Die Philosophie und das Marxsche Erbe

What is the fate of philosophy as the spiritual weapon of the proletariat in changing reality when it is clear that the communist experiment has failed? The question pertains above all to the heritage of Marx's theory, not to Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. The latter are party-inspired and -dominated and aspire to be schools of philosophy, whereas Marx did not seek to create a philosophy but to realize philosophy in the material world. For Marx, philosophy and emancipation go hand in hand: man is emancipated when philosophy is realized in the world. The fate of the Marxian idea is set off against the development of dialectical materialist philosophy and Marxist social theory. In this way, the ground is laid for the conclusion that what is properly philosophical in Marx is restricted to a philosophy of history attendant on a theory of economic development. The conclusion is subject to the caveat that as yet unpublished notes by Marx about the true nature of dialectic may in fact reveal a more far-reaching philosophical conception. The realization of philosophy seems like a romantic illusion against the background of the events in Germany in autumn 1989. The working masses have elected capital as the basis of their future social existence, thus putting paid to the Marxian theme of class struggle. The fundamental conclusion is that Marx's vision of the task of philosophy is vitiated by a deep-rooted ambivalence: on one hand it is the ‘head’ of emancipation but on the other hand it neglects, indeed supresses, historical details, as shown by the example of the dialectic of class struggle and class exchange. This kind of suppression, neglect, comes to the fore in Marx's writing whenever he substitutes his romantic vision of the deprived proletariat for social science. This blind eye to detail is at the root of the later ideologization of Marxist theory and its subordination to local party interests.     

Logic,art, and understanding in the philosophy of Nelson Goodman

This paper contains a reconstruction and discussion of some central subjects in Nelson Goodman's philosophical work. Goodman's creative symbol‐constructional philosophy concerns fundamental aspects of human cognition and practice. It is argued that this provides us with the intellectual tools for constructing a genuine relationship between logic, knowledge, art, and understanding. This is shown by focusing on subjects ranging from the projectibility of predicates and nominalistic mereology to constructive relativity, ways of worldmaking and a general theory of symbols.     

More Thinking About Gender: A Response to Julie A. Nelson

Nelson argues the best we can hope for in a nonsexist society is to revalue those feminine qualities that have previously been devalued. I argue that those qualities are the result of a sexist construction of gender categories, and that a nonsexist society would have no reason to preserve them.