You can also read or download a .pdf version of this essay HERE. 1. What do Thoreau’s Walden (written during the mid-1840s, published in 1854), Schopenhauer’s “On University Philosophy” (1851), Dewey’s “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy” (1917) and Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920/1948), Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918/1922), Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences … [continue reading]
THE LIMITS OF SENSE AND REASON: A Line-By-Line Critical Commentary on Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” #1.
[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. … [continue reading]
Meditations & Mediations, #3—Context.
Previous Installments #2: In an Instant. #1: Introduction, and On Sources. Section III: Context If a series of insights creates a context, what is it—and what does it do for philosophy? The notion of context is one of the strangest concepts we have created. It is a waste basket of all those things that are … [continue reading]
How To Win The Kant Wars.
You can download a .pdf version of this essay HERE. [F]or … non-Kantian philosophers, there are no persistent problems — save perhaps the existence of Kantians.[i] 1. Kant in the Twentieth Century More than a decade ago, I wrote this: Alfred North Whitehead … quotably wrote in 1929 that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical … [continue reading]
Thoughts on Postmodernity 2: The Tensions of the Past and the Fluidity of the Present.
The first essay in this series is “Thoughts on Postmodernity 1: An Impossible Presentation.” Andrew D. Chapman, in a recent APP essay,“Thoughts on the Relationship Between Postmodernism and Fascism,” makes a large number of philosophically illuminating points, spinning as it were a tightly woven spider’s web of arguments and connections. The great advantage of this … [continue reading]
Borderless Philosophy 3 (2020): First Call For Submissions.
Borderless Philosophy‘s Editorial Team, whose members currently are: Dennis Earl (Coastal Carolina Univ., USA) https://www.coastal.edu/academics/facultyprofiles/humanities/philosophyandreligiousstudies/dennisearl/, Robert Hanna (Independent, USA) https://colorado.academia.edu/RobertHanna, Michelle Maiese (Emmanuel College, USA) http://www.emmanuel.edu/academics/our-faculty/michelle-maiese.html, Pablo Muchnik (Emerson College, USA) https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/pablo-muchnik, Otto Paans (Independent, Netherlands) https://tu-berlin.academia.edu/OttoPaans, and Hugh Reginald (Independent, Canada) (Editorial Team Leader), is pleased to announce a First Call for Submissions for … [continue reading]
On Sebastian Rödl’s “Self-Consciousness and Objectivity,” Or,The Refutation of Absolute Idealism.
Author’s Note: The following essay has a little back-story. Eight months ago, I was invited by the journal Idealistic Studies to do a review of Sebastian Rödl’s 2018 book, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, with a due date for submitting my review of 25 July 2019. As I worked my way through the book, I decided it … [continue reading]
Meditations & Mediations, #2—In An Instant.
Previous Installments #1: Introduction, and On Sources. Section II: In An Instant Even if mustering up the courage to decide something requires time, making the decision itself happens in an instant. Likewise, to become aware of something often happens in an instant. Instantaneousness and insight share a deep and unexplored connection. Heidegger called this connection … [continue reading]
On Leonard Nelson’s “The Socratic Method.”
You can also download a .pdf version of this essay, HERE. The Socratic method … is the art of teaching not philosophy but philosophizing, the art of teaching not about philosophers but of making philosophers of the students…. If there is such a thing at all as instruction in philosophy, it can only be instruction … [continue reading]
Fragments of Reality, Fragments of Solidarity.
In this essay, I’d like to respond Michelle Maiese’s thought-provoking recent critical piece on APP, “Smithereens: Reflections in a Black Mirror.” Maiese presents the following (reconstructed) argument: (1) Socialism—whether democratic socialism or social anarchism (aka anarcho-socialism, libertarian socialism, etc.)—is fundamentally concerned with respect for universal human dignity; with human freedom of thought, expression, choice, and action; with … [continue reading]