Demonstrating his second claim led him to write a detailed history of modern *Italian philoso-phy in order to show how the ideas of the German thinkers he admired were adopted or indepen
Trang 1Where a free variable αoccurs in Φ the application of
the rule binds the variable Formalizations specify
condi-tions and syntactic restriccondi-tions for application of the rule
to ensure that the inferences are valid An example of a
valid application of the rule is the inference of
(x) (Fx∨ ~Fx)
from
(Fy∨ ~Fy),
since the latter holds for any arbitrary individual r.b.m
W V Quine, Methods of Logic, 4th edn (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).
general properties: see properties, general.
general will The doctrine of the general will is found in
the writings of some theorists in the tradition of
contrac-tualist political philosophy The doctrine has
controver-sial images associated with it, but its central aim is to
provide an account of the conditions under which
prin-ciples and policies for the state are morally acceptable
Citi-zens are thought of as having ‘interests’, some of which
are ‘perceived’, and often different from one person to
another, and even from one time in a person’s life to
another, while others are considered ‘real’ or ‘genuine’,
and hence common to all persons The doctrine concerns
how these common interests may be identified, and how
they may gain expression in the policies of the state, and
thereby constitute the state just
Rousseau’s version of the doctrine appears to be driven
by the figure of society as ‘social organism’ The general
will is the will of this organism, i.e the ‘collective body’
formed by the citizens of a state, and as such is
distin-guished from the will of any particular individual or
group, and even from ‘the will of all’ Rousseau’s view
influenced Kant, but Kant’s view leaves aside the notion
that society should be thought of as ‘organism’ The main
idea now is that morality involves principles that are ‘valid
for all rational beings’, and that one may arrive at such
principles by setting aside one’s ‘inclinations’ (e.g
particu-lar features of personality or interests associated with
social station that differ among real people and tend to
ground conflicts among them), and by exercising the
‘rational nature’ that is the common possession of moral
agents John Rawls’s conception of *‘justice as fairness’ is
thought of heuristically as the choice of parties to a
hypo-thetical morally credentialled deliberating-position, one
of the main features of which is, again, a setting-aside of
those differentiating features of real individuals which are
(in Rawls’s words) ‘arbitrary from the moral point of
view’ The principles which are then chosen by agents
whose particularity is thereby suspended are construed as
providing the normative substance of justice for the basic
structure of society, i.e the standards by which to assess its
main economic, legal, political, and educational
institu-tions and practices
Thus, in different vocabularies, the theories of
Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls have in common the claim
that the deliverances of reasoning meeting the conditions
of impartiality and disinterestedness are morally right However, interpreting the doctrine in this way makes it attractive but not yet uncontroversial Recent challenges
do not restrict their critiques to the spectre of totalitarian-ism suggested by the idea of society as ‘social organtotalitarian-ism’ One critique instead cites cases in which particulars about persons, e.g their special relationships, the meaning-giving projects in their lives, their offices, and roles, are indeed relevant to an understanding of what morality requires, including the substance of justice This objection suggests that the doctrine does not appropriately recog-nize the moral relevance of ‘partiality’, or, more fully, the moral standing of the ‘individuality’ of persons This is paradoxical, for the historical and contemporary propon-ents of the doctrine think of their general theories as endorsing *individualism Another critique argues not from ‘individuality’ but from ‘community’ Its point is that the doctrine’s emphasis on impartiality and disinter-estedness ignores the importance of culture, heritage, and tradition to the identity of citizens This is paradoxical again, for some proponents of the doctrine think of their theories as providing reasonable interpretations of the communitarian ideals of the public interest and the
*organic society; contract, social
Brian Barry, ‘The Public Interest’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society (1964).
Patrick Riley, The General Will before Rousseau: The Transformation
of the Divine into the Civic (Princeton, NJ, 1986).
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York, 1983).
generations, justice between.The Brundtland Report,
Our Common Future (1987), defined sustainable
develop-ment as ‘developdevelop-ment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ The responsibility implied in this statement may be regarded as weak or strong The weak principle of intergenerational justice requires that we pass
on natural resources and knowledge to the future in a way that enables future people to meet their basic needs The strong principle requires us to limit consumption of envir-onmental goods so that future people can be expected to achieve a standard of living, or quality of life, equivalent to that enjoyed by present people Thomas Schwartz argued that any policy we now undertake will make a difference to who actually exists in future (e.g., by determining who travels where, and who meets whom) Hence, provided future individuals have lives worth living, they cannot be said to be harmed by present policies Whether Schwartz’s argument undermines the strong principle ofjustice between generations has been very much debated a.bre
A de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters (London, 1995).
T Schwartz, ‘Obligations to Posterity’, in R Sikora and B Barry
(eds.), Obligations to Future Generations (Philadelphia, 1978).
genetic epistemology: see epistemology, genetic.
330 generalization, rule of
Trang 2genetic fallacy Probably first called such by Morris
Cohen and Ernest Nagel, it is the fallacy of confusing the
causal origins of a belief with its justification That this is
always a confusion has been queried by reliabilist theories
in epistemology, which hold that a belief is justified to the
extent that it is the causal output of cognitive devices
oper-ating in accordance with their designs, i.e ‘as they should’
Of particular importance for the analysis of the genetic
fallacy is the widespread and indispensable practice of
forming one’s beliefs, and acting on them, on the basis
of the *testimony of others Assuming the implausibility
of declaring fallacious all such cases of belief-formation, it
evidently matters whether a believer’s testimonial
sources satisfy appropriate conditions on reliability Since
the same is true of whether a so-called ad verecundiam
argument is fallacious, it may be said that ad verecundiam
arguments are a special case of ‘genetic’ arguments j.w
*reliabilism
Morris R Cohen and Ernest Nagel, Logic and Scientific Method
(New York, 1934)
genetics and morality.The fast-developing science of
genetics, within which the functions of more and more
genes, either alone or in conjunction with others, are
being discovered, can be seen as providing the latest form
of determinism, or reductionism, according to which all
human behaviour can be explained by the genes a person
has If genetic determinism were true, no one could be
blamed, or indeed praised, for what he or she did, since
behaviour would have been programmed from the time a
person was an embryo Though such a theory is wholly
implausible, since environment (including education and
culture) must be taken into account in the formation of
character as much as genetic inheritance, yet, like other
forms of determinism, the theory in a less thoroughgoing
form may gradually come to have an effect on moral
atti-tudes If it were shown conclusively that a certain gene or
conjunction of genes led to aggressive behaviour, for
example, or indifference to the well-being of other people,
then there would be less inclination to apportion moral
blame to those who exhibited this kind of antisocial
behav-iour, and less faith in the efficacy of exhortation or
example to get people to mend their ways The language
of morals, as well as the practice of punishment, might be
subtly changed It has to be noticed, however, that there
have in the past been many forms of determinism,
theo-logical, physical, and psychological None has destroyed
the idea of morality, nor the human desire to influence
children by education and good upbringing The fate of
genetic determinism may be no different
A specific way in which our new appreciation of the
importance of genes may change our moral attitudes is
with regard to children who are born either through an
adulterous relationship or by artificial insemination with
donor sperm Hitherto it has been possible to try to justify
keeping a child in ignorance of her true paternity (though
many have always regarded such deception as morally
indefensible) This seems now positively wrong: too much may turn on the knowledge for it to be concealed
A more dramatic way in which new genetic knowledge may in future impinge on morality is in the matter of genetic intervention Morality is largely based on the assumption that individual people are unique, each differ-ent from one another, to be valued for their own sake and responsible, at least to a large extent, for their own charac-ters If it became possible for parents to choose not only the sex but the personalities and abilities of their children, according to their own blueprint, the sense of independ-ence and individual responsibility might be gradually eroded It is difficult to foresee the difference it would make to someone’s sense of responsibility and self-image
if he had to think that other people, his parents, had decided that this was what he should be There is some-thing profoundly inimical to our concept of morality in the thought of one person being in a position to dictate in advance the life-chances of another Though it seems morally right that parents should, by genetic manipula-tion, see to it that their child does not suffer from serious
or life-threatening disease, it seems morally wrong that they should intervene to enhance their child’s ability or beauty or talents This uneasiness may arise partly from the fact that such genetic enhancement, if it were possible, would be extremely expensive Only the very rich could afford it The gap between the children of the rich and those of the poor would be widened still further, to the detriment of society Political considerations apart, how-ever, the thought that we had been manipulated to con-form to someone else’s blueprint would be profoundly demeaning The intrinsic value that each individual has, a value that lies at the heart of morality, depends in part on the random and unpredictable mixture of his parents’ genes which make up his unique genome Such moral dis-tinctions may fall to be settled in the future, and are the subject of theoretical discussion even now m.warn
*bioethics
John Harris, Clones, Genes and Immortality: Ethics and the Genetic
Revolution (Oxford, 1998).
Jonathan Glover, What Sort of People Should there Be?
(Har-mondsworth, 1986)
John Habgood, Being a Person (London, 1998).
Ellie Lee (ed.), Designer Babies: Where Should we Draw the Line?
(London, 2002)
genius.Creative ability of an exalted kind In philosophy creative ability is in the realm of ideas It would be contro-versial to attempt either to provide a complete list of those philosophers who would be entitled to the label of genius,
or to lay down necessary and sufficient conditions for it Indeed, some philosophers might regard it as invidious to single out an individual philosopher as a ‘genius’ on the grounds that this creates a cult of cleverness But, if one were to allow the term, the following conditions—which are much wider than ‘cleverness’—are typically satisfied
by the philosophical genius The genius expresses through his work the main currents of scientific and other thought
genius 331
Trang 3of his times; he not only synthesizes these but adds the
stamp of his own mind to them; the force of the ideas
alters the direction of subsequent thought; the ideas
embody a vision of the world, they appeal to the
imagin-ation as well to the intellect It will be widely agreed that
Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel,
and Wittgenstein fit these criteria, and other names can
plausibly be added to the category r.s.d
*superman
R L Gregory, ‘Genius’, in R L Gregory (ed.), The Oxford
Com-panion to the Mind (Oxford, 1987).
Gentile, Giovanni (1875–1944) Together with Croce, he
led the revival of Italian idealist philosophy at the turn of
the century Gentile’s ‘actualism’ represented the
subject-ive extreme of *idealism He aimed to integrate our
con-sciousness of experience with its creation by uniting
thought and will in the self-constitution or autoctisi of
real-ity The ‘pure act’ of spirit constituted the true synthesis a
priori of self and world which made objective knowledge
possible He claimed that his theory explained the
phe-nomenological development of self-consciousness within
both the individual and Western thought as a whole To
illustrate the first thesis, he wrote a number of influential
books on education Demonstrating his second claim led
him to write a detailed history of modern *Italian
philoso-phy in order to show how the ideas of the German thinkers
he admired were adopted or independently conceived by
Italian philosophers as part of a single European tradition
reflecting the unity of spirit or human consciousness The
embodiment of the individual’s self-consciousness was
the state, a doctrine that led to his philosophical support of
*fascism He stood by Mussolini to the end, dying at the
Richard Bellamy, Modern Italian Social Theory (Cambridge, 1987),
ch 6
Gentzen, Gerhard (1909–45) German logician who, in his
fundamental paper of 1935, expounded a radically new
way of formalizing logic—*natural deduction, which he
carried out for both classical and intuitionistic first-order
logic A natural deduction system has rules of inference,
but no logical truths assumed axiomatically A formula
may be introduced into a derivation as a hypothesis at any
stage Gentzen divided the rules of his natural deduction
system that governed the logical constants into
introduc-tion rules and eliminaintroduc-tion rules An introducintroduc-tion rule
allowed the derivation of a formula with the given logical
constant as its main operator from premisses in which it
does not occur essentially; thus the introduction rule for
‘&’ allows us to infer A & B from A and B as separate
prem-isses An elimination rule allowed an inference from
such a formula, perhaps together with additional minor
premisses; thus the elimination rule for ‘→’ (if-then) was
simply modus ponens, whereby B is inferred from A→B
together with the minor premiss A In such cases, the
con-clusion of the inference depends on whatever hypotheses
the premisses depended on In some inferences, however,
it does not depend on all of them Thus the introduction
rule for negation is *reductio ad absurdum: if from a set Γ of
hypotheses, together with the hypothesis A, a contradict-ory conclusion can be derived, then the negation of A may
be inferred as depending on the hypotheses Γ alone The hypotheses on which the final conclusion of the derivation depends may then be regarded as the premisses of the derivation as a whole
In order to keep track of the hypotheses on which each line of a natural deduction derivation depends, these lines may be shown as sequents A sequent is a pair Γ : A, where
A is the formula standing at that line of the derivation, and
Γ is the finite set of formulae on which A depends; the introduction of a hypothesis H will be represented by the
‘basic sequent’ H : H If Γ : A occurs as a line of a correct derivation, the formula A will be a logical consequence of
the formulae Γ In the same paper, Gentzen developed another method of formalization, a sequent calculus For classical, but not intuitionistic, logic, a sequent was now allowed to have finitely many formulae on the right (these formulae being understood disjunctively) The introduc-tion rules remained as before, but the eliminaintroduc-tion rules were replaced by rules of introduction on the left-hand side of the sequent: e.g that for & allowed the derivation
ofΓ, A & B : ∆ from Γ, A :∆ or Γ, B:∆; it is thereby inferred
that a conclusion follows from certain premisses from the fact that it follows from other, simpler, premisses The sequent calculus is easily shown equivalent to the natural deduction system, with the help of the cut rule, allowing the derivation of Γ, Θ : ∆, Λ from Γ : C, ∆ and Θ, C : Λ, where C is termed the cut formula Gentzen’s cut-elimination theorem (Hauptsatz) showed that any
deriva-tion using the cut rule could be transformed into one not using it: the introduction of the cut formula had been an unnecessary detour The cut-free sequent calculus (lack-ing the cut rule) has the subformula property: any formula occurring within a derivation is a subformula of one occurring in the final sequent The cut-elimination theorem yielded a decision procedure for intuitionistic sentential logic, and allowed very simple proofs of several theorems hitherto proved by appeal to an algebraic characterization of the set of valid formulae
Gentzen proceeded to give two proofs of the consist-ency of formal (Peano) arithmetic (1936 and 1938), using a form of transfinite induction By Gödel’s second *incom-pleteness theorem, such transfinite induction cannot be so derivable; but in Gentzen’s proof, it was applied only to statements with no bound variables m.d
G Gentzen, Collected Papers, ed M E Szabo (Amsterdam, 1969).
genus and species Terms forming part of a system of
clas-sification of entities (most characteristically biological entities); genera constitute a wider class than do species The terms derive from Aristotle, for whom the principles of clas-sification depend on real relations between things in nature The Greek word for species is the same as that for *form, and in Aristotle’s view species have *essences and are
332 genius
Trang 4distinguished from other co-ordinate species falling under
the same genus by a determinate differentia d.w.h
*determinables and determinates; categories
Aristotle, De partibus animalium i and De generatione animalium i,
tr with notes by D M Balme (Oxford, 1972)
German philosophy In Germany, as in other European
nations, medieval philosophers (apart from the mystics)
wrote in Latin (The most significant was Albertus Magnus
(c.1200–80), the learned Aristotelian who taught Aquinas.)
But in Germany philosophy continued to be written and
taught in Latin later than elsewhere Leibniz wrote mainly
in Latin and French In 1688 Christian Thomasius (1655–
1728) gave, at Leipzig, the first philosophy lectures in
German Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was the first
signifi-cant philosopher to write mainly in German
Partly as a result of this, many of the philosophers who
wrote in German were very conscious of the fact, and
emphasized and exploited the philosophical resources of
German They did not always commend the same
fea-tures of the language Leibniz stressed the concrete
sen-sual imagery of German words and their metaphorical
potentialities, developed and transmitted by the medieval
mystics Hegel stressed the great variety of abstract, and
thus implicitly philosophical, terms in everyday speech
The virtues of German continued to be praised in the
twentieth century Heidegger noted the ‘peculiar inner
affinity of the German language with the language of the
Greeks and their thought When the French begin to
think, they speak German’ (Der Spiegel, 31 May 1976).
Fichte’s proposal to extrude foreign loan-words (including
‘Philosophie’) from the German language found little
sup-port, but the belief that German is an ideal philosophical
language, whatever its truth, affects the style of much
German philosophy
Owing in part to the nature of the Reformation and to
the survival of Catholicism as a potent force, theology
was, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, a
flour-ishing academic discipline with important
interconnec-tions with philosophy Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–
1834), one of the founders of *hermeneutics, was also the
greatest Protestant theologian since Luther Many
philosophers were originally trained as theologians:
Hegel and Schelling as Protestants, for example, and
Hei-degger as a Jesuit In the case of other philosophers too,
one cannot ignore their deep religiosity and their
theo-logical interests: the pietism of Kant, for example, or the
Augustinian Catholicism of Scheler Even when
philoso-phers initially reject their inherited religious beliefs, they
often, though not invariably, return to them later: Fichte’s
and Schelling’s talk about the I or the Absolute eventually
becomes talk about God, and Friedrich Schlegel (1772–
1829), like many of the Romantic radicals, converted to
Catholicism Conversely, theologians were often
deci-sively influenced by philosophers: Barth by Kierkegaard,
Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) by his friend Heidegger,
and Tillich (1886–1965) by Schelling The theological
background of many philosophers perhaps accounts for their willingness to transcend, or at least delve beneath, experience in their exploration of the nature of things and
to keep the natural sciences in their proper place, if not to ignore them altogether
Connected with this (since theologians need to inter-pret ancient texts) is the deeply historical character of much German philosophy and thought in general Philoso-phy of history was founded by Vico and baptized by Voltaire, but it came into its own in Germany Philoso-phers such as Herder and Hegel became aware that men think differently in different periods and came to ask not (like Hume or Gibbon) ‘Given that people think, if they think at all, in a uniformly rational way, how can we explain what they did in the past?’, but ‘How did it come about that we now think in a certain rational way, when in the past people thought in radically different ways?’ Associated with this historical tendency is the intense study, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-turies, of the philosophical and literary works of the past: Homer, Plato, Plotinus, and Shakespeare, etc were edited, translated, and explored Dilthey, among many others, continued this tradition into the twentieth cen-tury Nietzsche was a classical philologist as well as a philosopher, but philosophers who were not primarily scholars were often steeped in the works of classical antiquity (Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Heidegger) and occasionally in medieval philosophy (Heidegger) When Hegel speaks of scepticism, for example, he usually has in mind the Greek Sceptics rather than Hume
In the same period, German philosophers, above all Kant, explored the nature of the self and tended to a form
of *idealism British philosophers did so too, both earlier (Hume) and later ( J S Mill) But the two approaches differ significantly Hume and Mill distinguish two realms of entities, the outer objects studied by the natural sciences and the inner objects studied by psychology Mental events and states are to be studied by the same methods as outer objects; they are to be analysed, classified, and explained by laws of association Idealism consists in the conclusion that outer objects are reducible to complex pat-terns of inner events Kant and his followers, such as Fichte, rejected this procedure It ignores, they argued, the
I or subject that is aware of both inner and outer objects It omits to ask why the I has experience both of inner and of outer objects, and why its experience takes the form that it does Hence they abandoned the psychological approach
in favour of the transcendental: the I that has experience of both realms is neither physical nor psychical, but transcen-dental The rejection of the psychological and the espousal
of the transcendental persists into the twentieth century in the work of Husserl Some philosophers believed they had discovered a ‘third realm’ distinct from both the physical and the psychological, the realm of the ‘ideal’ But this did not go unchallenged Heidegger rejected this ‘banal Pla-tonism’ in favour of a radically overhauled psychology that no longer regards man as a compound of ‘body’,
‘soul’, and ‘spirit’, but as *Dasein or ‘being-in-the-world’.
German philosophy 333
Trang 5continental european philosophy in the nineteenth century
j g fichte developed Kant’s epistemological and ethical
ideas at the end of the eighteenth century, and became an
apostle of Prussian nationalism
søren kierkegaard gave deliberately anti-academic expression (witness the peculiar forms, titles, and pseud-onyms of his works) to a powerful defence of human freedom against systems, rules, and rationalizations
arthur schopenhauer’s academic career at the
Univer-sity of Berlin foundered when he opted unwisely to deliver
his lectures at the same times as Hegel’s; the resulting
resentment, and many others, find expression in his
writings In his work Eastern religious traditions first exert a
significant influence on Western philosophy
friedrich nietzsche’s iconoclastic brilliance brought him international fame too late for him to know it His unpredictable influence has coursed through modernism and postmodernism
Trang 6The transcendental method is connected with several
other features of German thought First, transcendental
philosophers regard idealism as entirely compatible with
objectivity While idealists such as Hume and Mill tend to
see values and the truths of logic and arithmetic as
depend-ent on our psychological states (or, later, on our
lan-guage), German idealists often, though not invariably,
regard them as wholly objective, albeit transcendentally
determined The transcendental lies deeper than our
cus-tomary distinction between the subject and the object, the
subjective and the objective Second, since the
transcen-dental I is neither psychological subject nor physical
object, and since it is, on some accounts, prior even to the
distinction between different people, it tends to be
equated with, or to turn into, the Absolute or God; it met
with this fate in Fichte and Schelling, if not in Husserl By
contrast, Hume and Mill incline to atheism, since there is
little temptation to deify the psychological I (Berkeley’s
theology depends on a combination of the psychological
and transcendental methods.) Third, psychological or
sub-jective idealism is inimical to a sense of history If I focus
on my own mental states and the laws governing them, I
have little reason to suppose that others may have, or have
had, mental states of a different type, governed perhaps by
different laws It is even hard to see how the historical past
can be more than a dubious inference from my present
mental states or a logical construction out of them
*Tran-scendental idealism, by contrast, presents no such
difficul-ties in the view of its adherents Indeed, it is plausible to
suppose that it favoured historicism: if one pares oneself
down to one’s bare I, shorn of historically determined
physical and psychological contingencies, it is easier to
range in imagination over other times and places What I
then find in the past may be as independent of my present
mental states as are the laws of logic and mathematics
The transcendental method is also related to the
ten-dency of German philosophers to reject individualism
Psychological states are decidedly the states of a single
individual, and the single individual is, on the whole, what
concerns British empiricists An individual is conceived as
a complete person prior to relations with other
individ-uals The acquisition of concepts and knowledge is
regarded as a solitary enterprise, with little attention to the
education of children into a shared language and culture
There then arises the problem of other minds: How can I
know that there are any other minds or, if there are, what
goes on in them? How can there even be psychological
states that are not experienced by me? (Little attention was
paid to this problem before J S Mill, however.)
Individu-alism also inspired social contract theories: people are
con-ceived as fully formed individuals, capable of making
contracts, etc., prior to relations with others,
independ-ently of any shared culture or tradition The
transcen-dental I, by contrast, is less obviously a complete
individ-ual, or even an individual at all To the questions ‘Why can
there not be just one person? Why does the I splinter into
many individuals?’, Fichte and Schelling reply that
with-out others I would not be complete I would lack moral
constraints and thus be unable to display my (Kantian) freedom Bereft of others and confined to my own per-spective on the world, I could hardly extricate the world
from myself: it would be my world, not an objective world Hegel develops their thought in his concept of Geist, a
word for ‘mind’ that expands, more readily than its English counterpart, into a shared mind or ‘spirit’, into an
‘I that is We and a We that is I’ Heidegger too, with his concepts of ‘ being-with-others’ and the They, insists that
a shared world and a complete human being require a deep interconnection between individuals, not just a plurality of solitary individuals Such philosophical anti-individualism converges with the German propensity for cultural history (Herder, Dilthey) and sociology (Weber) The history of German philosophy is more complex than these generalizations suggest The first strictly Ger-man philosophers, writing in GerGer-man as often as in Latin, were the mystics, the earliest of whom were nuns, such as Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1173) and Mechthild of Magde-burg (1212–85) These prepared the ground for Meister Eckhart (1260–1337), Heinrich Seuse (1300–66), Johann Tauler (1300–61), and Thomas à Kempis (1379–1471) The mystics were not wholly divorced from scholastic philoso-phy Eckhart, for example, made use of *Neoplatonism and
of Aquinas, and his thought is essentially scholastic, even if his style and devotion are shaped by earlier mystics The mystics were much admired by Leibniz, and their influ-ence, especially on the Romantics, but also on, for example, Heidegger, is pervasive The greatest German philosopher
of the Renaissance, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64), was influ-enced by Eckhart, as well as by medieval logic, in arguing that the universe flows out of and returns to an unknow-able God Several aspects of his thought, especially his prin-ciple of the coincidence of opposites, anticipate Leibniz and Hegel (Hegel, however, nowhere mentions Nicholas.) Among later mystics, the shoemaker Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) had a large impact on later philosophers, including Hegel and Schelling (who called him a ‘miracu-lous phenomenon in the history of humanity’)
Böhme was persecuted by the Protestant orthodoxy established by Martin Luther (1483–1546), who rejected the metaphysical element in German philosophy, attacked Aristotelianism and Thomism, and advocated conceptual and verbal clarity Philip Melanchthon (1497– 1560), who was entrusted by Luther with the task of sys-tematizing the thought of the Reformation, paradoxically returned to Aristotle as the foundation of his system, thus establishing what came to be known as Protestant neo-scholasticism
The first indisputably great German philosopher is Leib-niz, who, although he did not teach philosophy and pub-lished relatively little, decisively shaped the future course
of philosophy in Germany and was in a sense the founder
of German idealism Christian Wolff, who was a follower
of Leibniz, achieved enormous popularity in the late eight-eenth century and was largely responsible for establishing
a clear, stable philosophical vocabulary in German Other rationalist philosophers were Mendelssohn and Alexander
German philosophy 335
Trang 7Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62), who first gave aesthetics
its name and established it as a distinct department of
phil-osophy, and whose Metaphysica (1739) was used by Kant as
the basis for his lectures
The German *Enlightenment reached its climax with
Kant, who initiated the most important period of
philo-sophical activity in modern times He generated a host of
followers, attempting to explain, systematize, and develop
his thought: among others, Karl Leonhard Reinhold
(1758–1823), Solomon Maimon (1753–1800), J S Beck
(1761–1840), and Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843)
Schiller gave Kantianism a distinctive historical and
aes-thetic bias that contributed to the growth of post-Kantian
idealism But other forces worked to the same end: for
example, Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88), the ‘magus of
the north’, a Protestant mystic who disliked the analytical
rationalism of the Enlightenment and saw more creative
power in feeling, language, and especially poetry, the
‘mother-tongue of the human race’ Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi (1743–1819) argued that our knowledge of mundane
and divine matters rests, not on argument, but on feeling
and faith He also initiated the revival of Spinoza, a crucial
influence on Herder, Goethe, and the post-Kantian
ideal-ists: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel The Romantic circle,
especially Novalis (1772–1801) and Schlegel, made
per-verse use of Fichte’s doctrines, cultivating the aphoristic
style later adopted by Nietzsche Schelling was seen as their
official philosopher Schleiermacher was another member
of the circle Hegel admired his On Religion: Speeches to its
Cultured Despisers (1799), but later came to hate him,
avowedly because he rejected his view that religion rests
on a feeling of ‘absolute dependence’ (in which case, Hegel
said, a dog is the best Christian), but perhaps also because
he envied his work on Heraclitus, Plato, and dialectic
With the death of Hegel in 1831 the period of German
idealism, which has no parallel elsewhere, came to end
The growth of the natural sciences cast suspicion on
philo-sophical systems and favoured *naturalism and
*material-ism The view of man as essentially rational gave way to
the view that he is primarily a biological creature,
dom-inated by will rather than reason Schopenhauer forms a
bridge between idealism and naturalism, shifting freely
from the ‘I’ to the ‘brain’, and Nietzsche moved further in
the direction of naturalism The best of the Hegelians
fol-lowed this trend: Feuerbach, Stirner, and Marx
Schelling’s late philosophy, essentially an elaboration of
idealism, was regarded as an anachronism Three other
developments which began in the nineteenth century
contributed to the upsurge of German philosophy in the
twentieth First, the neo-Kantians appealed to Kant both
to oppose metaphysical idealism and to supply a more
adequate foundation for the sciences They later included
Cassirer and Heidegger’s teacher Heinrich Rickert (1863–
1936) Second, Dilthey and Georg Simmel (1858–1918)
advanced the philosophy of history, making more use of
the concept of life than of reason (History and ‘life’ are
also central in Nietzsche’s thought.) Third, Brentano laid
the foundations of phenomenology
The main philosophical trends of the early twentieth century, a period of creativity almost equal to the age of idealism, emerged from these beginnings Husserl and Scheler developed *phenomenology, though Scheler (as protean as Schelling) moved closer to Nietzsche and Dilthey when he championed philosophical *anthropol-ogy Nicolai Hartmann abandoned neo-Kantianism to establish an empirically grounded ontology All of these tendencies, along with Kierkegaard, contributed to the
Existenzphilosophie of Jaspers and Heidegger Most of
these trends continued after the Second World War, but with several additions Heidegger’s thought developed away from, or at least beyond, his pre-war writings Gadamer elaborated Heidegger’s *hermeneutics into a hermeneutical philosophy The neo-Marxian critical theory of the *Frankfurt School, originated in the 1930s by Adorno and Horkheimer, continued to flourish after their return from exile and has been developed by Habermas Finally, analytical philosophy prospers in Germany, espe-cially under the influence of the Vienna Circle, Popper, Wittgenstein, and Anglo-American philosophers, but utilizing also the fertile resources of the German heritage
m.j.i
*Hegelianism; Kantianism; neo-Kantianism; Schlegel; Schleiermacher; English philosophy; French philosophy
L W Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors
(Cambridge, Mass., 1969)
F C Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism,
1781–1801 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
R Bubner, Modern German Philosophy (Cambridge, 1981).
J D Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (Athens,
Oh., 1978)
A O’Hear (ed.), German Philosophy since Kant (Cambridge, 1999).
H Schnadelbach, Philosophy in Germany 1831–1933 (Cambridge,
1984)
German philosophy today.Contemporary philosophiz-ing in the German-speakphilosophiz-ing realm is characterized by a
‘new obscurity’ (neue Unübersichtlichkeit, Jürgen Habermas).
The decline of previous philosophical systems within
and after the two World Wars led to a plurality of
coexisting approaches and directions They are often in opposition to the idealistic and transcendental traditions which had been dominant for a long time and are still influential (especially the writings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel) What appeared in the twentieth century as a revolution or break became estab-lished as branches of new traditions, which will likely con-tinue for quite a while They are of no less importance than the extensive investigations of the history of philoso-phy and the interpretation of classical texts, the treasures
of which are made fruitful for contemporary thinking Three main currents are characteristic today: (1) the
hermeneutic current, which evolved out of the plurality of interpretations and deals with them; (2) the post-modern current, which is brought about by the plurality of
life-forms, partially leading to an extreme relativism, and giv-ing special emphasis to aesthetic points of view; and
336 German philosophy
Trang 8(3) the scientific and science-oriented current, which reacts to
the growth of knowledge and the increase in
specializa-tion, and carefully considers the theoretical and practical
conditions and consequences of the scientization and
mechanization of the world we live in A shared core of
these three main currents is anthropology in all its different
aspects—a reflection about man as an interpreting, social,
and natural being that searches for orientation in an
increasingly complex world
1 Hermeneutic philosophy is the only main current today
that has persisted relatively intact since before the Second
World War, and is the deepest continuation of traditional
philosophy in the German-speaking realm It builds
espe-cially upon the analyses of understanding by Wilhelm
Dilthey, phenomenology (Edmund Husserl), analyses of
being (Martin Heidegger), and subsequent philosophical
hermeneutics in a narrower sense (Hans-Georg Gadamer)
At the centre of this ‘art of understanding’ are
philosoph-ical, literary, and theological texts and their historical
hori-zon, as well as the methods of the humanities, and
everyday life as a whole This approach is chiefly about
interpretations and hence also about the phenomenon of
language (which rose—but for different reasons and
espe-cially with the aim of a theory of meaning—to be a main
subject of analytical philosophy as well) The conditions
and features of the communicative society, as well as
lin-guistic practice itself, are analysed (with natural
connec-tions to speech-act theory, structuralism, and general
semiotics) Not the individual consciousness but, rather,
intersubjectivity is regarded as constitutive for reason and
the truth of statements Contrary to the coherence and
cor-respondence theories of truth, which are dominant in
sci-entific philosophy, consensus theories of truth are
favoured, and the concept of explanation is confronted
with the concept of understanding The underlying
motiv-ations for thought and action are analysed, leading to
dis-course ethics ( Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel) and a
strong tendency to investigate and criticize social
mecha-nisms (with connections to sociology) and the tradition of
philosophical enlightenment Sometimes social theory has
almost demanded the status of a prima philosophia Before
the reunification of Germany, Marxist philosophy also
had a shaping influence: in West Germany (FRG) as a
critical instance within the scope of the Frankfurt School
(Theodor W Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert
Mar-cuse, Jürgen Habermas, etc.), and quite differently in East
Germany (GDR) as a state doctrine Today, the spectrum
of the hermeneutic current extends from the attempting of
ultimate explanations in ideal-communicative and
tran-scendental-pragmatic contexts, to a ‘farewell to principles’
(Abschied vom Prinzipiellen, Odo Marquard) The search
for anthropological and social guide-lines for managing
one’s own existence took the place of systematizing
objective truths in a philosophia perennis This pragmatic
turn lead to a self-restriction of philosophy Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s later investigations of the philosophy of
language gave many impulses for the analysis of everyday
communication and the life-world In taking very different historical, geographical, but also individual ways of life into consideration, the ‘new obscurity’ is also reflected in the second contemporary main current:
2 Post-modern philosophy which, in the broader sense,
separates itself from ways of thinking which are orientated towards strict methods, rationality, linguistic analyses, and the search for objective knowledge It has been influ-enced partly by twentieth-century French philosophy So-called post-modernism (a somewhat misleading term which expresses, quite appropriately, a certain insecurity within this current) tries to interpret the plurality of approaches and perspectives affirmatively and as progress, contrary to sceptical objections At the same time, earlier philosophical systems and traditions are con-sidered ‘grand narratives’ among others Some aspects of the modern are preserved, however, which is why Wolf-gang Welsch spoke of ‘our postmodern modern age’ Here one continues to emphasize human autonomy; on the other hand, belief in the progress of science and society
is questioned or criticized as a form of totalitarianism The aim is a ‘narrative philosophy’ similar to Richard Rorty’s
in the USA
Questions about forms of life, and how to conduct one’s own life, are the focus of interest in this divergent current of thought, which exceeds post-modernism in a narrower sense; traditional philosophizing with its demand for ultimate obligations recedes into the back-ground Culture and art critics, journalists, artists, movie directors and talk-show hosts now consider themselves competent to answer philosophical questions The result
is a popularization of philosophical topics in philosophical cafés, feature pages, and on television Aesthetics, philoso-phy of art, and the search for meaning, happiness, and an art of living become more and more important; occasion-ally there are even attempts to apply philosophy thera-peutically A philosophy of the media has developed, where virtual reality, simulation, and surrogates acquire paradigmatic status There is a far-reaching scepticism about metaphysics and rationality, attacking social taboos (e.g in the evaluation of mental diseases and criminality) and cultural bias There is an increased exploration of ways of thinking from other cultures, especially Asia Finally, some post-modern philosophers oppose meta-physical or scientific realism, justifying this with historical investigations of era changes and paradigm shifts, as well
as studies of the sociology of science; they argue for diverse forms of anti-realism and relativism This is in sharp contrast to the third main current:
3 Scientific and science-oriented philosophy, which has
mostly been influenced by the Anglo-American world, and can be subdivided into a theoretical and a more
practical, applied part The theoretical side, with its
emphasis of the significance of logic, language analysis, and empiricism, is dominated by analytical philosophy and philosophy of science It is in the tradition of Cambridge philosophers like G E Moore, Bertrand Russell, the early Ludwig Wittgenstein, and especially the Vienna Circle
German philosophy today 337
Trang 9Historically its reception did not begin until the
emigra-tion of many of its proponents to the USA, and the
subse-quent radiation of their teachings Additionally, Karl
Popper and his successors had a formative influence on
philosophy of science and political philosophy (fallibilism,
criticism of totalitarianism) Also initiated by Popper, and
in conjunction with biological discoveries, evolutionary
epistemology was developed Here the nature and
cap-acity of our epistemological faculties are viewed
objectiv-istically in the light of the Darwinian theory of selection
Contrary to this, radical constructivism takes a more
rela-tivistic and subjecrela-tivistic view, culminating in
quasi-idealistic epistemological schemes It is inspired by
cyber-netics and neurobiology In the framework of the Erlanger
school (Paul Lorenzen), constructivist approaches also
exist in philosophy of science (especially of physics) and
mathematics The focus of interest here is the process and
methods of gaining knowledge: philosophy of science is
transformed into a theory of action, and laws of nature are
interpreted as instructions to act Structuralism
(Wolf-gang Stegmüller and successors) is another prominent
current in philosophy of science; its focal point is, the
for-mal description and reconstruction of scientific theories
Finally, those working within the framework of modern
philosophy of nature reflect on scientific knowledge and
interpret its implications for an extensive philosophical
world-view Partly this has the character of a
counter-movement to post-modern pluralism and splintering,
striving for orientation by means of a unification of
sci-ence and world interpretation It has, however, by now
reached its own high degree of differentiation and, thus,
complexity or obscurity The central issue being dealt
with is naturalism (physicalism, materialism) It is both
elaborated and stated in rigorous forms, and also
criti-cized Especially influential upon philosophy of nature
and mind are discoveries in physics (cosmology, chaos
theory, particle physics) and biology (evolutionary
the-ory, neuroscience) As in the Anglo-American world, the
mind–body problem, consciousness, intentionality,
per-sonal identity, free will, and artificial intelligence have
long been central issues, with interdisciplinary
connec-tions to evolutionary and cognitive psychology,
linguis-tics, and computer science A new topic is evolutionary
ethics, which combines sociobiology, ethnology, and
behavioural ecology to explore possible biological
foun-dations of morality
The applied side of scientific philosophy is concerned
with the decisions required by new results and
opportun-ities of science and technology There is a political
dimen-sion to this, and that is why philosophers participate in
advisory boards and parliamentary decision-making
Par-ticularly urgent and controversial are the different
domains of bioethics, especially because of the new
possi-bilities in genetics and medicine Another focus of interest
is philosophy of technology Here, quite pragmatic
ten-dencies are common, which accompany technological
developments mainly reflectively and try to evaluate their
effects and implications
The three main currents outlined are not unrelated and separate from each other There were and are connecting topics, attempts at mediation, and more or less fruitful controversies (e.g the positivist dispute) Within the phil-osophy of mind, for instance, phenomenological and ana-lytical approaches are linked to each other, post-modern ideas are discussed (‘the end of the subject’), and some aspects of traditional German idealism are maintained (e.g self-consciousness in the work of Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank) Philosophers of technology have to deal with the critical hermeneutical tradition since Martin Hei-degger Philosophers of nature derive some inspirations (e.g for the problem of emergence) from the organismic conceptions of nature which go back to German idealism and romanticism There is interpollination between hermeneutical and analytical schools, especially in discus-sions of ethics and ecology In general pragmatics, there are efforts to integrate hermeneutic, relativistic, and natur-alistic perspectives Whatever its different currents and points of view, philosophy should, after all, always be indispensable as a means for conceptual analysis and reflection, as well as being a critical authority, for science
k.w
A Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy (Cambridge, 2003).
P Gorner, Twentieth-Century German Philosophy (Oxford, 2000).
J Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, tr W M Hohengarten
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994)
K Wuchterl, Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Philosophie des 20.
Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1995).
—— Handbuch der analytischen Philosophie und
Grundlagen-forschung (Bern, 2002).
Gestalt theory.A psychological theory which tried to explain various aspects of psychology in terms of
struc-tures (Gestalten), particularly in relation to the tendency of
forms of *perception to conform to ‘good’ structures (the
so-called law of Prägnanz) The movement was initiated
by Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1897–1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) in reaction against earlier sensationalist psychological theories which tried to break down the mental life into atomic sensations and ideas The Gestaltists emphasized ‘wholes’ and struc-tures which could not be broken down into elements Ini-tially the movement was concerned with perception, starting from the phi-phenomenon, the apparent move-ment of alternating points of light; but gradually other aspects of psychology, including both their physiological and their philosophical backing, were brought within the same principles, especially by Köhler d.w.h
D W Hamlyn, The Psychology of Perception (London, 1957).
K Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (London, 1935).
Gettier, Edmund (1927– ) Gettier is famous in
Anglo-American epistemology for one three-page paper in which he attacks the tripartite definition of *knowledge
This defines ‘S knows that p’ as:
338 German philosophy today
Trang 101 p is true.
2 S believes that p.
3 S’s belief that p is justified.
Gettier showed by counter-example that this definition
is insufficient; there are cases where the three clauses are
all true, but S does not know The general idea was that
one’s true belief might be justified in a way that depends
too much on luck, as, for example, when a clock which is
normally accurate happens to have stopped, but its hands
indicate the very time at which one glances at it In a case
like this, one has a true belief which is justified, but is not
knowledge (Russell made the same point some decades
earlier.) Considerable effort has been spent, especially in
the USA, on repairing the definition Counter-examples to
suggested repairs are known as Gettier counter-examples
j.d
*counter-example, philosophy by
E L Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, Analysis (1963).
Geulincx, Arnold (1624–69) An occasionalist, a modified
Cartesian, and an anti-Aristotelian, Geulincx moved from
Louvain to Leiden, and simultaneously from Catholicism
to *Calvinism, in 1658 Using the analogy of two
synchron-ized but otherwise unconnected *clocks which strike
simultaneously, he pointed out the possibility of there
being two law-governed areas with no causal interaction
Applying this to the general case he held that though God
acts immediately and in a lawlike manner in the realms of
both thought and extension, there is no interaction
between the two Like Descartes, Geulincx was a plenist
who held that body and extension are coextensive Hence,
given his supposition that the universe is infinite, so is
mat-ter Motion, however, may not be Beyond the universe of
events lies infinite space: ‘completely solid, completely
dark, harder than any adamant’ j.j.m
*Cartesianism; occasionalism
B Cooney, ‘Arnold Geulincx: A Cartesian Idealist’, Journal of the
History of Philosophy (1978).
Gewirth, Alan (1912–2004) Gewirth did important work
on Descartes’s theory of knowledge and medieval
politi-cal philosophy, especially Marsilius of Padua, but he is best
known for his attempt to develop a stringently rational
foundation for morality in Reason and Morality The
cen-tral argument of this book begins with a claim that every
rational agent must accept, which is that he or she must
have freedom and well-being Gewirth claims that when
the implications of this claim are fully worked out, it
fol-lows that every rational agent must also accept the claim
that all prospective purposive agents have a moral *right to
freedom and well-being Professor Gewirth spent most of
his career at the University of Chicago j.p.s
Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago, 1978).
—— The Community of Rights (Chicago, 1996).
Ghaza¯l ı¯, al- (1058/9–1111) Persian Abu¯ H a¯mid
Muh.ammad Ghaza¯lı¯ (Algazel in Latin texts) was the most
influential Ash‘arite theologian of his time His role as head of the state-endowed Niz.a¯miyya Madrasa, his
monu-mental work Revival of Religious Sciences, and his autobio-graphical account Deliverance from Error (often compared
to Augustine’s Confessions) furthered the triumph of
reve-lation over reason His specifically anti-philosophical
works, Intentions of the Philosophers and Incoherence of the Philosophers, called on theologians to use philosophical
technique to oppose ‘heretic’ arguments However, the effects on philosophy proved positive The study of logic gained widespread theological acceptance The identifica-tion of twenty philosophical problems argued to be false (including eternity, immortality, and rational causality) were brilliantly rebutted by Averroës, thus leading to refinement of Aristotelian arguments, and Sohravardı¯’s
W M Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghaza¯lı¯ (London, 1951).
ghost in the machine Gilbert Ryle in his book The
Con-cept of Mind held that the ‘Cartesian’ tradition represents
the human body as a purely physical thing (the machine), and the human *mind as a purely non-physical thing (the ghost) somehow inhabiting the body and ‘operating’ it from inside ‘The ghost in the machine’ is his derisive title for this—as Ryle argues—fundamentally misleading
*self; persons; subjectivity; category mistake
G Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London, 1949), 15 ff.
Gibbard, Allan (1942– ) American philosopher,
profes-sor at the University of Michigan, who has developed a general theory of normative judgement According to this expressivist theory, to cite a reason for action or judgement
is to accept norms that give it weight in deliberation Norms serve the biological function of social co-ordination, and Gibbard offers naturalistic accounts of their force and degree of objectivity Morality concerns the rationality of feelings such as guilt and anger that sanction unco-operative actions Feelings have rationales stating that the circumstances that elicit them call for the actions they prompt, and moral norms endorse or alter the rationales for these moral feelings that have naturally evolved a.h.j
A Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative
Judge-ment (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
—— Thinking How to Live (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
Giles of Rome (c.1247–1316) A member of the Order of
the Hermits of St Augustine, rising to become General of the order in 1292 He studied at Paris, possibly under Aquinas, and eventually taught theology there He pro-duced a number of commentaries on Aristotle’s writings,
though his most famous treatise Errors of the Philosophers
was a different sort of work, in which he attacks Aristotle and a number of major Muslim and Jewish thinkers His aim is, however, not always accurate For example, although he singles out Maimonides for censure partly
on the grounds that the latter taught that some terms
Giles of Rome 339