History of Philosophy Commons^™

Symposium On Justin Remhof's Nietzsche's Constructivism: A Metaphysics Of Material Objects (Routledge, 2018), Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Like Kant, the German Idealists, and many neo-Kantian philosophers before him, Nietzsche was persistently concerned with metaphysical questions about the nature of objects. His texts often address questions concerning the existence and non-existence of objects, the relation of objects to human minds, and how different views of objects impact commitments in many areas of philosophy―not just metaphysics, but also language, epistemology, science, logic and mathematics, and even ethics. In this book, Remhof presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche’s material object metaphysics. He argues that Nietzsche embraces the controversial constructivist view that all concrete objects are socially constructed. Reading …

Canons, Careers, And Campfollowers: Randall And The Historiography Of Philosophy, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

For some very good reasons John Herman Randall, Jr. saw himself as an innovator and a deviant within the discourse that is called the history of philosophy. In an early chapter of The Career of Philosophy he pronounces this characteristically salty judgment on the main tendency of such work:

The history of philosophy, in truth, since German professors captured it and made it the handmaiden of academic advancement, has been a rigid tradition. Philosophy began with Thales, it falls neatly into Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, and it culminates in the men now writing for your favorite philosophical journal, God forgive …

British Hermeneutics And The Genesis Of Empiricism, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In an essay of 1961, "The History of Philosophy and Historicity," Paul Ricoeur has suggested that the narratives which we construct of the history of philosophy tend either toward excessive integration or disintegration. On the first alternative we tend to view the history of philosophy, or a segment of it, as a succession of systems understood from the perspective of that system closest to our own philosophical inclinations; on the second alternative we tend toward a dispersive attention toward specific problems, thinkers, and texts. Neither approach is satisfying, but Ricoeur maintains that in the history of philosophy, as contrasted to …