Herder's ‘Expressivist’ Metaphysics and the Origins of German Idealism

Charles Taylor's influential exposition of Hegel made the doctrine of expressivism of central importance and identified Herder as its exemplary historical advocate. The breadth and generality of Taylor's use of ‘expressivism’ have led the concept into some disrepute, but a more precise formulation of the doctrine as a theory of meaning can both demonstrate what is worthwhile and accurate in Taylor's account, and allow us a useful point of entry into Herder's multifaceted philosophy. A reconstruction of Herder's overall philosophical position, centred around a refined theory of what this paper labels ‘Herderean expressivism’, reveals a naturalistic, teleological metaphysics. This metaphysics fulfils the Hegelian aim of providing what Dieter Henrich has called a ‘feedback loop’ between ontology and epistemology. Exploring Herder's expressivism, therefore, helps further the case for his decisive impact on Hegel's philosophy. Herder's methodological naturalism, however, represents an obstacle to Hegel's absolute idealism.     

TELEOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT

Abstract. Current teleology in Western biology, philosophy, and theology draws on resources from four main Western philosophers. (1) Plato's Timaeus shows how to interpret the universe as the handiwork of a purposive Creator who subordinates secondary, necessary, causes to primary, intelligent, causes. (2) Aristotle's Physics sets forth purpose as implicit in the nature of things. Purposes of different sorts inhere in different types of being, and everything has a natural function. Living things grow to actualize the potentials of the goal whose principle they bear within themselves. (3) Kant's Critique of Judgment denies that purpose is anything that human beings can know, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, purpose is a concept we must use to make sense of biological systems. (4) Hegel's Philosophy of Nature articulates organic systems as dialectically including and transcending mechanical and chemical systems. Teleological themes persist, in different ways, in contemporary discussions; I consider two lines of criticism of traditional teleology—by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould—and one line that continues traditional teleology in an updated way—by Holmes Rolston, III.     

“All history is the history of thought”: competing British idealist historiographies

ABSTRACT

Along with utilitarianism, British idealism was the most important philosophical and practical movement in Britain and its Empire during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Even though the British idealists have regained some of their standing in the history of philosophy, their own historical theories still fail to receive the deserved scholarly attention. This article helps to fill that major gap in the literature. Understanding historiography as concerning the appropriate modes of enquiring into the recorded past, this article analyses the key historiographical commitments that underpin the writings of the early T.H. Green (section two), Edward Caird (section three), and F.H. Bradley (sections four and five). Section six explores the influence of Bradley's historiography. These approaches are linked by the belief that all thought can be properly understood only by critical historians who possess the appropriate tools with which to distinguish permanently valid truths from the transient imperfections with which those truths are mixed. A crucial division between them is the invocation of a neo-Hegelian Geist by the early Green and Caird, and Bradley's reliance on a progressive human nature. Moreover, the article establishes that R.G. Collingwood's highly influential theories of “absolute presuppositions” and “re-enactment” were taken largely from Bradley's historiography.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Jonathan Lear, Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul
John P. Burgess and Gideon Rosen, A Subject with No Object; Strategies for Nominalistic Interpretation of Mathematics
Stewart Shapiro, Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology
Patrick Grim, Gary Mar and Paul St. Denis, The Philosophical Computer
Noël Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art
Robert Eliot, Faking Nature: The Ethnics of Environmental Restoration     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Raymond D. Boisvert, John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time
Larry A. Hickman, ed., Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation
Jennifer Welchman, Dewey's Ethical Thought
Richard Shusterman, Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life
Richard E. Hart and Douglas R. Anderson, eds., Philosophy in Experience: American Philosophy in Transition
Richard Kearney, Poetics of Modernity: Toward a Hermeneutic Imagination     

Hegel and Sellars on the Unity of Things

ABSTRACT

I have claimed previously that Hegel and Sellars are both, in the end, monistic visionaries, though with radically different visions of the grand unity of things. In this paper I explain and defend that claim. Section one differentiates several kinds of monism; section two discusses Hegel’s vision of the underlying unity of thing, while section three does the same for Sellars. The compare-and-contrast assignment is brought to completion in section four.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Doris A. Graber,Processing Politics: Learning From Television in the Internet Age Victor S. Kaufman,Confronting Communism: U.S. and British Policies Toward China Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam (eds.),Disaffected Democracies: What's Troubling the Trilateral Countries? Judith Torney‐Purta, Rainer Lehmann, Hans Oswald, and Wolfram Schultz,Citizenship and Education in Twenty‐Eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen Mark E. Warren,Democracy and Trust     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Maura O'Connor, The Romance of Italy and the English PoliticalImagination Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle (eds.), Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag Lee Clarke, Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster Aaron T. Beck, M.D., Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility and Violence Betty Glad and Eric Shiraev, The Russian Transformation: Political, Sociological, and Psychological Aspects Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Second Edition) Doris Graber, Briefly Noted     

Book Reviews

Richard A. Swanson and Elwood F. Holton III, (eds), Human Resource Development Research Handbook. Linking Research and Practice Nathan Body and Howard Erlichman, Personal Psychology, The Science of Individuality Neil Anderson and Peter Herriot, International Handbook of Selection and Assessment     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Joshua I. Miller, Democratic Temperament: The Legacy of William James Ellen Kappy Suckiel, Heaven's Champion: William James's Philosophy of Religion Ruth Anna Putnam (ed), The Cambridge Companion to William James David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucious, and the Hope for Democracy in China Dale Jacquette, Wittgenstein's Thought in Transition Michael T. Chiselin, Metaphysics and the Origin of Species Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? Evert van der Zweerde, Soviet Historiography of Philosophy Rem B. Edwards (ed), Ethics of Psychiatry: Insanity, Rational Autonomy, and Mental Health Care Jennifer Radden, Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders of Identity and Personality     

Kant and German idealisms

This paper considers whether Hegel's master/slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit should be considered as a refutation of solipsism. It focuses on a recent and detailed attempt to argue for this sort of reading that has been proposed by Frederick Beiser – but it argues that this reading is unconvincing, both in the historical motivations given for it in the work of Jacobi and Fichte, and as an interpretation of the text itself. An alternative reading of the dialectic is proposed, where it is argued that the central problem Hegel is concerned with is not solipsism, but the sociality of freedom.     

Global poverty: four normative positions

Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the key concepts and issues that take center stage in the philosophical discussion of global poverty. The four positions to be discussed are labeled the Maximalist Position, the Minimalist Position, Intermediate Position I and Intermediate Position II. After an account of these four distinct positions, we turn, in the conclusion, to a discussion of what role empirical sciences such as economics and political science should play in normative considerations about global poverty.     

The Theoretical Reformer: on Husserl’s Plato (Husserl and the Figures of the History of Philosophy)

ABSTRACT

The present research contributes to the elucidation of an important aspect of Husserl’s interpretation of the history of philosophy, that is, his reading of the beginning of Western thought. In particular, it aims to clarify the sense in which Husserl deems Plato the father of the idea itself of philosophy as a science. As will be maintained, Husserl thinks of Socrates and Plato together as providing the first reform of philosophy, whose overall goal is to give reason (Vernunft) a universal method of self-justification against the general skepticism of the sophists. The analysis will be both systematically and historically oriented, for, it will try to both reconstruct Husserl’s interpretation of the background against which Plato first introduces the idea of philosophy as a science, and to show that what is truly at stake for Husserl is the nature of philosophy itself.     

Book Reviews

Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict
Paul Kivel Uprooting Racism Benjamin P. Bowser and Raymond G. Hunt (eds.), Impacts of Racism on White Americans, Second Edition
Michael S. Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy
Marc Howard Ross, The Management of Conflict: Interpretations and Interests in Comparative Perspective
Amos Kiewe (ed.), The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric
Sarah Sanderson King and Donald P. Cushman (eds.), Political Communication: Engineering Visions of Order in the Socialist World
Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
John Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of American Thought
Maria Pia Lara, Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere     

The Incomprehensible Art of Thomas Hobbes

The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is one of the cornerstones of modern liberalism. Resting on controversial doctrines of freedom, perception, human nature, and history, the foundations of Hobbesianism presuppose an emergence of reason from matter-in-motion that Hobbes never adequately explains. In this paper I explore the motivations and consequences of his neglect of fundamental philosophical problems through a series of ambiguous uses of key terms manifested his work: nature, necessity, and God in metaphysics and theology; freedom in politics; intelligible unity in epistemology; and imagination in ethics. These show up, respectively, in his doctrines of naturalism, political science, phenomenalism, and the state of nature. While it may be that Hobbes’s metaphysical ideas are finally incoherent, this only raises a further question: Might Hobbes have recognized that the goal of a liberal state—a common human war against death—can only be grounded on sketchy and inadequate metaphysics, to be suppressed and avoided so far as possible? Primarily through a reading of the Leviathan, I explore this question and tentatively propose that an affirmative answer is warranted.     

Public justification versus public deliberation: the case for divorce

I drive a wedge between public deliberation and public justification, concepts tightly associated in public reason liberalism. Properly understood, the ideal of public justification imposes no restraint on citizen deliberation but requires that those who have a substantial impact on the use of coercive power, political officials, advance proposals each person has sufficient reason to accept. I formulate this idea as the Principle of Convergent Restraint and apply it to legislators to illustrate the general reorientation I propose for the public reason project.