Martyrs are almost by definition in positions of weakness. But the early accounts of Christian martyrs show that martyrdom tended to overturn the balance of power. Two examples from Eusebius illustrate the point. One story begins with a domestic conflict. A Christian wife married to a philandering . . . . Continue Reading »
Intellectually and politically, Christianity is a stability. We have a foundation. But Christianity also has a high tolerance for instability, uncertainty, imperfection, incompletion. The reason is that our foundation is that our foundation is not below us, set in the past; rather, our foundation . . . . Continue Reading »
Steven Crowell ( A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) ) gives this helpful explanation of what Husserl means when he says, counter-intuitively, that objects are “constituted” by the mind: “he means neither that the mind composes a . . . . Continue Reading »
Why, Leszel Kolakowski ( Husserl Search For Certitude ) wants to know, do philosophers talke about “Ego” when they mean the person, the self, or the soul? He thinks it’s a trick of language: You can’t say that the Ego is the philosopher, a real “I,” since for . . . . Continue Reading »
In his contribution to A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) , Steven Crowell summarizes the aims of phenomonology: it is “descriptive” rather than “constructive”; it aims at “clarification, not explanation”; it is . . . . Continue Reading »
In his German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (p. 138-9), Frederick Beiser offers this lucid explanation of “the transcendental” in Kant: “Rather than reducing experience down to the level of individual consciousness, the critical philosophy makes both the . . . . Continue Reading »
According to Dermot Moran’s account ( Introduction to Phenomenology ), Husserl’s phenomenology was an effort to arrest “cultural fragmentation and relativism, brought about by deep uncertainties about the nature and project of reason in the twentieth century. Husserl saw himself . . . . Continue Reading »
Gadamer waxing (Hegelian and) perichoretic (quoted in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , p. 159): “Life is defined by the fact that what is alive differentiates itself from the world in which in which it lives and to which it is bound, and preserves itself in such . . . . Continue Reading »
As Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , p. 150) explains, Dilthey like every other theorist of historical hermeneutics is haunted by the Hegelian ghost he tries to escape. For Dilthey, the problem is to prove the coherence and unity of history. He points to . . . . Continue Reading »
Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , p. 144) neatly summarizes the dilemma of anti-Hegelian historicism, influenced as it was by the hermeneutical theories of Schleiermacher and later Dilthey. Here’s the problem: Historicism rejects the Hegelian notion . . . . Continue Reading »
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