perhaps Derrida's most quoted and famous assertion, which appears in an essay on Rousseau in his book Of Grammatology (1967), is the statement that "there is no out-of-context" (il n'y a pas de hors-texte). Critics of Derrida have been often accused of having mistranslated the phrase in French to suggest he had written "Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte" ("There is nothing outside the text") and of having widely disseminated this translation to make it appear that Derrida is suggesting that nothing exists but words. Derrida once explained that this assertion "which for some has become a sort of slogan, in general so badly understood, of deconstruction ... means nothing else: there is nothing outside context. In this form, which says exactly the same thing, the formula would doubtless have been less shocking." === Early works === Derrida began his career examining the limits of phenomenology. His first lengthy academic manuscript, written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'études supérieures and submitted in 1954, concerned the work of Edmund Husserl. Gary Banham has said that the dissertation is "in many respects the most ambitious of Derrida's interpretations with Husserl, not merely in terms of the number of works addressed but also in terms of the extraordinarily focused nature of its investigation." In 1962 he published Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, which contained his own translation of Husserl's essay. Many elements of Derrida's thought were already present in this work. In the interviews collected in Positions (1972), Derrida said: In this essay the problematic of writing was already in place as such, bound to the irreducible structure of 'deferral' in its relationships to consciousness, presence, science, history and the history of science, the disappearance or delay of the origin, etc. ...this essay can be read as the other side (recto or verso, as you wish) of Speech and Phenomena. Derrida first received major attention outside France with his lecture, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," delivered at Johns Hopkins University in 1966 (and subsequently included in Writing and Difference). The conference at which this paper was delivered was concerned with structuralism, then at the peak of its influence in France, but only beginning to gain attention in the United States. Derrida differed from other participants by his lack of explicit commitment to structuralism, having already been critical of the movement. He praised the accomplishments of structuralism but also maintained reservations about its internal limitations; this has led US academics to label his thought as a form of post-structuralism.The effect of Derrida's paper was such that by the time the conference proceedings were published in 1970, the title of the collection had become The Structuralist Controversy. The conference was also where he met Paul de Man, who would be a close friend and source of great controversy, as well as where he first met the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, with whose work Derrida had a mixed relationship. === Phenomenology vs structuralism debate (1959) === In the early 1960s, Derrida began speaking and writing publicly, addressing the most topical debates at the time. One of these was the new and increasingly fashionable movement of structuralism, which was being widely favoured as the successor to the phenomenology approach, the latter having been started by Husserl sixty years earlier. Derrida's countercurrent take on the issue, at a prominent international conference, was so influential that it reframed the discussion from a celebration of the triumph of structuralism to a "phenomenology vs structuralism debate". Phenomenology, as envisioned by Husserl, is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects the rationalist bias that has dominated Western thought since Plato in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness that discloses the individual's "lived experience"; for those with a more phenomenological bent, the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this was a false problem, and the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential.In that context, in 1959, Derrida asked the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something? In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis. At the same time, in order that there be movement or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This original complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality. It is this thought of originary complexity that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of its terms are derived, including "deconstruction".Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. He achieved this by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, to determine what aspects of those texts run counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the aporias and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways in which this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects. === 1967–1972 === Derrida's interests crossed disciplinary boundaries, and his knowledge of a wide array of diverse material was reflected in the three collections of work published in 1967: Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology (initially submitted as a Doctorat de spécialité thesis under Maurice de Gandillac), and Writing and Difference.On several occasions, Derrida has acknowledged his debt to Husserl and Heidegger, and stated that without them he would not have said a single word. Among the questions asked in these essays are "What is 'meaning', what are its historical relationships to what is purportedly identified under the rubric 'voice' as a value of presence, presence of the object, presence of meaning to consciousness, self-presence in so called living speech and in self-consciousness?" In another essay in Writing and Difference entitled "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas", the roots of another major theme in Derrida's thought emerge: the Other as opposed to the Same "Deconstructive analysis deprives the present of its prestige and exposes it to something tout autre, "wholly other", beyond what is foreseeable from the present, beyond the horizon of the "same"." Other than Rousseau, Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas, these three books discussed, and/or relied upon, the works of many philosophers and authors, including linguist Saussure, Hegel, Foucault, Bataille, Descartes, anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, paleontologist Leroi-Gourhan, psychoanalyst Freud, and writers such as Jabès and Artaud.This collection of three books published in 1967 elaborated Derrida's theoretical framework. Derrida attempts to approach the very heart of the Western intellectual tradition, characterizing this tradition as "a search for a transcendental being that serves as the origin or guarantor of meaning". The attempt to "ground the meaning relations constitutive of the world in an instance that itself lies outside all relationality" was referred to by Heidegger as logocentrism, and Derrida argues that the philosophical enterprise is essentially logocentric, and that this is a paradigm inherited from Judaism and Hellenism. He in turn describes logocentrism as phallocratic, patriarchal and masculinist. Derrida contributed to "the understanding of certain deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in Western culture", arguing that the whole philosophical tradition rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories (such as sacred/profane, signifier/signified, mind/body), and that any text contains implicit hierarchies, "by which an order is imposed on reality and by which a subtle repression is exercised, as these hierarchies exclude, subordinate, and hide the various potential meanings." Derrida refers to his procedure for uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as deconstruction of Western culture.In 1968, he published his influential essay "Plato's Pharmacy" in the French journal Tel Quel. This essay was later collected in Dissemination, one of three books published by Derrida in 1972, along with the essay collection Margins of Philosophy and the collection of interviews entitled Positions. === 1973–1980 === Starting in 1972, Derrida produced on average more than one book per year. Derrida continued to produce important works, such as Glas (1974) and The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980). Derrida received increasing attention in the United States after 1972, where he was a regular visiting professor and lecturer at several major American universities. In the 1980s, during the American culture wars, conservatives started a dispute over Derrida's influence and legacy upon American intellectuals, and claimed that he influenced American literary critics and theorists more than academic philosophers. === Of Spirit (1987) === On 14 March 1987, Derrida presented at the CIPH conference entitled "Heidegger: Open Questions", a lecture which was published in October 1987 as Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. It follows the shifting role of Geist (spirit) through Heidegger's work, noting that, in 1927, "spirit" was one of the philosophical terms that Heidegger set his sights on dismantling. With his Nazi political engagement in 1933, however, Heidegger came out as a champion of the "German Spirit", and only withdrew from an exalting interpretation of the term in 1953. Derrida asks, "What of this meantime?" His book connects in a number of respects with his long engagement of Heidegger (such as "The Ends of Man" in Margins of Philosophy, his Paris seminar on philosophical nationality and nationalism in the mid-1980s, and the essays published in English as Geschlecht and Geschlecht II). He considers "four guiding threads" of Heideggerian philosophy that form "the knot of this Geflecht [braid]": "the question of the question", "the essence of technology", "the discourse of animality", and "epochality" or "the hidden teleology or the narrative order."Of Spirit contributes to the long debate on Heidegger's Nazism and appeared at the same time as the French publication of a book by a previously unknown Chilean writer, Victor Farías, who charged that Heidegger's philosophy amounted to a wholehearted endorsement of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) faction. Derrida responded to Farías in an interview, "Heidegger, the Philosopher's Hell" and a subsequent article, "Comment donner raison? How to Concede, with Reasons?" He called Farías a weak reader of Heidegger's thought, adding that much of the evidence Farías and his supporters touted as new had long been known within the philosophical community. === 1990s: political and ethical themes === Some have argued that Derrida's work took a political and ethical "turn" in the 1990s. Texts cited as evidence of such a turn include Force of Law (1990), as well as Specters of Marx (1994) and Politics of Friendship (1994). Some refer to The Gift of Death as evidence that he began more directly applying deconstruction to the relationship between ethics and religion. In this work, Derrida interprets passages from the Bible, particularly on Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac, and from Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. However, scholars such as Leonard Lawlor, Robert Magliola, and Nicole Anderson have argued that the "turn" has been exaggerated. Some, including Derrida himself, have argued that much of the philosophical work done in his "political turn" can be dated to earlier essays.Derrida develops an ethicist view respecting to hospitality, exploring the idea that two types of hospitalities exist, conditional and unconditional. Though this contributed to the works of many scholars, Derrida was seriously criticized for this.Derrida's contemporary readings of Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Jan Patočka, on themes such as law, justice, responsibility, and friendship, had a significant impact on fields beyond philosophy. Derrida and Deconstruction influenced aesthetics, literary criticism, architecture, film theory, anthropology, sociology, historiography, law, psychoanalysis, theology, feminism, gay and lesbian studies and political theory. Jean-Luc Nancy, Richard Rorty, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, Rosalind Krauss, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Duncan Kennedy, Gary Peller, Drucilla Cornell, Alan Hunt, Hayden White, Mario Kopić, and Alun Munslow are some of the authors who have been influenced by deconstruction. Derrida delivered a eulogy at Levinas' funeral, later published as Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas, an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy. Derrida used Bracha L. Ettinger's interpretation of Lévinas' notion of femininity and transformed his own earlier reading of this subject respectively.Derrida continued to produce readings of literature, writing extensively on Maurice Blanchot, Paul Celan, and others. In 1991 he published The Other Heading, in which he discussed the concept of identity (as in cultural identity, European identity, and national identity), in the name of which in Europe have been unleashed "the worst violences," "the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, religious or nationalist fanaticism."At the 1997 Cerisy Conference, Derrida delivered a ten-hour address on the subject of "the autobiographical animal" entitled The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow). Engaging with questions surrounding the ontology of nonhuman animals, the ethics of animal slaughter and the difference between humans and other animals, the address has been seen as initiating a late "animal turn" in Derrida's philosophy, although Derrida himself has said that his interest in animals is present in his earliest writings. === The Work of Mourning (1981–2001) === Beginning with "The Deaths of Roland Barthes" in 1981, Derrida produced a series of texts on mourning and memory occasioned by the loss of his friends and colleagues, many of them new engagements with their work. Memoires for Paul de Man, a book-length lecture series presented first at Yale and then at Irvine as Derrida's Wellek Lecture, followed in 1986, with a revision in 1989 that included "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War". Ultimately, fourteen essays were collected into The Work of Mourning (2001), which was expanded in the 2003 French edition, Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde (literally, "Unique each time, the end of the world"), to include essays dedicated to Gérard Granel and Maurice Blanchot. === 2002 film === In October 2002, at the theatrical opening of the film Derrida, he said that, in many ways, he felt more and more close to Guy Debord's work, and that this closeness appears in Derrida's texts. Derrida mentioned, in particular, "everything I say about the media, technology, the spectacle, and the 'criticism of the show', so to speak, and the markets – the becoming-a-spectacle of everything, and the exploitation of the spectacle." Among the places in which Derrida mentions the Spectacle, is a 1997 interview about the notion of the intellectual. == Politics == Derrida engaged with a variety of political issues, movements, and debates throughout his career. In 1968, he participated in the May 68 protests in France and met frequently with Maurice Blanchot. However, he expressed concerns about the "cult of spontaneity" and anti-unionist euphoria that he observed. He also registered his objections to the Vietnam War in a lecture he gave in the United States. Derrida signed a petition against age of consent laws in 1977, and in 1981 he founded the French Jan Hus association to support dissident Czech intellectuals.In 1981, Derrida was arrested by the Czechoslovakian government for leading a conference without authorization and charged with drug trafficking, although he claimed the drugs were planted on him. He was released with the help of the Mitterrand government and Michel Foucault. Derrida was an advocate for nuclear disarmament, protested against apartheid in South Africa, and met with Palestinian intellectuals during a visit to Jerusalem in 1988. He also opposed capital punishment and was involved in the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.Although Derrida was not associated with any political party until 1995, he supported the Socialist candidacy of Lionel Jospin, despite misgivings about such organizations. In the 2002 French presidential election, he refused to vote in the run-off election between far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen and center-right Jacques Chirac, citing a lack of acceptable choices. Derrida opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was engaged in rethinking politics and the political itself within and beyond philosophy. He focused on understanding the political implications of notions such as responsibility, reason of state, decision, sovereignty, and democracy. By 2000, he was theorizing "democracy to come" and thinking about the limitations of existing democracies. == Influences on Derrida == Crucial readings in his adolescence were Rousseau's Reveries of a Solitary Walker and Confessions, André Gide's journal, La porte étroite, Les nourritures terrestres and The Immoralist; and the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The phrase Families, I hate you! in particular, which inspired Derrida as an adolescent, is a famous verse from Gide's Les nourritures terrestres, book IV. In a 1991 interview Derrida commented on a similar verse, also from book IV of the same Gide work: "I hated the homes, the families, all the places where man thinks he'll find rest" (Je haïssais les foyers, les familles, tous lieux où l'homme pense trouver un repos).Other influences upon Derrida are Martin Heidegger, Plato, Søren Kierkegaard, Alexandre Kojève, Maurice Blanchot, Antonin Artaud, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Lévinas, Ferdinand de Saussure, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Claude Lévi-Strauss, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, J. L. Austin and Stéphane Mallarmé.His book, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas, reveals his mentorship by this philosopher and Talmudic scholar who practiced the phenomenological encounter with the Other in the form of the Face, which commanded human response. The use of deconstruction to read Jewish texts – like the Talmud – is relatively rare but has recently been attempted. == Peers and contemporaries == Derrida's philosophical friends, allies, students and the heirs of Derrida's thought include Paul de Man, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Sarah Kofman, Hélène Cixous, Bernard Stiegler, Alexander García Düttmann, Joseph Cohen, Geoffrey Bennington, Jean-Luc Marion, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Raphael Zagury-Orly, Jacques Ehrmann, Avital Ronell, Judith Butler, Béatrice Galinon-Mélénec, Ernesto Laclau, Samuel Weber, Catherine Malabou, and Claudette Sartiliot. === Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe === Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe were among Derrida's first students in France and went on to become well-known and important philosophers in their own right. Despite their considerable differences of subject, and often also of a method, they continued their close interaction with each other and with Derrida, from the early 1970s. Derrida wrote on both of them, including a long book on Nancy: Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, 2005). === Paul de Man === Derrida's most prominent friendship in intellectual life was with Paul de Man, which began with their meeting at Johns Hopkins University and continued until de Man's death in 1983. De Man provided a somewhat different approach to deconstruction, and his readings of literary and philosophical texts were crucial in the training of a generation of readers. Shortly after de Man's death, Derrida wrote the book Memoires: pour Paul de Man and in 1988 wrote an article in the journal Critical Inquiry called "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War". The memoir became cause for controversy, because shortly before Derrida published his piece, it had been discovered by the Belgian literary critic Ortwin de Graef that long before his academic career in the US, de Man had written almost two hundred essays in a pro-Nazi newspaper during the German occupation of Belgium, including several that were explicitly antisemitic. Critics of Derrida have argued that he minimizes the antisemitic character of de Man's writing. Some critics have found Derrida's treatment of this issue surprising, given that, for example, Derrida also spoke out against antisemitism and, in the 1960s, broke with the Heidegger disciple Jean Beaufret over Beaufret's instances of antisemitism, about which Derrida (and, after him, Maurice Blanchot) expressed shock. === Michel Foucault === Derrida's criticism of Foucault appears in the essay Cogito and the History of Madness (from Writing and Difference). It was first given as a lecture on 4 March 1963, at a conference at Wahl's Collège philosophique, which Foucault attended, and caused a rift between the two men that was never fully mended.In an appendix added to the 1972 edition of his History of Madness, Foucault disputed Derrida's interpretation of his work, and accused Derrida of practicing "a historically well-determined little pedagogy [...] which teaches the student that there is nothing outside the text [...]. A pedagogy which inversely gives to the voice of the masters that infinite sovereignty that allows it indefinitely to re-say the text." According to historian Carlo Ginzburg, Foucault may have written The Order of Things (1966) and The Archaeology of Knowledge partly under the stimulus of Derrida's criticism. Carlo Ginzburg briefly labeled Derrida's criticism in Cogito and the History of Madness, as "facile, nihilistic objections," without giving further argumentation. === Derrida's translators === Geoffrey Bennington, Avital Ronell and Samuel Weber belong to a group of Derrida translators. Many of Derrida's translators are esteemed thinkers in their own right. Derrida often worked in a collaborative arrangement, allowing his prolific output to be translated into English in a timely fashion. Having started as a student of de Man, Gayatri Spivak took on the translation of Of Grammatology early in her career and has since revised it into a second edition. Barbara Johnson's translation of Derrida's Dissemination was published by The Athlone Press in 1981. Alan Bass was responsible for several early translations; Bennington and Peggy Kamuf have continued to produce translations of his work for nearly twenty years. In recent years, a number of translations have appeared by Michael Naas (also a Derrida scholar) and Pascale-Anne Brault. Bennington, Brault, Kamuf, Naas, Elizabeth Rottenberg, and David Wills are currently engaged in translating Derrida's previously unpublished seminars, which span from 1959 to 2003. Volumes I and II of The Beast and the Sovereign (presenting Derrida's seminars from 12 December 2001 to 27 March 2002 and from 11 December 2002 to 26 March 2003), as well as The Death Penalty, Volume I (covering 8 December 1999 to 22 March 2000), have appeared in English translation. Further volumes currently projected for the series include Heidegger: The Question of Being and History (1964-1965), Death Penalty, Volume II (2000–2001), Perjury and Pardon, Volume I (1997–1998), and Perjury and Pardon, Volume II (1998–1999).With Bennington, Derrida undertook the challenge published as Jacques Derrida, an arrangement in which Bennington attempted to provide a systematic explication of Derrida's work (called the "Derridabase") using the top two-thirds of every page, while Derrida was given the finished copy of every Bennington chapter and the bottom third of every page in which to show how deconstruction exceeded Bennington's account (this was called the "Circumfession"). Derrida seems to have viewed Bennington in particular as a kind of rabbinical explicator, noting at the end of the "Applied Derrida" conference, held at the University of Luton in 1995 that: "everything has been said and, as usual, Geoff Bennington has said everything before I have even opened my mouth. I have the challenge of trying to be unpredictable after him, which is impossible... so I'll try to pretend to be unpredictable after Geoff. Once again." === Marshall McLuhan === Derrida was familiar with the work of Marshall McLuhan, and since his early 1967 writings (Of Grammatology, Speech and Phenomena), he speaks of language as a "medium," of phonetic writing as "the medium of the great metaphysical, scientific, technical, and economic adventure of the West."He expressed his disagreement with McLuhan in regard to what Derrida called McLuhan's ideology about the end of writing. In a 1982 interview, he said: I think that there is an ideology in McLuhan's discourse that I don't agree with because he's an optimist as to the possibility of restoring an oral community which would get rid of the writing machines and so on. I think that's a very traditional myth which goes back to... let's say Plato, Rousseau... And instead of thinking that we are living at the end of writing, I think that in another sense we are living in the extension – the overwhelming extension – of writing. At least in the new sense... I don't mean the alphabetic writing down, but in the new sense of those writing machines that we're using now (e.g. the tape recorder). And this is writing too. And in his 1972 essay Signature Event Context he said: As writing, communication, if one insists upon maintaining the word, is not the means of transport of sense, the exchange of intentions and meanings, the discourse and "communication of consciousnesses." We are not witnessing an end of writing which, to follow McLuhan's ideological representation, would restore a transparency or immediacy of social relations; but indeed a more and more powerful historical unfolding of a general writing of which the system of speech, consciousness, meaning, presence, truth, etc., would only be an effect, to be analyzed as such. It is this questioned effect that I have elsewhere called logocentrism. === Architectural thinkers === Derrida had a direct impact on the theories and practices of influential architects Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi towards the end of the twentieth century. Derrida impacted a project that was theorized by Eisenman in Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman. This design was architecturally conceived by Tschumi for the Parc de la Villette in Paris, which included a sieve, or harp-like structure that Derrida envisaged as a physical metaphor for the receptacle-like properties of the khôra. Moreover, Derrida's commentaries on Plato's notion of khôra (χώρα) as set in the Timaeus (48e4) received later reflections in the philosophical works and architectural writings of the philosopher-architect Nader El-Bizri within the domain of phenomenology. Derrida used "χώρα" to name a radical otherness that "gives place" for being. El-Bizri built on this by more narrowly taking khôra to name the radical happening of an ontological difference between being and beings. El-Bizri's reflections on "khôra" are taken as a basis for tackling the meditations on dwelling and on being and space in Heidegger's thought and the critical conceptions of space and place as they evolved in architectural theory (and its strands in phenomenological thinking), and in history of philosophy and science, with a focus on geometry and optics. This also describes El-Bizri's take on "econtology" as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen); and as also impacted by his own meditations on Derrida's take on "χώρα". Ecology is hence co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking Derrida argued that the subjectile is like Plato's khôra, Greek for space, receptacle or site. Plato proposes that khôra rests between the sensible and the intelligible, through which everything passes but in which nothing is retained. For example, an image needs to be held by something, just as a mirror will hold a reflection. For Derrida, khôra defies attempts at naming or the either/or logic, which he "deconstructed". == Criticism == === Criticism from Marxists === In a paper entitled Ghostwriting, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—the translator of Derrida's De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology) into English—criticised Derrida's understanding of Marx. Commenting on Derrida's Specters of Marx, Terry Eagleton wrote "The portentousness is ingrained in the very letter of this book, as one theatrically inflected rhetorical question tumbles hard on the heels of another in a tiresomely mannered syntax which lays itself wide open to parody." === Criticism from Anglophone philosophers === Though Derrida addressed the American Philosophical Association on at least one occasion in 1988, and was highly regarded by some contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty, Alexander Nehamas, and Stanley Cavell, his work has been regarded by other analytic philosophers, such as John Searle and Willard Van Orman Quine, as pseudophilosophy or sophistry. Some analytic philosophers have in fact claimed, since at least the 1980s, that Derrida's work is "not philosophy". One of the main arguments they gave was alleging that Derrida's influence had not been on US philosophy departments but on literature and other humanities disciplines.In his 1989 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty argues that Derrida (especially in his book, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, one section of which is an experiment in fiction) purposefully uses words that cannot be defined (e.g., différance), and uses previously definable words in contexts diverse enough to make understanding impossible, so that the reader will never be able to contextualize Derrida's literary self. Rorty, however, argues that this intentional obfuscation is philosophically grounded. In garbling his message Derrida is attempting to escape the naïve, positive metaphysical projects of his predecessors.Roger Scruton wrote in 2004, "He's difficult to summarise because it's nonsense. He argues that the meaning of a sign is never revealed in the sign but deferred indefinitely and that a sign only means something by virtue of its difference from something else. For Derrida, there is no such thing as meaning – it always eludes us and therefore anything goes."On Derrida's scholarship and writing style, Noam Chomsky wrote "I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain, as noted."Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt also criticized his work for misusing scientific terms and concepts in Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (1994).Three quarrels (or disputes) in particular went out of academic circles and received international mass media coverage: the 1972–88 quarrel with John Searle, the analytic philosophers' pressures on Cambridge University not to award Derrida an honorary degree, and a dispute with Richard Wolin and the NYRB. ==== Searle–Derrida debate ==== ==== Cambridge honorary doctorate ==== In 1992 some academics at Cambridge University, mostly not from the philosophy faculty, proposed that Derrida be awarded an honorary doctorate. This was opposed by, among others, the university's Professor of Philosophy Hugh Mellor. Eighteen other philosophers from US, Austrian, Australian, French, Polish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swiss, Spanish, and British institutions, including Barry Smith, Willard Van Orman Quine, David Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and René Thom, then sent a letter to Cambridge claiming that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour" and describing Derrida's philosophy as being composed of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists". The letter concluded that: ... where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial. Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university. In the end the protesters were outnumbered—336 votes to 204—when Cambridge put the motion to a formal ballot; though almost all of those who proposed Derrida and who voted in favour were not from the philosophy faculty. Hugh Mellor continued to find the award undeserved, explaining: "He is a mediocre, unoriginal philosopher — he is not even interestingly bad".Derrida suggested in an interview that part of the reason for the attacks on his work was that it questioned and modified "the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize education and the university scene". To answer a question about the "exceptional violence", the compulsive "ferocity", and the "exaggeration" of the "attacks", he would say that these critics organize and practice in his case "a sort of obsessive personality cult that philosophers should know how to question and above all to moderate". ==== Dispute with Richard Wolin and the NYRB ==== Richard Wolin has argued since 1991 that Derrida's work, as well as that of Derrida's major inspirations (e.g., Bataille, Blanchot, Levinas, Heidegger, Nietzsche), leads to a corrosive nihilism. For example, Wolin argues that the "deconstructive gesture of overturning and reinscription ends up by threatening to efface many of the essential differences between Nazism and non-Nazism".In 1991, when Wolin published a Derrida interview on Heidegger in the first edition of The Heidegger Controversy, Derrida argued that the interview was an intentionally malicious mistranslation, which was "demonstrably execrable" and "weak, simplistic, and compulsively aggressive". As French law requires the consent of an author to translations and this consent was not given, Derrida insisted that the interview not appear in any subsequent editions or reprints. Columbia University Press subsequently refused to offer reprints or new editions. Later editions of The Heidegger Controversy by MIT Press also omitted the Derrida interview. The matter achieved public exposure owing to a friendly review of Wolin's book by the Heideggerian scholar Thomas Sheehan that appeared in The New York Review of Books, in which Sheehan characterised Derrida's protests as an imposition of censorship. It was followed by an exchange of letters. Derrida in turn responded to Sheehan and Wolin, in "The Work of Intellectuals and the Press (The Bad Example: How the New York Review of Books and Company do Business)", which was published in the book Points....Twenty-four academics, belonging to different schools and groups – often in disagreement with each other and with deconstruction – signed a letter addressed to The New York Review of Books, in which they expressed their indignation for the magazine's behaviour as well as that of Sheenan and Wolin. === Critical obituaries === Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Independent. The magazine The Nation responded to the New York Times obituary saying that "even though American papers had scorned and trivialized Derrida before, the tone seemed particularly caustic". === Major works === 1. Structure,Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (1966) , it was published in 1967 as Chapter 10 of Writing and Difference . 2. Of Grammatology ( 1967) Translated by Gayatri C. Spivak in 1976 3. Speech and Phenomena : And Other Essays on Husserl's of Sign (1967) Or, Voice and Phenomena: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl's Phenomenology (1967) 4. Writing and Difference (1967) Trans. in 1978 5. Margins of Philosophy (1972) 6. Signature Event Context (1972) 7. Positions (1972) == See also == Gadamer–Derrida debate Difference (poststructuralism) == Notes == == Works cited == Geoffrey Bennington (1991). Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press. Section Curriculum vitae, pp. 325–36. Excerpts. ISBN 9780226042626 Caputo, John D. (ed.) (1997). Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press. Transcript (which is also available here at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 September 2006)) of the Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida at Villanova University, 3 October 1994. With commentary by Caputo. Cixous, Hélène (2001). Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint (English edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). OCLC 1025139739, 265430083, 448343513, 1036830179 Derrida (1967): interview with Henri Ronse, republished in Positions (English edition, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Derrida (1971): interview with Guy Scarpetta, republished in Positions (English edition, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Derrida (1976). Where a Teaching Body Begins and How It Ends, republished in Who's Afraid of Philosophy?. Derrida (1988). Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion, published in the English translation of Limited Inc. Derrida (1989). This Strange Institution Called Literature, interview published in Acts of Literature (1991), pp. 33–75 Derrida (1990). Once Again from the Top: Of the Right to Philosophy, interview with Robert Maggiori for Libération, 15 November 1990, republished in Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994 (1995). Derrida (1991). "A 'Madness' Must Watch Over Thinking", interview with Francois Ewald for Le Magazine Litteraire, March 1991, republished in Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994 (1995). Derrida (1992). Derrida's interview in The Cambridge Review 113, October 1992. Reprinted in Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994 Stanford University Press (1995) and retitled as Honoris Causa: "This is also extremely funny," pp. 399–421. Excerpt. Derrida (1993). Specters of Marx. Derrida et al. (1994): roundtable discussion: Of the Humanities and Philosophical Disciplines Archived 25 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine Surfaces Vol. VI.108 (v.1.0A – 16 August 1996) – ISSN 1188-2492 Later republished in Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy (2002). Derrida and Ferraris (1997). I Have a Taste for Secret, 1993–5 conversations with Maurizio Ferraris and Giorgio Vattimo, in Derrida and Ferraris [1997] A Taste for the Secret, translated by Giacomo Donis. Derrida (1997): interview Les Intellectuels: tentative de définition par eux-mêmes. Enquête, published in a special number of journal Lignes, 32 (1997): 57–68, republished in Papier Machine (2001), and translated into English as Intellectuals. Attempt at Definition by Themselves. Survey, in Derrida (2005) Paper machine. Derrida (2002): Q&A session at Film Forum, New York City, 23 October 2002, transcript by Gil Kofman. Published in Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering Kofman, Jacques Derrida (2005). Derrida: screenplay and essays on the film. Graff, Gerald (1993). Is Reason in Trouble? in Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., 137, no. 4, 1993, pp. 680–88. Kritzman, Lawrence (ed., 2005). The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, Columbia University Press. Mackey, Louis (1984) with a reply by Searle. An Exchange on Deconstruction, in New York Review of Books, 2 February 1984. Peeters, Benoît (2012). Derrida: A Biography. Polity. Powell, Jason (2006). Jacques Derrida: A Biography. London and New York: Continuum. Poster, Mark (1988). Critical theory and poststructuralism: in search of a context, section Introduction: Theory and the problem of Context. Poster, Mark (2010). McLuhan and the Cultural Theory of Media, MediaTropes eJournal, Vol. II, No. 2 (2010): 1–18. Searle (1983). The Word Turned Upside Down, in The New York Review of Books, October 1983. Searle (2000). Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle. Reason.com. February 2000 issue. Retrieved 30 August 2010. == Further reading == === Biographies === Peeters, Benoît (2012) Derrida: A Biography. Cambridge: Polity Salmon, Peter (2020) An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida. London: Verso. ISBN 9781788732802 === Introductory works === Adleman, Dan (2010) "Deconstricting Derridean Genre Theory" (PDF) Culler, Jonathan (1975) Structuralist Poetics. Culler, Jonathan (1983) On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Descombes, Vincent (1980) Modern French Philosophy. Deutscher, Penelope (2006) How to Read Derrida (ISBN 978-0-393-32879-0). Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh (2007) The Philosophy of Derrida, London: Acumen Press, 2006; Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Goldschmit, Marc (2003) Jacques Derrida, une introduction Paris, Agora Pocket, ISBN 2-266-11574-X. Hill, Leslie (2007) The Cambridge introduction to Jacques Derrida Jameson, Fredric (1972) The Prison-House of Language. Leitch, Vincent B. (1983) Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction. Lentricchia, Frank (1980) After the New Criticism. Moati Raoul (2009), Derrida/Searle, déconstruction et langage ordinaire Norris, Christopher (1987) Derrida (ISBN 0-674-19823-9). Norris, Christopher (1982) Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. Thomas, Michael (2006) The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation. Wise, Christopher (2009) Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East. === Other works === Agamben, Giorgio. "Pardes: The Writing of Potentiality," in Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. 205–19. Beardsworth, Richard, Derrida and the Political (ISBN 0-415-10967-1). Bennington, Geoffrey, Legislations (ISBN 0-86091-668-5). Bennington, Geoffrey, Interrupting Derrida (ISBN 0-415-22427-6). Critchley, Simon, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, 3rd Edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2014. ISBN 9780748689323. Caputo, John D., The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Coward, Harold G. (ed) Derrida and Negative theology, SUNY 1992. ISBN 0-7914-0964-3 Dal Bo, F. Deconstructing the Talmud Routledge 2019. ISBN 978-1138208223 de Man, Paul, "The Rhetoric of Blindness: Jacques Derrida's Reading of Rousseau," in Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, second edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. 102–41. El-Bizri, Nader, "Qui-êtes vous Khôra?: Receiving Plato's Timaeus", Existentia Meletai-Sophias 11 (2001), pp. 473–490. El-Bizri, Nader, "ON KAI KHORA: Situating Heidegger between the Sophist and the Timaeus," Studia Phaenomenologica 4 (2004), pp. 73–98. Fabbri, Lorenzo. "Chronotopologies of the Exception. Agamben and Derrida before the Camps", "Diacritics", Volume 39, Number 3 (2009): 77–95. Foucault, Michel, "My Body, This Paper, This Fire," in Michel Foucault, History of Madness, ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, London: Routledge, 2006. 550–74. Fradet, Pierre-Alexandre, Derrida-Bergson. Sur l'immédiateté, Hermann, Paris, coll. "Hermann Philosophie", 2014. ISBN 9782705688318 Gasché, Rodolphe, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida. Gasché, Rodolphe, The Tain of the Mirror. Goldschmit, Marc, Une langue à venir. Derrida, l'écriture hyperbolique Paris, Lignes et Manifeste, 2006. ISBN 2-84938-058-X Habermas, Jürgen, "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Jacques Derrida's Critique of Phonocentrism," in Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. 161-84. Hägglund, Martin, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. Hamacher, Werner, Lingua amissa, Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila editores, 2012. Kierans, Kenneth (1997). "Beyond Deconstruction" (PDF). Animus. 2. ISSN 1209-0689. Retrieved 17 August 2011. Kopić, Mario, Izazovi post-metafizike, Sremski Karlovci - Novi Sad: Izdavačka knjižarnica, 2007. (ISBN 978-86-7543-120-6) Kopić, Mario, Nezacjeljiva rana svijeta, Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 2007. (ISBN 978-953-249-035-0) Mackey, Louis, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem: Deconstructive Strategies in Theology," in Anglican Theological Review, Volume LXV, Number 3, July 1983. 255–272. Llewelyn, John, Derrida on the Threshold of Sense, London: Macmillan, 1986. Llewelyn, John, Appositions – of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Llewelyn, John, Margins of Religion: Between Kierkegaard and Derrida, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Mackey, Louis, "A Nicer Knowledge of Belief" in Loius Mackey, An Ancient Quarrel Continued: The Troubled Marriage of Philosophy and Literature, Lanham, University Press of America, 2002. 219–240 (ISBN 978-0761822677). Magliola, Robert, Derrida on the Mend, Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1984; 1986; rpt. 2000 (ISBN 0-911198-69-5). (Initiated what has become a very active area of study in Buddhology and comparative philosophy, the comparison of Derridean deconstruction and Buddhist philosophy, especially Madhyamikan and Zen Buddhist philosophy.) Magliola, Robert, On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture, Atlanta: Scholars P, American Academy of Religion, 1997; Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000 (ISBN 0-7885-0296-4). (Further develops comparison of Derridean thought and Buddhism.) Marder, Michael, The Event of the Thing: Derrida's Post-Deconstructive Realism, Toronto: Toronto UP, 2009. (ISBN 0-8020-9892-4) Miller, J. Hillis, For Derrida, New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. Mouffe, Chantal (ed.), Deconstruction and Pragmatism, with essays by Simon Critchley, Ernesto Laclau, Richard Rorty, and Derrida. Park, Jin Y., ed., Buddhisms and Deconstructions, Lanham: Rowland and Littlefield, 2006 (ISBN 978-0-7425-3418-6; ISBN 0-7425-3418-9). (Several of the collected papers specifically treat Derrida and Buddhist thought.) Rapaport, Herman, Later Derrida (ISBN 0-415-94269-1). Rorty, Richard, "From Ironist Theory to Private Allusions: Derrida," in Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 121-37. Ross, Stephen David, Betraying Derrida, for Life, Atropos Press, 2013. Roudinesco, Elisabeth, Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, Columbia University Press, New York, 2008. Sallis, John (ed.), Deconstruction and Philosophy, with essays by Rodolphe Gasché, John D. Caputo, Robert Bernasconi, David Wood, and Derrida. Sallis, John (2009). The Verge of Philosophy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-73431-6. Salvioli, Marco, Il Tempo e le Parole. Ricoeur e Derrida a "margine" della fenomenologia, ESD, Bologna 2006. Smith, James K. A., Jacques Derrida: Live Theory. Sprinker, Michael, ed. Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, London and New York: Verso, 1999; rpt. 2008. (Includes Derrida's reply, "Marx & Sons.") Stiegler, Bernard, "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.), Jacques Derrida and the Humanities (ISBN 0-521-62565-3). Wood, David (ed.), Derrida: A Critical Reader, Wiley-Blackwell, 1992. Zlomislic, Marko, Jacques Derrida's Aporetic Ethics, Lexington Books, 2004. == External links == Leonard Lawlor. Entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Gerry Coulter. Passings: Taking Derrida Seriously. Volume 2, Number 1, January 2005 John Rawlings. Jacques Derrida Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts Jean-Michel Rabaté. Jacques Derrida at the Wayback Machine (archived 3 May 2003) Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory. Eddie Yeghiayan. Books and contributions to books at the Library of Congress Web Archives (archived 15 November 2001) (up to 2001), Bibliography and translations list Guide to the Jacques Derrida Papers. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Guide to the Saffa Fathy Video Recordings of Jacques Derrida Lectures. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Guide to the Jacques Derrida Listserv Collection. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Mario Perniola, Remembering Derrida, in "SubStance" (University of California), 2005, n.1, issue 106. Rick Roderick, Derrida and the Ends of Man, in "The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the 20th Century (1993)" (University of Texas, Austin).

Alvin Plantinga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Plantinga

Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic. From 1963 to 1982, Plantinga taught at Calvin University before accepting an appointment as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He later returned to Calvin University to become the inaugural holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy.A prominent Christian philosopher, Plantinga served as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986. He has delivered the Gifford Lectures twice and was described by Time magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God". In 2014, Plantinga was the 30th most-cited contemporary author in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2017.Some of Plantinga's most influential works include God and Other Minds (1967), The Nature of Necessity (1974), and a trilogy of books on epistemology, culminating in Warranted Christian Belief (2000) that was simplified in Knowledge and Christian Belief (2015). == Biography == === Family === Plantinga was born on November 15, 1932, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Cornelius A. Plantinga (1908–1994) and Lettie G. Bossenbroek (1908–2007). Plantinga's father was a first-generation immigrant, born in the Netherlands. His family is from the Dutch province of Friesland; they lived on a relatively low income until he secured a teaching job in Michigan in 1941.Plantinga's father earned a PhD in philosophy from Duke University and a master's degree in psychology, and taught several academic subjects at different colleges over the years.Plantinga married Kathleen De Boer in 1955. They have four children: Carl, Jane, Harry, and Ann. Both of his sons are professors at Calvin University, Carl in film studies and Harry in computer science. Harry is also the director of the college's Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Plantinga's older daughter, Jane Plantinga Pauw, is a pastor at Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Seattle, Washington, and his younger daughter, Ann Kapteyn, has worked for Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International. One of Plantinga's brothers, Cornelius "Neal" Plantinga Jr., is a theologian and the former president of Calvin Theological Seminary. Another of his brothers, Leon, is an emeritus professor of musicology at Yale University. His brother Terrell worked for CBS News. === Education === After Plantinga completed 11th grade, his father urged him to skip his last year of high school and immediately enroll in college. Plantinga reluctantly followed his father's advice and in 1949, a few months before his 17th birthday, he enrolled in Jamestown College, in Jamestown, North Dakota. During that same year, his father accepted a teaching job at Calvin University, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In January 1950, Plantinga moved to Grand Rapids with his family and enrolled in Calvin University. During his first semester at Calvin, Plantinga was awarded a scholarship to attend Harvard University.Beginning in the fall of 1950, Plantinga spent two semesters at Harvard. In 1951, during Harvard's spring recess, Plantinga attended a few philosophy classes at Calvin University, and was so impressed with Calvin philosophy professor William Harry Jellema that he returned in 1951 to study philosophy under him. In 1954, Plantinga began his graduate studies at the University of Michigan where he studied under William Alston, William Frankena, and Richard Cartwright, among others. A year later, in 1955, he transferred to Yale University where he received his PhD in 1958. === Teaching career === Plantinga began his career as an instructor in the philosophy department at Yale in 1957, and then in 1958, he became a professor of philosophy at Wayne State University during its heyday as a major center for analytic philosophy. In 1963, he accepted a teaching job at Calvin University, where he replaced the retiring Jellema. He then spent the next 19 years at Calvin before moving to the University of Notre Dame in 1982. He retired from the University of Notre Dame in 2010 and returned to Calvin University, where he serves as the first holder of the William Harry Jellema Chair in Philosophy. He has trained many prominent philosophers working in metaphysics and epistemology including Michael Bergmann at Purdue and Michael Rea at Notre Dame, and Trenton Merricks working at University of Virginia. === Awards and honors === Plantinga served as president of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division, from 1981 to 1982. and as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986.He has honorary degrees from Glasgow University (1982), Calvin University (1986), North Park College (1994), the Free University of Amsterdam (1995), Brigham Young University (1996), and Valparaiso University (1999). He was a Guggenheim Fellow, 1971–72, and elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975.In 2006, the University of Notre Dame's Center for Philosophy of Religion renamed its Distinguished Scholar Fellowship as the Alvin Plantinga Fellowship. The fellowship includes an annual lecture by the current Plantinga Fellow.In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh's Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science co-awarded Plantinga the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy, which he received with a talk titled, "Religion and Science: Where the Conflict Really Lies". In 2017, Baylor University's Center for Christian Philosophy inaugurated the Alvin Plantinga Award for Excellence in Christian Philosophy. Awardees deliver a lecture at Baylor University and their name is put on a plaque with Plantinga's image in the Institute for Studies in Religion. He was named the first fellow of the center as well.He was awarded the 2017 Templeton Prize. == Philosophical views == Plantinga has argued that some people can know that God exists as a basic belief, requiring no argument. He developed this argument in two different fashions: firstly, in God and Other Minds (1967), by drawing an equivalence between the teleological argument and the common sense view that people have of other minds existing by analogy with their own minds. Plantinga has also developed a more comprehensive epistemological account of the nature of warrant which allows for the existence of God as a basic belief.Plantinga has also argued that there is no logical inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly good God. === Problem of evil === Plantinga proposed a "free-will defense" in a volume edited by Max Black in 1965, which attempts to refute the logical problem of evil, the argument that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God. Plantinga's argument (in a truncated form) states that "It is possible that God, even being omnipotent, could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. Furthermore, it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."However, the argument's handling of natural evil has been disputed. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the argument also "conflicts with important theistic doctrines" such as the notion of a heaven where free saved souls reside without doing evil, and the idea that God has free will yet is wholly good. Critics thus maintain that, if we take such doctrines to be (as Christians usually have), God could have created free creatures that always do right, contra Plantinga's claim. J. L. Mackie saw Plantinga's free-will defense as incoherent.Plantinga's well-received book God, Freedom and Evil, written in 1974, gave his response to what he saw as the incomplete and uncritical view of theism's criticism of theodicy. Plantinga's contribution stated that when the issue of a comprehensive doctrine of freedom is added to the discussion of the goodness of God and the omnipotence of God then it is not possible to exclude the presence of evil in the world after introducing freedom into the discussion. Plantinga's own summary occurs in his discussion titled "Could God Have Created a World Containing Moral Good but No Moral Evil", where he states his conclusion that, "... the price for creating a world in which they produce moral good is creating one in which they also produce moral evil." === Reformed epistemology === Plantinga's contributions to epistemology include an argument which he dubs "Reformed epistemology". According to Reformed epistemology, belief in God can be rational and justified even without arguments or evidence for the existence of God. More specifically, Plantinga argues that belief in God is properly basic, and due to a religious externalist epistemology, he claims that it could be justified independently of evidence. His externalist epistemology, called "proper functionalism", is a form of epistemological reliabilism. Plantinga discusses his view of Reformed epistemology and proper functionalism in a three-volume series. In the first book of the trilogy, Warrant: The Current Debate, Plantinga introduces, analyzes, and criticizes 20th-century developments in analytic epistemology, particularly the works of Chisholm, BonJour, Alston, Goldman, and others. In the book, Plantinga argues specifically that the theories of what he calls "warrant"—what many others have called justification (Plantinga draws out a difference: justification is a property of a person holding a belief while warrant is a property of a belief)—put forth by these epistemologists have systematically failed to capture in full what is required for knowledge.In the second book, Warrant and Proper Function, he introduces the notion of warrant as an alternative to justification and discusses topics like self-knowledge, memories, perception, and probability. Plantinga's "proper function" account argues that as a necessary condition of having warrant, one's "belief-forming and belief-maintaining apparatus of powers" are functioning properly—"working the way it ought to work". Plantinga explains his argument for proper function with reference to a "design plan", as well as an environment in which one's cognitive equipment is optimal for use. Plantinga asserts that the design plan does not require a designer: "it is perhaps possible that evolution (undirected by God or anyone else) has somehow furnished us with our design plans", but the paradigm case of a design plan is like a technological product designed by a human being (like a radio or a wheel). Ultimately, Plantinga argues that epistemological naturalism- i.e. epistemology that holds that warrant is dependent on natural faculties—is best supported by supernaturalist metaphysics—in this case, the belief in a creator God or designer who has laid out a design plan that includes cognitive faculties conducive to attaining knowledge.According to Plantinga, a belief, B, is warranted if: (1) the cognitive faculties involved in the production of B are functioning properly…; (2) your cognitive environment is sufficiently similar to the one for which your cognitive faculties are designed; (3) … the design plan governing the production of the belief in question involves, as purpose or function, the production of true beliefs…; and (4) the design plan is a good one: that is, there is a high statistical or objective probability that a belief produced in accordance with the relevant segment of the design plan in that sort of environment is true. Plantinga seeks to defend this view of proper function against alternative views of proper function proposed by other philosophers which he groups together as "naturalistic", including the "functional generalization" view of John Pollock, the evolutionary/etiological account provided by Ruth Millikan, and a dispositional view held by John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter. Plantinga also discusses his evolutionary argument against naturalism in the later chapters of Warrant and Proper Function.In 2000, the third book of the trilogy, Warranted Christian Belief, was published. In this volume, Plantinga's warrant theory is the basis for his theological end: providing a philosophical basis for Christian belief, an argument for why Christian theistic belief can enjoy warrant. In the book, he develops two models for such beliefs, the "A/C" (Aquinas/Calvin) model, and the "Extended A/C" model. The former attempts to show that a belief in God can be justified, warranted and rational, while the Extended model tries to show that specifically Christian theological beliefs including the Trinity, the Incarnation, the resurrection of Christ, the atonement, salvation etc. Under this model, Christians are justified in their beliefs because of the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing those beliefs about in the believer. James Beilby has argued that the purpose of Plantinga's Warrant trilogy, and specifically of his Warranted Christian Belief, is firstly to make a form of argument against religion impossible—namely, the argument that whether or not Christianity is true, it is irrational—so "the skeptic would have to shoulder the formidable task of demonstrating the falsity of Christian belief" rather than simply dismiss it as irrational. In addition, Plantinga is attempting to provide a philosophical explanation of how Christians should think about their own Christian belief. === Modal ontological argument === Plantinga has expressed a modal logic version of the ontological argument in which he uses modal logic to develop, in a more rigorous and formal way, Norman Malcolm's and Charles Hartshorne's modal ontological arguments. Plantinga criticized Malcolm's and Hartshorne's arguments, and offered an alternative. He argued that, if Malcolm does prove the necessary existence of the greatest possible being, it follows that there is a being which exists in all worlds whose greatness in some worlds is not surpassed. It does not, he argued, demonstrate that such a being has unsurpassed greatness in this world.In an attempt to resolve this problem, Plantinga differentiated between "greatness" and "excellence". A being's excellence in a particular world depends only on its properties in that world; a being's greatness depends on its properties in all worlds. Therefore, the greatest possible being must have maximal excellence in every possible world. Plantinga then restated Malcolm's argument, using the concept of "maximal greatness". He argued that it is possible for a being with maximal greatness to exist, so a being with maximal greatness exists in a possible world. If this is the case, then a being with maximal greatness exists in every world, and therefore in this world.The conclusion relies on a form of modal axiom S5, which states that if something is possibly true, then its possibility is necessary (it is possibly true in all worlds). Plantinga's version of S5 suggests that "To say that p is possibly necessarily true is to say that, with regard to one world, it is true at all worlds; but in that case it is true at all worlds, and so it is simply necessary." A version of his argument is as follows: A being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world. It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise) Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being exists. Therefore, (by axiom S5) it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists. Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.Plantinga argued that, although the first premise is not rationally established, it is not contrary to reason. Michael Martin argued that, if certain components of perfection are contradictory, such as omnipotence and omniscience, then the first premise is contrary to reason. Martin also proposed parodies of the argument, suggesting that the existence of anything can be demonstrated with Plantinga's argument, provided it is defined as perfect or special in every possible world.Another Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig, characterizes Plantinga's argument in a slightly different way: It is possible that a maximally great being exists. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.According to Craig, premises (2)–(5) are relatively uncontroversial among philosophers, but "the epistemic entertainability of premise (1) (or its denial) does not guarantee its metaphysical possibility." Furthermore, Richard M. Gale argued that premise three, the "possibility premise", begs the question. He stated that one only has the epistemic right to accept the premise if one understands the nested modal operators, and that if one understands them within the system S5—without which the argument fails—then one understands that "possibly necessarily" is in essence the same as "necessarily". Thus the premise begs the question because the conclusion is embedded within it. On S5 systems in general, James Garson writes that "the words 'necessarily' and 'possibly', have many different uses. So the acceptability of axioms for modal logic depends on which of these uses we have in mind." === Evolutionary argument against naturalism === In Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, he argues that if evolution is true, it undermines naturalism. His basic argument is that if evolution and naturalism are both true, human cognitive faculties evolved to produce beliefs that have survival value (maximizing one's success at the four Fs: "feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing"), not necessarily to produce beliefs that are true. Thus, since human cognitive faculties are tuned to survival rather than truth in the naturalism-evolution model, there is reason to doubt the veracity of the products of those same faculties, including naturalism and evolution themselves. On the other hand, if God created man "in his image" by way of an evolutionary process (or any other means), then Plantinga argues our faculties would probably be reliable. The argument does not assume any necessary correlation (or uncorrelation) between true beliefs and survival. Making the contrary assumption—that there is, in fact, a relatively strong correlation between truth and survival—if human belief-forming apparatus evolved giving a survival advantage, then it ought to yield truth since true beliefs confer a survival advantage. Plantinga counters that, while there may be overlap between true beliefs and beliefs that contribute to survival, the two kinds of beliefs are not the same, and he gives the following example with a man named Paul: Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour. The argument has received favorable notice from Thomas Nagel and William Lane Craig, but has also been criticized as seriously flawed, for example, by Elliott Sober. === View on naturalism and evolution === Even though Alvin Plantinga believes that God could have used Darwinian processes to create the world, he stands firm against philosophical naturalism. He said in an interview on the relationship between science and religion that: Religion and science share more common ground than you might think, though science can't prove, it presupposes that there has been a past for example, science does not cover the whole of the knowledge enterprise. Plantinga participated of groups that support the Intelligent Design Movement, and was a member of the 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' that supported Philip E. Johnson's 1991 book Darwin on Trial, he also provided a back-cover endorsement of Johnson's book: "Shows how Darwinian evolution has become an idol."He was a Fellow of the (now defunct) pro-intelligent design International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, and has presented at a number of intelligent design conferences. In a March 2010 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, philosopher of science Michael Ruse labeled Plantinga as an "open enthusiast of intelligent design". In a letter to the editor, Plantinga made the following response: Like any Christian (and indeed any theist), I believe that the world has been created by God, and hence "intelligently designed". The hallmark of intelligent design, however, is the claim that this can be shown scientifically; I'm dubious about that. ...As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution. But the scientific theory of evolution, sensibly enough, says nothing one way or the other about divine guidance. It doesn't say that evolution is divinely guided; it also doesn't say that it isn't. Like almost any theist, I reject unguided evolution; but the contemporary scientific theory of evolution just as such—apart from philosophical or theological add-ons—doesn't say that evolution is unguided. Like science in general, it makes no pronouncements on the existence or activity of God. The attitude that he proposes and elaborates upon in Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism is that there is no tension between religion and science, that the two go hand in hand, and that the actual conflict lies between naturalism and science. == Selected works by Plantinga == God and Other Minds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1967. rev. ed., 1990. ISBN 0-8014-9735-3 The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1974. ISBN 0-19-824404-5 God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1974. ISBN 0-04-100040-4 Does God Have A Nature? Wisconsin: Marquette University Press. 1980. ISBN 0-87462-145-3 Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (ed. with Nicholas Wolterstorff). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1983. ISBN 0-268-00964-3 Warrant: The Current Debate. New York: Oxford University Press. 1993. ISBN 0-19-507861-6 Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1993. ISBN 0-19-507863-2 Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. ISBN 0-19-513192-4 online Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality. Matthew Davidson (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. ISBN 0-19-510376-9 Knowledge of God (with Michael Tooley). Oxford: Blackwell. 2008. ISBN 0-631-19364-2 Science and Religion (with Daniel Dennett). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010 ISBN 0-19-973842-4 Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011. ISBN 0-19-981209-8 Knowledge and Christian Belief. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 2015. ISBN 0802872042 == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers == Notes == == References == === Footnotes === === Bibliography === == Further reading == == External links == Alvin Plantinga's faculty page at the University of Notre Dame Plantinga's Curriculum Vitae Virtual Library of Christian Philosophy a collection of some of Plantinga's papers Papers by Plantinga Extensive collection of online papers. Interviews from the PBS program Closer to Truth "The Dawkins Confusion", Plantinga's review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion from Books and Culture magazine Alvin Plantinga's spiritual autobiography from Philosophers Who Believe. Clark, Kelly James (InterVarsity Press,1993) Warrant: The Current Debate Plantinga's Gifford Lecture, and volume 1 of his Warrant trilogy. Warrant and Proper Function Plantinga's Gifford Lecture, and volume 2 of his Warrant trilogy. Warranted Christian Belief, full electronic text of volume 3 of his Warrant trilogy. Daniel C. Dennett and Alvin Plantinga, Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? (Oxford University Press, 2011) "Proper Functionalism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Jerry Fodor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Fodor

Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, and he is recognized as having had "an enormous influence on virtually every portion of the philosophy of mind literature since 1960." At the time of his death in 2017, he held the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Rutgers University, and had taught previously at the City University of New York Graduate Center and MIT. == Early life and education == Jerry Fodor was born in New York City on April 22, 1935, and was of Jewish descent. He received his A.B. degree (summa cum laude) from Columbia University in 1956, where he wrote a senior thesis on Søren Kierkegaard and studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, and a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1960, under the direction of Hilary Putnam. == Academic career == From 1959 to 1986 Fodor was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 1986 to 1988 he was a full professor at the City University of New York (CUNY). From 1988 until his retirement in 2016 he was State of New Jersey Professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he was emeritus. Besides his interest in philosophy, Fodor passionately followed opera and regularly wrote popular columns for the London Review of Books on that and other topics. == Philosophical work == Fodor argued that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintained that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Furthermore, this language of thought itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adhered to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought. For Fodor, significant parts of the mind, such as perceptual and linguistic processes, are structured in terms of modules, or "organs", which he defines by their causal and functional roles. These modules are relatively independent of each other and of the "central processing" part of the mind, which has a more global and less "domain specific" character. Fodor suggests that the character of these modules permits the possibility of causal relations with external objects. This, in turn, makes it possible for mental states to have contents that are about things in the world. The central processing part, on the other hand, takes care of the logical relations between the various contents and inputs and outputs.: 73–75 Although Fodor originally rejected the idea that mental states must have a causal, externally determined aspect, in his later years he devoted much of his writing and study to the philosophy of language because of this problem of the meaning and reference of mental contents. His contributions in this area include the so-called asymmetric causal theory of reference and his many arguments against semantic holism. Fodor strongly opposed reductive accounts of the mind. He argued that mental states are multiple realizable and that there is a hierarchy of explanatory levels in science such that the generalizations and laws of a higher-level theory of psychology or linguistics, for example, cannot be captured by the low-level explanations of the behavior of neurons and synapses. He also emerged as a prominent critic of what he characterized as the ill-grounded Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theories of natural selection. === Fodor and the nature of mental states === In his article "Propositional Attitudes" (1978), Fodor introduced the idea that mental states are relations between individuals and mental representations. Despite the changes in many of his positions over the years, the idea that intentional attitudes are relational has remained unchanged from its original formulation up to the present time.In that article, he attempted to show how mental representations, specifically sentences in the language of thought, are necessary to explain this relational nature of mental states. Fodor considers two alternative hypotheses. The first completely denies the relational character of mental states and the second considers mental states as two-place relations. The latter position can be further subdivided into the Carnapian view that such relations are between individuals and sentences of natural languages and the Fregean view that they are between individuals and the propositions expressed by such sentences. Fodor's own position, instead, is that to properly account for the nature of intentional attitudes, it is necessary to employ a three-place relation between individuals, representations and propositional contents.Considering mental states as three-place relations in this way, representative realism makes it possible to hold together all of the elements necessary to the solution of this problem. Further, mental representations are not only the objects of beliefs and desires, but are also the domain over which mental processes operate. They can be considered the ideal link between the syntactic notion of mental content and the computational notion of functional architecture. These notions are, according to Fodor, our best explanation of mental processes. === The functional architecture of the mind === Following in the path paved by linguist Noam Chomsky, Fodor developed a strong commitment to the idea of psychological nativism. Nativism postulates the innateness of many cognitive functions and concepts. For Fodor, this position emerges naturally out of his criticism of behaviourism and associationism. These criticisms also led him to the formulation of his hypothesis of the modularity of the mind. Historically, questions about mental architecture have been divided into two contrasting theories about the nature of the faculties. The first can be described as a "horizontal" view because it sees mental processes as interactions between faculties which are not domain specific. For example, a judgment remains a judgment whether it is judgment about a perceptual experience or a judgment about the understanding of language. The second can be described as a "vertical" view because it claims that our mental faculties are domain specific, genetically determined, associated with distinct neurological structures, and so on.The vertical vision can be traced back to the 19th century movement called phrenology and its founder Franz Joseph Gall. Gall claimed that mental faculties could be associated with specific physical areas of the brain. Hence, someone's level of intelligence, for example, could be literally "read off" from the size of a particular bump on his posterior parietal lobe. This simplistic view of modularity has been disproved over the course of the last century. Fodor revived the idea of modularity, without the notion of precise physical localizability, in the 1980s, and became one of the most vocal proponents of it with the 1983 publication of his monograph The Modularity of Mind, where he points to Gall through Bernard Hollander, which is the author cited in the references instead, more specifically Hollander's In search of the soul. Two properties of modularity in particular, informational encapsulation and domain specificity, make it possible to tie together questions of functional architecture with those of mental content. The ability to elaborate information independently from the background beliefs of individuals that these two properties allow Fodor to give an atomistic and causal account of the notion of mental content. The main idea, in other words, is that the properties of the contents of mental states can depend, rather than exclusively on the internal relations of the system of which they are a part, also on their causal relations with the external world.Fodor's notions of mental modularity, informational encapsulation and domain specificity were taken up and expanded, much to Fodor's chagrin, by cognitive scientists such as Zenon Pylyshyn and evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Henry Plotkin, among many others. But Fodor complained that Pinker, Plotkin and other members of what he sarcastically called "the New Synthesis" have taken modularity and similar ideas way too far. He insisted that the mind is not "massively modular" and that, contrary to what these researchers would have us believe, the mind is still a very long way from having been explained by the computational, or any other, model. === Intentional realism === In A Theory of Content and Other Essays (1990), Fodor takes up another of his central notions: the question of the reality of mental representations. Fodor needs to justify representational realism to justify the idea that the contents of mental states are expressed in symbolic structures such as those of the LOT. ==== Fodor's criticism of Dennett ==== Fodor starts with some criticisms of so-called standard realism. This view is characterized, according to Fodor, by two distinct assertions. One of these regards the internal structure of mental states and asserts that such states are non-relational. The other concerns the semantic theory of mental content and asserts that there is an isomorphism between the causal roles of such contents and the inferential web of beliefs. Among modern philosophers of mind, the majority view seems to be that the first of these two assertions is false, but that the second is true. Fodor departs from this view in accepting the truth of the first thesis but rejecting strongly the truth of the second. In particular, Fodor criticizes the instrumentalism of Daniel Dennett. Dennett maintains that it is possible to be realist with regard to intentional states without having to commit oneself to the reality of mental representations. Now, according to Fodor, if one remains at this level of analysis, then there is no possibility of explaining why the intentional strategy works:There is ... a standard objection to instrumentalism ...: it is difficult to explain why the psychology of beliefs/desires works so well, if the psychology of beliefs/desires is, in fact, false.... As Putnam, Boyd and others have emphasized, from the predictive successes of a theory to the truth of that theory there is surely a presumed inference; and this is even more likely when ... we are dealing with the only theory in play which is predictively crowned with success. It is not obvious ... why such a presumption should not militate in favour of a realist conception ... of the interpretations of beliefs/desires. === Productivity, systematicity and thought === Fodor also has positive arguments in favour of the reality of mental representations in terms of the LOT. He maintains that if language is the expression of thoughts and language is systematic, then thoughts must also be systematic. Fodor draws on the work of Noam Chomsky to both model his theory of the mind and to refute alternative architectures such as connectionism. Systematicity in natural languages was explained by Chomsky in terms of two more basic concepts: productivity and compositionality. Productivity refers to a representational system's unbounded ability to generate new representations from a given set of symbols. "John", "loves", and "Mary" allow for the construction of the sentences "John loves Mary" and "Mary loves John". Fodor's language of thought theorizes that representations are decomposable into constituent parts, and these decomposed representations are built into new strings.More important than productivity is systematicity since it does not rely on questionable idealizations about human cognition. The argument states that a cognizer is able to understand some sentence in virtue of understanding another. For example, no one who understands "John loves Mary" is unable to understand "Mary loves John", and no one who understands "P and Q" is unable to understand "P". Systematicity itself is rarely challenged as a property of natural languages and logics, but some challenge that thought is systematic in the same way languages are. Still others from the connectionist tradition have tried to build non-classical networks that can account for the apparent systematicity of language.The fact that systematicity and productivity depend on the compositional structure of language means that language has a combinatorial semantics. If thought also has such a combinatorial semantics, then there must be a language of thought.The second argument that Fodor provides in favour of representational realism involves the processes of thought. This argument touches on the relation between the representational theory of mind and models of its architecture. If the sentences of Mentalese require unique processes of elaboration then they require a computational mechanism of a certain type. The syntactic notion of mental representations goes hand in hand with the idea that mental processes are calculations which act only on the form of the symbols which they elaborate. And this is the computational theory of the mind. Consequently, the defence of a model of architecture based on classic artificial intelligence passes inevitably through a defence of the reality of mental representations.For Fodor, this formal notion of thought processes also has the advantage of highlighting the parallels between the causal role of symbols and the contents which they express. In his view, syntax plays the role of mediation between the causal role of the symbols and their contents. The semantic relations between symbols can be "imitated" by their syntactic relations. The inferential relations which connect the contents of two symbols can be imitated by the formal syntax rules which regulate the derivation of one symbol from another. === The nature of content === From the beginning of the 1980s, Fodor adhered to a causal notion of mental content and of meaning. This idea of content contrasts sharply with the inferential role semantics to which he subscribed earlier in his career. As of 2010 Fodor criticizes inferential role semantics (IRS) because its commitment to an extreme form of holism excludes the possibility of a true naturalization of the mental. But naturalization must include an explanation of content in atomistic and causal terms. ==== Anti-holism ==== Fodor has made many and varied criticisms of holism. He identifies the central problem with all the different notions of holism as the idea that the determining factor in semantic evaluation is the notion of an "epistemic bond". Briefly, P is an epistemic bond of Q if the meaning of P is considered by someone to be relevant for the determination of the meaning of Q. Meaning holism strongly depends on this notion. The identity of the content of a mental state, under holism, can only be determined by the totality of its epistemic bonds. And this makes the realism of mental states an impossibility:If people differ in an absolutely general way in their estimations of epistemic relevance, and if we follow the holism of meaning and individuate intentional states by way of the totality of their epistemic bonds, the consequence will be that two people (or, for that matter, two temporal sections of the same person) will never be in the same intentional state. Therefore, two people can never be subsumed under the same intentional generalizations. And, therefore, intentional generalization can never be successful. And, therefore again, there is no hope for an intentional psychology. ==== The asymmetric causal theory ==== Having criticized the idea that semantic evaluation concerns only the internal relations between the units of a symbolic system, Fodor can adopt an externalist position with respect to mental content and meaning. For Fodor, in recent years, the problem of naturalization of the mental is tied to the possibility of giving "the sufficient conditions for which a piece of the world is relative to (expresses, represents, is true of) another piece" in non-intentional and non-semantic terms. If this goal is to be achieved within a representational theory of the mind, then the challenge is to devise a causal theory which can establish the interpretation of the primitive non-logical symbols of the LOT. Fodor's initial proposal is that what determines that the symbol for "water" in Mentalese expresses the property H2O is that the occurrences of that symbol are in certain causal relations with water. The intuitive version of this causal theory is what Fodor calls the "Crude Causal Theory". According to this theory, the occurrences of symbols express the properties which are the causes of their occurrence. The term "horse", for example, says of a horse that it is a horse. In order to do this, it is necessary and sufficient that certain properties of an occurrence of the symbol "horse" be in a law-like relation with certain properties which determine that something is an occurrence of horse.The main problem with this theory is that of erroneous representations. There are two unavoidable problems with the idea that "a symbol expresses a property if it is ... necessary that all and only the presences of such a property cause the occurrences". The first is that not all horses cause occurrences of horse. The second is that not only horses cause occurrences of horse. Sometimes the A(horses) are caused by A (horses), but at other times—when, for example, because of the distance or conditions of low visibility, one has confused a cow for a horse—the A (horses) are caused by B (cows). In this case the symbol A doesn't express just the property A, but the disjunction of properties A or B. The crude causal theory is therefore incapable of distinguishing the case in which the content of a symbol is disjunctive from the case in which it isn't. This gives rise to what Fodor calls the "problem of disjunction". Fodor responds to this problem with what he defines as "a slightly less crude causal theory". According to this approach, it is necessary to break the symmetry at the base of the crude causal theory. Fodor must find some criterion for distinguishing the occurrences of A caused by As (true) from those caused by Bs (false). The point of departure, according to Fodor, is that while the false cases are ontologically dependent on the true cases, the reverse is not true. There is an asymmetry of dependence, in other words, between the true contents (A= A) and the false ones (A = A or B). The first can subsist independently of the second, but the second can occur only because of the existence of the first:From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse". Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"... === Functionalism === During the 1960s, various philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and Fodor tried to resolve the puzzle of developing a way to preserve the explanatory efficacy of mental causation and folk psychology while adhering to a materialist vision of the world which did not violate the "generality of physics". Their proposal was, first of all, to reject the then-dominant theories in philosophy of mind: behaviorism and the type identity theory. The problem with logical behaviorism was that it failed to account for causation between mental states and such causation seems to be essential to psychological explanation, especially if one considers that behavior is not an effect of a single mental event/cause but is rather the effect of a chain of mental events/causes. The type-identity theory, on the other hand, failed to explain the fact that radically different physical systems can find themselves in the identical mental state. Besides being deeply anthropocentric (why should humans be the only thinking organisms in the universe?), the identity-type theory also failed to deal with accumulating evidence in the neurosciences that every single human brain is different from all the others. Hence, the impossibility of referring to common mental states in different physical systems manifests itself not only between different species but also between organisms of the same species. One can solve these problems, according to Fodor, with functionalism, a hypothesis which was designed to overcome the failings of both dualism and reductionism. What is important is the function of a mental state regardless of the physical substrate which implements it. The foundation for this view lies in the principle of the multiple realizability of the mental. Under this view, for example, I and a computer can both instantiate ("realize") the same functional state though we are made of completely different material stuff (see graphic at right). On this basis functionalism can be classified as a form of token materialism. === Evolution === Fodor and the biolinguist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini co-authored the book What Darwin Got Wrong (2010), in which they describe neo-Darwinists as "distressingly uncritical" and say of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that "it overestimates the contribution the environment makes in shaping the phenotype of a species and correspondingly underestimates the effects of endogenous variables". Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne describes this book as "a profoundly misguided critique of natural selection" and "as biologically uninformed as it is strident". Moral philosopher and anti-scientism author Mary Midgley praises What Darwin Got Wrong as "an overdue and valuable onslaught on neo-Darwinist simplicities". The book also received a positive review from mathematician and intelligent-design theorist William Dembski. == Awards and honors == Fodor was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received numerous awards and honors: New York State Regent's Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (Princeton University), Chancellor Greene Fellow (Princeton University), Fulbright Fellowship (University of Oxford), Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He won the first Jean Nicod Prize for philosophy of mind and cognitive philosophy in 1993. His lecture series for the Prize, later published as a book by MIT Press in 1995, was titled The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics. In 1996–1997, Fodor delivered the prestigious John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford, titled Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, which went on to become his 1998 Oxford University Press book of the same name. He has also delivered the Patrick Romanell Lecture on Philosophical Naturalism (2004) and the Royce Lecture on Philosophy of Mind (2002) to the American Philosophical Association, of whose Eastern Division he has served as Vice President (2004–2005) and President (2005–2006). In 2005, he won the Mind & Brain Prize. == Criticism == A wide variety of philosophers of diverse orientations have challenged many of Fodor's ideas. For example, the language of thought hypothesis has been accused of either falling prey to an infinite regress or of being superfluous. Specifically, Simon Blackburn suggested in an article in 1984 that since Fodor explains the learning of natural languages as a process of formation and confirmation of hypotheses in the LOT, this leaves him open to the question of why the LOT itself should not be considered as just such a language which requires yet another and more fundamental representational substrate in which to form and confirm hypotheses so that the LOT itself can be learned. If natural language learning requires some representational substrate (the LOT) in order for it to be learned, why shouldn't the same be said for the LOT itself and then for the representational substrate of this representational substrate and so on, ad infinitum? On the other hand, if such a representational substrate is not required for the LOT, then why should it be required for the learning of natural languages? In this case, the LOT would be superfluous. Fodor, in response, argues that the LOT is unique in that it does not have to be learned via an antecedent language because it is innate. In 1981, Daniel Dennett had formulated another argument against the LOT. Dennett suggested that it would seem, on the basis of the evidence of our behavior toward computers but also with regard to some of our own unconscious behavior, that explicit representation is not necessary for the explanation of propositional attitudes. During a game of chess with a computer program, we often attribute such attitudes to the computer, saying such things as "It thinks that the queen should be moved to the left." We attribute propositional attitudes to the computer and this helps us to explain and predict its behavior in various contexts. Yet no one would suggest that the computer is actually thinking or believing somewhere inside its circuits the equivalent of the propositional attitude "I believe I can kick this guy's butt" in Mentalese. The same is obviously true, suggests Dennett, of many of our everyday automatic behaviors such as "desiring to breathe clear air" in a stuffy environment.Some linguists and philosophers of language have criticized Fodor's self-proclaimed "extreme" concept nativism. Kent Bach, for example, takes Fodor to task for his criticisms of lexical semantics and polysemy. Fodor claims that there is no lexical structure to such verbs as "keep", "get", "make" and "put". He suggests that, alternatively, "keep" simply expresses the concept KEEP (Fodor capitalizes concepts to distinguish them from properties, names or other such entities). If there is a straightforward one-to-one mapping between individual words and concepts, "keep your clothes on", "keep your receipt" and "keep washing your hands" will all share the same concept of KEEP under Fodor's theory. This concept presumably locks on to the unique external property of keeping. But, if this is true, then RETAIN must pick out a different property in RETAIN YOUR RECEIPT, since one can't retain one's clothes on or retain washing one's hands. Fodor's theory also has a problem explaining how the concept FAST contributes, differently, to the contents of FAST CAR, FAST DRIVER, FAST TRACK, and FAST TIME. Whether or not the differing interpretations of "fast" in these sentences are specified in the semantics of English, or are the result of pragmatic inference, is a matter of debate. Fodor's own response to this kind of criticism is expressed bluntly in Concepts: "People sometimes used to say that exist must be ambiguous because look at the difference between 'chairs exist' and 'numbers exist'. A familiar reply goes: the difference between the existence of chairs and the existence of numbers seems, on reflection, strikingly like the difference between numbers and chairs. Since you have the latter to explain the former, you don't also need 'exist' to be polysemic.": 54 Some critics find it difficult to accept Fodor's insistence that a large, perhaps implausible, number of concepts are primitive and undefinable. For example, Fodor considers such concepts as EFFECT, ISLAND, TRAPEZOID, and WEEK to be all primitive, innate and unanalyzable because they all fall into the category of what he calls "lexical concepts" (those for which our language has a single word). Against this view, Bach argues that the concept VIXEN is almost certainly composed out of the concepts FEMALE and FOX, BACHELOR out of SINGLE and MALE, and so on. == Personal life and death == Fodor lived in Manhattan with his wife, the linguist Janet Dean Fodor, and had two children. Fodor died at home on November 29, 2017. == Books == The Structure of Language, with Jerrold Katz (eds.), Prentice Hall, 1964, ISBN 0-13-854703-3. Psychological Explanation, Random House, 1968, ISBN 0-07-021412-3. The Psychology of Language, with T. Bever and M. Garrett, McGraw Hill, 1974, ISBN 0-394-30663-5. The Language of Thought, Harvard University Press, 1975, ISBN 0-674-51030-5. Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science, Harvard Press (UK) and MIT Press (US), 1979, ISBN 0-262-56027-5. The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology, MIT Press, 1983, ISBN 0-262-56025-9. Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, MIT Press, 1987, ISBN 0-262-56052-6. A Theory of Content and Other Essays, MIT Press, 1990, ISBN 0-262-56069-0. Holism: A Shopper's Guide, with Ernie Lepore, Blackwell, 1992, ISBN 0-631-18193-8. Holism: A Consumer Update, with Ernie Lepore (eds.), Grazer Philosophische Studien, Vol 46. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1993, ISBN 90-5183-713-5. The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics, The 1993 Jean Nicod Lectures, MIT Press, 1994, ISBN 0-262-56093-3. Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, The 1996 John Locke Lectures, Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-823636-0. In Critical Condition, MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-56128-X. The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology, MIT Press, 2000, ISBN 0-262-56146-8. The Compositionality Papers, with Ernie Lepore, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-925216-5. Hume Variations, Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-928733-3. LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-19-954877-3. What Darwin Got Wrong, with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ISBN 0-374-28879-8. Minds without meanings: an essay on the contents of concepts, with Zenon W. Pylyshyn, MIT Press, 2014, ISBN 0-262-52981-5. == See also == Computational theory of mind Special sciences == References == == External links == Jerry Fodor's Homepage Jerry Fodor at the London Review of Books "Semantics – An Interview with Jerry Fodor", ReVEL. Vol. 5, n. 8 (March 2007). BloggingHeads dialogue between Jerry Fodor and Elliott Sober meaningful words without sense, & other revolutions Interview by Richard Marshall Guardian obituary Jerry A. Fodor, Philosopher Who Plumbed the Mind’s Depths, Dies at 82 New York Times obituary Jerry A. Fodor (1935—2017) entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Ioanna Kuçuradi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0oanna_Ku%C3%A7uradi

Ioanna Kuçuradi (born October 4, 1936) is a Turkish philosopher from Istanbul. She is currently the president of Philosophical Society of Turkey and a full-time academic of Maltepe University. == Biography == Kuçuradi was born on October 4, 1936 in Istanbul, Turkey. After finishing Zappeion Greek Gymnasium for Girls in Istanbul in 1954, she studied philosophy at Istanbul University, from where she graduated with a B.A. degree in 1959. She earned a Ph.D. degree at the same university in 1965. Ioanna Kuçuradi worked as an assistant professor at her alma mater and the Atatürk University in Erzurum. She was founder and head of the Department of Philosophy at Hacettepe University. From 1997 to 2005, Kuçuradi was founding director of the Centre for Research and Application of the Philosophy of Human Rights at Hacettepe University. She is also holder of a UNESCO Chair of Philosophy since 1998. Since 2006, Kuçuradi teaches philosophy and acts as director of the Centre for Research and Application of Human Rights at Maltepe University. == Honours == Kuçuradi has received numerous honors, among which: Goethe-Medaille (1996) Doctor honoris causa, University of Crete, Greece (1996) Prize of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (1996) Hacettepe University Prize for Scientific Achievement (Academic years 1994-1995 and 1995–1996) Doctor honoris causa, University Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru (2000) Freedom of the Press 1999 Prize of the Journalists Association of Turkey (2000) Grosses Verdienstkreuz des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Knight Commander of the Order of Merit of Germany (2001) Honourable Mention, UNESCO Human Rights Education Prize (2002) Huésped Ilustra de la Ciudad de La Habana (2002) Mustafa N. Parlar Prize for Scientific Achievement, Parlar Foundation Science Award, Ankara, Turkey (2003) UNESCO Aristotle Medaille (2003) Diyarbakır Medical Association's Prize for Peace, Friendship and Democracy (2004) Council of Secular Humanism's Planetary Humanist Philosopher's Award (2005) Honorary Fellow, The Science Academy Society of Turkey, Istanbul (2015) == References == == External links == Official website of Phılosophıcal Socıety of Turkey

Alain Badiou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou

Alain Badiou (; French: [alɛ̃ badju] (listen) ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou has written about the concepts of being, truth, event and the subject in a way that, he claims, is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force. == Biography == Badiou is the son of the mathematician Raymond Badiou (1905–1996), who was a working member of the Resistance in France during World War II. Alain Badiou was a student at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and then the École Normale Supérieure (1955–1960). In 1960, he wrote his diplôme d'études supérieures (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) on Spinoza for Georges Canguilhem (the topic was "Structures of Demonstration in the First Two Books of Spinoza's Ethics", "Structures démonstratives dans les deux premiers livres de l'Éthique de Spinoza"). He taught at the lycée in Reims from 1963 where he became a close friend of fellow playwright (and philosopher) François Regnault, and published two novels before moving first to the faculty of letters of the University of Reims (the collège littéraire universitaire) and then to the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) in 1969. Badiou was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser, became increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan and became a member of the editorial board of Cahiers pour l'Analyse. By then he "already had a solid grounding in mathematics and logic (along with Lacanian theory)", and his own two contributions to the pages of Cahiers "anticipate many of the distinctive concerns of his later philosophy".The student uprisings of May 1968 reinforced Badiou's commitment to the far Left, and he participated in increasingly militant groups, such as the Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste (UCFml). To quote Badiou himself, the UCFml is "the Maoist organization established in late 1969 by Natacha Michel, Sylvain Lazarus, myself and a fair number of young people". During this time, Badiou joined the faculty of the newly founded University of Paris VIII/Vincennes-Saint Denis which was a bastion of counter-cultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with fellow professors Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard, whose philosophical works he considered unhealthy deviations from the Althusserian program of a scientific Marxism. In the 1980s, as both Althusserian structural Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis went into decline (after Lacan died and Althusser was committed to a psychiatric hospital), Badiou published more technical and abstract philosophical works, such as Théorie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988). Nonetheless, Badiou has never renounced Althusser or Lacan, and sympathetic references to Marxism and psychoanalysis are not uncommon in his more recent works (most notably Petit panthéon portatif / Pocket Pantheon).He took up his current position at the ENS in 1999. He is also associated with a number of other institutions, such as the Collège International de Philosophie. He was a member of "L'Organisation Politique" which, as mentioned above, he founded in 1985 with some comrades from the Maoist UCFml. This organization disbanded in 2007, according to the French Wikipedia article (linked to in the previous sentence). In 2002, he was a co-founder of the Centre International d'Etude de la Philosophie Française Contemporaine, alongside Yves Duroux and his former student Quentin Meillassoux. Badiou has also enjoyed success as a dramatist with plays such as Ahmed le Subtil. In the last decade, an increasing number of Badiou's works have been translated into English, such as Ethics, Deleuze, Manifesto for Philosophy, Metapolitics, and Being and Event. Short pieces by Badiou have likewise appeared in American and English periodicals, such as Lacanian Ink, New Left Review, Radical Philosophy, Cosmos and History and Parrhesia. Unusually for a contemporary European philosopher his work is increasingly being taken up by militants in countries like India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa.In 2014–15, Badiou had the role of Honorary President at The Global Center for Advanced Studies. == Anti-Semitism accusation and response == In 2005, a fierce controversy in Parisian intellectual life erupted after the publication of Badiou's Circonstances 3: Portées du mot 'juif' ("The Uses of the Word 'Jew'"). This book generated a strong response, and the wrangling became a cause célèbre with articles going back and forth in the French newspaper Le Monde and in the cultural journal Les Temps modernes. Linguist and Lacanian philosopher Jean-Claude Milner, a past president of Collège international de philosophie, accused Badiou of anti-Semitism.Badiou forcefully rebutted this charge, declaring that his accusers often conflate a nation-state with religious preference and will label as anti-Semitic anyone who objects to this tendency: "It is wholly intolerable to be accused of anti-Semitism by anyone for the sole reason that, from the fact of the extermination, one does not conclude as to the predicate "Jew" and its religious and communitarian dimension that it receive some singular valorization – a transcendent annunciation! – nor that Israeli exactions, whose colonial nature is patent and banal, be specially tolerated. I propose that nobody any longer accept, publicly or privately, this type of political blackmail."Badiou characterizes the state of Israel as "neither more nor less impure than all states", but objects to "its exclusive identitarian claim to be a Jewish state, and the way it draws incessant privileges from this claim, especially when it comes to trampling underfoot what serves us as international law." For example, he continues, "The Islamic states are certainly no more progressive as models than the various versions of the 'Arab nation' were. Everyone agrees, it seems, on the point that the Taliban do not embody the path of modernity for Afghanistan.” A modern democracy, he writes, must count all its residents as citizens, and "there is no acceptable reason to exempt the state of Israel from that rule. The claim is sometimes made that this state is the only 'democratic' state in the region. But the fact that this state presents itself as a Jewish state is directly contradictory."Badiou is optimistic that ongoing political problems can be resolved by de-emphasizing the communitarian religious dimension: "The signifier 'Palestinian' or 'Arab' should not be glorified any more than is permitted for the signifier 'Jew.' As a result, the legitimate solution to the Middle East conflict is not the dreadful institution of two barbed-wire states. The solution is the creation of a secular and democratic Palestine...which would show that it is perfectly possible to create a place in these lands where, from a political point of view and regardless of the apolitical continuity of customs, there is 'neither Arab nor Jew.' This will undoubtedly demand a regional Mandela." == Key concepts == Badiou makes repeated use of several concepts throughout his philosophy, which he discerns from close readings of the philosophical literature from the classical period. His own method cannot be fully understood if it is not situated within the tradition of French academic philosophy. Badiou's work engages a detailed decrypting of texts, in line with philosophers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Balibar, Bourdieu, Derrida, Bouveresse and Engel, all of whom he studied with at the Ecole Normale Superieure. One of the aims of his thought is to show that his categories of truth are useful for any type of philosophical critique. Therefore, he uses them to interrogate art and history as well as ontology and scientific discovery. Johannes Thumfart argues that Badiou's philosophy can be regarded as a contemporary reinterpretation of Platonism. === Conditions === According to Badiou, philosophy is suspended from four conditions (art, love, politics, and science), each of them fully independent "truth procedures." (For Badiou's notion of truth procedures, see below.) Badiou consistently maintains throughout his work (but most systematically in Manifesto for Philosophy) that philosophy must avoid the temptation to suture itself ('sew itself', that is, to hand over its entire intellectual effort) to any of these independent truth procedures. When philosophy does suture itself to one of its conditions (and Badiou argues that the history of philosophy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is primarily a history of sutures), what results is a philosophical "disaster." Consequently, philosophy is, according to Badiou, a thinking of the compossibility of the several truth procedures, whether this is undertaken through the investigation of the intersections between distinct truth procedures (the intersection of art and love in the novel, for instance), or whether this is undertaken through the more traditionally philosophical work of addressing categories like truth or the subject (concepts that are, as concepts, external to the individual truth procedures, though they are functionally operative in the truth procedures themselves). For Badiou, when philosophy addresses the four truth procedures in a genuinely philosophical manner, rather than through a suturing abandonment of philosophy as such, it speaks of them with a theoretical terminology that marks its philosophical character: "inaesthetics" rather than art; metapolitics rather than politics; ontology rather than science; etc. Truth, for Badiou, is a specifically philosophical category. While philosophy's several conditions are, on their own terms, "truth procedures" (i.e., they produce truths as they are pursued), it is only philosophy that can speak of the several truth procedures as truth procedures. (The lover, for instance, does not think of her love as a question of truth, but simply and rightly as a question of love. Only the philosopher sees in the true lover's love the unfolding of a truth.) Badiou has a very rigorous notion of truth, one that is strongly against the grain of much of contemporary European thought. Badiou at once embraces the traditional modernist notion that truths are genuinely invariant (always and everywhere the case, eternal and unchanging) and the incisively postmodernist notion that truths are constructed through processes. Badiou's theory of truth, exposited throughout his work, accomplishes this strange mixture by uncoupling invariance from self-evidence (such that invariance does not imply self-evidence), as well as by uncoupling constructedness from relativity (such that constructedness does not lead to relativism). The idea, here, is that a truth's invariance makes it genuinely indiscernible: because a truth is everywhere and always the case, it passes unnoticed unless there is a rupture in the laws of being and appearance, during which the truth in question becomes, but only for a passing moment, discernible. Such a rupture is what Badiou calls an event, according to a theory originally worked out in Being and Event and fleshed out in important ways in Logics of Worlds. The individual who chances to witness such an event, if he is faithful to what he has glimpsed, can then introduce the truth by naming it into worldly situations. For Badiou, it is by positioning oneself to the truth of an event that a human animal becomes a subject; subjectivity is not an inherent human trait. According to a process or procedure that subsequently unfolds only if those who subject themselves to the glimpsed truth continue to be faithful in the work of announcing the truth in question, genuine knowledge is produced (knowledge often appears in Badiou's work under the title of the "veridical"). While such knowledge is produced in the process of being faithful to a truth event, for Badiou, knowledge, in the figure of the encyclopedia, always remains fragile, subject to what may yet be produced as faithful subjects of the event produce further knowledge. According to Badiou, truth procedures proceed to infinity, such that faith (fidelity) outstrips knowledge. (Badiou, following both Lacan and Heidegger, distances truth from knowledge.) The dominating ideology of the day, which Badiou terms "democratic materialism," denies the existence of truth and only recognizes "bodies" and "languages." Badiou proposes a turn towards the "materialist dialectic," which recognizes that there are only bodies and languages, except there are also truths. === Inaesthetic === In Handbook of Inaesthetics Badiou both draws on the original Greek meaning and the later Kantian concept of "aesthesis" as "material perception" and coins the phrase "inaesthetic" to refer to a concept of artistic creation that denies "the reflection/object relation" yet, at the same time, in reaction against the idea of mimesis, or poetic reflection of "nature", he affirms that art is "immanent" and "singular". Art is immanent in the sense that its truth is given in its immediacy in a given work of art, and singular in that its truth is found in art and art alone – hence reviving the ancient materialist concept of "aesthesis". His view of the link between philosophy and art is tied into the motif of pedagogy, which he claims functions so as to "arrange the forms of knowledge in a way that some truth may come to pierce a hole in them". He develops these ideas with examples from the prose of Samuel Beckett and the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and Fernando Pessoa (who he argues has developed a body of work that philosophy is currently incapable of incorporating), among others. == Being and Event == The major propositions of Badiou's philosophy all find their basis in Being and Event, in which he continues his attempt (which he began in Théorie du sujet) to reconcile a notion of the subject with ontology, and in particular post-structuralist and constructivist ontologies. A frequent criticism of post-structuralist work is that it prohibits, through its fixation on semiotics and language, any notion of a subject. Badiou's work is, by his own admission, an attempt to break out of contemporary philosophy's fixation upon language, which he sees almost as a straitjacket. This effort leads him, in Being and Event, to combine rigorous mathematical formulae with his readings of poets such as Mallarmé and Hölderlin and religious thinkers such as Pascal. His philosophy draws upon both 'analytical' and 'continental' traditions. In Badiou's own opinion, this combination places him awkwardly relative to his contemporaries, meaning that his work had been only slowly taken up. Being and Event offers an example of this slow uptake, in fact: it was translated into English only in 2005, a full seventeen years after its French publication. As is implied in the title of the book, two elements mark the thesis of Being and Event: the place of ontology, or 'the science of being qua being' (being in itself), and the place of the event – which is seen as a rupture in being – through which the subject finds realization and reconciliation with truth. This situation of being and the rupture which characterizes the event are thought in terms of set theory, and specifically Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice. In short, the event is a truth caused by a hidden "part" or set appearing within existence; this part escapes language and known existence, and thus being itself lacks the terms and resources to fully process the event. === Mathematics as ontology === For Badiou the problem which the Greek tradition of philosophy has faced and never satisfactorily dealt with is that while beings themselves are plural, and thought in terms of multiplicity, being itself is thought to be singular; that is, it is thought in terms of the one. He proposes as the solution to this impasse the following declaration: that the One is not (l'Un n'est pas). This is why Badiou accords set theory (the axioms of which he refers to as the "ideas of the multiple") such stature, and refers to mathematics as the very place of ontology: Only set theory allows one to conceive a 'pure doctrine of the multiple'. Set theory does not operate in terms of definite individual elements in groupings but only functions insofar as what belongs to a set is of the same relation as that set (that is, another set too). What individuates a set, therefore, is not an existential positive proposition, but other multiples whose properties (i.e., structural relations) validate its presentation. The structure of being thus secures the regime of the count-as-one. So if one is to think of a set – for instance, the set of people, or humanity – as counting as one, the multiple elements which belong to that set are secured as one consistent concept (humanity), but only in terms of what does not belong to that set. What is crucial for Badiou is that the structural form of the count-as-one, which makes multiplicities thinkable, implies (somehow or other) that the proper name of being does not belong to an element as such (an original 'one'), but rather the void set (written Ø), the set to which nothing (not even the void set itself) belongs. It may help to understand the concept 'count-as-one' if it is associated with the concept of 'terming': a multiple is not one, but it is referred to with 'multiple': one word. To count a set as one is to mention that set. How the being of terms such as 'multiple' does not contradict the non-being of the one can be understood by considering the multiple nature of terminology: for there to be a term without there also being a system of terminology, within which the difference between terms gives context and meaning to any one term, is impossible. 'Terminology' implies precisely difference between terms (thus multiplicity) as the condition for meaning. The idea of a term without meaning is incoherent, the count-as-one is a structural effect or a situational operation; it is not an event of 'truth'. Multiples which are 'composed' or 'consistent' are count-effects. 'Inconsistent multiplicity' [meaning?] is [somehow or other] 'the presentation of presentation.' Badiou's use of set theory in this manner is not just illustrative or heuristic. Badiou uses the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory to identify the relationship of being to history, Nature, the State, and God. Most significantly this use means that (as with set theory) there is a strict prohibition on self-belonging; a set cannot contain or belong to itself. This results from the axiom of foundation – or the axiom of regularity – which enacts such a prohibition (cf. p. 190 in Being and Event). (This axiom states that every non-empty set A contains an element y that is disjoint from A.) Badiou's philosophy draws two major implications from this prohibition. Firstly, it secures the inexistence of the 'one': there cannot be a grand overarching set, and thus it is fallacious to conceive of a grand cosmos, a whole Nature, or a Being of God. Badiou is therefore – against Georg Cantor, from whom he draws heavily – staunchly atheist. However, secondly, this prohibition prompts him to introduce the event. Because, according to Badiou, the axiom of foundation 'founds' all sets in the void, it ties all being to the historico-social situation of the multiplicities of de-centred sets – thereby effacing the positivity of subjective action, or an entirely 'new' occurrence. And whilst this is acceptable ontologically, it is unacceptable, Badiou holds, philosophically. Set theory mathematics has consequently 'pragmatically abandoned' an area which philosophy cannot. And so, Badiou argues, there is therefore only one possibility remaining: that ontology can say nothing about the event. Several critics have questioned Badiou's use of mathematics. Mathematician Alan Sokal and physicist Jean Bricmont write that Badiou proposes, with seemingly "utter seriousness," a blending of psychoanalysis, politics and set theory that they contend is preposterous. Similarly, philosopher Roger Scruton has questioned Badiou's grasp of the foundation of mathematics, writing in 2012: There is no evidence that I can find in Being and Event that the author really understands what he is talking about when he invokes (as he constantly does) Georg Cantor's theory of transfinite cardinals, the axioms of set theory, Gödel's incompleteness proof or Paul Cohen's proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis. When these things appear in Badiou's texts it is always allusively, with fragments of symbolism detached from the context that endows them with sense, and often with free variables and bound variables colliding randomly. No proof is clearly stated or examined, and the jargon of set theory is waved like a magician's wand, to give authority to bursts of all but unintelligible metaphysics.An example of a critique from a mathematician's point of view is the essay 'Badiou's Number: A Critique of Mathematics as Ontology' by Ricardo L. Nirenberg and David Nirenberg, which takes issue in particular with Badiou's matheme of the Event in Being and Event, which has already been alluded to in respect of the 'axiom of foundation' above. Nirenberg and Nirenberg write: Rather than being defined in terms of objects previously defined, ex is here defined in terms of itself; you must already have it in order to define it. Set theorists call this a not-well-founded set. This kind of set never appears in mathematics – not least because it produces an unmathematical mise-en-abîme: if we replace ex inside the bracket by its expression as a bracket, we can go on doing this forever – and so can hardly be called "a matheme."' === The event and the subject === Badiou again turns here to mathematics and set theory – Badiou's language of ontology – to study the possibility of an indiscernible element existing extrinsically to the situation of ontology. He employs the strategy of the mathematician Paul J. Cohen, using what are called the conditions of sets. These conditions are thought of in terms of domination, a domination being that which defines a set. (If one takes, in binary language, the set with the condition 'items marked only with ones', any item marked with zero negates the property of the set. The condition which has only ones is thus dominated by any condition which has zeros in it [cf. pp. 367–371 in Being and Event].) Badiou reasons using these conditions that every discernible (nameable or constructible) set is dominated by the conditions which don't possess the property that makes it discernible as a set. (The property 'one' is always dominated by 'not one'.) These sets are, in line with constructible ontology, relative to one's being-in-the-world and one's being in language (where sets and concepts, such as the concept 'humanity', get their names). However, he continues, the dominations themselves are, whilst being relative concepts, not necessarily intrinsic to language and constructible thought; rather one can axiomatically define a domination – in the terms of mathematical ontology – as a set of conditions such that any condition outside the domination is dominated by at least one term inside the domination. One does not necessarily need to refer to constructible language to conceive of a 'set of dominations', which he refers to as the indiscernible set, or the generic set. It is therefore, he continues, possible to think beyond the strictures of the relativistic constructible universe of language, by a process Cohen calls forcing. And he concludes in following that while ontology can mark out a space for an inhabitant of the constructible situation to decide upon the indiscernible, it falls to the subject – about which the ontological situation cannot comment – to nominate this indiscernible, this generic point; and thus nominate, and give name to, the undecidable event. Badiou thereby marks out a philosophy by which to refute the apparent relativism or apoliticism in post-structuralist thought. Badiou's ultimate ethical maxim is therefore one of: 'decide upon the undecidable'. It is to name the indiscernible, the generic set, and thus name the event that re-casts ontology in a new light. He identifies four domains in which a subject (who, it is important to note, becomes a subject through this process) can potentially witness an event: love, science, politics and art. By enacting fidelity to the event within these four domains one performs a 'generic procedure', which in its undecidability is necessarily experimental, and one potentially recasts the situation in which being takes place. Through this maintenance of fidelity, truth has the potentiality to emerge. In line with his concept of the event, Badiou maintains, politics is not about politicians, but activism based on the present situation and the evental [sic] (his translators' neologism) rupture. So too does love have this characteristic of becoming anew. Even in science the guesswork that marks the event is prominent. He vigorously rejects the tag of 'decisionist' (the idea that once something is decided it 'becomes true'), but rather argues that the recasting of a truth comes prior to its veracity or verifiability. As he says of Galileo (p. 401): When Galileo announced the principle of inertia, he was still separated from the truth of the new physics by all the chance encounters that are named in subjects such as Descartes or Newton. How could he, with the names he fabricated and displaced (because they were at hand – 'movement', 'equal proportion', etc.), have supposed the veracity of his principle for the situation to-come that was the establishment of modern science; that is, the supplementation of his situation with the indiscernible and unfinishable part that one has to name 'rational physics'?While Badiou is keen to reject an equivalence between politics and philosophy, he correlates nonetheless his political activism and skepticism toward the parliamentary-democratic process with his philosophy, based around singular, situated truths, and potential revolutions. == L'Organisation Politique == Alain Badiou is a founding member (along with Natacha Michel and Sylvain Lazarus) of the militant French political organisation L'Organisation Politique, which was active from 1985 until it disbanded in 2007. It called itself a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). In addition to numerous writings and interventions, L'Organisation Politique highlighted the importance of developing political prescriptions concerning undocumented migrants (les sans papiers), stressing that they must be conceived primarily as workers and not immigrants. == Sarkozy pamphlet == Alain Badiou gained great notoriety in 2007 with his pamphlet The Meaning of Sarkozy (De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?), which quickly sold 60,000 copies, whereas for 40 years the sales of his books had oscillated between 2,000 and 6,000 copies. == Works == === English translations === ==== Journals ==== Journal of Badiou Studies "The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?", transl. by Bruno Bosteels; positions: asia critique, Volume 13, Issue 3, Winter 2005; (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005): ISSN 1067-9847 "Selections from Théorie du sujet on the Cultural Revolution", transl. by Alberto Toscano with the assistance of Lorenzo Chiesa and Nina Power; positions: asia critique, Volume 13, Issue 3, Winter 2005; (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005): ISSN 1067-9847 "Further Selections from Théorie du sujet on the Cultural Revolution", transl. by Lorenzo Chiesa; positions: asia critique, Volume 13, Issue 3, Winter 2005; (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005): ISSN 1067-9847 "The Triumphant Restoration", transl. by Alberto Toscano; positions: asia critique, Volume 13, Issue 3, Winter 2005; (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005): ISSN 1067-9847 "An Essential Philosophical Thesis: 'It Is Right to Rebel against the Reactionaries'", transl. by Alberto Toscano; positions: asia critique, Volume 13, Issue 3, Winter 2005; (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005): ISSN 1067-9847 What is a philosophical Institution? or: Address, Transmission, Inscription. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol 2, No 1-2 (2006) Les Reponses Ecrites D'Alain Badiou Interviewed by Ata Hoodashtian, for Le journal Philosophie Philosophie, Université Paris VIII. === DVD === === Lectures === == See also == Speculative realism == Notes == == Further reading == === Secondary literature on Badiou's work === ==== in English (books) ==== Jason Barker, Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction, London, Pluto Press, 2002. Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Peter Hallward (ed.), Think Again: Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, London, Continuum, 2004. Andrew William Gibson, Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of intermittency, Oxford, Oxford University press, 2006. Paul Ashton (ed.), A. J. Bartlett (ed.), Justin Clemens (ed.): The Praxis of Alain Badiou; (Melbourne: re.press, 2006). Adam Miller, Badiou, Marion, and St. Paul: Immanent Grace, London, Continuum, 2008. Bruno Bosteels, Badiou and Politics, Durham, Duke University Press, 2011. Oliver Feltham, Alain Badiou: Live Theory, London, Continuum, 2008. Burhanuddin Baki, Badiou's Being and Event and the Mathematics of Set Theory, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Sam Gillespie, The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou's Minimalist Metaphysics, (Melbourne, Australia: re.press, 2008) (details on re.press website) (Open Access) Chris Henry, The Ethics of Political Resistance: Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019) Adrian Johnston, Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2009. Gabriel Riera (ed.), Alain Badiou: Philosophy and its Conditions, Albany: New York, SUNY Press, 2005. Frank Ruda, For Badiou: Idealism Without Idealism, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 2015. Christopher Norris, Badiou's Being and Event: A Reader's Guide, London, Continuum, 2009. A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens (eds.), Badiou: Key Concepts, London, Acumen, 2010. Alex Ling, Badiou and Cinema, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Ed Pluth, Badiou: A Philosophy of the New, Malden, Polity, 2010. A. J. Bartlett, Badiou and Plato: An education by truths, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011. P. M. Livingston, The Politics of Logic: Badiou, Wittgenstein, and the Consequences of Formalism, New York, Routledge, 2011. Steven Corcoran (ed.): The Badiou Dictionary, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press 2015, ISBN 978-0-7486-4096-6 Am Johal: Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocence, New York, Atropos Press, 2015. ==== In English (journals, essays and articles) ==== Cantor, Lacan, Mao, Becket, meme combat: The philosophy of Alain Badiou essay by Jean-Jacques Lecercle. Radical Philosophy 093. January / February 1999 Je te Mathème: Badiou's De-Psychologisation of Love, essay by Carlos Gómez Camarena. Annual Review of Critical Psychology 8 (2010). Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject: Part 1. The Recommencement of Dialectical Materialism? by Bruno Bosteels Society and Space Theme Issue: Being and Spatialization vol. 27. Issue 5. 2009, interview and articles by M. Constantinou, N. Madarasz, J. Flowers MacCannell(See: "Environment and Planning D: Society and Space contents vol 29". Envplan.com. Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2011.) Fatal Repetition: Badiou and the Age of the Poets, with Appendix, A Psychoanalysis of Alain Badiou, by James Luchte, Istiraki (Turkey), 5 May 2014. ==== In French (books) ==== Charles Ramond (éd), Penser le multiple, Paris, Éditions L'Harmattan, 2002 Fabien Tarby, La Philosophie d'Alain Badiou, Paris, Éditions L'Harmattan, 2005 Fabien Tarby, Matérialismes d'aujourd'hui : de Deleuze à Badiou, Paris, Éditions L'Harmattan, 2005 Eric Marty, Une Querelle avec Alain Badiou, philosophe, Paris, Editions Gallimard, coll. L'Infini, 2007 Bruno Besana et Oliver Feltham (éd), Écrits autour de la pensée d'Alain Badiou, Paris, Éditions L'Harmattan, 2007. ==== In Basque (books and articles) ==== Antton Azkargorta (1996): "Hitzaurrea" in Alain Badiou, Etika, Bilbo, Besatari ISBN 84-921104-1-4 Imanol Galfarsoro (2011): "Alain Badiou. Filosofia etiko-politikoa I", hAUSnART, 0: 124–129 Imanol Galfarsoro (2012): "Alain Badiou. Filosofia etiko-politikoa II", hAUSnART, 1: 108–114 Imanol Galfarsoro (2012): "Alain Badiou eta hipotesi komunistaren birdefinizioak", hAUSnART, 2: 82–99 Imanol Galfarsoro (2012): "(Post)Marxismoa, kultura eta eragiletasuna: Ibilbide historiko labur bat" in Alaitz Aizpuru(koord.), Euskal Herriko pentsamenduaren gida, Bilbo, UEU. ISBN 978-84-8438-435-9 Xabier Insausti & Irati Oliden (2012): Konpromisorik gabeko filosofia. Alain Badiou, Donostia, Jakin ISBN 978-84-95234-44-5 Alain Badiou on the Lapiko Kritikoa basque website. ==== In Spanish (books and articles) ==== Carlos Gómez Camarena and Angelina Uzín Olleros (eds.), Badiou fuera de sus límites, Buenos Aires, Imago Mundi, 2010. ISBN 978-950-793-102-4 Angelina Uzín Olleros (2008). Introducción al pensamiento de Alain Badiou. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi. ISBN 978-950-793-076-8 Je te mathème: Badiou y la despsicologización del amor (por Carlos Gómez Camarena- Revista Teoría y Crítica de la Psicología) Badiou, la ciencia, el matema Archived 22 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine (por Carlos Gómez Camarena- Revista Reflexiones Marginales) Alfonso Galindo Hervás, Pensamiento impolítico contemporáneo. Ontología (y) política en Agamben, Badiou, Esposito y Nancy, Sequitur, Madrid, 2015. == External links == Alain Badiou Bibliography at Lacan Dot Com Alain Badiou Archive at MidEastDilemma.com Plato, Badiou and I: an Experiment in Writerly Happiness Cordite Poetry Review === Critical opinions === On Alain Badiou and Logiques des mondes by Slavoj Žižek The Marxist hypothesis: a response to Alain Badiou's "communist hypothesis" by Chris Cutrone The Anarchist Hypothesis, or Badiou, Žižek, and the Anti-Anarchist Prejudice by Gabriel Kuhn

Robert Nozick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick

Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his books Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971), in which Nozick also presented his own theory of utopia as one in which people can freely choose the rules of the society they enter into, and Philosophical Explanations (1981), which included his counterfactual theory of knowledge. His other work involved ethics, decision theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His final work before his death, Invariances (2001), introduced his theory of evolutionary cosmology, by which he argues invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through evolution across possible worlds. == Personal life == Nozick was born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish descent. His mother was born Sophie Cohen, and his father was a Jew from a Russian shtetl who had been born with the name Cohen and who ran a small business.Nozick attended the public schools in Brooklyn. He was then educated at Columbia College, Columbia University (A.B. 1959, summa cum laude), where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser; Princeton University (PhD 1963) under Carl Hempel; and at Oxford University as a Fulbright Scholar (1963–1964). At one point, he joined the YPSL. In addition, at Columbia he founded the local chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy which in 1960 changed its name to Students for a Democratic Society. After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1959, he married Barbara Fierer. They had two children, Emily and David. The Nozicks eventually divorced; Nozick later married the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer. He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. == Career and works == === Political philosophy === For Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) Nozick received a National Book Award in the category Philosophy and Religion. There, Nozick argues that only a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against "force, fraud, theft, and administering courts of law" could be justified, as any more extensive state would violate people's rights. For Nozick, a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults from a just starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick challenged the partial conclusion of John Rawls's Second Principle of Justice of his A Theory of Justice, that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society." Anarchy, State, and Utopia claims a heritage from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government and seeks to ground itself upon a natural law doctrine, but reaches some importantly different conclusions from Locke himself in several ways. Nozick appealed also to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as end in themselves (what he termed 'separatedness of persons'), not merely as a means to an end. Most controversially, and unlike Locke and Kant, Nozick argued that consistent application of self-ownership and non-aggression principle would allow and regard as valid consensual or non-coercive enslavement contracts between adults. He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in Anarchy, State, and Utopia that the typical notion of a "free system" would allow adults to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts. === Epistemology === In Philosophical Explanations (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Nozick provided novel accounts of knowledge, free will, personal identity, the nature of value, and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both the Gettier problem and those posed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge.: ch. 7 Nozick's four conditions for S's knowing that P were (S=Subject / P=Proposition): P is true S believes that P If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P If it were the case that P, S would believe that PNozick's third and fourth conditions are counterfactuals. He called this the "tracking theory" of knowledge. Nozick believed the counterfactual conditionals bring out an important aspect of our intuitive grasp of knowledge: For any given fact, the believer's method must reliably track the truth despite varying relevant conditions. In this way, Nozick's theory is similar to reliabilism. Due to certain counterexamples that could otherwise be raised against these counterfactual conditions, Nozick specified that: If P weren't the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S wouldn't believe, via M, that P. If P were the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S would believe, via M, that P.Where M stands for the method by which S came to arrive at a belief whether or not P. A major feature of Nozick's theory of knowledge is his rejection of the principle of deductive closure. This principle states that if S knows X and S knows that X implies Y, then S knows Y. Nozick's truth tracking conditions do not allow for the principle of deductive closure. Nozick believes that the truth tracking conditions are more fundamental to human intuition than the principle of deductive closure. === Later books === The Examined Life (1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life. According to Stephen Metcalf, Nozick expresses serious misgivings about capitalist libertarianism, going so far as to reject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fully actualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to protect the freedom of the many from the potential tyranny of an overly selfish and powerful few. Nozick suggests that citizens who are opposed to wealth redistribution which fund programs they object to, should be able to opt out by supporting alternative government approved charities with an added 5% surcharge.However, Jeff Riggenbach has noted that in an interview conducted in July 2001, he stated that he had never stopped self-identifying as a libertarian. Roderick Long reported that in his last book, Invariances, "[Nozick] identified voluntary cooperation as the 'core principle' of ethics, maintaining that the duty not to interfere with another person's 'domain of choice' is '[a]ll that any society should (coercively) demand'; higher levels of ethics, involving positive benevolence, represent instead a 'personal ideal' that should be left to 'a person's own individual choice and development.' And that certainly sounds like an attempt to embrace libertarianism all over again. My own view is that Nozick's thinking about these matters evolved over time and that what he wrote at any given time was an accurate reflection of what he was thinking at that time." Furthermore, Julian Sanchez reported that "Nozick always thought of himself as a libertarian in a broad sense, right up to his final days, even as his views became somewhat less 'hardcore.'"The Nature of Rationality (1993) presents a theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theory. Socratic Puzzles (1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from Ayn Rand and Austrian economics to animal rights. A thesis claims that "social ties are deeply interconnected with vital parts of Nozick's later philosophy", citing these two works as a development of The Examined Life.His last production, Invariances (2001), applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value. === Utilitarianism === Nozick created the thought experiment of the "utility monster" to show that average utilitarianism could lead to a situation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual. He also wrote a version of what was essentially a previously known thought experiment, the experience machine, in an attempt to show that ethical hedonism was false. Nozick asked us to imagine that "superduper neuropsychologists" have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences.: 210–11  We would not be able to tell that these experiences were not real. He asks us, if we were given the choice, would we choose a machine-induced experience of a wonderful life over real life? Nozick says no, then asks whether we have reasons not to plug into the machine and concludes that since we desire to be really impressed by things and not just feel something pleasurable, it does not seem to be rational to plug in, hence ethical hedonism must be false. === Philosophical method === Nozick was notable for the exploratory style of his philosophizing and for his methodological ecumenism. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology). === Invariances === In his 2001 work, Invariances, Nozick introduces his theory of truth, in which he leans towards a deflationary theory of truth, but argues that objectivity arises through being invariant under various transformations. For example, space-time is a significant objective fact because an interval involving both temporal and spatial separation is invariant, whereas no simpler interval involving only temporal or only spatial separation is invariant under Lorentz transformations. Nozick argues that invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through a theory of evolutionary cosmology across possible worlds. == Bibliography == Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) ISBN 0-631-19780-X Philosophical Explanations (1981) ISBN 0-19-824672-2 The Examined Life (1989) ISBN 0-671-72501-7 The Nature of Rationality (1993/1995) ISBN 0-691-02096-5 Socratic Puzzles (1997) ISBN 0-674-81653-6 Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001/2003) ISBN 0-674-01245-3 == See also == American philosophy Liberalism List of American philosophers List of liberal theorists A Theory of Justice: The Musical! – in which a fictional Nozick is one of the characters == Notes == == Further reading == == External links == Robert Nozick at Find a Grave Robert Nozick: Political Philosophy – overview of Nozick in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Robert Nozick at Curlie

Saul Kripke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Kripke

Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American analytic philosopher and logician. He was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emeritus professor at Princeton University. Kripke is considered one of the most important philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century. Since the 1960s, he has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical and modal logic, philosophy of language and mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and recursion theory. Kripke made influential and original contributions to logic, especially modal logic. His principal contribution is a semantics for modal logic involving possible worlds, now called Kripke semantics. He received the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. Kripke was also partly responsible for the revival of metaphysics and essentialism after the decline of logical positivism, claiming necessity is a metaphysical notion distinct from the epistemic notion of a priori, and that there are necessary truths that are known a posteriori, such as that water is H2O. A 1970 Princeton lecture series, published in book form in 1980 as Naming and Necessity, is considered one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. It introduces the concept of names as rigid designators, designating (picking out, denoting, referring to) the same object in every possible world, as contrasted with descriptions. It also contains Kripke's causal theory of reference, disputing the descriptivist theory found in Gottlob Frege's concept of sense and Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions. Kripke is often seen in opposition to the other great late-20th-century philosopher to eschew logical positivism: W. V. O. Quine. Quine rejected essentialism and modal logic.Kripke also gave an original reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein, known as "Kripkenstein", in his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The book contains his rule-following argument, a paradox for skepticism about meaning. Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape recordings and privately circulated manuscripts. == Life and career == Saul Kripke was the oldest of three children born to Dorothy K. Kripke and Myer S. Kripke. His father was the leader of Beth El Synagogue, the only Conservative congregation in Omaha, Nebraska; his mother wrote educational Jewish books for children. Saul and his two sisters, Madeline and Netta, attended Dundee Grade School and Omaha Central High School. Kripke was labeled a prodigy, teaching himself Ancient Hebrew by the age of six, reading Shakespeare's complete works by nine, and mastering the works of Descartes and complex mathematical problems before finishing elementary school. He wrote his first completeness theorem in modal logic at 17, and had it published a year later. After graduating from high school in 1958, Kripke attended Harvard University and graduated summa cum laude in 1962 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. During his sophomore year at Harvard, he taught a graduate-level logic course at nearby MIT. Upon graduation he received a Fulbright Fellowship, and in 1963 was appointed to the Society of Fellows. Kripke later said, "I wish I could have skipped college. I got to know some interesting people but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway just reading on my own."After briefly teaching at Harvard, Kripke moved in 1968 to Rockefeller University in New York City, where he taught until 1976. In 1978 he took a chaired professorship at Princeton University. In 1988 he received the university's Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities. In 2002 Kripke began teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center, and in 2003 he was appointed a distinguished professor of philosophy there. Kripke has received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Omaha (1977), Johns Hopkins University (1997), University of Haifa, Israel (1998), and the University of Pennsylvania (2005). He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1985 was a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He won the Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy in 2001.Kripke was married to philosopher Margaret Gilbert. He is the second cousin once removed of television writer, director, and producer Eric Kripke. Kripke died of pancreatic cancer on September 15, 2022, in Plainsboro, New Jersey, at the age of 81. == Work == Kripke's contributions to philosophy include: Kripke semantics for modal and related logics, published in several essays beginning in his teens. His 1970 Princeton lectures Naming and Necessity (published in 1972 and 1980), which significantly restructured philosophy of language. His interpretation of Wittgenstein. His theory of truth.He has also contributed to recursion theory (see admissible ordinal and Kripke–Platek set theory). === Modal logic === Two of Kripke's earlier works, "A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic" (1959) and "Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic" (1963), the former written when he was a teenager, were on modal logic. The most familiar logics in the modal family are constructed from a weak logic called K, named after Kripke. Kripke introduced the now-standard Kripke semantics (also known as relational semantics or frame semantics) for modal logics. Kripke semantics is a formal semantics for non-classical logic systems. It was first made for modal logics, and later adapted to intuitionistic logic and other non-classical systems. The discovery of Kripke semantics was a breakthrough in the making of non-classical logics, because the model theory of such logics was absent before Kripke. A Kripke frame or modal frame is a pair ⟨ W , R ⟩ \langle W,R\rangle , where W is a non-empty set, and R is a binary relation on W. Elements of W are called nodes or worlds, and R is known as the accessibility relation. Depending on the properties of the accessibility relation (transitivity, reflexivity, etc.), the corresponding frame is described, by extension, as being transitive, reflexive, etc. A Kripke model is a triple ⟨ W , R , ⊩ ⟩ \langle W,R,\Vdash \rangle , where ⟨ W , R ⟩ \langle W,R\rangle is a Kripke frame, and ⊩ \Vdash is a relation between nodes of W and modal formulas, such that: w ⊩ ¬ A w\Vdash \neg A if and only if w ⊮ A w\nVdash A , w ⊩ A → B w\Vdash A\to B if and only if w ⊮ A w\nVdash A or w ⊩ B w\Vdash B , w ⊩ ◻ A w\Vdash \Box A if and only if ∀ u ( w R u \forall u\,(w\;R\;u implies u ⊩ A ) u\Vdash A) .We read w ⊩ A w\Vdash A as "w satisfies A", "A is satisfied in w", or "w forces A". The relation ⊩ \Vdash is called the satisfaction relation, evaluation, or forcing relation. The satisfaction relation is uniquely determined by its value on propositional variables. A formula A is valid in: a model ⟨ W , R , ⊩ ⟩ \langle W,R,\Vdash \rangle , if w ⊩ A w\Vdash A for all w ∈ W, a frame ⟨ W , R ⟩ \langle W,R\rangle , if it is valid in ⟨ W , R , ⊩ ⟩ \langle W,R,\Vdash \rangle for all possible choices of ⊩ \Vdash , a class C of frames or models, if it is valid in every member of C.We define Thm(C) to be the set of all formulas that are valid in C. Conversely, if X is a set of formulas, let Mod(X) be the class of all frames which validate every formula from X. A modal logic (i.e., a set of formulas) L is sound with respect to a class of frames C, if L ⊆ Thm(C). L is complete with respect to C if L ⊇ Thm(C). Semantics is useful for investigating a logic (i.e., a derivation system) only if the semantical entailment relation reflects its syntactical counterpart, the consequence relation (derivability). It is vital to know which modal logics are sound and complete with respect to a class of Kripke frames, and for them, to determine which class it is. For any class C of Kripke frames, Thm(C) is a normal modal logic (in particular, theorems of the minimal normal modal logic, K, are valid in every Kripke model). However, the converse does not hold generally. There are Kripke incomplete normal modal logics, which is unproblematic, because most of the modal systems studied are complete of classes of frames described by simple conditions. A normal modal logic L corresponds to a class of frames C, if C = Mod(L). In other words, C is the largest class of frames such that L is sound wrt C. It follows that L is Kripke complete if and only if it is complete of its corresponding class. Consider the schema T : ◻ A → A \Box A\to A . T is valid in any reflexive frame ⟨ W , R ⟩ \langle W,R\rangle : if w ⊩ ◻ A w\Vdash \Box A , then w ⊩ A w\Vdash A since w R w. On the other hand, a frame which validates T has to be reflexive: fix w ∈ W, and define satisfaction of a propositional variable p as follows: u ⊩ p u\Vdash p if and only if w R u. Then w ⊩ ◻ p w\Vdash \Box p , thus w ⊩ p w\Vdash p by T, which means w R w using the definition of ⊩ \Vdash . T corresponds to the class of reflexive Kripke frames. It is often much easier to characterize the corresponding class of L than to prove its completeness, thus correspondence serves as a guide to completeness proofs. Correspondence is also used to show incompleteness of modal logics: suppose L1 ⊆ L2 are normal modal logics that correspond to the same class of frames, but L1 does not prove all theorems of L2. Then L1 is Kripke incomplete. For example, the schema ◻ ( A ≡ ◻ A ) → ◻ A \Box (A\equiv \Box A)\to \Box A generates an incomplete logic, as it corresponds to the same class of frames as GL (viz. transitive and converse well-founded frames), but does not prove the GL-tautology ◻ A → ◻ ◻ A \Box A\to \Box \Box A . ==== Canonical models ==== For any normal modal logic L, a Kripke model (called the canonical model) can be constructed, which validates precisely the theorems of L, by an adaptation of the standard technique of using maximal consistent sets as models. Canonical Kripke models play a role similar to the Lindenbaum–Tarski algebra construction in algebraic semantics. A set of formulas is L-consistent if no contradiction can be derived from them using the axioms of L, and modus ponens. A maximal L-consistent set (an L-MCS for short) is an L-consistent set which has no proper L-consistent superset. The canonical model of L is a Kripke model ⟨ W , R , ⊩ ⟩ \langle W,R,\Vdash \rangle , where W is the set of all L-MCS, and the relations R and ⊩ \Vdash are as follows: X R Y X\;R\;Y if and only if for every formula A A , if ◻ A ∈ X \Box A\in X then A ∈ Y A\in Y , X ⊩ A X\Vdash A if and only if A ∈ X A\in X .The canonical model is a model of L, as every L-MCS contains all theorems of L. By Zorn's lemma, each L-consistent set is contained in an L-MCS, in particular every formula unprovable in L has a counterexample in the canonical model. The main application of canonical models are completeness proofs. Properties of the canonical model of K immediately imply completeness of K with respect to the class of all Kripke frames. This argument does not work for arbitrary L, because there is no guarantee that the underlying frame of the canonical model satisfies the frame conditions of L. We say that a formula or a set X of formulas is canonical with respect to a property P of Kripke frames, if X is valid in every frame which satisfies P, for any normal modal logic L which contains X, the underlying frame of the canonical model of L satisfies P.A union of canonical sets of formulas is itself canonical. It follows from the preceding discussion that any logic axiomatized by a canonical set of formulas is Kripke complete, and compact. The axioms T, 4, D, B, 5, H, G (and thus any combination of them) are canonical. GL and Grz are not canonical, because they are not compact. The axiom M by itself is not canonical (Goldblatt, 1991), but the combined logic S4.1 (in fact, even K4.1) is canonical. In general, it is undecidable whether a given axiom is canonical. We know a nice sufficient condition: H. Sahlqvist identified a broad class of formulas (now called Sahlqvist formulas) such that: a Sahlqvist formula is canonical, the class of frames corresponding to a Sahlqvist formula is first-order definable, there is an algorithm which computes the corresponding frame condition to a given Sahlqvist formula.This is a powerful criterion: for example, all axioms listed above as canonical are (equivalent to) Sahlqvist formulas. A logic has the finite model property (FMP) if it is complete with respect to a class of finite frames. An application of this notion is the decidability question: it follows from Post's theorem that a recursively axiomatized modal logic L which has FMP is decidable, provided it is decidable whether a given finite frame is a model of L. In particular, every finitely axiomatizable logic with FMP is decidable. There are various methods for establishing FMP for a given logic. Refinements and extensions of the canonical model construction often work, using tools such as filtration or unravelling. As another possibility, completeness proofs based on cut-free sequent calculi usually produce finite models directly. Most of the modal systems used in practice (including all listed above) have FMP. In some cases, we can use FMP to prove Kripke completeness of a logic: every normal modal logic is complete wrt a class of modal algebras, and a finite modal algebra can be transformed into a Kripke frame. As an example, Robert Bull proved using this method that every normal extension of S4.3 has FMP, and is Kripke complete. Kripke semantics has a straightforward generalization to logics with more than one modality. A Kripke frame for a language with { ◻ i ∣ i ∈ I } \{\Box _{i}\mid \,i\in I\} as the set of its necessity operators consists of a non-empty set W equipped with binary relations Ri for each i ∈ I. The definition of a satisfaction relation is modified as follows: w ⊩ ◻ i A w\Vdash \Box _{i}A if and only if ∀ u ( w R i u ⇒ u ⊩ A ) . \forall u\,(w\;R_{i}\;u\Rightarrow u\Vdash A). ==== Carlson models ==== A simplified semantics, discovered by Tim Carlson, is often used for polymodal provability logics. A Carlson model is a structure ⟨ W , R , { D i } i ∈ I , ⊩ ⟩ \langle W,R,\{D_{i}\}_{i\in I},\Vdash \rangle with a single accessibility relation R, and subsets Di ⊆ W for each modality. Satisfaction is defined as: w ⊩ ◻ i A w\Vdash \Box _{i}A if and only if ∀ u ∈ D i ( w R u ⇒ u ⊩ A ) . \forall u\in D_{i}\,(w\;R\;u\Rightarrow u\Vdash A). Carlson models are easier to visualize and to work with than usual polymodal Kripke models; there are, however, Kripke complete polymodal logics which are Carlson incomplete. In Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic, published in 1963, Kripke responded to a difficulty with classical quantification theory. The motivation for the world-relative approach was to represent the possibility that objects in one world may fail to exist in another. But if standard quantifier rules are used, every term must refer to something that exists in all the possible worlds. This seems incompatible with our ordinary practice of using terms to refer to things that exist contingently. Kripke's response to this difficulty was to eliminate terms. He gave an example of a system that uses the world-relative interpretation and preserves the classical rules. But the costs are severe. First, his language is artificially impoverished, and second, the rules for the propositional modal logic must be weakened. Kripke's possible worlds theory has been used by narratologists (beginning with Pavel and Dolezel) to understand "reader's manipulation of alternative plot developments, or the characters' planned or fantasized alternative action series." This application has become especially useful in the analysis of hyperfiction. === Intuitionistic logic === Kripke semantics for intuitionistic logic follows the same principles as the semantics of modal logic, but uses a different definition of satisfaction. An intuitionistic Kripke model is a triple ⟨ W , ≤ , ⊩ ⟩ \langle W,\leq ,\Vdash \rangle , where ⟨ W , ≤ ⟩ \langle W,\leq \rangle is a partially ordered Kripke frame, and ⊩ \Vdash satisfies the following conditions: if p is a propositional variable, w ≤ u w\leq u , and w ⊩ p w\Vdash p , then u ⊩ p u\Vdash p (persistency condition), w ⊩ A ∧ B w\Vdash A\land B if and only if w ⊩ A w\Vdash A and w ⊩ B w\Vdash B , w ⊩ A ∨ B w\Vdash A\lor B if and only if w ⊩ A w\Vdash A or w ⊩ B w\Vdash B , w ⊩ A → B w\Vdash A\to B if and only if for all u ≥ w u\geq w , u ⊩ A u\Vdash A implies u ⊩ B u\Vdash B , not w ⊩ ⊥ w\Vdash \bot .Intuitionistic logic is sound and complete with respect to its Kripke semantics, and it has the Finite Model Property. Intuitionistic first-order logic Let L be a first-order language. A Kripke model of L is a triple ⟨ W , ≤ , { M w } w ∈ W ⟩ \langle W,\leq ,\{M_{w}\}_{w\in W}\rangle , where ⟨ W , ≤ ⟩ \langle W,\leq \rangle is an intuitionistic Kripke frame, Mw is a (classical) L-structure for each node w ∈ W, and the following compatibility conditions hold whenever u ≤ v: the domain of Mu is included in the domain of Mv, realizations of function symbols in Mu and Mv agree on elements of Mu, for each n-ary predicate P and elements a1,...,an ∈ Mu: if P(a1,...,an) holds in Mu, then it holds in Mv.Given an evaluation e of variables by elements of Mw, we define the satisfaction relation w ⊩ A [ e ] w\Vdash A[e] : w ⊩ P ( t 1 , … , t n ) [ e ] w\Vdash P(t_{1},\dots ,t_{n})[e] if and only if P ( t 1 [ e ] , … , t n [ e ] ) P(t_{1}[e],\dots ,t_{n}[e]) holds in Mw, w ⊩ ( A ∧ B ) [ e ] w\Vdash (A\land B)[e] if and only if w ⊩ A [ e ] w\Vdash A[e] and w ⊩ B [ e ] w\Vdash B[e] , w ⊩ ( A ∨ B ) [ e ] w\Vdash (A\lor B)[e] if and only if w ⊩ A [ e ] w\Vdash A[e] or w ⊩ B [ e ] w\Vdash B[e] , w ⊩ ( A → B ) [ e ] w\Vdash (A\to B)[e] if and only if for all u ≥ w u\geq w , u ⊩ A [ e ] u\Vdash A[e] implies u ⊩ B [ e ] u\Vdash B[e] , not w ⊩ ⊥ [ e ] w\Vdash \bot [e] , w ⊩ ( ∃ x A ) [ e ] w\Vdash (\exists x\,A)[e] if and only if there exists an a ∈ M w a\in M_{w} such that w ⊩ A [ e ( x → a ) ] w\Vdash A[e(x\to a)] , w ⊩ ( ∀ x A ) [ e ] w\Vdash (\forall x\,A)[e] if and only if for every u ≥ w u\geq w and every a ∈ M u a\in M_{u} , u ⊩ A [ e ( x → a ) ] u\Vdash A[e(x\to a)] .Here e(x→a) is the evaluation which gives x the value a, and otherwise agrees with e. === Naming and Necessity === The three lectures that form Naming and Necessity constitute an attack on the descriptivist theory of names. Kripke attributes variants of descriptivist theories to Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and John Searle, among others. According to descriptivist theories, proper names either are synonymous with descriptions, or have their reference determined by virtue of the name's being associated with a description or cluster of descriptions that an object uniquely satisfies. Kripke rejects both these kinds of descriptivism. He gives several examples purporting to render descriptivism implausible as a theory of how names get their references determined (e.g., surely Aristotle could have died at age two and so not satisfied any of the descriptions we associate with his name, but it would seem wrong to deny that he was still Aristotle). As an alternative, Kripke outlined a causal theory of reference, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of a causal connection with the object as mediated through communities of speakers. He points out that proper names, in contrast to most descriptions, are rigid designators: that is, a proper name refers to the named object in every possible world in which the object exists, while most descriptions designate different objects in different possible worlds. For example, "Richard Nixon" refers to the same person in every possible world in which Nixon exists, while "the person who won the United States presidential election of 1968" could refer to Nixon, Humphrey, or others in different possible worlds. Kripke also raised the prospect of a posteriori necessities—facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only through empirical investigation. Examples include "Hesperus is Phosphorus", "Cicero is Tully", "Water is H2O", and other identity claims where two names refer to the same object. According to Kripke, the Kantian distinctions between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori, and contingent and necessary do not map onto one another. Rather, analytic/synthetic is a semantic distinction, a priori/a posteriori is an epistemic distinction, and contingent/necessary is a metaphysical distinction. Finally, Kripke gave an argument against identity materialism in the philosophy of mind, the view that every mental particular is identical with some physical particular. Kripke argued that the only way to defend this identity is as an a posteriori necessary identity, but that such an identity—e.g., that pain is C-fibers firing—could not be necessary, given the (clearly conceivable) possibility that pain could be separate from the firing of C-fibers, or the firing of C-fibers be separate from pain. (Similar arguments have since been made by David Chalmers.) In any event, the psychophysical identity theorist, according to Kripke, incurs a dialectical obligation to explain the apparent logical possibility of these circumstances, since according to such theorists they should be impossible. Kripke delivered the John Locke Lectures in philosophy at Oxford in 1973. Titled Reference and Existence, they were in many respects a continuation of Naming and Necessity, and deal with the subjects of fictional names and perceptual error. In 2013 Oxford University Press published the lectures as a book, also titled Reference and Existence. In a 1995 paper, philosopher Quentin Smith argued that key concepts in Kripke's new theory of reference originated in the work of Ruth Barcan Marcus more than a decade earlier. Smith identified six significant ideas in the New Theory that he claimed Marcus had developed: (1) that proper names are direct references that do not consist of contained definitions; (2) that while one can single out a single thing by a description, this description is not equivalent to a proper name of this thing; (3) the modal argument that proper names are directly referential, and not disguised descriptions; (4) a formal modal logic proof of the necessity of identity; (5) the concept of a rigid designator, though Kripke coined that term; and (6) a posteriori identity. Smith argued that Kripke failed to understand Marcus's theory at the time but later adopted many of its key conceptual themes in his New Theory of Reference. Other scholars have subsequently offered detailed responses arguing that no plagiarism occurred. ==== "A Puzzle about Belief" ==== Kripke's main propositions about proper names in Naming and Necessity are that the meaning of a name simply is the object it refers to and that a name's referent is determined by a causal link between some sort of "baptism" and the utterance of the name. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the possibility that propositions containing names may have some additional semantic properties, properties that could explain why two names referring to the same person may give different truth values in propositions about beliefs. For example, Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly, although she does not believe that Clark Kent can fly. This can be accounted for if the names "Superman" and "Clark Kent", though referring to the same person, have distinct semantic properties. But in his article "A Puzzle about Belief" (1988) Kripke seems to oppose even this possibility. His argument can be reconstructed as follows: The idea that two names referring to the same object may have different semantic properties is supposed to explain that coreferring names behave differently in propositions about beliefs (as in Lois Lane's case). But the same phenomenon occurs even with coreferring names that obviously have the same semantic properties: Kripke invites us to imagine a French, monolingual boy, Pierre, who believes that "Londres est jolie" ("London is beautiful"). Pierre moves to London without realizing that London = Londres. He then learns English the same way a child would learn the language, that is, not by translating words from French to English. Pierre learns the name "London" from the unattractive part of the city where he lives, and so comes to believe that London is not beautiful. If Kripke's account is correct, Pierre now believes both that Londres is jolie and that London is not beautiful. This cannot be explained by coreferring names having different semantic properties. According to Kripke, this demonstrates that attributing additional semantic properties to names does not explain what it is intended to. === Wittgenstein === First published in 1982, Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language contends that the central argument of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations centers on a devastating rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date", and that Wittgenstein does not reject the argument that leads to the rule-following paradox, but accepts it and offers a "skeptical solution" to ameliorate the paradox's destructive effects. Most commentators accept that Philosophical Investigations contains the rule-following paradox as Kripke presents it, but few have agreed with his attributing a skeptical solution to Wittgenstein. Kripke himself expresses doubts in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language as to whether Wittgenstein would endorse his interpretation of Philosophical Investigations. He says that the work should not be read as an attempt to give an accurate statement of Wittgenstein's views, but rather as an account of Wittgenstein's argument "as it struck Kripke, as it presented a problem for him". The portmanteau "Kripkenstein" has been coined for Kripke's interpretation of Philosophical Investigations. Kripkenstein's main significance was a clear statement of a new kind of skepticism, dubbed "meaning skepticism": the idea that for isolated individuals there is no fact in virtue of which they mean one thing rather than another by the use of a word. Kripke's "skeptical solution" to meaning skepticism is to ground meaning in the behavior of a community. Kripke's book generated a large secondary literature, divided between those who find his skeptical problem interesting and perceptive, and others, such as Gordon Baker, Peter Hacker, and Colin McGinn, who argue that his meaning skepticism is a pseudo-problem that stems from a confused, selective reading of Wittgenstein. Kripke's position has been defended against these and other attacks by the Cambridge philosopher Martin Kusch, and Wittgenstein scholar David G. Stern considers Kripke's book "the most influential and widely discussed" work on Wittgenstein since the 1980s. === Truth === In his 1975 article "Outline of a Theory of Truth", Kripke showed that a language can consistently contain its own truth predicate, something deemed impossible by Alfred Tarski, a pioneer in formal theories of truth. The approach involves letting truth be a partially defined property over the set of grammatically well-formed sentences in the language. Kripke showed how to do this recursively by starting from the set of expressions in a language that do not contain the truth predicate, and defining a truth predicate over just that segment: this action adds new sentences to the language, and truth is in turn defined for all of them. Unlike Tarski's approach, however, Kripke's lets "truth" be the union of all of these definition-stages; after a denumerable infinity of steps the language reaches a "fixed point" such that using Kripke's method to expand the truth-predicate does not change the language any further. Such a fixed point can then be taken as the basic form of a natural language containing its own truth predicate. But this predicate is undefined for any sentences that do not, so to speak, "bottom out" in simpler sentences not containing a truth predicate. That is, " 'Snow is white' is true" is well-defined, as is " ' "Snow is white" is true' is true," and so forth, but neither "This sentence is true" nor "This sentence is not true" receive truth-conditions; they are, in Kripke's terms, "ungrounded." Gödel's first incompleteness theorem demonstrates that self-reference cannot be avoided naively, since propositions about seemingly unrelated objects (such as integers) can have an informal self-referential meaning, and this idea – manifested by the diagonal lemma – is the basis for Tarski's theorem that truth cannot be consistently defined. But Kripke's truth predicate does not give a truth value (true/false) to propositions such as the one built in Tarski's proof, since it is provable by induction that it is undefined at stage n n for every finite n n . Kripke's proposal is problematic in the sense that while the language contains a "truth" predicate of itself (at least a partial one), some of its sentences – such as the liar sentence ("this sentence is false") – have an undefined truth value, but the language does not contain its own "undefined" predicate. In fact it cannot, as that would create a new version of the liar paradox, the strengthened liar paradox ("this sentence is false or undefined"). Thus while the liar sentence is undefined in the language, the language cannot express that it is undefined. == Saul Kripke Center == The Saul Kripke Center at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is dedicated to preserving and promoting Kripke's work. Its director is Romina Padro. The Saul Kripke Center holds events related to Kripke's work and is creating a digital archive of previously unpublished recordings of Kripke's lectures, lecture notes, and correspondence dating back to the 1950s. In his favorable review of Kripke's Philosophical Troubles, the Stanford philosopher Mark Crimmins wrote, "That four of the most admired and discussed essays in 1970s philosophy are here is enough to make this first volume of Saul Kripke's collected articles a must-have... The reader's delight will grow as hints are dropped that there is a great deal more to come in this series being prepared by Kripke and an ace team of philosopher-editors at the Saul Kripke Center at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York." == Works == Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972. ISBN 0-674-59845-8 Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: an Elementary Exposition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-674-95401-7. Philosophical Troubles. Collected Papers Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 9780199730155 Reference and Existence – The John Locke Lectures. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780199928385 == Awards and recognitions == Fulbright Scholar (1962–1963) Society of Fellows, Harvard University (1963–1966). Doctor of Humane Letters, honorary degree, University of Nebraska, 1977. Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978–). Corresponding Fellow, British Academy (1985–). Howard Behrman Award, Princeton University, 1988. Fellow, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea (1993–). Doctor of Humane Letters, honorary degree, Johns Hopkins University, 1997. Doctor of Humane Letters, honorary degree, University of Haifa, Israel, 1998. Fellow, Norwegian Academy of Sciences (2000–). Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy, Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2001. Doctor of Humane Letters, honorary degree, University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Fellow, American Philosophical Society (2005–). == See also == American philosophy List of American philosophers Barry Kripke (a character on The Big Bang Theory who is believed to be named after Saul) == References == == Further reading == Arif Ahmed (2007), Saul Kripke. New York, NY; London: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-9262-2. Alan Berger (editor) (2011) Saul Kripke. ISBN 978-0-521-85826-7. Jonathan Berg (2014) Naming, Necessity and More: Explorations in the Philosophical Work of Saul Kripke. ISBN 9781137400932 Taylor Branch (August 14, 1977), "New Frontiers in American Philosophy". The New York Times Magazine. John Burgess (2013), Saul Kripke: Puzzles and Mysteries. ISBN 978-0-7456-5284-9. G. W. Fitch (2005), Saul Kripke. ISBN 0-7735-2885-7. Christopher Hughes (2004), Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity. ISBN 0-19-824107-0. Paul W. Humphreys and James H. Fetzer (editors) (1998) The New Theory of Reference: Kripke, Marcus, and Its Origins ISBN 978-0-7923-4898-6 Martin Kusch (2006), A Sceptical Guide to Meaning and Rules: Defending Kripke's Wittgenstein. Acumben: Publishing Limited. Colin McGinn (1984), Wittgenstein on Meaning. ISBN 0631137645 ISBN 978-0631137641. Harold Noonan (2013), Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kripke and Naming and Necessity. ISBN 978-1135105167 Christopher Norris (2007), Fiction, Philosophy and Literary Theory: Will the Real Saul Kripke Please Stand Up? London: Continuum Consuelo Preti (2002), On Kripke. Wadsworth. ISBN 0-534-58366-0. Nathan Salmon (1981), Reference and Essence. ISBN 1-59102-215-0 ISBN 978-1591022152. Scott Soames (2002), Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity. ISBN 0-19-514529-1. == External links == CUNY Graduate Center Philosophy Department faculty page Archived 2009-09-30 at the Wayback Machine Saul Kripke's archive on the CUNY Philosophy Commons Second Annual Saul Kripke Lecture by John Burgess on the Necessity of Origin at the CUNY Graduate Center, November 13th, 2012 Saul Kripke at the Mathematics Genealogy Project "Saul Kripke, Genius Logician", a short, non-technical interview by Andreas Saugstad, February 25, 2001. The conference in honor of Kripke's sixty-fifth birthday with a video of his speech "The First Person", January 25–26, 2006 Video of his talk "From Church's Thesis to the First Order Algorithm Theorem," June 13, 2006. Podcast of his talk "Unrestricted Exportation and Some Morals for the Philosophy of Language," Archived 2015-11-25 at the Wayback Machine May 21, 2008. London Review of Books article by Jerry Fodor discussing Kripke's work Archived 2009-04-16 at the Wayback Machine Celebrating CUNY's Genius Philosopher, by Gary Shapiro, January 27, 2006, in The New York Sun. information from 'Wisdom Supreme' website A New York Times article about his 65th birthday Roundtable on Kripke's critique of mind-body identity with Scott Soames as the main presenter May 26, 2010.

Jean-Luc Nancy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Nancy

Jean-Luc Nancy ( nahn-SEE, French: [ʒɑ̃lyk nɑ̃si]; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre (The Title of the Letter, 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Nancy is the author of works on many thinkers, including La remarque spéculative in 1973 (The Speculative Remark, 2001) on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Le Discours de la syncope (1976) and L'Impératif catégorique (1983) on Immanuel Kant, Ego sum (1979) on René Descartes, and Le Partage des voix (1982) on Martin Heidegger. In addition to Le titre de la lettre, Nancy collaborated with Lacoue-Labarthe on several other books and articles. Nancy is credited with helping to reopen the question of the ground of community and politics with his 1985 work La communauté désoeuvrée (The Inoperative Community), following Blanchot's The Unavowable Community (1983) and Agamben responded to both with The Coming Community (1990). One of the very few monographs that Jacques Derrida ever wrote on a contemporary philosopher is On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy. == Biography == Jean-Luc Nancy graduated in philosophy in 1962 from the University of Paris. He taught for a short while in Colmar before becoming an assistant at the Strasbourg Institut de Philosophie in 1968. In 1973, he received his doctorate with a dissertation on Kant under the supervision of Paul Ricœur. Nancy was then promoted to Maître de conférences (associate professor) at the Université des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nancy was a guest professor at universities all over the world, from the University of California to the Freie Universität in Berlin. He has been invited as a cultural delegate of the French Ministry of External Affairs to speak in Eastern Europe, Britain and the United States. In 1987, Nancy became a Docteur d'État at the Université de Toulouse-Le-Mirail for a thesis on freedom in Heidegger under the supervision of Gérard Granel. The jury was composed of Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. It was published as L'expérience de la liberté (1988). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nancy suffered serious medical problems. He underwent a heart transplant and his recovery was made more difficult by a long-term cancer diagnosis. He stopped teaching and participating in almost all of the committees with which he was engaged, but continued to write. Many of his best known texts were published during this time. An account of his experience, L'intrus (The Intruder), was published in 2000. Nancy was a professor at the University of Strasbourg. Nancy was also Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Chair and Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School.Filmmaker Claire Denis has made at least two movies inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy and his works. Many other artists have worked with Nancy as well, such as Simon Hantaï, Soun-gui Kim and Phillip Warnell. Nancy has written about the filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami and featured prominently in the film The Ister. Nancy died on 23 August 2021 at the age of 81. == Major works == === Les Fins de l'homme === In 1980, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe organized a conference at Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle on Derrida and politics entitled "Les Fins de l'homme" ("The Ends of Man"). The conference solidified Derrida's place at the forefront of contemporary philosophy, and was a place to begin an in-depth conversation between philosophy and contemporary politics. Further to their desire to rethink the political, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe set up in the same year the Centre de Recherches Philosophiques sur la Politique (Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political). The centre was dedicated to pursuing philosophical rather than empirical approaches to political questions, and supported such speakers as Claude Lefort and Jean-François Lyotard. By 1984, however, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe were dissatisfied with the direction work at the centre was taking, and it was closed down.During that period Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy produced several important papers, together and separately. Some of these texts appear in Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980 (1981), Rejouer le politique (1981), La retrait du politique (1983), and Le mythe nazi (1991, revised edition; originally published as Les méchanismes du fascisme, 1981). Many of these texts are gathered in translation in Retreating the Political (1997). === La Communauté désœuvrée === Nancy's first book on the question of community, La Communauté désœuvrée (The Inoperative Community, 1986), is perhaps his best-known work. This text is an introduction to some of the main philosophical themes Nancy continued to work with. Nancy traces the influence of the notion of community to concepts of experience, discourse, and the individual, and argues that it has dominated modern thought. Discarding popular notions, Nancy redefines community, asking what can it be if it is reduced neither to a collection of separate individuals, nor to a hypostasized communal substance, e.g., fascism. He writes that our attempt to design society according to pre-planned definitions frequently leads to social violence and political terror, posing the social and political question of how to proceed with the development of society with this knowledge in mind. La Communauté désœuvrée means that community is not the result of a production, be it social, economic or even political (nationalist) production; it is not une œuvre, a "work of art" ("œuvre d'art", but "art" is here understood in the sense of "artifice"). "The community that becomes a single thing (body, mind, fatherland, Leader...) ...necessarily loses the in of being-in-common. Or, it loses the with or the together that defines it. It yields its being-together to a being of togetherness. The truth of community, on the contrary, resides in the retreat of such a being." (Preface, xxxix). === L'Expérience de la liberté === Nancy's dissertation for his Doctorat d'État looked at the works of Kant, Schelling, Sartre and Heidegger, and concentrated on their treatment of the topic of freedom. It was published in 1988 as L'Expérience de la Liberté (The Experience of Freedom). Since then, Nancy has continued to concentrate on developing a reorientation of Heidegger's work. Nancy treats freedom as a property of the individual or collectivity, and looks for a "non-subjective" freedom which would attempt to think the existential or finite origin for every freedom. Nancy argues that it is necessary to think freedom in its finite being, because to think of it as the property of an infinite subject is to make any finite being a limit of freedom. The existence of the other is the necessary condition of freedom, rather than its limitation. === Le sens du monde === Nancy addresses the world in its contemporary global configuration in other writings on freedom, justice and sovereignty. In his 1993 book Le sens du monde (The Sense of the World), he asks what we mean by saying that we live in one world, and how our sense of the world is changed by saying that it is situated within the world, rather than above or apart from it. To Nancy, the world, or existence, is our ontological responsibility, which precedes political, judicial and moral responsibility. He describes our being in the world as an exposure to a naked existence, without the possibility of support by a fundamental metaphysical order or cause. Contemporary existence no longer has recourse to a divine framework, as was the case in feudal society where the meaning and course of life was predetermined. The contingency of our naked existence as an ontological question is the main challenge of our existence in contemporary global society. All of these themes relating to world are taken up again by Nancy in his 2002 book La création du monde ou la mondialisation (The Creation of the World or Globalization), where he makes the distinction between globalization as a deterministic process and mondialisation as an open-ended "world-forming" process. Here, he connects his critique with Marx's critique of political economy, which saw "free labour" as what produces the world. Nancy argues that an authentic "dwelling" in the world must be concerned with the creation of meaning (enjoyment) and not final purposes, closed essences, and exclusive worldviews. The present system of expanding cities and nodes in the planetary techno-scientific network (tied to capitalism) leads to the loss of world, because the world is treated as an object (globe), even though the self-deconstruction of ontotheology increasingly made it the "subject" of its own creation. === Être singulier pluriel === In his book Être singulier pluriel (Being Singular Plural, 2000), Nancy tackles the question of how we can speak of a plurality of a "we" without making the "we" a singular identity. The premise of the title essay in this book is that there is no being without "being-with," that "I" does not come before "we" (i.e., Dasein does not precede Mitsein) and that there is no existence without co-existence. In an extension from his thoughts on freedom, community, and the sense of the world, he imagines the "being-with" as a mutual exposure to one another that preserves the freedom of the "I", and thus a community that is not subject to an exterior or pre-existent definition. "There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have in common, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being." The five essays that follow the title piece continue to develop Nancy's philosophy through discussions of sovereignty, war and technology, ecotechnics, identity, the Gulf War and Sarajevo. Nancy's central concern in these essays remains the "being-with", which he uses to discuss issues of psychoanalysis, politics and multiculturalism, looking at notions of "self" and "other" in current contexts. == Artistic analysis == Nancy has also written for art catalogues and international art journals, especially on contemporary art. He also writes poetry and for the theatre and has earned respect as an influential philosopher of art and culture. In his book Les Muses published in 1994 (The Muses, 1996), he begins with an analysis of Hegel's thesis on the death of art. Among the essays in The Muses is a piece on Caravaggio, originally a lecture given at the Louvre. In this essay, Nancy looks for a different conception of painting where painting is not a representation of the empirical world, but a presentation of the world, of sense, or of existence. Nancy has published books on film and music, as well as texts on the problem of representation, on the statute of literature, on image and violence, and on the work of On Kawara, Charles Baudelaire, and Friedrich Hölderlin. == Film theory == Nancy's text L'intrus formed the basis for French director Claire Denis's film of the same name. He has written extensively on film, including The Evidence of Film, a short work on Abbas Kiarostami. Nancy appears in the film The Ister, based on Martin Heidegger's 1942 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin's poem "Der Ister" (published as Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"). The film focuses on the relation of politics, technology and myth. Nancy has developed three films in conjunction with artist-filmmaker Phillip Warnell. He appears in their 2009 film Outlandish: 'Strange Foreign Bodies', which also features a text he wrote specifically for the project, Étranges Corps Étrangers. Nancy contributed a poem, 'Oh The Animals of Language' to Warnell's 2014 feature-length film 'Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air'. Warnell and Nancy worked on a new text-film collaboration which was completed in 2017, 'The Flying Proletarian'. == Bibliography == === Titles in French === La Remarque spéculative (Un bon mot de Hegel). Paris: Galilée, 1973. La titre de la lettre. Paris: Galilée, 1973 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe). Le Discours de la syncope. I. Logodaedalus. Paris: Flammarion, 1975. L'absolu littéraire. Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand. Paris: Seuil, 1978 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe). Ego sum. Paris: Flammarion, 1979. Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980. 1981 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe). Rejouer le politique. 1981 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe). Le partage des voix. Paris: Galilée, 1982. La retrait du politique. 1983 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe). La communauté désoeuvrée. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1983. L'Impératif catégorique. Paris: Flammarion, 1983. L'oubli de la philosophie. Paris: Galilée, 1986. Des lieux divins. Mauvezin: T.E.R, 1987. L'expérience de la liberté. Paris: Galilée, 1988. Une Pensée finie. Paris: Galilée, 1990. Le poids d'une pensée. Québec: Le griffon d'argile, 1991. Le mythe nazi. La tour d'Aigues: L'Aube, 1991 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, revised edition; originally published as Les méchanismes du fascisme, 1981). La comparution (politique à venir). Paris: Bourgois, 1991 (with Jean-Chrisophe Bailly). Corpus. Paris: Métailié, 1992. Le sens du monde. Paris: Galilée, 1993. Les Muses. Paris: Galilée, 1994. Être singulier pluriel. Paris: Galilée, 1996. Hegel. L'inquiétude du négatif. Paris: Hachette, 1997. L'Intrus. Paris: Galilée, 2000. Le regard du portrait. Paris: Galilée, 2000. Conloquium, in Roberto Esposito, Communitas. trad. de Nadine Le Lirzin, Paris: PUF, 2000. La pensée dérobée. Paris: Galilée, 2001. The evidence of film. Bruxelles: Yves Gevaert, 2001. La création du monde ou la mondialisation. Paris: Galilée, 2002. À l’écoute. Paris: Galilée, 2002. Nus sommes. La peau des images. Paris: Klincksieck, 2003 (with Federico Ferrari). Noli me tangere. Paris: Bayard, 2003. "L'extension de l'âme". Metz: Le Portique, 2003. "Lil y a' du rapport sexuel". Paris: Galilée, 2003. La déclosion (Déconstruction du Christianisme 1). Paris: Galilée, 2005. Sur le commerce des pensées: Du livre et de la librairie. Paris: Galilée, 2005. Iconographie de l'auteur. Paris: Galilée, 2005 (with Federico Ferrari). Tombe de sommeil. Paris: Galilée, 2007. Juste impossible. Paris: Bayard, 2007. À plus d'un titre: Jacques Derrida. Paris: Galilée, 2007. Vérité de la democratie. Paris: Galilée, 2008. Le poids d'une pensée, l'approche. Strasbourg: La Phocide, 2008. Je t'aime, un peu, beaucoup, passionnément.... Paris: Bayard Centurion, 2008. Démocratie, dans quel état ?, with Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Wendy Brown, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross and Slavoj Žižek, La Fabrique, 2009. L'Adoration, Paris, Galilée, 2010. Atlan : les détrempes, Paris, Hazan, 2010. À Vengeance ? de Robert Antelme, in Robert Antelme, Vengeance ?. Hermann, 2010. La Ville au loin. Strasbourg: La Phocide, 2011. Maurice Blanchot, passion politique. Paris: Galilée, 2011. Politique et au-delà. Interview with Philipp Armstrong and Jason E. Smith, Paris: Galilée, 2011. Dans quels mondes vivons-nous?, with Aurélien Barrau, Paris: Galilée, 2011. L’Équivalence des catastrophes (Après Fukushima), Paris: Galilée, 2012. La Possibilité d'un monde, Paris: Les petits platons, 2013. Jamais le mot "créateur"..., with Simon Hantaï, Paris, Galilée, 2013. L’Autre Portrait, Paris, Galilée, 2013. Être singulier pluriel, nouvelle édition augmentée, Paris, Galilée, 2013. Le Philosophe boiteux, Le Havre, Franciscopolis/Presses du réel, 2014. La Jouissance. Questions de caractère, with Adèle Van Reeth, Paris, Plon, 2014. La Communauté désavouée, Paris, Galilée, 2014. Inventions à deux voix. Entretiens, with Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Paris, Éditions du Félin, 2015. Proprement dit : Entretien sur le mythe, with Mathilde Girard, Paris, Lignes, 2015. Journal des Phéniciennes, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 2015. Banalité de Heidegger, Paris, Galilée, 2015. Demande : Littérature et philosophie, Paris, Galilée, 2015. Entretien sur le christianisme (Paris, 2008), with Bernard Stiegler and Alain Jugnon, in: Bernard Stiegler, Dans la disruption : Comment ne pas devenir fou ?, Paris, Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2016. Que faire ?, Paris, Galilée, 2016. Signaux sensibles, entretien à propos des arts, with Jérôme Lèbre, Paris, Bayard, 2017. La Tradition allemande dans la philosophie, with Alain Badiou, Paris, Éditions Lignes, 2017. Sexistence, Paris, Galilée, 2017. Exclu le Juif en nous, Paris, Galilée, 2018. Hegel, l'inquiétude du négatif, Paris, Galilée, 2018. Derrida, suppléments, Paris, Galilée, 2019. La peau fragile du monde, Paris, Galilée, 2020. Mascarons de Macron, Paris, Galilée, 2021. Cruor, Paris, Galilée, 2021. === English translations === The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. The Birth to Presence. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. The Experience of Freedom. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. The Muses. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. The Gravity of Thought. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997. Retreating the Political. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; edited by Simon Sparks. London: Routledge, 1997. The Sense of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Being Singular Plural. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. The Speculative Remark: One of Hegel's Bons Mots. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. A Finite Thinking. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003 The Ground of the Image. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Multiple Arts (The Muses II). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. The Creation of the World or Globalization. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. Listening. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. The Discourse of the Syncope: Logodaedalus. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Philosophical Chronicles (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy). New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Noli Me Tangere: On the Raising of the Body. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Corpus. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. On the Commerce of Thinking: On Books and Bookstores. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. The Fall of Sleep. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. The Truth of Democracy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Four Little Dialogues. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. In Place of Utopia. In Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought. New York & London: Continuum, 2012. Adoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity II. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. The Pleasure in Drawing. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. Being Nude. The Skin of Images. With Federico Ferrari; New York: Fordham University Press, 2014. The Disavowed Community. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Foreword of Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Dies Irae. London: University of Westminster Press, 2019. "A Passing." New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2020. Introduction to Marguerite Duras, The Darkroom. Sexistence. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021. == See also == List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction == References == == Further reading == Alexandrova, Alena, ed. Re-treating Religion: Deconstructing Christianity with Jean-Luc Nancy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. Armstrong, Phillip. Reticulations: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Networks of the Political. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Deconstruction and Anastasis, Mohan, Shaj, Qui Parle (2022) 31 (2): 339–344, https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-10052375 And the Beginning of Philosophy, Mohan, Shaj, Philosophy World Democracy Derrida, Jacques. On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. "Nancy's Wager", Dwivedi, Divya, Philosophy World Democracy. Garrido, Juan Manuel. Chances de la pensée – À partir de Jean-Luc Nancy, París: Galilée, “La Philosophie en effet”, 2011. Garrido, Juan Manuel. “The Poetry of the World," in Diacritics, Vol 43 (4), pp. 52–64, 2016. Garrido, Juan Manuel. “La poésie du monde”, in Po&sie, n. 149–159, 3ème et 4ème trim. 2014, pp. 233–238. Garrido, Juan Manuel. “Jean-Luc Nancy’s Concept of Body”, Epoché - A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 14, Issue 1 (Fall 2009), 189–211. Garrido, Juan Manuel.“Le corps insacrifiable”, Europe, París, 2009, 277–283. Garrido, Juan Manuel. "La mutation infinie du sens", Les Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg, 42, 2017. Hörl, Erich. 'The Artificial Intelligence of Sense. The History of Sense and Technology After Jean-Luc Nancy (by way of Simondon).' In: Parrhesia, no. 17, 2013, pp. 11–24. Hutchens, B. C. Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005. Hutchens, B. C., ed. Jean-Luc Nancy: Justice, Legality, and World. New York: Continuum, 2012. James, Ian. The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Kamuf, Peggy, ed. On the Work of Jean-Luc Nancy: A Special Issue of Paragraph. Nov. 1992. Martin, Jean-Clet, ed. Sens en tous sens, (with Jean-Luc Nancy, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida...), Paris, Galilée, 2004. Mohan, Shaj, “The Marvelous Births of Jean-Luc Nancy Archived 26 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine”, European Journal of Psychoanalysis Morin, Marie-Eve. Jean-Luc Nancy. Cambridge: Polity, 2012. Sparks, Simon, ed. On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1997. Tuppini, Tommaso. Jean-Luc Nancy. Le forme della comunicazione. Roma: Carocci 2012. At the Heart: of Jean-Luc Nancy. A Special Issue of The New Centennial Review, Vol. 2, no.3, Fall 2002. == External links == Jean-Luc Nancy article at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Grace of Jean-Luc Nancy, tributes by friends and colleagues on Philosophy World Democracy “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” by Jean-Luc Nancy "La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée" by Jean-Luc Nancy On Communism, by Nancy. Demosophia by Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy. Between Story and Truth. In: Little Mag. July / August 2001. Emmanuel Alloa. The real outside is at the heart of the inside. Interview. Atopia. 2007. Jean-Luc Nancy. The Technique of the Present. Lecture. Nouveau Musée. January 1997. David Patrick. Review of The Sense of the World at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 April 2003). Adam Kotsko. Already, Not Yet. Review of La Déclosion: Déconstruction du christianisme. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 87–95, Fall 2005. Jean-Luc Nancy. Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy in two parts, by Florian Forestier (in French) — Second part of the interview (in French) Federico Ferrari and Jean-Luc Nancy (translated by Filippo Pietrogrande). What is Deconstruction? An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy. Derrida Today. Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 236–253, November 2020.

David K. Lewis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lewis_(philosopher)

David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton University from 1970 until his death. He is closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years. Lewis made significant contributions in philosophy of mind, philosophy of probability, epistemology, philosophical logic, aesthetics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of time and philosophy of science. In most of these fields he is considered among the most important figures of recent decades. But Lewis is most famous for his work in metaphysics, philosophy of language and semantics, in which his books On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) and Counterfactuals (1973) are considered classics. His works on the logic and semantics of counterfactual conditionals are broadly used by philosophers and linguists along with a competing account from Robert Stalnaker; together the Stalnaker-Lewis theory of counterfactuals has become perhaps the most pervasive and influential account of its type in the philosophical and linguistic literature. His metaphysics incorporated seminal contributions to quantified modal logic, the development of counterpart theory, counterfactual causation, and the position called "Humean supervenience". Most comprehensively in On the Plurality of Worlds, Lewis defended modal realism: the view that possible worlds exist as concrete entities in logical space, and that our world is one among many equally real possible ones. == Early life and education == Lewis was born in Oberlin, Ohio, to John D. Lewis, a professor of government at Oberlin College, and Ruth Ewart Kellogg Lewis, a medieval historian. He was the grandson of the Presbyterian minister Edwin Henry Kellogg and the great-grandson of the Presbyterian missionary and Hindi expert Samuel H. Kellogg.Lewis attended Oberlin High School, where he attended college lectures in chemistry. He went on to Swarthmore College and spent a year at Oxford University (1959–60), where he was tutored by Iris Murdoch and attended lectures by Gilbert Ryle, H. P. Grice, P. F. Strawson, and J. L. Austin. His year at Oxford played an important role in his decision to study philosophy. Lewis received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1967, where he studied under W. V. O. Quine, whose views he would later dispute. It was there he took a seminar with the Australian philosopher J. J. C. Smart. Smart recalled, "I taught David Lewis, or rather, he taught me."Lewis joined the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1966. In 1970, he moved to Princeton University, where he spent the remainder of his career. == Early work on convention == Lewis's first monograph was Convention: A Philosophical Study (1969), which is based on his doctoral dissertation and uses concepts of game theory to analyze the nature of social conventions; it won the American Philosophical Association's first Franklin Matchette Prize for the best book published in philosophy by a philosopher under 40. Lewis claimed that social conventions, such as the convention in most states that one drives on the right (not on the left), the convention that the original caller will re-call if a phone conversation is interrupted, etc., are solutions to so-called "'co-ordination problems'". Co-ordination problems were at the time of Lewis's book an under-discussed kind of game-theoretical problem; most game-theoretical discussion had centered on problems where the participants are in conflict, such as the prisoner's dilemma. Co-ordination problems are problematic, for, though the participants have common interests, there are several solutions. Sometimes one of the solutions is "salient", a concept invented by the game-theorist and economist Thomas Schelling (by whom Lewis was much inspired). For example, a co-ordination problem that has the form of a meeting may have a salient solution if there is only one possible spot to meet in town. But in most cases, we must rely on what Lewis calls "precedent" for a salient solution. If both participants know that a particular co-ordination problem, say "which side should we drive on?", has been solved in the same way numerous times before, both know that both know this, both know that both know that both know this, etc. (this particular state Lewis calls common knowledge, and it has since been much discussed by philosophers and game theorists), then they will easily solve the problem. That they have solved the problem successfully will be seen by even more people, and thus the convention will spread in the society. A convention is thus a behavioral regularity that sustains itself because it serves the interests of everyone involved. Another important feature of a convention is that a convention could be entirely different: one could just as well drive on the left; it is more or less arbitrary that one drives on the right in the US, for example. Lewis's main goal in the book, however, was not simply to provide an account of convention but rather to investigate the "platitude that language is ruled by convention" (Convention, p. 1.) The book's last two chapters (Signalling Systems and Conventions of Language; cf. also "Languages and Language", 1975) make the case that a population's use of a language consists of conventions of truthfulness and trust among its members. Lewis recasts in this framework notions such as truth and analyticity, claiming that they are better understood as relations between sentences and a language rather than as properties of sentences. == Counterfactuals and modal realism == Lewis went on to publish Counterfactuals (1973), which gives a modal analysis of the truth conditions of counterfactual conditionals in possible world semantics and the governing logic for such statements. According to Lewis, the counterfactual "If kangaroos had no tails they would topple over" is true if in all worlds most similar to the actual world where the antecedent "if kangaroos had no tails" is true, the consequent that kangaroos in fact topple over is also true. Lewis introduced the now standard "would" conditional operator □→ to capture these conditionals' logic. A sentence of the form A □→ C is true on Lewis's account for the same reasons given above. If there is a world maximally similar to ours where kangaroos lack tails but do not topple over, the counterfactual is false. The notion of similarity plays a crucial role in the analysis of the conditional. Intuitively, given the importance in our world of tails to kangaroos remaining upright, in the most similar worlds to ours where they have no tails they presumably topple over more frequently and so the counterfactual comes out true. This treatment of counterfactuals is closely related to an independently discovered account of conditionals by Robert Stalnaker, and so this kind of analysis is called Stalnaker-Lewis theory. The crucial areas of dispute between Stalnaker's account and Lewis's are whether these conditionals quantify over constant or variable domains (strict analysis vs. variable-domain analysis) and whether the Limit assumption should be included in the accompanying logic. Linguist Angelika Kratzer has developed a competing theory for counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals, "premise semantics", which aims to give a better heuristic for determining the truth of such statements in light of their often vague and context-sensitive meanings. Kratzer's premise semantics does not diverge from Lewis's for counterfactuals but aims to spread the analysis between context and similarity to give more accurate and concrete predictions for counterfactual truth conditions. === Realism about possible worlds === What made Lewis's views about counterfactuals controversial is that whereas Stalnaker treated possible worlds as imaginary entities, "made up" for the sake of theoretical convenience, Lewis adopted a position his formal account of counterfactuals did not commit him to, namely modal realism. On Lewis's formulation, when we speak of a world where I made the shot that in this world I missed, we are speaking of a world just as real as this one, and although we say that in that world I made the shot, more precisely it is not I but a counterpart of mine who was successful. Lewis had already proposed this view in some of his earlier papers: "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic" (1968), "Anselm and Actuality" (1970), and "Counterparts of Persons and their Bodies" (1971). The theory was widely considered implausible, but Lewis urged that it be taken seriously. Most often the idea that there exist infinitely many causally isolated universes, each as real as our own but different from it in some way, and that alluding to objects in this universe as necessary to explain what makes certain counterfactual statements true but not others, meets with what Lewis calls the "incredulous stare" (Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, 2005, pp. 135–137). He defends and elaborates his theory of extreme modal realism, while insisting that there is nothing extreme about it, in On the Plurality of Worlds (1986). Lewis acknowledges that his theory is contrary to common sense, but believes its advantages far outweigh this disadvantage, and that therefore we should not be hesitant to pay this price. According to Lewis, "actual" is merely an indexical label we give a world when we are in it. Things are necessarily true when they are true in all possible worlds. (Lewis is not the first to speak of possible worlds in this context. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and C.I. Lewis, for example, both speak of possible worlds as a way of thinking about possibility and necessity, and some of David Kaplan's early work is on the counterpart theory. Lewis's original suggestion was that all possible worlds are equally concrete, and the world in which we find ourselves is no realer than any other possible world.) === Criticisms === This theory has faced a number of criticisms. In particular, it is not clear how we could know what goes on in other worlds. After all, they are causally disconnected from ours; we can't look into them to see what is going on there. A related objection is that, while people are concerned with what they could have done, they are not concerned with what people in other worlds, no matter how similar to them, do. As Saul Kripke once put it, a presidential candidate could not care less whether someone else, in another world, wins an election, but does care whether he himself could have won it (Kripke 1980, p. 45).Another criticism of the realist approach to possible worlds is that it has an inflated ontology—by extending the property of concreteness to more than the singular actual world it multiplies theoretical entities beyond what should be necessary to its explanatory aims, thereby violating the principle of parsimony, Occam's razor. But the opposite position could be taken on the view that the modal realist reduces the categories of possible worlds by eliminating the special case of the actual world as the exception to possible worlds as simple abstractions. Possible worlds are employed in the work of Kripke and many others, but not in the concrete sense Lewis propounded. While none of these alternative approaches has found anything near universal acceptance, very few philosophers accept Lewis's brand of modal realism. === Influence === At Princeton, Lewis was a mentor of young philosophers and trained dozens of successful figures in the field, including several current Princeton faculty members, as well as people now teaching at a number of the leading philosophy departments in the U.S. Among his prominent students were Robert Brandom, L. A. Paul, J. David Velleman, Peter Railton, Phillip Bricker, Cian Dorr, and Joshua Greene. His direct and indirect influence is evident in the work of many prominent philosophers of the current generation. == Later life and death == Lewis suffered from severe diabetes for much of his life, which eventually grew worse and led to kidney failure. In July 2000 he received a kidney transplant from his wife Stephanie. The transplant allowed him to work and travel for another year, before he died suddenly and unexpectedly from further complications of his diabetes, on October 14, 2001.Since his death a number of posthumous papers have been published, on topics ranging from truth and causation to philosophy of physics. Lewisian Themes, a collection of papers on his philosophy, was published in 2004. A two-volume collection of his correspondence, Philosophical Letters of David K. Lewis, was published in 2020. A 2015 poll of philosophers conducted by Brian Leiter ranked Lewis the fourth most important Anglophone philosopher active between 1945 and 2000, behind only Quine, Kripke, and Rawls. == Works == === Books === Convention: A Philosophical Study, Harvard University Press 1969. Counterfactuals, Harvard University Press 1973; revised printing Blackwell 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds, Blackwell 1986. Parts of Classes, Blackwell 1991.Lewis published five volumes containing 99 papers—almost all the papers he published in his lifetime. They discuss his counterfactual theory of causation, the concept of semantic score, a contextualist analysis of knowledge, and a dispositional value theory, among many other topics. Philosophical Papers, Vol. I (1983) includes his early work on counterpart theory and the philosophy of language and of mind. Philosophical Papers, Vol. II (1986) includes his work on counterfactuals, causation, and decision theory, where he promotes his principal principle about rational belief. Its preface discusses Humean supervenience, the name Lewis gave to his overarching philosophical project. Papers in Philosophical Logic (1998). Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (1999) contains "Elusive Knowledge" and "Naming the Colours", honored by being reprinted in the Philosopher's Annual for the year they were first published. Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy (2000).Lewis's monograph Parts of Classes (1991), on the foundations of mathematics, sketched a reduction of set theory and Peano arithmetic to mereology and plural quantification. Very soon after its publication, Lewis became dissatisfied with some aspects of its argument; it is currently out of print (his paper "Mathematics is megethology", in Papers in Philosophical Logic, is partly a summary and partly a revision of "Parts of Classes"). === Selected papers === "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic", Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): pp. 113–126. "General semantics", Synthese, 22(1) (1970): pp. 18–67. "Causation", Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): pp. 556–67. Reprinted with postscripts in Philosophical Papers: Volume II (1986). "Semantic Analyses for Dyadic Deontic Logic" in Logical Theory and Semantic Analysis: Essays Dedicated to Stig Kanger on His Fiftieth Birthday, Reidel 1974. "The Paradoxes of Time Travel", American Philosophical Quarterly, April (1976): pp. 145–152. "Truth in Fiction", American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978): pp. 37–46. "How to Define Theoretical Terms", Journal of Philosophy 67 (1979): pp. 427–46. "Scorekeeping in a Language Game", Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979): pp. 339–59. "Mad pain and Martian pain", Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology Vol. I. N. Block, ed. Harvard University Press (1980): pp. 216–222. "A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance", in R. Jeffrey, ed., Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability: Volume II. Reprinted with postscripts in Philosophical Papers: Volume II (1986). "Are We Free to Break the Laws?" Theoria 47 (1981): pp. 113–21. "New Work for a Theory of Universals", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (1983): pp. 343–77. "What Experience Teaches", in Mind and Cognition by William G. Lycan, (1990 Ed.) pp. 499–519. Article omitted from subsequent editions. "Elusive Knowledge", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74/4 (1996): pp. 549–567. == See also == == References == == Further reading == Weatherson, Brian. "David Lewis". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hall, Ned. "David Lewis's Metaphysics". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Dixon, Scott. "David Lewis". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Nolan, Daniel Patrick (2005). David Lewis. Chesham [U.K.]: Acumen. Loewer, Barry; Schaffer, Jonathan, eds. (2015). A Companion to David Lewis. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. doi:10.1002/9781118398593 == External links == Service of Remembrance Friday, February 8, 2002 – Princeton University Chapel at the Wayback Machine (archived October 3, 2003) Photos from the weekend of the memorial service for David Lewis in Princeton, February 2002

Joxe Azurmendi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joxe_Azurmendi

Joxe Azurmendi Otaegi (born 19 March 1941) is a Basque writer, philosopher, essayist and poet. He has published numerous articles and books on ethics, politics, the philosophy of language, technique, Basque literature and philosophy in general.He is member of Jakin and the director of Jakin irakurgaiak, a publishing house which has published over 40 books under his management. He also collaborated with the Klasikoak publishing firm in the Basque translations of various philosophical works and was one of the founders of Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea (The Basque Summer University). He is currently a Professor of Modern Philosophy and a lecturer at Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (The University of the Basque Country). In 2010 he was awarded the title "honorary academic" by Euskaltzaindia (The Basque Language Academy).Azurmendi is an intellectual who studies the problem more than the solution. Azurmendi's essays cover modern European topics in great depth and knowledge. He has incorporated the philosophy and thinking of European thinkers, especially German ones. He often adopts a polemic tone.Joxe Azurmendi is, in the opinion of many, one of the most prolific and erudite thinkers in the Basque Country. == Life == Joxe Azurmendi studied philosophy and theology at The University of the Basque Country, Rome and Münster.At the beginning of the 1960s he joined the cultural movement which grew up around the magazine Jakin, and was in fact the director of the publication when it was prohibited for the first time by Franco's regime. He has collaborated closely and uninterruptedly with the magazine since its restoration. In that publication he has raised the problems of Basque society in the context of European thinkers. During the early 1970s he focused his attention on disseminating basic literature in the Basque language on subjects which were being hotly debated at the time in the Basque Country: nationhood, socialism, internationalism, etc. In the 1980s he began teaching at The University of the Basque Country, and in 1984 he submitted his thesis on Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, the founder of the Mondragon cooperative movement, in which he argued that Arizmendiarrieta's project aimed to unite individuals and society under an organisation which combined both socialism and French personalism.In 1992 he published what was to become his best-known work: Espainolak eta euskaldunak (The Spanish and the Basques). The work, published by Elkar, was written in response to a text by Sánchez-Albornoz which claimed that "The Basques are the last people to be civilised in Spain; they have a thousand years less civilisation than any other people ... They are rough, simple people who nevertheless consider themselves to be the children of God and the heirs to his glory. But they are really nothing more than un-Romanised Spaniards." Azurmendi's essay refuted and dismantled the stereotypes maintained about the Basques by certain Spanish intellectuals. It was on the threshold of the new millennium, however, that Azurmendi's work reached its height. During the early years of the 21st century he published the trilogy formed by Espainiaren arimaz (About the soul of Spain) (2006, Elkar), Humboldt. Hizkuntza eta pentsamendua (Humboldt. Language and Thought) (2007, UEU) and Volksgeist. Herri gogoa (Volksgeist. National Character) (2008, Elkar). In this trilogy, Joxe Azurmendi reveals some of his most significant thinking. == Philosophical work == His work emerged and developed during a period marked by a crisis of culture, politics and values. But it was a crisis that he understood not as something negative, but rather something that opened up a whole new range of possibilities. Consequently, all his thinking is centred around the defence of freedom in every field, but especially in relation to conscience and thinking. Far from fleeing the crisis, then, his work tries to outline how we can live in this situation. To this end, he adopts a relativist perspective, and given that modernity has left us with no solid base, he fights against the last vestiges of the dogmatism towards which our society tends to lean when in crisis: " The proclamation of relativism is provocative. ... I am not particularly interested in being an apostle of relativism. But as I come from a dogmatic culture [Franco's regime], I'm allergic to some things. Truth, Reason and absolute correction were Catholic in that culture. Now I hear that postmodern relativism is the cause of the moral misery and the loss of values. It is seen that there is a nostalgia of dogmatic culture, disguised with some democratic and enlightened discourse. That dogmatic culture has relativism as its enemy, for that reason I claim this convicted relativism. But it is not an absolute relativism." In this sense, for example, he is critical of the modern state, which he accuses of being the new church seeking to control our consciences. He also criticises the exploitation of morality, or in other words, how politicians, instead of solving the problems facing them in their various areas or fields, flee instead to moral ground to hide their responsibilities under the cloak of supposedly absolute moral principles: "In the mean time, what is the point of repeating the old tale as to what the state is becoming? Once the sour critical analysis of sometime ago (Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man), the dark negative utopias (Aldous Huxley, George Orwell) and the protest cries (May 68) are forgotten, and with a near lack of the slightest sense of resistance in civil society, the cobweb of power spins peacefully over our heads, all over the place. Even the dressing room." He has also made an important contribution in questioning the canonical interpretations which have been constructed regarding different issues. Of particular interest, due to his erudition and training in Germany, is his interpretation of the German Enlightenment. In this context he deconstructs the apparent opposition between the French Enlightenment and German Romanticism and proposes a new way of thinking about the different aspects which stem from this opposition. In this way, he defies certain Spanish and French intellectuals (Alain Finkielkraut) and argues that nationalism in fact arose in France (Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Ernest Renan) and was later reinterpreted by the German thinkers and romantics. By doing this, he questions the way in which authors such as Goethe, Schiller, Herder or Humboldt are viewed as the fathers of metaphysical nationalism. In this field, the opposition between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism is deconstructed. Thus, Azurmendi criticizes the essentialist basis of Spanish nationalism and French nationalism that operates under these nation states. Some of the topics Azurmendi deeply develops in his essays first appeared in his poetry of youth. Azurmendi is within the Basque poetry of the 60s which shows the fight against the tradition, the old faith and the dogmatic certainties: He also dedicates a large part of his work to recovering and reinterpreting Basque thinkers, breaking through and dismantling numerous stereotypes. Of particular interest is his research into Jon Mirande, Orixe, Unamuno and others. He is an author who has worked from within and for Basque culture. He claims to have been influenced by Basque authors from the post-war period, for example, in questions of language. In this field, he has researched other authors also, including Heidegger, Wittgenstein, George Steiner and Humboldt. The fact that his vast oeuvre is all written in the Basque language is clearly consistent with his thinking. == Writing style == In his language Joxe Azurmendi combines an educated register with colloquial expressions, and his prose is fast, incisive, and ironic. Azurmendi's Basque is modern and standard and he demonstrates great knowledge of the language, and richness and variety of expression. == Awards and recognition == 1976: Andima Ibiñagabeitia Award for the work: Espainolak eta euskaldunak 1978: Irun Hiria Award for the work: Mirande eta kristautasuna (Mirande and Christianity). 1998: Irun Hiria Award for the work: Teknikaren meditazioa (Meditations on Technique). 2005: Juan San Martin Award for the work: Humboldt: Hizkuntza eta pentsamendua (Humboldt. Language and Thought). 2010: Euskadi Literatura Saria Award, in the essay category, for the work: Azken egunak Gandiagarekin (The last days with Gandiaga). 2010: Ohorezko euskaltzaina by Euskaltzaindia. 2012: Eusko Ikaskuntza Award. 2012: Dabilen Elea Award 2014: Digitization of the entire work of Joxe Azurmendi by The Council of Gipuzkoa 2015: Euskadi Literatura Saria Award, in the essay category, for the work: Historia, arraza, nazioa (History, race, nation). 2019: Joxe Azurmendi Congress hosted by Joxe Azurmendi Katedra and University of the Basque Country == Works == The Inguma database of the Basque scientific community contains over 180 texts written by Azurmendi. === Essays === Hizkuntza, etnia eta marxismoa (Language, Ethnics and Marxism) (1971, Euskal Elkargoa) Kolakowski (Kołakowski) (1972, EFA): co-author: Joseba Arregui Kultura proletarioaz (About Proletarian Culture) (1973, Jakin EFA) Iraultza sobietarra eta literatura (The Soviet Revolution and Literature) (1975, Gero Mensajero) Gizona Abere hutsa da (Man is Pure Animal) (1975, EFA) Zer dugu Orixeren kontra? (What do we have against Orixe?) (1976, EFA Jakin) Zer dugu Orixeren alde? (What do we have in favour of Orixe?) (1977, EFA Jakin) Artea eta gizartea (Art and Society) (1978, Haranburu) Errealismo sozialistaz (About Socialist Realism) (1978, Haranburu) Mirande eta kristautasuna (Mirande and Christianity) (1978, GAK) Arana Goiriren pentsamendu politikoa (The political thinking of Arana Goiri) (1979, Hordago Lur) Nazionalismo Internazionalismo Euskadin (Nationalism Internationalism in the Basque Country) (1979, Hordago Lur) PSOE eta euskal abertzaletasuna (The Spanish Socialist Party and Basque Nationalism) (1979, Hordago Lur) El hombre cooperativo. Pensamiento de Arizmendiarrieta (Cooperative Man. Arizmendiarrieta's thinking) (1984, Lan Kide Aurrezkia) Translated into Japanese as ホセ・アスルメンディ: アリスメンディアリエタの協同組合哲学 ( 東大和 : みんけん出版 , 1990) ISBN 4-905845-73-4 Filosofía personalista y cooperación. Filosofía de Arizmendiarrieta (Personalist philosophy and cooperation. Arizmendiarrieta's philosophy) (1984, EHU) Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spengler, Miranderen pentsamenduan (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spengler in the thinking of Mirande) (1989, Susa) Miranderen pentsamendua (Mirande's thinking) (1989, Susa) Gizaberearen bakeak eta gerrak (War and Peace according to the Human Animal) (1991, Elkar) Espainolak eta euskaldunak (The Spanish and the Basques) (1992, Elkar) Translated into Spanish as Azurmendi, Joxe: Los españoles y los euskaldunes, Hondarribia: Hiru, 1995. ISBN 978-84-87524-83-7 Karlos Santamaria. Ideiak eta ekintzak (Karlos Santamaria. Ideas and Action) (1994, The Gipuzkoa Provincial Council (unpublished)) La idea cooperativa: del servicio a la comunidad a su nueva creación (The cooperative idea: from the community service toward its new creation) (1996, Gizabidea Fundazioa) Demokratak eta biolentoak (The Democrats and the Violent) (1997, Elkar) Teknikaren meditazioa (Meditations on Technique) (1998, Kutxa Fundazioa) Oraingo gazte eroak (The Mad Youth of Today) (1998, Enbolike) El hecho catalán. El hecho portugués (The Catalan fact. The Portuguese fact) (1999, Hiru) Euskal Herria krisian (The Basque Country in Crisis) (1999, Elkar) La violencia y la búsqueda de nuevos valores (The violence and the search for new values) (2001, Hiru) La presencia de Nietzsche en los pensadores vascos Ramiro de Maeztu y Jon Mirande (The Nietzsche's presence in the Basque thinkers Ramiro de Maeztu and Jon Mirande) (2002, Euskalerriaren Adiskideen Elkartea) Etienne Salaberry. Bere pentsamenduaz (1903–2003) (Etienne Salaberry. About his Thinking (1903–2003)) (2003, Egan) Espainiaren arimaz (About the soul of Spain) (2006, Elkar) Volksgeist. Herri gogoa (Volksgeist. National Character) (2007, Elkar) Humboldt. Hizkuntza eta pentsamendua (Humboldt. Language and Thought) (2007, UEU) Azken egunak Gandiagarekin (The last days with Gandiaga) (2009, Elkar) Bakea gudan (Peace in War) (2012, Txalaparta) Barkamena, kondena, tortura (Forgiveness, Condemnation, Torture) (2012, Elkar) Karlos Santamariaren pentsamendua (Karlos Santamaria's thinking) (2013, Jakin/EHU) Historia, arraza, nazioa (History, race, nation) (2014, Elkar) Gizabere kooperatiboaz (About the cooperative Human Animal) (2016, Jakin) Hizkuntza, Nazioa, Estatua (Language, Nation, State) (2017, Elkar) Beltzak, juduak eta beste euskaldun batzuk (Blacks, Jews and other Basques) (2018, Elkar) Pentsamenduaren historia Euskal Herrian (History of thought in the Basque Country) (2020, EHU-Jakin) === Poetry === Hitz berdeak (Unrefined words) (1971, EFA) XX. mendeko poesia kaierak – Joxe Azurmendi (Books of 20th century poetry – Joxe Azurmendi) (2000, Susa), edition of Koldo Izagirre. === Articles in journals === Articles in the journal Jakin Articles in the journal Anaitasuna Articles in the journal RIEV == See also == Volksgeist == References == === Citations === === Sources === == External links == (in English) The democrats and the violent (in German) Verspätetes Manifest (in German) Ein Denkmal der Achtung und Liebe. Humboldt über die baskische Landschaft, RIEV, 48-1: 125–142, Eusko Ikaskuntza, 2003 ISSN 0212-7016 (in Basque) Joxe Azurmendi on the jakingunea website (in Basque) section on Joxe Azurmendi on the Literaturaren Zubitegia website (in Basque) The poem Prometeo mixerablea, music by Imanol Ubeda. (in Basque) interview by Elkarri. (in Basque) Karlos Santamaria's thinking. (in Basque) Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spengler, in the thinking of Mirande (1989, Susa) Archived 10 December 2012 at archive.today (in Basque) Books of 20th century poetry – Joxe Azurmendi (2000, Susa) Archived 18 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine (in Basque) Joxe Azurmendi on the Lapiko Kritikoa website.

Antonio Escohotado

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Escohotado

Antonio Escohotado Espinosa (5 July 1941 – 21 November 2021), commonly called Antonio Escohotado, was a Spanish philosopher, jurist, essayist and university professor. His life's work primarily focused on law, philosophy and sociology, yet extended to many other disciplines. Escohotado gained public renown for his research on drugs and for his well-known anti-prohibitionist positions. His crown jewel The General History of Drugs, is the most comprehensive book ever written regarding drugs, in any language, in all of academia. The leitmotif of his work is, in the same way, an affirmation of freedom as an antidote to fear or the constraints that push the human being towards all kinds of servitude. His thought fits into the framework of libertarian liberalism. == Summary of intellectual trajectory == Escohotado declared more than once "to have no other stimulus than self-clarification, nor a compass other than to find out the beginning and end of all things." According to him, his work has developed as a process of self-learning of the variety of topics that he addresses by applying a method genealogical analysis, a historical approach that chronologically organizes information and is suspicious of taxonomies. During the 1960s he trained as a jurist and philosopher fascinated by the teachings of Ortega y Gasset and Zubiri —influenced by the concepts of vital reason and historical reason—, through which he came to know Freud and especially Hegel, whose philosophy of religion he analyzed in his doctoral thesis The unhappy conscience (1972). This work together with Reality and Substance (1985) —an incursion into the field of logic and pure metaphysics— lay the foundations of a solid philosophical foundation on which the rest of his intellectual production rests. With De physis a polis (1975) he went back to Pre-Socratic thinkers, while at the same time he played a leading role in the emergence of the island of Ibiza as a countercultural focus in Spain at the end of Francoism and the democratic awakening, by founding the disco Amnesia (1976). Over the years he evolved, from a greater application to the abstract in his youth and early maturity, towards a growing interest in the data extracted from the observation of the most concrete reality, taking the option of "an observant science, cornered today for its predictive branch".Since then and until today he has devoted himself to studying and disseminating the origin and evolution of impersonal human entities that represent complexity itself, "which are neither volitional subjects nor inert objects, but beings of a third type – such as human understanding, the family or political economy – the result of the concurrence of unlimited individual actions in some order not planned a priori." This interest in reality as an emancipatory principle of simplification places Escohotado's work at the hinge between ontology and the sciences of Man – according to Hume's expression – his interdisciplinary perspective combines a great diversity of knowledge and interests from a humanistic position. Starting from logic and metaphysics, it penetrates into epistemology and the theory of science, to later derive towards even more properly human phenomena, such as the economy and political power, gender myths and family and sexual customs, or the forms of intoxication. The common impulse in all these fields is an affirmation of human freedom as an antidote to fear, or to the impositions of authorities outside of personal responsibility.From the underground militancy during the Franco regime, his political positions have evolved until he defined himself as "a liberal democrat", while in his work the idea matured that "any political utopia ends up being indiscernible from one or another eugenic project, a euphemism for genocidal companies." Politically, he is a singular thinker in the Spanish panorama, and not always well understood, since he is not part of the traditional left/right axis, but rather focuses on the issues of freedom/authoritarianism, rejecting utopianism and authoritarianism from pragmatic and rationalist positions. Nevertheless, he declared himself to be "the paradigm of the man of the left in Spain." Escohotado became a historian and analyst of current affairs, social practices and culture during the transition for his contemporaries through his numerous articles published first in El País and later in El Mundo and Diario 16. For example, those crimes of the State Perpetrated by the GALs, they are revealed to public opinion by Escohotado in opinion stands and essays on the sociology of political power such as Majesties, crimes and victims (1987), or The Spirit of Comedy, Anagrama Essay Award in 1992. As the author of the book The General History of Drugs (1989), he achieved public notoriety in the last decades of the 20th century for his defense of anti-prohibitionist positions through articles and appearances in televised debates. He practiced bioassay, testing, classifying and describing the physical and subjective effects of more than thirty different psychoactive substances (crack, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis, LSD, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, etc.). This user manual after several editions would end up titled Learning from Drugs (1990–1995). He has maintained numerous controversies in the media for his opinions on sensitive issues for morals, such as drug use, prostitution or euthanasia. The same that for his followers means independence of criteria or the cultivation of free thought, is considered intellectual impertinence by his detractors, and has sometimes caused the rejection of certain academic circles that have accused him of professional intrusion, for example, after the publication of the Epistemological manifesto appeared as Chaos y Orden, Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 1999. On a professional level, he has also served as a translator for more than forty titles. Among others, he has translated the works of Newton, Hobbes, Jefferson and Bakunin, he has especially divulged the work of Thomas Szasz and that of Ernst Jünger. He served until his retirement in 2013 as professor of Philosophy and Methodology of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology of the UNED. Until very recently he has been immersed in the study of the history of the communist movement with the writing of The enemies of commerce. A Moral History of Property (2008–2014), a three-volume monograph. In 2019, he was awarded the Juan de Mariana Prize for his defense of "freedom in response to the coercions that end up subjecting the individual to all kinds of slavery." == Early years == === From Brazil to Spain === The Escohotado family, a long-time resident of the northwest of the Madrid mountain range, has its first notorious member with Escohotado's great-grandfather, Vicente, who supported the Glorious Revolution of 1868 as mayor of Galapagar. The son of the former (and grandfather of Escohotado), also named Vicente, was one of the first scholarship holders of the town to study law, and when he had already published an extensive history of theater in verse, La teatrada (1925), along with several books of planhs and songs, he went from being a solicitor to mayor of El Escorial. The sixth of his sons, Román (1908-1970), father of Antonio Escohotado, began by voting for the socialist Julián Besteiro and ended up signing the Manifesto of the Spanish Falanx. He was head of Dionisio Ridruejo's secretariat during his time as director general of Propaganda, directed Radio Nacional from 1941, won the main journalistic awards (including the Mariano de Cavia prize) and was press attaché in Brazil from 1946 to 1956.Escohotado spoke about his interest in knowledge at this time: When the family returned to Spain, Escohotado experienced the abrupt contrast between the tropical paradise of his early childhood and the gray and severe society of National Catholicism, which led him to forge a spirit of rebellion generated by the newfound authoritarianism and sexual repression. Escohotado found his vocation for knowledge as an early bloomer and it led him to begin a career in philosophy. However, the intellectual status quo of the Faculty of Philosophy led him to disappointment and, consequently, he followed the advice of his father Román to study a career with more professional opportunities: Despite having spent a good part of the two summers in holding cells, required by the university militias, because "he had turned the tent into a seminar of Marxism and disobedience", his lack of military spirit did not prevent him from taking steps to enlist with the Vietcong in their war against the United States. A chronic hepatitis allowed him to shorten his period of military service and forced him to reflect on his future. He then decided to prepare for competitive examinations compatible with leftist commitment —which excluded those of Diplomat, a career to which he seemed to be naturally inclined due to his father's example and his training in languages and general culture— and finally joined the Official Credit Institute (Spanish: ICO) in 1964 to manage the service of Fusión y Concentración de Empresas during five years of economic prosperity. A position that was compatible with that of assistant in the faculties of Law and Politics at the Complutense University; as well as organizing a seminar on Kant and Hegel at the Autonomous University of Madrid and a course on Psychoanalysis at the now defunct School of Anthropology. He then began to publish, in addition to giving practical classes or seminars in the faculties of Politics and Philosophy, where he developed a relationship with colleagues such as Carlos Moya, Eugenio Trías Sagnier and Felipe Martínez Marzoa, and discovered somewhat younger authors such as Savater, Azúa and Echeverría. United in one way or another by the world that May '68 and Woodstock heralded, also a breeding ground for anarchistic nuclei such as that of Agustín García Calvo, they all formed part of an improvised "tribe" whose reasonable sector continued with their studies, while a more radicalized wing rediscovered terrorism, and others like Escohotado decided to lead a life far removed from consumerism, embracing in passing what came to be called "the sexual revolution of the 1970s". === Initial publications === He began to publish under the guidance of José Ortega Spottorno, who had just relaunched the publishing house and reissued the Revista de Occidente —both founded by his father, Ortega y Gasset—, and it was there that the article Alucinógenos y mundo habitual appeared, his first involvement into this field, which contains the described experiences by Michaux and Huxley as the most immediate references. His reflection soon led him to carry out a series of psychaunautic bio-essays, which a few decades later would lead him to compose the first cultural history of drugs and a phenomenology of the main psychoactive substances. In these initial publications, Escohotado mixes any of the subjects treated with his philosophical passion of the moment, the study of the work of Hegel and Freud, two authors that will permanently influence him. His professor of Philosophy of Law and later thesis director —Luis Legaz Lacambra, who translated The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and was a disciple of Kelsen— was astonished when Escohotado presented him with the academic work four months before finishing his degree. The professor took a few days to examine the text and only suggested to the doctoral candidate that he included a chapter on the moral law and positive law in Kant.With the same blueprint he wrote his doctoral thesis, The Moral Philosophy of the Young Hegel, which, presented in 1970, annoyed part of a tribunal that received it as an "apology on Marx's mentor, a Protestant on top of that", provoking on several occasions the absence of the quorum required to grade the work. In that Spain, some were still scandalized by what was announced in the introduction: When it was published —as The Unhappy Conscience. Essay on the philosophy of religion of Hegel (Revista de Occidente, 1972)—, the small academic uproar was followed by the inclusion of the work in the Index of heretical texts, at the same time that it won the New Criticism prize, a short-lived award. Forty years later, recapitulating on the research, Escohotado maintains "a distinction between spirit and positive religion. By embodying the rupture between life and its fossil, Christianity would be the reality captured in the form of fantasy and vice versa, the truth estranged from itself. It was my first contact with the divergence between intention and result".Academic obstacles made the later Marcuse, utopia y razón (Alianza Editorial, 1968), a book focused on examining the compatibility of Marx with Hegel and Freud proposed by one of the founders of the Frankfurt School, whose synthesis was very attractive for that precise moment, appear earlier. Escohotado analyzed the premises that articulated the Marcusian theses. First, he focused on the figure of Freud who "was subjected to a straitjacket typical of Marxism at that time, which was an identity of structure between alienation and repression, clearly unsustainable". The second author was Hegel who "was forgotten in the essentials of his method —dialectics— which does not consist in 'judging', but rather, in 'exposing'". And the last point concluded that "it was comfortable to present Leninism as a betrayal of Marxism, but it was a purely romantic thesis to propose that the commercial society could be abolished without recourse to a single Party, censorship, and other violence". The book made certain sectors of Spanish Marxism of the time uncomfortable by qualifying the text as "revisionist" and even provoked a brief polemic with one of the relevant intellectuals of the time, Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora. Nevertheless, the book obtained some positive reviews. It would be one of the first, if not the first monograph dedicated to this school in Spain, and also the writer's first sales success. The edition sold out in barely a month, perhaps thanks to the fact that half of Europe would wake up to graffiti like "Marx, Mao and Marcuse". But the author objected to reprinting it, believing that it was written in haste and "in full self-importance syndrome". After these initial works, Escohotado became increasingly detached from utopian positions. == Ibiza and metaphysics == Thanks to a leave of absence from his civil service that was not to last more than two years, Escohotado set out in 1970 to experience a life without luxury, sustained by the income obtained through translations, and dispensing with conventional habits. In those days, Ibiza offered peasant houses (Spanish: casas payesas) designed in accordance to ancestral techniques, without electricity or running water but very cheap, which their new inhabitants turned into a sort of monastery, as devoted to the collective life and orgiastic traditions as those of the Middle Ages. Although only a minority had a vehicle, it was enough to walk and hitchhike to sustain a very intense social life, where everything revolved around flirting within a diffuse plan to reinvent life with material austerity and alternative drugs. It was precisely profound experiences with visionary substances such as LSD, as well as incessant study, that led the author to the project of elaborating his own treatise on metaphysics. The first part of this project involved a review of the earliest philosophical testimonies —From physis to polis. La evolución del pensamiento griego desde Tales a Sócrates (Anagrama, 1975)— in which he attempts to thematically order the scattered fragments of each pre-Socratic. The results are debatable when it comes to recomposing the lost work of Heraclitus, although the style gains in fluidity and expressive economy. The prologue of the book ironizes about the figure of the "specialist in the subject", who devotes nine tenths of his space to comment on observations of his colleagues, and one or none to the commented author. The epilogue ironizes on French postmodernity, then germinating, called to épater with theses such as the "pre-Socratic artificialism" suggested by Clément Rosset. Like the specialist, who decided to talk about himself in any case, the postmodern does the same by imitating intellectuals like Lacan, Deleuze or Althusser, concentrated according to Escohotado in disguising emptiness with a jargon whose mystery begins and ends by twisting the grammar. === Reality and Substance === The second part of Escohotado's metaphysical project took shape in the work Reality and Substance (Taurus, 1985). From Physis to Polis concludes with the simultaneous birth of the physical world as a cosmos emancipated from the resource to magic, and of democracy as an order sustained by civil liberties. Reality and Substance begins with the physical world as "unity of the difference between being and thought," where the task of the philosopher is to move "from fact to becoming" by analyzing modalities of action.The metaphysical or ontological treatise as a classical style of writing philosophy was already then an outdated genre or considered by many as obsolete, which starts from defining basic categories of discourse to then deduce the following categories by linking them from the first to the last, and Escohotado chooses: Commenting on Bertrand Russell's An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, in 1944, Einstein detected "an unfortunate fear of metaphysics [...] and I am especially pleased to note that in the last chapter it is recognized that it is impossible to get along without it. I can only reproach in this respect the bad intellectual conscience that can be perceived between the lines. Escohotado expands this perspective with two extensive appendices on positivism and logical empiricism, gravediggers of metaphysics and guardians of a corporate orthodoxy that "grants the mind a subordinate place." In Escohotado's understanding, "what is common to both is a pseudo-empirical attitude, which did not even consider the relationship between being and thought, guided by the goal of turning science into a new religious institute, dogmatic and sectarian in equal parts." When he went on to study complex phenomena, the twelve years devoted to "polishing the prose poetry that is metaphysics" would be remembered by the author as the fruit of an "anachronistic stubbornness" whose only justification a posteriori could be to create familiarity with "those few words —essence, existence, matter, cause, accident...— on which the meaning of the others rests", as a sine qua non condition for being able to think for oneself. === Amnesia, Whores and Wives, and an indictment === Between 1970 and 1983 Escohotado translated more than forty titles for different publishers, among them the only comprehensive anthology of Thomas Jefferson, Hobbes' Leviathan and Newton's Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica. When he received his widowed mother's inheritance in 1976, it occurred to him to transform a large old farmhouse into a meeting place for the "tribe" —basically equipped with instruments for live music— which would become Amnesia, one of the most multitudinous and best known discotheques in the world.Shortly afterwards he published Historias de familia, cuatro mitos sobre sexo y deber (Anagrama, 1978), his first anthropological essay. The work examines the marital model exemplified by Mary and Joseph, in the light of the contrast offered by the relationship of Gilgamesh with Ishtar, that of Zeus with Hera and that of Hercules with Deyanira. These timeless figures of ancient consciousness manifest themselves for Escohotado in the primordial tension between the two poles of the archaic family: the patriarch who devours the offspring and the matriarch who conspires to turn him into a eunuch in the service of his children. The book was reworked in depth as Rameras y esposas (Anagrama, 1993), Whores and Wives. The essay is surprising in the first place for the chronicles contained in the apocryphal Gospels about the child and adolescent Jesus, who is portrayed as a despot with magical powers that he uses to get his own way. But it includes parallel analyses on Mesopotamian ritual prostitution —which commanded virgins to remain on the temple steps and give themselves to the first man who put a coin in their hand—, or the conflict between decency and freedom imposed on Roman women, since only those registered as harlots enjoyed the status of adults; the rest were considered minors under the tutelage of a male, from the cradle to the grave. The last section reviews ancient family law, followed by a highly polemical epilogue on the feminist movement. The founding of Amnesia provoked only the first frictions with the local police, which would culminate in 1983 with his prosecution for involvement in cocaine trafficking, accused of directing "the hippy mafia" from the cover offered by his status as a writer and teacher —Escohotado had re-entered the National University of Distance Education (UNED) as a part-time assistant in 1980—. The newspaper Diario 16 commented at the time that "The professor of Ethics is a trafficker of hard drugs", and the scandal escalated when El País published two days later an article by Escohotado himself. A victim of entrapment, forced to participate in a drug dealing operation in which both buyers and sellers were policemen, during his three months in custody he was forced to share a cell with a leader of a Corsican-Marseillaise group, registered with Interpol for extortion and three murders, and the pressures he suffered to collaborate with one of the sides, neither of which lacked double agents, pushed him to leave the island for good. Five years later a hearing of the trial was held, where he was convicted of "drug trafficking in the degree of impossible attempt", a figure of the Spanish Penal Code that would soon be replaced by the jurisprudential doctrine of provoked crime. Instead of appealing the sentence he opted for the "humble but paid vacation" of a year in the penitentiary of Cuenca, and there he remained uncommunicated, which allowed him to work without interruptions, receiving mail and meals under the door. === Teaching, research, and controversies === The five years between his indictment and imprisonment are by far the most prolific phase in Escohotado's biography, as he publishes practically a book a year, while simultaneously publishing monthly opinion columns in El País and a media presence boosted by the audience for his first television confrontation on the program La Clave (presented by José Luis Balbín) with José María Mato Reboredo, who was the head of the Central Narcotics Brigade at the time. Escohotado organized two courses on pharmacology and civil disobedience —with Albert Hofmann, Thomas Szasz and Alexander Shulgin among other speakers— that broke attendance records for summer university courses, which unleashed in the 1990s a fashion for television debates on Prohibition. At the same time, he passed the qualifying exams to become a full professor, in charge of Philosophy and Methodology of Social Sciences at the newly created Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the UNED, where he remained until his retirement. Starting with The General History of Drugs, which, despite its 1500 pages, received an extraordinary critical and public acclaim, he was credited with "an army of followers and two or three detractors".The first text of this period is Majesties, Crimes, and, Victims (Anagrama, 1987), an essay in legal sociology that reviews a block of apparently disparate crimes —illegal propaganda, homosexuality, apostasy, euthanasia, blasphemy, prostitution, magical practices, pharmacological idiosyncrasies, pornography, contraception, sedition, tax fraud, public scandal, conscientious objection, and the disclosure of state secrets— whose common denominator is "to blur the boundary between morality and law, with inevitably corrupting effects for both spheres". After analyzing different manifestations of each, Escohotado comes to the conclusion that condemning voluntarily requested services between adults, or publicly expressing forbidden thoughts create crimes of only supposed victim, where the offense does not fall on someone of flesh and blood, but on some auctoritas of religious origin that declares itself an offended party even though it has not participated in the incident. This whole group of behaviors derives "from the archaic injustice par excellence that is lèse majesté, a challenge to the power of the prince that secularized societies displace towards new mayestatic powers, sometimes camouflaged by scientific pretexts such as the 'pharmacracy' described by Thomas Szasz".For Escohotado, freedom is incompatible with any crime of mere defiance, since "every crime of lèse-majesté is ultimately a crime against humanity, an inertia of slave societies governed by a military-clerical logic". This analysis aroused the interest of criminologists, prosecutors and judges, and in April 1989, two years after the essay appeared, the jurisprudence issued the first acquittal for provoked crime. Since then, the Spanish judiciary has been reluctant to confuse morality and law, and almost all crimes of lèse-majesté —beginning with blasphemy— lost their validity. Escohotado has continued to draw attention to the legal status of euthanasia (a contempt for divine providence), and even more to the crime of assisting the suicide (a contempt for medical authority) as pending issues. Following this legal essay, the sociologist Emilio Lamo de Espinosa published in 1993 his remarkable work entitled Delitos sin víctimas: orden social y ambivalencia moral (Crimes without victims: social order and moral ambivalence). == General History of Drugs == Betting, in his own words, on "the pharmacological enlightenment, which presents this field as one more object of knowledge, where the quintessence of danger is concentrated in ignorance", Escohotado composed a chronicle aimed at meticulously documenting the matter: He lists many examples: wine terrified Greco-Roman civilization, which led to severe prohibitions against its consumption; drinking coffee was punished with mutilation and hanging in Russia and Egypt, as was tobacco in Persia; Paraguayan mate was rejected by the Vatican as a satanic vehicle.... It was enough to gather in chronological order the details of each reaction to new drugs to open a hitherto closed window to the general history. Perhaps the most outstanding general concept of the work appears in the first chapter —"Magic, pharmacy and religion"—, when the author draws conclusions from the analogy between phármakos, ("drug") and pharmakós ("scapegoat")— Greek terms coming from the Indo-European pharmak-, proposing two divergent modalities of the sacrifice, core of all the rites instituted to purge guilt. 1. The first modality formalizes expiation as a mystical banquet or communion, consummating the sacrifice through the collective ingestion of a substance, which transfigures the mood of the faithful and is experienced as an interiorization of the deity. The other, 2. based on the physical transference of evil/impurity, immolates animals or people to ingratiate oneself with the deity, being ultimately the root for all subsequent types of decontaminating "crusades". Another aspect of the study was to recover the spirit of the sobria ebrietas, exemplarily embodied by the Socrates of some Platonic dialogues, which would resurface with the liberal spirit since the eighteenth century. Escohotado documents the extent to which the psychoactive arsenal was once again considered as a resource to broaden not only intuition and introspection, but also self-control and work performance. Many illustrious figures such as Goethe, Goya, Wagner, Bismarck and Freud imitated the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who regularly took opium on the advice of Galen, offering an illustrative contrast with the figure of the junkie born of Prohibition, who uses that same substance or derivatives thereof as an alibi for declaring himself a "wretch". According to the introduction: Among the first reviews was that of Fernando Savater, in the literary supplement of El País: Since then, the work has become a reference text on the subject, and soon after translated into several languages from an abridged version. Stimulated by this reception, Escohotado completed the work in 1992 with an appendix dedicated to self-essay: Learning from drugs: uses and abuses, prejudices and challenges, which inaugurated a genre dedicated to the "practical theory of psychoactive substances". This involved experimenting with such compounds, mentioning a hundred of them and closely analyzing the most commonly used ones —on the white and black market— such as alcohol, coffee, heroin, hemp, ether, benzodiazepines, cocaine, LSD, ketamine or MDMA. He analyzes drugs as a path to self-discovery, maturation, dialogue or simple entertainment: Instead of classifying drugs as legal and illegal, hard or soft, or according to their respective chemical bases, the author groups them in functional terms, attending to the extent to which they "satisfy, or promise to satisfy" needs defined as "peace, vigor, and trip." After clarifying that many psychoactive substances fulfill several, the text distributes them into some of these needs and examines them one by one from variables such as minimum active dose, average lethal dose, tolerance factor, subjective and objective effects, synergies, antagonisms and withdrawal syndromes. It also includes sections devoted to the cultural framework ("main applications"), and the mythology attached to each. "The rope that serves the mountaineer to climb," the epilogue begins, "serves the suicidal man to hang himself, and the sailor to let his sails catch the wind." Hence the proposal stated in the last paragraph: The illustration observes certain compounds that used reasonably can grant moments of peace, energy and psychic excursion. Its goal is to make them less and less toxic, and those who use them more aware of their inalienable freedom. It is about the most ancient human aspiration: to go deeper in responsibility and knowledge. == Towards the body of work of maturity == Learning from drugs was celebrated with the song "From the skin inwards I am in charge" (De la piel para dentro mando yo). It outsold the historical part of his research, turning Escohotado into a media figure for a decade, subjected to a cliché of a sort of Anarchist from which he would later find it burdensome to rid himself. During this period his creative work was reduced to articles and conferences, compiled in The Spirit of Comedy (1992) and Portrait of the libertine (1998). === The Spirit of Comedy === The Spirit of Comedy —Anagrama Essay Prize in 1992— returns to the sociology of political power addressed in Majesties, Crimes, and Victims, but focuses on executive power. Moliére, and much earlier Aristotle's Rhetoric, had defined as comedy that representation in which the tragic hero and the chorus are replaced by three recurring characters: the impostor, the buffoon and the magnate. Starting from its practical variants, the book analyzes the political class that emerged with the democratic transition, distributing its material in two parts. The first part analyzes fear as an individual and social passion, taking care to mark the boundaries that separate fear from pain by a sampling procedure. After comparing the theses of Hobbes and Thomas Jefferson, among others, he introduces the thought of the Jünger brothers, Ernst and Friedrich Georg, whose meditation on technology precedes and guides that of Heidegger. The second part focuses on the political class as a class or caste, reflecting on the institutional horizons of parliamentary democracy and one of its alternatives, direct democracy. He pays special attention to terrorism as a feedback loop, in which the interests of the terrorist and the anti-terrorist always coincide, and contrasts this vicious circle with the premises of an alternative virtuous circle, analyzing the population parameters from which a group could claim the right to self-determination, such as, for example, the Basque Country. In this connection, he closely examines the Swiss model, as well as the tension between centralism, federalism and confederalism. === Portrait of the libertine === Escohotado brings together here a series of texts that together outline a contemporary theory of health, considering that our nature inevitably fuses being and thought. In other words, "the corporeal is animic and the animic corporeal", and he proposes "to accept corporeality as immediacy of the spirit, considering that this acceptance is a way of rethinking beauty on a daily basis". His first essay is dedicated to the anonymous Victorian My Secret Life —years earlier Escohotado had translated and prefaced an abridged edition in two volumes of the twelve published at the time—, according to Jaime Gil de Biedma "the most extensive and prolix report ever written on the erotic experience of a human being of the male sex". Indeed, "in addition to offering a rich picture of the period —precisely the part omitted in the novels of Dickens, Hardy and other respectable English narrators of the time—, it describes in detail carnal relations with some two thousand women". Escohotado takes up issues dealt with in Whores and Wives, such as the many ways of experiencing carnal love, passions such as domination, lust, or jealousy, and equates human institutions such as marriage and prostitution, even though the former is sanctioned by laws and morals, and the latter is pushed into the shadows of the clandestine, maintaining the thesis that the one is fundamental for the other and vice versa. From the philosophical point of view, Portrait of the libertine also contains "Chemical Euphoria and Human Dignity", originally written in English. Another of his essays —"Notes on Eugenics"— examines the policy of denying the terminally ill, chronically ill and those in simple recovery the use of analgesics considered euphoric, not only as palliatives but as remedies, elevating ignorance to the degree of genocide. In Die better he reflects on euthanasia, and the right of every individual to choose the moment and manner of his or her own death. The volume ends with profiles of Ernst Jünger and Albert Hofmann, at the time two elderly centenarians proposed as examples of good living and good dying. === Chaos and order === Escohotado returned to research in the strong sense of the term with Chaos and Order (Espasa, 1999), when he discovered that Mandelbrot's fractal geometry was an alternative to Euclid's idealization, and Prigogine's dissipative structures a restatement of the second principle of thermodynamics. He proved in passing that these were not isolated feats, but part of a general scientific renaissance, which "transcends the reductionist paradigm with progress in the ability to grasp the complex". It also allowed him to confirm the inadequacy of determinism, one of the oldest intuitions: That neither the Nobel Prize in Chemistry received by Prigogine, nor the Fields Medal —its equivalent in mathematics— not awarded to Mandelbrot, have prevented their absence from Spanish curricula —where they continue to be systematically ignored not only by high school students, but also by those taking doctorates in the exact sciences, Engineering, Physics or Chemistry—, led Escohotado to affirm: Chaos and Order criticizes this "guild infallibilism" from different perspectives, arguing that we are beginning to glimpse reality, after centuries of trying to adapt it to the ideal of some theological or atheistic faith, precisely thanks to the understanding of phenomena of self-organization. He compares modalities of open and closed orders, some fed by the environment, such as the thermostat, and others isolated from it, such as the clock, ironizing about the confusion between the two, as if the "order" of the barracks and the convent could be considered synonymous with the real. The dogmatist tries to do so by reducing, abstracting, or forgetting what is convenient in each case, but according to Escohotado this implies opting for the vicious circle to the detriment of the virtuous one —using Wiener's expression in his Cybernetics—, "by disregarding the signals of the medium as the clock does, sensitive only to its winding, in contrast to a permanently fed thermostat". The essay, which received the Espasa Prize and sold out five editions in one semester, was also harshly criticized by four professors of Physics and Mathematics, who considered it uninformed intrusiveness, "hogwash," and "postmodern philosophy", which generated a broad controversy. The extensive prologue to his edition of the Newtonian Principia (1980) had been received in the same terms. Escohotado replied, among other things, that he had been denouncing the fraud of French postmodernism for many years and answered each of the criticisms in detail. === Sixty weeks in the tropics === The fact that he defined himself in the last chapters as a "liberal democrat", when many of his unconditional supporters venerated him as a symbol of unredeemed leftism, produced as much or more scandal than spreading chaos theory. However, he defined himself as "the paradigm of the man of the left in Spain." Some of those who had supported his chronicle on the use of psychoactive substances went on to question what need he had to combine it with a bioessay program, considering it a cynical provocation —an apology for crime even, as Menem and Maradona declared— and even irrefutable proof of neurological degeneration. Since then he has been labeled a "neoliberal" —without anyone having yet succeeded in clarifying "how he differs from a liberal"—, although he has not stopped being sarcastic with the followers of Murray Rothbard, whom he calls "dogmatic liberals" and "one hundred percent fanatics" (for opposing the reserve ratio that enables bank credit) or with Ayn Rand, calling her an "amphetamenomaniac". Her vocation for independence could also explain the chain of disagreements with the teachers' union.The publication of Chaos and Order also coincided with the most traumatic period of his sentimental life, as he broke off a marriage of twenty years to start a new family and move to live in the antipodes, taking advantage of a sabbatical year offered by the Catholic University of Bangkok, with the project of researching the causes of poverty and wealth. Dazzled by the discovery of the figure of Carl Menger, father of marginal utility, he concentrated on studying economic theory and history, "as an incantation not to lose his own self-esteem entirely", and wrote a hybrid between a diary, working notes on the Austrian School, and research tourism, published as Sesenta semanas en el trópico (Sixty Weeks in the Tropics) (Anagrama, 2003). On the other hand, his tour of Southeast Asia convinces him that "educated peoples are rich, regardless of their resources". He therefore looks back, reviewing the meaning of his own youthful "red soul", moved by the desire to "find reasons and useful data for those formed from childhood on screens [...] to whom a concept as distant as possible from conformism and sectarianism is convenient". == The investigation of the communist movement: The enemies of commerce. A moral history of property == According to Escohotado, in his old age he undertook the effort "to go from original to wise, and from ingenious to equanimous", which led him to compose The enemies of commerce. A moral history of property, in his opinion "the book of my life". In principle, this project is limited to specifying who, in what context and with what results "have maintained that private property is theft and commerce its instrument."However, the first thing he discovered in studying the matter was the need to go back to Sparta and Plato, on the one hand, and on the other to the Essene sect —which interpreted the sixth commandment as "thou shalt not trade"— later converted into the Ebionite ("povertist") creed and finally into the manifesto expounded by the Sermon on the Mount. Contextualizing both lines meant for him to carry out an investigation on the origins of the slave society, breeding ground for the birth of the messianic redeemer —a "lamb that washes away the evils of the world" whose novelty is to be a scapegoat that also assumes the Restitution or revenge of "the last over the first"— , prefiguring the progress through civil war posed later by Marx as the law of social development. The process by virtue of which the commercial society re-emerges becomes more distinguished. This process is rejected and supported at the same time by numerous communist sects, and it culminates in the peasant wars of the Renaissance, while the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation converge in leaving behind the ideal of peasantry and propose to the good Christian to be far-sighted and prosperous. Two centuries of material accumulation followed, with Mandeville's Fable of the Bees as a compendium of his realism, and finally the great French Revolution as a battleground for liberals and authoritarians, followed by the Conspiracy of the Equals and its leader Babeuf. This position was refuted by the writer María Elvira Roca Barea in a debate with the author at a conference organized by the Cajasol Foundation in Seville on the Spanish Black Legend.The first volume, published in 2008, was received by the specialized critics with practically absolute silence. The second volume, which appeared in 2013, had much more repercussion, especially on the Internet, which promoted it vigorously. On the other hand, the growing volume of data made it impossible to carry the research to the present day, as the author intended, since documenting the nineteenth century exceeded 700 pages, forcing the composition of a third volume. He then joked about his destiny to meticulously document one or another variant of fear: In the narrative, he adds to the ideological picture the detail of each economic milieu and the evolution of parallel institutions — the instruments of credit, guilds and unions, the first big companies, the social security systems, the acclimatization of paper money, patent law— and an analysis of the specifics of the political revolutions in North America, England, France, Spain, Germany and Russia. According to Escohotado, the contemporary historian finally has at his disposal innumerable data organized thematically by Internet search engines, which oblige him to make "the leap from the chronicle to something more akin to a retransmission articulated on multiple cameras", making possible as never before "the exercise of an evaluative neutrality". In his case, the result of investigating the tortuous transition from a servile society to a commercial one has served him to end up documenting a triumph of mobility over immobility, "stalked at every step by the vertigo of freedom and the securities of servitude". In section 4.I.2 of the first volume, the following translation of the Cyrus Cylinder is presented: Indeed, The second volume ended by specifying the dilemma between messianic and democratic models of socialism. But the twentieth century and the totalitarian era remained to be described, and the work then proposes to take its project as far as Chávez and Ahmadinejad (whose alliance Jorge Verstrynge promoted). According to the author, nothing of what he took for granted survived the careful study of each episode —in fact, his daily joy has been to be led to change his mind without a pause, going from prejudice to judgment— and only when the chronicle looks at the twentieth century will there be enough statistical universe to advance general conclusions about "the communist spirit". Within the trilogy on the origin and development of the communist movement, the third and final volume of The Enemies of Commerce in December 2016 was an unprecedented investigation. No history of the communist phenomenon had so far added to the ideological debate the detail of its economic context, the evolution of parallel institutions such as the trade union, big business, property defended by copyright or the various social security systems. If in volume I what was analyzed was its development up to the French Revolution, and in volume II the events up to the first years of the 20th century, the third volume deals with the period from Lenin to the latest populist movements that emerged in the 20th century in Latin America and their reflection in Europe in the 21st century through parties such as Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain.After the completion of the work, the interviews conducted by Federico Jiménez Losantos and Pablo Iglesias to the Spanish thinker and broadcast through the Internet, have contributed to the dissemination of Escohotado's figure. == A history of thought == To the referenced writings should be added Génesis y desarrollo del análisis científico, which began as Filosofía y metodología de las ciencias sociales, the name of the subject he taught at the UNED from 1983 to 2013. Revised and expanded on several occasions, this book constitutes a considerably extensive text although lightened with notes. == La Emboscadura == The last five years of the thinker's life was marked by a close professional collaboration with his third son, Antonio Jorge Escohotado Álvarez de Lorenzana (Madrid, 1977) who is a journalist and entrepreneur. At the end of 2017, he decided to found La Emboscadura Editorial with the aim of spreading Antonio Escohotado's thought globally by issuing his collection in E-book format. To forge the editorial project, he managed the social networks by opening profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. His YouTube channel stores and compiles vast audiovisual content of the philosopher ranging from interviews to conferences given throughout Spain and Latin America. This channel exceeded 125,000 subscribers at the end of 2021. His son Jorge not only carried out work as a community manager, but served as the editor of the third volume of The Enemies of Commerce (Espasa, 2017) and promoter of works such as My Ibiza Privada (Espasa, 2019) and La forja de la gloria (Espasa, 2021); the last text published by Escohotado where the author briefly covers and collects the history of Real Madrid from a philosophical, moral and cultural point of view. The name of the publishing house was chosen in honor of the famous essay The Forest Passage (1951) by Ernst Jünger, which according to Escohotado's own words is "the greatest book of the entire 20th century, along with Camus's The Rebel". == Ibizan haven and last days == There is no doubt that the Ibizan environment has been a fundamental piece in both the biography and the intellectual development of Antonio Escohotado's work. At the end of 2019, the essayist leaves his usual home in the Madrid town of Galapagar to settle in the Pityuses with the intention of spending the last years of his life.During this period, the journalist of the newspaper El Mundo, Ricardo F. Colmenero, published Los penúltimos días de Escohotado (Los penúltimos días de Escohotado) (La Esfera de los Libros, 2021), a compilation of conversations between the philosopher and the columnist where he openly declares, among other things, that he had returned to Ibiza to await his death.Although the writer was retired, he did not stop receiving regular visits from curious onlookers, fans and disciples, but also from personalities as diverse as the singer Jorge Drexler, José Antonio Matamoros or the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez. He was also quite active in the media as he continued to give interviews and collaborated in some YouTube streaming program. Antonio Escohotado Espinosa died in the early hours of November 21, 2021 at the age of 80 as a result of multiorgan failure (renal, pulmonary and cardiac) at the Policlínica de Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Ibiza surrounded by his loved ones. His mortal remains rest in the civil cemetery of the secluded village of Santa Inés de Corona. Following the news of his death, personalities from the world of culture and politics expressed their condolences and acknowledgement of his figure as one of the last wise men in the Spanish-speaking world. The Deputy Mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís, presented on November 29, 2021, an initiative in the municipal plenary to erect a statue of Escohotado in the University City of Madrid, which was unanimously approved by all the political forces of the parliamentary arc present in the plenary session of the Madrid City Council. == List of published works == Marcuse, Utopia and Reason (Marcuse, utopía y razón, 1968, Alianza Editorial). The Unhappy Consciousness, an essay about Hegel's philosophy of religion La conciencia infeliz. (Ensayo sobre la filosofía de la religión de Hegel, 1971, Revista de Occidente). From Physis to Polis (De physis a polis, 1982, Anagrama). Reality and Substance (Realidad y substancia, 1986, Taurus). Philosophy and Methodology in the Sciences (Filosofía y metodología de las ciencias, 1987, UNED). Majesties, Crimes and Victims (Majestades, crímenes y víctimas, 1987, Anagrama). The General History of Drugs (Historia general de las drogas 3 volúmenes, 1989, Alianza). Translated partially or completely into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Bulgarian and Czech. Online access to parts of the book cited by the author. The Book of Poisons (El libro de los venenos, 1990, Alianza) The Spirit of Comedy (El espíritu de la comedia, 1991, Anagrama Essay Award – Premio Anagrama de Ensayo). Learning from drugs: uses and abuses, prejudices and challenges (Aprendiendo de las drogas: usos y abusos, prejuicios y desafíos, 1995, Anagrama). This volume was published earlier under the name: El libro de los venenos in 1990 and in 1992 as Para una fenomenología de las drogas. Whores and Wives: Four Myths about Sex and Duty (Rameras y esposas: cuatro mitos sobre el sexo y deber, 1993, Anagrama). Drugs: Yesterday and Today (Las drogas: de ayer a mañana, 1994, Talasa). Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age, 1999, Park Street Press (Historia elemental de las drogas, 1996, Anagrama). The Question of Cannabis: A constructive proposal on hashish and marihuana (La cuestión del cáñamo: una propuesta constructiva sobre hachís y marihuana, 1997, Anagrama) Portrait of a Libertine (Retrato del libertino, 1997, Espasa-Calpe). The General History of Drugs (in English, Graffiti Militante Press, 2015) includes the appendix: "Phenomenology of drugs" 1999, Espasa-Calpe. Online at Google Books here. Chaos and Order (Caos y orden, 1999, Premio Espasa de Ensayo 1999). Sixty weeks in the Tropics (Sesenta semanas en el trópico, 2003, Anagrama). The Enemies of Commerce (Los enemigos del comercio, 2008, Espasa-Calpe). Online access to the Spanish book here. The Enemies of Commerce II (Los enemigos del comercio II, 2013 Espasa-Calpe). Online access to the Spanish book here. Facing Fear (Frente al miedo, 2015, Página Indómita). The Enemies of Commerce III (Los enemigos del comercio III, 2017 Espasa-Calpe). My Private Ibiza (Mi Ibiza privada, 2019 Espasa-Calpe). == Prologues == Más allá del nihilismo: Meditaciones sobre Ernst Jünger, de Enrique Ocaña, Editum, 1993. Nuestro derecho a las drogas, de Thomas Szasz, Anagrama, 1993. Drogas y cultura de masas, de Juan Carlos Usó, Taurus, 1996. Mr. Nice, de Howard Marks, La Cañamería Global, 2000. "Rememorando a Sasha Shulgin", en PIHKAL y TIHKAL (edición en castellano), de Alexander Shulgin y Ann Shulgin, Editorial Manuscritos, 2015. El rebaño: Cómo Occidente ha sucumbido a la tiranía ideológica, de Jano García, La Esfera de los Libros, 2021. == References == == External links == Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category about Antonio Escohotado. Wikiquote contains famous quotes by or about Antonio Escohotado. laemboscadura.com (Website on Antonio Escohotado, with a selection of articles). Wikimedia Commons has multimedia content on Antonio Escohotado. Wikiquote has Spanish language quotes by or about Antonio Escohotado. Antonio Escohotado's official Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Channel. Video of Escohotado in Spanish in Carta blanca in 8 parts. Antonio Escohotado's Biography in Spanish from Cannabis Magazine. Interview with Antonio Escohotado in Spanish in Cannabis Magazine. The Pharmacological Crusade: A Historical Crusade, English text. Interview in Spanish with Escohotado in Negro sobre Blanco (Entrevista a Escohotado en Negro sobre Blanco) Critical review of The Enemies of Commerce I in Spanish in video (Reseña crítica en vídeo a Los enemigos del comercio tomo 1).

Derek Parfit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit

Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.Parfit rose to prominence in 1971 with the publication of his first paper, "Personal Identity". His first book, Reasons and Persons (1984), has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s. His second book, On What Matters (2011), was widely circulated and discussed for many years before its publication. For his entire academic career, Parfit worked at Oxford University, where he was an Emeritus Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College at the time of his death. He was also a visiting professor of philosophy at Harvard University, New York University, and Rutgers University. He was awarded the 2014 Rolf Schock Prize "for his groundbreaking contributions concerning personal identity, regard for future generations, and analysis of the structure of moral theories." == Early life and education == Parfit was born in 1942 in Chengdu, China, the son of Jessie (née Browne) and Norman Parfit, medical doctors who had moved to Western China to teach preventive medicine in missionary hospitals. The family returned to the United Kingdom about a year after Parfit was born, settling in Oxford. Parfit was educated at the Dragon School and Eton College, where he was nearly always at the top of the regular rankings in every subject except maths. From an early age, he endeavoured to become a poet, but he gave up poetry towards the end of his adolescence.He then studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1964. In 1965–66, he was a Harkness Fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University. He abandoned historical studies for philosophy during the fellowship. == Career == Parfit returned to Oxford to become a fellow of All Souls College, where he remained until he was 67, when the university’s mandatory retirement policy required him to leave both the college and the faculty of philosophy. He retained his appointments as regular Visiting Professor at Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers until his death. == Ethics and rationality == === Reasons and Persons === In Reasons and Persons, Parfit suggested that nonreligious ethics is a young and fertile field of inquiry. He asked questions about which actions are right or wrong and shied away from meta-ethics, which focuses more on logic and language. In Part I of Reasons and Persons Parfit discussed self-defeating moral theories, namely the self-interest theory of rationality ("S") and two ethical frameworks: common-sense morality and consequentialism. He posited that self-interest has been dominant in Western culture for over two millennia, often making bedfellows with religious doctrine, which united self-interest and morality. Because self-interest demands that we always make self-interest our supreme rational concern and instructs us to ensure that our whole life goes as well as possible, self-interest makes temporally neutral requirements. Thus it would be irrational to act in ways that we know we would prefer later to undo. As an example, it would be irrational for fourteen-year-olds to listen to loud music or get arrested for vandalism if they knew such actions would detract significantly from their future well-being and goals (such as having good hearing, a good job, or an academic career in philosophy). Most notably, the self-interest theory holds that it is irrational to commit any acts of self-denial or to act on desires that negatively affect our well-being. One may consider an aspiring author whose strongest desire is to write a masterpiece, but who, in doing so, suffers depression and lack of sleep. Parfit argues that it is plausible that we have such desires which conflict with our own well-being, and that it is not necessarily irrational to act to fulfill these desires. Aside from the initial appeal to plausibility of desires that do not directly contribute to one's life going well, Parfit contrived situations where self-interest is indirectly self-defeating—that is, it makes demands that it initially posits as irrational. It does not fail on its own terms, but it does recommend adoption of an alternative framework of rationality. For instance, it might be in my self-interest to become trustworthy to participate in mutually beneficial agreements, even though in maintaining the agreement I will be doing what will, other things being equal, be worse for me. In many cases self-interest instructs us precisely not to follow self-interest, thus fitting the definition of an indirectly self-defeating theory.: 163–165 Parfit contended that to be indirectly individually self-defeating and directly collectively self-defeating is not fatally damaging for S. To further bury self-interest, he exploited its partial relativity, juxtaposing temporally neutral demands against agent-centred demands. The appeal to full relativity raises the question whether a theory can be consistently neutral in one sphere of actualisation but entirely partial in another. Stripped of its commonly accepted shrouds of plausibility that can be shown to be inconsistent, self-interest can be judged on its own merits. While Parfit did not offer an argument to dismiss S outright, his exposition lays self-interest bare and allows its own failings to show through. It is defensible, but the defender must bite so many bullets that they might lose their credibility in the process. Thus a new theory of rationality is necessary. Parfit offered the "critical present aim theory", a broad catch-all that can be formulated to accommodate any competing theory. He constructed critical present aim to exclude self-interest as our overriding rational concern and to allow the time of action to become critically important. But he left open whether it should include "to avoid acting wrongly" as our highest concern. Such an inclusion would pave the way for ethics. Henry Sidgwick longed for the fusion of ethics and rationality, and while Parfit admitted that many would avoid acting irrationally more ardently than acting immorally, he could not construct an argument that adequately united the two. Where self-interest puts too much emphasis on the separateness of persons, consequentialism fails to recognise the importance of bonds and emotional responses that come from allowing some people privileged positions in one's life. If we were all pure do-gooders, perhaps following Sidgwick, that would not constitute the outcome that would maximise happiness. It would be better if a small percentage of the population were pure do-gooders, but others acted out of love, etc. Thus consequentialism too makes demands of agents that it initially deemed immoral; it fails not on its own terms, for it still demands the outcome that maximises total happiness, but does demand that each agent not always act as an impartial happiness promoter. Consequentialism thus needs to be revised as well. Self-interest and consequentialism fail indirectly, while common-sense morality is directly collectively self-defeating. (So is self-interest, but self-interest is an individual theory.) Parfit showed, using interesting examples and borrowing from Nashian games, that it would often be better for us all if we did not put the welfare of our loved ones before all else. For example, we should care not only about our kids, but everyone's kids. === On What Matters === In his second book, Parfit argues for moral realism, insisting that moral questions have true and false answers. Further, he suggests that the three most prominent categories of views in moral philosophy—Kantian deontology, consequentalism, and contractarianism (or contractualism)—converge on the same answers to moral questions. In the book he argues that the affluent have strong moral obligations to the poor: "One thing that greatly matters is the failure of we rich people to prevent, as we so easily could, much of the suffering and many of the early deaths of the poorest people in the world. The money that we spend on an evening’s entertainment might instead save some poor person from death, blindness, or chronic and severe pain. If we believe that, in our treatment of these poorest people, we are not acting wrongly, we are like those who believed that they were justified in having slaves. Some of us ask how much of our wealth we rich people ought to give to these poorest people. But that question wrongly assumes that our wealth is ours to give. This wealth is legally ours. But these poorest people have much stronger moral claims to some of this wealth. We ought to transfer to these people [...] at least ten per cent of what we earn." === Criticism === In his book On Human Nature, Roger Scruton criticised Parfit's use of moral dilemmas such as the trolley problem and lifeboat ethics to support his ethical views, writing, "These 'dilemmas' have the useful character of eliminating from the situation just about every morally relevant relationship and reducing the problem to one of arithmetic alone." Scruton believes that many of them are deceptive; for example, he does not believe one must be a consequentialist to believe that it is morally required to pull the switch in the trolley problem, as Parfit assumes. He instead suggests that more complex dilemmas, such as Anna Karenina's choice to leave her husband and child for Vronsky, are needed to fully express the differences between opposing ethical theories, and suggests that deontology is free of the problems that (in Scruton's view) beset Parfit's theory. == Personal identity == Parfit was singular in his meticulously rigorous and almost mathematical investigations into personal identity. In some cases, he used examples seemingly inspired by Star Trek and other science fiction, such as the teletransporter, to explore our intuitions about our identity. He was a reductionist, believing that since there is no adequate criterion of personal identity, people do not exist apart from their components. Parfit argued that reality can be fully described impersonally: there need not be a determinate answer to the question "Will I continue to exist?" We could know all the facts about a person's continued existence and not be able to say whether the person has survived. He concluded that we are mistaken in assuming that personal identity is what matters in survival; what matters is rather Relation R: psychological connectedness (namely, of memory and character) and continuity (overlapping chains of strong connectedness). On Parfit's account, individuals are nothing more than brains and bodies, but identity cannot be reduced to either. (Parfit concedes that his theories rarely conflict with rival Reductionist theories in everyday life, and that the two are only brought to blows by the introduction of extraordinary examples, but he defends the use of such examples on the grounds that they arouse strong intuitions in many of us.) Identity is not as determinate as we often suppose it is, but instead such determinacy arises mainly from the way we talk. People exist in the same way that nations or clubs exist. Following David Hume, Parfit argued that no unique entity, such as a self, unifies a person's experiences and dispositions over time. Therefore personal identity is not "what matters" in survival.A key Parfitian question is: given the choice between surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness (Relation R) and dying but preserving R through someone else's future existence, which would you choose? Parfit argues the latter is preferable. Parfit described his loss of belief in a separate self as liberating:My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. === Criticism of personal identity view === Fellow reductionist Mark Johnston of Princeton rejects Parfit's constitutive notion of identity with what he calls an "Argument from Above". Johnston maintains, "Even if the lower-level facts [that make up identity] do not in themselves matter, the higher-level fact may matter. If it does, the lower-level facts will have derived significance. They will matter, not in themselves, but because they constitute the higher level fact."In this, Johnston moves to preserve the significance of personhood. Parfit's explanation is that it is not personhood itself that matters, but rather the facts in which personhood consists that provide it with significance. To illustrate this difference between himself and Johnston, Parfit used an illustration of a brain-damaged patient who becomes irreversibly unconscious. The patient is certainly still alive even though that fact is separate from the fact that his heart is still beating and other organs are still functioning. But the fact that the patient is alive is not an independent or separately obtaining fact. The patient's being alive, even though irreversibly unconscious, simply consists in the other facts. Parfit explains that from this so-called "Argument from Below" we can arbitrate the value of the heart and other organs still working without having to assign them derived significance, as Johnston's perspective would dictate. == The future == In part four of Reasons and Persons, Parfit discusses possible futures for the world.: 349–441  Parfit discusses possible futures and population growth in Chapter 17 of Reasons and Persons. He shows that both average and total utilitarianism result in unwelcome conclusions when applied to population.: 388 In the section titled "Overpopulation," Parfit distinguishes between average utilitarianism and total utilitarianism. He formulates average utilitarianism in two ways. One is what Parfit calls the "Impersonal Average Principle", which he formulates as "If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which people's lives go, on average, best.": 386  The other is what he calls the "Hedonistic version"; he formulates this as "If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which there is the greatest average net sum of happiness, per life lived.": 386  Parfit then gives two formulations of the total utilitarianism view. The first formulation Parfit calls the "Hedonistic version of the Impersonal Total Principle": "If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which there would be the greatest quantity of happiness—the greatest net sum of happiness minus misery.": 387  He then describes the other formulation, the "non-Hedonistic Impersonal Total Principle": "If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which there would be the greatest quantity of whatever makes life worth living.: 387 Applying total utilitarian standards (absolute total happiness) to possible population growth and welfare leads to what he calls the repugnant conclusion: "For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living.": 388  Parfit illustrates this with a simple thought experiment: imagine a choice between two possible futures. In A, 10 billion people would live during the next generation, all with extremely happy lives, lives far happier than anyone's today. In B, there are 20 billion people all living lives that, while slightly less happy than those in A, are still very happy. Under total utility maximisation we should prefer B to A. Therefore, through a regressive process of population increases and happiness decreases (in each pair of cases the happiness decrease is outweighed by the population increase) we are forced to prefer Z, a world of hundreds of billions of people all living lives barely worth living, to A. Even if we do not hold that coming to exist can benefit someone, we still must at least admit that Z is no worse than A. There have been a number of responses to Parfit's utilitarian calculus and his conclusion regarding future lives, including challenges to what life in the A-world would be like and whether life in the Z-world would differ very much from a normal privileged life; that movement from the A-world to the Z-world can be blocked by discontinuity; that rather than accepting the utilitarian premise of maximizing happiness, emphasis should be placed on the converse, minimizing suffering; challenging Parfit's teleological framework by arguing that "better than" is a transitive relation and removing the transitive axiom of the all-things-considered-better-than relation; proposing a minimal threshold of liberties and primary social goods to be distributed; and taking a deontological approach that looks to values and their transmission through time.Parfit makes a similar argument against average utilitarian standards. If all we care about is average happiness, we are forced to conclude that an extremely small population, say ten people, over the course of human history is the best outcome if we assume that these ten people (Adam and Eve et al.) had lives happier than we could ever imagine.: 420  Then consider the case of American immigration. Presumably alien welfare is less than American, but the would-be alien benefits tremendously from leaving his homeland. Assume also that Americans benefit from immigration (at least in small amounts) because they get cheap labour, etc. Under immigration both groups are better off, but if this increase is offset by increase in the population, then average welfare is lower. Thus although everyone is better off, this is not the preferred outcome. Parfit asserts that this is simply absurd. Parfit then discusses the identity of future generations. In Chapter 16 of Reasons and Persons he posits that one's existence is intimately related to the time and conditions of one's conception.: 351  He calls this "The Time-Dependence Claim": "If any particular person had not been conceived when he was in fact conceived, it is in fact true that he would never have existed".: 351 Study of weather patterns and other physical phenomena in the 20th century has shown that very minor changes in conditions at time T have drastic effects at all times after T. Compare this to the romantic involvement of future childbearing partners. Any actions taken today, at time T, will affect who exists after only a few generations. For instance, a significant change in global environmental policy would shift the conditions of the conception process so much that after 300 years none of the same people that would have been born are in fact born. Different couples meet each other and conceive at different times, and so different people come into existence. This is known as the 'non-identity problem'. We could thus craft disastrous policies that would be worse for nobody, because none of the same people would exist under the different policies. If we consider the moral ramifications of potential policies in person-affecting terms, we will have no reason to prefer a sound policy over an unsound one provided that its effects are not felt for a few generations. This is the non-identity problem in its purest form: the identity of future generations is causally dependent, in a very sensitive way, on the actions of the present generations. == Personal life == Parfit met Janet Radcliffe Richards in 1982, and they then began a relationship that lasted until his death. They married in 2010. Richards believes Parfit had Asperger syndrome.Parfit supported effective altruism. He was a member of Giving What We Can and pledged to donate at least 10% of his income to effective charities.Parfit was an avid photographer who regularly traveled to Venice and St. Petersburg to photograph architecture. == Selected works == 1964: Eton Microcosm. Edited by Anthony Cheetham and Derek Parfit. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. 1971: "Personal Identity". Philosophical Review. vol. 80: 3–27. JSTOR 2184309 1979: "Is Common-Sense Morality Self-Defeating?". The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 76, pp. 533–545, October. JSTOR 2025548 1984: Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-824615-3 1992: "Against the social discount rate" (with Tyler Cowen), in Peter Laslett & James S. Fishkin (eds.) Justice between age groups and generations, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 144–161. 1997: "Reasons and Motivation". The Aristotelian Soc. Supp., vol. 77: 99–130. JSTOR 4106956 2003: Parfit, Derek (2003). "Justifiability to each person" (PDF). Ratio. 16 (4): 368–390. doi:10.1046/j.1467-9329.2003.00229.x. 2006: "Normativity", in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.). Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. I. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2011: On What Matters, vols. 1 and 2. Oxford University Press. 2017: On What Matters, vol. 3. Oxford University Press. == References == == Further reading == David Edmonds, Parfit: A Philosopher and his Mission to Save Morality (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2023). Jussi Suikkanen and John Cottingham (Editors), Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters (Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). == External links == Profile, All Souls College, Oxford Archived 21 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine Derek Parfit: a bibliography. A complete bibliography of writings. Parfit's Climbing the Mountain reading group on PEA Soup

Giorgio Agamben

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Agamben

Giorgio Agamben ( ə-GAM-bən, Italian: [ˈdʒordʒo aˈɡamben]; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and homo sacer. The concept of biopolitics (carried forth from the work of Michel Foucault) informs many of his writings. == Biography == Agamben was educated at the University of Rome, where in 1965 he wrote an unpublished laurea thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil. Agamben participated in Martin Heidegger's Le Thor seminars (on Heraclitus and Hegel) in 1966 and 1968. In the 1970s, he worked primarily on linguistics, philology, poetics, and topics in medieval culture. During this period, Agamben began to elaborate his primary concerns, although their political bearings were not yet made explicit. In 1974–1975 he was a fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London, due to the courtesy of Frances Yates, whom he met through Italo Calvino. During this fellowship, Agamben began to develop his second book, Stanzas (1977). Agamben was close to the poets Giorgio Caproni and José Bergamín, and to the Italian novelist Elsa Morante, to whom he devoted the essays "The Celebration of the Hidden Treasure" (in The End of the Poem) and "Parody" (in Profanations). He has been a friend and collaborator to such eminent intellectuals as Pier Paolo Pasolini (in whose The Gospel According to St. Matthew he played the part of Philip), Italo Calvino (with whom he collaborated, for a short while, as advisor to the publishing house Einaudi and developed plans for a journal), Ingeborg Bachmann, Pierre Klossowski, Guy Debord, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri, Jean-François Lyotard and many, many others. His strongest influences include Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault. Agamben edited Benjamin's collected works in Italian translation until 1996, and called Benjamin's thought "the antidote that allowed me to survive Heidegger". In 1981, Agamben discovered several important lost manuscripts by Benjamin in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Benjamin had left these manuscripts to Georges Bataille when he fled Paris shortly before his death. The most relevant of these to Agamben's own later work were Benjamin's manuscripts for his theses On the Concept of History. Agamben has engaged since the nineties in a debate with the political writings of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, most extensively in the study State of Exception (2003). His recent writings also elaborate on the concepts of Michel Foucault, whom he calls "a scholar from whom I have learned a great deal in recent years".Agamben's political thought was founded on his readings of Aristotle's Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, and treatise On the Soul, as well as the exegetical traditions concerning these texts in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. In his later work, Agamben intervenes in the theoretical debates following the publication of Nancy's essay La communauté désoeuvrée (1983), and Maurice Blanchot's response, La communauté inavouable (1983). These texts analyzed the notion of community at a time when the European Community was under debate. Agamben proposed his own model of a community which would not presuppose categories of identity in The Coming Community (1990). At this time, Agamben also analyzed the ontological condition and "political" attitude of Bartleby (from Herman Melville's short story) – a scrivener who "prefers not" to write. Currently, Agamben is teaching at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Università della Svizzera Italiana) and has taught at the Università IUAV di Venezia, the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, and the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland; he previously taught at the University of Macerata and at the University of Verona, both in Italy. He also has held visiting appointments at several American universities, from the University of California, Berkeley, to Northwestern University, and at Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf. Agamben received the Prix Européen de l'Essai Charles Veillon in 2006.In 2013 he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize by the University of Tübingen for his work titled Leviathans Rätsel (Leviathan's Riddle, translated into English by Paul Silas Peterson). == Work == Much of Agamben's work since the 1980s can be viewed as leading up to the so-called Homo Sacer project, which properly begins with the book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. In this series of works, Agamben responds to Hannah Arendt's and Foucault's studies of totalitarianism and biopolitics. Since 1995 he has been best known for this ongoing project, the volumes of which have been published out of order, and which include: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995) State of Exception. Homo Sacer II, 1 (2003) Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm. Homo Sacer II, 2 (2015) The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath. Homo Sacer II, 3 (2008) The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Homo Sacer II, 4 (2007) Opus Dei: An Archeology of Duty. Homo Sacer II, 5 (2013) Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III (1998). The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Forms-of-Life. Homo Sacer IV, 1 (2013) The Use of Bodies. Homo Sacer IV, 2 (2016)As of 2017, these works have been collected and published as The Omnibus: Homo Sacer (2017) ISBN 978-150360305-9 In the final volume of the series, Agamben intends to address "the concepts of forms-of-life and lifestyles." "What I call a form-of-life," he explains, "is a life which can never be separated from its form, a life in which it is never possible to separate something like bare life. […] [H]ere too the concept of privacy comes in to play." If human beings were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible… This does not mean, however, that humans are not, and do not have to be, something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at this point). There is in effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: It is the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality… The reduction of life to 'biopolitics' is one of the main threads in Agamben's work, in his critical conception of a homo sacer, reduced to 'bare life', and thus deprived of any rights. Agamben's concept of the homo sacer rests on a crucial distinction in Greek between "bare life" (la vita nuda or zoê ; Gk. ζωή zoê) and "a particular mode of life" or "qualified life" (bios UK: , US: ; Gk. βίος bios). In Part III, section 7 of Homo Sacer, "The Camp as the 'Nomos' of the Modern", he evokes the concentration camps of World War II. "The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule." Agamben says that "What happened in the camps so exceeds (is outside of) the juridical concept of crime that the specific juridico-political structure in which those events took place is often simply omitted from consideration." The conditions in the camps were "conditio inhumana," and the incarcerated somehow defined outside the boundaries of humanity, under the exception laws of Schutzhaft. Where law is based on vague, unspecific concepts such as "race" or "good morals," law and the personal subjectivity of the judicial agent are no longer distinct. In the process of creating a state of exception these effects can compound. In a realized state of exception, one who has been accused of committing a crime, within the legal system, loses the ability to use his/her voice and represent themselves. The individual can not only be deprived of their citizenship, but also of any form of agency over their own life. "Agamben identifies the state of exception with the power of decision over life."Within the state of exception, the distinction between bios (the life of the citizen) and zoê (the life of homo sacer) is made by those with judicial power. For example, Agamben would argue that Guantánamo Bay exemplifies the concept of 'the state of exception' in the United States following 9–11.Agamben mentions that basic universal human rights of Taliban individuals while captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2001 were negated by US laws. In reaction to the removal of their basic human rights, detainees of Guantánamo Bay prison went on hunger strikes. Within a state of exception, when a detainee is placed outside the law he or she is, according to Agamben, reduced to "bare life" in the eyes of the judicial powers. Here, one can see why such measures as hunger strikes can occur in such places as prisons. Within the framework of a system that has deprived the individual of power, and their individual basic human freedoms, the hunger strike can be seen as a weapon or form of resistance. "The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious." Within a state of exception the boundaries of power are precarious and threaten to destabilize not only the law, but one's humanity, as well as their choice of life or death. Forms of resistance to the extended use of power within the state of exception, as suggested in Guantánamo Bay prison, also operate outside the law. In the case of the hunger strike, the prisoners were threatened and endured force feeding not allowing them to die. During the hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay prison, accusations and founded claims of forced feedings began to surface in the autumn of 2005. In February 2006, The New York Times reported that prisoners were being force fed in Guantánamo Bay prison and in March 2006, more than 250 medical experts, as reported by the BBC, voiced their opinions of the forced feedings stating that this was a breach of the government's power and was against the rights of the prisoners. === The Coming Community (1993) === In The Coming Community, published in 1990 and translated by longtime admirer Michael Hardt in 1993, Agamben describes the social and political manifestation of his philosophical thought. Employing diverse short essays he describes the nature of "whatever singularity" as that which has an "inessential commonality, a solidarity that in no way concerns an essence". It is important to note his understanding of "whatever" not as being indifference but based on the Latin "quodlibet ens" translated as "being such that it always matters". Agamben starts off by describing "The Lovable" Love is never directed toward this or that property of the loved one (being blond, being small, being tender, being lame), but neither does it neglect the properties in favor of an insipid generality (universal love): The lover wants the loved one with all of its predicates, its being such as it is. In the same sense, Agamben talks about "ease" as the "place" of love, or "rather love as the experience of taking-place in a whatever singularity", which resonates his use of the concept "use" in the later works. In this sense, ease names perfectly that "free use of the proper" that, according to an expression of Friedrich Hölderlin's, is "the most difficult task." Following the same trend, he employs, among others, the following to describe the "watershed of whatever": Example – particular and universal Limbo – blessed and damned Homonym – concept and idea Halo – potentiality and actuality Face – common and proper, genus and individual Threshold – inside and outside Coming community – state and non-state (humanity)Other themes addressed in The Coming Community include the commodification of the body, evil, and the messianic. Unlike other continental philosophers he does not reject the dichotomies of subject/object and potentiality/actuality outright, but rather turns them inside-out, pointing out the zone where they become indistinguishable. Matter that does not remain beneath form, but surrounds it with a halo The political task of humanity, he argues, is to expose the innate potential in this zone of indistinguishability. And although criticised as dreaming the impossible by certain authors, he nonetheless shows a concrete example of whatever singularity acting politically: Whatever singularity, which wants to appropriate belonging itself, its own being-in-language, and thus rejects all identity and every condition of belonging, is the principal enemy of the State. Wherever these singularities peacefully demonstrate their being in common there will be Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear === Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) === In his main work "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" (1998), Agamben analyzes an obscure figure of Roman law that poses fundamental questions about the nature of law and power in general. Under the laws of the Roman Empire, a man who committed a certain kind of crime was banned from society and all of his rights as a citizen were revoked. He thus became a "homo sacer" (sacred man). In consequence, he could be killed by anybody, while his life on the other hand was deemed "sacred", so he could not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony. Although Roman law no longer applied to someone deemed a Homo sacer, they remained "under the spell" of law. This means that "human life" is "included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed)". Homo sacer was therefore both excluded from law and included at the same time. This paradoxical figure of homo sacer is the exact mirror image of the sovereign (basileus) – a king, emperor, or president – who stands, on the one hand, within law (so he can be condemned, e.g., for treason, as a natural person) and outside the law (since as a body politic he has power to suspend law for an indefinite time). Agamben draws on Carl Schmitt's definition of the Sovereign as the one who has the power to decide the state of exception (or justitium), where law is indefinitely "suspended" without being abrogated. But while Schmitt's aim is to include the necessity of state of emergency under the rule of law, Agamben on the contrary demonstrates that all life cannot be subsumed by law. As in homo sacer, the state of emergency is the inclusion of life and necessity in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion.Agamben argues that laws have always assumed the authority to define "bare life" – zoe, as opposed to bios, or 'qualified life' – by making this exclusive operation, while at the same time gaining power over it by making it the subject of political control. The power of law to actively separate "political" beings (citizens) from "bare life" (bodies) has carried on from Antiquity to Modernity – literally from Aristotle to Auschwitz. Aristotle, as Agamben notes, constitutes political life via a simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of "bare life": as Aristotle says, man is an animal born to life (Gk. ζῆν, zen), but existing with regard to the good life (εὖ ζῆν, eu zen) which can be achieved through politics. Bare life, in this ancient conception of politics, is that which must be transformed, via the State, into the "good life"; that is, bare life is that which is supposedly excluded from the higher aims of the state, yet is included precisely so that it may be transformed into this "good life". Sovereignty, then, is conceived from ancient times as the power which determines what or who is to be incorporated into the political body (in accord with its bios) by means of the more originary exclusion (or exception) of what is to remain outside the political body—which is at the same time the source of that body's composition (zoe). According to Agamben, biopower, which takes the bare lives of the citizens into its political calculations, may be more marked in the modern state, but has essentially existed since the beginnings of sovereignty in the West, since this structure of ex-ception is essential to the core concept of sovereignty.Agamben would continue to expand the theory of the state of exception first introduced in "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life", ultimately leading to the "State of Exception" in 2005. Instead of leaving a space between law and life, the space where human action is possible, the space that used to constitute politics, he argues that politics has "contaminated itself with law" in the state of exception. Because "only human action is able to cut the relationship between violence and law", it becomes increasingly difficult within the state of exception for humanity to act against the State. === State of Exception (2005) === In this book, Agamben traces the concept of 'state of exception' (Ausnahmezustand) used by Carl Schmitt to Roman justitium and auctoritas. This leads him to a response to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to proclaim the exception. Agamben's text State of Exception investigates the increase of power by governments which they employ in supposed times of crisis. Within a state of emergency, Agamben refers to the states of exception, where constitutional rights can be diminished, superseded and rejected in the process of claiming this extension of power by a government. The state of exception invests one person or government with the power and voice of authority over others extended well beyond where the law has existed in the past. "In every case, the state of exception marks a threshold at which logic and praxis blur with each other and a pure violence without logos claims to realize an enunciation without any real reference" (Agamben, pg 40). Agamben refers a continued state of exception to the Nazi state of Germany under Hitler's rule. "The entire Third Reich can be considered a state of exception that lasted twelve years. In this sense, modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system" (Agamben, p. 2). The political power over others acquired through the state of exception, places one government—or one form or branch of government—as all powerful, operating outside the laws. During such times of extension of power, certain forms of knowledge shall be privileged and accepted as true and certain voices shall be heard as valued, while of course, many others are not. This oppressive distinction holds great importance in relation to the production of knowledge. The process of both acquiring knowledge, and suppressing certain knowledge, is a violent act within a time of crisis. Agamben's State of Exception investigates how the suspension of laws within a state of emergency or crisis can become a prolonged state of being. More specifically, Agamben addresses how this prolonged state of exception operates to deprive individuals of their citizenship. When speaking about the military order issued by President George W. Bush on 13 November 2001, Agamben writes, "What is new about President Bush's order is that it radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnameable and unclassifiable being. Not only do the Taliban captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status of POW's (prisoner of war) as defined by the Geneva Convention, they do not even have the status of people charged with a crime according to American laws" (Agamben, pg 3). 780 Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan were held at Guantánamo Bay without trial. These individuals were termed "enemy combatants." Until 7 July 2006, these individuals had been treated outside the Geneva Conventions by the United States administration. ==== Auctoritas, "charisma" and Führertum doctrine ==== Agamben shows that auctoritas and potestas are clearly distinct – although they form together a binary system". He quotes Mommsen, who explains that auctoritas is "less than an order and more than an advice".While potestas derives from social function, auctoritas "immediately derives from the patres personal condition". As such, it is akin to Max Weber's concept of charisma. This is why the tradition ordered, at the king's death, the creation of the sovereign's wax-double in the funus imaginarium, as Ernst Kantorowicz demonstrated in The King's Two Bodies (1957). Hence, it is necessary to distinguish two bodies of the sovereign in order to assure the continuity of dignitas (term used by Kantorowicz, here a synonym of auctoritas). Moreover, in the person detaining auctoritas—the sovereign—public life and private life have become inseparable. Augustus, the first Roman emperor who claimed auctoritas as the basis of princeps status in a famous passage of Res Gestae, had opened up his house to public eyes. The concept of auctoritas played a key-role in fascism and Nazism, in particular concerning Carl Schmitt's theories, argues Agamben: To understand modern phenomena such as the fascist Duce or the Nazi Führer, it is important not to forget their continuity with the principle of auctoritas principis {Agamben refers here to Augustus's Res Gestae}. {...} Neither does the Duce nor the Führer represent constitutionally defined public charges – even though Mussolini and Hitler endorsed respectively the charge of head of government and Reich's chancellor, just as Augustus endorsed the imperium consulare or the potestas tribunicia. The Duce's or the Führer's qualities are immediately related to the physical person and belong to the biopolitical tradition of auctoritas and not to the juridical tradition of potestas. Thus, Agamben opposes Foucault's concept of "biopolitics" to right (law), as he defines the state of exception, in Homo sacer, as the inclusion of life by right under the figure of ex-ception, which is simultaneously inclusion and exclusion. Following Walter Benjamin's lead, he explains that our task would be to radically differentiate "pure violence" from right, instead of tying them together, as did Carl Schmitt. Agamben concludes his chapter on "Auctoritas and potestas" writing: It is significative that modern specialists were so inclined to admit that auctoritas was inherent to the living person of the pater or the princeps. What was evidently an ideology or a fictio aiming to be the groundwork of auctoritas' preeminence or, at least, specific rank compared to potestas thus became a figure of right's {law – "droit"} immanence to life. (...) Although it is evident that there can't be an eternal human type that would incarnate itself each time in Augustus, Napoleon, Hitler, but only more or less comparable ("semblables") mechanisms {"dispositif", a term often used by Foucault} – the state of exception, justitium, the auctoritas principis, the Führertum -, put in use in more or less different circumstances, in the 1930s – overall, but not only – in Germany, the power that Weber had defined as "charismatic" is related to the concept of auctoritas and elaborated in a Führertum doctrine as the original and personal power of a leader. In 1933, in a short article intending to define the fundamental concepts of national-socialism, Schmitt defines the Führung principle by the "root identity between the leader and his entourage".{"identité de souche entre le chef et son entourage"} Agamben's thoughts on the state of emergency leads him to declare that the difference between dictatorship and democracy is thin indeed, as rule by decree became more and more common, starting from World War I and the reorganization of constitutional balance. Agamben often reminds that Hitler never abrogated the Weimar Constitution: he suspended it for the duration of the Third Reich with the Reichstag Fire Decree, issued on 28 February 1933. Indefinite suspension of law is what characterizes the state of exception. === The Highest Poverty (2011) === The English edition was translated by Adam Kotsko. In this study of medieval monastic rules, Agamben offers a genealogical approach to several concepts that Ludwig Wittgenstein established in his late philosophy, primarily the Philosophical Investigations: rule-following, form-of-life, and the central importance of 'use' (for Wittgenstein: 'the meaning of a word is its use in language', and he uses 'language' not just to speak of word-language but any understandable behaviour). Agamben traces earlier versions of the term 'form-of-life' throughout the development of monastic life, beginning with the establishment of a genre of written rules in the fourth century. The aim of the book is to differentiate between 'law' and a particular use of rule that is opposite to the implementation of law. In order to sketch out the potential of this concept, we would need 'a theory of use – of which Western philosophy lacks even the most elementary principles'. Agamben turns to the Franciscans to survey a unique historical incident of a group organising itself with a rule that is their life, and thinking of their own lives not as their own possession but as a communal 'use'; he looks at the ways in which this idea developed and how it eventually lapsed into the Church' law. According to reviewer Nathan Schneider, "The Highest Poverty examines two medieval Christian attempts, in the name of eternal life, to live this life beyond the reach of ordinary politics: several centuries of monasticism, and then the brief and momentous epiphany in the movement founded by Francis of Assisi. Each, according to Agamben, fails in revealing ways." === Criticism of US response to 9/11 === Giorgio Agamben is particularly critical of the United States' response to 11 September 2001, and its instrumentalization as a permanent condition that legitimizes a "state of exception" as the dominant paradigm for governing in contemporary politics. He warns against a "generalization of the state of exception" through laws like the USA PATRIOT Act, which means a permanent installation of martial law and emergency powers. In January 2004, he refused to give a lecture in the United States because under the US-VISIT he would have been required to give up his biometric information, which he believed stripped him to a state of "bare life" (zoe) and was akin to the tattooing that the Nazis did during World War II.However, Agamben's criticisms target a broader scope than the US "war on terror". As he argues in State of Exception (2005), rule by decree has become common since World War I in all modern states, and has been since then generalized and abused. Agamben points out a general tendency of modernity, recalling for example that when Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon invented "judicial photography" for "anthropometric identification", the procedure was reserved to criminals; to the contrary, today's society is tending toward a generalization of this procedure to all citizens, placing the population under permanent suspicion and surveillance: "The political body thus has become a criminal body". And Agamben notes that the Jews deportation in France and other occupied countries was made possible by the photos taken from identity cards. Furthermore, Agamben's political criticisms open up in a larger philosophical critique of the concept of sovereignty itself, which he argues is intrinsically related to the state of exception. === Statements on COVID-19 === Agamben, in an article published by Il Manifesto on 26 February 2020, quoted the NRC in saying that there was no COVID-19 pandemic: "In order to make sense of the frantic, irrational, and absolutely unwarranted emergency measures adopted for a supposed epidemic of coronavirus, we must begin from the declaration of the Italian National Research Council (NRC), according to which 'there is no SARS-CoV2 epidemic in Italy.' and 'the infection, according to the epidemiological data available as of today and based on tens of thousands of cases, causes light/moderate symptoms (a variant of flu) in 80–90% of cases. In 10–15%, there is a chance of pneumonia, but which also has a benign outcome in the large majority of cases. We estimate that only 4% of patients require intensive therapy.'" Agamben argued that “the health emergency was being exaggerated” to create a state of exception. Agamben's views were strongly criticised by Sergio Benvenuto, Roberto Esposito, Divya Dwivedi, Shaj Mohan, Jean-Luc Nancy, Benjamin H. Bratton, and others. == Bibliography == Agamben's major books are listed in order of first Italian publication (with the exception of Potentialities, which first appeared in English), and English translations are listed where available. There are translations of most writings in German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. L'uomo senza contenuto (1970). Translated by Georgia Albert as The Man without Content (1999). 0-8047-3554-9 Stanze. La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale (1977). Trans. Ronald L. Martinez as Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture (1992). 0-8166-2038-5 Infanzia e storia: Distruzione dell'esperienza e origine della storia (1978). Trans. Liz Heron as Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience (1993). 0-86091-645-6 Il linguaggio e la morte: Un seminario sul luogo della negatività (1982). Trans. Karen E. Pinkus with Michael Hardt as Language and Death: The Place of Negativity (1991). ISBN 0-8166-4923-5 Idea della prosa (1985). Trans. Michael Sullivan and Sam Whitsitt as Idea of Prose (1995). ISBN 0-7914-2380-8 La comunità che viene (1990). Trans. Michael Hardt as The Coming Community (1993). ISBN 0-8166-2235-3 Bartleby, la formula della creazione (1993, contains Bartleby, or the Contingency, an essay included in Potentialities, (1999). ISBN 0-8047-3278-7 and a text by Gilles Deleuze from 1989, Bartleby ou la formule, also in Deleuze, Essays Clinical and Critical (1997). ISBN 0-8166-2569-7 Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Homo sacer, I) (1995). Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen as Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998). ISBN 0-8047-3218-3 Mezzi senza fine. Note sulla politica (1996). Trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino as Means Without End: Notes of Politics (2000). ISBN 0-8166-3036-4 Categorie italiane. Studi di poetica (1996). Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen as The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics (1999). ISBN 0-8047-3022-9 Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L'archivio e il testimone (Homo sacer, III) (1998). Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen as Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III (1999). ISBN 1-890951-17-X Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. (1999). First published in English translation and edited by Daniel Heller-Roazen. ISBN 0-8047-3278-7. Published in the original Italian, with additional essays, as La potenza del pensiero: Saggi e conferenza (2005). Il tempo che resta. Un commento alla Lettera ai Romani (2000). Trans. Patricia Dailey as The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (2005). ISBN 0-8047-4383-5 L'aperto. L'uomo e l'animale (2002). Trans. Kevin Attell as The Open: Man and Animal (2004). ISBN 0-8047-4738-5 Stato di eccezione (Homo sacer, II, 1) (2003). Trans. Kevin Attell as State of Exception (2005). ISBN 0-226-00925-4 Profanazioni (2005). Trans. Jeff Fort as Profanations (2008). ISBN 1-890951-82-X Che cos'è un dispositivo? (2006). Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella in What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays (2009). ISBN 0-8047-6230-9 L'amico (2007). Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella in What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays (2009). ISBN 0-8047-6230-9 Ninfe (2007). Trans. Amanda Minervini as "Nymphs" in Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media, ed. Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell (2011). ISBN 978-0-8047-6137-6 Il regno e la gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo (Homo sacer, II, 4) (2007). Trans. Lorenzo Chiesa with Matteo Mandarini as The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (2011). ISBN 978-0-8047-6016-4 Che cos'è il contemporaneo? (2007). Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella in What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays (2009). ISBN 0-8047-6230-9 Signatura rerum. Sul Metodo (2008). Trans. Luca di Santo and Kevin Attell as The Signature of All Things: On Method (2009). ISBN 978-1-890951-98-6 Il sacramento del linguaggio. Archeologia del giuramento (Homo sacer, II, 3) (2008). Trans. Adam Kotsko as The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath (2011). Nudità (2009). Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella as Nudities (2010). ISBN 978-0-8047-6950-1 Angeli. Ebraismo Cristianesimo Islam (ed. Emanuele Coccia and Giorgio Agamben). Neripozza, Vicenza 2009. La Chiesa e il Regno (2010). ISBN 978-88-7452-226-2. Trans. Leland de la Durantaye as The Church and the Kingdom (2012). ISBN 978-0-85742-024-4 La ragazza indicibile. Mito e mistero di Kore (2010, with Monica Ferrando.) ISBN 978-88-370-7717-4. Trans. Leland de la Durantaye and Annie Julia Wyman as The Unspeakable Girl: The Myth and Mystery of Kore (2014). ISBN 978-0-85742-083-1 Altissima povertà. Regole monastiche e forma di vita (Homo sacer, IV, 1) (2011). ISBN 978-88-545-0545-2. Trans. Adam Kotsko as The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life (2013). ISBN 978-0-8047-8405-4 Opus Dei. Archeologia dell'ufficio (Homo sacer, II, 5) (2012). ISBN 978-88-339-2247-8. Trans. Adam Kotsko as Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty (2012). ISBN 978-0-8047-8403-0. Pilato e Gesú (2013). ISBN 978-88-7452-409-9 Trans. by Adam Kotsko as Pilate and Jesus (2015) ISBN 978-0804794541 Il mistero del male: Benedetto XVI e la fine dei tempi (2013). ISBN 978-88-581-0831-4 Trans. by Adam Kotsko as The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days (2017) ISBN 978-1503602731 "Qu'est-ce que le commandement?" (2013) ISBN 978-2-7436-2435-4 (French translation only, no original version published.) "Leviathans Rätsel" ('Leviathans Riddle') (2013) ISBN 978-3-16-153195-8. English trans. Paul Silas Peterson Il fuoco e il racconto (2014). ISBN 978-88-7452-500-3 Trans. by Lorenzo Chiesa as The Fire and the Tale (2017) ISBN 978-1503601642 L'uso dei corpi (Homo sacer, IV, 2) (2014). ISBN 978-88-545-0838-5. Trans. Adam Kotsko as The Use of Bodies (2016). ISBN 978-0-8047-9234-9 L'avventura (2015). ISBN 978-88-7452-555-3 Trans. by Lorenzo Chiesa as The Adventure (2018) ISBN 978-0262037594 Stasis. La guerra civile come paradigma politico (2015). ISBN 978-88-339-2587-5. Trans. Nicholas Heron as Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm (2015). ISBN 978-0-8047-9731-3 Pulcinella ovvero Divertimento per li regazzi in quattro scene (2015). ISBN 978-88-7452-574-4 Trans. by Kevin Attell as Pulcinella: Or Entertainment for Children (2019) ISBN 978-0857425409 Che cos'è la filosofia? (2016). ISBN 978-88-7462-791-2 Trans. by Lorenzo Chiesa as What Is Philosophy? (2017) ISBN 978-1503602212 Che cos'è reale? La scomparsa di Majorana (2016). ISBN 978-88-545-1407-2 Trans. by Lorenzo Chiesa as What Is Real? (2018) ISBN 978-1503606210 Creazione e anarchia (2017) Trans. Adam Kotsko as Creation and Anarchy (2019) ISBN 978-1503609266 Karman. Breve trattato sull'azione, la colpa e il gesto (2017) ISBN 978-8833928821 Trans. by Adam Kotsko as Karman: A Brief Treatise on Action, Guilt, and Gesture (2017) ISBN 978-1503605824 Studiolo (2019) ISBN 9788806243838 A che punto siamo? L’epidemia come politica (2019) ISBN 978-8822905390 Trans. by Valeria Dani as Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics (2020) ISBN 978-1912475353Articles and essays"Nei campi dei senza nome". Il Manifesto (in Italian). Italy. 3 November 1998. Archived from the original on 27 May 2010. "Gênes et la peste". L'Humanité (in French). France. 27 August 2001. Archived from the original on 27 May 2010. The State of Emergency, extract from a lecture 10 December 2002, at the Centre Roland Barthes-University of Paris VII, Denis Diderot. Entire French text. Philosophical Archaeology (abstract). Law and Critique. Vol. 20, No. 3, 2009, pp. 211–231. Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy. Theory & Event. Vol. 13, No. 1, 2010. Se la feroce religione del denaro divora il futuro. 16 February 2012. La Repubblica. The 451 Manifesto 23 December 2012. Le Monde. La Repubblica. The "Latin Empire" should strike back. 15 March 2013, La Repubblica. 24 March 2013, Libération. Various articles published by Multitudes, available here. To Whom in Poetry Addressed?, New Observations 130 (2014), p. 11. == See also == Agamben's explanation of auctoritas Agamben's response to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to decide state exception Basileus Homo sacer Interregnum Justitium Unlawful combatants == Notes and references == == External links == EnglishGiorgio Agamben Faculty Page at European Graduate School Catherine Mills. Giorgio Agamben - Entry at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Review of Agamben, Profanations, by Daniel Ross On Giorgio Agamben's Profanations, by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life Review of State of Exception, by Brett Neilson (in English and Italian) The Ripe Fruit of Redemption, by Toni Negri "Get Rid Of Yourself" with Giorgio Agamben, by Bernadette Corporation. Apparatus, Capture, Trace: Photography and Biopolitics in: Fillip. Fall 2011. For a theory of destituent power. By Giorgio Agamben. Public lecture in Athens, 16.11.2013. Invitation and organization by Nicos Poulantzas Institute and SYRIZA Youth. What is a Destituent Power? By Giorgio Agamben (translated by Stephanie Wakefield). Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(1), 65–74. Anthony Downey, 'Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben's "Bare Life" and the Politics of Aesthetics', (2009) 98 Third. Text pp 109–25 Giorgio Agamben Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.French"État d'exception" de G. Agamben, by Sandra Salomon. "L'État d'exception ("State of Exception")". Le Monde. France. 12 December 2002. Archived from the original on 27 May 2010. "Une biopolitique mineure ("A minor biopolitic", interview with Agamben)". Vacarme. December 1999. Giorgio Agamben Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.HebrewReview of State of Exception, Yehouda Shenhav, Sfarim Haaretz, 23.11.2005.CroatianAn Essay on Giorgio Agamben's Homo sacer, by Mario Kopić

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Chakravorty_Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.Considered one of the most influential postcolonial intellectuals, Spivak is best known for her essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and her translation of and introduction to Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie. She has also translated many works of Mahasweta Devi into English, with separate critical notes on Devi's life and writing style, notably Imaginary Maps and Breast Stories. Spivak was awarded the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for being "a critical theorist and educator speaking for the humanities against intellectual colonialism in relation to the globalized world." In 2013, she received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award given by the Republic of India.Although associated with postcolonialism, Spivak confirmed her separation from the discipline in her book A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), a position she maintains in a 2021 essay titled "How the Heritage of Postcolonial Studies Thinks Colonialism Today", published by Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies. == Life == === Early life === Spivak was born Gayatri Chakravorty in Calcutta, India, to Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty. After completing her secondary education at St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School, Spivak attended Presidency College, Kolkata under the University of Calcutta, from which she graduated in 1959.Spivak has been married twice—first to Talbot Spivak, from 1964 to 1977, and then to Basudev Chatterji. She has no children. === 1960s and 1970s === In 1959, upon graduation, she secured employment as an English tutor for forty hours a week. Her MA thesis was on the representation of innocence in Wordsworth with M.H. Abrams. In 1961, Spivak joined the graduate program in English at Cornell University in the United States, traveling on money borrowed on a so-called "life mortgage". In 1962, unable to secure financial aid from the department of English, she transferred to a new program called Comparative Literature, although she had insufficient preparation in French and German. Her dissertation was under the guidance of the program's first director, Paul de Man, titled Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats. In 1963–1964, she attended Girton College, Cambridge, as a research student under the supervision of Professor T.R. Henn, writing on the representation of the stages of development of the lyric subject in the poetry of Yeats. She presented a course in the summer of 1963 on "Yeats and the Theme of Death" at the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland. (She returned there in 1987 to present Yeats' position within post-coloniality.)In the Fall of 1965, Spivak became an assistant professor in the English department of the University of Iowa. She received tenure in 1970. She did not publish her doctoral dissertation, but decided to write a critical book on Yeats that would be accessible to her undergraduate students without compromising her intellectual positions. The result was her first book, written for young adults, Myself I Must Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats.In 1967, on her regular attempts at self-improvement, Spivak purchased a book, by an author unknown to her, entitled De la grammatologie. She decided to translate this book, and wrote a long translator's preface. This publication was immediately a success, and the "Translator's Preface" began to be used around the world as an introduction to the philosophy of deconstruction launched by the author, Jacques Derrida, whom Spivak met in 1971.In 1974, at the University of Iowa, Spivak founded the MFA in Translation in the department of Comparative Literature. The following year, she became the Director of the Program in Comparative Literature and was promoted to a full professorship. In 1978, she was National Humanities Professor at the University of Chicago. She received many subsequent residential visiting professorships and fellowships. In 1978, she joined the University of Texas at Austin as professor of English and Comparative Literature. === 1980s to present === In 1982, she was appointed as the Longstreet Professor in English and Comparative Literature at Emory University. In 1986, at the University of Pittsburgh, she became the first Mellon Professor of English. Here, she established the Cultural Studies program. From 1991, she was a member of faculty at Columbia University as Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, where, in 2007, she was made University Professor in the Humanities. Since 1986, Spivak has been engaged in teaching and training adults and children among the landless illiterates on the border of West Bengal and Bihar/Jharkhand. This sustained attempt to access the epistemologies damaged by the millennial oppression of the caste system has allowed her to understand the situation of globality as well as the limits of high theory more clearly. In 1997, her friend Lore Metzger, a survivor of the Third Reich, left her $10,000 in her will, to help with the work of rural education. With this, Spivak established the Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty Memorial Foundation for Rural Education; to which she contributed the majority of her Kyoto Prize. == Work == Spivak rose to prominence with her translation of Derrida's De la grammatologie, which included a translator's introduction that has been described as "setting a new standard for self-reflexivity in prefaces". After this, as a member of the "Subaltern Studies Collective", she carried out a series of historical studies and literary critiques of imperialism and international feminism. She has often referred to herself as a "practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist". Her predominant ethico-political concern has been for the space occupied by the subaltern, especially subaltern women, both in discursive practices and in institutions of Western cultures. Edward Said wrote of Spivak's work, "She pioneered the study in literary theory of non-Western women and produced one of the earliest and most coherent accounts of that role available to us." === "Can the Subaltern Speak?" === Her essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988), established Spivak among the ranks of feminists who consider history, geography, and class when thinking about women. In "Can the Subaltern Speak?", Spivak discusses the lack of an account of the Sati practice, leading her to reflect on whether the subaltern can even speak. Spivak writes about the process, the focus on the Eurocentric Subject as they disavow the problem of representation; and by invoking the Subject of Europe, these intellectuals constitute the subaltern 'Other of Europe' as anonymous and mute. In all her work, Spivak's main effort has been to try to find ways of accessing the subjectivity of those who are being investigated. She is hailed as a critic who has feminized and globalized the philosophy of deconstruction, considering the position of the subaltern (a word used by Antonio Gramsci as describing ungeneralizable fringe groups of society who lack access to citizenship). In the early 1980s, she was also hailed as a co-founder of postcolonial theory, which she refused to accept fully. Her A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, published in 1999, explores how major works of European metaphysics (e.g., Kant, Hegel) not only tend to exclude the subaltern from their discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as fully human subjects. In this work, Spivak launched the concept of "sanctioned ignorance" for the "reproducing and foreclosing of colonialist structures". This concept denotes a purposeful silencing through the "dismissing of a particular context as being irrelevant"; an institutionalized and ideological way of presenting the world.Spivak coined the term "strategic essentialism", which refers to a sort of temporary solidarity for the purpose of social action. For example, women's groups have many different agendas that potentially make it difficult for feminists to work together for common causes. "Strategic essentialism" allows for disparate groups to accept temporarily an "essentialist" position that enables them able to act cohesively and "can be powerfully displacing and disruptive."However, while others have built upon the idea of "strategic essentialism", Spivak has been unhappy with the ways the concept has been taken up and used. In interviews, she has disavowed the term, although she has not completely deserted the concept itself.In speeches given and published since 2002, Spivak has addressed the issue of terrorism and suicide bombings. With the aim of bringing an end to suicide bombings, she has explored and "tried to imagine what message [such acts] might contain", ruminating that "suicidal resistance is a message inscribed in the body when no other means will get through". One critic has suggested that this sort of stylised language may serve to blur important moral issues relating to terrorism. However, Spivak stated in the same speech that "single coerced yet willed suicidal 'terror' is in excess of the destruction of dynastic temples and the violation of women, tenacious and powerfully residual. It has not the banality of evil. It is informed by the stupidity of belief taken to extreme."Apart from Derrida, Spivak has also translated the fiction of the Bengali author, Mahasweta Devi, the poetry of the 18-century Bengali poet Ramprasad Sen, and A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire, a poet, essayist, and statesman from Martinique. In 1997, she received a prize for translation into English from the Sahitya Akadami from the National Academy of Literature in India. === Academic roles and honors === She has been a Guggenheim fellow, has received numerous academic honours including an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College, and has been on the editorial board of academic journals such as Boundary 2. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007. In March of that same year, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger appointed Spivak University Professor, the institution's highest faculty rank. In a letter to the faculty, he wrote: Not only does her world-renowned scholarship—grounded in deconstructivist literary theory—range widely from critiques of post-colonial discourse to feminism, Marxism, and globalization; her lifelong search for fresh insights and understanding has transcended the traditional boundaries of discipline while retaining the fire for new knowledge that is the hallmark of a great intellect. Spivak has served on the advisory board of numerous academic journals, including Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies published by Memorial University of Newfoundland, differences, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies published by Routledge, and Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. Spivak has received 11 honorary doctorates from the University of Toronto, University of London, Oberlin College, Universitat Rovira Virgili, Rabindra Bharati University, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, University of St Andrews, Université de Vincennes à Saint-Denis, Presidency University, Yale University, and University of Ghana-Legon. In 2012, she became the only Indian recipient of the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in the category of Arts and Philosophy, while in 2021 she was elected a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.Spivak has advised many significant post-colonial scholars. Professors Jenny Sharpe and Mark Sanders are among her former students.: xxiii  == Criticism == Spivak has often been criticized for her cryptic prose. Terry Eagleton laments that If colonial societies endure what Spivak calls 'a series of interruptions, a repeated tearing of time that cannot be sutured', much the same is true of her own overstuffed, excessively elliptical prose. She herself, unsurprisingly, reads the book's broken-backed structure in just this way, as an iconoclastic departure from 'accepted scholarly or critical practice'. But the ellipses, the heavy-handed jargon, the cavalier assumption that you know what she means, or that if you don't she doesn't much care, are as much the overcodings of an academic coterie as a smack in the face for conventional scholarship. Writing for the New Statesman, Stephen Howe complained that "Spivak is so bewilderingly eclectic, so prone to juxtapose diverse notions without synthesis, that ascribing a coherent position to her on any question is extremely difficult."Judith Butler, in a response critical of Eagleton's position, cited Adorno's comment on the lesser value of the work of theorists who "recirculate received opinion", and opined that Spivak "gives us the political landscape of culture in its obscurity and proximity", and that Spivak's supposedly "complex" language has resonated with and profoundly changed the thinking of "tens of thousands of activists and scholars", and continues to do so. == Avital Ronell controversy == In May 2018, Spivak signed a collective letter to New York University to defend Avital Ronell, a colleague of Spivak, against the charge of sexual abuse from NYU graduate student Nimrod Reitman. Spivak and the other signatories called the case a "legal nightmare" for Ronell and charged Reitman with conducting a "malicious campaign" against her. More specifically, the letter suggested that Ronell should be excused on the basis of the significance of her academic contributions. Many signatories were also concerned of the utilisation of feminist tools, like Title IX, to take down feminists. Judith Butler, the chief signatory, subsequently apologized for certain aspects of the letter. NYU ultimately found Ronell guilty of sexual harassment and suspended her for a year. == Publications == === Academic books === Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats. Crowell. 1974. ISBN 9780690001143. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. Routledge. 2006 [1987]. ISBN 9781135070816. This is a collection of previously published essays. Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford University Press. 1988. ISBN 9780195052893. This collection was edited by Ranajit Guha and Spivak, and includes an introduction by Spivak. The Post-Colonial Critic – Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Routledge. 1990. ISBN 9781134710850. This collection of interviews was edited by Sarah Harasym. Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge. 2009 [1993]. ISBN 9781135070571. The Spivak Reader. Routledge. 1995. ISBN 9781135217129. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Harvard University Press. 1999. ISBN 9780674177642. Death of a Discipline. Columbia University Press. 2003. ISBN 9780231503235. Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Seagull Books. 2012 [2006]. ISBN 9781905422289. These conversations were conducted with Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska, and Tani E. Barlow. Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging. Seagull Books. 2007. ISBN 9781905422579. This book was co-authored by Spivak and Judith Butler. Other Asias. Wiley. 2008. ISBN 9781405102070. Nationalism and the Imagination. Seagull Books. 2010. ISBN 9780857423184. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Harvard University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780674051836. Harlem. Seagull Books. 2012. ISBN 9780857420848. This book engages with photographs by Alice Attie. Readings. Seagull Books. 2014. ISBN 9780857422088. === Selected essays === "Translator's Preface" in Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press. ix-lxxxvii. 1976. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985). "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism". Critical Inquiry. 12 (1): 243–61. doi:10.1086/448328. S2CID 143045673. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985). "The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives". History and Theory. 24 (3): 247–72. doi:10.2307/2505169. JSTOR 2505169. "Speculations on Reading Marx: After Reading Derrida" in Post-Structuralism and the Question of History, eds. Derek Attridge, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 30–62. 1987. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 271–313. 1988. "Woman in Difference: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Douloti the Bountiful’" in Nationalisms and Sexuality, eds. Andrew Parker et al. New York: Routledge. 96–120. 1992. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1994). "Responsibility". Boundary 2. 21 (3): 19–64. doi:10.2307/303600. JSTOR 303600. "Ghostwriting". Diacritics. 25 (2): 65–84. 1995. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2001). "A Note on the New International". Parallax. 7 (3): 12–6. doi:10.1080/13534640110064084. S2CID 144501695. "Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular". Postcolonial Studies. 8 (4): 475–86. 2006. === Translations === Derrida, Jacques (2016) [1967]. Of Grammatology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421419954. This translation includes a lengthy critical preface by Spivak. Devi, Mahasweta (1995) [1993]. Imaginary Maps. Routledge. ISBN 9780415904636. This translation includes a critical introduction of the three stories. Devi, Mahasweta (1997). Breast Stories. Seagull Books. ISBN 9788170461401. This translation includes a critical introduction of the three stories. Mazumdar, Nirode; Sena, Rāmaprasāda (2000). Song for Kali: A Cycle. Seagull Books. ISBN 9788170461555. This translation includes an introduction to the story. Devi, Mahasweta (2002) [1999]. Old Women. Seagull Books. ISBN 9788170461449. This translation includes a critical introduction of the two stories. Devi, Mahasweta (2002) [1980]. Chotti Munda and His Arrow. Seagull Books. ISBN 9780857426772. This translation includes a critical introduction of the novel. Césaire, Aimé (2010) [1966]. A Season in the Congo. Seagull Books. ISBN 9781905422944. This translation includes a critical introduction of the novel. Red Thread (forthcoming) Gramsci and the Schucht Sisters (forthcoming, in collaboration with Ursula Apitzsch, et al.) == In popular culture == Phire Esho, Chaka, a 1961 book of love poems by Binoy Majumdar, was addressed and dedicated to her.Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic". == See also == List of deconstructionists Postcolonialism Postcolonial feminism Subaltern Studies Comparative literature == References == == Further reading == Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatri; Landry, Donna; MacLean, Gerald M. (1996). The Spivak Reader: Selected Works. Routledge. ISBN 9780415910019. Spivak, Gayatri (1997). ""In a Word": interview". In Nicholson, Linda (ed.). The Second Wave: a Reader in Feminist Theory. Ellen Rooney. New York: Routledge. pp. 356–378. ISBN 9780415917612. Milevska, Suzana (January 2005). "Resistance That Cannot be Recognised as Such: Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak". N.paradoxa. 15: 6–12. Iuliano, Fiorenzo (2012). Altri mondi, altre parole. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak tra decostruzione e impegno militante (in Italian). OmbreCorte. ISBN 9788897522362. == External links == Media related to Gayatri Spivak at Wikimedia Commons "Righting Wrongs" (read full article) "Spivak's Rani of Sirmur" "'Woman' as Theatre" in Radical Philosophy "In the Gaudy Supermarket" – A critical review of A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present by Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books, May 1999 "Exacting Solidarities" – Letters responding to Eagleton's review of Spivak by Judith Butler and others Glossary of Key Terms in the Work of Spivak MLA Journals: PMLA, Vol. 123, No. 1, January 2008 MLA Journals: PMLA, Vol. 125, No. 4, October 2010 "An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization" on YouTube; Gayatri Spivak describes her 2012 collection from Harvard University Press "Creating a Stir Wherever she goes" – The New York Times, February 2002 Reading Spivak

Peter Singer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He wrote the book Animal Liberation (1975), in which he argues for veganism, and the essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", which favours donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he revealed in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian. On two occasions, Singer served as chair of the philosophy department at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996 he stood unsuccessfully as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004 Singer was recognised as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. In 2005, The Sydney Morning Herald placed him among Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals. Singer is a cofounder of Animals Australia and the founder of The Life You Can Save. == Biography == Singer's parents were Austrian Jews who immigrated to Australia from Vienna after Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. They settled in Melbourne, where Singer was born in 1946. His grandparents were less fortunate: his paternal grandparents were taken by the Nazis to Łódź, and were most likely murdered since they were never heard from again; his maternal grandfather David Ernst Oppenheim (1881–1943), an educator and psychologist who collaborated with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Oppenheim was a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and wrote a joint article with Sigmund Freud, before joining the Adlerian Society for Individual Psychology. Singer later wrote a biography of Oppenheim.Singer is an atheist and was raised in a prosperous, nonreligious family. His father had a successful business importing tea and coffee. His family rarely observed Jewish holidays, and Singer declined to have a Bar Mitzvah. Singer attended Preshil and later Scotch College. After leaving school, Singer studied law, history, and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, earning a bachelor's degree in 1967. He has explained that he elected to major in philosophy after his interest was piqued by discussions with his sister's then-boyfriend.He earned a master's degree for a thesis entitled "Why Should I Be Moral?" at the same university in 1969. He was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford and obtained from there a Bachelor of Philosophy in 1971 with a thesis on civil disobedience supervised by R. M. Hare and published as a book in 1973. Singer names Hare and Australian philosopher H. J. McCloskey as his two most important mentors.One day at Balliol College in Oxford, he had what he refers to as probably the decisive formative experience of his life. He was having a discussion after class with fellow graduate student Richard Keshen, a Canadian, who would later become a professor at Cape Breton University. During their lunch Keshen opted to have a salad after being told that the spaghetti sauce contained meat. Singer had the spaghetti. Singer eventually questioned Keshen about his reason for avoiding meat. Keshen explained his ethical objections. Singer would later state, "I'd never met a vegetarian who gave such a straightforward answer that I could understand and relate to". Keshen later introduced Singer to his vegetarian friends. Singer was able to find one book in which he could read up on the issue (Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison) and within a week or two he approached his wife saying that he thought they needed to make a change to their diet and that he did not think they could justify eating meat.After spending three years as a Radcliffe lecturer at University College, Oxford, he was a visiting professor at New York University for 16 months. In 1977 he returned to Melbourne where he spent most of his career, aside from appointments as visiting faculty abroad, until his move to Princeton in 1999. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London, in addition to his work at Princeton. He also has been a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2001. According to philosopher Helga Kuhse, Singer is almost certainly the best-known and most widely read of all contemporary philosophers. Michael Specter wrote that Singer is among the most influential of contemporary philosophers. == Applied ethics == Singer's Practical Ethics (1979) analyzes why and how living beings' interests should be weighed. His principle of equal consideration of interests does not dictate equal treatment of all those with interests, since different interests warrant different treatment. All have an interest in avoiding pain, for instance, but relatively few have an interest in cultivating their abilities. Not only does his principle justify different treatment for different interests, but it allows different treatment for the same interest when diminishing marginal utility is a factor. For example, this approach would privilege a starving person's interest in food over the same interest of someone who is only slightly hungry. Among the more important human interests are those in avoiding pain, in developing one's abilities, in satisfying basic needs for food and shelter, in enjoying warm personal relationships, in being free to pursue one's projects without interference, "and many others". The fundamental interest that entitles a being to equal consideration is the capacity for "suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness". Singer holds that a being's interests should always be weighed according to that being's concrete properties. He favors a "journey" model of life, which measures the wrongness of taking a life by the degree to which doing so frustrates a life journey's goals. So taking a life is less wrong at the beginning, when no goals have been set, and at the end, when the goals have either been met or are unlikely to be accomplished. The journey model is tolerant of some frustrated desire and explains why persons who have embarked on their journeys are not replaceable. Only a personal interest in continuing to live brings the journey model into play. This model also explains the priority that Singer attaches to interests over trivial desires and pleasures. Ethical conduct is justified by reasons that go beyond prudence to "something bigger than the individual", addressing a larger audience. Singer thinks this going-beyond identifies moral reasons as "somehow universal", specifically in the injunction to 'love thy neighbour as thyself', interpreted by him as demanding that one give the same weight to the interests of others as one gives to one's own interests. This universalising step, which Singer traces from Kant to Hare,: 11  is crucial and sets him apart from those moral theorists, from Hobbes to David Gauthier, who tie morality to prudence. Universalisation leads directly to utilitarianism, Singer argues, on the strength of the thought that one's own interests cannot count for more than the interests of others.Taking these into account, one must weigh them up and adopt the course of action that is most likely to maximise the interests of those affected; utilitarianism has been arrived at. Singer's universalising step applies to interests without reference to who has them, whereas the Kantian's applies to the judgments of rational agents (in Kant's kingdom of Ends, or Rawls's original position, etc.). Singer regards Kantian universalisation as unjust to animals. As for the Hobbesians, Singer attempts a response in the final chapter of Practical Ethics, arguing that self-interested reasons support adoption of the moral point of view, such as 'the paradox of hedonism', which counsels that happiness is best found by not looking for it, and the need most people feel to relate to something larger than their own concerns. Singer identifies as a sentientist. Sentientism is a naturalistic worldview that grants moral consideration to all sentient beings. === Effective altruism and world poverty === Singer's ideas have contributed to the rise of effective altruism. He argues that people should try not only to reduce suffering but to reduce it in the most effective manner possible. While Singer has previously written at length about the moral imperative to reduce poverty and eliminate the suffering of nonhuman animals, particularly in the meat industry, he writes about how the effective altruism movement is doing these things more effectively in his 2015 book The Most Good You Can Do. He is a board member of Animal Charity Evaluators, a charity evaluator used by many members of the effective altruism community which recommends the most cost-effective animal advocacy charities and interventions.His own organisation, The Life You Can Save (TLYCS), also recommends a selection of charities deemed by charity evaluators such as GiveWell to be the most effective when it comes to helping those in extreme poverty. TLYCS was founded after Singer released his 2009 eponymous book, in which he argues more generally in favour of giving to charities that help to end global poverty. In particular, he expands upon some of the arguments made in his 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", in which he posits that citizens of rich nations are morally obligated to give at least some of their disposable income to charities that help the global poor. He supports this using the "drowning child analogy", which states that most people would rescue a drowning child from a pond, even if it meant that their expensive clothes were ruined, so we clearly value a human life more than the value of our material possessions. As a result, we should take a significant portion of the money that we spend on our possessions and instead donate it to charity.Since November 2009, Singer is a member of Giving What We Can, an international organisation whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities. === Animal liberation and speciesism === Published in 1975, Animal Liberation has been cited as a formative influence on leaders of the modern animal liberation movement. The central argument of the book is an expansion of the utilitarian concept that "the greatest good of the greatest number" is the only measure of good or ethical behaviour, and Singer believes that there is no reason not to apply this principle to other animals, arguing that the boundary between human and "animal" is completely arbitrary. There are far more differences between a great ape and an oyster, for example, than between a human and a great ape, and yet the former two are lumped together as "animals", whereas we are considered "human" in a way that supposedly differentiates us from all other "animals". He popularised the term "speciesism", which had been coined by English writer Richard D. Ryder to describe the practice of privileging humans over other animals, and therefore argues in favour of the equal consideration of interests of all sentient beings. In Animal Liberation, Singer argues in favour of veganism and against animal experimentation. He stated in a 2006 interview that he doesn't eat meat and that he's been a vegetarian since 1971. He also said that he has "gradually become increasingly vegan" and that "I am largely vegan but I'm a flexible vegan. I don't go to the supermarket and buy non-vegan stuff for myself. But when I'm traveling or going to other people's places I will be quite happy to eat vegetarian rather than vegan."More recently, Singer has stated that he isn't fully vegan, because he will occasionally consume oysters, mussels and clams due to their lack of a central nervous system. According to Singer, meat-eating can be ethically permissible if "farms really give the animals good lives, and then humanely kill them, preferably without transporting them to slaughterhouses or disturbing them. In Animal Liberation, I don't really say that it's the killing that makes [meat-eating] wrong, it's the suffering".In an article for the online publication Chinadialogue, Singer called Western-style meat production cruel, unhealthy, and damaging to the ecosystem. He rejected the idea that the method was necessary to meet the population's increasing demand, explaining that animals in factory farms have to eat food grown explicitly for them, and they burn up most of the food's energy just to breathe and keep their bodies warm. In a 2010 Guardian article he titled, "Fish: the forgotten victims on our plate", Singer drew attention to the welfare of fish. He quoted author Alison Mood's startling statistics from a report she wrote, which was released on fishcount.org.uk just a month before the Guardian article. Singer states that she "has put together what may well be the first-ever systematic estimate of the size of the annual global capture of wild fish. It is, she calculates, in the order of one trillion, although it could be as high as 2.7tn."Some chapters of Animal Liberation are dedicated to criticising testing on animals but, unlike groups such as PETA, Singer is willing to accept testing when there is a clear benefit for medicine. In November 2006, Singer appeared on the BBC programme Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing and said that he felt that Tipu Aziz's experiments on monkeys for research into treating Parkinson's disease could be justified. Whereas Singer has continued since the publication of Animal Liberation to promote vegetarianism and veganism, he has been much less vocal in recent years on the subject of animal experimentation. Singer has defended some of the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, such as the stealing of footage from Dr. Thomas Gennarelli's laboratory in May 1984 (as shown in the documentary Unnecessary Fuss), but he has condemned other actions such as the use of explosives by some animal-rights activists and sees the freeing of captive animals as largely futile when they are easily replaced.Singer features in the 2017 documentary Empathy, directed by Ed Antoja, which aims to promote a more respectful way of life towards all animals. The documentary won the "Public Choice Award" of the Greenpeace Film Festival. === Other views === ==== Meta-ethical views ==== In the past, Singer did not hold that objective moral values exist, on the basis that reason could favour both egoism and equal consideration of interests. Singer himself adopted utilitarianism on the basis that people's preferences can be universalised, leading to a situation where one takes the "point of view of the universe" and "an impartial standpoint". But in the second edition of Practical Ethics, he concedes that the question of why we should act morally "cannot be given an answer that will provide everyone with overwhelming reasons for acting morally".: 335 However, when co-authoring The Point of View of the Universe (2014), Singer shifted to the position that objective moral values do exist, and defends the 19th century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick's view that objective morality can be derived from fundamental moral axioms that are knowable by reason. Additionally, he endorses Derek Parfit's view that there are object-given reasons for action.: 126  Furthermore, Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (the co-author of the book) argue that evolutionary debunking arguments can be used to demonstrate that it is more rational to take the impartial standpoint of "the point of view of the universe", as opposed to egoism—pursuing one's own self-interest—because the existence of egoism is more likely to be the product of evolution by natural selection, rather than because it is correct, whereas taking an impartial standpoint and equally considering the interests of all sentient beings is in conflict with what we would expect from natural selection, meaning that it is more likely that impartiality in ethics is the correct stance to pursue.: 182–183  ==== Political views ==== Whilst a student in Melbourne, Singer campaigned against the Vietnam War as president of the Melbourne University Campaign Against Conscription. He also spoke publicly for the legalisation of abortion in Australia. Singer joined the Australian Labor Party in 1974, but resigned after disillusionment with the centrist leadership of Bob Hawke. In 1992, he became a founding member of the Victorian Greens. He has run for political office twice for the Greens: in 1994 he received 28% of the vote in the Kooyong by-election, and in 1996 he received 3% of the vote when running for the Senate (elected by proportional representation). Before the 1996 election, he co-authored a book The Greens with Bob Brown.In A Darwinian Left, Singer outlines a plan for the political left to adapt to the lessons of evolutionary biology. He says that evolutionary psychology suggests that humans naturally tend to be self-interested. He further argues that the evidence that selfish tendencies are natural must not be taken as evidence that selfishness is "right". He concludes that game theory (the mathematical study of strategy) and experiments in psychology offer hope that self-interested people will make short-term sacrifices for the good of others, if society provides the right conditions. Essentially, Singer claims that although humans possess selfish, competitive tendencies naturally, they have a substantial capacity for cooperation that also has been selected for during human evolution. Singer's writing in Greater Good magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley, includes the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. Singer has criticised the United States for receiving "oil from countries run by dictators ... who pocket most of the" financial gains, thus "keeping the people in poverty". Singer believes that the wealth of these countries "should belong to the people" within them rather than their "de facto government. In paying dictators for their oil, we are in effect buying stolen goods, and helping to keep people in poverty." Singer holds that America "should be doing more to assist people in extreme poverty". He is disappointed in U.S. foreign aid policy, deeming it "a very small proportion of our GDP, less than a quarter of some other affluent nations." Singer maintains that little "private philanthropy from the U.S." is "directed to helping people in extreme poverty, although there are some exceptions, most notably, of course, the Gates Foundation."Singer describes himself as not anti-capitalist, stating in a 2010 interview with the New Left Project: Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the capitalist economy. He added that "[i]f we ever do find a better system, I'll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist".Similarly, in his book Marx, Singer is sympathetic to Marx's criticism of capitalism, but is skeptical about whether a better system is likely to be created, writing: "Marx saw that capitalism is a wasteful, irrational system, a system which controls us when we should be controlling it. That insight is still valid; but we can now see that the construction of a free and equal society is a more difficult task than Marx realised."Singer is opposed to the death penalty, claiming that it does not effectively deter the crimes for which it is the punitive measure, and that he cannot see any other justification for it.In 2010, Singer signed a petition renouncing his right of return to Israel, because it is "a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians."In 2016, Singer called on Jill Stein to withdraw from the US presidential election in states that were close between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, on the grounds that "The stakes are too high". He argued against the view that there was no significant difference between Clinton and Trump, whilst also saying that he would not advocate such a tactic in Australia's electoral system, which allows for ranking of preferences.When writing in 2017 on Trump's denial of climate change and plans to withdraw from the Paris accords, Singer advocated a boycott of all consumer goods from the United States to pressure the Trump administration to change its environmental policies.In 2021, Singer described the War on Drugs as an expensive, ineffective and extremely harmful policy. ==== Euthanasia and infanticide ==== Singer holds that the right to life is essentially tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is essentially tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure. In Practical Ethics, Singer argues in favour of abortion rights on the grounds that fetuses are neither rational nor self-aware, and can therefore hold no preferences. As a result, he argues that the preference of a mother to have an abortion automatically takes precedence. In sum, Singer argues that a fetus lacks personhood. Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living". Singer has clarified that his "view of when life begins isn't very different from that of opponents of abortion." He deems it not "unreasonable to hold that an individual human life begins at conception. If it doesn't, then it begins about 14 days later, when it is no longer possible for the embryo to divide into twins or other multiples." Singer disagrees with abortion rights opponents in that he does not "think that the fact that an embryo is a living human being is sufficient to show that it is wrong to kill it." Singer wishes "to see American jurisprudence, and the national abortion debate, take up the question of which capacities a human being needs to have in order for it to be wrong to kill it" as well as "when, in the development of the early human being, these capacities are present."Singer classifies euthanasia as voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary. Voluntary euthanasia is that to which the subject consents. He argues in favour of voluntary euthanasia and some forms of non-voluntary euthanasia, including infanticide in certain instances, but opposes involuntary euthanasia. Bioethicists associated with the disability rights and disability studies communities have argued that his epistemology is based on ableist conceptions of disability. Singer's positions have also been criticised by some advocates for disability rights and right-to-life supporters, concerned with what they see as his attacks upon human dignity. Religious critics have argued that Singer's ethics ignores and undermines the traditional notion of the sanctity of life. Singer agrees and believes the notion of the sanctity of life ought to be discarded as outdated, unscientific, and irrelevant to understanding problems in contemporary bioethics. Disability rights activists have held many protests against Singer at Princeton University and at his lectures over the years. Singer has replied that many people judge him based on secondhand summaries and short quotations taken out of context, not on his books or articles, and that his aim is to elevate the status of animals, not to lower that of humans.American publisher Steve Forbes ceased his donations to Princeton University in 1999 because of Singer's appointment to a prestigious professorship. Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote to organisers of a Swedish book fair to which Singer was invited that "A professor of morals ... who justifies the right to kill handicapped newborns ... is in my opinion unacceptable for representation at your level." Conservative psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple wrote in 2010 that Singerian moral universalism is "preposterous—psychologically, theoretically, and practically".In 2002, disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson debated Singer, challenging his belief that it is morally permissible to euthanise newborn children with severe disabilities. "Unspeakable Conversations", Johnson's account of her encounters with Singer and the pro-euthanasia movement, was published in the New York Times Magazine in 2003.In 2015, Singer debated Archbishop Anthony Fisher on the legalisation of euthanasia at Sydney Town Hall. Singer rejected arguments that legalising euthanasia would result in a slippery slope where the practice might become widespread as a means to remove undesirable people for financial or other motives.Singer has experienced the complexities of some of these questions in his own life. His mother had Alzheimer's disease. He said, "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult". In an interview with Ronald Bailey, published in December 2000, he explained that his sister shares the responsibility of making decisions about his mother. He did say that, if he were solely responsible, his mother might not continue to live. ==== Surrogacy ==== In 1985, Singer wrote a book with the physician Deanne Wells arguing that surrogate motherhood should be allowed and regulated by the state by establishing nonprofit 'State Surrogacy Boards', which would ensure fairness between surrogate mothers and surrogacy-seeking parents. Singer and Wells endorsed both the payment of medical expenses endured by surrogate mothers and an extra "fair fee" to compensate the surrogate mother. ==== Religion ==== Singer was a speaker at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention. He has debated with Christians including John Lennox and Dinesh D'Souza. Singer has pointed to the problem of evil as an objection against the Christian conception of God. He stated: "The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler." In keeping with his considerations of nonhuman animals, Singer also takes issue with the original sin reply to the problem of evil, saying that, "animals also suffer from floods, fires, and droughts, and, since they are not descended from Adam and Eve, they cannot have inherited original sin." ==== Medical intervention in the aging process ==== Singer supports the view that medical intervention into the aging process would do more to improve human life than research on therapies for specific chronic diseases in the developed world: In developed countries, aging is the ultimate cause of 90 per cent of all human deaths. Thus, treating aging is a form of preventive medicine for all of the diseases of old age. Moreover, even before aging leads to our death, it reduces our capacity to enjoy our lives and to contribute positively to the lives of others. So, instead of targeting specific diseases that are much more likely to occur when people have reached a certain age, wouldn't a better strategy be to try to forestall or repair the damage done to our bodies by the aging process? Singer does worry that "If we discover how to slow aging, we might have a world in which the poor majority must face death at a time when members of the rich minority are only a 10th of the way through their expected lifespans," thus risking "that overcoming aging will increase the stock of injustice in the world." However, Singer cautiously highlights that as with other medical developments, they will reach the more economically disadvantaged over time once developed, whereas they can never do so if they are not. As to the concern that longer lives might contribute to overpopulation, Singer notes that "success in overcoming aging could itself ... delay or eliminate menopause, enabling women to have their first children much later than they can now" and thus slowing the birth rate, and also that technology may reduce the consequences of rising human populations by (for instance) enabling more zero-greenhouse gas energy sources.In 2012, Singer's department sponsored the "Science and Ethics of Eliminating Aging" seminar at Princeton. === Protests === In 1989 and 1990, Singer's work was the subject of a number of protests in Germany. A course in ethics led by Hartmut Kliemt at the University of Duisburg where the main text used was Singer's Practical Ethics was, according to Singer, "subjected to organised and repeated disruption by protesters objecting to the use of the book on the grounds that in one of its ten chapters it advocates active euthanasia for severely disabled newborn infants". The protests led to the course being shut down.When Singer tried to speak during a lecture at Saarbrücken, he was interrupted by a group of protesters including advocates for disability rights. One of the protesters expressed that entering serious discussions would be a tactical error.The same year, Singer was invited to speak in Marburg at a European symposium on "Bioengineering, Ethics and Mental Disability". The invitation was fiercely attacked by leading intellectuals and organisations in the German media, with an article in Der Spiegel comparing Singer's positions to Nazism. Eventually, the symposium was cancelled and Singer's invitation withdrawn.A lecture at the Zoological Institute of the University of Zurich was interrupted by two groups of protesters. The first group was a group of disabled people who staged a brief protest at the beginning of the lecture. They objected to inviting an advocate of euthanasia to speak. At the end of this protest, when Singer tried to address their concerns, a second group of protesters rose and began chanting "Singer raus! Singer raus!" ("Singer out!" in German) When Singer attempted to respond, a protester jumped on stage and grabbed his glasses, and the host ended the lecture. Singer explains "my views are not threatening to anyone, even minimally" and says that some groups play on the anxieties of those who hear only keywords that are understandably worrying (given the constant fears of ever repeating the Holocaust) if taken with any less than the full context of his belief system.: 346–359 In 1991, Singer was due to speak along with R. M. Hare and Georg Meggle at the 15th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria. Singer has stated that threats were made to Adolf Hübner, then the president of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, that the conference would be disrupted if Singer and Meggle were given a platform. Hübner proposed to the board of the society that Singer's invitation (as well as the invitations of a number of other speakers) be withdrawn. The Society decided to cancel the symposium.In an article originally published in The New York Review of Books, Singer argued that the protests dramatically increased the amount of coverage he received: "instead of a few hundred people hearing views at lectures in Marburg and Dortmund, several millions read about them or listened to them on television". Despite this, Singer argues that it has led to a difficult intellectual climate, with professors in Germany unable to teach courses on applied ethics and campaigns demanding the resignation of professors who invited Singer to speak. === Criticism === Singer was criticised by Nathan J. Robinson, founder of Current Affairs, for comments in an op-ed defending Anna Stubblefield, a carer and professor who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault against a man with severe physical and intellectual disabilities. The op-ed questioned whether the victim was capable of giving or withholding consent, and stated that "It seems reasonable to assume that the experience was pleasurable to him; for even if he is cognitively impaired, he was capable of struggling to resist." Robinson called the statements "outrageous" and "morally repulsive", and said that they implied that it might be permissible to rape or sexually assault disabled people.Roger Scruton was critical of the consequentialist, utilitarian approach of Peter Singer. Scruton alleged that Singer's works, including Animal Liberation (1975), "contain little or no philosophical argument. They derive their radical moral conclusions from a vacuous utilitarianism that counts the pain and pleasure of all living things as equally significant and that ignores just about everything that has been said in our philosophical tradition about the real distinction between persons and animals."Anthropologists have criticised Singer's foundational essay "Animal Liberation" (1973) for comparing the interests of "slum children" with the interests of the rats that bite them – at a time when poor and predominantly Black American children were indeed regularly attacked and bitten by rats, sometimes fatally. == Recognition == Singer was inducted into the United States Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2000.In June 2012, Singer was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for "eminent service to philosophy and bioethics as a leader of public debate and communicator of ideas in the areas of global poverty, animal welfare and the human condition."Singer received Philosophy Now's 2016 Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity for his efforts "to disturb the comfortable complacency with which many of us habitually ignore the desperate needs of others ... particularly for this work as it relates to the Effective Altruism movement."In 2018, Singer was noted in the book, Rescuing Ladybugs by author and animal advocate Jennifer Skiff as a "hero among heroes in the world", who, in arguing against speciesism "gave the modern world permission to believe what we innately know – that animals are sentient and that we have a moral obligation not to exploit or mistreat them.": 132  The book states that Singer's "moral philosophy on animal equality was sparked when he asked a fellow student at Oxford University a simple question about his eating habits.": 133 In 2021, Singer was awarded the US$1-million Berggruen Prize, and decided to give it away. He decided, in particular, to give half of the prize money to his foundation The Life You Can Save, because "over the last three years, each dollar spent by it generated an average of $17 in donations for its recommended nonprofits". (He added he has never taken money for personal use from the organisation.) Moreover, he plans to donate more than a third of the money to organisations combating intensive animal farming, and recommended as effective by Animal Charity Evaluators.For 2022 Singer received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of "Humanities and Social Sciences". == Personal life == Since 1968, he has been married to Renata Singer (née Diamond; b. 1947 Wałbrzych, Poland); they have three children: Ruth, a textile artist; Marion, law student and youth arts specialist; and Esther, linguist and teacher. Renata Singer is a novelist and author and has collaborated on publications with her husband. Until 2021 she was President of the Kadimah Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library in Melbourne. == Publications == === Singly authored books === Democracy and Disobedience, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973; Oxford University Press, New York, 1974; Gregg Revivals, Aldershot, Hampshire, 1994 Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals, New York Review/Random House, New York, 1975; Cape, London, 1976; Avon, New York, 1977; Paladin, London, 1977; Thorsons, London, 1983. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, New York, 2002. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, New York, 2009. Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980; second edition, 1993; third edition, 2011. ISBN 0-521-22920-0, ISBN 0-521-29720-6, ISBN 978-0-521-70768-8 Marx, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980; Hill & Wang, New York, 1980; reissued as Marx: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000; also included in full in K. Thomas (ed.), Great Political Thinkers: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Mill and Marx, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992 The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1981; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981; New American Library, New York, 1982. ISBN 0-19-283038-4 Hegel, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1982; reissued as Hegel: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2001; also included in full in German Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-interest, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1993; Mandarin, London, 1995; Prometheus, Buffalo, NY, 1995; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1994; St Martin's Press, New York, 1995; reprint 2008. ISBN 0-312-11880-5 Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995 Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 1998; Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1999 A Darwinian Left, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1999; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000. ISBN 0-300-08323-8 One World: The Ethics of Globalisation, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002; Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2002; 2nd edition, pb, Yale University Press, 2004; Oxford Longman, Hyderabad, 2004. ISBN 0-300-09686-0 Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna, Ecco Press, New York, 2003; HarperCollins Australia, Melbourne, 2003; Granta, London, 2004 The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush, Dutton, New York, 2004; Granta, London, 2004; Text, Melbourne, 2004. ISBN 0-525-94813-9 The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. New York: Random House 2009. The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically. Yale University Press, 2015. Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter. Princeton University Press, 2016. Why Vegan? Eating Ethically. Liveright, 2020. === Coauthored books === Animal Factories (co-author with James Mason), Crown, New York, 1980 The Reproduction Revolution: New Ways of Making Babies (co-author with Deane Wells), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984. revised American edition, Making Babies, Scribner's New York, 1986 Animal Liberation: A Graphic Guide (co-author with Lori Gruen), Camden Press, London, 1987 Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants (co-author with Helga Kuhse), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985; Oxford University Press, New York, 1986; Gregg Revivals, Aldershot, Hampshire, 1994. ISBN 0-19-217745-1 Ethical and Legal Issues in Guardianship Options for Intellectually Disadvantaged People (co-author with Terry Carney), Human Rights Commission Monograph Series, no. 2, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1986 How Ethical is Australia? An Examination of Australia's Record as a Global Citizen (with Tom Gregg), Black Inc, Melbourne, 2004 The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (or The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter), Rodale, New York, 2006 (co-author with Jim Mason); Text, Melbourne; Random House, London. Audio version: Playaway. ISBN 1-57954-889-X Eating (co-authored with Jim Mason), Arrow, London, 2006 Stem Cell Research: the ethical issues. (co-edited by Lori Gruen, Laura Grabel, and Peter Singer). New York: Blackwells. 2007. The Future of Animal Farming: Renewing the Ancient Contract (with Marian Stamp Dawkins, and Roland Bonney) 2008. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), Oxford University Press, 2014 Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), Oxford University Press, 2017 === Edited and coedited volumes and anthologies === Test-Tube Babies: a guide to moral questions, present techniques, and future possibilities (co-edited with William Walters), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982 Animal Rights and Human Obligations: An Anthology (co-editor with Tom Regan), Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1976. 2nd revised edition, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1989 In Defence of Animals (ed.), Blackwells, Oxford, 1985; Harper & Row, New York, 1986. ISBN 0-631-13897-8 Applied Ethics (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986 Embryo Experimentation (co-editor with Helga Kuhse, Stephen Buckle, Karen Dawson and Pascal Kasimba), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990; paperback edition, updated, 1993 A Companion to Ethics (ed.), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; paperback edition, 1993 Save the Animals! (Australian edition, co-author with Barbara Dover and Ingrid Newkirk), Collins Angus & Robertson, North Ryde, NSW, 1991 The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (co-editor with Paola Cavalieri), Fourth Estate, London, 1993; hardback, St Martin's Press, New York, 1994; paperback, St Martin's Press, New York, 1995 Ethics (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994 Individuals, Humans and Persons: Questions of Life and Death (co-author with Helga Kuhse), Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin, Germany, 1994 The Greens (co-author with Bob Brown), Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1996 The Allocation of Health Care Resources: An Ethical Evaluation of the "QALY" Approach (co-author with John McKie, Jeff Richardson and Helga Kuhse), Ashgate/Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1998 A Companion to Bioethics (co-editor with Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, Oxford, 1998 Bioethics. An Anthology (co-editor with Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, 1999/ Oxford, 2006 The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature (co-edited with Renata Singer), Blackwell, Oxford, 2005 In Defense of Animals. The Second Wave (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 2005 The Bioethics Reader: Editors' Choice. (co-editor with Ruth Chadwick, Helga Kuhse, Willem Landman and Udo Schüklenk). New York: Blackwell, 2007 J. M. Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature (co-editor with A. Leist), New York: Columbia University Press, 2010 The Golden Ass, by Apuleius (edited and abridged by Peter Singer, translated by Ellen D. Finkelpearl), New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation; London: W.W. Norton and Company, Ltd., 2021 === Anthologies of Singer's work === Writings on an Ethical Life, Ecco, New York, 2000; Fourth Estate, London, 2001. ISBN 0-06-019838-9 Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics (edited by Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, Oxford, 2001 === Commentary volumes on Singer's work === Jamieson, Dale (ed.). Singer and His Critics. Wiley-Blackwell, 1999 Schaler, Jeffrey A. (ed.). Peter Singer Under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His Critics. Chicago: Open Court Publishers, 2009 Davidow, Ben (ed.). "Peter Singer" Uncaged: Top Activists Share Their Wisdom on Effective Farm Animal Advocacy. Davidow Press, 2013 == See also == Animal liberation movement Animal liberationist Argument from marginal cases Demandingness objection Effective altruism Intrinsic value (animal ethics) List of animal rights advocates Utilitarian bioethics Utilitarianism Veganism == Notes == == References == == External links == Official website Column archive at Project Syndicate Appearances on C-SPAN Peter Singer at IMDb An in-depth autobiographical interview with Singer Peter Singer, biographical profile, including quotes and further resources, at Utilitarianism.net.

Camille Paglia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia

Camille Anna Paglia (; born April 2, 1947) is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history. == Personal life == Paglia was born in Endicott, New York, the eldest child of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (née Colapietro) Paglia. All four of her grandparents were born in Italy. Her mother immigrated to the United States at five years old from Ceccano, in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, Italy. Paglia has stated that her father's side of the family was from the Campanian towns of Avellino, Benevento, and Caserta. Paglia was raised Roman Catholic, and attended primary school in rural Oxford, New York, where her family lived in a working farmhouse. Her father, a veteran of World War II, taught at the Oxford Academy high school and exposed his young daughter to art through books he brought home about French art history. In 1957, her family moved to Syracuse, New York, so that her father could begin graduate school; he eventually became a professor of Romance languages at Le Moyne College. She attended the Edward Smith Elementary School, T. Aaron Levy Junior High, and Nottingham Senior High School. In 1992, Carmelia Metosh, her Latin teacher for three years, said, "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now." Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgements to Sexual Personae, later describing her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards".During her stays at a summer Girl Scout camp in Thendara, New York, she took on a variety of new names, including Anastasia (her confirmation name, inspired by the film Anastasia), Stacy, and Stanley. A crucially significant event for her was when an outhouse exploded after she poured too much quicklime into the latrine. "That symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture, into pornography and crime and psychopathology… and I would drop the bomb into it".For more than a decade, Paglia was the partner of artist Alison Maddex. Paglia legally adopted Maddex's son (who was born in 2002). In 2007, the couple separated but remained "harmonious co-parents", in the words of Paglia, who lived two miles (three kilometers) apart.Paglia is an atheist, and has stated she has "a very spiritual mystic view of the universe". == Education == Paglia entered Harpur College at Binghamton University in 1964. The same year, Paglia's poem "Atrophy" was published in the local newspaper. She later said that she was trained to read literature by poet Milton Kessler, who "believed in the responsiveness of the body, and of the activation of the senses to literature ... And oh did I believe in that". She graduated from Harpur as class valedictorian in 1968.According to Paglia, while in college she punched a "marauding drunk", and takes pride in having been put on probation for committing 39 pranks.Paglia attended Yale as a graduate student, and she claims to have been the only open lesbian at Yale Graduate School from 1968 to 1972. At Yale, Paglia quarreled with Rita Mae Brown, whom she later characterized as "then darkly nihilist," and argued with the New Haven, Connecticut, Women's Liberation Rock Band when they dismissed the Rolling Stones as sexist. Paglia was mentored by Harold Bloom. Sexual Personae was then titled "The Androgynous Dream: the image of the androgyne as it appears in literature and is embodied in the psyche of the artist, with reference to the visual arts and the cinema."Paglia read Susan Sontag and aspired to emulate what she called her "celebrity, her positioning in the media world at the border of the high arts and popular culture." Paglia first saw Sontag in person on October 15, 1969 (Vietnam Moratorium Day), when Paglia, then a Yale graduate student, was visiting a friend at Princeton. In 1973, Paglia, a militant feminist and open lesbian, was working at her first academic job at Bennington College. She considered Sontag a radical who had challenged male dominance. The same year, Paglia drove to an appearance by Sontag at Dartmouth, hoping to arrange for her to speak at Bennington, but found it difficult to find the money for Sontag's speaking fee; Paglia relied on help from Richard Tristman, a friend of Sontag's, to persuade her to come. Bennington College agreed to pay Sontag $700 (twice what they usually offered speakers but only half Sontag's usual fee) to give a talk about contemporary issues. Paglia staged a poster campaign urging students to attend Sontag's appearance. Sontag arrived at Bennington Carriage Barn, where she was to speak, more than an hour late, and then began reading what Paglia recalled as a "boring and bleak" short story about "nothing" in the style of a French New Novel.As a result of Sontag's Bennington College appearance, Paglia began to become disenchanted with her, believing that she had withdrawn from confrontation with the academic world, and that her "mandarin disdain" for popular culture showed an elitism that betrayed her early work, which had suggested that high and low culture both reflected a new sensibility. == Career == In the autumn of 1972, Paglia began teaching at Bennington College, which hired her in part thanks to a recommendation from Harold Bloom. At Bennington, she befriended the philosopher James Fessenden, who first taught there in the same semester.Through her study of the classics and the scholarly work of Jane Ellen Harrison, James George Frazer, Erich Neumann and others, Paglia developed a theory of sexual history that contradicted a number of ideas fashionable at the time, hence her criticism of Marija Gimbutas, Carolyn Heilbrun, Kate Millett and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and other topics in her Yale PhD thesis Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, which she defended in December 1974. In September 1976, she gave a public lecture drawing on that dissertation, in which she discussed Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, followed by remarks on Diana Ross, Gracie Allen, Yul Brynner, and Stéphane Audran.Paglia wrote that she "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior". Similar fights with feminists and academics culminated in a 1978 incident which led her to resign from Bennington; after a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned in 1979.Paglia finished Sexual Personae in the early 1980s, but could not get it published. She supported herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. Her paper, "The Apollonian Androgyne and the Faerie Queene", was published in English Literary Renaissance, Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "Wuthering Heights and the Ellipses of Interpretation", in Journal of Religion in Literature, but her academic career was otherwise stalled. In a 1995 letter to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (The Advocate) in the early 1980s". She wrote articles on New Haven's historic pizzerias and on an old house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.In 1984, she joined the faculty of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged in 1987 with the Philadelphia College of Art to become the University of the Arts. Paglia is on the editorial board of the classics and humanities journal Arion. She wrote a regular column for Salon.com from 1995 to 2001, and again from 2007 to 2009. Paglia resumed writing a Salon.com column in 2016.Paglia cooperated with Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock in their writing of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, sending them detailed letters from which they quoted with her permission. Rollyson and Paddock note that Sontag "had her lawyer put our publisher on notice" when she realized that they were investigating her life and career.Paglia participates in the decennial poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound which asks participants to submit a list of what they believe to be the ten greatest films of all time. According to her responses to the poll in 2002, 2012, and 2022, the films Paglia holds in highest regard include Ben-Hur, Blowup, Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, North by Northwest, Orphée, Persona, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Ten Commandments, and Vertigo.In 2005, Paglia was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect. In 2012, an article in The New York Times remarked that "[a]nyone who has been following the body count of the culture wars over the past decades knows Paglia". Paglia has said that she is willing to have her entire career judged on the basis of her composition of what she considers to be "probably the most important sentence that she has ever written": "God is man's greatest idea." == Views == === Feminism === Though Paglia admires Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex ("the supreme work of modern feminism… its deep learning and massive argument are unsurpassed") as well as Germaine Greer, Time critic Martha Duffy writes that Paglia "does not hesitate to hurl brazen insults" at several feminists. In an interview, Paglia stated that to be effective, one has to "name names"; criticism should be concrete. Paglia stated that many critics "escape into abstractions", rendering their criticism "intellectualized and tame". Paglia was known as one of the scholars and feminists that theorized American singer Madonna within feminism and for which publications such as Vogue called her the "high priestess of post-feminism".Paglia accused Greer of becoming "a drone in three years" as a result of her early success; Paglia has also criticized the work of activist Diana Fuss. Elaine Showalter calls Paglia "unique in the hyperbole and virulence of her hostility to virtually all the prominent feminist activists, public figures, writers and scholars of her generation", mentioning Carolyn Heilbrun, Judith Butler, Carol Gilligan, Marilyn French, Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Susan Thomases, and Hillary Clinton as targets of her criticism. Paglia has accused Kate Millett of starting "the repressive, Stalinist style in feminist criticism." Paglia has repeatedly criticized Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), calling her a "sanctimonious", unappealing role model for women whose "smug, arrogant" attitude is accompanied by "painfully limited processes of thought". Paglia contends that under Ireland's leadership, NOW "damaged and marginalized the women's movement".In 1999, Martha Nussbaum wrote an essay called "The Professor of Parody", in which she criticized Judith Butler for retreating to abstract theory disconnected from real world problems. Paglia reacted to the essay by stating that the criticism was "long overdue", but characterized the criticism as "one PC diva turning against another". She criticized Nussbaum for failing to make her criticisms earlier while accusing her of borrowing Paglia's ideas without acknowledgement. She called Nussbaum's "preparation or instinct for sex analysis… dubious at best", but nevertheless stated that "Nussbaum is a genuine scholar who operates on a vastly higher intellectual level than Butler".Many feminists have criticized Paglia; Christina Hoff Sommers calls her "Perhaps the most conspicuous target of feminist opprobrium," noting that the Women's Review of Books described Sexual Personae as patriarchy's "counter-assault on feminism". Sommers relates that when Paglia appeared at a Brown University forum, feminists signed a petition censuring her and demanding an investigation into procedures for inviting speakers to the campus. Some feminist critics have characterized Paglia as an "anti-feminist feminist", critical of central features of much contemporary feminism but holding out "her own special variety of feminist affirmation".Naomi Wolf traded a series of sometimes personal attacks with Paglia throughout the early 1990s. In The New Republic, Wolf wrote that Paglia "poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters" and characterized Paglia as intellectually dishonest. In a 1991 speech, Paglia criticized Wolf for blaming anorexia on the media, calling Wolf a "twit". Gloria Steinem said of Paglia that, "Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a Nazi saying they're not anti-Semitic." Paglia called Steinem "the Stalin of feminism". Katha Pollitt calls Paglia one of a "seemingly endless parade of social critics [who] have achieved celebrity by portraying not sexism but feminism as the problem". Pollitt writes that Paglia has glorified "male dominance", and has been able to get away with things "that might make even Rush Limbaugh blanch," because she is a woman.Paglia's view that rape is sexually motivated has been endorsed by evolutionary psychologists Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer; they comment that "Paglia… urges women to be skeptical toward the feminist 'party line' on the subject, to become better informed about risk factors, and to use the information to lower their risk of rape".In an essay critiquing the Hollywood/celebrity fad of "Girl Squads", made popular in 2015 by pop-icons like Taylor Swift, Paglia argued that rather than empowering women the cliquish practice actually harms the self-esteem of those who are not rich, famous, or attractive enough to belong to the group, while further defining women only by a very narrow, often sexualized stereotype. She challenged that to be truly empowering, these groups need to mentor, advise, and be more inclusive, for more women to realize their true, individual potential. === Transgender people === Though she has not transitioned, Paglia identifies as transgender. She reports having gender dysphoria since childhood, and says that "never once in my life have I felt female". She says that she was "donning flamboyant male costumes from early childhood on".Nevertheless, Paglia says that she is "highly skeptical about the current transgender wave" which she thinks has been produced by "far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows". She writes that "In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity."Paglia's views led to a petition demanding that the University of the Arts remove her from their faculty, but the university rejected it. Paglia considered it "a publicity stunt" and praised the university's "eloquent statement affirming academic freedom [as] a landmark in contemporary education." === Climate change === Paglia has long rejected the scientific consensus on global warming, which she describes as "the political agenda that has slowly accrued" around the issue of climate change. In a 2017 interview with The Weekly Standard, Paglia stated, "It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender." === French academia === Paglia is critical of the influence of many postwar French writers have had on the humanities, claiming that universities are in the "thrall" of French post-structuralists; that in the works of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault, she never once found a sentence that interested her. François Cusset writes that Paglia, like other major American public intellectuals after World War II, owes her broader recognition mainly to the political repercussions of polemics that first erupted on college campuses, in her case to a polemic against foreign intellectualism. He says she achieved phenomenal success when she called Foucault a "bastard", thereby providing (together with Alan Sokal's Social Text parody) the best evidence for Paul de Man's view that theory should be defined negatively, based on the opposition it arouses.However, Paglia's assessment of French writers is not purely negative. She has called Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) "brilliant and imperious" and she traces the lineage of her "dissident feminism", not from Betty Friedan but from Beauvoir. Paglia also identified Jean-Paul Sartre's work as part of a high period in literature. She has praised Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1957) and Gilles Deleuze's Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1967), while finding both men's later work flawed. Of Gaston Bachelard, who influenced Paglia, she wrote "[his] dignified yet fluid phenomenological descriptive method seemed to me ideal for art", adding that he was "the last modern French writer I took seriously". === Politics === Paglia characterizes herself as a libertarian. She opposes laws against prostitution, pornography, drugs, and abortion. She is also opposed to affirmative action laws. Some of her views have been characterized as conservative, although when asked in 2017 if she considers herself a cultural conservative she replied: "No, not at all… Conservative would mean I was cleaving to something past which was great, and no longer is… and usually I'm not saying we should return to anything. I do believe we're moving inexorably into the future."Paglia criticized Bill Clinton for not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which she says "paralyzed the government for two years, leading directly to our blindsiding by 9/11". In the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, she voted for the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader "[because] I detest the arrogant, corrupt superstructure of the Democratic Party, with which I remain stubbornly registered."In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Paglia supported John Kerry, and in 2008 she supported Barack Obama. In 2012, she supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Paglia was highly critical of 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, calling her a "fraud" and a "liar". Paglia refused to support either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, indicating in a March Salon column that if Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party's nomination, she would either cast a write-in vote for Bernie Sanders or else vote for Green Party candidate Stein, as she did in 2012. Paglia later clarified in a statement that she would vote for Stein. In 2017, she stated that she is a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary and for Jill Stein in the 2016 general election. For the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Paglia criticized the Democratic Party for lacking a coherent message and a strong candidate. She disavowed Sanders as being "way too old and creaky" and retracted her initial support for Kamala Harris for missing "a huge opportunity to play a moderating, statesmanlike role." Citing the "need to project steadiness, substance, and warmth," Paglia expressed interest in Cheri Bustos and Steve Bullock as potential candidates. === Child sexuality === In 1993, Paglia signed a manifesto supporting NAMBLA, a pederasty and pedophilia advocacy organization. In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the legal age of consent to 14. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist Bill Andriette, "I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age." In a 1997 Salon column, Paglia expressed the view that male pedophilia correlates with the heights of a civilization, stating "I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In Sexual Personae, I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization." Paglia noted in several interviews, as well as Sexual Personae, that she supports the legalization of certain forms of child pornography.She later changed her views on the matter. In an interview for Radio New Zealand's Saturday Morning show, conducted on April 28, 2018, by Kim Hill, Paglia was asked, "Are you a libertarian on the issue of pedophilia?", to which she replied, "In terms of the present day, I think it's absolutely impossible to think we could reproduce the Athenian code of pedophilia, of boy-love, that was central to culture at that time. …We must protect children, and I feel that very very strongly. The age of consent for sexual interactions between a boy and an older man is obviously disputed, at what point that should be. I used to think that fourteen (the way it is in some places in the world) was adequate. I no longer think that. I think young people need greater protection than that. …This is one of those areas that we must confine to the realm of imagination and the history of the arts." == Books == === Sexual Personae === Paglia's Sexual Personae was rejected by at least seven different publishers before it was published by Yale University Press, whereupon it became a best seller, reaching seventh place on the paperback best-seller list, a rare accomplishment for a scholarly book. 'Paglia called it her "prison book", commenting, "I felt like Cervantes, Genet. It took all the resources of being Catholic to cut myself off and sit in my cell." Sexual Personae has been called an "energetic, Freud-friendly reading of Western art", one that seemed "heretical and perverse", at the height of political correctness; according to Daniel Nester, its characterization of "William Blake as the British Marquis de Sade or Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson as 'self-ruling hermaphrodites who cannot mate' still pricks up many an English major's ears".In the book, Paglia argues that human nature has an inherently dangerous Dionysian or chthonic aspect, especially in regard to sexuality. Culture and civilization are created by men and represent an attempt to contain that force. Women are powerful, too, but as natural forces, and both marriage and religion are means to contain chaotic forces. A best seller, it was described by Terry Teachout in a New York Times book review as being both "intellectually stimulating" and "exasperating". Sexual Personae received critical reviews from numerous feminist scholars. Anthony Burgess described Sexual Personae as "a fine disturbing book" that "seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his or her prejudices". === Sex, Art and American Culture === Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays (1992) is a collection of short pieces, many published previously as editorials or reviews, and some transcripts of interviews. The essays cover such subjects as Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, rock music, Robert Mapplethorpe, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination, rape, Marlon Brando, drag, Milton Kessler, and academia. It made The New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks. === Vamps and Tramps === Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (1994) is a collection of 42 short articles and a long essay, "No Law in the Arena: a Pagan Theory of Sexuality". It also contains a collection of cartoons from newspapers about Paglia. Writing for The New York Times, Wendy Steiner wrote "Comic, camp, outspoken, Ms. Paglia throws an absurdist shoe into the ponderous wheels of academia". Michiko Kakutani, also writing for The New York Times, wrote: "Her writings on education ... are highly persuasive, just as some of her essays on the perils of regulating pornography and the puritanical excesses of the women's movement radiate a fierce common sense ... Unfortunately, Ms. Paglia has a way of undermining her more interesting arguments with flip, hyperbolic declarations". === The Birds === In 1998, in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the release of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, the British Film Institute commissioned Paglia to write a book about the film. The book interprets the film as "in the main line of British Romanticism descending from the raw nature-tableaux and sinister femme-fatales of Coleridge". Paglia uses a psychoanalytic framework to interpret the film as portraying "a release of primitive forces of sex and appetite that have been subdued but never fully tamed". === Break, Blow, Burn === Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems (2005) is a collection of 43 short selections of verse with an accompanying essay by Paglia. The collection is oriented primarily to those unfamiliar with the works. Clive James wrote that Paglia tends to focus on American works as it moves from Shakespeare forward through time, with Yeats, following Coleridge, as the last European discussed, but emphasized her range of sympathy and her ability to juxtapose and unite distinct art forms in her analysis. === Glittering Images === Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars (2012) is a series of essays about notable works of art from ancient to modern times, published in October 2012. Writer John Adams of The New York Times Book Review was skeptical of the book, accusing it of being "so agenda driven and so riddled with polemic asides that its potential to persuade is forever being compromised". Gary Rosen of The Wall Street Journal, however, praised the book's "impressive range" and accessibility to readers. === Free Women, Free Men === Paglia's Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism was published by Pantheon in 2017. It is a series of essays from 1990 onward. Dwight Garner in The New York Times wrote Paglia's essays address two main targets: modern feminism, which, Paglia writes, "has become a catchall vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses," and modern American universities, of which she asks, "How is it possible that today's academic left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and overregulation of student life?" === Provocations === Paglia's fourth essay collection, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education, was published by Pantheon on October 9, 2018. == Works == The Androgyne in Literature and Art (1974; PhD thesis) Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) ISBN 0-679-73579-8 Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays (1992) ISBN 0-679-74101-1 Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (1994) ISBN 0-679-75120-3 The Birds (BFI Film Classics) (1998) ISBN 0-851-70651-7 Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems (2005) ISBN 0-375-42084-3 Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars (2012) ISBN 978-0-375-42460-1 Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism (2017) ISBN 978-0-375424779 Provocations: Collected Essays (2018) ISBN 978-1-52474689-6 == References == === Sources === Paglia, Camille (1992), Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays, ISBN 0-679-74101-1 ——— (1994), Vamps and Tramps: New Essays, New York: Vintage Books, ISBN 978-0-67975120-5 == External links == Quotations related to Camille Paglia at Wikiquote Media related to Camille Paglia at Wikimedia Commons Salon Articles by Camille Paglia Appearances on C-SPAN In Depth interview with Paglia, August 3, 2003 Camille Paglia at IMDb

John Ralston Saul

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul

John Ralston Saul (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian writer, political philosopher, and public intellectual. Saul is most widely known for his writings on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-led societies; the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy, in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and critiques of the prevailing economic paradigm. He is a champion of freedom of expression and was the International President of PEN International, an association of writers. Saul is the co-founder and co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national charity promoting the inclusion of new citizens. He is also the co-founder and co-chair of 6 Degrees, the global forum for inclusion. Saul is also the husband to the former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, making him the Viceregal consort of Canada during most of her service (1999–2005). His work is known for being thought-provoking and ahead of its time, leading him to be called a "prophet" by Time and to be included in Utne Reader's list of the world's leading thinkers and visionaries. His works have been translated into 25 languages in 36 countries. == Early life and education == Saul is the son of William Saul, an army officer, and a British mother whose family had a long tradition of military service. He was born in Ottawa, but raised in Alberta and Manitoba before graduating from Oakville Trafalgar High School in Oakville, Ontario. At a young age, he became fluent in both national languages, French and English. By the time he started university at McGill University, Montreal, his father was in Paris and Brussels, working as a military adviser to the Canadian ambassador to NATO. == Career == After completing his undergraduate degree, Saul was accepted into the foreign service, but the death of his father in 1968 changed Saul's career plans. He left the foreign service to attend King's College London, where he wrote his thesis on the modernization of France under Charles de Gaulle, and earned his PhD in 1972. His doctoral thesis, The Evolution of Civil–Military Relations in France after the Algerian War, led him to France for research. There he began to write his first novel, Mort d'un général, a romanticized version of his thesis on de Gaulle's chief of staff. He supported himself by running the French subsidiary of a British investment company. After helping to set up the national oil company Petro-Canada in 1976, as assistant to its first chair, Maurice F. Strong, Saul published his first novel, The Birds of Prey, in 1977. Strong described Saul as "an invaluable, though unconventional, member of my personal staff."Through the late 1970s into the 1980s, Saul travelled extensively and regularly spent time with guerrilla armies, spending a great deal of time in North Africa and South East Asia. Out of this time came his novels, The Field Trilogy. It was during those extended periods in Northwest Africa and Southeast Asia where he witnessed fellow writers there suffering government suppression of freedom of expression, which caused him to become interested in the work of PEN International. Between the years of 1990 and 1992, Saul acted as the president of the Canadian centre of PEN International. In 2009, he was elected president of PEN and re-elected for a second and last term in 2012, remaining International President until October 2015. Saul is co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, which encourages new Canadians to become active citizens. He is patron and former president of the Canadian Centre of PEN International and of the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars. He is also founder and honorary chair of French for the Future, which encourages bilingual French-English education, chair of the advisory board for the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium lecture series, and a patron of Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network. From 1999 until 2006, his wife Adrienne Clarkson was Governor General of Canada, making him Canada's viceregal consort. During this period he devoted much of his time to issues of freedom of expression, poverty, public education and bilingualism. === PEN International === Saul was elected as the international president of PEN International for a three-year term at its Annual Congress in Linz, Austria in October 2009. He was the first Canadian to be elected to that position, which had previously been held by John Galsworthy, Arthur Miller, Heinrich Böll, Mario Vargas Llosa and Homero Aridjis. He campaigned on the need to pay attention to smaller and endangered languages and cultures, arguing that the ultimate removal of freedom of expression was the loss of a language. He put a specific emphasis on endangered indigenous languages. He called for a further decentralization of PEN, which has 144 centres in 102 countries. He argues that literature and freedom of expression are the same thing; that you cannot have one without the other. Saul has testified before the European Parliament Human Rights Commission on the loss of freedom of expression in Tunisia, has spoken before European Council on Refugees in Exile, and has published an essay on writers in exile, which has been translated into several languages. === The Institute for Canadian Citizenship === Saul founded, and currently co-chairs, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) with Adrienne Clarkson. The ICC is a national, non-profit charity that helps accelerate new citizens' integration into Canadian life through original programs, collaborations and unique volunteer opportunities. While its focus is on encouraging new citizens to take their rightful place in Canada, the ICC aims to encourage all citizens – new or not – to embrace active citizenship in their daily life. === Speaking === In addition to his selection as the 1995 Massey lecturer, Saul has delivered other notable lectures. He gave the Harold Innis Lecture in 1994. In 2000 he gave the inaugural LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium Lecture. Saul delivered the J.D. Young Memorial Lecture "A New Era of Irregular Warfare?" at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario on February 4, 2004. He gave the 2005 IDEAS lecture in Brisbane, Australia, the 2007 Captive Mind Lecture in Kraków, Poland, and in 2008 gave the 33rd Sir Winston Scott Memorial Lecture in Barbados. He also delivered the 2009 McGill Law Journal's Annual Lecture at the McGill Faculty of Law in Montreal on February 3, 2009. Saul also spoke at the Sydney Opera House on August 26, 2012, on the subject "It's Broke: How do we fix it?" === Fiction writing === The Birds of Prey (1977) is a political novel based in Gaullist France. Between 1983 and 1988 Saul then published The Field Trilogy, which deals with the crisis of modern power and its clash with the individual. It includes Baraka, or The Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor of Anthony Smith (1983), The Next Best Thing (1986), and The Paradise Eater (1988), which won the Premio Letterario Internazionale in Italy. De si bons Américains (1994) is a picaresque novel in which he observes the lives of America's nouveaux riches. A vastly reworked and expanded version was published in 2012 as Dark Diversions, Saul's first novel in over fifteen years. ==== Other fiction writing ==== Baraka (1983) The Next Best Thing (1986) The Paradise Eater (1988) Dark Diversions (2012) === Non-fiction writing === ==== Voltaire's Bastards, The Doubter's Companion and The Unconscious Civilization ==== Saul's non-fiction began with the trilogy comprising the bestseller Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992), the polemic philosophical dictionary The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994), and the book that grew out of his 1995 Massey Lectures, The Unconscious Civilization (1995). The last won the 1996 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction Literature. These books deal with themes such as the dictatorship of reason unbalanced by other human qualities, how it can be used for any ends especially in a directionless state that rewards the pursuit of power for power's sake. He argues that this leads to deformations of thought such as ideology promoted as truth; the rational but anti-democratic structures of corporatism, by which he means the worship of small groups; and the use of language and expertise to mask a practical understanding of the harm caused by this, and what else our society might do. He argues that the rise of individualism with no regard for the role of society has not created greater individual autonomy and self-determination, as was once hoped, but isolation and alienation. He calls for a pursuit of a more humanist ideal in which reason is balanced with other human mental capacities such as common sense, ethics, intuition, creativity, and memory, for the sake of the common good, and he discusses the importance of unfettered language and practical democracy. These attributes are elaborated upon in his 2001 book On Equilibrium. ==== Reflections of a Siamese Twin ==== He expanded on these themes as they relate to Canada and its history and culture in Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1998). In this book, he proposed the idea of Canada being a "soft" country, meaning not that the nation is weak, but that it has a flexible and complex identity, as opposed to the unyielding or monolithic identities of other states. He argues that Canada's complex national identity is made up of the "triangular reality" of the three nations that compose it: First Peoples, francophones, and anglophones. He emphasizes the willingness of these Canadian nations to compromise with one another, as opposed to resorting to open confrontations. In the same vein, he criticizes both those in the Quebec separatist Montreal School for emphasizing the conflicts in Canadian history and the Orange Order and the Clear Grits traditionally seeking clear definitions of Canadian-ness and loyalty. ==== On Equilibrium ==== Saul's next book, On Equilibrium (2001), is effectively a fourth, concluding volume to his philosophical quartet. He identifies six qualities as common to all people: common sense, ethics, imagination, intuition, memory, and reason. He describes how these inner forces can be used to balance each other, and what happens when they are unbalanced, for example in the case of a "Dictatorship of Reason". ==== The Collapse of Globalism ==== In an article written for Harper's magazine's March 2004 issue, titled The Collapse of Globalism and the Rebirth of Nationalism, he argued that the globalist ideology was under attack by counter-movements. Saul rethought and developed this argument in The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005). Far from being an inevitable force, Saul argued that globalization is already breaking down in the face of widespread public opposition and that the world was seeing a rise in nationalism. Following the Great Recession he had predicted, The Collapse of Globalism was re-issued in 2009 with a new epilogue that addressed the economic crisis. ==== A Fair Country ==== A Fair Country (2008) is Saul's second major work on Canada. It is organized into four subsections. "A Métis Civilization" This section picks up on the argument that Saul makes in Reflections of a Siamese Twin about the 'triangular reality of Canada'. Drawing on the work of scholars like Harold Innis and Gerald Friesen, Saul argues that contemporary Canada has been deeply influenced and shaped by Aboriginal ideas and the experience of both Francophone and Anglophone immigrants over the 250 years, from 1600 on, during which Aboriginals were either the dominant force in Canada, or equal partners. He argues that Aboriginals are making a rapid "comeback", and that their fundamental influence needs to be recognized in order for non-Aboriginal Canadians to understand themselves."Peace, Fairness, and Good Government" In this section Saul argues that instead of the phrase "peace, order, and good government", which appears in and has become a touchstone of the 1867 Canadian Constitution, the phrase that dominated previous Canadian documents was "peace, welfare, and good government". Saul suggests that the ensuing emphasis on "order" has not truly represented Canadian origins."The Castrati" This sections echoes Saul's more general critiques of technocratic and bureaucratic regimes. He also suggests that while current Canadian elites reflect a "disturbing mediocrity" this was not always the case."An Intentional Civilization" Saul uses the final section of the book to argue for a return to an understanding of Canada as a unique response to particular historical circumstances. ==== Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin ==== Saul's contribution to Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series, of which he serves as general editor, is a double biography of Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin. In it, he argues that Canada did not begin in 1867, but that in fact its foundations were laid by LaFontaine and Baldwin much earlier. The two leaders of Lower and Upper Canada, respectively, worked together after the 1841 Union to lead a reformist movement for responsible government run by elected citizens instead of a colonial governor. But it was during the "Great Ministry" of 1848–51 that the two politicians implemented laws that Saul argues created a more equitable country. They revamped judicial institutions, created a public education system, made bilingualism official, designed a network of public roads, began a public postal system, and reformed municipal governance. Faced with opposition, and even violence, Saul contends that the two men united behind a set of principles and programs that formed modern Canada. ==== The Comeback ==== His most recent work, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power and Influence (2014) was a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. The "comeback" that Saul identifies in this new book emphasizes the strides that Aboriginal people have made in reversing years of population decline and "cultural oppression". As recently as seventy years ago it was widely assumed that Indians were disappearing, the victims of disease, starvation and their own ineptitude for modern civilization. Canada's Aboriginal population is growing in numbers and its cultural and political self-confidence seems boundless. In Saul's view, this observation, while obvious to anyone who studies the history, nonetheless needs hammering home. We are far more used to hearing about the dismal lives of Aboriginal people—their family dysfunction, their crime rates, their impoverished communities—than we are to being told they are a success story. Today's Aboriginal population, for all the problems that afflict it, has overcome incredible disadvantages to achieve what Saul calls "a position of power, influence and civilizational creativity" in Canadian society. ==== Other non fiction writing ==== Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992) The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994) The Unconscious Civilization (1995) Le Citoyen dans un cul-de-sac?: Anatomie d'une société en crise (1996) Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century (1997) On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism (2001) The John W. Holmes Memorial Lecture (2004) The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005) Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech (2006) A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (2008) Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin (2010) The Comeback (2014) Le Grand Retour (2015) – French edition of The Comeback, translated by Daniel Poliquin == Honours == Saul was made a Companion of the Order of Canada (CC) in 1999. He is also a chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France (1996). His 21 honorary degrees range from McGill University and the University of Ottawa to Herzen University in Saint Petersburg, Russia. On October 16, 2019, he received his latest honorary degree from King's College London. == Awards == Italy's Premio Letterario Internazionale, for The Paradise Eater (1990) Gordon Montador Award, for The Unconscious Civilization (1996) Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction, for The Unconscious Civilization (1996) Gordon Montador Award, for Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1998) Pablo Neruda International Presidential Medal of Honour (2004) Manhae Literary Prize (2010) Inaugural Gutenburg Galaxy Award for Literature (2011) Writers' Union of Canada's Freedom to Read Award (2011) == Archives == There is a John Ralston Saul fonds at Library and Archives Canada. == References == == External links == Institute for Canadian Citizenship Interview with Mother Jones, November 9, 2005 John Ralston Saul's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia "Canada's Spiritual Quest", Adbusters magazine "The prophet of anti-globalism" (interview), The Guardian, June 9, 2005 Good governance as the Key to Gross National Happiness, keynote speech by John Ralston Saul at Rethinking Development (GNH2) in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, June 23, 2005. Interview with Scott London from the radio series "Insight and Outlook" Full text and streaming audio and another transcript of Citizenship vs the Reigning Linear Trap, a public lecture given at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, August 29, 1999 Full text and streaming audio and another transcript Archived September 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine of Globalisation and Democracy, a public lecture given at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, January 1999

Martha Nussbaum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nussbaum

Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. She has a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, existentialism, feminism, and ethics, including animal rights. She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown.Nussbaum has written more than two dozen books, including The Fragility of Goodness (1986), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), Sex and Social Justice (1998), Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006), From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010), and Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (2023). She received the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, the 2018 Berggruen Prize, and the 2021 Holberg Prize. == Early life and education == Nussbaum was born as Martha Craven on May 6, 1947, in New York City, the daughter of George Craven, a Philadelphia lawyer, and Betty Warren, an interior designer and homemaker. During her teenage years, Nussbaum attended The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr. She described her upbringing as "East Coast WASP elite ... very sterile, very preoccupied with money and status". She would later credit her impatience with "mandarin philosophers" and dedication to public service as the "repudiation of my own aristocratic upbringing. I don't like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida".After studying at Wellesley College for two years, she dropped out to pursue theatre in New York. She studied theatre and classics at New York University, getting a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969, and gradually moved to philosophy while at Harvard University, where she received a Master of Arts degree in 1972 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1975, studying under G. E. L. Owen. == Career == In the 1970s and early 1980 she taught philosophy and classics at Harvard, where she was denied tenure by the Classics Department in 1982. Nussbaum then moved to Brown University, where she taught until 1994 when she joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty. Her 1986 book The Fragility of Goodness, on ancient Greek ethics and Greek tragedy, made her a well-known figure throughout the humanities. At Brown, Nussbaum's students included philosopher Linda Martín Alcoff and actor and playwright Tim Blake Nelson. In 1987, she gained public attention due to her critique of fellow philosopher Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. More recent work (Frontiers of Justice) establishes Nussbaum as a theorist of global justice. Nussbaum's work on capabilities has often focused on the unequal freedoms and opportunities of women, and she has developed a distinctive type of feminism, drawing inspiration from the liberal tradition, but emphasizing that liberalism, at its best, entails radical rethinking of gender relations and relations within the family.Nussbaum's other major area of philosophical work is the emotions. She has defended a neo-Stoic account of emotions that holds that they are appraisals that ascribe to things and persons, outside the agent's own control, great significance for the person's own flourishing. On this basis, she has proposed analyses of grief, compassion, and love, and, in a later book, of disgust and shame.Nussbaum has engaged in many spirited debates with other intellectuals, in her academic writings as well as in the pages of semi-popular magazines and book reviews and, in one instance, when testifying as an expert witness in court. She testified in the Colorado bench trial for Romer v. Evans, arguing against the claim that the history of philosophy provides the state with a "compelling interest" in favor of a law denying gays and lesbians the right to seek passage of local non-discrimination laws. A portion of this testimony, dealing with the potential meanings of the term tolmêma in Plato's work, was the subject of controversy, and was called misleading and even perjurious by critics. She responded to these charges in a lengthy article called "Platonic Love and Colorado Law". Nussbaum used multiple references from Plato's Symposium and his interactions with Socrates as evidence for her argument. The debate continued with a reply by one of her sternest critics, Robert P. George. Nussbaum has criticized Noam Chomsky as being among the leftist intellectuals who hold the belief that "one should not criticize one's friends, that solidarity is more important than ethical correctness". She suggests that one can "trace this line to an old Marxist contempt for bourgeois ethics, but it is loathsome whatever its provenance". Among her academic colleagues whose books she has reviewed critically are Allan Bloom, Harvey Mansfield, and Judith Butler. Other academic debates have been with figures such as John Rawls, Richard Posner, and Susan Moller Okin. In January 2019, Nussbaum announced that she would be using a portion of her Berggruen Prize winnings to fund a series of roundtable discussions on controversial issues at the University of Chicago Law School. These discussions will be known as the Martha C. Nussbaum Student Roundtables. === Capabilities Approach === Nussbaum is well known for her contributions in developing the Capabilities Approach to well-being, alongside Amartya Sen. The key question the Capabilities Approach asks is "What is each person able to do and to be?": 18  As such, the approach looks at combined capabilities: an individual's developable abilities (internal abilities), freedom, and opportunity. Here, "freedom" refers to the ability of a person to choose one life or another, and opportunity refers to social, political, and/or economic conditions that allow or disallow deny individual growth.Nussbaum asserts that all humans (and non-human animals) have a basic right to dignity. To provide human dignity, she states that governments must provide "at least a threshold level": 33–34  of the following capabilities: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought, emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one's environment, including political and material environments. == Personal life == She was married to Alan Nussbaum from 1969 until they divorced in 1987, a period which also led to her conversion to Judaism and the birth of her daughter Rachel. Nussbaum's interest in Judaism has continued and deepened: on August 16, 2008, she became a bat mitzvah in a service at Temple K. A. M. Isaiah Israel in Chicago's Hyde Park, chanting from the Parashah Va-etchanan and the Haftarah Nahamu, and delivering a D'var Torah about the connection between genuine, non-narcissistic consolation and the pursuit of global justice. Nussbaum's daughter Rachel died in 2019 due to a drug-resistant infection following successful transplant surgery. At the time of her death she was a government affairs attorney in the Wildlife Division of Friends of Animals, a nonprofit organization working for animal welfare. She and her mother co-authored four articles about wild animals. Nussbaum dated and lived with Cass Sunstein for more than a decade. They had been engaged to be married. She had previously had a romantic relationship with Amartya Sen.When she became the first woman to hold the Junior Fellowship at Harvard, Nussbaum received a congratulatory note from a "prestigious classicist" who suggested that since "female fellowess" was an awkward name, she should be called hetaira, for in Greece these educated courtesans were the only women who participated in philosophical symposia. == Major works == === The Fragility of Goodness === The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy confronts the ethical dilemma that individuals strongly committed to justice are nevertheless vulnerable to external factors that may deeply compromise or even negate their human flourishing. Discussing literary as well as philosophical texts, Nussbaum seeks to determine the extent to which reason may enable self-sufficiency. She eventually rejects the Platonic notion that human goodness can fully protect against peril, siding with the tragic playwrights and Aristotle in treating the acknowledgment of vulnerability as a key to realizing the human good. Her interpretation of Plato's Symposium in particular drew considerable attention. Under Nussbaum's consciousness of vulnerability, the re-entrance of Alcibiades at the end of the dialogue undermines Diotima's account of the ladder of love in its ascent to the non-physical realm of the forms. Alcibiades's presence deflects attention back to physical beauty, sexual passions, and bodily limitations, hence highlighting human fragility. Fragility brought attention to Nussbaum throughout the humanities. It garnered wide praise in academic reviews, and even drew acclaim in the popular media. Camille Paglia credited Fragility with matching "the highest academic standards" of the twentieth century, and The Times Higher Education called it "a supremely scholarly work". Nussbaum's reputation extended her influence beyond print and into television programs like PBS's Bill Moyers. === Cultivating Humanity === Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education appeals to classical Greek texts as a basis for defense and reform of the liberal education. Noting the Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes' aspiration to transcend "local origins and group memberships" in favor of becoming "a citizen of the world", Nussbaum traces the development of this idea through the Stoics, Cicero, and eventually the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. Nussbaum champions multiculturalism in the context of ethical universalism, defends scholarly inquiry into race, gender, and human sexuality, and further develops the role of literature as narrative imagination into ethical questions. At the same time, Nussbaum also censured certain scholarly trends. She excoriated deconstructionist Jacques Derrida saying "on truth [he is] simply not worth studying for someone who has been studying Quine and Putnam and Davidson". She cites Zhang Longxi, who labels Derrida's analysis of Chinese culture "pernicious" and without "evidence of serious study".: 41 126  More broadly, Nussbaum criticized Michel Foucault for his "historical incompleteness [and] lack of conceptual clarity", but nevertheless singled him out for providing "the only truly important work to have entered philosophy under the banner of 'postmodernism.': 40  Nussbaum is even more critical of figures like Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, and George Will for what she considers their "shaky" knowledge of non-Western cultures and inaccurate caricatures of today's humanities departments. The New York Times praised Cultivating Humanity as "a passionate, closely argued defense of multiculturalism" and hailed it as "a formidable, perhaps definitive defense of diversity on American campuses". Nussbaum received the 2002 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education for Cultivating Humanity. === Sex and Social Justice === Sex and Social Justice argues that sex and sexuality are morally irrelevant distinctions that have been artificially enforced as sources of social hierarchy; thus, feminism and social justice have common concerns. Rejecting anti-universalist objections, Nussbaum proposes functional freedoms, or central human capabilities, as a rubric of social justice.Nussbaum discusses at length the feminist critiques of liberalism itself, including the charge advanced by Alison Jaggar that liberalism demands ethical egoism. Nussbaum notes that liberalism emphasizes respect for others as individuals, and further argues that Jaggar has eluded the distinction between individualism and self-sufficiency. Nussbaum accepts Catharine MacKinnon's critique of abstract liberalism, assimilating the salience of history and context of group hierarchy and subordination, but concludes that this appeal is rooted in liberalism rather than a critique of it.Nussbaum condemns the practice of female genital mutilation, citing deprivation of normative human functioning in its risks to health, impact on sexual functioning, violations of dignity, and conditions of non-autonomy. Emphasizing that female genital mutilation is carried out by brute force, its irreversibility, its non-consensual nature, and its links to customs of male domination, Nussbaum urges feminists to confront female genital mutilation as an issue of injustice.Nussbaum also refines the concept of "objectification", as originally advanced by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. Nussbaum defines the idea of treating as an object with seven qualities: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. Her characterization of pornography as a tool of objectification puts Nussbaum at odds with sex-positive feminism. At the same time, Nussbaum argues in support of the legalization of prostitution, a position she reiterated in a 2008 essay following the Spitzer scandal, writing: "The idea that we ought to penalize women with few choices by removing one of the ones they do have is grotesque."Sex and Social Justice was highly praised by critics in the press. Salon declared: "She shows brilliantly how sex is used to deny some people—i.e., women and gay men—social justice." The New York Times praised the work as "elegantly written and carefully argued". Kathryn Trevenen praised Nussbaum's effort to shift feminist concerns toward interconnected transnational efforts, and for explicating a set of universal guidelines to structure an agenda of social justice. Patrick Hopkins singled out for praise Nussbaum's "masterful" chapter on sexual objectification. Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin faulted Nussbaum for "consistent over-intellectualization of emotion, which has the inevitable consequence of mistaking suffering for cruelty". === Hiding from Humanity === Hiding from Humanity extends Nussbaum's work in moral psychology to probe the arguments for including two emotions—shame and disgust—as legitimate bases for legal judgments. Nussbaum argues that individuals tend to repudiate their bodily imperfection or animality through the projection of fears about contamination. This cognitive response is in itself irrational, because we cannot transcend the animality of our bodies. Noting how projective disgust has wrongly justified group subordination (mainly of women, Jews, and homosexuals), Nussbaum ultimately discards disgust as a reliable basis of judgment. Turning to shame, Nussbaum argues that shame takes too broad a target, attempting to inculcate humiliation on a scope that is too intrusive and limiting on human freedom. Nussbaum sides with John Stuart Mill in narrowing legal concern to acts that cause a distinct and assignable harm. In an interview with Reason magazine, Nussbaum elaborated: Disgust and shame are inherently hierarchical; they set up ranks and orders of human beings. They are also inherently connected with restrictions on liberty in areas of non-harmful conduct. For both of these reasons, I believe, anyone who cherishes the key democratic values of equality and liberty should be deeply suspicious of the appeal to those emotions in the context of law and public policy. Nussbaum's work was received with wide praise. The Boston Globe called her argument "characteristically lucid" and hailed her as "America's most prominent philosopher of public life". Her reviews in national newspapers and magazines garnered unanimous praise. In academic circles, Stefanie A. Lindquist of Vanderbilt University lauded Nussbaum's analysis as a "remarkably wide ranging and nuanced treatise on the interplay between emotions and law".A prominent exception was Roger Kimball's review published in The New Criterion, in which he accused Nussbaum of "fabricating" the renewed prevalence of shame and disgust in public discussions and says she intends to "undermine the inherited moral wisdom of millennia". He rebukes her for "contempt for the opinions of ordinary people" and ultimately accuses Nussbaum herself of "hiding from humanity". Nussbaum has recently drawn on and extended her work on disgust to produce a new analysis of the legal issues regarding sexual orientation and same-sex conduct. Her book From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and the Constitution was published by Oxford University Press in 2009, as part of their "Inalienable Rights" series, edited by Geoffrey Stone. === From Disgust to Humanity === In her 2010 book From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law, Nussbaum analyzes the role that disgust plays in law and public debate in the United States. The book primarily analyzes constitutional legal issues facing gay and lesbian Americans but also analyzes issues such as anti-miscegenation statutes, segregation, antisemitism and the caste system in India as part of its broader thesis regarding the "politics of disgust". Nussbaum posits that the fundamental motivation of those advocating legal restrictions against gay and lesbian Americans is a "politics of disgust". These legal restrictions include blocking sexual orientation being protected under anti-discrimination laws (see Romer v. Evans), sodomy laws against consenting adults (See: Lawrence v. Texas), constitutional bans against same-sex marriage (See: California Proposition 8 (2008) ). Nussbaum also argues that legal bans on conducts, such as nude dancing in private clubs, nudity on private beaches, the possession and consumption of alcohol in seclusion, gambling in seclusion or in a private club, which remain on the books, partake of the politics of disgust and should be overturned.She identifies the "politics of disgust" closely with Lord Devlin and his famous opposition to the Wolfenden report, which recommended decriminalizing private consensual homosexual acts, on the basis that those things would "disgust the average man". To Devlin, the mere fact some people or act may produce popular emotional reactions of disgust provides an appropriate guide for legislating. She also identifies the 'wisdom of repugnance' as advocated by Leon Kass as another "politics of disgust" school of thought as it claims that disgust "in crucial cases ... repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it". Nussbaum goes on to explicitly oppose the concept of a disgust-based morality as an appropriate guide for legislating. Nussbaum notes that popular disgust has been used throughout history as a justification for persecution. Drawing upon her earlier work on the relationship between disgust and shame, Nussbaum notes that at various times, racism, antisemitism, and sexism, have all been driven by popular revulsion.In place of this "politics of disgust", Nussbaum argues for the harm principle from John Stuart Mill as the proper basis for limiting individual liberties. Nussbaum argues the harm principle, which supports the legal ideas of consent, the age of majority, and privacy, protects citizens while the "politics of disgust" is merely an unreliable emotional reaction with no inherent wisdom. Furthermore, Nussbaum argues this "politics of disgust" has denied and continues to deny citizens humanity and equality before the law on no rational grounds and causes palpable social harms to the groups affected. From Disgust to Humanity earned acclaim from liberal American publications, and prompted interviews in The New York Times and other magazines. One conservative magazine, The American Spectator, offered a dissenting view, writing: "[H]er account of the 'politics of disgust' lacks coherence, and 'the politics of humanity' betrays itself by not treating more sympathetically those opposed to the gay rights movement." The article also argues that the book is marred by factual errors and inconsistencies. === Creating Capabilities === The book Creating Capabilities, first published in 2011, outlines a unique theory regarding the Capability approach or the Human development approach. Nussbaum draws on theories of other notable advocates of the Capability approach like Amartya Sen, but has a distinct approach. She proposes to choose a list of capabilities based on some aspects of John Rawls' concept of "central human capabilities." These ten capabilities encompass everything Nussbaum considers essential to living a life that one values. Nussbaum's book combines ideas from the Capability approach, development economics, and distributive justice to substantiate a qualitative theory on capabilities. She criticizes existing economic indicators like GDP as failing to fully account for quality of life and assurance of basic needs, instead rewarding countries with large growth distributed highly unequally across the population. The book also aims to serve as an introduction to the Capability approach more generally; it is accessible to students and newcomers to the material because of the current lack of general knowledge about this approach. Finally, Nussbaum compares her approach with other popular approaches to human development and economic welfare, including Utilitarianism, Rawlsian Justice, and Welfarism in order to argue why the Capability approach should be prioritized by development economics policymakers. == Awards and honors == === Honorary degrees and honorary societies === Nussbaum is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1988) and the American Philosophical Society (1996). She is an Academician in the Academy of Finland (2000) and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (2008). She has 63 honorary degrees from colleges and universities across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, including: === Awards === 1990: Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Non-Fiction 1991: PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Love's Knowledge 1998: Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (Cultivating Humanity) 2000: Book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy (Sex and Social Justice) 2002: University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education (Cultivating Humanity) 2003: Barnard College Medal of Distinction 2004: Honorary membership into Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Chicago. 2004: Association of American University Publishers Professional and Scholarly Book Award for Law (Hiding From Humanity) 2005: listed among the world's Top 100 intellectuals by Foreign Policy (as well as in 2008 and 2010) and Prospect magazines. 2007: Radcliffe Alumnae Recognition Award 2009: American Philosophical Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence. 2009: Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award from the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS). CCAS bestows this award upon an individual or organization demonstrating exemplary advocacy for the arts and sciences, flowing from a deep commitment to the intrinsic worth of liberal arts education. 2010: Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University 2012: Prince of Asturias Awards for Social Sciences 2014: John Locke Lectures at Oxford University. 2015: Premio Nonino, Italy 2015: Inamori Ethics Prize 2016: Kyoto Prize in Philosophy, Japan 2017: Jefferson Lecture 2017: Don M. Randel Award for Contribution to the Humanities, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2018: Berggruen Prize 2021: Holberg Prize "for her groundbreaking contribution to research in philosophy, law and related fields" 2022: The Order of Lincoln the highest award for public service conferred by the State of Illinois 2022: The Balzan Prize for "her transformative reconception of the goals of social justice, both globally and locally". == See also == == References == == External links == University of Chicago biography Nussbaum on Anger and Forgiveness (Audio) University of Chicago Nussbaum's University of Chicago faculty website Nussbaum bibliographies Martha Nussbaum at IMDb Q&A with Martha Nussbaum from The Guardian 'Creating capabilities' Nussbaum interviewed by Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4, July 2011 Appearances on C-SPAN In Depth interview with Nussbaum, June 6, 2010 on C-SPAN Martha Nussbaum, Land of my Dreams: Islamic liberalism under fire in India, Boston Review, March/April 2009. Archived July 27, 2009, at the Wayback Machine Profile at the International Institute of Social Studies Honored as one of 50 Most Influential Living Philosophers "Dismantling the 'Citadels of Pride': Claudia Dreifus, an interview with Martha C. Nussbaum", The New York Review of Books (June 30, 2021)

Oruç Aruoba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oru%C3%A7_Aruoba

Oruç Aruoba (14 July 1948 – 31 May 2020), was a Turkish writer, poet, and philosopher.His research subjects were epistemology, ethics and the philosophers he was influenced by were Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. His work mostly takes the form of poetry, arguing that the human's connection with the world is only made possible through poetic language. == References ==

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (; German: [ˈhɔpə]; born 2 September 1949) is a German-American economist of the Austrian School, philosopher and political theorist. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Senior Fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and the founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society.Hoppe identifies as an austro-libertarian and anarcho-capitalist, and has written extensively in opposition to democracy and in support of voluntary association and disassociation in his book Democracy: The God That Failed. == Life and work == Hoppe was born in Peine, West Germany. He completed his undergraduate studies at Saarland University and received his MA and PhD degrees from Goethe University Frankfurt. He studied under Jürgen Habermas, a leading German intellectual of the post-WWII era, but gradually came to reject Habermas's ideas, and European leftism generally, regarding them as "intellectually barren and morally bankrupt."He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, from 1976 to 1978 and earned his habilitation in Foundations of Sociology and Economics from the University of Frankfurt in 1981. Afterward he taught in West Germany and Italy. From 1986 until his retirement in 2008, Hoppe was a professor in the School of Business at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank that is publisher of much of his work, and was editor of various Mises Institute periodicals.Hoppe has said that Murray Rothbard was his "principal teacher, mentor and master". After reading Rothbard's books and being converted to a Rothbardian political position, Hoppe moved from Germany to New York City to be with Rothbard, and then followed Rothbard to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, "working and living side-by-side with him, in constant and immediate personal contact." Hoppe said that from 1985 until Rothbard's 1995 death, he considered Rothbard his "dearest fatherly friend". Hoppe was also intimate friends with Ludwig von Mises.Hoppe resides in Turkey with his wife Gülçin Imre Hoppe, an Austrian school economist and hotelier. === Property and Freedom Society === In 2006, Hoppe founded The Property and Freedom Society ("PFS") as a reaction against the Milton Friedman-influenced Mont Pelerin Society, which he has derided as "socialist". On the fifth anniversary of PFS, Hoppe reflected on its goals: "On the one hand, positively, it was to explain and elucidate the legal, economic, cognitive and cultural requirements and features of a free, state-less natural order. On the other hand, negatively, it was to unmask the State and showcase it for what it really is: an institution run by gangs of murderers, plunderers and thieves, surrounded by willing executioners, propagandists, sycophants, crooks, liars, clowns, charlatans, dupes and useful idiots – an institution that dirties and taints everything it touches." Hoppe was criticized for inviting white nationalist speakers such as Jared Taylor, and neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer, to speak at the PFS. === Mises Institute and John Randolph Club === As a result of the economic works of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and other Austrian economists, the Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, Burton Blumert, and Murray Rothbard, following a split between the Cato Institute and Rothbard, who had been one of the founders of the Cato Institute.Hoppe was active in the John Randolph Club, a far-right alliance of paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives that was organized by Rothbard and associated with the Rockford Institute. The club was known for promoting secessionist and neo-Confederate views in the 1990s. == Argumentation ethics == In the September 1988 issue of Liberty, Hoppe attempted to establish an a priori and value-neutral justification for libertarian ethics by devising a new theory which he named argumentation ethics. Hoppe asserted that any argument which in any respect purports to contradict libertarian principles is logically incoherent.Hoppe argued that, in the course of having an argument about politics (or indeed any subject), people assume certain norms of argumentation, including a prohibition on initiating violence. Hoppe then extrapolated this argument to political life in general, arguing that the norms governing argumentation should apply in all political contexts. Hoppe claimed that, of all political philosophies, only anarcho-capitalist libertarianism prohibits the initiation of aggressive violence (the non-aggression principle); therefore, any argument for any political philosophy other than anarcho-capitalist libertarianism is logically incoherent.In the following issue, Liberty published comments by ten libertarians, followed by a rejoinder from Hoppe. In his comment for Liberty, Hoppe's friend and Mises Institute supervisor Murray Rothbard wrote that Hoppe's theory was "a dazzling breakthrough for political philosophy in general and for libertarianism in particular" and that Hoppe "has managed to transcend the famous is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that has plagued philosophy since the days of the Scholastics, and that had brought modern libertarianism into a tiresome deadlock". However, the majority of Hoppe's colleagues surveyed by Liberty rejected his theory. In his response, Hoppe derided his critics as "utilitarians".Mises Institute Senior Fellow Roderick T. Long stated that Hoppe's a priori formulation of libertarianism denied the fundamental principle of Misesean praxeology. On the issue of utilitarianism, Long wrote, "Hoppe's argument, if it worked, would commit us to recognizing and respecting libertarian rights regardless of what our goals are – but as a praxeologist, I have trouble seeing how any practical requirement can be justified apart from a means-end structure." Libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan rejected Hoppe's argument, saying, "Hoppe's argument illicitly conflates a liberty right with a claim right, and so fails."Another critic argued that Hoppe had not provided any non-circular reasons why we "have to regard moral values as something that must be regarded as being established through (consensual) argument instead of 'mere' subjective preferences for situations turning out in certain ways". In other words, the theory relies "on the existence [of] certain intuitions, the acceptance of which cannot itself be the result of 'value-free' reasoning." == Views on democracy == In 2001, Hoppe published Democracy: The God That Failed, which examines various social and economic phenomena which, Hoppe argues, are problems caused by democratic forms of government. He attributes democracy's failures to pressure groups which seek to increase government expenditures and regulations. Hoppe proposes alternatives and remedies, including secession, decentralization of government, and "complete freedom of contract, occupation, trade and migration". Hoppe argues that monarchy would preserve individual liberty more effectively than democracy.Regarding democracy and the arts, Hoppe argued in 2013 that "democracy leads to the subversion and ultimately disappearance of the notion of beauty and universal standards of beauty. Beauty is swamped and submerged by so-called 'modern art'."Walter Block, a colleague of Hoppe's at the Mises Institute, asserts that Hoppe's arguments shed light "on historical occurrences, from wars to poverty to inflation to interest rates to crime". Block notes that while Hoppe concedes that 21st-century democracies are more prosperous than the monarchies of old, Hoppe argues that if nobles and kings replaced today's political leaders, their ability to take a long-term view of a country's well-being would "improve matters". Block also shared what he called minor criticisms of Hoppe's theses regarding time preferences, immigration and the gap between libertarianism and conservatism.Alberto Benegas-Lynch Jr. criticized Hoppe's thesis that monarchy is preferable to democracy. A professor of economics at the University of Buenos Aires, Benegas-Lynch provided empirical evidence demonstrating that modern monarchies tend to be far poorer than modern democracies. In response, Hoppe argued that those monarchies were poorer than democracies not because of intrinsic features of these political systems, but because the monarchies used on the study, mostly African countries, compared to the democracies, mostly European countries, led to a distortion in the study. The degree of time preference of a democracy in the present will be lower than a democracy of the past, and even lower in a democracy in the future. In order for a study to be consistent comparing both types of government, one needs to eliminate as much variables as possible, like cultural differences, sex differences, time differences, so on. Hoppe argues that this lack of proper elimination of variables led to distortions in B-L's study when comparing democracies in Europe and monarchies in Africa. == Criticism == === Expulsion of homosexuals and dissidents === His belief in the right of property owners to establish libertarian communities that engage in racial discrimination, and his assertion that communities could establish exclusive criteria for admission and acceptance, have proven particularly divisive.In Democracy Hoppe describes a fully libertarian society of "covenant communities" made up of residents who have signed an agreement defining the nature of that community. He writes that "There would be little or no 'tolerance' and 'openmindedness' so dear to left-libertarians. Instead, one would be on the right path toward restoring the freedom of association and exclusion implied in the institution of private property". He argues that towns and villages could have warning signs saying "no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Muslims, Germans, or Zulus".Hoppe also makes plain that he believes that practicing certain forms of discrimination, including the physical removal of people whose lifestyle is deemed incompatible with the purpose of establishing certain communities, is completely compatible with his system. Hoppe writes: "In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, . . . naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order."Commenting on this passage, Martin Snyder of the American Association of University Professors said Hoppe's words will disturb "[t]hose with a better memory than Hoppe for segregation, apartheid, internment facilities and concentration camps, for yellow stars and pink triangles". Hoppe also provoked controversy by calling homosexuality a "perversity or abnormality" analogous to pedophilia, drug use, pornography, polygamy and obscenity.Walter Block wrote that Hoppe's statement calling for the physical removal of homosexuals from a libertarian political community was "exceedingly difficult to reconcile with libertarianism." === Support for immigration restrictions and critiques === Although a self-described anarcho-capitalist who favors abolishing the nation-state, Hoppe also garners controversy due to his support for governmental enforcement of immigration laws, which critics argue is at odds with libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. Hoppe argues that as long as states exist, they should impose some restrictions on immigration. He has equated free immigration to "forced integration" which violates the rights of native peoples, since if land were privately owned, immigration would not be unhindered but would only occur with the consent of private property owners.Hoppe's Mises Institute colleague Walter Block has characterized Hoppe as an "anti-open immigration activist" who argues that, though all public property is "stolen" by the state from taxpayers, "the state compounds the injustice when it allows immigrants to use [public] property, thus further "invading" the private property rights of the original owners". However, Block rejects Hoppe's views as incompatible with libertarianism. He argues that Hoppe's logic implies that flagrantly unlibertarian laws such as regulations on prostitution and drug use "could be defended on the basis that many tax-paying property owners would not want such behavior on their own private property". Another libertarian author, Simon Guenzl, writing for Libertarian Papers, argues that: "supporting a legitimate role for the state as an immigration gatekeeper is inconsistent with Rothbardian and Hoppean libertarian anarchism, as well as with the associated strategy of advocating always and in every instance reductions in the state's role in society."In terms of specific immigration restrictions, Hoppe argued that an appropriate policy will require immigrants to the United States to display proficiency in English in addition to "superior (above-average) intellectual performance and character structure as well as a compatible system of values". He suggested that these criteria would lead to a "systematic pro-European immigration bias". Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation argued that the immigration test Hoppe advocated would probably be prejudiced against Latin American immigrants to the United States. === Remarks about homosexuals and academic freedom === Hoppe's statements and ideas concerning race and homosexuality have repeatedly provoked controversy among his libertarian peers and his colleagues at UNLV. Following a 4 March 2004, lecture on time preference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), a student complained that Hoppe created a hostile classroom environment by asserting that homosexuals tend to be more shortsighted than heterosexuals in their ability to save money and plan economically, in part because they tend not to have children. Hoppe also suggested that John Maynard Keynes's homosexuality might explain his economic views, with which Hoppe disagreed. Hoppe also stated that very young and very old people, and couples without children, were less likely to plan for the future. Hoppe told a reporter that the comments lasted only 90 seconds of a 75-minute class, no students questioned the comments in that class, and that in 18 years of giving the same lecture all over the world, he had never previously received a complaint about it. At the request of university officials, Hoppe apologized to the class. He said, "Italians tend to eat more spaghetti than Germans, and Germans tend to eat more sauerkraut than Italians" and explained that he was speaking in generalities. Thereafter, Hoppe told the reporter, the student alleged that Hoppe did not take the complaint seriously and filed a formal complaint. Hoppe told the reporter that he felt as if he was the victim in the incident and that the student should have been told to "grow up".An investigation was conducted, and the university's provost, Raymond W. Alden III, issued Hoppe a non-disciplinary letter of instruction on 9 February 2005, with a finding that he had "created a hostile or intimidating educational environment in violation of the University's policies regarding discrimination as to sexual orientation". Alden also instructed Hoppe to "... cease mischaracterizing opinion as objective fact", and said that Hoppe's opinion was not supported by peer-reviewed academic literature.Hoppe appealed the decision, saying the university had "blatantly violated its contractual obligations" toward him and described the action as "frivolous interference with my right to academic freedom". He was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which threatened legal action. The Nevada ACLU executive director said "We don't subscribe to Hans' theories and certainly understand why some students find them offensive ... But academic freedom means nothing if it doesn't protect the right of professors to present scholarly ideas that are relevant to their curricula". Alden's decision was picked up by Fox News and several blogs and libertarians organized a campaign to contact the university. The university received two weeks of bad publicity and the Interim Chancellor (Nevada System of Higher Education) Jim Rogers expressed concerns about "any attempts to thwart free speech".Jim Rogers intervened in the matter. He rejected Hoppe's request for a one-year paid sabbatical. UNLV President Carol Harter acted upon Hoppe's appeal on 18 February 2005, deciding that Hoppe's views, even if non-mainstream or controversial, should not be cause for reprimanding him. She dismissed the discrimination complaint against Hoppe, and the non-disciplinary letter was withdrawn from Hoppe's personnel file. She wrote: "UNLV, in accordance with policy adopted by the Board of Regents, understands that the freedom afforded to Professor Hoppe and to all members of the academic community carries a significant corresponding academic responsibility. In the balance between freedoms and responsibilities, and where there may be ambiguity between the two, academic freedom must, in the end, be foremost."Hoppe later wrote about the incident and the UNLV investigation in an article entitled "My Battle With the Thought Police". Martin Snyder of the American Association of University Professors wrote that he should not be "punished for freely expressing his opinions".Various controversies about academic freedom, including the Hoppe matter and remarks made by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, prompted the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to hold a conference on academic freedom in October 2005. In 2009 UNLV proposed a new policy that included the encouragement of reporting by people who felt that they had encountered bias. The proposed policy was criticized by the Nevada ACLU and some faculty members who remembered the Hoppe incident as adverse to academic freedom. == Selected works == === Books (authored) === German Handeln und Erkennen [Action and Cognition] (in German). Bern (1976). ISBN 978-3261019004. OCLC 2544452. Kritik der kausalwissenschaftlichen Sozialforschung [Critique of Causal Scientific Social Research] (in German). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag (1983). ISBN 978-3531116242. OCLC 10432202. Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat Property, Anarchy, and the State (in German). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag (1987). ISBN 978-3531118116. OCLC 18226538.English A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Kluwer Academic Publishers (1988). ISBN 0898382793. Archived from the original. Audiobook, narrated by Jim Vann. Economic Science and the Austrian Method. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute (1995). ISBN 094546620X. Audiobook, narrated by Gennady Stolyarov II. Democracy: The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers (2001). ISBN 0765808684. OCLC 46384089. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006. [2nd ed.] ISBN 0945466404. === Books (edited) === The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production. Ludwig von Mises Institute (2003). ISBN 978-0945466376. OCLC 53401048. === Book contributions === "Introduction." [1998]. In: The Ethics of Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. New York University Press (1998). ISBN 978-1610166645. Audiobook available. "Government and the Private Production of Defense." In: The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute (2003), pp. 335–368. ISBN 978-0945466376. OCLC 53401048. Audiobook, narrated by George Pickering. === Articles === "On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property." Liberty, vol. 2, no. 1 (September 1988): 20–22. "Symposium: Breakthrough or Buncombe?" Liberty, vol. 2, no. 2 (November 1988): 44–54.Symposium proceedings featuring Murray N. Rothbard, D. Friedman, L. Yeager, D. Gordon and D. Rasmussen."Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?" Review of Austrian Economics, vol. 9 (March 1996): 143–149. doi:10.1007/BF01101888. "Small is Beautiful and Efficient: The Case for Secession." Telos, vol. 107 (Spring 1996). "The Libertarian Case for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration." Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (Summer 1998). Center for Libertarian Studies. Reprinted by the Center for Immigration Studies (May 2001). "On Property and Exploitation," with Walter Block. International Journal of Value-Based Management, vol. 15 (2002): 225–236. "My Battle with the Thought Police." Mises Daily (12 April 2005). Ludwig von Mises Institute. === Book reviews === "In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on D. McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics." Review of The Rhetoric of Economics by Donald McCloskey. Review of Austrian Economics, vol. 3 (1989): 179–214. === Collected works === Jacob, Thomas (editor). Hoppe Unplugged: Ansichten, Einsichten und Provokationen aus Interviews und Reden von Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe [in German]. Hamburg: tredition GmbH (2021). Online supplement."Views, insights and provocations from interviews and speeches by Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe." == See also == == References == == External links == Official website Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Mises Institute The Property & Freedom Society Hoppe's archives at LewRockwell.com