Towards A Critical Philosophy Of Science: Continental Beginnings And Bugbears, Whigs, And Waterbears, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Continental philosophy of science has developed alongside mainstream analytic philosophy of science. But where continental approaches are inclusive, analytic philosophies of science are not – excluding not merely Nietzsche’s philosophy of science but Gödel’s philosophy of physics. As a radicalization of Kant, Nietzsche’s critical philosophy of science puts science in question and Nietzsche’s critique of the methodological foundations of classical philology bears on science, particularly evolution as well as style (in art and science). In addition to the critical (in Mach, Nietzsche, Heidegger but also Husserl just to the extent that continental philosophy of science tends to depart from a …

Ex Aliquo Nihil: Nietzsche On Science And Modern Nihilism. Acpq, 84-2 (Spring 2010): 231-256., Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

This essay explores the nihilistic coincidence of the ascetic ideal and Nietzsche’s localization of science in the conceptual world of anarchic socialism as Nietzsche indicts the uncritical convictions of modern science by way of a critique of the causa sui, questioning both religion and the enlightenment as well as both free and unfree will and condemning the “poor philology” enshrined in the language of the “laws” of nature. Reviewing the history of philosophical nihilism in the context of Nietzsche’s “tragic knowledge” along with political readings of nihilism, willing nothing rather than not willing at all, today’s this-worldly and very planetary …

How Greek Tragedy Inspired Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy From "The Birth Of Tragedy" To "Ecce Homo", Marc Le Voir

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Kierkegaard On Indirect Communication, The Crowd, And A Monstrous Illusion, Antony Aumann

Faculty Works

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage …

Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, And Their Aftermath, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Developments in Anglo-American philosophy during the first half of the 20^th Century closely tracked developments that were occurring in continental philosophy during this period. This should not surprise us. Aside from the fertile communication between these ostensibly separate traditions, both were responding to problems associated with the rise of mass society. Rabid nationalism, corporate statism, and totalitarianism (Left and Right) posed a profound challenge to the idealistic rationalism of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophies. The decline of the individual – classically conceived by the 18th-century Enlightenment as a self-determining agent – provoked strong reactions. While some philosophical tendencies sought to …

The Art Of Aidagara: Ethics, Aesthetics, And The Quest For An Ontology Of Social Existence In Watsuji Tetsurō’S Rinrigaku, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper provides an analysis of the key term aidagara (“betweenness”) in the philosophical ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), in response to and in light of the recent movement in Japanese Buddhist studies known as “Critical Buddhism.” The Critical Buddhist call for a turn away from “topical” or intuitionist thinking and towards (properly Buddhist) “critical” thinking, while problematic in its bipolarity, raises the important issue of the place of “reason” versus “intuition” in Japanese Buddhist ethics. In this paper, a comparison of Watsuji’s “ontological quest” with that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Watsuji’s primary Western source and foil, is followed by …

Meaning In History? The Young Hegelian's Battle For Historical Meaning And The Resurgence Of Nihilism, Angelo J. Letizia

History Theses & Dissertations

After the Reign of Terror, the German thinker J.H. Jacobi saw only two options for Europe: faith in God or nihilism, the belief in nothing. His ultimatum between faith and nihilism for the modern era called into question for some thinkers the entire revolutionary project and its ideals of reason and self government. Two answers to Jacobi's ultimatum were put forth by the German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who rejected both faith and nihilism, and instead crafted a vision of progress, and Arthur Schopenhauer who opted for nihilism. Jacobi's ultimatum, and Hegel and Schopenhauer's answers to it, opened up …

Politik Und Die Analytisch-Kontinentale Streit Der Fakultaeten In Die Philosophie, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Bekanntnermaßen machen die unterschiedlichen Antworten, die auf die Frage ‚Was ist Philosophie?’ gegeben werden können, die Differenz und damit die Trennung zwischen analytischen und kontinentalen Denkstilen aus. Wenn man bedenkt, was hier auf dem Spiele steht, so geht es dabei nicht um einen terminologischen Streit um Begriffe, sondern um die Definition einer Disziplin als solcher und dies schließt nicht nur das Problem ein, wie Philosophie betrieben – und bewertet – wird, sondern wer überhaupt in die Lage kommt, sie auszuüben (und zu evaluieren), gerade wo solches Tun – und solche Evaluation – sich als eine bedeutsame Voraussetzung für Einladungen erweist. …

Kierkegaard's Case For The Irrelevance Of Philosophy, Antony Aumann

Faculty Works

This paper provides an account of Kierkegaard’s central criticism of the Danish Hegelians. Contrary to recent scholarship, it is argued that this criticism has a substantive theoretical basis and is not merely personal or ad hominem in nature. In particular, Kierkegaard is seen as criticizing the Hegelians for endorsing an unacceptable form of intellectual elitism, one that gives them pride of place in the realm of religion by dint of their philosophical knowledge. A problem arises, however, because this criticism threatens to apply to Kierkegaard himself. It is shown that Kierkegaard manages to escape this problem by virtue of the …

The Responsibility Of Thinking In Dark Times: Hannah Arendt Versus Hans Jonas, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Emmanuel Levinas And The Judaism Of The Good Samaritan, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Vico’S New Science Of Interpretation: Beyond Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Hermeneutics Of Suspicion, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article situates Vico's hermeneutical science of history between a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricoeur, Habermas, Freud) and a redemptive hermeneutics (Gadamer, Benjamin). It discusses Vico's early writings and his ambivalent trajectory from Cartesian rationalism to counter-enlightenment historicist and critic of natural law reasoning. The complexity of Vico's thinking belies some of the popular treatments of his thought developed by Isaiah Berlin and others.

Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis Of Bioethics In Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss And Leon Kass, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Leon Kass is much misunderstood. He is not simply a Republican ideologue who tailored his ideas to break out of the ivory tower and into the halls of power. Nor does he look simply to use human nature as a moral guide. When the full range of his writings is considered and set in the tradition of his teachers, Hans Jonas and Leo Strauss, what emerges is a natural law position colored by religious revelation.

Words In Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy And Poetry, Music And Eros In Hölderlin, Nietzsche, And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

The Modal Gap: The Objective Problem Of Lessing's Ditch(Es) And Kierkegaard's Subjective Reply, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

This essay expands upon the suggestion that Lessing's infamous ‘ditch’ is actually three ditches: temporal, metaphysical, and existential gaps. It examines the complex problems these ditches raise, and then proposes that Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript exhibit a similar triadic organizational structure, which may signal a deliberate attempt to engage and respond to Lessing's three gaps. Viewing the Climacean project in this way offers an enhanced understanding of the intricacies of Lessing's rationalist approach to both religion and historical truth, and illuminates Climacus's subjective response to Lessing.

Sartre's View Of Kierkegaard As Transhistorical Man, Antony Aumann

Faculty Works

This paper illuminates the central arguments in Sartre's UNESCO address, 'The Singular Universal." The address begins by asking whether objective facts tell us everything there is to know about Kierkegaard. Sartre's answer is negative. The question then arises as to whether we can lay hold of Kierkegaard's "irreducible subjectivity" by seeing him as alive for us today, i.e., as transhistorical. Sartre's answer here is affirmative. However, a close inspection of this answer exposes a deeper level to the address. The struggle to find a place for Kierkegaard within the world of objective knowledge is an allegory. It mirrors Sartre's struggle …

Freeing Freedom From Illusion, B. Kamran Swanson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Continental Philosophy In Britain And America, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

list of chapter sections en lieu of an abstract

“Introduction” 22-28; “Phenomenology” 28- 34; “Hermeneutic Phenomenology” 34-40; “Existentialism: Toward an Ethics of Responsibility & a Feminist Erotic Ethic” 40-44; Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Ricoeur; Continental Aesthetics: Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenology of Perception” 51-56; “Continental Philosophy of Science” 56-58; “The Hermeneutics of the Other: The Dominion of the Ethical” 58-64; “The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory” 64-67; “From Structuralism to Deconstruction” 67-82.

Continental Philosophy In Britain And America, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Continental, or as it is sometimes called, contemporary European philosophy represents a range of approaches to academic philosophy distinguished from the analytic modality dominating professional or institutional philosophy in the United Kingdom and in the United States, as in Australia, Canada, and Ireland. Where the analytic tradition itself may be said to trace its own roots to Europe, e.g., positivism may be traced to France and its originator August Comte, and logical empiricism to Germany and to Austria and the writings of Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein and the members of the Vienna Circle, continental philosophy expresses an ideological tradition …

From Fleck’S Denkstil To Kuhn’S Paradigm: Conceptual Schemes And Incommensurability, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

This article argues that the limited influence of Ludwik Fleck’s ideas on philosophy of science is due not only to their indirect dissemination by way of Thomas Kuhn, but also to an incommensurability between the standard conceptual framework of history and philosophy of science and Fleck’s own more integratedly historico-social and praxis-oriented approach to understanding the evolution of scientific discovery. What Kuhn named “paradigm” offers a periphrastic rendering or oblique translation of Fleck’s Denkstil/Denkkollektiv, a derivation that may also account for the lability of the term “paradigm”. This was due not to Kuhn’s unwillingness to credit Fleck but rather to …

Heidegger: Through Phenomenology To Thought, William J. Richardson

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Fearfully And Wonderfully Made, David L. Smith

Phenomenology Center Books

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction & The Department's Philosophical Anthropology (p. 15)

Chapter 2: The First Decennial (1959-1969) (p. 29)

Chapter 3: The Second Decennial (1969-1979) (p. 54)

Chapter 4: The Third Decennial ( 1979-1989) (p. 74)

Chapter 5: The Fourth Decennial (1989-1999) (p. 104)

Chapter 6: The New Millennium (1999-2000) (p. 136)

Abstracting Aristotle’S Philosophy Of Mathematics, John J. Cleary

Research Resources

In the history of science perhaps the most influential Aristotelian division was that

between mathematics and physics. From our modern perspective this seems like an unfortunate deviation from the Platonic unification of the two disciplines, which guided Kepler and Galileo towards the modern scientific revolution. By contrast, Aristotle’s sharp distinction between the disciplines seems to have led to a barren scholasticism in physics, together with an arid instrumentalism in Ptolemaic astronomy. On the positive side, however, astronomy was liberated from commonsense realism for the conceptual experiments of Aristarchus of Samos, whose heliocentric hypothesis was not adopted by later astronomers because …

Jewish Philosophies After Heidegger: Imagining A Dialogue Between Jonas And Levinas, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Emmanuel Levinas and Hans Jonas draw on their roots in phenomenology and Judaism to answer the ethical nihilism of Heidegger's thought. Though both Levinas and Jonas aim to ground an imperative of responsibility in a Good-in-itself ultimately sourced in God, their disagreements are basic and revolve around three fundamental questions: (1) Can Jews "after Auschwitz" have a theology without lapsing into theodicy?; (2) Is the Good-in-itself within Being or "otherwise than Being"?; and (3) Is ethics the completion of nature or against nature? I explore possibilities for integrating the apparently incompatible ideas of Levinas and Jonas.

Between Hölderlin And Heidegger: Nietzsche’S Transfiguration Of Philosophy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Future Philology! By Ulrich Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff - Translated By G. Postl, B. Babich, And H. Schmid, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Ulrich von Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff's

FUTURE PHILOLOGY! a reply to FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S Ordinarius Professor of Classical Philology at Basel „birth of tragedy“

Translated by Gertrude Postl, Babette E. Babich, and Holger Schmid (Greek and Latin translations by Babette Babich and Holger Schmid. Additional corrections to the Greek by James I. Porter and Alexander Nehamas)

Nietzsche And Eros Between The Devil And God’S Deep Blue Sea: The Problem Of The Artist As Actor–Jew–Woman, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

In just one aphorism in The Gay Science, Nietzsche arrays “The Problem of the Artist” in a complex, highly reticulated constellation. Addressing every member of the excluded grouping of disenfranchised “others,” Nietzsche turns to the destitution of a god of love keyed to the self- or inward-turning absorption of the human heart. His ultimate and irrecusably tragic project to restore the innocence of becoming requires the affirmation of the problem of suffering as the task of learning how to love. Nietzsche sees the eros of art as what can teach us how to make things beautiful, desirable, lovable in the …

Eros And Transgression In An Age Of Immanence: Georges Bataille’S (Religious) Critique Of Kinsey, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper explores the religious implications of eroticism in Western culture since the Sexual Revolution, a period at once applauded for its open and immanent view of sexuality and denounced for its shamelessness and promiscuity. After discussing the work and effects of Alfred C. Kinsey, the father of the Sexual Revolution, I focus on a critical appraisal of Kinsey written by French theorist Georges Bataille (“Kinsey, the Underworld and Work,” in L’Erotisme, 1957). Bataille situates contemporary Western sexuality within a larger historical movement towards the “desacralization” of all aspects of human life: sex, under the scientific gaze of the Kinsey …

A Text For Reading, A Text For Deciding, Antonio T De Nicolas

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

The Native, General Background Of Ignatius Of Loyola, Antonio T De Nicolas

Research Resources

First chaper of de Nicolas:

Powers of Imagining: Ignatius of Loyola : A Philosophical Hermeneutic of Imagining Through the Collected Works of Ignatius De Loyola With a Translation of These Works (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986)