Humans, by nature, desire to know.
20th Century Philosophy / Ethics
by Jurgen · Published February 25, 2019 · Last modified February 26, 2019
The following text is a keynote address Heinz von Foerster gave at the “International Conference on Systems and Family Therapy — Ethics, Epistemology, New Methods”, which took place in Paris...
Source: Volume 1. Leo Lowenthal, published by Transaction Books, 1984. Leo Löwenthal (1900-1993) was a sociologist associated with the Frankfurt School. He began his career by joining the Institute for...
20th Century Philosophy / Ethics
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published June 24, 2017 · Last modified May 23, 2018
If we do not abandon, as ethical relativism does, the search for objectively valid norms of conduct, what criteria for such norms can we find? The kind of criteria depends on the type of ethical system – the norms of which we study. By necessity, the criteria in authoritarian ethics are fundamentally different from those in humanistic ethics.
In authoritarian ethics an authority states what is good for man and lays down the laws and norms of conduct; in humanistic ethics man himself is both the norm giver and the subject of the norms, their formal source or regulative agency and their subject matter.
Source: Hegel for Beginners, by Llyod Spencer and Andrzej Krauze, Published by Icon Books. In 1808, Hegel still talked of constructing some sort of bridge between traditional logic set out...
19th Century Philosophy / Continental Philosophy / Dialectics
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published June 19, 2017 · Last modified May 26, 2019
Part One: Introduction §1 Philosophy misses an advantage enjoyed by the other sciences. It cannot like them rest the existence of its objects on the natural admissions of consciousness, nor...
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published June 15, 2017 · Last modified January 23, 2019
Written in 1938, during André Breton’s trip to Mexico, where he visited Leon Trotsky. It is signed by André Breton and Diego Rivera. It is believed that the Manifesto was...
20th Century Philosophy / Continental Philosophy / Ethics / Metaphysics / Philosophy
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published March 22, 2017 · Last modified March 23, 2017
This essay was published for the first time in “Justifications de l’Ethique” (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Universite de Bruxelles), 1984, pp. 41 – 51. I am quoting here from the English...
Aesthetics / Art / Images
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published March 21, 2017 · Last modified April 9, 2017
It is spring in California, and we had plenty of rain through the winter. Everything is in bloom, and the De Young Museum uses this abundance to organize its annual...
Philosophical Topics/Areas / Philosophy
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published March 21, 2017 · Last modified January 23, 2019
Western Philosophy has an almost 3000-year history, with origins in ancient Greece and Rome, to its fully established form today. It is the intellectual discourse that accompanied Western civilization. At...
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published January 22, 2017 · Last modified January 23, 2019
This text was written in 1936. “Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action...
20th Century Philosophy / Continental Philosophy / Political Theory / Postmodernism
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published December 12, 2016
What is Enlightenment? This is a question that modern philosophy has not been capable of answering, but that it has never managed to get rid of, either. And one that has been repeated in various forms for two centuries now. From Hegel through Nietzsche or Max Weber to Horkheimer or Habermas, hardly any philosophy has failed to confront this same question, directly or indirectly. What, then, is this event that is called the Aufklärung?
20th Century Philosophy / Continental Philosophy / Political Theory / Postmodernism
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published December 11, 2016
This page offers brief definitions of some of the key concepts in Foucault’s work. It is adapted from Michel-Foucault.com, maintained by Claire O’Farrell. apparatus (dispositif) Foucault generally uses this term...
Continental Philosophy / Philosophers / Political Theory / Postmodernism
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published December 11, 2016 · Last modified February 13, 2017
Foucault (1926 – 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. He theorized the relationship between power and knowledge, and examined the forms of social control...
The following description was written by Simon Webley, of the British-North American Research Association, who also worked on the text itself. INTRODUCTION A series of Interfaith consultations began in 1984 under the...
20th Century Philosophy / Continental Philosophy / Metaphysics / Philosophy
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published April 10, 2016
Note: This is a reproduction of Heideggers 1964 short essay The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking. The section and paragraph numbers are not part of the original...
19th Century Philosophy / Continental Philosophy / Metaphysics / Philosophers
by Jurgen Braungardt · Published April 10, 2016 · Last modified January 28, 2019
About Schelling “Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) is, along with Fichte and Hegel, one of the three most influential thinkers in the tradition of ‘German Idealism’. Since he changed...
