Continental Philosophy

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The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.

The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.

This book was first published in 1984."

Terrence Malick’s metaphysics involves a materialism, roughly Nietzschean in character, that denies not only cultural essentialism, but also any meaningful distinction between reason and nature. In other words, it denies the superiority or dominance of rational beings over nature by affirming the natural character of reason. The end result is that human reason turns out to be nothing more than an expression of the ‘blind’ rationality of nature — not an exception to the rule of nature but rather its unmitigated realization. In this sense, it is not that ‘all is life, and life is good’, as though life were eternally beautiful, good or true. On the contrary, all is struggle and conflict, a “war in the heart of nature”, as in The Thin Red Line, and one in which human beings play no special role, in spite of what we might think. It is just that we have the capacity to see this war for what it is.

"I pull my copy of Metrophage out of its battered pink paper folder. It is suitably badly printed, and the black and white stripes of the dysfunctional roller have left interference patterns running from the right to the left that distract the eye and make discernment of the faint courier words difficult and time consuming. I randomly separate the pages and start reading:

He stood and Nimble Virtue tossed a packet of Mad Love at his feet. It came to rest by the toe of his boot, where the water was icing up over a flaking patch of dried blood. Welding marks, like narrow scars of slag. The slaughterhouse had been grafted together from a stack of old Sea Train cargo containers. A cryogenic pump hummed at the far end of the place, like a beating heart, pushing liquid oxygen through the network of pipes that criss-crossed the walls and floor. From the ceiling, dull steel hooks held shapeless slabs of discoloured meat. Jonny looked at the slunk merchant.""

"This paper argues that Eugen Fink’s meontic phenomenology is concerned with the same problematic that animates the whole of Michel Henry’s material phenomenology, immanent absolute life.  As an aside, I use this connection to respond to Dominique Janicaud’s critique of Henry’s material phenomenology.  Janicaud claims that material phenomenology violates phenomenology’s fundamental procedural principle, namely the connection between its method and object.  Insofar as Fink’s meontic phenomenology can be shown to be continuous with phenomenology’s guiding methodological insight as it takes shape in the works of Husserl and Heidegger, Janicaud’s critique of Henry thus appears to be false.


Cet article soutient que la phénoménologie matérielle de Eugen Fink se soucie de la même problématique qui anime l'ensemble de la phénoménologie matérielle de Michel Henry, vie absolue immanente. En passant, j’utiliser cette connexion pour répondre à la critique de Dominique Janicaud de la phénoménologie matérielle de Henry. Janicaud affirme que la phénoménologie matérielle viole le principe fondamental de la phénoménologie, à savoir le lien entre sa méthode et son objet. Dans la mesure où la phénoménologie matérielle de Fink peut être vue comme continue avec la méthodologie directive de la connaissance, étant donné qu’elle prend forme dans les œuvres de Husserl et de Heidegger, la critique de Janicaud de Henry semble donc être fausse.
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"Moses Mendelssohn has often been described by his friends and admirers as the paragon of tolerance. It is likely that some of these tales are hagiographic, but, as far as I can tell, the historical evidence we have portrays him as a decent, non-arrogant person, who was open to criticism and willing to engage in an attentive dialogue with his opponents. Though it is hard to distinguish Mendelssohn, the man, from his views, I will attempt here to scrutinize Mendelssohn’s notion of tolerance, and particularly his objection to the use of herem/excommunication  against dissenters within the Jewish community.
The common Maskilic narrative of this story runs roughly along these lines. Mendelssohn had an “unrestricted commitment” to tolerance.  He was opposed to excommunication on the grounds that its use would display intolerance toward a member of the community. Mendelssohn’s objection to excommunication is frequently discussed in the context of the ex-communication of Spinoza. It is sometimes even depicted as evidence of a lesson learned from that event. In this paper I will argue that this self-flattering narrative is based on several myths. "

Las alusiones a la visión instaladas en el núcleo de la filosofía de Platón ponen en tensión el horân físico y el theoreîn de tintes intelectuales reavivando la pregunta por el papel del cuerpo, considerado un mero obstáculo en las lecturas que priorizan la caracterización del Fedón. Sin embargo, la filosofía platónica presenta aristas en las que la corporalidad aparece asociada con la dimensión cognitiva de un modo que suele ser pasado por alto. Nos interesa analizar el tratamiento de esta relación en el símil de la caverna, desde la perspectiva que brinda la metáfora del conocimiento como visión y el protagonismo del hombre en tanto ser encarnado. Para ello recurriremos a una interpretación en clave fenomenológica que muestre la epopeya del prisionero como un despliegue de cinestesias para la búsqueda de la donación óptima. Los contactos con los estudios husserlianos sobre la aparición de los objetos y el sistema de escorzamientos que apuntan a una captación progresiva permitirá poner de relieve aspectos obliterados de la relación entre cognición y cuerpo y aportar elementos de apoyo para las líneas exégéticas actuales que sugieren una marcada continuidad entre la filosofía platónica y la fenomenología.

This essay considers the way and manner in which a musician and music educator approaches his or her work. It is suggested that anthropomorphic conceptions of music have endured in music education practice in the West. It is proposed that our view of the ‘processes’ of music making, music reception and music learning can be challenged and reconsidered. Heidegger's theory of art is used as a way of rethinking these processes, and of reconsidering our relational dimension with music. The unfolding of music in music-events occurs as people ‘work-with’ music and interact with its dimensions in a way that is culturally and dialogically vibrant. Music education can thus become more responsive to changing ‘modes of beings’ in the moment.

This paper analyzes Fichte’s conception of infinity in the 1800 text Die Bestimmung des Menschen (The Vocation of Man) against the background of his ideas on mathematics, particularly in the context of a mathematical dispute from 1794-97 over the so-called “infinite polygon.” It shows that genuine mathematical infinity is a procedural rule or task for Fichte's that can never be completed, and concludes that the main epistemological principles of his later conception of infinity - especially with respect to the limits of cognition and the unknowability of God and the Infinite as such - do not signal a philosophical break but remain entirely consistent with his earlier Jena writings.