The Summer of Maimon

Over at Perverse Egalitarianism a Maimon Reading Group is now up and running. I plan to take part and post some thoughts here as things develop. We are reading the new translation of Maimon's Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, so make sure to check it out or take part. For an introduction to Maimon this Stanford Encyclopedia article is nice. There is also a Maimon conference in August, the details of which you can find here. Happy SOM.

Hegelian Analysis of the Tea Party

Jay Bernstein, who is at the New School for Social Research and was my dissertation adviser, has published in the NY Times an interesting analysis of the motivations behind the Tea Party. The piece is really a Hegelian analysis of the underlying anger motivating the Tea Party. Why are they so angry? Check it out! Here are some highlights:

My hypothesis is that what all the events precipitating the Tea Party movement share is that they demonstrated, emphatically and unconditionally, the depths of the absolute dependence of us all on government action, and in so doing they undermined the deeply held fiction of individual autonomy and self-sufficiency that are intrinsic parts of Americans’ collective self-understanding.

...

Tea Party anger is, at bottom, metaphysical, not political: what has been undone by the economic crisis is the belief that each individual is metaphysically self-sufficient, that one’s very standing and being as a rational agent owes nothing to other individuals or institutions. The opposing metaphysical claim, the one I take to be true, is that the very idea of the autonomous subject is an institution, an artifact created by the practices of modern life: the intimate family, the market economy, the liberal state. Each of these social arrangements articulate and express the value and the authority of the individual; they give to the individual a standing she would not have without them.

...

The issue here is a central one in modern philosophy: is individual autonomy an irreducible metaphysical given or a social creation? Descartes famously argued that self or subject, the “I think,” was metaphysically basic, while Hegel argued that we only become self-determining agents through being recognized as such by others who we recognize in turn. It is by recognizing one another as autonomous subjects through the institutions of family, civil society and the state that we become such subjects; those practices are how we recognize and so bestow on one another the title and powers of being free individuals.

All the heavy lifting in Hegel’s account turns on revealing how human subjectivity only emerges through intersubjective relations, and hence how practices of independence, of freedom and autonomy, are held in place and made possible by complementary structures of dependence. At one point in his “Philosophy of Right,” Hegel suggests love or friendship as models of freedom through recognition. In love I regard you as of such value and importance that I spontaneously set aside my egoistic desires and interests and align them with yours: your ends are my desires, I desire that you flourish, and when you flourish I do, too. In love, I experience you not as a limit or restriction on my freedom, but as what makes it possible: I can only be truly free and so truly independent in being harmoniously joined with you; we each recognize the other as endowing our life with meaning and value, with living freedom. Hegel’s phrase for this felicitous state is “to be with oneself in the other.”

Hegel’s thesis is that all social life is structurally akin to the conditions of love and friendship; we are all bound to one another as firmly as lovers are, with the terrible reminder that the ways of love are harsh, unpredictable and changeable. And here is the source of the great anger: because you are the source of my being, when our love goes bad I am suddenly, absolutely dependent on someone for whom I no longer count and who I no longer know how to count; I am exposed, vulnerable, needy, unanchored and without resource. In fury, I lash out, I deny that you are my end and my satisfaction, in rage I claim that I can manage without you, that I can be a full person, free and self-moving, without you. I am everything and you are nothing.

This is the rage and anger I hear in the Tea Party movement; it is the sound of jilted lovers furious that the other — the anonymous blob called simply “government” — has suddenly let them down, suddenly made clear that they are dependent and limited beings, suddenly revealed them as vulnerable. And just as in love, the one-sided reminder of dependence is experienced as an injury. All the rhetoric of self-sufficiency, all the grand talk of wanting to be left alone is just the hollow insistence of the bereft lover that she can and will survive without her beloved. However, in political life, unlike love, there are no second marriages; we have only the one partner, and although we can rework our relationship, nothing can remove the actuality of dependence. That is permanent.

Many philosophy blogs were irritated by Simon Critchley's inaugural post on the NY Times The Stone, but it looks as if the blog is heading in the right direction now with Bernstein's post and posts by other philosophers like Peter Singer, Nancy Sherman, and Arthur Danto.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Subscription

I'm a big fan of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I noticed they have a new initiative that I think many readers will be interested in. For a very reasonable sum of money, you can subscribe to the encyclopedia and download clean Pdfs of their articles. More here.

Also, check out the new Novalis entry by Kristin Gjedal.

Book Reviews

Two reviews at NDPR:

Béatrice Longuenesse, Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Scott Stapleford, Kant's Transcendental Arguments: Disciplining Pure Reason, Continuum, 2008.

Pete Mandik posted an entry on transcendental arguments he wrote for a book he is working on. And over at Philosophy, et cetra, Richard Chappell has created a feed for NDPR so you can receive their reviews through your blog reader, rather than via email.

PhilPapers

David Chalmers has announced that PhilPapers has now gone public. PhilPapers is a database of philosophy papers maintained by Chalmers and David Bourget. The database is set up around a category system that organizes papers into various philosophical categories. Under the category History of Western Philosophy, for instance, you will find sub-categories like 19th Century Philosophy, 19th Century German Philosophy, Fichte, and Hegel. The groupings contain links to papers, abstracts, and books. Currently, the database has close to 200,000 entries, and it is expected to grow quickly. I imagine this will become an incredibly useful research tool, and an easy way to access online papers. The project grows out of the MindPapers database Chalmers also maintains, an excellent resource for people working in philosophy of mind.

Philosophical Gourmet and Specialty Rankings

Over the past two days, Brian Leiter has previewed some of the rankings (here and here) that will appear in the newest version of the Philosophical Gourmet. This includes the ranking of specialty areas, which can be quite helpful for undergraduates when applying to graduate programs. Looking over the specialty areas I was struck by one ranking in particular. NYU is listed as a top department in 19th Century Continental Philosophy.

It is perfectly clear that NYU has one of the strongest philosophy programs, and the consistency with which it tops Leiter’s general departmental rankings attests to that. However, I can not quite see why it should be considered top in 19th Century Continental Philosophy. If NYU deserves such a ranking, then I admit I must be out of touch with the current state of 19th Century Continental Philosophy in the academy. If it should not be so listed, then I suggest that Leiter take it off the 19th Century list since undergraduates, and certainly some graduates, will inevitably use the specialty rankings when making decisions about where to apply and eventually attend graduate school.

Here are three reasons NYU should not be on the 19th Century list:

1) According to their own graduate course listings, which date back to 1997, there has not been one course that generally counts as a 19th Century Continental course. The only possible course I saw listed that could reasonably fit in this category was in the Spring 2006. This was a course called “Consciousness and Self-Consciousness in Modern Philosophy” and was taught by Dan Garrett, who is well known for his work on Hume and the Moderns, and Beatrice Longuenesse, who has written an important book on Kant and one on Hegel. The course sounds more like a thematic Modern Philosophy course than a 19th Century Continental Course. According to the course description the readings range from Descartes to Hegel, so I imagine some Kant and Hegel were read, and, since one of the guest speakers included Wayne Martin (a Fichte scholar), there is even a chance Fichte was discussed.

2) Based on the listing of current students, there appears to be no current PhD students specializing in 19th Century Continental Philosophy.

3) According to their placement records, no past PhD students dating back to 2003 specialized in 19th Century Continental Philosophy. A 2008 graduate lists “Ethics, Epistemology, Early Modern, Kant” as his AOS.

Here are two reasons NYU should be on the list:

1) Béatrice Longuenesse. Longuenesse is a leading Kant scholar and has published an important book on Hegel. She is currently working on the topic of self-consciousness, an issue that animated German Idealism, and many of the philosophers the Idealist influenced like Sartre, someone Longuenesse has also written about. Since arriving at NYU her teaching has focused on Kant and topics related to self-consciousness.

2) John Richardson. Richardson is well known for his work on Nietzsche and Heidegger. He taught a course on Heidegger in the fall of 2005, but from the course listings, it does not appear he has taught a graduate course on Nietzsche since at least 1996. It is does not look like any of his students wrote on Nietzsche. This judgment is based on only the information on the website. I was not able to find dissertation titles. The placement records do not list them, although they do list AOS.

The Gourmet’s method of ranking programs focuses largely on the quality of faculty. No one can doubt that Longuenesse and Richardson deserve the esteemed reputation they have garnered. Is this enough to consider NYU as a top program with a specialty in 19th Century Continental Philosophy? Without any courses or students working in the field, it does not seem so to me.

I am unclear whether it is only specialists who rank the areas of specialty. It makes sense to have only specialists ranking the specialties of programs. It also makes sense to consider the course offerings and maybe even recent dissertation titles. Some of these points are standard criticisms of Philosophical Gourmet, so I don’t want to rehash them. Based on what I see in the 19th Century Continental category, it appears the specialty rankings could be improved.

Any thoughts?

Classic German Journals Online

Following up on my last post, I want to point readers to Perverse Egalitarianism where Mikhail Emelianov has liked to digitized versions of Hegel and Schelling's Kritisches Journal der Philosophie and Der Teutsche Merkur. This online resource is quite a find, and has links to an incredible number of important journals published in Germany roughly between the 1750s-1810, with the bulk appearing around the 1790s. There are links to famous journals edited by Schiller, Herder, Eberhard, and Feder, too much to actually list, so check it out for yourself.

You will see that I have added a link to this page in the sidebar titled "online resources".

Hegel, Religion, Mysticism

For those of you interested in Hegel, Religion and Mysticism, Robert Wallace, author of Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom and God (Cambridge, 2005), has a website dedicated to these issues. There you will find pages dedicated to internet resources on mysticism, and also some of his writings on Hegel. Enjoy!

Brandom on Hegel

Thanks to SOH-Dan for posting about Brandom's current work on Hegel. I remembering hearing maybe five or so years ago Brandom was writing a book on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. It was believable since he had already published some articles on Hegel and sections of the Tales of the Mighty Dead dealt directly with Hegel.

I've wondered what form Brandom's book would take. Many works on Hegel's Phenomenology are fairly straight forward commentaries. H. S. Harris's Hegel's Ladder goes far beyond any of the many commentaries in terms of its detail and comprehensiveness. Pinkard's is an interesting Sellarsian take (with some serious Barndomian influences). But I could not imagine Brandom taking the time or interest in this kind of scholarly and reconstructive work. Now after seeing what he's done with Kant and Hegel in his Woodbridge Lectures, it became clearer there was no chance of this. But how does one write on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit without getting caught in commentary mode. One option is the general Heideggerian approach: by writing about a historical figure you write a commentary on yourself. Well, after a brief perusal through Chapter 8 of Brandom's A Spirit of Trust, the title of what apparently is the long-awaited Hegel book, it seems to be somewhere between the traditional commentary and the Heideggerian approach (though this is a fairly speculative comment). There are lots of long quotations interpreted through Brandom's philosophical framework.

The chapter is itself long (256 pages in Word), so, as SOH-Dan points out, this will likely rival Maxing it Explicit in size, but I wonder to what extent it will influence how people understand Hegel. My bet is that Brandom's own philosophical work on inferentialism, semantics and normativity will have a greater influence on Idealism studies than his own commentaries on Hegel or Kant. There is some historical precedence for this. Look at the influence Sellars has had on Kant studies or even McDowell. Strawson's work on Kant might be an exception but the debate over transcendental arguments, one of his greatest legacies, stems originally from Individuals and not the Bounds of Sense. But maybe I'm overstating things in the case of Strawson, he did after all make it permissible, along with Bennett, for Anglo-American philosophers to take Kant seriously. Anyway, these are just some cursory half-thoughts.

You should checkout Brandom's very funny "Untimely Review of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit." Brandom's so-called review can be found here on his webpage, and his chapter along with other Hegel papers here.

Update

It's been too long since I last posted. I've been traveling some. A few days in Madison, Wisconsin, and a few with the family in Houston. I'm now in Berlin where I will actually be for the next two months. I'm here on a DAAD stipend which allows me to work on my German. Currently, I'm working on a paper on Fichte, pre-reflective awareness, and the body. The paper is called "Fichte and the Possibility of Mindedness." It takes up some issues developed in the Dreyfus/McDowell debate and Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right. I will be presenting a version of it on July 17 at the Philosophisches Kolloquium at the University of Cologne. Besides that, I will be in Berlin working on the dissertation and my German. I do plan to keep up with the blog while in Germany, so keep an eye out. For those of you looking for some idealism related posts, check out SOH-Dan here and here on Hegel.

Philosophers' Carnival!!

It's been a while since I've linked to the Philosophers' Carnival, so here it is.

Hobbes blog

I just came across this new Hobbes blog. I don't myself work much on Hobbes, but I will be teaching some Hobbes in the Fall, which I'm really looking forward to. This week I plan to start posting more than I have in the recent weeks, and I plan to put up some of Fichte's arguments on individuality and self-consciousness (as found in his Foundations of Natural Right) as well as a version of his argument for other minds. I figure if I mention this "publicly", then I will be more likely to follow through.

Philosophers' Carnival

A new and interesting Philosophers' Carnival on Idealism is here.

On the Very Idea of an Internet Meme

Well, not really, but in the spirit of procrastinating, I'll play along with this so-called meme, which has been evolving across some blogs here, here, and here (where I was tagged):

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence on that page
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people

And here is what we get. Donald Davidson's Essays on Actions and Events, and at page 123 we find:

I dream of a theory that makes the transition from the ordinary idiom to canonical notation purely mechanical, and a canonical notation rich enough to capture, in its dull and explicit way, every difference and connection legitimately considered the business of a theory of meaning. The point of canonical notation so conceived is not to improve on something left vague and defective in natural language, but to help elicit in a perspicuous and general form the understanding of logical grammar we all have that constitutes (part of) our grasp of our native tongue.

In exploring the logical form of sentences about actions and events, I concentrated on certain features of such sentences and neglected others.

I guess my dreams are are a bit more exciting than Davidson's. This is from some of his comments about his essay, "The Logical Form of Action Sentences." Davidson's book was not the first one I grabbed. Strawon's Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties was the obvious choice, but it only has 98 pages.

I hereby tag: Selbsttatigkeit, Carubou, Spontaneity&Receptivity, The Brooks Blog, and The Ends of Thought. Let's see what happens.

Cosmos and History Double Issue on Hegel

Thanks to Tom from Grundlegung for pointing out that Cosmos and History has a double issue online dedicated to "Thinking the Spirit of the Age: Hegel and the Fate of Thinking." There are some interesting articles there, some by Angelica Nuzzo, H. S. Harris, Karin de Boer, Andrew Haas and many others. Also, Yovel's translation and commentary on Hegel's "Preface" to the Phenomenology of Spirit and Robert Sterns book on the Phenomenology are reviewed. Enjoy!

Old Comentary on Hegel's Logic

At Now-Times, Alexei has added some links worth checking out. I want to add a link to a commentary by William Torey Harris, editor of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, on Hegel's Logic.

Thom Brooks on Publishing

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) of The Brooks Blog just posted here a revised paper that gives what appears to be sound and very helpful advice on publishing essays, replies, book reviews and book manuscripts for graduate students. I take it that his advice will also be quite helpful for recent graduates and young scholars. You might also want to check out this conversation on publishing book manuscripts at Leiter Reports and this one about graduate students and publishing.

Idealism Texts Online

Recently, I posted about some Hegel material that is online. At the same site there is a good bit of material from other figures:

Kant

Herder

Fichte

Schlegel

Schelling

Hegel's Science of Logic

There is an online reading group reading Hegel's Science of Logic. Various blogs appear to be taking part. You can find a link to all the posts here at Rough Theory.

Philosophers' Carnival

Buffalo Philosophy hosts the Philosophers' Carnival. Make sure to check out the post on McDowell and Kant by Avery at The Space of Reasons.