Kirk Ludwig , Donald Davidson (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Kirk Ludwig , Donald Davidson (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)
Cambridge University Press | ISBN 0521793823 | 2003 | PDF | 1.2 MB | 256 pages

Written by a distinguished roster of philosophers, this volume includes chapters on truth and meaning; the philosophy of action; radical interpretation; philosophical psychology; knowledge of the external world; other minds and our own minds; and the implications of Davidson’s work for literary theory. Donald Davidson has been one of the most influential figures in modern analytic philosophy and has made significant contributions to a wide range of subjects. Embodied in a series of landmark essays stretching over nearly 40 years, his principal work exhibits a unity rare among philosophers contributing on so many diverse fronts. Kirk Ludwig, the recipient of two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has taught at the University of Florida’s Department of Philosophy since 1995. His areas of research specialization include philosophy of language, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. He has contributed chapters to a number of volumes on these topics as well as published articles in Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mind and Language, and elsewhere.

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Michael L. Morgan & Peter Eli Gordon - The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy

Michael L. Morgan & Peter Eli Gordon, "The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy" (Cambridge Companions to Religion)
Cambridge University Press (2007) | English | ISBN 0521813123 | 390 pages | PDF | 2.06 MB

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy is a collection of original essays that examine the work of some of the most important Jewish thinkers of the modern era – the period extending from the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. Editors Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon have brought together a group of world-renowned scholars to paint a broad and rich picture of the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy over a period of four hundred years. Beginning with the seventeenth century, modern Jewish philosophy developed among thinkers who responded to the new science and modern philosophy in the course of reflecting on the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. The essays address themes that are central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy – language and revelation, autonomy and authority, the problem of evil, Messianism, the influence of Kant, and feminism – and discuss in depth the work of major thinkers such as Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim, Soloveitchik, Strauss, Levinas, Maimon, Benjamin, Derrida, Scholem, and Arendt.

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Ebook directory on Philosophy (eserver.org)

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The heart of Philosophy is our collection of canonical texts. Every year more texts go out of copywrite faster than we can identify and collect them. Any help finding and collecting these texts (in the origional languages and in translation) would be greatly appreciated.

various texts in .txt format

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Thomas Holden - The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant

link on Maquinas de Mundo

The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant

Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 0199263264
2004 Edition
PDF 191 Pages 830 KB

Thomas Holden presents a fascinating study of theories of matter in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These theories were plagued by a complex of interrelated problems concerning matter's divisibility, composition, and internal architecture. Is any material body infinitely divisible? Must we posit atoms or elemental minima from which bodies are ultimately composed? Are the parts of material bodies themselves material concreta? Or are they merely potentialities or possible existents? Questions such as these - and the press of subtler questions hidden in their amibiguities - deeply unsettled philosophers of the early modern period. They seemed to expose serious paradoxes in the new world view pioneered by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. The new science's account of a fundamentally geometrical Creation, mathematicizable and intelligible to the human inquirer, seemed to be under threat. This was a great scandal, and the philosophers of the period accordingly made various attempts to disarm the paradoxes. All the great figures address the issue: most famously Leibniz and Kant, but also Galileo, Hobbes, Newton, Hume, and Reid, in addition to a crowd of lesser figures. Thomas Holden offers a brilliant synthesis of these discussions and presents his own overarching interpretation of the controversy, locating the underlying problem in the tension between the early moderns' account of material parts on the one hand and the programme of the geometrization of nature on the other.

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The Coherence of Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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The Coherence of Kant's Transcendental Idealism
Publisher: Springer(2004-05-11)
ISBN-10: 1402025807
PDF 2.3 Mb 295 pages

This book presents a new interpretation of Kant’s theory of knowledge that emphasizes the coherence and plausibility of his doctrine of transcendental idealism. Many interpreters believe that Kant’s transcendental idealism is an incoherent theory. Some have attempted to respond to this charge. Yet, as the author demonstrates, the interpretations that seek to vindicate Kant’s theory continue to be committed to some claims that evoke the charge of incoherence. One type of claim which does so is connected to the contradictory notion of subjective necessity. The other type of claim is related to the supposition that knowledge of the reality of appearances entails knowledge of the reality of things in themselves. The interpretation presented in this book does not involve any of these claims. Part One of this book presents an analysis of Kant’s concept of a priori knowledge and of his response to skepticism about synthetic a priori knowledge that specifies the content of such knowledge without invoking the notion of subjective necessity. Part Two presents an account of the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves that does not entail knowledge of the reality of things in themselves. Part Three presents a new interpretation of transcendental synthesis, the transcendental "I" and of the role of transcendental self-consciousness in synthetic a priori knowledge which emphasizes the originality of Kant’s account of self-knowledge and subjectivity. The arguments presented in this book relate Kant’s ideas to current debates in epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind in a way that underscores their invaluable relevance to present-day philosophical discourse.

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Foucault and Kant (some references)

link: ahp.yorku.ca

Some articles (in english) on Foucault and Kant

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Naamah Akavia - Writing “The Case of Ellen West”: Clinical Knowledge and Historical Representation

Akavia , Naamah. Writing “The Case of Ellen West”: Clinical Knowledge and Historical RepresentationScience in Context 21(1), 119–144 (2008). (PDF file)

Argument
“The Case of Ellen West” was published by the Swiss psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger, in 1944–1945. The case-history depicts the illness and suicide of a young woman who was his patient twenty years earlier. It came to be considered one of the paradigmatic studies of the newly established discipline of Daseinsanalyse, an attempt to synthesize existential philosophy and therapeutic practice. This paper analyzes the case-study, employing newly uncovered archival material to expose important details regarding the treatment of Ellen West (a pseudonym) and the posthumous writing of her case-history. The richness of the archival sources and the various historiographical characteristics they exhibit raise methodological questions about the potentialities and limitations of historical representation. The new data will thus serve as a platform from which to explore and discuss more generally the problems involved in historical reconstruction – of both subjective experience and clinical knowledge – and the questions of authorship and intertextuality in the genre of the case-history.

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Daniel Defoe - The History of the Devil (1727)

a contemporary cover

link: archive.org (and here, 1840 edition)

Domain: Literature, Religion. Genre: Treatise, Satire, Novel. Country: England, Britain, Europe.

The Political History of the Devil – or, to give it its full title, The Political History of the Devil, as well Ancient as Modern: in Two Parts. Part I. Containing a State of the Devil’s Circumstances, and the various Turns of his Affairs, from his Expulsion out of Heaven, to the Creation of Man; with Remarks on the several Mistakes concerning the Reason and Manner of his Fall. Also his Proceedings with Mankind ever since Adam, to the first planting of the Christian Religion in the World. Part II. Containing his more private Conduct, down to the Present Times: his Government, his Appearances, his Manner of Working, and the Tools he works with. Bad as he is, the Devil may be abus’d, Be falsly charg’d, and causelessly accus’d, When Men, unwilling to be blam’d alone, Shift off those Crimes on Him which are their Own – is a work of some 258 octavo pages. It offers a serio-comic satire on both mankind and popular ideas of the devil. Whilst Defoe sees evidence of the devil’s handiwork everywhere, he mocks medieval and Catholic images of a terrifying devil “broiling [sinners] upon Gridirons, hanging them up upon Hooks”. Rather than seeing the devil as the unique source of human iniquity, Defoe has the devil return to earth after hundreds of years of absence to discover mankind committing evil acts without having consulted him, and then blaming him as the cause. Furthermore, the devil discovers that human beings are capable of far more devious and criminal acts than he could ever have conceived or devised. Thus, the work recognizes the Divine order of the world, and Defoe proves himself a devout Presbyterian; but the work attributes disorder, first, to the devil’s desire to wreak chaos upon earth and, secondly, to the manner in which man may, on the one hand, be persuaded by the devil to disrupt the initial order of Eden, but, on the other, act on his own with evil intent.

As the extended title indicates, The Political History of the Devil is divided into two parts. In the first part Defoe discusses Biblical narrative and devotes himself to the devil’s influence upon human beings. In the second part he focuses on modern politics and government, pointing out how recent and contemporary politicians have been influenced by the devil.

In the first part, comprising eleven chapters, Defoe claims that the devil has two undeniable traits: (1) he is a believer and (2) he fears God. Defoe believes that the devil could be an historian were he ever to tell the truth, but that is not his way. The devil has no permanent or visible shape. He is capable of entering any shape he desires to achieve his ends. With his multiple identities, he is identified by many names in the Hebrew Scriptures or in the New Testament: the Serpent (Gen. iii.1), the great red Dragon (Rev. xii.3), Satan (Job i.), the Prince of the power of the air (Eph.ii.2), and Lucifer (Isa.xiv.12), to l [source]

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List of Complete Works of Martin Heidegger

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This is a list of the complete works of Martin Heidegger. The numbers are those assigned to each work in the official collection, the Gesamtausgabe, which is still an ongoing effort. The Gesamtausgabe is published by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main.

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Slavoj Zizek - Hegel - Chesterton: German Idealism and Christianity

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According to a commonplace, Judaism (and Islam) is a "pure" monotheism, while Christianity, with its Trinity, is a compromise with polytheism; Hegel even designates Islam as THE "religion of sublimity" at its purest, as the universalization of the Jewish monotheism:

"In Mohammedanism the limited principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as with the Asiatics, contemplated as existent in immediately sensuous mode but is apprehended as the one infinite sublime Power beyond all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the world, the religion of sublimity."1

This, perhaps, explains why there is so much anti-Semitism in Islam: because of the extreme proximity of the two religions. In Hegelese, in Judaism, Islam encounters ITSELF in its "oppositional determination," in the mode of particularity. Against this, one should argue that it is Judaism which is an "abstract negation" of polytheism and, as such, still haunted by it (Jehovah - plural; do not celebrate other gods IN FRONT OF ME; etc.), while Christianity is the only TRUE monotheism, since it includes self-differentiation into the One - its lesson is that, in order to have truly One, you need THREE. Here Hegel's logic of triads gets stuck into a deadlock: the triad that offers itself is that of Judaism - Christianity - Islam: first the immediate/abstract monotheism which, as the price to be paid for its immediate character, has to be embodied in a particular ethnic group (which is why Jews renounce all proselytism); then Christianity; then Islam, the only TRUE universal monotheism. What would be an alternative here?

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Pedro Costa Rego - Reflexão e fundamento: sobre a relação entre gosto e conhecimento na estética de Kant

REGO, Pedro Costa. Reflexão e fundamento: sobre a relação entre gosto e conhecimento na estética de Kant. Kriterion [online]. 2005, vol. 46, no. 112

RESUMO

A Crítica da Faculdade do Juízo, de Kant, é primordialmente uma investigação crítica acerca de uma certa classe de juízos chamados reflexionantes, que se subdivide em dois grupos, estéticos e teleológicos, e se define em oposição a uma outra classe, a dos chamados juízos determinantes. Nosso objetivo neste artigo é elaborar a hipótese de um privilégio fundacional do juízo reflexionante estético relativamente ao conhecimento determinante. Para tanto, pretendemos cumprir duas etapas. Em primeiro lugar, procederemos a uma análise da conexão entre os temas centrais — e aparentemente dissociados — do belo e da faculdade do juízo enquanto tal que justifica a passagem do projeto de uma crítica do gosto ao de uma crítica do juízo e delimita como alvo da obra o fundamento de determinação (Bestimmungsgrund) de uma "intersubjetividade" conceitualmente indeterminada. Em segundo lugar, passaremos à análise da relação entre a reflexão e o princípio da finalidade da natureza, com base na Introdução da terceira Crítica, a fim de identificar, na formulação "prática" do princípio do gosto, o germe de uma anterioridade que subordina a determinação à reflexão estética.

Palavras-Chave: Reflexão, Finalidade, Juízo de Gosto, Faculdade do Juízo

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ABSTRACT

Kant's Critique of Judgment is chiefly a critical investigation into a certain class of judgments identified as "reflective", divided into the aesthetic and the teleological sub-classes and defined in opposition to those termed by Kant "determinant judgments". In this paper I intend to elaborate, in two expositive moments, the hypothesis of a foundational primacy of reflective aesthetic judgment over determinant knowledge. Firstly, I analyse the connection between the main themes — apparently dissociated — of beautiful and faculty of judgment in order to disclose both the ground of Kant's move from a Critique of Taste into a Critique of Judgment and the determining ground of a conceptually indeterminate intersubjectivity considered as the main aim of the work. In the next step I investigate the relationship between reflection and the principle of finality of nature on the basis of third Critique's Introduction in order to verify, through the "practical formula" of the principle of taste, the accuracy of the thesis supporting the primacy of aesthetic reflection over determination.

Keywords: Reflection, Finality, Judgment of Taste, Faculty of Judgment

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