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BEINER, Ronald. Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 167 pp. Cloth, $24.95--'Many of us are reeling today,' declares Ronald [...]

This paper describes and evaluates two different ways of doing philosophy: a 'reflexive' approach that sees metaphilosophical inquiry as fundamental, and a 'non-reflexive' approach that sees metaphilosophy as dispensable. It examines arguments that have been advanced for these approaches by Gilbert Ryle, Jerry Fodor, and Richard Rorty, and claims that none of these arguments are convincing. Finally, the paper draws on Alasdair MacIntyre's work to propose a different way of choosing between the approaches, one that asks which approach is more successful at making its appeal intelligible to the other. From this perspective, the reflexive approach appears to have an important advantage over its rival.

Ricoeur is a post-Hegelian Kantian is presented considering about how and what he reasons philosophically. It is argued that Ricoeur philosophizes on three Kantian ideas God, self and world while taking into account Hegel's critical evaluation on it.

This article asks what Gadamerian hermeneutics can contribute to recent debates about how philosophy is related to its history. First, I explain how Gadamer understands this relation, paying particular attention to his debts to Heidegger and to the role of tradition in the human sciences. Next, I argue that Gadamer's view raises serious difficulties--difficulties connected with what he calls historical consciousness. Finally, I try to respond to these difficulties by distinguishing two different ways of understanding what historians of philosophy do. While my response is in some tension with what Gadamer explicitly says about the history of philosophy, it is, I argue, consistent with the spirit of his work.

It is often argued that a study of the history of philosophy is not itself philosophical. Philosophy, it is claimed, is an active, productive enterprise, whereas history is taken to be imitative and therefore passive. My aim in this paper is to argue against this view of the history of philosophy. First, I describe a famous criticism of historians of philosophy--Kant's critique of the 'spirit of imitation.' I claim that the source of this criticism is the received view of mimesis. Since the received view has been widely discredited, I propose a different one--one that sees imitation not as passive but as active. Finally, I suggest that adopting this new view of mimesis demands that we rethink what it means for a history of philosophy to be true. And I propose that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer might help us to do so.

The distinction between morality and ethics is valid, but they should be regarded as complementary rather than competing approaches. Views of Bernard Williams and Jurgen Habermas are examined.

One of the core principles of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics is that interpretation culminates in application, or appropriation. But what exactly is an appropriation, and what makes some appropriations better than others? I try to shed light on these difficult matters by examining Ricoeur's own appropriation of Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of the narrative unity of a life, and by contrasting it with Richard Rorty's appropriation of the same notion. I argue that Ricoeur's appropriation is more successful than Rorty's, and that the best explanation of its success is that it respects a distinctive norm that governs the activity of appropriation. I conclude by describing this norm, which I call the principle of ultimate compatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FISCHER, John Martin. Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. viii + 184 pp. Cloth, $65.00--John Martin Fischer is well-known for his work [...]

FISCHER, John Martin. Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. viii + 184 pp. Cloth, $65.00--John Martin Fischer is well known for his [...]

Paul Ricoeur's use of Greek tragedy is discussed by looking at several of his readings of tragedy to show how he uses it as a particularly valuable way of articulating and defending philosophical claims. Ricoeur's engagement with tragedy amounts to a powerful assessment of the relationship between philosophy and literature.

WEISSMAN, David. Lost Souls: The Philosophical Origins of a Cultural Dilemma. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. xiii + 210 pp. Paper, $18.95--Lost Souls is a genealogy of [...]

This essay asks whether a pragmatist philosophy of history can make sense of the notion of historical facts. It is tempting to think it cannot, since pragmatists insist, as James puts it, that the trail of the human serpent is over everything. Facts, by contrast, are typically thought of as something untouched by the human serpent, something impervious to what we think and do. I argue, however, that there is a way of understanding facts that is perfectly at home in pragmatist philosophy of history. Drawing on work by Robert Brandom, I propose that facts be interpreted inferentially. On this view, to call something a fact, or to say that the facts make my beliefs true, is simply a shorthand way of saying that a particular sort of relationship exists among certain sentences. I further show that this inferential understanding of facts is fully compatible with the distinctive features of historical inquiry. In particular, it is compatible with history's irreducibly narrative character, and with the way different narratives can reveal radically different facts. Finally, I use this account of historical facts to respond to a classic criticism of pragmatism: the charge that pragmatism is narcissistic. I argue that pragmatism is narcissistic in only the minimal sense that it cannot countenance theory-neutral givens. But pragmatists can happily grant that there is more to truth than consensus, and that our claims are answerable to facts that everyone can get wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]