Twentieth-century Philosophy Research Articles

The Narrative Subject of Law: An Introduction to and Outline of a Long-Awaited Turn in Law

Abstract In this article, we argue that the current concept of the legal subject should be expanded to include narrative identity, in other words that the narrative subject of law should be recognised. With this aim in mind, we firstly (i) identify the philosophical assumptions and tools necessary to articulate the thesis of homo narrans. We find them in Martin Heidegger’s work Being and time, where he made a groundbreaking contribution to twentieth-century philosophy by deconstructing the concept of the subject. Then (ii) we discuss the key theoretical-legal assumptions and tools related to the legal turn we advocate, and finally (iii) we indicate – provisionally and in broad outline – the key consequences of recognising the narrative legal subject of law in the justice system.

A resolute reading of Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

ABSTRACT It is often remarked that Iris Murdoch’s thought deeply influenced the landscape of twentieth-century moral philosophy. It is certainly true that she inspired a generation of Anglo-American philosophers who sought to critique the moral philosophy of their day. However, these philosophers drew almost exclusively from her early philosophical thought, most notably The Sovereignty of Good. When it came to Murdoch’s second book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (MGM), moral philosophers and scholars alike found it hard to place within contemporary moral philosophy. Our aim in this paper is to offer a reading of MGM that is resolute in its commitment to do justice to the book’s resistance against domestication within standard moral philosophy, while taking Murdoch at her word when she writes that her “whole argument can be read as moral philosophy” (MGM, 740). This commitment allows us to read MGM as an integrated unity. More importantly, it allows us to reassess Murdoch’s place in twentieth-century philosophy and to propose MGM as one of the works seeking to transform it. Our hope is that our reading will interest any philosopher who feels that something essential is missing in current typical practices in the discipline.

“He’s the Test(imony)”: Edward Gibbon and Virginia Woolf’s View of History

ABSTRACT This article examines Virginia Woolf’s view of history by taking Edward Gibbon as a locus of historical reflection and refiguration. Starting with a reinvestigation into the Gibbon episode in The Voyage Out, it argues that Woolf’s primary aim is to equate history as an act of reading and thereupon a sort of reader-oriented text. The reader’s powerful autonomy in historical reading foregrounds the textuality of history. This article turns then to explore the ways in which Woolf maneuvers the writing style of Gibbon and infuses it into her historical writing through the prism of imagination. The literary and reconstructive attributes of historical writing indicate the subjectivity of history. Finally, this article adumbrates the retrospective trajectory of Woolf’s mode of thinking in history. By virtue of Gibbon’s great doctrine of the continuity of history, Woolf forges a continuous connection between the present and the past as well as the future. Valorising Gibbon as both an allusion and an influencer, this article problematises the widely acknowledged nineteenth-century traditions or twentieth-century philosophies thought to be assimilated or anticipated by Woolf; instead, it defends Woolf’s receptive and revisionist stance vis-à-vis the eighteenth-century historian as a legacy and correspondingly outlines her triangulated view of history.

Standing beyond Dasein

Abstract This article argues that twentieth-century philosophy of liberation in Latin America should be considered a rhetorical movement just as much as a philosophical one because it exhibits two basic rhetorical tendencies: the prioritization of the concrete over the abstract and the foregrounding of figurative language. To illustrate these rhetorical tendencies, it documents how the twentieth-century cultural anthropologist and philosopher Rodolfo Kusch uses the Spanish words ser and estar to reengineer Heidegger’s concept of Dasein.

Open Form, Its Psychological, Civilizational, and Aesthetic Foundations in the Works of Modern Ukrainian Artists

The paper presents the concept of an “open work” (according to the idea of Umberto Eco) as a meaningfully undefined, and even non-finito work, which appeared in the artistic practice of the 20th century, at the time of revolutionary and military disasters. The events of the early 20th century in the social, psychological, and artistic consciousness of the leading avant-garde figures caused emotional and psychological shifts and contributed to the emergence of new ways of artistic expression. In art, works with different vector characteristics emerged: palimpsest, simulacrum, deconstruction, etc. Since then, the nature of general development of art became that of a rhizome. Similar principles of artistic thinking were predicted by H. Wölfflin in art (19th century) and in the aesthetics by A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson, and other philosophers of the early 20th century. The aesthetic concept of an “open work” and its special poetics reoriented the European art critics’ opinions regarding the analysis of modern artistic practice. Art studies focused on the artistic form in the very process of its formation (incompleteness). The process of forming an artistic work became the subject of meticulous analysis as something that is interesting to the modern viewer, who is a “synergistic person.” In the context of the poetics of an “open work,” the paper highlights the significance of the avant-garde discoveries of Oleksandr Arkhipenko as a pioneer of world modern sculpture. The connection of his philosophical and plastic thinking with dynamic social and scientific shifts in the life of mankind, with the “physics of space” of Albert Einstein, is visualized. The revolutionary role of caesuras (voids) in the volumes of Archipenko sculpture is defined. Under the angle of the concept of an “open work,” the article visualizes new forms of dialogue between modernists of the 21st century, in particular, Ukrainian artists and their recipients. The analysis of the works of modern Ukrainian artists (O. Zhyvotkov, O. Dzhuraeva, I. Grechanyk) illustrates the practical use of an “open form” as a modern practice in the time of psychological tension and uncertainty, in the state of stressful situations of the 2022–2024 war in Ukraine. “Staying before nothingness” (K. Jaspers’s expression), life on the threshold of existence caused irrationalism and “poetics of incompleteness” in the works of the mentioned artists. It was important to determine such a substantial characteristic of the work as ambiguity in its perception and reading. The paper reveals the psychological and plastic foundations of the authors’ artistic thinking when producing an “open work.” The productivity of a certain artistic paradigm is proven.

Thomas S. Kuhn: key to a better understanding of the extended evolutionary synthesis.

In recent years, some scholars have explicitly questioned the desirability or utility of applying the classical and "old-fashioned" theories of scientific change by the likes of Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn to the question of the precise nature and significance of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). Supposedly, these twentieth-century philosophers are completely irrelevant for a better understanding of this new theoretical framework for the study of evolution. Here, it will be argued that the EES can be fruitfully interpreted in terms of, as yet, insufficiently considered or even overlooked elements from Kuhn's theory. First, in his original, historical philosophy of science, Kuhn not only distinguished between small and big scientific revolutions, he also pointed out that paradigms can be extended and reformulated. In contrast with what its name suggests, the mainstream EES can be interpreted as a Kuhnian reformulation of modern evolutionary theory. Second, it has, as yet, also been overlooked that the EES can be interpreted in terms of Kuhn's later, tentative evolutionary philosophy of science. With the EES, an old dichotomy in evolutionary biology is maybe being formalized and institutionalized.

‘Freeze Peach’: A Fruitful Formulation or a Recipe for Heated Discord? Followed by A Response to Keith Reader's ‘Freeze Peach’

Keith Reader's brief, unfinished article ‘Freeze Peach’ situates contemporary controversies surrounding free speech in relation to material and economic concerns. Ian James's response draws attention to the way Keith does this by bringing together four key figures of late twentieth-century philosophy and theory: Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish. Ian argues that the conjugation of Marx-inspired theory with thinkers associated with the postmodern would have allowed Keith to develop a uniquely perceptive and productive insight into the present moment of political disorientation, one which demands a renegotiation of the legacies of both modernity and postmodernity.

Open Sesame! The Magical Words of the World of Meaning of Human Beings: Dialectical Harmony of the Symbolical Forms

Ernst Cassirer made an original contribution to twentieth century philosophy with his genuine series of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer evaluates the various moments of culture from an integral perspective in this multi-faceted study that covers the symbolic dimension of human communication and interaction with the world. Cassirer's contribution to the philosophical agenda was reinforced by the works An Essay on Man and The Myth of the State, published posthumously. These latter works, however, go beyond mere repetition and summary of Cassirer's thought. Particularly, The Myth of the State is important to confront a problem left open by Cassirer's integral philosophy of culture; the return of myth that consolidates contemporary political thought and action. Cassirer defines culture as the progressive process of human emancipation; analyzes the elements of culture in dialectical harmony, without reducing one to the other. It is doubtful that a metaphysics of culture will eliminate existing problems, but a philosophical framework that will offer an integral view of culture is still a current need. Although Cassirer presents such a framework, it triggers a series of questions waiting to be resolved within itself. In this study, first, the aspects of Cassirer's philosophy of culture that give the opportunity to comprehend the various dimensions of the human beings’ world of meaning will be discussed in detail. Then, it will be tried to describe the depth and limit of the original cultural analysis revealed by this systematic approach to update itself in the face of a historical problem. Within the first half of the twentieth century, totalitarianism, as an experience that completely shook the world of meaning of the West, documented the violence and destruction of the culture's transformation into cult. Thus, the challenge concerning Cassirer's assumption of dialectical harmony of symbolic forms that move culture raises the need for a political horizon. Although The Myth of State has tried to present this necessary complementary horizon of interpretation, it is far from the comprehensive dimension offered by the critical philosophical interventions bolstered mainly by Cassirer’s thought.

"The New Economy and the Old Morality": Reimagining a Liberal Culture in Howards End

Abstract: Attentive to the transmutation of British liberalism as a political philosophy in the early twentieth century, this essay examines how E. M. Forster's Howards End brings together multiple intellectual sources that trouble standard divisions between liberal and conservative affiliations in reimagining a liberal culture. From the root and branch image of the wych-elm to the "sweetness and light" (79) of the grass, and to the "little platoon" (136) of Howards End, the essay offers fresh interpretations of Forster's novel and reconnects his work with a group of thinkers as diverse as Edmund Burke, William Gladstone, Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Hobhouse, and John Maynard Keynes.

The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World

The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World

Synthesis and analysis: Jean Nicod as a mediator between Bergson and Russell

ABSTRACT This paper presents Jean Nicod (1893–1924) as a mediator in the dispute between Bergson and Russell. In La géométrie dans le monde sensible (1924), Nicod extensively discusses Bergson’s epistemology focusing on those aspects that Russell critically discusses in The Philosophy of Henri Bergson (1912) and Our Knowledge of the External World (1914). His aim is to establish a middle ground between synthesis and analysis: to show how most of the disagreements between Bergson and Russell can be resolved without compromising the central principles of their thought. Throughout this paper, I explicate Nicod’s exposition of two points of contention between Bergson and Russell: (1) the nature of sense-data and analysis, and (2) the relation between geometry and the sensible world. I will also show that his attempt to reconcile synthesis and analysis results in an innovative account of representation inspired by an early reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In the conclusion, I reflect on how Nicod’s proficiency to engage with two increasingly diverging philosophical programmes, namely early analytic philosophy and the French epistemological tradition, could have affected the development of early twentieth-century philosophy.

Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze

Abstract In the 1983 article “My Chances/Mes chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean Stereophonies,” Jacques Derrida gives philological questions massive philosophical significance by reading the long âgon between idealist and materialist philosophy through a philological crux in the text of Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Tracing philological debates that have surrounded Lucretius from the Renaissance onward, this article argues that Lucretius’s poetic theory of interlinked atomic and textual swerves and the philological history that has mediated them were important touchstones for both Derrida and the other major twentieth-century philosopher of difference, Gilles Deleuze. Additionally, the article argues that for both Derrida and Deleuze, the clinamen offers a theory not only of how atoms or alphabetical letters swerve or even split, but also of how a philosophical tradition such as materialism refuses to run in a straight, unitary line. This is a question of how to understand reception history: either as an unbroken tradition of faithful imitation and replication (a family genealogy, grouped under the name of the father, “Lucretius” for example), or else as something less patriarchal, less heteronormative, less faithful. Read this way, the swerve offers a rethinking of the methods of reception history itself.

Другой, ребенок, тринитарность: к новому теологическому обоснованию гетеросексуальности

This paper, written in the context of a public debate on LGBT issues, seeks a novel theological explanation for the uniqueness of the relationship between a man and a woman in the flesh, and an answer to the question of why heterosexual relations are considered in the Gospel and Christian tradition to be the way to God. The author argues that the value of heterosexual relations, which nowadays is no longer considered self-evident, requires a new justification – which the paper attempts to give, drawing on the intellectual resources of modern theology (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) and twentieth-century philosophy. The article begins with an analysis of I Rom. 1:19-27, describing Paul’s position on the subject. Then the author interprets love between a man and a woman as a fundamental experience of communion with the Other, an experience necessary, among other things, for a relationship with God and life in heaven. Next we will consider the profound connection of heterosexual relationships with the conception, as an act of God phenomenon (unpredictable and miraculous) and personal trust in God, and the experience of trinitarian relationships, in the father-mother-child triangle, with the knowledge of the Trinitarian God. The ideas and arguments developed in this article are not based on notions of "normalcy-abnormality," "naturalness-non-naturalness" of one behavior or another, but on principles of path and choice. We argue that our approach may be useful for the church, from a catechetical and missionary perspective, helping to develop a language in which to talk about sexuality and live in the contemporary world.

Modal Ontological Arguments

AbstractInspired by the third chapter of Anselm's Proslogion, twentieth century philosophers including Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga developed “modal” ontological arguments for the existence of God. Such arguments use modal logic to infer God's existence from the premises that (i) God's existence is possible and (ii) if God exists, He exists necessarily. Like other ontological arguments, modal arguments have won few converts to theism; many commentators consider them question‐begging or liable to parody. This article details how recent attempts to defend these arguments have tried to overcome these difficulties by drawing on modern accounts of the epistemology and metaphysics of modality.

“How didst thou come beneath the murky darkness?”: sense-making in light of the ancient Greeks and in the spirit of Hegel

PurposeThis piece explores the philosophical origins of sense-making as defined in Brenda Dervin’s methodology.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper locates the origins of sense-making's rich ontological, epistemological and etymological heritage to the Classical Greece and the Pre-Socratic period. The Greek origins of sense-making‘s philosophical undercurrents surface again in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit before the idea is picked up again in twentieth century philosophy and library science.FindingsThis is a conceptual paper and no empirical findings are presented.Originality/valueThis paper makes an original contribution to the study of information seeking and to sense making theory and methodology.

Bibliotheken von Frauen: Ein Lexikon

Bibliotheken von Frauen: Ein Lexikon

Ludwik Fleck’s reasonable relativism about science

An ongoing project in the philosophy of science and medicine is the effort to articulate a form of relativism about science that can find a path between strongly realist and pernicious relativist poles. Recent scholarship on relativism has described the characteristics a philosophy must have in order to be considered a thoroughgoing relativism. These include non-absolutism, multiplicity, dependence, incompatibility, equal validity and non-neutrality. Critics of relativism maintain that these requirements cannot be met without collapsing into a pernicious form of relativism and that attempts to do so have failed. Against this view, I argue that the early twentieth century philosophy of Ludwik Fleck satisfies these requirements. Paying attention to the scientific details of Fleck’s account of active and passive elements of knowledge, and the resistance generated by them, reveals a thoroughgoing and yet reasonable relativism about science.

Возвращение к апофатике: неоплатонизм Алексея Лосева и Жака Деррида

The purpose of this article is to initiate a virtual dialogue between the ideas of two twentieth-century philosophers who turned their interest to the concept of the apophatic unity – A.F. Losev and Jacques Derrida. This thopic, as well as the interest in the concepts of Neo-Platonism in general, one of the basic ones in the works of Losev, turns out to be in the focus of modern European philoso­phy, generating an independent intellectual current – Henology. As Losev re­marked, European scholarship for a long time have been ignored the Neoplaton­ists’ interpretations of Plato, while his philosophical system is based precisely on the Christian version of Neoplatonism. It will be noted that both thinkers draw the idea of apophaticism from the texts of the Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum, but have understood it differently. Losev’s system implies that the one is expressed symbolically and in name, suggesting Christian overtones, while Jacques Derrida has a radical apophatic, an unattainable supersubstantial reality, designated by him as negative theology. But his deconstruction project, however, is not Christian. It will be concluded that the topic requires a compara­tive analysis of the ideas of the neo-platonist Losev with his variant of apophatic henology, which he presents as onomatology and symbolism (the expressed unity) and a completely different variant of the topic in Jacques Derrida’s works, who deconstructaed antique-medieval term of the one and looked for ways to “avoid talking” about it.

Два подхода к социальной политике в немецкой консервативной политической философии конца XX века

Introduction. In conservative political philoso- phy in Germany at the end of the 20th century, there developed two main approaches to social policy. The first one, paternalistic and corporat- ist approach continued the line that had been established in the 19th century and assumed the active participation of the state in regulating social support. The second, the market one, adopted American ideas of the second half of the 20th cen- tury and proposed limiting the scope of the welfare state in order to save resources and avoid a nega- tive impact on the labor market. The purpose of the study is to analyze the argu- ments of the two directions of German conserva- tism at the end of the 20th century, their philo- sophical origin and their significance for politics. Methods. The article is based on the comparative historical approach, analysis of institutions and legal documents, and the hermeneutic method for studying the political, administrative and ideological context of the development of German conserva- tism at the end of the 20th century. Scientific novelty of the research. The article focuses on the intellectual heritage of German theorists, while the main attention of domestic and foreign researchers of conservative political philosophy of the late 20th century was attracted by American and British authors. Results. The key arguments of the paternalistic approach to social issues include pointing out the responsibility of elites for the well-being of the population and a strong state as a means of com- pensating for inequality in society. The arguments of the market approach are based on the appeal to the ideas of civic virtue and the protection of property as key forces that ensure social peace and well-being. Conclusions. In practice, the approach that offered the preservation and expansion of the welfare state prevailed, and favorable economic condi- tions, as well as institutional and ideological inertia, contributed to implementing solutions within the framework of this paradigm. But the ideas of the market approach have not lost their relevance, since the burden on the welfare state increases due to the aging of the population.

On one view of Eurasianism: doctrine of personality (personology) and proof of the existence of Eurasia by S. Wiederker

The article addresses to the doctrine of personality in the philosophy of classical Eurasianism, which Stefan Wiederkehr analizes in one of the paragraphs of his book “Eurasian Movement. Science and Politics in the Russian Emigration of the Interwar Period and in Post-Soviet Russia”. In the study of Eurasianism XX and XXI centuries, the author presents Eurasianism as a speech act, pursuing a political goal in a particular historical context. The topic of Eurasianism and literature, as well as the religious aspect, which is key in the philosophy of classical Eurasianism, are left out of the study. In matters relating to "personology", the author assesses the idea of the classics of the Eurasian movement about the "multinational" or "collective" personality, as Russian philosophers of the early 20th century see Russia-Eurasia.