Schellingianism & Postmodernity

1998 ◽  
pp. 32-38
Author(s):  
Iain Hamilton Grant
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Reflective Consciousness ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Paul Churchland

Andrew Bowie's recent Schelling and Modern European Philosophy claims that Schelling idealism is a critique of 'reflective reason' that can be brought to bear on the avatars of French postmodernism. Bower is careful not to intricate Schelling's Naturphilosophie and Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, in which both nature and freedom are fused into a single, unconscious series of natural drives or 'vortex of forces.' To take Schelling at word would turn the Naturphilosophie and Inquiries into a materialist physics of mental states, the basis of which are inaccessible to reflective consciousness. Best represented by philosophers such as Paul Churchland, however, why does Bowie avoid playing up this materialist Schelling when dealing with French 'Irrationalism?' Inadvertently, Bowie rekindles the Kantian critique in order to separate two aspects of recent French philosophy: the materialist (with which Paul Churchland notes that his eliminative, connectionist neuromaterialism has much in common) and the reflective (as inherited from the German Idealism Schelling represents, and mediated via Bergson and Heidegger). While French philosophy's recent adoptions in the Anglo world have been of this latter complexion, Bowie's anxious prophylaxia exposes a materialist current in French thought that has remained more or less beyond the range of Anglophone hearing.

Jacques Lacan

Philosophy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Mirror Stage ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Objet Petit A ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (b. 13 April 1901–d. 9 September 1981) arguably is the most creative and influential figure in the history of psychoanalysis after Sigmund Freud. Lacan portrays himself as an embattled defender of Freud’s true legacy within and beyond analytic circles, the lone champion of a “return to Freud.” His teachings emphasize the crucial differences between the Freudian unconscious and speciously similar notions such as that of the id as a dark, seething cauldron of irrational, animalistic instincts. He stresses especially the centrality of language in psychoanalysis, with the unconscious subject at stake in analysis being constituted and sustained through socio-symbolic mediations (as per Lacan’s famous thesis according to which “the unconscious is structured like a language”). Dubbed “the French Freud,” Lacan significantly broadened and deepened Freudianism through putting Freud’s discoveries into conversation with a wide range of other disciplines and orientations. In particular, Lacan’s reflections draw frequently and extensively on the resources of 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophical currents such as German idealism, structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology, and existentialism. Indeed, not only did Lacan inspire the formation of distinctly Lacanian clinical approaches—perhaps his greatest worldwide impact has been (and continues to be) in the fields of the theoretical humanities, themselves heavily indebted to the past two centuries of European philosophy. Over the course of recent decades, Lacan’s concepts/theories of, for instance, the mirror stage, subjectivity, language, desire, drive, jouissance, fantasy, and the objet petit a all have come to serve as key components in numerous scholars’ explorations of issues and instances relating to philosophy, art, literature, cinema, culture, politics, and religion, among other areas of concern. Furthermore, like Freud, Lacan remains a source of heated controversy among various commentators and critics right up through the present day.

scholarly journals Philosophical representations on evil in the works of classicists of German idealism

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Pavel Aleksandrovich Gorokhov ◽  
Ekaterina Rafaelevna Yuzhaninova
Keyword(s):  
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Ethical Aspect ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Intellectual Level ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Further Development

The object of this research is the philosophical heritage of German idealism, while the subject is the philosophical views of the prominent representatives of German idealism upon evil and its dialectical correlation with the good. The article solves two key problems: 1) analyze and compare the views of classicists of German idealism upon the essence and main manifestations of evil; 2) determine the genesis of the views of Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Schelling, as well as the ways and degree of their influence upon further development of perceptions on evil within world philosophy. Research methodology is based on the historical-philosophical and comparative-historical analysis, culturological approach, and philosophical comparativism. The representatives of German idealism associated a range of negative in the ethical aspect qualities with a human. Their reasoning on good and evil were tightly related with comprehension of socio-historical problems of the past and modernity. Evil was viewed as an essential consort of social progress, while overcoming of evil by each individual was understood as a booster of spiritual growth and improvement. In evolution of views of the European philosopher on the nature of evil, the author clearly traces the genetic link from Jakob Böhme through fundamental works of the classicists of German idealism to the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who synthesized and advanced to a new artistic and intellectual level the ideas of European philosophy.

Heidegger’s Encounter with Schelling

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Ryan Hellmers ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lecture Courses ◽  
The Relationship

I provide a close analysis of truth and freedom in Heidegger’s work of the Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie). The work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling is shown to play a decisive role in this key text of Heidegger’s, leading him to an understanding of the self in terms of freedom, community, culture, and history that carries important implications for political philosophy In attempting to uncover a thoughtful and elucidating interpretation of the Beiträge zur Philosophie, one of the most promising portions of Heidegger’s canon to which one can turn for assistance in developing a reading is to the lecture courses of the surrounding period as they provide strong indications of Heidegger’s textual sources of the time, and one of the most often overlooked sources for studying the Beiträge is Heidegger’s 1936 lecture, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom..2 William J. Richardson’s work has familiarly encouraged us to think of Heidegger’s thought in two markedly differing periods separated by a turn, a helpful and insightful approach to which Heidegger studies remains indebted, though this story will not entirely be my own preferred take on Heidegger’s work in the present project. These investigations are nonetheless indebted to Richardson in arguing that one can arrive at a better understanding of the relationship between the early and the late material such as to elucidate the Beiträge by drawing on his finding of a Kantian thematic in the early work, an interpretive move which is also well backed by Reiner Schürmann’s work.3 My proposal in this project is that bearing this in mind, the late Heideggerian corpus, particularly the Beiträge, can be understood through the lens of German Idealism and its relationship to a criticism of Kantian thought. By problematizing certain key elements of Heidegger’s late thought that are drawn from F. W. J. Schelling and establishing a hermeneutic between these concepts and Schelling’s writings, I will use a reading of Schelling to help us begin to understand the Beiträge as a somewhat fractured continuation and completion of the study of being that was earlier carried out primarily through an analytic of Dasein. Heidegger imports crucial concepts from Idealism and applies his method of destructive philosophical appropriation to develop his own notions of the history of being, the event of appropriation, and community, revolving around what I argue is a very original appropriation of Schellingian concepts of freedom, ground, and jointure in the Beiträge.

Schelling on the Possibility of Evil: Rendering Pantheism, Freedom, and Time Consistent

SATS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
G. Anthony Bruno
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Middle Period

AbstractGerman idealism stems in large part from Fichte’s response to a dilemma involving the concepts of pantheism, freedom, and time: time is the form of the determination of modes of substance, as held by a pantheistic or “dogmatic” person, or the form of acts generated by human freedom, as held by an idealistic person. Fichte solves the dilemma by refuting dogmatism and deducing time from idealism’s first principle. But his diagnosis is more portentous: by casting the lemmas in terms of person-types, he unintentionally invites Schelling’s philosophical rethinking of personality. In his middle period, Schelling argues for the consistency of the concepts of pantheism, freedom, and time, claiming that it depends on a “good” as opposed to “evil’ personality. However, since on his view personality is an absolute or

From Jena to Copenhagen: Kierkegaard's relations to German idealism and the critique of autonomy in The Sickness Unto Death

2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMUEL LONCAR
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self

AbstractThis article seeks to demonstrate the influence of J. G. Fichte's philosophy on Søren Kierkegaard's theory of the self as he develops it in The Sickness unto Death and to interpret his theory of the self as a religious critique of autonomy. Following Michelle Kosch, it argues that Kierkegaard's theory of the self was developed in part as a critique of idealist conceptions of agency. Moreover, Kierkegaard's view of agency provides a powerful way of understanding human freedom and finitude that has implications for contemporary debates about autonomy, normativity, and agency.

Alain Badiou and Education

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torill Strand
Keyword(s):  
Set Theory ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Radical Innovations ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
History Of

The French philosopher Alain Badiou (1937–) is one of the most significant philosophers of our time, well known for his meticulous work on rethinking, renewing, and thereby strengthening philosophy as an academic discipline. In short, his philosophy seeks to reveal and make sense of the potential of radical innovations in, or transformations of, any given situation. Although he has not written extensively on education, the pedagogical theme is vital, constitutive, and ongoing throughout his work. Badiou is an outspoken critic of the analytic and postmodern schools of thought, as he strongly promotes the virtue of curiosity, and prospects of “an education by truths.” “Truths” are not to be confused with matters of knowledge or opinion. Truths are existential, ongoing, and open-ended ontological operations that do not belong to any epistemic category. An education by such truths operates through a subtraction from the state of the situation and proposes a different direction regarding the true life. According to Badiou, the task of philosophy is to think these truths as processes that emerge from and pursue gradually transformations of particular situations. Overall, the structure of Badiou’s philosophical system demonstrates an extraordinary ontological style as it concurrently stands in relation to, and breaks off from, the history of contemporary French philosophy, German Idealism, and Greek antiquity. His system, which is of vast complexity, is based on mathematical set theory, consisting of a series of determinate negations of the history of philosophy, and also created by the histories of what Badiou terms philosophy’s conditions: science, art, politics, and love.

scholarly journals The phenomenon of evil in the philosophical concepts of the European Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-54
Author(s):  
Pavel Aleksandrovich Gorokhov ◽  
Ekaterina Rafaelevna Yuzhaninova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Historical Aspect ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
The Will ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Middle Ages

The object of this research is the heritage of the leading representatives of Medieval philosophy, while the subject is the philosophical ideas of the prominent representatives of Patristic and Scholastic philosophy upon the nature of evil. The goal of this work lies in giving holistic assessment to the philosophical ideas on the phenomenon of evil in the Middle Ages, and is achieved by solving the following tasks: 1) assessment of the concept of “the first sin” as the foundation for understanding the phenomenon of evil in Medieval philosophy; 2) determination of the genesis of philosophical ideas of the Middle Ages pertaining to the nature of evil in the logical-historical aspect; 3) description of the impact of such ideas upon further development of the Western European philosophy. The scientific novelty consists in comprehensive examination of the Medieval philosophical concepts dedicated to the phenomenon of evil. In Christianity, evil is viewed as essentially historical phenomenon, stemming from the event of the first sin and being conquered by the will of God. Medieval philosophers underlined the need for determining the ontology of evil, which is called to answer the question on the nature of evil and the role of evil in the universe. Medieval philosophers were also concerned with the problem of Theodicy, i.e. why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. The representatives of Patristic and Scholastic philosophy reasoned over the moral aspect in interpretation of evil, trying to correlate the phenomenon of evil with the free will of a human. The ideas of evil as the absence of good prevailed in the Christian philosophy, which viewed the phenomenon of evil as opposite to being, nothingness. Medieval concepts on the phenomenon of evil had a considerable spiritual and sociocultural impact upon the views of the leading representatives of German idealism, who have embraced not so much the assuredness of Medieval Christian philosophers that evil is the absence of good, but the idea on the equality of good and evil as the fundamentals of the universe and the components of human nature.

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