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The article is a survey of the impact of US political philosophy over its Italian counterpart. Such impact has not been deep, judging from the presence of Italian authors in the American debate, even though the most important American authors have been translated in Italian, and their work has been the object of essays and reviews by several Italian authors belonging to different schools of thought. There are two explanations, according to the author of the survey, of such relative inhospitality of Italian political philosophy to its American homologue. The first is a general difference over the way to understand philosophy itself. Whereas American philosophers subscribe to what might be described roughly as an analytical understanding of their discipline, the majority of Italian philosophers are still under the spell of several brands of historicist or relativistic thought. The second is the sensible difference in the understanding of liberalism, the predominant attitude among political philosophers in the USA. Whereas in the USA liberalism is understood as a political theory that deals with normative models of just institutions, in Italy, where it is far from the prevalent orientation among the political philosophers, it is conceived ‘meta-politically’.     

Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

Summary

The issue which I wish to address in this paper is the widespread tendency in Anglophone philosophy to insist on a separation between the history of philosophy and the history of ideas or intellectual history. This separation reflects an anxiety on the part of philosophers lest the special character of philosophy will be dissolved into something else in the hands of historians. And it is borne of a fundamental tension between those who think of philosophy's past as a source of ideas and arguments of interest to the present, and those who hold that the philosophy of the past should be studied on its own terms, in relation to its immediate context, without reference to the present. The challenge, then, is to re-historicise the history of philosophy, and to keep the philosophers onside.     

Big Philosophical Questions: Why They Matter and Why They Are Still Around

Big philosophical questions—about the mind, the idea of the good, justice, beauty, knowledge—have been the prime interest of philosophers ever since Plato first raised them in his dialogues. However, regardless of how hard philosophers have been trying to find answers to them, it seems that all they have ever managed to do was to find reasons for disagreements, and, on the whole, to have failed to reach a consensus on pretty much anything. Some philosophers now claim that there hasn’t been much progress in philosophy, especially when compared to the sciences. I take up this verdict and try to refute it, first by offering an alternative view on what counts as progress, and then by analyzing big philosophical questions and their relevance for our intellectual and practical pursuits. I argue that, due to the distinctive nature of philosophical curiosity, coming up with answers to the big philosophical questions is an ideal that can hardly be met, but that philosophy nevertheless delivers various benefits, intellectual and practical, which the proponents of the No-Progress View tend to ignore.     

Cosmopolitanism as Nihilism: Rousseau's Study of Paris

Today's cosmopolitanism and its ideal of the global citizen is an attempt to bring together the universality of philosophy with the dedication of politics, and more precisely the freedom of the mind with political freedom. This attempted synthesis was also attempted in the eighteenth century by the French philosophes and was examined most carefully and comprehensively by Rousseau. His First Discourse outlines the deficiencies of cosmopolitanism and attempts to reestablish the conflict between philosophy and politics, but it is in his romantic novel Julie that he treats cosmopolitanism most exhaustively as a way of life and as a social order. There he argues that cosmopolitanism is really just a prejudice of metropolises and that its ideal is only a reflection of the ruling element—the gynaecocracy. Ultimately, cosmopolitans are neither philosophers nor citizens and their attempt to be both means that they are nothing at all.     

The place of historiography in the network of logical empiricism

ABSTRACT

In this paper I investigate how intellectual problems concerning an epistemology of history and a historical view of knowledge played a role in the network of logical empiricist philosophers between 1930 and 1945. Specifically, I focus on the practical efforts of Hans Reichenbach and Otto Neurath to incorporate these intellectual stakes concerning history. I argue that Reichenbach was mainly concerned with creating more institutional space for scientific philosophy. Consequently, he was interested in determining his relation to historically oriented philosophy on the practical level only. Otto Neurath, I claim, was interested in promoting an intellectual incorporation of an epistemology of history and a historical view of knowledge into the Unity of Science movement. His attempts, however, largely failed. I conclude that the intellectual stakes concerning history did have an effect within the network of logical empiricist philosophers, but that, by 1945 these stakes were entirely dissolved. The displacement of the network to the United States removed Reichenbach’s practical problems, while Neurath was unable to persuade enough actors before his death.     

The Future of the Philosophy of Historiography

This article argues that the perception of decline among philosophers of history reflects the diffused weak academic status of the discipline, as distinct from the booming research activity and demand for philosophy of history that keeps pace with the growth rate of publications in the philosophies of science and law. This growth is justified and rational because the basic problems of the philosophy of history, concerning the nature of historiographical knowledge and the metaphysical assumptions of historiography, have maintained their relevance. Substantive philosophy of history has an assured popularity but is not likely to win intellectual respectability because of its epistemic weaknesses. I suggest focusing on problems that a study of historiography can help to understand and even solve, as distinct from problems that cannot be decided by an examination of historiography, such as the logical structure of explanation (logical positivism)and the relation between language and reality (post‐structuralism). In particular, following Quine's naturalized epistemology, I suggest placing the relation between evidence and historiography at the center of the philosophy of historiography. Inspired by the philosophy of law, I suggest there are three possible relations between input (evidence)and output in historiography: determinism, indeterminism, and underdeterminism. An empirical examination of historiographical agreement, disagreement, and failure to communicate may indicate which relation holds at which parts of historiography. The historiographical community seeks consensus, but some areas are subject to disagreements and absence of communication; these are associated with historiographical schools that interpret conflicting models of history differently to fit their evidence. The reasons for this underdetermination of historiography by evidence needs to be investigated further.     

Danto, History, and The Tragedy of Human Existence

Philosophy of history is the Cinderella of contemporary philosophy. Philosophers rarely believe that the issues dealt with by philosophers of history are matters of any great theoretical interest or urgency. In their view philosophy of history rarely goes beyond the question of how results that have already been achieved elsewhere can or should be applied to the domain of historical writing. Moreover, contemporary philosophers of history have done desperately little to dispel the low opinion that their colleagues have of them. In this essay I argue that Arthur Danto is the exception confirming the rule, for Danto's philosophy of representation may help us understand how texts relate to what they are about. The main shortcoming of (twentieth‐century) philosophy of language undoubtedly is that it never bothered to investigate the philosophical mysteries of the text. The writing of history is a philosophical goldmine and we must praise Danto for having reminded us of this.     

Living the Theologico-Political Problem: Leo Strauss on the Common Ground of Philosophy and Theology

Leo Strauss argues that the “theologico-political” problem arose from the competing claims of rationalist philosophy and theology. Although he urges others to take sides in this debate, most theorists see it as insoluble, since it is rooted in competing traditions and different, non-demonstrable, epistemic principles. Strauss, however, argues that there is a common ground capable of sustaining a contest between the two: their appeal to the pre-philosophic understanding of justice as moral virtue. The contest between the Bible and Socratic-Platonic philosophy centers on which of the two better understands what justice is, what completes it, and in what respect it is good. Strauss enables us to see why Plato’s Socratic dialogues became indispensable models for classical and medieval philosophers who sought to meet the challenge of theology on the vital common ground of philosophy and theology.     

DEFENDING SPIRIT,SPIRITUALIZING MATTER: NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE MEDICAL SCIENCES

This review essay discusses Larry Sommer McGrath's Making Spirit Matter: Neurology, Psychology, and Selfhood in Modern France (2020), a history of the philosophical current known as “spiritualism.” The book covers the long nineteenth century, focusing especially on the first part of the Third Republic (1870–1914), and studies how French academic philosophers confronted the discourses about human cognition and behavior that were produced by physicians—namely, physiologists and pathologists, phrenologists, neurologists, alienists, and psychiatrists. It describes how, while engaged in this confrontation, French philosophy took a peculiar shape, eventually influencing the development of some sciences—namely, psychology, which emerged progressively as a discipline at the crossroads of medicine and philosophy. In the second part of the essay, starting from a terminological analysis of a series of terms dealing with “spirit,” I consider the formation of spiritualism by adopting an approach that diverges slightly from the ones proper to history of philosophy and intellectual history. I inscribe the philosophical discourses in their contexts of emergence, paying particular attention to institutional macrostructures and their inertia. This provides another perspective on “spiritualism,” which may no longer be conceived as a current or a school; rather, it should be conceived as the effect of the conditions of possibility of academic philosophy in France. It seems to me that, starting from the beginning of the nineteenth century, because of the organization of the educational institutions, the French philosophers’ agenda consisted mainly in opposing all forms of materialism, mechanism, and determinism and in defending the legitimacy of their discipline.     

Biblical anthropology and the idea of human prehistory in late antiquity

Late Antiquity is an important period in the history of anthropology because it marks a divide between the naturalistic and rationalistic anthropological ideas of Greco-Roman philosophers and the "biblical anthropology" that was formulated by Medieval Christian writers. The biblical anthropology that emerged in Late Antiquity addressed the question of the origin of the first humans, our relationship to the natural world, and the original state of mankind. While early Christian philosophers based much of this biblical anthropology on the Genesis account of early human history, they also utilized a great deal of Greco-Roman philosophy in order to expound a vision of human prehistory that profoundly influenced anthropological thought well into the modern era.     

Épistémologie 1900 la tradition Française

The paper reviews the French tradition on epistemology and the reaction of the philosophical milieu in the early XX^th century against the crisis of philosophical concepts induced by the development of science. The 1^st International Congress on Philosophy of 1900 in Paris shows that philosophy tries to confirm her hegemony on sciences, but for this, philosophers have to embark into history of science. History of science becomes for philosophy the means to keep the highest place in the whole realm of knowledge: philosophers become historians of science and supervise historical institutes. It is still possible to show quite a continuity between the philosophical questions of 1900 and some similar problems raised in the years between the two world wars, especially by Gaston Bachelard.     

“WITHOUT THINKERS … NO THEORIES OF THE WORLD”

Tim Crane's books Aspects of Psychologism and The Objects of Thought present a perspective on human intentionality based on internalism about mental contents. Crane understands intentionality as the defining aspect of the mental. The theory of intentionality that he formulates is similar to that of John Searle when it comes to ontological commitments, but it is also marked by a more traditional approach that retains the concept of intentional objects as its central aspect. In this review I examine the implications of Crane's internalism for the philosophy of history, by comparing his views with some well‐known arguments in favor of externalism about mental contents, such as Hilary Putnam's “Twin Earth” and Tyler Burge's “arthritis” mental experiments. Although internalism about mental contents such as Crane's is a minority view among contemporary analytic philosophers, I argue that it has significant advantages when it comes to the philosophy of history, because it is much better aligned with standard interpretive procedures in historical research. At the same time, externalism about mental contents typically results in inappropriate contextualizations and approaches that most practicing historians will find awkward. More generally, it is possible to argue that over decades, analytic philosophers’ externalist tendencies have significantly contributed to the reduced interest in their views among philosophers of history. The final section of the article reviews the implication of Crane's views on nonconceptual contents of human perception for art historiography.     

HISTORY AND THE MANIFEST IMAGE: HAYDEN WHITE AS A PHILOSOPHER OF HISTORY1

To claim that Hayden White has yet to be read seriously as a philosopher of history might seem false on the face of it. But do tropes and the rest provide any epistemic rationale for differing representations of historical events found in histories? As an explanation of White's influence on philosophy of history, such a proffered emphasis only generates a puzzle with regard to taking White seriously, and not an answer to the question of why his efforts should be worthy of any philosophical attention at all. For what makes his emphasis on narrative structure and its associated tropes of philosophical relevance? What, it may well be asked, did (or could) any theory that draws its categories from a stock provided by literary criticism contribute to explicating problems with regard to the warranting of claims about knowledge, explanation, or causation that represent those concerns that philosophy typically brings to this field? Robert Doran's anthologizing of previously uncollected pieces, ranging as they do over a literal half‐century of White's published work, offers an opportunity to identify explicitly those philosophical themes and arguments that regularly and prominently feature there. Moreover, White's essays in this volume demonstrate a credible knowledge of and interest in mainstream analytic philosophers of his era and also reveal White as deeply influenced by or well acquainted with other important philosophers of history. White thus invites a reading of his work as philosophy, and this volume presents the opportunity for accepting it as such.     

Evolution from molecules to men

Early modern philosophers discussed the question of time in a variety of contexts; an enduring theme is the connection between time and the rational powers of the human soul. However, authors from a variety of confessional and philosophical perspectives also considered how the passions of the soul engage both humans and animals with the temporal world. This article considers a debate about the connections between time and the passions between two French physicians, Marin Cureau de la Chambre (1594–1669) and Pierre Chanet (c.1603–c.1660). The article explores the extent to which their background in late Aristotelian philosophy shaped this project, and its place within the broader transformation of the philosophy of time in the seventeenth century. Cureau and Chanet belong within a well-known early modern tradition of debates about animal reasoning, but their discussion of time and the passions is a significant yet neglected episode in the vernacularisation of scholastic and Aristotelian natural philosophy.     

Philosophy,Sociability and Modern Patriotism: Young Herder between Rousseau and Abbt

Summary

In his early years Herder is known to have been a follower of Rousseau (via Kant). This article argues that there was indeed a substantial overlap between Herder's and Rousseau's ideas in Herder's early writings, particularly in terms of their joint critique of abstract philosophy and their understanding of the sentimental foundations of morality, as well as their commitment to the ideals of human moral independence and political freedom. Yet Herder's admiration for Rousseau's moral philosophy did not lead him to adopt Rousseau's critique of sociability even in this early period, and there was in fact a deep divergence between their political views. Herder attempted to combine a Rousseauian cultural critique, ‘human’ moral philosophy and philosophy of education with ideas inspired by Thomas Abbt's theory of monarchical patriotism. In contrast to Rousseau, and following Abbt, Herder posited the existence of natural patriotic feelings and underlined their importance in guaranteeing good government and political freedom. Thus, Herder could have a relatively optimistic view of the role of ‘human philosophy’ in regenerating patriotism in a modern setting. Herder embraced Abbt's emphasis on the positive aspects of modern monarchies and ‘modern liberty’ when compared to ancient republics, highlighting the compatibility of Christianity, international commerce and religious tolerance, and the general possibility of developing one's natural inclinations in modern monarchies.     

Wörter und Bilder in der österreichisch‐ungarischen Philosophie: Von Palágyi zu Wittgenstein

The thesis according to which technologies of communication have implications not just for the form, but also for the content and indeed for the overall logic of what is being communicated rests on a set of general philosophical assumptions as regards the relation between thought and its medium. The paper shows that formulating these assumptions, and elaborating them, has been a characteristic concern of Austro‐Hungarian philosophy; that between the philosophers who played a role in the relevant endeavours there obtained significant, sometimes mutual, influences; and that Austro‐Hungarian realities ‐ basically, the phenomenon of disturbed communication within the Habsburg Empire ‐ had a marked effect on their thought.     

Canadian Philosophy: A Dialectical Exploration

This article inquires into the difference between philosophy as a universal practice and philosophy as a cultural product; its aim is to establish a case for there being Canadian philosophy. Philosophy as a practice can exhibit a dialectical framework. The practice can pursue both universal truths and cultural variations in expressions of those truths. Each philosophical endeavor requires the other to be meaningful. No matter how abstract a “truth” may be, an example always creates cultural relevance. The article introduces the example of an early Canadian philosopher, whose work is documented in the book by Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada, 1850-1950. John Watson (1847–1939) was the most prolific and well-known contributor to philosophy in early Canada, pursuing universal questions and yet responding to the circumstances of his new home in developing Canada and, in doing so, contributing to Canadian cultural interpretations of philosophical questions. This article uses his example to conclude that the study of philosophy in Canada must include Canadian philosophy.     

The origins of democratic thinking: The invention of politics in classical Athens

While many (perhaps most) of those engaged in the study of philosophy would accept the continued reality and importance of an analytic/continental divide in the discipline, there has been no serious examination of the political dimensions of this rift. Here a series of political assumptions are revealed to be widely held among the British analytic philosophers who were active during the period in which the analytic/continental divide was being established. This paper will approach demonstrating the analysts’ beliefs about the political affiliations of continental philosophy in three ways. Firstly, it will produce direct evidence of the analysts’ belief in the relationship between 19th century continental philosophy and various politically undesirable regimes. Secondly, it will examine in detail one illustrative example, that of Hegel. Thirdly, it will illustrate how the political beliefs already canvassed permeated beyond the limited political critique of continental philosophy into the analysts’ writing on the history of philosophy.     

Hegel,Analytic Philosophy’s Pharmakon

In this article I argue that Hegel has become analytic philosophy’s “pharmakon”—both its “poison” and its “cure.” Traditionally, Hegel’s philosophy has been attacked by Anglo-American analytical philosophers for its alleged charlatanism and irrelevance. Yet starting from the 1970s there has been a revival of interest in Hegel’s philosophical work, which, I suggest, may be explained by three developments: (1) the revival of interest in Aristotelianism following Saul Kripke’s and Hilary Putnam’s work on natural kinds, and Elizabeth Anscombe’s, Philippa Foot’s, and Putnam’s opposition to the fact-value distinction; (2) the rehabilitation of Hegel’s theories by various philosophers, including Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, Fred Beiser, Robert Stern, and Stephen Houlgate; and (3) the Sellars-inspired philosophy of mind of John McDowell and of Robert Brandom. The first and third of these reasons, I argue, have led several analytic theorists to cast Hegel in a more positive light as the “cure” for analytic philosophy. The combined outcome of these changes, both ironic and fitting, is that the Hegelian principle of internal critique has played a significant role not only in analytic philosophy’s rapprochement with Hegel’s philosophy but also in overcoming the Analytic-Continental philosophical divide.     

After the Death of God: Postsecularity?

These recent volumes clearly show that the work of the recent generation of French philosophers, and the philosophy they continue to inspire, offer a splendid resource for theologians and theorists of religion. They stage a challenge to received divisions between philosophy and theology, deconstructing the secular/non-secular bifurcation on which they rest. In this vein, the contribution of the 'postsecularists' is to emphasise the centrality of issues of social justice at the heart of the religious sensibility.