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Metaphysics in the Age of Scientific Hegemony
This book consists of a series of essays which concern themselves with the persisting relevance of metaphysical speculation in our time. It delves into Hegel's politics, the ethics of Confucius and Aristotle, the research of Leibniz, with its astonishing anticipations of modern ideas, Wittgenstein's reflections on language, the meaning of music and art and a capital instance of a failed enquiry into life and mind from a scientific point of view. In all these instances, the focus is on the autonomous agency of the human being. Metaphysics as a philosophical discipline has long been under fire for its doctrinal presumptions, but never more so than under the hegemony of science. Yet, as the essays in this volume demonstrate, it remains an indispensable tool for thinkers in all areas of research in which the human creature is under the spotlight. That this involves a reversal of competences has not been seriously accepted--predominantly in terms of the gulf between autonomous agency and the mechanistic doxa under which science is compelled to operate. This volume seeks to put the torch on these discrepancies, where presuppositions end and understanding must take over.
Life and Mind
In this bold, provocative account, the author argues that the phenomena of life and mind elude purely materialistic explanations. Living matter occupies a unique phase of existence which results from the complex transformation of its biochemical synergies. Analogous phase changes account for mind and self-reflexive consciousness. A central role in the living state is played by intelligence, which has not been recognised as a non-negotiable precondition of organic existence. Yet the concept of evolutionary adaptivity relies tacitly on it. Thus the book amounts to a serious challenge to the overly theoretical paradigmata of the last half-century with their timorous evasion of biological fundamentals. However, although the work relies on up-to-date research of the life sciences, it is a primarily philosophical enquiry, dealing head on with many unsolved problems of life and mind, and culminating in a detailed “ontological proof” of the mind system.
The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature
This new, comprehensive study of Leibniz’s system of thought reveals a philosopher equally intrigued by the complexity of physical reality and the fascinations of his metaphysical laboratory. Many of his most important, but never previously published papers are evaluated in this book. Too often put down as an arch-metaphysician, Leibniz is seen in these pages as a venturer of breathtaking boldness, his ambition being nothing less than to actually solve the enigma of existence. Accordingly his system embraced science equally with metaphysics; they complement and pollinate each other. The outcome is a view of his system as a double ontology. Reality is the domain of the actual; metaphysics t...
Metaphysics in the Age of Scientific Hegemony
This book consists of a series of essays which concern themselves with the persisting relevance of metaphysical speculation in our time. It delves into Hegel’s politics, the ethics of Confucius and Aristotle, the research of Leibniz, with its astonishing anticipations of modern ideas, Wittgenstein’s reflections on language, the meaning of music and art and a capital instance of a failed enquiry into life and mind from a scientific point of view. In all these instances, the focus is on the autonomous agency of the human being. Metaphysics as a philosophical discipline has long been under fire for its doctrinal presumptions, but never more so than under the hegemony of science. Yet, as the essays in this volume demonstrate, it remains an indispensable tool for thinkers in all areas of research in which the human creature is under the spotlight. That this involves a reversal of competences has not been seriously accepted—predominantly in terms of the gulf between autonomous agency and the mechanistic doxa under which science is compelled to operate. This volume seeks to put the torch on these discrepancies, where presuppositions end and understanding must take over.
Leibniz
In this book, modern scientists and philosophers of science confront the prophetic legacy of the 17th century philosopher Leibniz—a metaphysical agenda full of ideas presaging today’s state of the art research into relativity and quantum cosmology; the physics of force, mass, momentum, time and space; complexity and chaos theories; fundamental particles and multiple worlds; and of the electronic cosmos of our computer era. Their immense relevance to us is demonstrated by the engagement with them of over 200 present-day scientific minds. In essence this monograph comprises a survey and critical comparison of interlocking texts, and will serve philosophers as a gateway into fundamental science from the angle of metaphysics, as well as scientists as a documentation of Leibniz’s profound philosophical impact on their own fields.
Art and the Platonic Matrix
For two millennia philosophy has restlessly stalked a fundamental problem—the answer to the question “what is art, really?” Aesthetic discourse, focused on the Platonic Matrix of truth and beauty, arthood and object, imitation and representation, form and idea, has not delivered on its promise, leaving us in bewilderment over principles that are either ignored or contradicted by the arts themselves. In this searching critique, some astonishing faux pas are brought to light. Notably that aesthetics makes do without a knower, the heuristics of art, and the dynamics of self-exploration that are central to the aesthetic experience. What this book seeks to accomplish is a thorough reformula...
Art Music
Listening to music is not merely something one does, but something central to a way of living. Listening has the power to transport one into another way of being. It is a mode of feeling and forms the bedrock of deep emotion. Written from the viewpoint of a philosophy of sensibility, Matthew Del Nevo notes that this perspective may not be in fashion, but it follows a long tradition.Del Nevo emphasizes the aesthetic experience of listening to art music as it has developed and disintegrated in Western civilization. He recognizes a deep psychological element to what he calls soul—or more accurately sensibility. He addresses music in a non-technical way, taking up the powerful art theory of Ch...
Understanding Rosenstock-Huessy
The contributions of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973), one of the most profound and original thinkers of the twentieth century, span several disciplines in the humanities--history, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, religion--although his work is ultimately uncategorizable. In 1933, immediately upon the ascent of Hitler, he emigrated to the United States from Germany, taught at Harvard for two years, and then at Dartmouth College until 1957. His voice was prophetic, urgent, compelling, and it remains relevant. This collection of essays is by a retired professor of history who was a student of Rosenstock-Huessy's in the 1950s and found his lecturing transformative. It is not a nostalgic book, however. It is written with the conviction that Rosenstock-Huessy still needs to be heard, more urgently than ever for the betterment of humankind.
Idolizing the Idea
Ever since Plato made the case for the primacy of ideas over names, philosophy has tended to elevate the primacy of its ideas over the more common understanding and insights that are circulated in the names drawn upon by the community. Commencing with a critique of Plato’s original philosophical decision, Cristaudo takes up the argument put forward by Thomas Reid that modern philosophy has generally continued along the ‘way of ideas’ to its own detriment. His argument identifies the major paradigmatic developments in modern philosophy commencing from the new metaphysics pioneered by Descartes up until the analytic tradition and the anti-domination philosophies which now dominate social...
Baudelaire Contra Benjamin
This book offers the first sustained argument against the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and his readings of Charles Baudelaire. More broadly, it is also a critique of politicized aesthetics and cultural Marxism, of which Benjamin is a pioneering and emblematic figure. Cristaudo and Beibei argue that Baudelaire was not mistaken in refusing to subject aesthetics to morality and politics. Baudelaire’s refusal was based on the recognition that existential matters, such as sickness, evil, death, sexual longing, melancholy, and beauty itself—all themes at the center of his poetry—are by nature intrinsically supra-political. By contrast, Benjamin’s faith in political redemption, while break...
