The Identification and Representation of Views

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Michael Frede

This chapter describes the actual work of the historian of philosophy. Ordinarily, the historian is working with a text, or even a number of texts, on the basis of which he will try to reconstruct the thought of a philosopher. This is the standard case in the history of medieval philosophy, and it is almost invariably the case for the historian of modern philosophy. In the case of ancient philosophy, however, the primary aim is not to understand certain texts, but to understand the thought of a philosopher underlying a text, if there is one. The historian has to understand and to explain a philosopher’s taking a view from the point of view of a contemporary historian of philosophy, and this means that he has to identify——to represent——the philosopher’s view not only in terms in which it is intelligible to a modern historian of philosophy, but also in terms in which it is intelligible to the historian’s modern audience. And this raises at least two questions, one concerning the translation this involves and the other concerning the language of the historian.

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Michael Frede

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study of the history of philosophy. In general, there is an enormous difference between those who concern themselves with ancient philosophy, those who concern themselves with medieval philosophy, and the students of the history of modern philosophy. And, across this distinction, there is a great variety of approaches. One should not forget that the historiography of philosophy itself in many ways is a product of history and reflects the historical context in which it is pursued. Nevertheless, what this book is interested in is not the factual question of why historians of philosophy do what they do, but the theoretical question, the question of how one ought to conceive of and explain what they do; though they themselves in this work may not in fact be guided by these assumptions and principles, there must be such principles to the extent that their activity is a rational activity. It is also important to note that philosophers tend to criticize historians of philosophy as being unduly historical and not sufficiently philosophical.


1897 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-549
Author(s):  
M. Gaster

More marvellous and more remarkable than the real conquests of Alexander are the stories circulated about him, and the legends which have clustered round his name and his exploits. The history of Alexander has, from a very early period, been embellished with legends and tales. They spread from nation to nation during the whole of the ancient times, and all through the Middle Ages. Many scholars have followed up the course of this dissemination of the fabulous history of Alexander. It would, therefore, be idle repetition of work admirably done by men like Zacher, Wesselofsky, Budge, and others, should I attempt it here. All interested in the legend of Alexander are familiar with those works, where also the fullest bibliographical information is to be found. I am concerned here with what may have appeared to some of these students as the bye-paths of the legend, and which, to my mind, has not received that attention which is due to it, from more than one point of view. Hitherto the histories of Alexander were divided into two categories; the first were those writings which pretended to give a true historical description of his life and adventures, to the exclusion of fabulous matter; the other included all those fabulous histories in which the true elements were smothered under a great mass of legendary matter, the chief representative of this class being the work ascribed to a certain Callisthenes. The study of the legend centred in the study of the vicissitudes to which this work of (Pseudo-) Callisthenes had been exposed, in the course of its dissemination from the East, probably from its native country, Egypt, to the countries of the West.


1886 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 359-367
Author(s):  
J. H. Collins

My argument that at Porthalla there is a “passage” from hornblende-schist to serpentine; or rather that some beds of a common series have been changed into serpentine, others into hornblende-schist, and others again into a substance of intermediate character, is, I think, much strengthened by the fact that many such “apparent passages” are admitted to exist by all those who have examined the Lizard Coast with any degree of detail. De la Beche's description of that seen near the Lizard Town is as follows, and it would apply equally well to the others. “The hornblende slate,” he says, “supports the great mass of the Lizard serpentine with an apparent passage of the one into the other in many places—an apparent passage somewhat embarrassing,” that is, from his point of view; from mine it is perfectly natural. He goes on to say: “Whatever the cause of this apparent passage may have been, it is very readily seen at Mullion Cove, at Pradanack Point, at the coast west of Lizard Town, and at several places on the east coast between Landewednack and Kennick Cove, more especially under the Balk … and at the remarkable cavern and open cavity named the Frying-Pan, near Cadgwith.” At Kynance some of the laminse of serpentine are not more than one-tenth of an inch in thickness for considerable distances.


1898 ◽  
Vol 63 (389-400) ◽  
pp. 56-61

The two most important deviations from the normal life-history of ferns, apogamy and apospory, are of interest in themselves, but acquire a more general importance from the possibility that their study may throw light on the nature of alternation of generations in archegoniate plants. They have been considered from this point of view Pringsheim, and by those who, following him, regard the two generations as homologous with one another in the sense that the sporophyte arose by the gradual modification of individuals originally resemblin the sexual plant. Celakovsky and Bower, on the other hand, maintaint the view tha t the sporophyte, as an interpolated stage in the life-history arising by elaboration of the zygote, a few thallophytes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mies

This response is focused on the following question: What may be the specific group analytic point of view on phenomena as the resurgence of nationalism in the western world, the so-called refugee crisis and the confrontation with Islamism and Islamist terror? The guideline of this response will be the idea of the ‘group of individuals’, which Norbert Elias characterized as his main contribution to group analytic theory. The response will emphasize the significance of the Other for the formation of personal and collective identities. It will argue that we face the Other, not only outside our own group, but also inside, and that xenophobia goes hand in hand with the denial of real differences and conflicts inside one’s own group. Finally, the history of the German nation-state is discussed as an exemplary case.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tautvydas Vėželis

This article examines the problem of overcoming nihilism in Heidegger’s dialogue with Jünger. It is suggested that nihilism is manifested in various forms and is the deep logic of the whole history of European civilization. One of the main aims of this paper is to outline the relationship of nihilism and Nothing in Heidegger’s dispute with Jünger, viewing how Heidegger distinguishes his approach from Jünger’s point of view. Heidegger, on the one hand, treats nihilism as consummation of the Western metaphysical tradition, on the other hand, identifies Nothing itself as the shadow of Being, which cannot be overcome in the traditional dialectical thinking manner.


Author(s):  
Roberto Luquín Guerra

Apart from his political and educational work, and from his controversial autobiography, José Vasconcelos is known for his Ibero-Americanist thought. The Cosmic Race, Indology and Bolivarism and Monroeism gather all the ideas that are attributed to his theoretical point of view. His philosophy is what we know less of and what is most criticized. Nonetheless, is there a connection between his philosophical thought and his Ibero-Americanist ideas? Abelardo Villegas says that Vasconcelos’s philosophy is the product of a racial and cultural message. Therefore, according to Villegas, his philosophy is subordinated to his Ibero-Americanist ideas. Patrick Romanell, on the other hand, states that the Ibero-Americanist ideas make up the popular and illusory side and, hence, must be separated from the philosophical thought. The aim of this paper is to elucidate this problem. In order to clarify it, we will follow Villegas viewpoint to the bitter end. His reasoning invites us to look closely at the history of Ibero-American thought as well as at Vasconcelos’s first works. Precisely by analyzing these two aspects and the point where they meet, we might be able to find an answer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Natalia A. Guz ◽  
Yulia G. Babicheva

The purpose of the work is to explore the point of view in Vasily Shukshin's short stories in its systematic and diverse manifestation. Topicality is provided by the exceptional significance of this category in narratology. The study of the point of view based on the material of short stories by Vasily Shukshin has been conducted for the first time. The article briefly traces the history of scientific understanding of the category of point of view in foreign and Russian philology and notes the variety of approaches and definitions in the formulation of the concept. The authors use the classification of Boris Uspenskij for analysis and consider the point of view in Vasily Shukshin's short stories in psychological, ideological (evaluative), spatial-temporal and phraseological terms. The positions of Boris Korman, Yuri Lotman, Wolf Schmid and Franz Karl Stanzel also take into account. The authors note the features of Vasily Shukshin's narration that affect the expression of the point of view in the text. Vasily Shukshin's short stories are characterised by a dynamic and frequent change of points of view, which indicates the technique of “montageˮ and similarities in this regard with cinematic techniques. The conclusions generalise the variety of ways and forms of expression of the point of view in the studied artistic material. The point of view in the considered stories is characterised by variability in the correlation of subjects of speech and subjects of consciousness, alternation of external and internal points of view, mutual transitions from one to the other, text interference and other hybrid phenomena.


2020 ◽  
pp. 132-136
Author(s):  
G.A. Shuliko ◽  

Presented is a review of latest edition of book by C. Robinson’s (1946–2016) “An anthropology of Marxism". The article begins with a short introduction to why Robinson’s work might be of interest to Russian reader. What follows is a critical analysis of how Robinson views Marxist views of his own conceptual history. Skillfully combining the civilizational approach and the principle of historicism, Robinson comes to the conclusion, that there are a number of weaknesses in the materialist conception of history. One of the key weaknesses, from Robinson’s point of view, is the history of pre-capitalist European socialism, i.e. Marxism, due to specific perception of capitalism, is divorced from the centuries-old history of European actions of social lower classes. Rethinking the historical place of Marxism can productively affect both the study of Marxism itself and socio-political ideas about humanity as a whole. Using a number of historical examples, Robinson shows the importance of various pre-capitalist forms of social consciousness (ancient philosophy, religion, etc.) for formation of the socialist movement in its classical forms.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-556
Author(s):  
Reginald S. Lourie

FROM the viewpoint of the pediatric psychiatrist, the problems of obesity, as seen clinically, can be thought of as having three layers. The first is constitutional, better described as physiologic, which may be broken down into genetic and structural elements. The second is psychologic, consisting of the values that food intake or the obesity itself come to have. The third layer is made of the cultural and social reactions to food and fat. These attitudes encountered inside and outside the home intermesh in their effects with the physiologic and psychologic levels. These, in turn, are also interwoven, until one cannot separate one layer from the other. However, when individual cases are scrutinized they reveal the pathology at one layer or the other to predominate and indicate where efforts to modify the abnormality might best be directed. Incidentally, the same levels operate on the other side of the coin, anorexia. From the practical point of view, let us consider the natural history of obesity and the clinical varieties one sees in practice, and let us see how the three-layer concept fits. First, as pointed out by Gordon, there is a tendency to be complacent or even pleased with obese infants. At level one, the physiologic, such constitutional factors as those present in the neonate born with an excessive quantity of pepsinogen secreted by the gastric mucous membrane could have the effect of producing as Mirsky points out, a relatively intense or even continuous hunger, and make greater demands on its mother for nursing.


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