Mechanism and materialism in early modern German philosophy

ABSTRACT

The paper focuses on the gradual separation between materialism and mechanism in early modern German philosophy. In Germany the distinction between the two concepts, originally introduced by Leibniz, was definitively stated by Wolff who was the first to provide a definition of the new philosophical term Materialismus, and of the related philosophical sect. In the first part I describe the initial identification of mechanism and materialism in German philosophy between the last decades of the seventeenth century and 1720. Mechanism is here mostly conceived within a monistic metaphysics of body, which refers mainly to Hobbes and to some (unfaithful) interpretations of Spinoza’s pantheism. This tight connection between a mechanical explanation of nature and the Deus sive natura issue leads to a negative judgement on mechanism and its materialistic implications, both charged with a form of more or less explicit atheism. In the second part I describe the gradual emancipation in Germany of mechanism from materialism according to the distinction between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ materialism. In the third and final part, I sketch the first appearances of the entry ‘materialism’ in the philosophical encyclopaedias of early modern Germany, pointing out the by-then clear distinction between this metaphysical issue and the mechanical claim.     

German philosophy: Language and style

Conclusion Why, then, has so much of German philosophy for so long and so intensively felt itself bound to texts and authorities? And why is philosophy in Germany so often a matter of philosophizing through an author (whether Kant or Hegel or Heidegger)? Why is German philosophy to such a large extent a philosophy wherein questions such as What problems are you dealing with, then ? or Is what you say here true ? or What, then, is your own view on this matter? are unable to gain a foothold?The textual orientation of the mainstream of German philosophy is certainly in part dictated by the fact that this philosophy was always, in the middle ages as also in the modern era, to a very high degree a product of the universities. The most important philosophical movements in England, in contrast (as also in France), arose initially against the opposition of the universities. German-speaking university philosophers were thereby able to take over the teaching forms and methods of their scholastic predecessors in unbroken continuity, and the commentary, whether spoken or written, was in German philosophy faculties a prescribed form until as late as 1800. Even Kant gave lectures always in the form of commentary on other works, never on his own philosophy.Gradually, of course, philosophy came to be a matter for the universities in the Anglo-Saxon countries as well. The teaching of philosophy in these countries has however to a much greater extent than on the Continent been tied not to the formalized lecture(-commentary) but rather to tutorials and seminars involving comparatively small numbers of active participants. The job of philosophizing is learned thereby in Anglo-Saxon universities principally through the activity of argument and discussion.In German universities, in contrast, philosophy continues to be learned, in general, through lectures or homilies involving little or no discussion, so that the student of philosophy is rarely called upon to become active in his philosophizing. This is marked in the fact that in German one still refers to those enrolled in a lecture course as hearers (Hörer), whereby one often gains the impression that the hearers of lectures in philosophy are not in fact familiar with the desire to understand the content of what they hear.Even the teaching of the history of philosophy becomes impossible under such conditions, at least if this is understood in the Anglo-Saxon sense as an objective and as it were atomistic treatment of the ideas and arguments and problems which have arisen at different times and places. Rather we have an outcome in which philosophy, history of philosophy and textual commentary have become fused together into a single whole. To philosophize is to insert oneself into this whole, in order to contribute thereby to its further growth. Sometimes there will come along a philosopher (Hegel, Gentile, Heidegger) who will conceive it as his task to bring this development to a climax. The whole enterprise may thereby from time to time acquire a certain vital teleology. On the other hand, however, the conception of philosophy as a slowly growing textual mass can on occasion skid out of control, as the dadaistic posturings of Derrida et al. have made all too abundantly clear.     

The architecture of modern mathematics: Essays in history and philosophy

It is a little understood fact that the system of formal logic presented in Wittgenstein’s Tractatusprovides the basis for an alternative general semantics for a predicate calculus that is consistent and coherent, essentially independent of the metaphysics of logical atomism, and philosophically illuminating in its own right. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to describe the general characteristics of a Tractarian-style semantics, to defend the Tractatus system against the charge of expressive incompleteness as levelled by Robert Fogelin, and to give a semantics for a formal language that is the Tractarian equivalent of a first-order predicate calculus. Of note in regard to the latter is the fact that a Tractatusstyle truth-definition makes no appeal to the technical trick of defining truth in terms of the satisfaction of predicates by infinite sequences of objects, yet is materially equivalent to the usual Tarski-style truth-definitions     

道家哲学对现代医学的启示

一、现代医学模式转型自20世纪后半叶以来,由于现代社会和医学实践的长足进展,使人类的疾病谱和死亡谱发生了根本变化。比如中国在20世纪前半叶,居于前四位的疾病是呼吸系统疾病、急性传染病、结核病和消化系统疾病,死亡率最高的也是这四种疾病;20世纪后半叶,居于头四位的疾病则是脑血管病、心脏病、恶性肿瘤和呼吸系统疾病,死亡率最高的也是这四种疾病。由于中国和世界疾病谱和死亡谱的根本变化,使传统的西方生物学医学模式不得不被现代的“生物—心理—社会”医学模式所代替,开始由单一的生物模式向综合性的医学模式转变,这是人类医学健康…     

Nietzsche's place in nineteenth century German philosophy

I describe two ways of thinking about what constitutes a knowledgeable assertion – the ‘orthodox view’ and the ‘isomorphic view’. I argue that we should discard the orthodox view and replace it with the isomorphic view. The latter is more natural and has greater theoretical utility than the former.     

Materialism in the mainstream of early German philosophy

ABSTRACT

Discussions of the reception of materialist thought in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century tend to focus, naturally enough, upon the homegrown freethinkers who advanced the cause of Lucretius, Hobbes, and Spinoza in clandestine publications and frequently courted the ire of the state for doing so. If the philosophers belonging to the mainstream of German intellectual life in that period are accorded a place in the story, it is only insofar as they actively set themselves against the materialist threat and, in the course of working to undermine it, actually only succeeded in inadvertently drawing more popular attention to it. By contrast, in this paper I will show that it was not just insofar as the thinkers of the early eighteenth century played the role of the diligent critic and unwittingly propagated the views of their opponents that materialism can be said to have penetrated into the very mainstream of the German Enlightenment. Rather, as I will argue, there was a striking degree of uptake of distinctively materialist claims even among its most vociferous mainstream critics, and that this is the case for thinkers in both the Wolffian and the Thomasian traditions.     

Psychoanalysis, romantic nature philosophy and German idealistic thinking

The author examines the historical roots of Freud-revision at the Stuttgart Institute of Psychotherapy and Depth Psychology during post-war times. There had been strivings then for a synthesis of Freud's materialistic analytic theory, the holistic worldly-spiritual theory especially of C. G. Jung and philosophical anthropology. The author suggests that this revision of Freud's theory and thoughts is based on specifically German traditions of romantic and idealistic thinking which predestined the willingness of psychoanalysts to participate in the integration of psychotherapeutic schools being prescribed by the Nazi-regime and also having determined the continuation of this "synoptic" project after the end of the "G?ring-Institut".     

早期现代哲学中的语言问题

The view of language is greatly changed from early modern philosophy to later modern philosophy and to postmodern philosophy. The linguistic question in early modern philosophy, which is characterized by rationalism and empiricism, is discussed in this paper. Linguistic phenomena are not at the center of philosophical reflections in early modern philosophy. The subject of consciousness is at the center of the philosophy, which makes language serve purely as an instrument for representing thoughts. Locke, Leibniz and Descartes consider language from a representationalist point of view. To them, language itself is idealized and represents thought as if it were thought representing itself. Like the structural linguist Saussure, the founders of phenomenology and analytical philosophy give much attention to the logical or static structure of language, and stick up for the representationalism of early modern philosophy. However, their successors refuse to accept this attitude, meaning the final collapse of representationalism. Translated by Cui Zengbao and Yang Dachun from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Research), 2007, (8): 62–67     

German philosophy, Freud, and the riddle of the woman

After Kant's critique of empiricism, subjectivist epistemologies cropped up in 19th-century German philosophy. Schopenhauer argued that the true essence of every object was an irrational and sexual will. This underlying will distorted a subject's knowledge of the world. Schopenhauer's notion of this true essence was analogous to his portrayal of women; they too were natural, irrational, and instinctual. Nietzsche postulated a will-to-power that structured and hence distorted a chaotic world. That structureless "real" world Nietzsche symbolized as the essential "truth of a woman," a truth which for Nietzsche was unknowable to the desirous male philosopher. Freud, while maintaining belief in empirical truth, developed a psychology of mis-knowledge which had much in common with Schopenhauer's epistemology. His theory of transference grew from a need to explain how female patients libidinally distorted the reality of their male analysts. Conversely, Freud's later writings on women are hampered by the author's realization of his own precarious and subjective position as man trying to know woman. These counter-transferential concerns ultimately made the woman's psychological essence an unknowable riddle for Freud.