Early Philosophical Writings Research Articles

Russell and American Realism

American philosophical realism developed in two forms: “new” and “critical” realism. While the new realists sought to ‘emancipate’ ontology from epistemology and defended a direct theory of perception, the critical realists promoted a representationalist account of perception and thus argued for an epistemological dualism. Bertrand Russell’s early philosophical writings figured prominently in both of these American realist camps. However, while the new realists quite enthusiastically embraced the Russellian analytic style of reasoning (and Russell himself appreciated the American new realists as anti-idealist allies), the critical realists were significantly more reserved toward Russell’s point of view. In the present paper, I identify the reasons for this difference in reception. In particular, I will show that the critical realists’ reservations pertained primarily to a more traditionalist—‘continental’—account of philosophy, whereas the neo-realists proved instrumental in setting the stage for later full-blown analytic philosophy in the United States.

Edgar Wind and Modern Art: In Defence of Marginal Anarchy

Edgar Wind and Modern Art: In Defence of Marginal Anarchy

Origin and the Outline of Florian Znaniecki’s Psychology of Culture

Summary The aim of this paper is to present the cultural psychology project formulated by Florian Znaniecki. In the first part of the article, the authoress reconstructs the origin of this concept by reviewing the scholar’s early philosophical writings. In the second and third part of this paper, the authoress focuses on presenting the basic categories of Znaniecki’s theory such as culture, culturalism and cultural action and highlights the role of cultural psychology in his scientific system.

Capitalism and alienation: Towards a Marxist theory of alienation for the 21st century

Alienation is among the most influential terms in Marxist theory, but also one of the most ambiguous and controversial. Unlike previous literature, which has tended to focus on Marx’ early philosophical writings, this offers a novel reinterpretation of the theory of alienation found in Marx’s later works. Rather than conceiving alienation as a subjective experience or an inherent feature of social organization, I contend that alienation in the Marxist sense can be understood as an objective process arising from the appropriation of the results of production and their transformation into capital. This interpretation resolves the main theoretical problems conventionally associated with alienation theory, for example the tendency towards essentialism and moral paternalism. In particular, a Marxist theory of alienation explains the paradox of social power and isolation that characterizes contemporary capitalist societies, in which feelings of powerlessness and loneliness are intensified despite objective increases in humanity’s social power and interdependence.

A Radical Humanist Approach to Social Welfare

ABSTRACT This conceptual paper presents a radical humanist framing of the relationship between human needs and social welfare. It draws and develops its conceptualisation of radical humanism from the early philosophical writings of Marx in which he identified the radical constitutive needs of the human species. It seeks to translate the definitive characteristics of humanity's ‘species being’ – namely consciousness, ‘work’, sociality and historical development – into overarching claims or social rights to autonomous thinking, creative activity, mutual caring and human progress. It argues for a ‘needs-first ethos’ from within which critically to evaluate welfare policy and practice, and through which to conceptualise approaches that humanise rather than dehumanise.

Dallas Willard’s Contribution to Phenomenology

Dallas Willard’s contribution to phenomenology is presented in terms of his articles on, and translations into English of, Edmund Husserl’s early philosophical writings (i.e., those in the decade prior to Husserl’s 1900 publication Logical Investigations), which single-handedly prevented them from falling into oblivion, both literally and philosophically. Willard’s account of Husserl’s “negative critique” of formalized logic in those writings, and argument for its contemporary relevance, is presented and largely endorsed.

Does One Stand to Gain by Combining Art with Philosophy? A Study of Fourth-Year College (13/14 Years of Age) Philosophical Writings Produced Within the PreCPhi/Philosophemes Corpus

Creative thinking is sometimes neglected by schools. Introducing philosophy in schools represents a commitment to balancing the development of logical and creative thinking, currently exercised only orally. In the present study, the focus is on writing. Firstly, the value of authentic pupil writings is underscored. The pupils and students studied wrote texts for “Adolescence et Société”, a magazine produced by researchers. 100 students’ works, written by philosophizing students in fourth-year college in France, culled from the PreCPhi/Philosophemes Corpus (1,300 texts collected from 43 classrooms) were studied in order to measure the progress of philosophizing students between a pre-test and a post-test following the introduction of a pedagogical tool that unites Art with Philosophy, Philo & Carto. Their writing skills were measured according to the following five dimensions: linguistic, philosophical, cognitive, reflective and creative. Performance measures, calculated on group averages and applied to the group’s variance between the pre- and the post-tests, were related to each dimension. Linguistic performance (presence of an introduction and conclusion) did not progress, remaining subject to pupils’ academic level. Philosophical, cognitive, creative and reflective performance increased significantly, or at least confirmed the trend. Reasoning, metaphors, conceptual differences and discourse ownership increased, while anecdotal examples decreased. These increases were accompanied by an increase in the post-test variance: gaps between the strongest and the weakest performances widened, except in the case of questioning, personal examples and generation of doubt, which were at the core of the effect produced. The study validates the fact that the Art and Philosophy link promises unprecedented educational prospects with regard to the production of early quality philosophical writings. This will require validation with other samplings.

Creating meaning: a Daoist response to existential nihilism

The rise of modern science in the Western world produced not only a number of social and technical improvements but also a view of the world as a godless mechanism and thus of human life as devoid of ultimate metaphysical meaning. Some modern Western thinkers worried that this rational scientific view of the world, which presupposes ‘metaphysical nihilism’, or the view that there are no metaphysically grounded values, would also lead to an existential kind of nihilism that rejects human life, action, morality and social values in general as meaningless. Their attempts at preserving the former condition while preventing the emergence of the latter, however, have been criticized as being founded on questionable metaphysical and even religious foundations, and thus for being inconsistent with the modern scientific outlook. Richard Dawkins‘s argument that engagement in the scientific activity of seeking truth suffices to establish meaning in life is generally not regarded as convincing, largely because the ‘truths’ of modern science fail to provide anything resembling existential meaning. Apparently, Western culture seems to suffer from some kind of metaphysical yearning in its post-metaphysical scientific world. This paper seeks an inspiration for a solution in early Daoist philosophical writings, most notably the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, and their call for creative self-forgetting and constantly active interpretation. Their treatment of topics such as human life, death and activity uncovers an intriguing worldview consistent with ‘metaphysical nihilism’ and yet inherently meaningful and life affirming.

William H. Poteat and Michael Polanyi

This essay provides a timeline charting contact between Michael Polanyi and William H. Poteat. We trace the contours of the intimate, multifaceted, and mutually influential friendship of Polanyi and Poteat which developed over more than twenty years. This historical record of contacts between Michael Polanyi and William H. Poteat portrays their close, multifaceted, and mutually influential relationship. There were more contacts and a deeper relationship between Poteat and Polanyi than we had recognized prior to undertaking this study. Much more can be learned about their mutual influences. The new Poteat archival collection of letters, drafts, and unpublished manuscripts in the Yale Divinity School Library (YDS) will make further exploration possible. Below we suggest that the nature of Polanyi’s influence on Poteat began to change in 1968. Poteat’s subsequent inquiry and quest take him in directions he believed moved far beyond and beneath the “grand program” of Polanyi with which he was closely associated earlier. We welcome reactions, corrections, and additions to the narrative which we have here pieced together. Tradition & Discovery: The Journal of the Polanyi Society 42:1 19 1952: Poteat discovers early philosophical writings of Polanyi The discovery, in 1952, I think of early ‘philosophical’ writings of Michael Polanyi—the first I remember, was “The Stability of Beliefs” in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, later to be incorporated, as a section, into Personal Knowledge—accredited and greatly enriched the context within which initially to obey my own intimations (PM, 6). Poteat’s incorporation of Polanyi’s discussion of an exchange between an Azande witch doctor and a scientific agronomist in the Duke Divinity School class “Christianity and Culture 16,” some 15 years after 1952, showed Polanyi’s influence on Poteat’s teaching. Breytspraak vividly recalls several class sessions spent unsuccessfully trying to convince Poteat, role playing the Azande, of the truth of the scientific approach contra his obviously erroneous Azande view of how the world works. Whether there were any references to Polanyi in this vigorous exchange is a detail now unclear, but the illumination of the stability of beliefs made a profound and lasting impression. 1954: Poteat publishes “The Open Society and Its Ambivalent Friends” The first published evidence of Polanyi’s influence on Poteat appears in Poteat’s 1954 review article “The Open Society and Its Ambivalent Friends” in The Christian Scholar (included in PP). The essay sharply criticizes Popper’s ideas as presented in the new revised and expanded second edition of The Open Society and Its Enemies. In a short reference to Polanyi without citation, Poteat approvingly notes Polanyi’s notion of “fiduciary foundations.” This phrase is not in “The Stability of Beliefs” but “fiduciary foundations” does appear twice in LL, once in a reference to the end of “the critical enterprise” and the new emerging intellectual period, “the post-critical age” (109). Popper’s critical rationalist ideas about an Open Society suggest he does not recognize the importance of fiduciary foundations. Poteat’s reference to Polanyi without citation seems to assume his readers are familiar with Polanyi and suggests that he has already incorporated some Polanyian ideas into his own perspective. Other sections and themes in Poteat’s essay on Popper seem compatible with and may be influenced by Polanyi, but Poteat’s own critique of “Cartesian anthropology,” “deracinate, critical reason,” and absolute distinctions between facts and norms is also made from the standpoint of “Incarnation faith.”

On the Supposed Break in Marx

Abstract An interpretative point popularized by Louis Althusser is that Marx's early philosophical and political writings should not be viewed as connected or contributing to his later historical materialism. However, Althusser's standpoint of a “break” in Marx cannot be correct. An analysis of Marx's early works reveals continuity with and development to commitments and problems that are familiar in Marx's later writings. Certain political, democratic commitments are inherent to the development of Marx's project, and a normative standpoint is not thereby transcended. Marx's use of a political democratic idea, consideration of our species-being potential, as well as his critique of social relations in regard to alienation, lead to an articulation of and commitment to communism.

The Early Moore and Russell [review of G.E. Moore, <i>Early Philosophical Writings</i>, edited by Thomas Baldwin and Consuelo Preti

The Early Moore and Russell [review of G.E. Moore, <i>Early Philosophical Writings</i>, edited by Thomas Baldwin and Consuelo Preti

The Early Moore and Russell

178 Reviews c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3302\rj 33,2 113 red.docx 2014-01-15 10:04 THE EARLY MOORE AND RUSSELL Ray Perkins, Jr. Philosophy / Plymouth State U. Plymouth, nh 03264 1600, usa perkrk@earthlink.net G. E. Moore. Early Philosophical Writings. Edited and with an Introduction by Thomas Baldwin and Consuelo Preti. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U. P., 2011. Pp. lxxxv, 251. isbn: 978-0521190145. £68.00; us$114.00. aldwin and Preti have put together a very nice book which gives us G. E. Moore’s 1897 and 1898 Trinity College dissertations and an informative look at the historical context in which they were written. This story—including information about Moore’s early life, the philosophical influences at Cambridge and a critical commentary on his dissertations and readers’ reports— is clearly and carefully presented in their 78-page introduction.1 The book is a valuable addition to the history of analytic philosophy and will be of special interest to Moore (and Russell) scholars and to historians generally who wish to know more about the genesis of the ideas shaping the new analytic philosophy at the end of the century. Moore entered Trinity in 1892 to study classics. There he met Russell (who was in his third year) and took his advice to study philosophy in his last two years and take his final exams (Tripos, Part ii) in both disciplines, which he did successfully in 1896. And like Russell—who had won a Trinity prize fellowship in 1895 (with a dissertation on the foundations of geometry2 ) only one year after his graduation—he submitted a dissertation (1897) in hopes of winning a prize fellowship. Moore’s first attempt failed, but his 1898 version was successful. And not only did the success of the 1898 dissertation launch Moore’s career as a professional philosopher, it also paved the way for the new analytic philosophy of the next century. Moore’s dissertations and his Trinity examiners’ reports (by Caird, Sidgwick , Ward and Bosanquet3 ) are fascinating reading, and it’s a great convenience to have them handy in a single volume. But the editors deserve special 1 Hereafter I shall use the editors’ convention of referring to the pagination of their introduction with roman numerals and to Moore’s dissertations (plus examiners’ reports) with arabic numerals. 2 Russell’s dissertation was published in 1897 as An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry . 3 Edward Caird was an idealist and highly respected Kant scholar at Oxford. Henry Sidgwick was one of Moore’s teachers at Cambridge and author of the influential _= Reviews 179 c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3302\rj 33,2 113 red.docx 2014-01-15 10:04 praise for not only giving the reader an astute critical summary of the dissertations , but also for their skillful reconstruction of Moore’s surviving, but incomplete , 1898 manuscript from which parts of the early chapters had been removed. The editors make a good case (pp. lxxv–lxxix) that those pages became the basis of Moore’s 1899 Mind article, “The Nature of Judgment”. (Those familiar with Russell’s early work may recall it as an article that Russell claimed as of paramount importance for his own early work.4 I’ll return to the question of Russell and Moore and this article’s significance.) the dissertations, 1897 and 1898 Moore’s dissertations reveal a young Moore with remarkable powers of analysis and more than a hint of the careful, courageous scepticism and intellectual honesty for which he later became known. But as the editors make clear, their main importance is the record they reveal of the transition away from Kant and Hegel to the new philosophy, which put a premium on conceptual analysis and metaphysics without Kantian or neo-Hegelian idealism. The 1897 dissertation (“The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics”) is an analysis of the basic concepts of ethics with considerable critical discussion of Kant, especially concerning freedom and reason, and Moore’s attempt to fashion his own good-based ethics utilizing a little from Kant and much from Bradley (p. l). At this time both Moore and Russell were still under the influence of Kant...

Reticence and the Fuzziness of Thresholds

This article discusses implicit conceptions of reticence in the early philosophical writings of Mikhail Bakhtin. Contrary to the image of Bakhtin as a thinker of dialogue, polyphony, and voice, it finds a strand in Bakhtin's thought that suggests that there might be good reasons for remaining silent and not stepping into the world in speech: in reticence, the human being avoids both judgment and being judged, eludes the risk of the addressee's absence or unreliability, and resists the finality of utterance that shares in the finality of death. This essay makes a case for a Bakhtinian apology for quietism and seeks to contribute to recent work in Common Knowledge on that subject. Bakhtin's conception of reticence is usefully understood with reference to threshold situations: in withholding a future word, a human being hovers on the borders of nonbeing and being, on the borders of the present, future, and past. In this sense, reticence is allied to conceptions of fuzziness and blur that have also been concerns of this journal in recent years. In making these claims, the essay relates Bakhtin's thought to a Russian literary tradition of thinking about silence (Tiutchev's and Mandelstam's Silentium poems), as well as to a more broadly European intellectual context (Arendt and Heidegger, for example), where thinkers understand being in terms of becoming and understand disclosure through speech.

G. E. Moore. Early Philosophical Writings

G. E. Moore. Early Philosophical Writings

Review: T. Baldwin; C. Preti (eds): G.E. Moore: Early Philosophical Writings

This is a review of T. Baldwin; C. Preti (eds): G.E. Moore: Early Philosophical Writings .

“Violence Is Not an Evil”: Ambiguity and Violence in Simone de Beauvoir’s Early Philosophical Writings

“Violence Is Not an Evil”: Ambiguity and Violence in Simone de Beauvoir’s Early Philosophical Writings

Friedrich Schlegel's Romanticization of Music

This articles explores Friedrich Schlegel's call for the "romanticization" of music in his early philosophical writings. This romanticization creates an infinitely perfectible musical work of dissonant sounds by actualizing the hermeneutic indeterminacy and anti-systematic tendencies of sonoric signifiers. These conditions initiate a crucial synchronic dialogue between the musical work and its listeners: as listeners actualize the work's dialectical contradictions into non-exhaustive semantic configurations, the work's formal properties shape listeners' thought-processes aesthetically.

Signification and Truth Epistemology at the Crossroads of Semantics and Ontology in Augustine's Early Philosophical Writings

AbstractThis article is about the conception of truth and signification in Augustine's early philosophical writings. In the first, semantic-linguistic part, the gradual shift of Augustine's position towards the Academics is treated closely. It reveals that Augustine develops a notion of sign which, by integrating elements of Stoic epistemology, is suited to function as a transmitter of true knowledge through linguistic expressions. In the second part, both the ontological structure of signified (sensible) things and Augustine's solution to the apparent tautologies of mathematical truths are examined. Again his notion of sign turns out to be the keystone; this time, however, the natural in contrast to the conventional sign of linguistic expressions. In their complementarity, both parts show how Augustine intensely struggles with and (partially) overcomes the skepticism of the sensible world through his conception of sign and signification.

The pragmatics of bereavement

In keeping with the Freudian heritage, the psychological study of mourning has traditionally been conducted from a mentalistic and subjectivist perspective. In this paper, we present an alternative to the mentalistic approach by reconsidering mourning from a socio-semiotic perspective that draws heavily on the early philosophical writings of Bakhtin. More specifically, we conceptualize mourning as a process of meaning-making. This conceptualization is illustrated through texts written by women who have experienced stillbirth. Our analysis points out the social illegitimacy of mourning for a stillborn, the related difficulties, and the way stillbirth mothers struggle to overcome these difficulties.

Philosophy, theology and foundationalism in the thought of Karl Rahner

This paper argues for the possibility of a non-foundationalist reading of Karl Rahner's theology, one which treats it as logically independent of his philosophy. It argues that there is a greater degree of discontinuity between Rahner's early philosophical writings and his later theology than is usually recognized, and focusing on the Vorgriff auf esse, that the same claim may function differently in his theology than it does in his philosophy. Through an analysis of a line of tension running through much of Rahner's later thought, it shows that his insistence on the inescapability of pluralism, if taken fully seriously, has significant consequences for one's understanding of the ‘transcendental’ aspect of Rahner's theology.