Archive for the positivism category

The Institution of Philosophy (4)

Posted on August 14th, 2008 in Carnap, Heidegger, Joseph Margolis, Marcelo Dascal, Quine, academia, analytical philosophy, continental philosophy, historicism, historiography of philosophy, intellectual life, naturalism, philosophers, positivism, postmodernism.

Cohen, Avner; Dascal, Marcelo; eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989. Joseph Margolis, “Radical Philosophy and Radical History,” pp. 249-270. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida may have wanted to put an end to traditional philosophy, but at most they provided self-corrective measures, not the therapies they though they [...]

Dascal on controversies

Posted on August 10th, 2008 in Chaim Perelman, Darwinism, Gilles-Gaston Granger, Hegel, Jacques Derrida, John Searle, Kant, Karl Popper, Lakatos, Marcelo Dascal, Mary Hesse, Schopenhauer, Thomas Kuhn, argumentation, epistemology, paraconsistency, philosophers, philosophical style, positivism, pragmatics, rationality, scientific revolution, speech acts.

Dascal, Marcelo. Types of polemics and types of polemical moves. In S. Cmejrkova, J. Hoffmannova, O. Mullerova, and J. Svetla, Dialogue Analysis VI (= Proceedings of the 6th Conference, Prague 1996), vol. 1. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 15-33, 1998 [Reprinted in H.S. Gill and G. Manetti (eds.), Signs and Signification, vol. II, New Delhi: Bahri Publication, [...]

The Institution of Philosophy (1)

Posted on August 10th, 2008 in Collingwood, Descartes, Donald Davidson, Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Marcelo Dascal, Quentin Skinner, Quine, Richard Rorty, academia, analytical philosophy, continental philosophy, historiography of philosophy, intellectual life, irrationalism, modernity, philosophers, positivism, postmodernism, progress.

Cohen, Avner; Dascal, Marcelo; eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989. When I first surveyed this anthology four years ago, the name Marcelo Dascal, whose work is currently under review, was unknown to me. My assessment of this book was . . . er . . . [...]

Dascal on disputation & the analytical-continental divide

Posted on August 6th, 2008 in Carnap, French philosophy, Habermas, Heidegger, J. L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, John Searle, Kant, Karl Popper, Marcelo Dascal, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, analytical philosophy, argumentation, continental philosophy, historiography of philosophy, intellectual life, irrationalism, philosophers, philosophical style, positivism, postmodernism, progress.

Dascal, Marcello. How rational can a polemic across the analytic-continental ‘divide’ be?, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9(3): 313-339, 2001. In order to specify controversy’s position within the large family of polemical dialogues, I propose to distinguish between three members of the subfamily to which controversies belong. I will call them ‘discussion’, ‘dispute’, and ‘controversy’. [...]

March – mid-June 2008 reading review (1): books

Posted on June 16th, 2008 in Adorno, Alvin Gouldner, Dostoevsky, Enlightenment, Habermas, Heidegger, Marxism, Richard Wright, Soviet philosophy, Spinoza, analytical philosophy, atheism, critical theory, ideology, positivism, reading, social theory.

I have not published a reading review since June 2007. Instead of beginning with July, I’ll work my way backward. At the moment there is too much non-book material to document readily, so this is an effort at compiling a list of books I’ve read part or all of since the beginning of March. I [...]

Paul Valéry, Jacques Bouveresse, Theodor Adorno

Posted on December 11th, 2007 in Adorno, Descartes, French philosophy, Jacques Bouveresse, Paul Valéry, Wittgenstein, analytical philosophy, poetry, positivism.

Jacques Bouveresse is a French philosopher who is invested in analytical philosophy, with a particular interest in Wittgenstein, and is out of step with the fashionable philosophy issuing from France since the 1960s. A fraction of his work has been translated into English. This article was of particular interest to me: Bouveresse, Jacques; Fournier, Christian [...]

June 2007 reading review (2): Vonnegut, Marxism, positivism

Posted on August 12th, 2007 in Indian Philosophy, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Marxism, Roy Bhaskar, Slavoj Zizek, Stephen Eric Bronner, Terry Eagleton, Wittgenstein, critical theory, ideology, mysticism, positivism, reading, religion, social theory.

More Vonnegut When I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake (New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1997) off my table for the first time, I thought this might be a throwaway book. I was wrong; it was hilarious, and there’s much in there. It is a combination memoir and science fiction tale. A whole decade has to be [...]

February-April 2007 reading review

Posted on June 28th, 2007 in Adorno, American Philosophy, Antonio Negri, Cornel West, Jewish Studies, Marcuse, Marxism, Ranciere, Richard Rorty, Roy Bhaskar, Wittgenstein, atheism, critical theory, irrationalism, naturalism, positivism, pragmatism, reading, religion, science, social theory.

I have long delayed summarizing the books I read in all or part from February through April 2007, partly in hope of writing extensive reviews of some of them. For now, I will just list the books and some other materials, and I can always return and delve into more detail at a future date. [...]

Wittgenstein’s philosophy as politics

Posted on April 18th, 2007 in Ernest Gellner, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Marxism, Piero Sraffa, Wittgenstein, irrationalism, positivism.

Robert Vienneau’s blog Thoughts on Economics has an entry Wittgenstein and Marxism on my Wittgenstein, Marxism, Sociology: An Annotated Bibliography. More importantly, Vienneau provides his own bibliography Wittgenstein and Soviet Communism, mostly in connection with Piero Sraffa and referencing articles from New Left Review. There is also this noteworthy article: Robinson, Christopher C. (2006). “Why [...]