Philosophical Readings
Not a member yet
181 research outputs found
Sort by
Platonismo o psicologismo? La filosofia della logica di Lotze
Get PDFWhen not ignored by scholars, Lotze’s logic is understood as an example of either psychologism or Platonism. As a matter of fact, despite his allowance for the topic of the origin of concepts, Lotze manages to avoid logical psychologism. At the same time, concepts cannot be said to have validity (Geltung) in the same way as propositions in themselves do: were this the case, one could actually ascribe Lotze a form of Platonism. Avoiding the crass dichotomy between realism and nominalism, Lotze works out a meticulous analysis of the relation between general concepts and our knowledge of reality, which is perfectly compliant with his teleological worldview
La fenomenologia e i molteplici sensi della crisi. Dalla crisi dei fondamenti alla crisi dell’umanità europea
Get PDFIn his work and during his life, from the Philosophy of Arithmetic to the Krisis of European Sciences and even beyond, Husserl fight constantly against a certain « crisis » and settle Phenomenology as answer to the forms of crisis that step by step he focuses as critical moments of our civilization. But the meaning of “crisis” is manifold, can be viewed from different perspectives and assessed by different forms, in continuity or incremental to each other. The evolution of the idea of « crisis » let us finally sketch the dynamic and speculative evolution of Phenomenology itself and its standing critical self-interpretation. In our paper, we will explain and focus the different meanings of “crisis” in Phenomenology in order to understand its evolution and the intrinsic continuity between the project of the Logical Investigations (where Phenomenology is presented as a new form of Mathesis universalis) and the late period, in which Phenomenology itself is presented as an Hyper-Rationalism with a well defined role in the History of Europe and of the Mankind. 
Il dominio della crisi in Europa
No full textThe paper seeks to interpret the European crisis following the critical-pragmatic approach that has been developed by the French sociologist Luc Boltanski. In this respect, the essay aims to achieve two main objectives. The first one is to show how the current crisis can be described not only focusing on its systemic, structural nature, but also taking into account the critical claims of social actors. In this respect, it will be argued that the European crisis can be seen as a form of institutional disorder, i.e. a lack of legitimacy of supra-national European institutions, which is grounded on the distrust of both European citizens and international markets. The second purpose is to explain how such a condition of crisis can foster and support the affirmation of a «regime of complex domination», namely a non-planned, unintended form of oppression
Hermann Lotze and Franz Brentano
Get PDFFranz Brentano was not a solitary figure who propounded his philosophy in lonely isolation from other contemporary philosophers in Germany, as some neo-Brentanists have claimed over the last years. The aim of this paper is to correct such misconceptions by establishing that Brentano developed his philosophical psychology while actively engaged in the rich intellectual-historical and academic context of his time—in particular, under the influence of Hermann Lotze. Specifically, Brentano: (i) adopted from Lotze the idea that judgment is not just an association of ideas but an assertion of content; (ii) he also embraced Lotze’s idea that the content of perception is something given; (iii) Brentano notion of intentionality, too, was inherited from Lotze; (iv) as well as the method of descriptive psychology; (v) finally, Lotze and Brentano shook hands admitting that perception and knowledge are intrinsically connected with emotions. At the same time, there were at least two points at which Brentano disagreed with Lotze: (i) he criticised Lotze’s logical sign theory of perception as well as Lotze’s atomism. These were clearly constructivist theories inspired by Kant. (ii) Brentano also criticized Lotze’s principle of teleomechanism. It was influenced by the German Idealists
“A halting-stage in the evolution of logical theory”. John Dewey’s critical engagement with Lotze’s logic
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the way in which the American pragmatist John Dewey’s engaged critically with Hermann Lotze’s logic in a series of papers in the 1903 anthology Studies in Logical Theory. The first part of the paper describes the backdrop for Dewey’s critical engagement with Lotze, namely, his attempt to distinguish his newly developed instrumentalist understanding of logic from the absolute idealism that had played an important role in his earlier thinking. The next part of the paper then describes the instrumental position from which Dewey approached Lotze’s thinking, while the final part of the paper examines Dewey’s critical analysis of Lotze’s thinking about logic. Here the conclusion will be that even though Dewey saw Lotze as “one of the most vigorous and acute of modern logicians”, he also thought that Lotze represented “a halting-stage in the evolution of logical theory” in so far as his thinking never managed to get beyond the classical “empiristic and transcendental logics” in the way that Dewey thought his own instrumental logic managed to do
Lotze\u27s Conception of Metaphysics and Science: A Middle Position in the Materialism Controversy
Get PDFThe materialism controversy, which tore the middle 19th century intellectual German society apart, involved scientists, theologians, philosophers, teachers, and even more. Hermann Lotze, who at first was not willing to engage in this dispute, was soon appealed to as an arbiter based upon his previous epistemological writings concerning life sciences, psychology and natural science in general. Since he appeared to defend both a mechanistic point of view in natural science and spiritualism in metaphysics, representatives of both these extreme positions thought he could help backing up their own views during the controversy. Yet, as Lotze himself described it, the controversy was for his times, generally speaking, only “useless torture”. This paper aims at showing that Lotze’s specific role in the controversy corresponds to what we will assume to be a clear theoretical need of the time: i.e., a critical assessment of how to connect natural science with metaphysics
Introduction
Get PDFNo better analogy can be found to indirectly “illustrate” and thus describe the vicissitudes of the thought of Rudolf Hermann Lotze than what Don Abbondio exclaims about Carnades in Alessandro Manzoni’s 1827 masterpiece I promessi sposi. Carneades was in fact one of the most important and famous thinkers of the Hellenic period; as one of the great heads of the Platonic Academy after Arcesilaus, he was sent to Rome in 155 BC to lecture on justice (together with Diogenes of Babylon and Critolaus). Apparently, more than 400 books were written about him. And yet, the question that Don Abbondio asks himself (“Carnades! Who was he?”) reveals how little his name is known outside the quite restricted circles of professional scholarship[1].
[1] M. Bonazzi, Il platonismo (Milan: Einaudi, 2015)
Crisi e storia in Husserl. Attualità e inattualità della "Crisi delle scienze europee"
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to discuss whether and to what extent Husserl’s Crisis can help us to understand the challenges of Europe’s current crisis. The paper identifies both the problematic aspects of Husserl’s analysis and its fruitful components. In this connection, special attention is paid to three themes: the relationship between philosophical thought and Europe’s crisis, the emergence of a phenomenological philosophy of history, and the political scope of the life-world. These themes are discussed with particular reference to the connection between Husserl’s philosophy of subjectivity and his conception of history
Il fascino dell\u27ideale. Heidegger e il lotzismo di Husserl.
No full textThis paper provides an interpretation of two paragraphs from Heidegger’s 1925-26 lectures on the question of “truth”. First, I will consider Heidegger\u27s criticism of Lotze’s notion of “ideality”; then, I will focus on Heidegger\u27s claim that Husserl was “fascinated” by such a Lotzean notion (especially if understood as “universality”). In the first section I will describe Heidegger\u27s ontological approach to the distinction between reality and ideality. In the second section I will explain why, in Heidegger\u27s view, Lotze’s understanding of the notions of “reality” and “ideality”, construed as different forms of Wirklichkeit, depends on some uncritical presumptions. In the third section, I will evaluate the consequences of Lotze\u27s perspective on the notions of ideality and truth, so as to turn my attention to Husserl’s Prolegomena and his allegedly adoption of Lotze’s notion of “ideality” as universality. Accordingly, I will suggest that Heidegger’s criticism is limited not only to Husserl\u27s Prolegomena but to his phenomenology as a whole. Finally, I will discuss the problem of universality from the point of view of Heidegger’s existential analytic. By referring to a 1925 lecture, I will suggest that Heidegger’s rejection of Husserl’s “reduction” is to be read in light of his criticism of the notion of “ideality”