POSITIVISM vs LIFE PHILOSOPHY
(LEBENSPHILOSOPHIE)
STUDY GUIDE
On the struggle and interdependence of positivism and life philosophy / lebensphilosophie (including existentialism and other philosophies of consciousness) within modern (bourgeois) philosophy and ideology.
“Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 41See “Herman Melville's Moby Dick & the Contradictions of Modernity” by Ralph Dumain
LINKS
ON THIS SITE
Crisis Consciousness in Contemporary Philosophy by András Gedö:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: "Two Aspects of Bourgeois Crisis Consciousness"
Chapter 2: "The Contemporary Crisis in Bourgeois Philosophy"
1. Neopositivism: Linguistic Philosophy and Critical Rationalism
2. Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie)
"The Contemporary Attack on Science" by Andras Gedo: Parts one and two
"The Historical Character of the Concept of Nature" by András Gedö
"Why Marx or Nietzsche?" by András Gedö
The Man of Science in a World of Crisis: A Plea for a Two-Pronged Attack on Positivism and Irrationalism by Aant Elzinga
"Scientism, Romanticism and Social Realist Images of Science" by Aant Elzinga
"The Growth of Science: Romantic and Technocratic Images" by Aant Elzinga
"Objectivity & Partisanship in Science" by Aant Elzinga
Irrationalism and Marxism by Étienne Balibar
Romanticism and Classicism: Deep Structures in Social Science by Alvin W. Gouldner
The Philosophical Critique of Science and the Neopositivist Critique of Philosophy in the Weimar Republic by Helmut Dubiel (See also bibliography below.)
Max Horkheimer on Materialism vs Positivism & Metaphysics
T.W. Adorno on the Division of Philosophy & Labor
T.W. Adorno on Kant, the Division of Labor & Restriction of Reason
Jeffrey Herf on Reactionary Modernism & Dialectic of Enlightenment
2003 Reading Review by Ralph Dumain
R. Dumain's Critique of Dialectic of Enlightenment
Max Horkheimer's Materialism: The Struggle with Traditional Theory, Science, Positivism, & Irrationalism by Ralph Dumain
Adorno & the Dualities by Ralph Dumain
Adorno contra Husserl by Ralph Dumain
"Heidegger's Jargon" by Ralph Dumain
On Goldmann, Lukacs, Heidegger, and Adorno by Ralph Dumain
Marxism & Totality & Gramsci & Della Volpe by Ralph Dumain
Notes on Herbert Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution by Ralph Dumain
Metacritique Critiqued by Ralph Dumain
Hegel, Marx, Goldner, C.L.R. James, Enlightenment & the Philosophical Dichotomies by Ralph Dumain
Intellectual Traditions, Alienation, and the Integration of Knowledge by Ralph Dumain
Note on the Poznan School by R. Dumain
Consciousness and Society: A Review by R. Dumain
Badiou and the Bankruptcy of Fashionable French Philosophy by R. Dumain
"The Reactionary Philosophy, Ambiguous Aesthetics, and Revolutionary Politics of Herbert Marcuse" [draft] by Ralph Dumain
“Reactionary Philosophy and Ambiguous Aesthetics in the Revolutionary Politics of Herbert Marcuse—A Review Essay” by Ralph Dumain [PDF file]
"From Hegel to Marcuse" by Lucio Colletti
Man in the “Industrial Society”: Is Herbert Marcuse’s “Critical Theory of Society” Critical? by Yuri Zamoshkin & Ninel Motroshilova
"Existentialism" by Georg Lukács
Simple and Higher Categories of the Dialectic by Georg Lukács
Lukács’ Lost Manuscript Tailism and the Dialectic Reviewed by R. Dumain
"Lukács' and Husserl's Critiques of Science" by Mihály Vajda
Preface to Process and Unreality: A Criticism of Method in Whitehead's Philosophy by Harry K. Wells
"On the Dialectico-Materialist Type of Rationality" by Jindrich Zeleny
“Marx and Critical Scientific Thought” by Mihailo Marković
"The Concept of Critique in Social Science" by Mihailo Marković
“Anti‑Semitism and National Socialism” by Moishe Postone
The Aporias of Marxism / Archaism and Modernity by Enzo Traverso
The Alienation of Reason (Extract) by Leszek Kolakowski
Alternatives to Positivism by Igor Naletov (entire book)
Reflections on American Philosophy From Within: Foreword & Table of Contents by Roy Wood Sellars (links to other chapters)
Experience and Subjectivism (Sections I.F-II.D) by Marvin Farber
The Issue of Naturalism vs. Subjectivism by Marvin Farber
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Contents by Marvin Farber
Edmund Husserl and the Aims of Phenomenology by Marvin Farber
Phenomenology and Existence: Toward a Philosophy Within Nature by Marvin
Farber
Contents &
Foreword
Marvin Farber
on Maurice Merleau‑Ponty
The Search for an Alternative I: Subjectivism, Phenomenology, Marxism, and the Role of Alternatives by Marvin Farber
The Search for an Alternative 9: From the Perspective of Materialism by Marvin Farber
Phenomenology and Natural Existence: Essays in Honor of Marvin Farber,
edited by Dale Riepe
Contents &
Acknowledgements
Introduction
by Dale Riepe
The Concept of Essence (Excerpt: Phenomenology) by Herbert Marcuse
On Science and Phenomenology by Herbert Marcuse
Comment on the Paper by H. Marcuse by Aron Gurwitsch
One-Dimensional Man: From Operationalism to Zen by Herbert Marcuse
One-Dimensional Man: A New Science? by Herbert Marcuse
"Life-World within Brackets" by David H. DeGrood
"The Appearance of Reality and the Reality of Appearance" by David H. DeGrood
Carnap on Wittgenstein & Esperanto
Carnap’s ‘Elimination of Metaphysics’ by V. Brushlinsky
Modern Science and Its Philosophy
by Philipp Frank
Introduction - Historical
Background
Chapter 5: Is There
a Trend Today Toward Idealism in Physics?
Chapter 6: Mechanical
"Explanation" or Mathematical Description?
Chapter 8: Philosophic
Misinterpretations of the Quantum Theory
Chapter 10: How Idealists
and Materialists View Modern Physics
Chapter 11: Logical
Empiricism and the Philosophy of the Soviet Union
Chapter 16: The Place
of Logic and Metaphysics in the Advancement of Modern Science
Marxism and Modern Idealism by John Lewis
Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy by Maurice Cornforth
Contents
Foreword to Second Edition
Part I, chapter 5, section 5: The
refutation of idealism
Part II, Linguistic Philosophy; chapter 7: A
Place in the Establishment
Science and Evaluation by Maurice Cornforth
Science versus Idealism by Maurice Cornforth
Contents, Foreword,
Introduction
Maurice Cornforth on William Blake vs. the Fetishism of Language
"Logical Empiricism" by Maurice Cornforth
"Wittgensteinian Foundations of Non-Fregean Logic" by Boguslaw Wolniewicz
"The Empiricist Account of Scientific Knowledge—A Polemical Evaluation" by Richard Arthur
“The Main Principles of David Hume's Epistemology as a Source of Contemporary Positivism” by Elena Panova
Revolution or Reform? A Confrontation (Herbert Marcuse & Karl Popper)
Contents
Marxism, Liberalism,
and the Foundations of Scientific Method by Frederic L. Bender
Herbert Marcuse: The New
Society
Theoretical Background:
Herbert Marcuse
Afterword to the German
Edition by Franz Stark
The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology by Theodor W. Adorno et al
The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology: Notes, Questions & Comments
by R. Dumain
I: Adorno's Introduction
“Logic, Dialectics, Politics: Some Recent Controversies” by Hayward R. Alker, Jr.
"Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality" by Glenn C. Ellenbogen, Ph.D.
The American Utopia by Eduard Batalov
Chapter II.5: The
Technocratic Utopia
Chapter III.2: The Technocratic
Utopia
"Matter and Motion" by L. Bazhenov
Wilhelm Ostwald's ‘The Bridge’ by Niles R. Holt (10/15/07)
"A Note on My Dialectic" by Jack Lindsay
"Towards a Marxist Aesthetic" by Jack Lindsay
"Structuralism and Dialectic" by Jean Piaget
“On the Origin of Language and Consciousness” by Jacinthe Baribeau
"Popes, Kings & Cultural Studies: Placing the Commitment to Non-disciplinarity in Historical Context" by Karl Maton
On Bentham and Coleridge (Excerpts) by John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill & the Dualities: Bentham & Coleridge — Commentary by Ralph Dumain
Review of James Miller, History and Human Existence: From Marx to Merleau-Ponty by R. Dumain
The Popes Combat Modernity in the Bourgeois Century
Occultism and Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century by George Macdonald Ross (Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1983)
A Generation of Materialism,
1871-1900 by Carlton J. H. Hayes
Mechanistic
Natural Science, Deterministic Biological Science, Physiological Psychology,
Positivism and the Social Sciences
The Climax of the
Enlightenment
"The Relationship Between Science and Morality (Philosophical Aspects)" by A. Arsenyev
Science, Society, and Life: Extract from "Private Property and Communism" from the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of Karl Marx (1844)
Marx & Engels on the Science of History
Marx on Science, Religion, Historical Method
Marx on Capital, Machinery, Universality, Descartes: From Worship to Instrumentalization of Nature
Engels on the British Ideology: Empiricism, Agnosticism, & “Shamefaced Materialism”
Friedrich Engels on Empiricism, Spiritualism, Science, Mysticism, & Philosophical Naivete
V.I. Lenin on Idealism & The Spiral of Knowledge
The Late Vitalism of Wilhelm Reich: Commentary by Ralph Dumain
The Late Vitalism of Wilhelm Reich: Selected Quotations
C.L.R. James on Descartes & the Division of Labor
Descartes' Dualism (Extract) by Albert William Levi
Aesthetic Abstraction, Philosophical Foreplay (Descartes) by W. F. Haug
Imperialism and Irrationalism by Herbert Aptheker
Alvin Gouldner: Notes & Commentary by Ralph Dumain
The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar, and Future of Ideology by Alvin W. Gouldner
Adorno on Wittgenstein & the Dialectical Essence of Philosophy
The Privilege of Experience by Theodor W. Adorno
Adorno on Paul Valéry & Cartesian Rationalism & Irrationalism in French Philosophy
Taoism & the Tao of Bourgeois Philosophy by Ralph Dumain
Vedanta and the Bengal Renaissance by Niranjan Dahr
Chapter X: Secular English
Education and Learning
Chapter XI: Triumph of
Vedanta
Holistic Thought, New Age Obscurantism, Occultism, the Sciences, & Fascism: Selected Bibliography
Occultism, Eastern Mysticism, Fascism, & Countercultures: Selected Bibliography
Wittgenstein, Marxism, Sociology: An Annotated Bibliography
Whitehead & Marxism: Selected Bibliography
Leibniz & Ideology: Selected Bibliography
Robert Musil: Science, Positivism, Irrationalism, Modernism: Selected Bibliography
Ideology Study Guide
ON OTHER SITES
1841
- The World Historic Split in Western Philosophy: The "Expurgation of Hegelianism"
by Andy Blunden
Philosophy & State Capitalism, in: State Capitalism and World Revolution, by C.L.R. James in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya & Grace Lee, with a new introduction by Paul Buhle (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1986; Original publication, 1950); Chapter XI, pp. 113-135.
A Fresh Look at Lukács: on Steven Vogel's Against Nature by Andrew Feenberg (Rethinking Marxism, Winter 1999, pp. 84-92)
Marcuse Or Habermas: Two Critiques of Technology by Andrew Feenberg
Left Heideggerianism or Phenomenological Marxism? Reconsidering Herbert Marcuse's Critical Theory of Technology by John Abromeit (Constellations 17, no. 1, 2010, pp. 87-106)
Nietzsche as Founder of Irrationalism in the Imperialist Period (Chapter III of The Destruction of Reason) by Georg Lukács
Anti-Heidegger (Jud Evans' pages)
Review article: Alastair Morgan, Adorno’s Concept of Life by Mark Tomlinson (Parrhesia, no. 4, 2008, pp. 84-87)
The Two Cultures: C.P. Snow, Literature and Science
Humanising Biology by Mats Benner, translated by Phil Holmes (Axess, Issue 2, 2005. Theme: The two cultures)
Cultural Beings vs Natural Beings by Arne Jarrick, translated by Phil Holmes (Axess, Issue 2, 2005. Theme: The two cultures)
Stephen Jay Gould's Philosophy & History of Science & the Humanities by R. Dumain
‘The Rise of New Irrationalism and its Incompatibility with Inclusive Democracy’ by Takis Fotopoulos (Democracy & Nature, vol. 4, no. 2/3 [11/12], 1998)
Irrationalism, Fundamentalism and Religious Revival: The Colors of the Chess-Board by Fotis Terzakis (Democracy & Nature, vol. 4, no. 2/3 [11/12], 1998)
"Irrationalism and Ideology in Risk Capitalism: Helpless Search for Meaning: Social Crisis, Need for Escapism and the ‘Culture of Violence’" by Werner Seppmann (2005)
The New Dialectics: The Dialectical Phenomenology of Michael Kosok (caveat emptor)
THE "TWO CULTURES"
Benner, Mats. Humanising Biology, translated by Phil Holmes, Axess, Issue 2, 2005. (Theme: The two cultures)
Brin, David. The old and new versions of "culture war", Contrary Brin blog, May 8, 2009.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap between Science and the Humanities. New York: Harmony Books, 2003. (Sample text)
Jarrick, Arne. Cultural Beings vs Natural Beings, translated by Phil Holmes, Axess, Issue 2, 2005. (Theme: The two cultures)
Mooney, Chris; Kirshenbaum, Sheril. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
Ortolano, Guy. The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures; with introduction by Stefan Collini. London; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Publisher description.
Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures; And, A Second Look: An Expanded Version of 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969. This was the standard edition until recently. See excerpts: C. P. Snow on the 'Two Cultures': Literary Modernism, Irrationalism & Reactionary Politics.
The Two Cultures: C.P. Snow, Literature and Science. Web guide & bibliography, December 31, 1999.
The Two Cultures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
OTHER REFERENCES
Alexander, Jeffrey C. Fin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. London; New York: Verso, 1995.
Alford, C. Fred. Science and the Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and Habermas. Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1985.
Babich, Babette E. "On the Analytic Continental Divide in Philosophy: Nietzsche's Lying Truth, Heidegger's Speaking Language, and Philosophy," in A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy, edited by C. G. Prado (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), pp. 63-104.
Balibar, Étienne. "Irrationalism and Marxism," New Left Review, I/107, January-February 1978, pp. 3-18.
Bhaskar, Roy. The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979.
Bronner, Stephen Eric. Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Burrow, J. W. The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914. New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 2000.
Christopher Mack . "Review of J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914," H-Ideas, H-Net Reviews, June, 2001.
Burwick, Frederick; Douglass, Paul; eds. The Crisis in Modernism: Bergson and the Vitalist Controversy. Cambridge [UK]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. See table of contents and publisher description.
Carson, Cathryn. "Science as Instrumental Reason: Heidegger, Habermas, Heisenberg," Continental Philosophy Review, (forthcoming).
Dubiel, Helmut. Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory, translated by Benjamin Gregg, with an introduction by Martin Jay. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. (See also extract The Philosophical Critique of Science and the Neopositivist Critique of Philosophy in the Weimar Republic.)
Fotopoulos, Takis. Towards An Inclusive Democracy: The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project. London; New York: Cassell, 1997. See chapter 8, "How Do We Justify the Project for an Inclusive Democracy?" (pp. 305-356), whose main sections are: [1] The myth of objectivity: orthodox 'objectivity'; [2] The myth of objectivity: dialectical 'objectivity'; [3] Beyond 'objectivism', irrationalism and relativism. See subsection "Dialectical Naturalism: An Objective Ethics?".
This school of thought is expounded also in the online journal Democracy & Nature (The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy) [variant title, Society and Nature], vols. 1-9 (1992-2003), succeeded by The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (Vol. 1 - , October 2004 - ). Much of chapter 8 is recapitulated and extended in:
See also:
Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court, 2000.
Glazebrook, Trish. Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000. Publisher description.
Habermas, Jürgen. 'Technology and Science as "Ideology"' (1968), in Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 81-122.
Hayes, Carlton J. H. A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900. New York: Harper & Row, 1963 [orig.1941]. See chapters III (The Rapid Mechanizing of Work and Thought; sections 6-9: Mechanistic Natural Science, Deterministic Biological Science, Physiological Psychology, Positivism and the Social Sciences), IV, IX (The Climax of the Enlightenment).
Hughes, H. Stuart. Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930, with a new introduction by Stanley Hoffman. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1958. See also Consciousness and Society: A Review by R. Dumain.
Leiss, William. The Domination of Nature. Boston: Beacon Press, 1974. (Originally published 1972. See also 1994 ed. below.)
See also the William Leiss web site, esp.
- The Domination of Nature (Note "Preface to the 1994 Reprint")
- Hera, or Empathy: A Work of Utopian Fiction
- The Dual Role of Science in Modern Society (2005)
- Critical Theory and Its Future (1974)
Also by William Leiss:
- The HeraSaga
- Modern Science, Enlightenment, and the Domination of Nature: No Exit? (2007)
- Exerpt from: Hera, or Empathy by William Leiss
And see:
- William Leiss, Hera, and the Fate of Science by Hans Kellner
Lukács, Georg. The Destruction of Reason. Translated by Peter Palmer. London: The Merlin Press, 1980. See Lukács on Wittgenstein, pp. 782-784.
Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964. On this site see extracts: From Operationalism to Zen, Classical Philosophy, the Division of Labor, Abstraction & Practice, A New Science? by Herbert Marcuse.
Mill, John Stuart. On Bentham and Coleridge, with an introduction. by F. R. Leavis. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. (Orig. 1950)
“Bentham” (1838), in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X—Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by F.E.L. Priestley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985).
This essay can also be found at: http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/bentham/bentham, http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/bentham/bentham, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MilBent.html.
“Coleridge” (1840), in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X—Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by F.E.L. Priestley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985).
Miller, James. History and Human Existence: From Marx to Merleau-Ponty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. (1st paperback ed., 1982) See also review by R. Dumain.
Petreu, Marta. An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania, translated from the Romanian by Bogdan Aldea, foreword by Norman Manea. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005. Table of contents.
Piloiu, Rares. "Hegemony: Methods and Hypotheses, A Historical-Comparative Perspective," Reconstruction, Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2002.
Richards, Robert J. The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. (Science and its Conceptual Foundations)
Schäfer, Wolf. "Stranded at the Crossroads of Dehumanization: John Desmond Bernal and Max Horkheimer," in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, edited by Seyla Benhabib, Wolfgang Bonß, and John McCole (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993) pp. 153-183.
Vogel, Steven. Against Nature. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996.
Vogel, Steven. 'Marcuse and the "New Science"', in Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, edited by John Abromeit and W. Mark Cobb (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 385-394.
Vogel, Steven M. "New Science, New Nature: The Habermas-Marcuse Debate Revisited," Research in Philosophy and Technology, 11 (1991): 157-178.
Waite, Geoffrey. "On Esotericism: Heidegger and/or Cassirer," Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 5, (Oct., 1998), pp. 603-651.
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Previously updated 24 February 2010
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