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Shi‘a theology differs distinctly from Sunni theology in its interpretation of the Qur’ān and of early Islamic political history. On the basis of these differences, it is postulated that Shi‘a thought is also epistemologically different from Sunni thought and that it builds on a radically dissimilar vision of the world. Thus, it is usually assumed that the Shi‘a have a different conception and philosophy of history. Closer inspection, however, reveals no such variance. Specifically, this article examines the case of tenth-century historian Mas‘ūdi, whose importance in classical Muslim historiography has been remarked upon by Muslim historians as well as by contemporary scholarship. Mas‘ūdi is believed to be a Shi‘a of Twelver persuasion. Some have assumed that he was an Ismā‘ili, but the majority of scholars agree that he is more likely to be an adept of the Twelver Shi‘a. His extensive presentation of Shi‘a beliefs, his excessive praise of ‘Ali ibn Abū ālib, and his sympathetic T treatment of Shi‘a claims certainly make him a likely candidate. That his actual beliefs remain to some extent an issue is due to the fact that he does not claim his religious confession outright in the books that have survived. He does refer the reader to his other books devoted to the matter and where he presumably clarified his position concerning Shi‘a claims. The books that remained, however, are history books, and while he is not trying to hide his identity, Mas‘ūdi is trying to write as much of an objective account of history and events as he can, and he avoids consciously taking position on such matters.

The history of philosophy is not just an academic discipline, but considered to be a philosophical activity itself. It has been instrumental in shaping our understanding of philosophy, our philosophical canon and curricula. The history of philosophy in Africa is still a young discipline, although philosophical thinking (concepts, manuscripts, books and philosophers) can be traced back until ancient Egypt. Facing the problem of exclusion and inferiorisation of traditions of thought and philosophy in Africa, the discipline of the history of philosophy involves very specific problems and requires a project of “conceptual decolonisation”. This explains both the importance and the difficulty of writing a history of philosophy in Africa.

In this essay, we reply to the five commentaries offered of our 2016 book, Socrates Tenured: The Institutions of 21st Century Philosophy. We argue that, in a recursive fashion, those commentaries exemplify the thesis of our book – that contemporary philosophy has a blind spot concerning the philosophical priors of its status as an institution. That is, 20th and now 21st century philosophy has limited metaphilosophy to being an exclusively theoretical exercise, neglecting to also pursue a ‘philosophy of philosophy’ in its material, bureaucratic, and Marxist dimensions. After making these points in the introduction, the article is divided into three parts that deal, in turn, with comments that are facile, earnest, and provocative. We then conclude by noting the unintentional irony of our contemporary situation, where the vast majority of philosophy departments are inhabited by sophists rather than philosophers.

Vittorio Hösle’s evaluation of the Soviet Revolution on the ground of the philosophy of history can be usefully examined from the value-pluralist perspective of Isaiah Berlin. Although Berlinwould agree with most ofHösle’s judgements on the Revolution, he would do so for very different reasons. Most importantly, Berlin would not accept the teleology that lies at the heart of the philosophy of history. For Berlin, the notion of a human telos to be realized at the end of history is a species of moral monism, and so falsified, indeed rendered incoherent, by the deeply pluralist reality of human values. However, Berlin’s pluralism also seems to present a problem for the justification of liberalism, and I consider a range of responses to this difficulty.

Two convictions underlie the following article. The first is that Hilary Putnam has been one of the greatest thinkers of our time, a philosopher who was able to propose groundbreaking ideas in virtually every area of philosophy. As the reader will see, the topics he tackled in his writings included questions of philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and logic, philosophy of mind, metaethics, the fact-value dichotomy, the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later thought, the question of relativism, the analysis of rationality, the analysis of religious experience, the character of Jewish philosophy, the interpretation of pragmatism, the elucidation of the concept of truth, the question of realism, the relationship between mind and the world. The second is that the changes some of his positions underwent, far from being a point of weakness—as some critics have sometimes felt compelled to claim—reveal the freshness and genuineness of Putnam’s way of philosophising and at the same time the essence of philosophical discussion itself.

Referring to the philosophical reflection on interculturality as presented by Raul Fornet-Betancourt, I confront the process of globalization, which is based on a single economy, homogeniza...

Experimental Philosophy is a new and controversial movement that challenges some of the central findings within analytic philosophy by marshalling empirical evidence. The purpose of this short paper is twofold: (i) to introduce some of the work done in experimental philosophy concerning issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics and (ii) to connect this work with several debates within the philosophy of religion. The provisional conclusion is that philosophers of religion must critically engage experimental philosophy.

Philosophy as the absolute knowledge has been studied from two different but closely related approaches: historical and logical. The first approach exposes four main stages in the history of European metaphysics that marked out types of “philosophical absolutism”: the evolution of philosophy brought to light metaphysics of being, method, morals and logic. All of them are associated with the names of Aristotle, Bacon/Descartes, Kant and Hegel. Then these forms are considered in the second approach that defined them as subject-matter of philosophy as such. Due to their overall, comprehensive character, the focus of philosophy on them justifies its claim on absoluteness as far as philosophy is aimed at comprehension of the world’s unity regardless of the philosopher’s background, values and other preferences. And that is its prerogative since no other form of consciousness lays down this kind of aim. Thus, philosophy is defined as an everlasting attempt to succeed in conceiving the world in all its multifold manifestations. This article is to try to clarify the claim of philosophy on the absolute knowledge.

In this study, I aimed to carry out a comparative analysis of the methods of conversational philosophy and sage philosophy as contributions towards overcoming the problem of methodology in African philosophy. The purpose was to show their points of convergence and probably, if possible, their point of divergence as well. I did not intend to show that the method of one is superior or inferior to the other. The objective was to provide an analysis to show that the two methods are essentially the same with little variations. Thereafter, I highlighted their significance as methods of doing African philosophy and discussed their problems as well. I used the methods of analysis and hermeneutics. From the study, I concluded that conversational philosophy is an extension or a modified form of sage philosophy. The implication of this conclusion is that sage philosophy and conversational philosophy should overlap each other in research and purposes.Keywords: Sage Philosophy, Conversational Philosophy, African Philosophy, Philosophical place, Philosophical space, Methodology

When we learned of the death of Roy Bhaskar on 14th November 2014, the world appeared to turn a little more slowly and more darkly. Something rare and precious had been taken from us and those, lik...

This paper is concerned with the reasons for the emergence and dominance of analytic philosophy in America. It closely examines the contents of, and changing editors at, The Philosophical Review, and provides a perspective on the contents of other leading philosophy journals. It suggests that analytic philosophy emerged prior to the 1950s in an environment characterized by a rich diversity of approaches to philosophy and that it came to dominate American philosophy at least in part due to its effective promotion by The Philosophical Review’s editors. Our picture of mid-twentieth-century American philosophy is different from existing ones, including those according to which the prominence of analytic philosophy in America was basically a matter of the natural affinity between American philosophy and analytic philosophy and those according to which the political climate at the time was hostile towards non-analytic approaches. Furthermore, our reconstruction suggests a new perspective on the nature of 1950s analytic philosophy.

The still-nascent academic discipline of African philosophy has spent most of its energy and ink wrestling with issues of authenticity (what makes it “African”) and validity (what makes it “philosophy”). In this article, I argue for a reconsideration of these categories—“African” and “philosophy”—by tracing the closely related history of their development. Then, on the basis of this genealogy and after critiquing some of the most influential academic attempts to engage with African religious/intellectual traditions (by Evans-Pritchard, Horton, Wiredu, Appiah, Hountondji, and Mudimbe), I propose an alternative framework for approaching and understanding the intellectual traditions of the continent. Drawing on Pierre Hadot's work on ancient philosophy, I argue that the vast majority of religious/intellectual traditions in Africa are better described by the “philosophy as a way of life” paradigm exemplified by the ancient Greeks and Neoplatonists than the “philosophy as written, rational discourse” model of the Enlightenment. I conclude by exploring the implications of this reconsideration of “African philosophy” for our academic approach to African religious/intellectual traditions, theory, and methodology in the social sciences and humanities, and our understandings of race, rationality, progress, and development.

This paper introduces a special issue on logic and philosophy of religion in this journal (Sophia). After discussing the role played by logic in the philosophy of religion along with classical developments, we present the basic motivation for this special issue accompanied by an exposition of its content.

The belief’s problem as one of the key subjects of gnoseology, doesn’t seem less interesting in a historical-religious discourse, as well. The example of comparison of Judaic and Christian tradition shows the various focuses of understanding of a belief’s phenomenon in its interface to texts of the Old and New Testament, Christian exegesis and views of prominent foreign and domestic philosophers (M. Buber, P. Tillikh, H. Yannaras, D. Zilberman, M. Bakhtin).

The topic of Islamic philosophy has always been attracted its reader to a wide yet specific subject including the identification of Islamic Philosophy which related to the relation between its origin and Worldview of Islam, the adaption of Greek philosophy into Islamic Philosophy, and the implications which emerged during and after the glory of Islamic Civilization. This paper will try to elaborate the term of “Islamic Philosophy” from its etymological meaning as well as the identification that taken from revelationbased worldview of Islam. As the beginning, the definitions of “philosophy” will be derived from number of authoritative scholars. The suitability between Islamic Worldview and the Islamization of Greek Philosophy will answer of the questions about ‘the originof Islamic Philosophy’; including the relation between both the important of revelation (wahy) and semantic interpretation. The discussion is continued widely as well on the history of translation in the time of the Caliph Ma’mun, Abbasid, when the civilization of Islam was in its golden era. Initiated by the caliph himself, this period has introduced many authoritative Muslim scholars in translation of knowledge scripts as well as described a lot of unique facts which rarely mentioned in the general literature such as how does the system of Bayt al-H{ikmah work, interreligious relation between Scholars, and even the given salary for the Scholars. Lastly, this paper will redefine the historicity and ethnicity of philosopher explaining why does the reason of the term “Islamic Philosophy” become the most appropriate definition. In the deeper analysis, we do not only see ‘Islamic Philosophy’ as a claim of term but it is also as the ‘worldview identification’. Islamic philosophy, has indeed successfully assimilated the sophisticated assimilation of the thought of Greek Philosophy by all of its distinctive and characteristics.

That philosophy exists, that it is possible, and that it has (and could still have) a future depends first and foremost on the existence of philosophers (necessarily considered in the plural). If the presence of philosophers is fundamental for the existence of the philosophical enterprise, then it can be easily deduced that, without philosophers, there would be no philosophy. If they come necessarily in the plural (as more than one), how should they, however, interact? Is philosophy a mere interaction among philosophers, or is it a cooperation of philosophers? But maybe it is something different still. The concept of philosophy, in its original Greek understanding, reveals how this interaction can be understood in a provocative but very interesting way: as friendship. Philosophy as philo-sophy, as friendship of wisdom. Said differently, philosophy as a community (of friends) that gather around the question of wisdom and knowledge. This essay attempts to think philosophy according to its being φιλe...

This essay examines the life and thought of two East Asian Buddhist thinkers, Paek Sŏnguk 白性郁 (1897–1981) and Inoue Enryō 井上円了 (1858–1919), as paradigmatic examples of modern East Asian philosophy. In so doing it brings together two seemingly unrelated aspects of the East-West encounter in modern East Asian philosophy. That is, the beginning of philosophy in modern East Asia was inevitably influenced by the power imbalance between East and West. On the other hand, the forced encounter of the Eastern “thought” tradition with the Western genre called philosophy generated a new mode of philosophizing, which is also shared by some contemporary Western philosophers in their criticism of an institutionalized form of philosophy.

This collection maintains a dialogue between the analytic and continental traditions, while aspiring to situate itself beyond the analytic-continental divide. It divides into four parts, (1) Methodologies, (2) Truth and Meaning, (3) Metaphysics and Ontology, and (4) Values, Personhood and Agency, though there is considerable overlap among the categories. History and temporality are recurrent themes, but there is a lot of metaphysics generally, with some philosophy of language, philosophy of social science, ethics, political philosophy and epistemology. Less prominent is a pragmatic, deflationary attitude, and at a number of points I argue for the virtues of such an approach.

Trent Dougherty argues (contra Jonathan Matheson) that when taking into consideration the probabilities involving skeptical theism (ST) and gratuitous evils, an agent may reasonably affirm both ST and that gratuitous evils exist. In other words, Dougherty thinks that assigning a greater than .5 probability to ST is insufficient to defeat the commonsense problem of evil. I argue that Dougherty’s response assumes, incorrectly, that ST functions solely as an evidential defeater, and that, when understood as a closure of inquiry defeater, ST may still defeat reasonable belief in gratuitous evils, even in the face of strong evidence that gratuitous evils exist. Postprint

Do we really need another book on the philosophy of (social) science? Surely we can find all that we need to know in existing tomes such as those of Kuhn (1962), Lakatos (1980), and Popper (1976). ...

This paper is a response to Patrick Hart’s “Theory, Method, and Madness in Religious Studies,” and it argues that philosophy is presupposed and therefore ineliminable when theorizing religions.

In this interview Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and arguments in Frank Ankersmit’s thinking about history, focusing on the Leibnizian dimension of his work. The following topics are discussed: the role of the philosophy of history within the academic philosophy and history writing, the relevance of historicism for contemporary philosophy of history, the distinction between descriptive sentences and representations in history writing, the importance of Leibniz for the future of the philosophy of history, the representational character of Leibniz’s substances and the problem of relations in his philosophical system.

The relation between mysticism and ethics is contentious. Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Danto, and others have argued that mystical consciousness and morality are incompatible. The dominant view is expressed by Steven T. Katz, however: “it is difficult to find any major mystical figures, or mystical traditions, that can be said to preach moral indifference; and certainly none preach immorality” (1992: 254). But the issue is not so straightforward. Keywords: altruism; benevolence; charity; Christianity; comparative philosophy; ethics; Indian philosophy; philosophy of religion

This article suggests a repositioning of philosophy’s disciplinary boundaries in terms of the analyses of ancient Greek philosophy carried out late in the career of Michel Foucault, which, under the influence of Pierre Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life, set out to highlight "the care of the self" as the practical core of the Ancient philosophical enterprise. In light of this shift in disciplinary boundaries, the article seeks to deepen the ongoing reconsideration of Ab? H?mid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghaz?l?’s position vis-à-vis philosophy by highlighting the role of the body and self-care in his ethical writing. Though recent scholarship has come to reject the notion that Ghaz?l? simply did away with philosophy in Islam, even the studies of his constructive incorporation of Avicennan thought have stopped short of highlighting bodily discipline as a central feature of spiritual exercise across these categories.

Based on anthropological fieldwork on the revival of hallucinogen research as well as on the epistemic culture of neurophilosophy, this Common Knowledge guest column examines two very different philosophical engagements with psychedelic drugs. In Thomas Metzinger's evidence-based philosophy of mind, hallucinogens help to operationalize questions about the nature of consciousness. While this project contributes to the great divide between empirically enlightened moderns and tradition-oriented premoderns, Metzinger's neurophilosophical reanimation of the ancient conception of philosophy as cultura animi can build a bridge to Aldous Huxley's perennial philosophy, which has informed the psychedelic intelligentsia like no other body of thought. In the sixteenth century, the philosophia perennis grew out of a decidedly nonmodern (but not pre- or antimodern) philosophy of religion that sought to suture the historical and cultural cracks that would come to define modernity. This essay argues that neurophilosophy and ethnographic studies of consciousness cultures could function as critical correctives in a contemporary rearticulation of perennial philosophy.

Among the many Iranian thinkers who dealt with Western intellectual systems and concepts, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī (1903–81)1 and Murtaḍā Muṭahharī (1920–79),2 two of the leading religious scholars of their time, stand out as the first to attempt to subject crucial teachings of modern Western philosophy to critical discussion by assessing the intellectual quality of their reasoning and questioning their claim to superiority to premodern philosophical systems.3 The doctrines they mainly engaged in the wake of their project were Cartesianism, empiricism, Kantian criticism, positivism, and Hegelianism. Their intellectual enterprise, going back to the 1950s, comes after a period when Iranian intellectuals’ contact with Western philosophy had been mainly receptive, based on the premise that doctrines of modern philosophy such as positivism and materialism were indispensable for intellectual and cultural progress.4 In the nineteenth century—and up to the 1950s—Iranians who grappled with Western philosophy often did so under the impact of the then-current philosophical teachings in Europe like positivism, scientism, naturalism, and empiricism5 and later, with the growing influence of Marxism on political thinking in Iran, dialectical materialism.6 In selecting the doctrines they came to adopt, they were less guided by purely intellectual interests, and more, perhaps, by intellectual, political, and ideological tendencies.

Confucianism, since the time of Confucius, emphasizes the significance of “practical wisdom” as the realization of philosophy. This approach accentuates the practical aspects of wisdom rather than the analytical rationale of the intellect. Emphasis on practical wisdom persistently reinforces a moral foundation that is not differentiated from personal virtue. At the same time, practical wisdom in Confucianism stresses self-cultivation, or the complete transformation of the self, derived from the internal state of the heart/mind (xin).

Two of the most important contributions that Bimal Krishna Matilal made to comparative philosophy are his (1968) doctoral dissertation The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation: The Semantics and Ontology of Negative Statements in Navya-Nyāya Philosophy and his (1986) classic: Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowing. In this essay, we aim to carry forward the work of Bimal K. Matilal by showing how ideas in classical Indian philosophy concerning absence and perception are relevant to recent debates in Anglo-analytic philosophy. In particular, we focus on the recent debate in the philosophy of perception centering on the perception of absence. In her Seeing Absence, Anya Farennikova (2013) argues for the thesis that we literally see absences. Her thesis is quite novel within the contexts of the traditions that she engages: analytical philosophy of perception, phenomenology, and cognitive neuroscience. In those traditions there is hardly any exploration of the epistemology of absence. By contrast, this is not the case in classical Indian philosophy where the debate over the ontological and epistemological status of absence (abhāva) is longstanding and quite engaging. In what follows, we engage Farennikova’s arguments, and those of John-Remy Martin and Jerome Dokic in their (2013) response to her work. Using the work of Matilal (1968, 1986), Bilimoria (2015) and Shaw (2016) we show that there are several engaging ideas that can be taken from Indian philosophy into the terrain explored by Farennikova, and Martin & Dokic. Our aim is to provide an updated comparative engagement on absence and its perception for the purposes of enhancing future discussions within global philosophy. However, we do not aim to do this merely by focusing on the history of primary texts or on twentieth century commentary on primary texts. Instead, we hope to show that the living tradition of Indian philosophy that Matilal embodied carries forward in his students and colleagues as they revive, revise, and extend Indian philosophy.

Analytic philosophy, as we recognize it today, has its origins in the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell around the turn of the twentieth century. Both were trained as mathematicians and became interested in the foundations of mathematics. In seeking to demonstrate that arithmetic could be derived from logic, they revolutionized logical theory and in the process developed powerful new forms of logical analysis, which they employed in seeking to resolve certain traditional philosophical problems. There were important differences in their approaches, however, and these approaches are still pursued, adapted, and debated today. In this paper I shall elucidate the origins of analytic philosophy in the work of Frege and Russell and explain the revolutionary significance of their methods of logical analysis.

This article has three main interconnected aims. First, I illustrate the historiographical conceptions of three early analytic philosophers: Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. Second, I consider some of the historiographical debates that have been generated by the recent historical turn in analytic philosophy, looking at the work of Scott Soames and Hans-Johann Glock, in particular. Third, I discuss Arthur Danto’s Analytic Philosophy of History, published 50 years ago, and argue for a reinvigorated analytic philosophy of history.

This article considers Kant's polemic against Plato, the letter writer, in order to investigate the role of letters in the production of philosophy. It begins with a close reading of Kant's essay against Johann George Schlosser, then takes up Derrida's engagement with Kant's concept of the tone of philosophy, and then turns to a discussion of three female philosophers who used the letter, whether real or fictitious, to engage in the production of philosophy. Something even stronger is argued, namely, that in the genre of the philosophical letter there is something sui generis that renders it, as a locus of the material production of philosophy, vitally humanizing, individualizing, and generously inviting. Many who were traditionally excluded from the calling of philosophy, because of their gender, found in the genre of the letter a way both to discover their philosophical voice and to share in the joy of thinking with another.

Engaging in dialogue with African philosophy, I respond to questions raised by Thaddeus Metz on characteristics of Confucian philosophy in comparison with African philosophy. First, in both Confucian philosophy and African philosophy, harmony/harmonization and self-realization coincide in the process of person-making. Second, Confucians accept that sometimes it is inevitable to sacrifice individual components in order to achieve or maintain harmony at large scales; the point is how to minimize such costs. Third, Confucians give family love a central place in the good life before extend love to the rest of the world. Fourth, the Confucian philosophy of gender equality is based on appropriate division of labor consistent with its yin-yang philosophy, rather than equal split of power in the family. Fifth, in the Confucian view, hierarchy and harmony do not necessarily contradict each other, though hierarchy is not essential to all forms of harmony. The two can co-exist.

Beckett's investigations in the history of philosophy are well represented in his notebooks of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which provide a close record of his reading in ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy, as well as in history, literature, and psychology. Numerous scholars – Daniella Caselli, Anthony Uhlmann, Dirk Van Hulle, Matthew Feldman, and David Addyman among others – have carefully delineated the relationship between Beckett's note-taking and his deployment of philosophical sources in his literary texts. Whilst the focus quite rightly tends to fall on Beckett's absorption of Presocratic, Aristotelian, Cartesian, and post-Cartesian philosophy, there are important strands of early medieval philosophy that find expression in his literary work. The philosophy notes housed in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, provide insights into Beckett's reading in medieval philosophy, drawing almost exclusively from Wilhelm Windelband's History of Philosophy. The epoch spanning from Augustine to Abelard saw central concepts in theology and metaphysics develop in sophistication, such as matters of divine identity and non-identity, the metaphysics of light, and the nature of sin. The influence of the Eastern Church Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Maximus the Confessor) on Western metaphysics finds expression in the figuration of light and its relation to knowing and unknowing. This eastern theological inflection is evident in the ‘Dream’ Notebook, where Beckett's notes demonstrate his careful reading of William Inge's Christian Mysticism. These influences are expressed most prominently in various themes and allusions in his early novels Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Murphy, and Watt. The formal experiments and narrative self-consciousness of these early novels also respond to the early medieval transformation of textual form, where the precarious post-classical fruits of learning were preserved in new modes of encyclopaedism, commentary, and annotation. Beckett's overt display of learning in his early novels was arguably a kind of intellectual and textual preservation. But the contest of ideas in his work subsequently became less one of intellectual history and more that of immanent thinking in the process of composition itself.

In 1871, the German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller (1832-1888) moved from his Basel chair to the much better paid chair in Tartu, and taught there until his untimely death. Besides philosophy, he had studied various disciplines, including the natural sciences. In the preparation of his own philosophy, he explored the history of philosophy for more than twenty years and made pioneering contributions to the history of concepts. Only by the early-1880s did he begin to elaborate his "new philosophy", an original version of personalism, both anti-idealist and anti-materialist. He did this in three major works (Die wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt 1882, Religionsphilosophie 1886, Neue Grundlegung der Psychologie und Logik, posthumous 1889) which built upon each other. Unwritten remained the keystone of his philosophy, the Philosophie des Christentums, in which Teichmüller wanted to show that the philosophical contents of Christianity were encapsulated by his own personalism. One major objective of his philosophy, as I see it, was regaining reality---in particular the reality of the person---after it had been lost in the wake of the failure of modern representationalism. Notwithstanding its coherentist elements, I see Teichmüller's philosophy as a precursor of direct realism. Although he fell into oblivion soon after, his thoughts were received throughout Europe, notably by Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleksey Kozlov and Nicholas Lossky. His extensive literary remains, which are kept in Basel, remain to be explored.

In this paper, I take inspiration from some themes in Ann Murphy’s recent book, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, especially her argument that philosophy’s identity and relation to itself depends on an intimate relationship with that which is designated as not itself (e.g. other academic disciplines and non-philosophy in general), the latter of which is a potential source of shame that calls for some form of response. I argue that this shame is particularly acute in regard to the natural sciences, which have gone on in various ways to distance themselves from their progenitor discipline and to achieve both agreement and technical progress in a way that could never be said of philosophy. I trace out some of the reactions to this shame that have dominated in the twentieth century and been a factor in the so-called analytic-continental ‘divide’. The options here are many and varied, but they range from cannibalism (philosophy as queen of the sciences, thus conferring some of the prestige of science upon the philosophy, which alone can unite or ground the various ontic sciences), scientific naturalism (the philosopher defers to the sciences, and most forms of meta-philosophy are rejected as an outmoded remnant of first philosophy), or some kind of irenic separatism about methods or domains such that science and philosophy do not encroach upon the territory of each other. My aims here are mainly diagnostic, but I will indicate where I think that certain responses to this shame are unproductive and unhelpful, with divergent weaknesses associated with the traditions that have come to be labelled ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ respectively. My tacit suggestion, then, is that philosophy needs to become post-analytic and meta-continental, but I will also briefly criticize some recent efforts to do precisely this in what is sometimes called the ‘scientific turn’ in contemporary continental (or post-continental) philosophy.

Institutionally, the flourishing of Dutch philosophy of history after the 1970s was primarily connected with history programmes and departments. Dutch philosophers, on the other hand, have not shown much interest in philosophy of history in the past four decades. Before 1970 this situation was completely different: philosophy of history was an important theme in Dutch academic philosophy. It is sometimes assumed that philosophy of history in The Netherlands before the 1970s mainly involved speculation about the meaning of the historical process from a religious perspective. Most academic philosophers, however, rejected more speculative forms of philosophy of history, and focused on a critical analysis of the foundations of historiography. This article examines the work of four Dutch philosophers of history in the period between 1920 and 1970, Goedewaagen, Pos, Kuypers, and Beerling, and positions their work within the historical development of Dutch philosophy. The strong interest in philosophy of history before 1970 and its sudden disappearance thereafter is explained by the late occurrence in The Netherlands of the parting of the ways between analytic and continental philosophy.

The article discusses the situation of philosophical education in Russia. After 1991, the teaching of the officially recognized “dialectical materialism” and “historical materialism” in Russia was stopped. Since then, there has been no unified curriculum in philosophy studies in Russia, and the discipline has been significantly changed and extended. Now it includes a variety of philosophical currents that correspond to the general image of this discipline in the world. Nevertheless, there are some distinctive features, which differentiate Russian philosophy teaching from the c of philosophy elsewhere. One significant trait of modern Russian philosophy is the quest for its own identity. This explains the steady and ongoing interest in the history of Russian philosophy and in religious philosophy, which is booming at present. It is also significant that a majority of post-Soviet philosophers still perceive themselves as successors to the scientific ideology in the Marxist sense and regard the working out of a scientific world outlook as their goal. Philosophical schools, such as phenomenology and hermeneutics, are still viewed with suspicion and considered as historical phenomena, which have been overcome a long time ago. The paper will discuss the complex relationship between different positions in the understanding of philosophy in Russia, against the background of the struggle between conservative and progressive tendencies in Russian politics, culture and economics. The analysis of the mainstream of philosophical re-formation allows us to speak about the “New Epoch of Engineers” and the fall of the “Humanist Thaw”.