Positivism vs Life Philosophy
(Lebensphilosophie)

STUDY GUIDE

Compiled by Ralph Dumain


On the struggle and interdependence of positivism and life philosophy / Lebensphilosophie (including existentialism and other philosophies of consciousness) within modern (bourgeois) philosophy and ideology. Or positivism vs irrationalism, or scientism vs romanticism.

“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 41

See “Herman Melville's Moby Dick & the Contradictions of Modernity” by Ralph Dumain

“Modern man still believes in magic; he lives in a rational world but insists on interpreting the events of that world in terms of mystical forces.”
       — Richard Wright, The Outsider (1953)


LINKS

ON THIS SITE

András Gedö — Vita (Bibliography)

Crisis Consciousness in Contemporary Philosophy by András Gedö:

Table of Contents
Publisher’s Note
Author’s Preface
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)
   3. The Structure of Late-Bourgeois Philosophy and Types of Apology
              section 3: ‘Social technology’ and positivism
                      [On Max Weber]
                      [On Karl Popper]

"The Contemporary Attack on Science" by Andras Gedo

"The Historical Character of the Concept of Nature" by András Gedö

"Why Marx or Nietzsche?" by András Gedö

András Gedö et al on Lukács (1957)

András Gedö on Rationality, History, Philosophy, and Post-History reviewed by R. Dumain

András Gedö on Marxism after the demise of the Soviet bloc by R. Dumain

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

Romanticism and Classicism: Deep Structures in Social Science by Alvin W. Gouldner

Irrationalism and Marxism by Étienne Balibar

Heritage of Our Times (Contents) by Ernst Bloch

Ernst Bloch on reason, unreason, the ‘non-contemporaneous’ & Nazism

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

Max Horkheimer on the Duality of Scientism and Spiritualism in Bourgeois Society

Adorno on Hegel: rationalism & irrationalism, logic & experience with commentary by R. Dumain

Concept of Intuition by Theodor W. Adorno

T.W. Adorno on the Division of Philosophy & Labor

Theodor W. Adorno on Progress in Philosophy

Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” by Theodor W. Adorno

Lecture 6 (9 June 1959), excerpt: T.W. Adorno on Kant, the Division of Labor & Restriction of Reason
Lecture 7 (11 June 1959): Knowledge as Tautology
Lecture 16 (14 July 1959): Society · ‘Block’

Adorno on Wittgenstein & the Dialectical Essence of Philosophy

The Privilege of Experience by Theodor W. Adorno

T.W. Adorno on Zen Buddhism

Adorno on Paul Valéry & Cartesian Rationalism & Irrationalism in French Philosophy

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

Stephen Jay Gould's Philosophy & History of Science & the Humanities by R. 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]

The prevention of literature: intellectual regimentation (1946) by George Orwell

“A Good Man Fallen Among Fabians”: Protestant Anarchism [on George Bernard Shaw] by Alick West

Inventing Bergson: The Politics of Time and Modernity (Excerpts) by Mark Antliff

Bergsonianism by Auguste Cornu

Galvano Della Volpe on Henri Bergson

Galvano Della Volpe on logical positivism [conclusion]

"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

Witold Gombrowicz on Existentialism (1956)

Witold Gombrowicz: Philosophy in 6 1/4 hours (1)

The Contemporary Crisis of Capitalism and the Ideology of Fascism by A. M. Deborin

Isaac Deutscher on Lukács, rationalism, irrationalism, & Nazism

ʻUne philosophie du fascisme allemand: lʼoeuvre de Martin Heideggerʼ by Colette Audry
& Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, Martin Heidegger & fascism

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

Georg Lukács on Relativism, Feuerbach, Nietzsche & Spengler

The Question of Educational Work by Georg Lukács

The Two Epochs of Bourgeois Materialism: On Moleschott’s Centenary” by Georg Lukács

The History of Hegel’s Youth: Review of Wilhelm Dilthey’s collected writings, Vol. IV” by Georg Lukács

"Lukács' and Husserl's Critiques of Science" by Mihály Vajda

Nature, Society, and Praxis” by Mihály Vajda

Preface to Process and Unreality: A Criticism of Method in Whitehead's Philosophy by Harry K. Wells

Introduction to Dialectical Logic by Henri Wald

"On the Dialectico-Materialist Type of Rationality" by Jindrich Zeleny

"Man and Philosophy" by Karel Kosík

Herbert Marcuse: Letter to Karel Kosík, March 22, 1963 (trans. Charles Reitz)

“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

Heidegger on the Essence of Truth 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
     Reflections on the Career of Marvin Farber by Roy Wood Sellars
     “Mediation and Immediacy for Husserl” by Kah Kyung Cho
     Conclusion

Towards a Socio‑Historical Interpretation of the Scientific Revolution” by Paul Piccone

"Theories of Knowledge: A Dialectical, Historical Critique" by Howard L. Parsons

The Concept of Essence (Excerpt: Descartes) by Herbert Marcuse

The Concept of Essence (Excerpt: Phenomenology) by Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse on Descartes, Kant, Hegel: Soul, Mind-Body Duality, & Affirmative Culture

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

Herbert Marcuse's Criticism of ‘Linguistic Philosophy’” by Colin Lyas

"Life-World within Brackets" by David H. DeGrood

"The Appearance of Reality and the Reality of Appearance" by David H. DeGrood

Logicomix: Logic and Madness Reviewed by Ralph Dumain

Wittgenstein on Esperanto

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Constructed Languages: Wittgenstein, Esperanto by T. Peter Park

Carnap on Wittgenstein & Esperanto

Galvano Della Volpe on logical positivism [conclusion]

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

Philosophy and the Physicists by L. Susan Stebbing

Book Review: Barnett's ‘Universe’

Marxism and Modern Idealism by John Lewis

Marxism and the Irrationalists 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

Nietzsche & the Analytic-Continental Divide: Denouement of Bourgeois Reason; Or, Analytical Philosophy's Being-for-Death by R. Dumain

On Geoffrey Waite on Esoterism, Heidegger, and Cassirer by R. 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

Fantasy and Reason: Children's Literature in the Eighteenth Century by Geoffrey Summerfield
    Introduction (extract) + Chapter 1
    Chapter 7: "Apotheosis of the Chap-Book"

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 Second International: A Reexamination” by Andrew Arato

"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 political economy vs reversion to Romanticism

Marx on Capital, Machinery, Universality, Descartes: From Worship to Instrumentalization of Nature

Engels on the British Ideology: Empiricism, Agnosticism, & “Shamefaced Materialism”

Engels (& Borges) on Carlyle

Friedrich Engels on Empiricism, Spiritualism, Science, Mysticism, & Philosophical Naivete

La naturesplorado en la mondo de la spiritoj de Friedrich Engels, elgermanigita de Vilhelmo Lutermano (in Esperanto)

Engels contra Holism

Holism in Soviet & Anglo-American philosophical dictionaries & encyclopedias

V.I. Lenin on Idealism & The Spiral of Knowledge

Leon Trotsky on the Culture of Fascism

La conscience mystifiée (table des matières) par Norbert Guterman & Henri Lefebvre

On Guterman & Lefebvre’s La conscience mystifiée (1936) by Riki Scanlan

The Late Vitalism of Wilhelm Reich: Commentary by Ralph Dumain

The Late Vitalism of Wilhelm Reich: Selected Quotations

C.L.R. James on philosophical wastrels (Existentialism & linguistic philosophy)

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

Revisiting D. T. Suzuki: Selective reading, memory, & embarrassment by R. Dumain

D. T. Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, theism, belief & experience

Sebastiano Timpanaro on Giacomo Leopardi & Materialist Pessimism

Jean-Paul Sartre on Camus’ Stranger as Mental vs. Physical Being

Jean-Paul Sartre on Camus, Empiricism, Literary Description, & the Absurd

Taoism & the Tao of Bourgeois Philosophy by Ralph Dumain

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s “Breakfast of Champions”: artificial intelligence

Love and Intellect II: For Blake, Against Nietzsche: Sources for Program (Vonnegut)

Vedanta and the Bengal Renaissance by Niranjan Dahr
   Chapter X: Secular English Education and Learning
   Chapter XI: Triumph of Vedanta

Dialectic and Dystopia: A Century Before and After the Russian Revolution Through Literature (podcast transcript) by R. Dumain

Bibliographies & guides:

Holistic Thought, New Age Obscurantism, Occultism, the Sciences, & Fascism: Selected Bibliography

Occultism, Eastern Mysticism, Fascism, & Countercultures: Selected Bibliography

Vienna Circle, Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American Philosophy: Selected Bibliography

Wittgenstein, Marxism, Sociology: An Annotated Bibliography

Whitehead & Marxism: Selected Bibliography

Anti-Nietzsche Bibliography

Dostoevsky’s Underground, Ideology, Reception: A Very Select Bibliography

Anti-Bergson: Bibliography & Links

Georg Lukács’ The Destruction of Reason: Selected Bibliography

Christopher Caudwell: Selected Bibliography

Descartes & Marxism: Selected Bibliography

Leibniz & Ideology: Selected Bibliography

Ramon Llull & His Influence: Select Bibliography & Web Guide

Ars Combinatoria Study Guide

Cybernetics & Artificial Intelligence: Ideology Critique

Greek Philosophy, the Scientific Revolution, Abstraction, Phenomenology, & the Money Economy: Selected Bibliography

Philosophy, Child-Rearing, Education, & Children's Literature in the British Enlightenment: Selected Bibliography

Robert Musil: Science, Positivism, Irrationalism, Modernism: Selected Bibliography

Ernst Cassirer: A Selected Secondary Bibliography

Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism: Selected Secondary Bibliography

Pessimism as Philosophy: A Jaundiced Selected Annotated Bibliography

Theodor W. Adorno & Critical Theory Study Guide

Ideology Study Guide

Emergence Blog

Marx and Marxism Web 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)

Neo-Romantic Ideology and Fascism (1933) by Georg Lukács

Fascism as the theoretical and practical system of Barbarism (1942) by Georg Lukács

Nietzsche as Founder of Irrationalism in the Imperialist Period (Chapter III of The Destruction of Reason) by Georg Lukács

Dionysian Politics and The Discourse of "Rausch" by Nitzan Lebovic

Anti-Heidegger (Jud Evans' pages)

« 'A History of Problems' : Bergson and the French Epistemological Tradition » by Elie During

Review article: Alastair Morgan, Adorno’s Concept of Life by Mark Tomlinson (Parrhesia, no. 4, 2008, pp. 84-87)

"Carnap's Logical Empiricism, Values, and American Pragmatism" by Thomas Mormann

“The New Failure of Nerve,” the Eclipse of Reason, and the Critique of Enlightenment in New York and Los Angeles, 1940-1947 by James Schmidt

Arguments Within English Marxism: Utopias by Perry Anderson (from Arguments Within English Marxism, 1980)

George Bernard Shaw on Einstein (blog post by R. Dumain with links)

The Return of Vitalism: Canguilhem and French Biophilosophy in the 1960s by Charles T. Wolfe

Occultism and Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century by George Macdonald Ross (Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1983)

On The Biocentric Metaphysics of Ludwig Klages (2001) by Joe Pryce [warning: fascist propaganda]

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)

to have done with life:
vitalism and antivitalism in contemporary philosophy _ zagreb, june 17-19, 2011

The Poverty of Vitalism by Benjamin Noys (Lecture, YouTube) (See also book.)

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.

Brown, James Robert. Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

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) See also review by R. Dumain.

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.

O’Neill, (Prof.) Onora. Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve - ‘The Two Cultures Fifty Years On’, London, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, 4 November 2010. Audio of lecture.

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.

Antliff, Mark. Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. See also: Inventing Bergson: The Politics of Time and Modernity (Excerpts).

Antosik, Stanley J. The Question of Elites: An Essay on the Cultural Elitism of Nietzsche, George, and Hesse. Bern; Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1978.

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.

Badcock, Christopher. “Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia,” Psychology Today blog, May 6, 2017.

Note reference to the ‘two cultures’. See related articles by Badcock mentioning Kazohinia. See also Mentalism and Mechanism: the twin modes of human cognition.  Badcock is also the likely author of Gulliver’s Return. A Sequel to Voyage to Kazohinia by Sándor Szathmári.

Badiou, Alain. Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy; translated and with an introduction by Bruno Bosteels. London; New York: Verso, 2011.

Balibar, Étienne. "Irrationalism and Marxism," New Left Review, I/107, January-February 1978, pp. 3-18.

Bard-Rosenberg, Jacob. “Adorno’s Essay on Ideology: A Commentary in Three Parts,” Selva: A Journal of the History of Art, 4 (Fall 2022), pp. 34-52.

Bhaskar, Roy. The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979.

Breckman, Warren. “Marx and Romanticism,” Critical Review, 2022, pp. 1-25.

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.

Carchedi, Guglielmo. “The Ontology and Social Dimension of Knowledge: The Internet Quanta Time,International Critical Thought, 11 September 2022.

“The unique feature is the co-existence of irrationalism and positivism.”

Carson, Cathryn. "Science as Instrumental Reason: Heidegger, Habermas, Heisenberg," Continental Philosophy Review, (forthcoming).

Caudwell, Christopher. The Crisis in Physics, edited with an introduction by Professor H[yman] Levy. London: John Lane, 1939 [repr. 1949]. New edition: Verso Books, 2018.

Connell, Philip. Romanticism, Economics and the Question of 'Culture'. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. See also review:

Kattel, Rainer. Review of Romanticism, Economics and the Question of Culture by Philip Connell, Human Nature Review, 4 (April 2004): 110-113.

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.)

Fischer, Michael. “Marxism and English Romanticism: The Persistence of the Romantic Movement,” Romanticism Past and Present, vol. 6, no. 1, 1982, pp. 27-46.

Foster, John Bellamy. “The New Irrationalism,” Monthly Review, Volume 74, Issue 09, February 2023.

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:

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.

Godelier, Maurice. Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, translated by Brian Pearce. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. London; New York: Verso, 2012.

Gordon, Peter E. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

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).

Horkheimer, Max. “The Rationalism Debate in Contemporary Philosophy," in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, translated by G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer and John Torpey (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), pp. 217-264.

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.

Jacquette, Dale, ed. Philosophy, Psychology and Psychologism: Critical and Historical Readings on the Psychological Turn in Philosophy. New York; Boston; Dordrecht; London; Moscow: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003. (Philosophical Studies Series; 91)

Jones, Donna V. “The Career of Living Things Is Continuous: Reflections on Bergson, Iqbal and Scalia,” Qui Parle, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 2012, pp. 225-248.

Jones, Donna V. The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Negritude, Vitalism, and Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. See also Interview with Donna Jones & Donna Jones’s web site.

Lane, Jeremy F. Review: Donna V. Jones, The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity, H-France Review, Vol. 12 (August 2012), No. 108, pp. 1-4.

Josephson-Storm, Jason. The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago; London: Chicago University Press, 2017.

Asprem, Egil. "Dialectics of Darkness" [review], Inference, Volume 4, Issue 2, October 2018.

Kusch, Martin. Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. Four Appendices to Psychologism (1995).

Hanna, Robert. Review of Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge by Martin Kusch (London: Routledge, 1995), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57, no.4 (December 1997): 961-964.

Review: Martin Kusch, Psychologism by R. Dumain. See also psychologism @ Studies in a Dying Culture.

Kusch, Martin, ed. The Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. (New Synthese Historical Library; 48)

LaValley, Albert J. Carlyle and the Idea of the Modern: Studies in Carlyle’s Prophetic Literature and its Relation to Blake, Nietzsche, Marx, and Others. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

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.

Also by William Leiss:

And see:

Lewis, John. Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1968. 96 pp.

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.

Morrison, Paul. The Poetics of Fascism: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Paul de Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Noys, Benjamin. The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. (See also conference material.)

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)

Roberts, Adam. The History of Science Fiction. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. (Thorough reworking of 1st ed., 2006.)

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.

Skidelsky, Edward. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. See also review:

Clingan, Nicolaas P. Barr. Review of Bevc, Tobias, Kulturgenese als Dialektik von Mythos und Vernunft: Ernst Cassirer und die Kritische Theorie and Skidelsky, Edward, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. H-German, H-Net Reviews. March, 2010.

Skidelsky, E. "From Epistemology to Cultural Criticism: Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer," History of European Ideas, volume 29, issue 3, September 2003, pp. 365-381.

Smith, Justin E. H. Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.

Why there will never be a cure for irrationality,” Joe Humphreys interviews Justin E. H. Smith, The Irish Times, Sept. 12, 2019.

Stebbing, L. Susan. Pragmatism and French Voluntarism, with Especial Reference to the Notion of Truth in the Development of French philosophy from Maine de Biran to Professor Bergson. Cambridge, UK: The University Press, 1914.

Sternhell, Zeev. The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, translated by David Maisel. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Sternhell, Zeev. Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, translated by David Maisel. Paperback [2nd] ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy, edited by Christopher Donohue and Charles T. Wolfe. Cham: Springer, 2023. (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences; volume 29) (Open access)

Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800-2010, edited by Sebastian Normandin and Charles T. Wolfe. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences; volume 2)

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. See also review by R. Dumain.

Wolin, Richard. Heidegger’s Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Wolin, Richard. The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism: From Nietzsche to Postmodernism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. See publisher description & table of contents.


Home Page | Site Map | What's New | Coming Attractions | Book News
Bibliography | Mini-Bibliographies | Study Guides | Special Sections
My Writings
| Other Authors' Texts | Philosophical Quotations
Blogs | Images & Sounds | External Links

CONTACT Ralph Dumain

Uploaded 8 June 2002
Last updated 19 January 2024
Previously updated 31 December 2023

©2001-2024 Ralph Dumain