David Hume is the most influential dead philosopher, according to a recent vote by contemporary philosophers. William Kline of the University of Illinois, Springfield, is an expert on Hume, and he gave a talk recently at Rockford College on Hume’s ethical theory. Here is my follow-up interview with him: Dr. Kline also spoke at Rockford […]
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[This is Section 40 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] Part 8. Conclusion: Nazi and Anti-Nazi Philosophies 40. Hindsight and future resolve We know from historical hindsight that it took a world war to defeat the Nazis. Tens of millions of human beings died in that war. Actual human beings who lived, loved, cried, had dreams—and
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While the world watched France’s revolution, an equally important cultural phenomenon was occurring across the Rhine: “In the year 1789 … nothing else was talked of in Germany but the philosophy of Kant, about which were poured forth in abundance commentaries, chrestomathies, interpretations, estimates, apologies, and so forth.” That’s Heinrich Heine, who also wrote, “Our
[We are reading Descartes’ Meditations this week in my Introduction to Philosophy course, so this is a re-post for new readers this semester.] I vote for Francis Bacon. . . The standard answer gives the honor to René Descartes. Descartes’s claim to the title is based primarily on his epistemology — specifically his method of
Who is the real father of modern philosophy? [repost] Read More »
[This excerpt is from Chapter 2 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Epistemological solutions to Kant: Irrationalism from Kierkegaard to Nietzsche The Kantians and the Hegelians represent the pro-reason contingent in nineteenth-century German philosophy. While the Hegelians pursued metaphysical solutions to Kant’s unbridgeable gap between subject and object, in the process
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[This excerpt is from Chapter 4 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Herder on multicultural relativism Sometimes called the “German Rousseau,”[57] Johann Herder had studied philosophy and theology at Königsberg University. Kant was his professor of philosophy; and while at Königsberg Herder also became a disciple of Johann Hamann. Herder is
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My colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, Shawn Klein and Matthew Flamm, will be leading a reading group on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith is best known as an economist and a critic of mercantilism and as an early advocate of market economies. Less well known is Smith the moral philosopher.
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Following up on an earlier post contrasting modernism with pre-modernism, I here contrast post-modernism to both. Postmodernism as a philosophical system is defined by means of its characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. Postmodernism as a historical movement is defined by the time of its
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