3,606 words
Schopenhauer as Lebensphilosoph
This introduction to the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer is not, strictly speaking, a part of the series on “Heidegger’s history of metaphysics” that I have been writing now for almost five years. The reason is that Heidegger had little use for Schopenhauer, and not a lot to say about him. To my knowledge, he never taught a course on any of Schopenhauer’s works. (more…)
5,218 words
All parts here.
Introducing the Clearing
As we discussed last time, Heidegger’s major objection to Hegel is to identify his philosophy as “ontotheology.” In other words, Hegel confuses the “ontological difference,” the difference between being-as-such and beings, the things that have being. In the end, Hegel declares that the Absolute is being. (more…)
3,748 words
All previous parts here.
Heidegger’s Critique of Hegel
We now turn, finally, to Heidegger’s critique of Hegel. As we noted at the beginning of this series, Heidegger saw Hegel’s philosophy as the completion of Western metaphysics. He thus agrees with Hegel in one very important respect, for Hegel held exactly this view of his own philosophy. (more…)
5,112 words
All previous parts can be found here.
Being, Nothing, Becoming
In our last installment, we introduced Hegel’s Logic and made a few small steps in trying to comprehend the standpoint from which it begins. We have spent a good deal of time discussing Hegel’s concept of “absolute knowing,” and it is in the Logic that we see it in operation. (more…)
5,521 words
Parts 1-4 here
Absolute Knowing and History
In our last installment, we completed our brief overview of The Phenomenology of Spirit, and we are now ready to turn to Hegel’s philosophical system proper, for which the Phenomenology provides a kind of introduction. First, however, we must consider some crucial points of interpretation, which have vexed many readers of Hegel. (more…)
Portrait of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4,859 words
Portrait of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Parts 1-3 here
Alpha and Omega
In the last installment, I introduced readers to Hegelian dialectic, to Hegel’s “objective idealism,” and to the major dialectical transitions in The Phenomenology of Spirit. The text consists of three principal divisions, which form a dialectical triad: “Consciousness,” “Self-Consciousness,” and “Reason.” (more…)
4,362 words
Parts 1 and 2 here.
Toward the Sunlight
In our last installment, we learned that The Phenomenology of Spirit is an account of how spirit, or humanity, traverses a highway of despair – a path along which it becomes disillusioned with various of its forms, all of which in one way or another implicitly aim at self-knowledge. In the end, it arrives at what it had sought all along, true self-knowledge or “absolute knowledge.” (more…)
Hegel pays his respects to Napoleon on his entry into Jena, 1807.
4,093 words
Hegel pays his respects to Napoleon on his entry into Jena, 1807.
Part 1 here
Introducing The Phenomenology of Spirit
In the first installment of this series, I introduced readers to Hegel and to Heidegger’s commentaries on him. We found that Hegel is the creator of an all-encompassing system of ideas or a “complete speech of the whole.” He offers his system not as philosophy, the search for wisdom, but as wisdom itself, or, as he puts it, “science” (Wissenschaft). (more…)
4,239 words
Every real philosopher is contemporaneous with every other philosopher, precisely by being, most intrinsically, the word of his time.
-Martin Heidegger[1]
Introducing Hegel
This essay, the first of several on Martin Heidegger and G.W.F. Hegel, constitutes a major milestone in my ongoing series about “Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics.” (more…)
1,490 words
Carl R. Trueman
To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse
Brentwood, Tennessee: B&H Academic, 2024
The philosophy which provided metapolitical cover for the violence of the George Floyd Riots in 2020 is called critical race theory. Carl R. Trueman, a theologian and professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, has published a book about the body of thought from which critical race theory sprang – critical theory. Critical theory’s origins lie in Marxism. (more…)
Carl Schmitt, 1888–1985
Carl Schmitt, 1888–1985
1.941 słowa
English original here, Estonian, French, Spanish
Część 7 (Rozdział 1, Rozdział 4, Rozdział 6)
„Czy możemy się po prostu dogadać?” – Rodney King
Krótka książka Carla Schmitta Pojęcie polityczności (1932) jest jednym z najważniejszych dzieł dwudziestowiecznej filozofii politycznej[1].
Głównym celem Pojęcia polityczności jest obrona polityki przed utopijnymi próbami jej porzucenia. Anty-polityczny utopizm zawiera wszystkie formy liberalizmu, jak również międzynarodowego socjalizmu, globalnego kapitalizmu, anarchizmu oraz pacyfizmu: w skrócie – wszystkie polityczne filozofie, których celem jest uniwersalny porządek, w którym porzucono wszelki konflikt. (more…)
Abraham Lincoln debating Stephen Douglas during the campaign for the 1860 presidential election, when Lincoln expressed views on blacks that would end any politician’s career today. (Litho by American School, 1858)
Abraham Lincoln debating Stephen Douglas during the campaign for the 1860 presidential election, when Lincoln expressed views on blacks that would end any politician’s career today. (Litho by American School, 1858)
2,521 words
Jacques Derrida remarks that Hegel compared words used over time with coins whose inscriptions wear away with use, ultimately leaving two blank and valueless faces signifying nothing. Words change their meaning, certainly, but they also lose meaning through overuse. Our most obvious contemporary example is the word “racism.”
Racism is a perfectly natural response to the “Other” the hard ideological Left like to parade around like a show pony. It is hardwired into us and is a protective reaction, it being an evolutionary advantage to be with those like yourself, and is why from canteens in high school to canteens in penitentiaries, blacks will always sit with other blacks and whites with other whites. (more…)
