Philosophical Movement Research Articles

Pynchon's Age of Reason: <i>Mason & Dixon</i> and America's Rise of Rational Discourse

By drawing upon astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon for the unlikely protagonists of <em>Mason &amp; Dixon</em> (1997), Thomas Pynchon develops a revisionist history of these two Englishmen as they come to terms with America in the so-called Age of Reason, which was informed by a European philosophical movement with its roots in rational discourse aimed at cultural and political intellect that eventually served as the foundation for American independence and democracy. But as Thomas Paine suggests, time wields a stronger power than does reason, and what history calls the Age of Reason may remind one of an ideal time in America when, in theory, rational discourse converted people into better citizens. However, as Mason and Dixon create their Line, recognizing that it will, in effect, divide North from South, they begin to realize that America consumes them with irrational discourse.

THE VARKARIS

The Varkari Sampradya, a 700-hundred-year-old philosophical movement in India's west-central state of Maharashtra, has been increasingly lauded by conservative forces in the state as a standard bearer of Hindu and ethnic Marathi tradition. More appropriately, the movement should be understood as a key site of identity contestation and widely ranging social criticism. In this essay, the author recounts his field experiences of the Varkari Sampradya and his observations of its massive annual pilgrimage in light of current and historical struggles to control signification of the movement's public meaning.

Hot-Tempered Philosophy

74 Reviews HOT-TEMPERED PHILOSOPHY Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa stratoflampsacus@aol.com David Edmonds and John Eidinow. Wittgenstein’s Poker: the Story of a TenMinute Argument between Two Great Philosophers. New York: Harper Collins, 2001. Pp. x, 340. us$24.00 (paper $13.95). istory knows of only one time when Karl Popper, Bertrand Russell, and HLudwig Wittgenstein were all together. This was 25 October 1946 at a meeting of Cambridge University’s Moral Science Club. Wittgenstein was chairman of the club. Karl Popper was visiting lecturer. Bertrand Russell was in the audience. Wittgenstein and Popper had a lively disagreement over no less than the very nature of philosophy itself. One of the earliest, and most sensational , accounts of the occasion culminates in an actual duel between Wittgenstein and Popper with red-hot fireplace pokers. Wittgenstein’s Poker presents conflicting first-hand accounts of the incident in an attempt to set the record straight. It is largely the contradictions among the first-hand reports that lend drama and intrigue to the book. David Edmonds and John Eidinow are award-winning journalists with the bbc. This is their first book. It is refreshingly light on jargon and should be of interest to philosophers and non-philosophers alike. In addition to giving a detailed account of the specific confrontation between Popper and Wittgenstein , the book presents an interesting and detailed prelude. It outlines the context of the tension between the two protagonists. It gives overviews of their respective upbringings, personalities, and philosophies. It also discusses kindred twentieth-century philosophical movements. The kernel of Popper and Wittgenstein’s difference that ill-fated night was that Popper believed in such things as genuine problems in the field of philosophy . By contrast, Wittgenstein maintained that there is nothing in philosophy that amounts to more than mere puzzles. All accounts agree that, as the argument heated up, Wittgenstein took the poker from the fireplace and started waving it at Popper. But the witnesses give different accounts of Wittgenstein’s intentions and ensuing behaviour. An amusing undisputed climactic detail is that when Wittgenstein, while waving the implement, importunes Popper to cite a genuine moral problem, Popper replies (much to Wittgenstein’s consternation ): “What to do with chairmen who threaten visiting professors with Reviews 75 waving pokers!” The third prominent character in the tale is Bertrand Russell to whom much reference is made. Russell had most recently addressed the Moral Science Club in 1935 and, more significantly, had been a mentor to both Wittgenstein and Popper. He is presented as a retiring, much revered, towering intellect who may have even put Popper up to this confrontation with Wittgenstein: Although the war was over, the future of Europe looked bleak. Industry lay in ruins, basic necessities were in short supply, Communist parties were flourishing in some Western democracies, the Soviets were strengthening their grip in eastern Europe and developing the bomb. These developments presented the West with immediate threats to its democratic future. Meanwhile Popper and Russell frustratedly watched Wittgenstein persuade a generation of new philosophers that philosophy was solely, as they saw it, trifling with language. It was essential for the future of philosophy that this deception should be exposed. (P. 242) The first twenty chapters of Wittgenstein’s Poker give the groundwork and relevant history; the twenty-first chapter details the probable nature and sequence of events that infamous October evening. The book concludes with attempts to put the whole debacle in proper perspective. There is also appended to the book a most interesting 1998 Times Literary Supplement feature of seven eyewitness accounts reviving the debate over developments that day. Wittgenstein’s Poker is recommended reading. ...

Strata, Blocks, Pieces, Spirals, Elastics and Verticals

In a genuine Nietzschean way, Michel Foucault always refused to develop a definitive theory of time and preferred to produce local and non-explicit theories, adapted to each one of the objects that he was studying. As much as being, time cannot be but interpreted and subjected to a multiplicity of perspectives. I tried to reconstruct these various conceptions of time following Foucault from book to book and situating his work among some of the great modern philosophical movements (historicism and phenomenology), but also according to the internal logic of his research.

Philosophy and Ordinary Language: The Bent and Genius of our Tongue (review)

Reviewed by: Philosophy and ordinary language: The bent and genius of our tongue by Oswald Hanfling Katia Chirkova Philosophy and ordinary language: The bent and genius of our tongue. (Routledge studies in twentieth century philosophy.) By Oswald Hanfling. London & New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 265. $ 85.00, $ 140.00 CAN. This volume is about ordinary language philosophy, the philosophical study of everyday language, and about the place that ordinary language occupies in philosophy. By considering in turn arguments in favor of and against ordinary language philosophy, Oswald Hanfling demonstrates the importance of ordinary language for philosophical inquiries and proves that ordinary language is not to be rejected or substituted by a better scientific language, as maintained by opponents of this philosophical movement. The volume is divided into two parts presenting pro and con arguments on ordinary language philosophy and consisting of seven and six chapters respectively. The book starts with the analysis of Socrates’ quest for definitions (Ch. 1). By showing that this quest is essentially carried out by referring to ordinary language, H proves that this quest is linguistic in nature. In Ch. 2 H examines John L. Austin’s conception of philosophy and establishes that his justification of ordinary language philosophy is largely open to criticism. Wittgenstein’s thoughts about language and its relationship with reality, most notably his ideas about ‘bring[ing] words back ... to their everyday use’, the ‘bewitchment of our understanding’ by language itself and ‘the arbitrariness of grammar’ are described in Ch. 3. Ch. 4 addresses questions of the basis and status of statements about the uses of words. H argues that given that the same concepts exist in different languages, philosophical statements are language neutral, although made in a specific language. Chs. 5–7 deal with the practice of linguistic philosophy. The paradigm case argument is discussed in Ch. 5. The subject of Ch. 6 is the treatment of justification based, according to H, on the false assumption that concepts can be defined in general terms without referring to the variety of situations in which they are used. Ch. 7 examines the concept of knowledge by analyzing some skeptic arguments tending to show that knowledge is impossible. Ch. 8 considers and challenges the view that ideas are more fundamental than words. In this chapter H also discusses the recent attempts to introduce ontology into ethics and argues for the separation of philosophy from empirical science. In Ch. 9 H examines various efforts to improve an ordinary language by introducing ‘more accurate’ alternatives. Ch. 10 is devoted to the linguistic philosophy of Grice, which has been a powerful influence in the extensive refutation of ordinary language philosophy. Quine’s arguments against the separation of philosophy from science are considered in Ch. 11. The ‘scientific realism’ of Putnam and Kripke is discussed in Ch. 12. In Ch. 13 H argues that the concepts of ‘belief’, ‘desire’, etc. used to explain human behavior and referred to as ‘folk psychology’ are not to be replaced by a science-based vocabulary. The book gives a comprehensive overview of the main practitioners of ordinary language philosophy and their methods. Supplied with a large number of examples, the book allows its reader to follow the [End Page 202] line of the argumentation easily. Even though the problems tackled in the volume are more philosophical than linguistic, the book touches upon the fundamental issues concerning the nature of language and would be thus of interest to anybody involved in language studies. Katia Chirkova Leiden University Copyright © 2002 Linguistic Society of America

Michael Riffaterre and the Unfinished Project of Structuralism

Habermas read the first version of his essay Modernity--an Unfinished Project in September 1980. This was his official discourse of thanks when receiving the Adorno Prize in Frankfurt. Ironically, Derrida received the same prize recently, in fact twenty-one years later, to be precise in September 2001, distinction that seems however to clash with Habermas's sense of priorities. I say ironically, because the impetus behind Habermas's first piece was critique of the then irresistible success of French neo-Structuralism. Twenty one years should be the right time to come of age, especially when the movement at issue is called neo-Structuralism, term that German critics tend to prefer to the Anglo-Saxon coining of post-Structuralism, in short dangerous movement in which, for Habermas, Derrida figures among the main suspects. My general thesis is that we can apply Habermas's phrase not to the whole of rationality deriving from the Enlightenment and its aborted or distorted of rationalization in progress, but to what appears now, in retrospect, as France's main philosophical movement in the last century with the possible exception of Existentialism, although I would be ready to argue that Existentialism has been more a fashion, morality, passion--to quote Baudelaire on the transient half needed to make modernity modern--than proper philosophy; I mean structuralism. In order to make my claim, I need Riffaterre's work in all its depth, variety and cogency; indeed, from Essais de Stylistique structurale (1973) to Fictional Truth (1990) via La Production du texte (1979) one can describe Riffaterre as one of the most steadfast advocates of style of thinking that has been too often reduced to bureaucratic scientism underpinned by misguided fascination with linguistics. It is my contention that this broad mode of approaching texts and society has not died out in the seventies. I will try to show that Structuralism should be reappraised and presented in more global context uniting various discourses, from anthropology to semiotics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics, history, that all come under the heading of the human sciences--in fact, the whole spectrum of what Giambattista Vico had in mind when he spoke of New Science defined as the science of man's arts in contradistinction with Cartesian truths and certainties. I will also suggest that the evolution of Riffaterre's positions proves that he has remained faithful to this unfinished project of an expanded and revised structuralism that knew how to dialectize structures, codes and systems dynamically by taking into account history of mentalities and the whole array of phenomenological interactions with the reader, finally by acknowledging the fundamental role played by the Unconscious. The Soldiers of Baltimore, or how Structuralism arrived to the U.S. 1966 marked high tide in the dissemination of Structuralism in France with the publication of two books that surprisingly turned out to be best-sellers, Lacan's Ecrits and Foucault's The Order of Things, following hard after the success of Althusser's For Marx year earlier. I will focus on the conference of the same year, when French theory was launched in America under the name of Structuralism, in order to highlight Riffaterre's role as mediator between two traditions, and describe unique moment of condensation and translation. The Baltimore meeting of October 1966 in which Barthes, Lacan, Derrida, Goldmann, Vernant and Todorov were active participants, was organized from the French side by Jean Hyppolite. The two successive volumes published from these proceedings commemorate this debt by dedicating the contents to Hyppolite as scholar, teacher and friend of scholars. (1) In his presentation, Hyppolite sketches the problematic he had developed in Logic and Existence, showing how Hegel's legacy was double, on the one hand an analysis of ordinary language starting from phenomenology of perception, and on the other hand an investigation of the structure and architecture of all languages with the Logic. …

Scientific Time and Temporal Experience: Pragmatism's Contribution to the Search for a Synthesis

AbstractThe problem of the relation between lived temporal experience and scientific time is an ongoing philosophical issue which has led to numerous and well entrenched radical solutions that in one way or another sever human temporal experience from the time of the universe. This presentation will offer a bird's eye view of the roots of the philosophical problem both historically and as it manifests itself today in major positions or movements that contour the contemporary philosophical landscape. It will then sketch the path to a possible solution from the perspective of classical American pragmatism, the philosophical movement encompassing the writings of Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, C.I. Lewis, and G.H. Mead. For pragmatism the roots of the problem are ultimately located in the understanding of time as discrete and confusions among the mathematical time of physical science, the time of the universe, and lived temporal experience.

Проблемний роздум щодо усвідомлення природи скепсису: Секст Емпірик і Кант

The author`s aim is to prove, that scepsis in aspects of scepticism can be compared in wider perspective with other philosophical movements. Because Sextus Empiricus says about sceptical abiloty in general, then he says about its transcendental dimension. Hence we can speak about scepsis as such. Fundamentality of sceptical ability allows it to stay the same in thinking of Sextus Empiricus, Kant, Descartes, Plato. Scepsis differs from scepticism as general from local. Scepsis arguments, in contrast with scepticism arguments, are universal, hence actual for philosophers of any movement or time. Therefore sceptics lack prioritized acces to scepsis. Sceptics can be called victims of scepsis, because scepsis has to be considered regardless of scepticism. Sceptical way of thinking is included in Kant`s thought adequately, in its prior form, nonetheless it does not lead to scepticism. Hence, Sextus Empiricus is not writing everything real about himself: his words do represent essence of scepsis. Kant has won.

Research Note: The Christian Critique of Phenomenology

This research note is penned in honour of Johan Vander Hoeven on his retirement as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophia Reformata. It is to acknowledge his helpful contribution to the critical exposition of phenomenology. I first read his work almost 30 years ago and it challenged me to develop a sympathetic Christian critique of this philosophical movement. This note is to offer some reflection upon the Christian interpretation of phenomeology. In particular, it raises questions about how some famous phrases, one by Dilthey, the other by Husserl, have been construed.

POST‐MODERN MISSION: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN DAVID BOSCH'S THEOLOGY OF MISSION?

KIRSTEEN KIM [*] A PARADIGM SHIFT IN DAVID BOSCH'S THEOLOGY OF MISSION? In his renowned Transforming Mission, [1] David Bosch delineates what he calls post-modem (p. 349) for mission. Magnificent in its clarity, scope and depth, the book has understandably fulfilled Lesslie Newbigin's prediction that it would become indispensable foundation for the teaching of missiology for many years to come (back cover). However, without doubting its value and usefulness for teaching missiology, this paper questions, in some important respects. Bosch's claim that his missiology is post-modern. The weakness of Bosch's emerging ecumenical consensus on mission was apparent in its very year of publication (1991) when the seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Canberra famously failed to find a consensus. [2] The assembly took a pneumatological theme with a missionary thrust based on a creation theology: Come, Holy -- Renew the Whole Creation. Canberra was particularly influenced by the work of the Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation 'process' (JPIC) which evidenced at Canberra particular concern for feminism, ecology, and spirituality -- and the Spirit of life theology of J[ddot{u}]rgen Moltmann. [3] In his chapter outlining post-modernity, Bosch recognizes its eco-feminist dimensions when he notes briefly that it involves a basic reorientation: One should, again, see oneself as a child of Mother Earth and as sister and brother to other human beings. One should think holistically, rather than analytically, emphasize togetherness rather than distance, break through the dualism of mind and body, subject and object, and emphasize 'symbiosis' (p. 355). He suggests such a change of worldview would have profound and far-reaching consequences for the epistemology of mission but these are not worked out in his book. Creation theology and its attendant concerns at Canberra are hardly mentioned in Transforming Mission. As far as feminism is concerned, although he does allude to women, nowhere does Bosch mention feminism as a theological or philosophical movement. [4] Bosch hardly touches on ecology or on the perceived global environmental crisis, which fuelled the IPIC process. [5] Thirdly, the related interest in indigenous or spiritualities of Indigenous People is missed. [6] This lack of interest is surprising in view of Bosch's own direct experience of peoples during his formative years as a missionary in Transkei (1957-71). [7] By its very nature, Transforming Mission is retrospective; it documents what has already been resolved, not the debates of today. [8] In that sense it was inevitably already out of date by the time of its publication. However, its lack of reference to these contemporary issues is remarkable when we consider that Bosch was a section leader at the San Antonio meeting of the Conference for World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC at which the influence of JPIC was clearly evident. Though preparation of his book was in its final stages in 1989, Bosch does refer to the San Antonio meeting six times (pp. 389, 429, 460-61, 467,487, 489) but never with reference to JPIC themes. When he concludes that San Antonio contained no new missiological reflections, [9] it is hard to avoid the conclusion that what falls outside his paradigm has simply been ignored. The of mission The fact that Bosch passes over feminism, ecology and spiritualities raises the question of whether Bosch's paradigm can be described as a truly post-modem one, even by his own criteria above. In the light of Canberra, it reveals both Bosch's lack of a creation theology and suggests also the limited nature of his pneumatology. Bosch has been praised for his emphasis on the work of the Holy in mission. [10] In highlighting the Orthodox contribution to the theology of mission and the theology of Luke, Bosch draws attention to the of mission (especially pp. …

Interrogating Silence: Environmental Education Research as Postcolonialist Textwork

In December 1997 I was privileged—and very pleasantly surprised—to receive the inaugural Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education for ‘environmental education research of a substantive nature which contributes to professional thinking and practice’. According to the program for the prize-giving ceremony, I was awarded the prize ‘for research on recent cultural and philosophical movements, such as postmodernism, which has translated and applied complex social theories to theory and practice in environmental education’.I want to take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority for their generous sponsorship of this prize. I offer these thanks not only as an individual recipient but also on behalf of the wider Australian environmental education community. I see particular significance in the Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education being awarded in a suite that includes separate prizes for environmental research and environmental journalism. This helps to distinguish our field from other disciplines with which it is sometimes confused. My own research emphasises that environmental education is not just another type of environmental study but more a form of cultural and media literacy.

Catriona M. M. Macdonald. Unionist Scotland, 1800-1997. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, Ltd. 1998. Pp. ix, 142. £14.95. ISBN 0-85976-471-0.

The roots of Unionism as both a political and philosophical movement are the subject of this compilation that seeks to clarify the true complexity of political culture and the nature of the much-debated Scottish identity.

Belgium's Anti-Sect War

Since the suicide—homicide of 53 members of the Order of the Solar Temple in 1994 and the gas attempt by Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo's subway in 1995, a number of European states have decided to fight against “sects.” France and Belgium are in the forefront of this battle. Both countries have set up official “observatories of sects” and state agencies involving various ministries to combat them. Preventive policies targeting sects are being carried out. In Belgium, the Anthroposophic Society, a philosophical movement listed as 1 of 189 sects suspected of being dangerous, has sued one federal entity that printed unfounded accusations against their movement in a widely distributed brochure against sects. The same Anthoposophic Society has also petitioned the Court of Arbitration to have the law establishing an observatory of sects annuled. This report deals with both legal actions.

Hegel, Women, and Hegelian Women on Matters of Public and Private.

This paper introduces America's first women Idealists and discusses their appropriation and reconfiguration of Hegel's public/private distinction. Through their philosophies of education two of these women, Susan E. Blow (1843--1916) and Anna C. Brackett (1836--1911), legitimized women's active involvement in public life. A third, Marietta Kies (1853--1899), put forth a political theory of altruism. Her theory anticipates feminist critiques of male-centered political theory and has important implications for today's “ethic of care.” Blow and Brackett were associates of William T. Harris (1835--1909) in the St. Louis Philosophical Movement (ca. 1860--1880) and contributors to The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Kies was associated with Harris through the Concord Summer School of Philosophy (1879--1888). She was also a student of John Dewey at the University of Michigan.

생명의료윤리학과 윤리이론

By the mid-1960s, there has been a consensus among English-speaking philosophers as to the role of philosophy: Analytic philosophers and logical positivists widely agreed that philosophy has nothing to say about practical moral issues. However, moral philosophers began to recognize their role in diverse fields; in particular, medicine and health-care. They saw the need for ethical theories in providing directions for moral judgment and conduct, and they started to propose ethical theories for solving practical moral problems. This paper provides an introduction both to the role of theories in biomedical ethics and the way applying them to specific moral issues. I will begin by presenting a brief description of the historical circumstances that gave rise to biomedical ethics as a distinct philosophical movement. With this historical backdrop, I will focus on the role of ethical theories, by introducing Ruth Macklin and R. M. Hare replies to the skeptics. I will then proceed to the applications of ethical theories to specific cases. First, I will clarify the competing ethical theories in the field of medical ethics; for example, utilitarianism (act-utilitarianism, rule-utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism), W. D. Ross theory of prima facie duty, and the principle of double effect. Then, I will introduce landmark euthanasia cases such as the Karen Quinlan case, the Baby Jane Doe case, the Elizabeth Bouvia case and the Dr. Jack Kevorkian case. Finally, I will turn my attention to the way in which these ethical theories can be applied.

Conversation, Language and Possibilities. A Postmodern Approach to Therapy

HARLENE ANDERSON: Conversation, Language and Possibilities. A Postmodern Approach to Therapy. New York: Basic Books, 1997, xIx + 307 pp., $38.00 ISBN 0-465-03805-0. We have looked for years to Houston Galveston Institute in Texas and its main authors Harlene Anderson and Harold A. Goolishian to demonstrate implications of postmodern thinking for process of psychotherapy. Harold Goolishian died recently and Anderson dedicates Conversation, Language and Possibilities, which summarizes their common work with its innovative ideas, to his memory, as her friend, colleague and mentor. It is a book worthy of his memory. Conversation-is framed by story of a family that had unsatisfactory family therapy and it could almost be viewed as an answer to challenges and criticisms raised by this family. Actually, all along, Anderson as a seasoned educator, poses questions and then proceeds to answer them, appropriately reflecting central importance of good questions in therapy, discussed later in book. Several important questions, as well as answers, are presented through client stories. The author solves difficult issues of confidentiality by using only cases that were already in public domain, such as videotapes of consultations and live interviews during conferences and workshops. Questions are chosen to lead us from one theoretical principle to next, in a welcome linear fashion, but many concepts also reappear several times in different contexts, adding some unnecessary redundancy, yet lending circular feeling of psychotherapy to book. Conversation, Language and Possibilities starts with an historical review of development of therapy within modernist paradigm. It leads us through gradual transformation of psychodynamic thinking, starting with radical innovations of systemic approach, giving a nod to communication theory and first- and second-order cybernetics until it lands at contemporary hermeneutics and social constructionism as two philosophical movements Anderson considers most representative of postmodern paradigm. In first 50 pages of Part I: Creating Space. The Give and Take of Theory and Practice, we are treated to entire context for new approach to helping people, yet another the medium is message move, since contextual understanding is a central postmodern axiom-[U]understanding is linguistically, historically, and culturally situated (p. 39) and meanings are context-dependent (p. 206). Part II-with a title that is too cumbersome to reproduce-introduces, or else re-emphasizes and carefully explains most important therapeutic ideas we have learned about through author's many articles. A tentative incomplete list includes concept of a problem-determined system with a shifting and fluid membership; approaching a client from a knowing position; therapy as a collaborative partnership; problems as linguistic events that are socially constructed; client as conversational partner and teacher; therapist as a welcome guest. Central is view of therapy as a process of internal and external conversations. Anderson defines a dialogical conversation ... [as] a generative process in which new meanings-different ways of understanding, making sense of, or punctuating one's lived experiences-emerge and are mutually constructed (p. 109). The author draws an interesting contrast between conversations in which new meaning emerges and monological conversations in which this is not case, a distinction that pervades all our social encounters. Important here is concept of shared inquiry (p. 112) and talking with . . . rather than to each other (p. 112). Part III, Searching for Meanings in Meanings returns to, and expands on, philosophical basis of this whole approach and its interface with psychotherapy. …

Clarice Lispector's (Post)Modernity and the Adolescence of the Girl-Colt

Clarice Lispector’s (Post)Modernity and the Adolescence of the Girl-Colt Diane E. Marting Whereas delineations of the differences between modern and postmodern themes and forms are still highly contested, few doubt that increasing fragmentation, a-historicity, and use of pastiche in the cultural production of the Americas and Europe characterize the period between the protests of the late 1960s and the reactions against postmodernism of the late 1980s. In Latin America, the lines between Modernism and Postmodernism (as defined in Europe) are drawn even less clearly, in large part because earlier literary movements in the region were designated by these very names. Brazilian Modernism, an avant-garde movement from the early twentieth century, for instance, contains much that is thematically and stylistically postmodern as well as modern within it. This article examines one of Lispector’s most enigmatic late works, “Seco estudo de cavalos” (“Dry Point of Horses,” hereafter, “Cavalos”) from Onde estivestes de noite (1974; literally, “Where You Were at Night,” trans. published in Soulstorm), in terms of certain post-structuralist philosophical ideas which came to the fore after the Existentialist heyday and which often were coined in reaction to this philosophy’s insufficiency to explain post-World War II intellectual developments. The ambiguity of a hybrid word, “(post)modernism,” designates best the partial applicability of both the terms modernism and postmodernism to the kind of themes, forms, and tones described by literary and philosophical theories since the revolt against existentialism and then against structuralism in the late 1960s. [End Page 433] Post-Existentialism Previous discussions of Clarice Lispector’s philosophical modernity have primarily focused on the presence of affinities between her works and postwar existentialism. Brazilian critic Benedito Nunes has been the leader in comparing themes in her early fictions to Kierkegaardian and Heideggerian concepts, and many other critics have followed. Although the similarities found in these thinkers’ works and in some of Lispector’s early and middle fiction are clear, the homologies have been questioned for at least three reasons: first, because Lispector denied any familiarity with the writings of the existential philosophers; second, because even her most existentialist fictions, works such as A maçã no escuro (1961; Apple in the Dark 1967), contain themes and characters inconsistent with existentialist ideas; and third, because there are periods of Clarice’s production in which existentialism appears as a shadow at best. This third reason—that Existentialism is absent from or irrelevant to Lispector’s late works—has led me to search for a different philosophical movement or theoretical paradigm closer to Lispector’s exploratory and metaliterary writings from her final years. Fábio Lucas refers tangentially to the relationship between Lispector and concepts of (post)modernity in a 1987 article “Clarice Lispector e o Impasse da narrativa contemporânea,” when he writes that in the 1980s the historical ‘flow’ of contemporary Brazilian narrative could be ‘unblocked’ by a greater recognition of the innovative character of Lispector’s stories. Among the writers who have begun to explore the ways in which Lispector’s late production coincides with certain philosophies of the 1970s and 1980s, French deconstructionist Hélène Cixous stands out as the most prolific and prominent. Quite a bibliography has grown around Cixous’s devoted engagement with Lispector’s work; The index in Marting (1993) contains around forty items either by Cixous on Lispector or about those Cixous texts. While this is not the place to go into detail about the French critic’s writings, it should be noted that Earl Fitz’s articles about Cixous’s books (Vivre l’orange and Reading with Clarice Lispector), demonstrate that for the French author, the Brazilian pioneered very contemporary modes of writing in her late works, transcending not only philosophical essentialism, but also the scientism of structuralism. One of the most salient (post)modern characteristics of “Cavalos” is its narrative fragmentariness. Jean-François Lyotard and other theorists of the postmodern criticize the totalizing qualities of “le gran récit,” the ‘Great Story’ or ‘Grand Narrative.’ The rejection of such overarching master narratives has, in the Anglo-American world, separated Modernism from Postmodernism, and, in Latin America, traditional fiction from the avant-garde. Lispector’s chronicle thus...

The Hegelian Element in Von Balthasar's and Moltmann's Understanding of the Suffering of God

The influence of G.W.F. Hegel on philosophy and theology since his own time could hardly be overestimated. Philosophers and theologians as diverse in outlook as Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard have all been variously influenced by Hegel's thought. Yet, as Karl Barth noted, much of the response of nineteenth-century philosophy and theology to Hegel was negative and critical, even to the point of being irrationally so. To a great extent, this has also been characteristic of the response of philosophy and theology of the twentieth century. Marxism and existentialism, while they drew on the Hegelian legacy, also fragmented it by attempting to construct philosophical expressions of reality out of what for Hegel would merely have been aspects of his own philosophical position. Even more significantly, these philosophical movements drew on the self-confidence that arose from Hegel's understanding of a universal self-consciousness. That self-consciousness became the foundation for the humanisms which have dominated the Western mind in the latter part of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century.

Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (review)

Book Reviews 155 not? That a general index would have been ofhelp to any. reader of this at least partly successful attempt to arouse renewed interest in an all-but-forgotten yet for his time not uncharacteristic and indeed quite popular Jewish musician goes without saying. Admittedly, Hartmut Wecker recognizes the need for considerably more detailed studies. But even this, his fmal statement, is marred by his fatefully global conceptions. For what he has in mind is conclusive clarification as to whether the social and political factors he believes to have been so crucial for his hero's life and work did actually affect "all Jewish composers of the emancipation and assimilation period in Central Europe." Would that the Jewish diaspora experience were that simple! Alexander L. Ringer School of Music University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment, by David Sorkin. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1996. 214 pp. $40.00. I remember when I first heard of Moses Mendelssohn. It was in the kitchen of my mother's apartment in Germany where I had switched on the radio in the middle of some kind of literary reading. I did not recognize the author nor had I any sense of his philosophical or religious agenda. What riveted me was the beauty ofthe words and the serene progress of the prose. As it turned out, the reading had been from Morgenstunden (Morning Hours), the work David Sorkin deems "Mendelssohn's ... most sustained philosophical work" (p. 147). Since this first encounter with the German "Socrates" ofthe Berlin Enlightenment ofthe late eighteenth century I have been going through various phases ofenchantment and disenchantment with Mendelssohn. David Sorkin has produced a new study of this seminal figure in modem Jewish thought and history which promises to shed new light on an old problem. Mendelssohn, a typical . figure of a period of transition, is hard to pin down. How much of his work must be understood as a contribution to the philosophical movement of Enlightenment, how much of it should be read as a genuine and authentic contribution to modem Jewish thought? Sorkin's answer is Solomonic. As a rigorous historian, he locates Mendelssohn in the context ofa "religious Enlightenment," paralleled in other religious movements of the time (Protestant, Catholic), that sought a fertile compromise between the Enlightenment ideal of clear and distinct use of reason and language on the one hand and the historical religious tradition on the other. Mendelssohn further appears as an important sociological link between Enlightenment as a phenomenon represented by 156 SHOFAR Fa111997 Vol. 16, No.1 individuals and Enlightenment as a movement involving schools, journals, and whole groups of individuals promoting (in this case) Haskalah on the popular level. I always understood Mendelssohn's Hebrew works as a means by which he thought to promote the truths of the Enlightenment among his Jewish contemporaries. For example, as Sorkin amply documents, Mendelssohn's emphasis on studying Hebrew grammar thorougWy instead ofhaphazardly, or his focusing on biblical texts rather than on the Talmud, indicate the predilections ofsomeone who wishes to educate his fellow Jews in ways conducive to the development of knowledge and skills useful to an enlightened citizen of the world. An even more striking case is Mendelssohn's promotion of "proper" German among the Jews of his time. So far there is nothing novel to Sorkin's careful and well documented introduction to Mendelssohn's Hebrew writings. Yet Sorkin seems to want to persuade us that Mendelssohn's familiarity with Jewish sources and his use ofsuch traditional forms of literary exposition as commentary make Mendelssohn a more authentic Jew than has been hitherto assumed. Assumed by whom, I ask myself. Another such somewhat puzzling claim, reiterated with a certain monotony at every possible juncture, is that Mendelssohn revived the "Andalusian tradition of Jewish thought" (mentioned no less than 14 times in 155 pages, usually in strategic places). This school of thought, according to Sorkin, consists mainly of Jehuda ha Levi, and Mendelssohn's connection to this eleventh/twelfth-century Spanish-Jewish thinker seems to exhaust itself in certain similarities that are never fully explored by Sorkin. It is difficult to shed one's suspicion that...

On Negating Positivism: An Anthropological Dialectic

Continuing a discussion initiated by Paul Roscoe in the pages of this journal, this essay situates positivism as a social and philosophic movement adversarily responding to the "negative dialectic" of 18th‐ and 19th‐century critical philosophy. Notably, positivistic ideologies and practices have been manifest in cultural anthropology, linguistic analysis without "meaning," and "the new archaeology." Because funding agencies have accepted the positivistic claim that it embodies "the scientific method," interpretivists and other dissidents have had to become "rice positivists," while graduate programs have required that research be fitted into a scenario of "hypothesis testing" of "theoretical problems."