Foremost Philosophers Research Articles

Professor Koeber Watsuji Tetsurō

In this translation, Watsuji Tetsurō provides an overview of the life and work of Raphael von Koeber who introduced and taught philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University to some of the most eminent Japanese intellectuals of that period. Watsuji focuses on the character of Koeber, rather than his intellectual achievements, as having an incomparably profound effect upon his students. In this regard, by discussing his sphere of influence, Watsuji simultaneously provides us with an insight into the shared intellectual heritage of many of Japan’s foremost philosophers, novelists, and academics, and subsequently raises awareness of the importance of Koeber himself.

The Alt-Right: Neoliberalism, Libertarianism and the Fascist Temptation

There is by now broad consensus in the critical literature that neoliberalism and social conservatism have frequently coexisted in practice. Yet the alt-right fits none of the previously identified alliances: this is not the neoliberal neoconservatism of the Reagan and Bush years, nor the neoliberal communitarianism of the Third Way, nor even a form of neoliberal authoritarianism. Instead, the alt-right claims intellectual descent from economic libertarianism, on the one hand, and paleo- (as opposed to neo-) conservatism on the other. This paper traces the contours of this ‘paleolibertarian’ alliance, first by following the volatile political trajectory of Murray Rothbard, the foremost philosopher of American libertarianism, and, second, by uncovering precedents in the longer history of the American far right. It will be argued that paleoconservatism makes for a uniquely powerful ally because it offers a workable response to libertarianism’s intrinsic contradictions.

A Critical Recuperation of Watsuji\u2019s Rinrigaku

Watsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands.

The Legal Positivism of H.L.A. Hart

H.L.A. Hart was the foremost Anglophone philosopher of law in the twentieth century, and he was rivaled only by Hans Kelsen as the foremost philosopher of law in any language during that century. Among his many sterling accomplishments in the philosophy of law was his reinvigoration of the tradition of legal positivism. His revival of that tradition greatly strengthened it by transforming it in some major respects – not least by severing it from the command theory of law that had been propounded (in distinct versions) by his illustrious predecessors Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. Yet, in spite of the distance that Hart put between himself and those predecessors, he was firmly aligned with them in his emphasis on the distinction between what legal institutions are and what legal institutions morally ought to be. With his general insistence on the separability of law and morality, he established himself as an opponent of natural-law theorists and their efforts to show that law is an inherently moral phenomenon. Indeed, the arguments through which he impugned a multiplicity of natural-law lines of reasoning are one feature of his book THE CONCEPT OF LAW that has cemented its place as a classic text with which generations of legal philosophers will perennially grapple. The present essay, written for the CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO LEGAL POSITIVISM, provides an overview of Hart's contribution to the tradition of positivist thinking about law.

Philosophy and Economics: Recent Issues and Perspectives. Introduction to the Special Issue

From its beginning, economic thinking has been deeply intertwined with philosophical considerations. The most important early economic thinkers, from Aristotle to Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, were of course also and (for some of them) foremost philosophers. Though the Marginalist revolution and the rise of neoclassical economics at the end of the 19th century have contributed to the constitution...

Jacques Maritain: Christian Theorist of Non-Violence and Just War

ABSTRACTJacques Maritain (1882–1973) is widely recognized as one of the foremost Catholic philosophers of modern times. He wrote groundbreaking works in all branches of philosophy. For a period of about 10 years, beginning in 1933, he discussed matters relating to war and ethics. Writing initially about Gandhi, whose strategy of non-violence he sought to incorporate within a Christian conception of political action, Maritain proceeded to comment more specifically on the religious aspects of armed force in “On Holy War,” an essay about the civil war then ongoing in Spain (1936–1939). After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Maritain penned a series of essays that sought to explain why the Anglo–French declarations of war were warranted on Christian just war principles. While the secondary literature on Maritain’s thought is extensive, thus far there has been little systematic exploration of his writings on war. In what follows I seek to remedy this lacuna, by examining how he conceptualized just war in the three phases outlined above.

An Interview with Philip Mirowski

In this interview, Philip Mirowski, a foremost economic historian and philosopher of economic thought, discusses his research into the history of economics along with its complex relationship to the natural sciences and the recent rise of neoliberalism. The conversation starts by focusing on his early work on the birth of neoclassical economics as an imitation of modern physics via energetic metaphors. We also discuss the subsequent impact of the computer metaphor and its influence on post-Second World War economic theory. Some of the most important aspects of the informational turn in economics are discussed, such as the understanding of the market processes as a form of computation and the shift from a concern with the nature of the individual agent to the institutional framework of markets. This inevitably leads us to Mirowski’s recent work, where he takes the informational turn in economics to its ultimate conclusions, arguing for an algorithmic understanding of markets. He calls this a theory of markomata, or a computational evolutionary economics. Finally, the discussion addresses the interdependencies between the general understanding of markets as superior information processors, the rise of neoliberalism and the recent financial crisis.

Book Symposium on Le concept d’information dans la science contemporaine

In 1962, at the illustrious grounds of Royaumont Abbey, situated about an hour north of Paris, a colloquium was held whose attendees included some of France’s foremost philosophers and experts on cybernetics and information theory. Presenters included Giorgio de Santillana, Lucien Goldmann, Benoit Mandelbrot, Norbert Wiener, Rene de Possel, Andre Lwoff, Abraham Moles, Henryk Greniewski, Helmar Frank, Jiři Zeman, Philos. Technol. (2016) 29:269–291 DOI 10.1007/s13347-015-0205-z

Performativity or Discourse? An Interview with John Searle

Scott Lash interviews John Searle, one of the foremost contemporary philosophers. Over the course of the conversation, Searle discusses his research into performativity, language and intentionality, the question of information and his account of social ontology. The conversation initially deals with the early influence of John Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as Searle's relationship to phenomenology and the rest of the philosophical tradition. This offers a conceptual reconstruction of Searle’s work from multiple perspectives. Crucial concepts are highlighted such as performativity, speech acts, intentionality and natural language. The discussion also touches on Searle’s recent debates around the questions of information and consciousness. The conversation ends with an overview of Searle’s social ontology, his theory of institutions and his relationship with post-structuralism.

On the impoverishment of scientific education

Hannah Arendt, one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century, has argued that it is the responsibility of educators not to leave children in their own world but instead to bring them into the adult world so that, as adults, they can carry civilization forward to whatever challenges it will face by bringing to bear the learning of the past. In the same collection of essays, she discusses the recognition by modern science that Nature is inconceivable in terms of ordinary human conceptual categories - as she writes, ‘unthinkable in terms of pure reason’. Together, these views on scientific education lead to an educational process that transforms children into adults, with a scientific adult being one who has the ability to conceptualize scientific systems independent of ordinary physical intuition. This article begins with Arendt’s basic educational and scientific points and develops from them a critique of current scientific education in conjunction with an appeal to educate young scientists in a manner that allows them to fulfill their potential ‘on the shoulders of giants’. While the article takes a general philosophical perspective, its specifics tend to be directed at biomedical education, in particular, how such education pertains to translational science.

PROGRESSIVISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHTS

AbstractThis essay treats the Progressives' critique of the Founders' doctrine of natural rights. Natural rights had been attacked before the Progressive era—by proponents of the racial science of ethnology, advocates of philosophy of history, and followers of Charles Darwin—but the Progressives launched the most thoroughgoing and systematic critique in American history. The leading thinker conducting the critique was America's foremost philosopher John Dewey. His critique had five major points: (1) that America had entered an entirely new age of social and economic organization requiring a different political theory; (2) that all theoretical claims of truth, like natural rights, are relative to the age in which they were born and thrived; (3) that theoretical ideas serve the aims of different classes, with natural rights representing the economic and political interests of the emerging bourgeoisie; (4) that natural rights encouraged a diminished goal for human beings, emphasizing the fulfillment of individual self-interest rather a higher idea of human development and of social cooperation; and (5) that any metaphysical claim in politics is undemocratic by virtue of ascribing a standard of right that is prior to and higher than a decision of a democratic majority. The paper concludes by briefly sketching the influence that this critique had on the heirs of the Progressives, the modern liberals.

Assessing Wesley Wildman’s Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry

Wesley Wildman is one of the foremost philosophers of religion calling for the evolution of the discipline from its present narrow focus on theistic beliefs to become a discipline concerned with religions in all their diversity. Towards this end, he proposes that philosophers of religion understand what they do as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. This article assesses his proposal.

Mario Bunge’s Materialist Theory of Mind and Contemporary Cognitive Science

Bunge’s writings on the mind–body problem provide a rigorous, analytical antidote to the persistent anti-materialist tendency that has characterized the history of philosophy and science. Bunge gives special attention to dualism and its shortcomings, and this attention is welcome in view of the resurgence of the doctrine today. However, I focus my comments selectively on Bunge’s more controversial, provocative claims, not to dismiss them, but to engage with them seriously. For example, a difficulty arising from Bunge’s rhetorical style and its undoubted virtues is that not all the targets of his selfconfessed “bashings” (2010, xi) are equally deserving. For example, Bunge suggests “most contemporary philosophers of mind are indifferent to psychology, or are remarkably uninformed about it”. This charge cannot be sustained today in light of the work of foremost philosophers today.

When Misery and Metaphysics Collide: William James on ‘the Problem of Evil’

William James is often described as one of America's foremost philosophers and the founder of American psychology. During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century he published several key texts on a broad range of topics, including the psychology of religion, ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. Many are still in current use, and contemporary philosophers continue to pore over them. Biographers, meanwhile, happily speculate on everything from James's parental relationships to the state of his marriage. However, there has been relatively little detailed exploration of how James's published writings and his private life may have intersected. This article explores one such intersection: that between James's protracted experience of ill health and the elaboration of the notion of evil in his writings.

An epistemology of the concrete: twentieth-century histories of life

An Epistemology of the Concrete brings together case studies and theoretical reflections on the history and epistemology of the life sciences by Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, one of the world’s foremost philosophers of science. In these essays, he examines the history of experiments, concepts, model organisms, instruments, and the gamut of epistemological, institutional, political, and social factors that determine the actual course of the development of knowledge. Building on ideas from his influential book Toward a History of Epistemic Things , Rheinberger first considers ways of historicizing scientific knowledge, and then explores different configurations of genetic experimentation in the first half of the twentieth century and the interaction between apparatuses, experiments, and concept formation in molecular biology in the second half of the twentieth century. He delves into fundamental epistemological issues bearing on the relationship between instruments and objects of knowledge, laboratory preparations as a special class of epistemic objects, and the note-taking and write-up techniques used in research labs. He takes up topics ranging from the French “historical epistemologists” Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem to the liquid scintillation counter, a radioactivity measuring device that became a crucial tool for molecular biology and biomedicine in the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout An Epistemology of the Concrete , Rheinberger shows how assemblages—historical conjunctures—set the conditions for the emergence of epistemic novelty, and he conveys the fascination of scientific things: those organisms, spaces, apparatuses, and techniques that are transformed by research and that transform research in turn.

John Dewey and the philosophy and practice of hope

Inspiring new techniques for engaging students with democratic ideals John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope combines philosophical theory with a study of its effects in an actual classroom. To understand how Dewey, one of the century's foremost philosophers of education, understood the concept of hope, Stephen Fishman begins with theoretical questions like: What is hope? What are its objects? How can hope foster a new understanding of democracy and social justice? The book's second half is a classroom study that mir-rors in practice what Fishman explores in theory, as Lucille McCarthy observes Fishman's undergraduate students reading the theorists. Illustrating students' own vital engagement with the hope literature, McCarthy reveals how the discussions deepen student understandings, simultaneously showing education's power to promote hope and turn social ideals into reality.

Rolling stone

Rolling stone

Derrida and the tasks for the new humanities: postmodern nursing and the culture wars

Abstract Jacques Derrida is perhaps the foremost philosopher of the humanities and of its place in the university. Over the long period of his career he has been concerned with the fate, status, place and contribution of the humanities. Through his deconstructive readings and writings he has done much not only to reinvent the western tradition by attending closely to those texts which constitute it but also he has redefined its procedures and protocols. This paper first introduces the notion of postmodern nursing, its relation to the culture wars and some of the main characteristics of so‐called poststructuralism, considered as a response to the scientific pretensions of structuralism. Secondly, it provides some background to Derrida, who Althusser believed to be the most important French philosopher of the 20th century. Thirdly, it explores a recent essay where Derrida outlines seven programmatic theses or what he calls ‘seven professions of faith’ for the new humanities. Finally, and very tentatively, it suggests what such a view might contribute to the nursing humanities.

For the Sake of the Argument: Ramsey Test Conditionals, Inductive Inference, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning.

This book by one of the world's foremost philosophers in the fields of epistemology and logic offers an account of suppositional reasoning relevant to practical deliberation, explanation, prediction and hypothesis testing. Suppositions made 'for the sake of argument' sometimes conflict with our beliefs, and when they do, some beliefs are rejected and others retained. Thanks to such belief contravention, adding content to a supposition can undermine conclusions reached without it. Subversion can also arise because suppositional reasoning is ampliative. These two types of nonmonotonic logic are the focus of this book. A detailed comparison of nonmonotonicity appropriate to both belief contravening and ampliative suppositional reasoning reveals important differences that have been overlooked.

The Discovery of Nature: The Contribution of the Chartrians to Twelfth-Century Attempts to Found aScientia naturalis

If one takes standard overviews of the history of natural science or natural philosophy as his measure, the object appearing in the title of this study would literally appear not to exist. For, apart from a few scattered encyclopedia entries — which are always of necessity rather summary in character — one searches in vain for studies on the medieval interest in the natural sciences. For the contemporary cosmologist, be he first and foremost philosopher or physicist, the Middle Ages lie in a very deep darkness indeed.