One of the guiding thoughts throughout this work is that G. W. F. Hegel is the philosopher of the modern age, that subsequent phil osophers, whether or not they have read his works, must take their stand in relation to Hegel. My purpose is not only to present Hegel, but to show that his influence has been felt for some time, even though his presence has not been explicitly acknowledged. In spite of a recent revival in Heglian scholarship, the history of philosophy in the English-speaking world is generally obscured by a period of darkness between Kant and the early inquiries of Russell and...

Die Sprachen sind nicht nach dem logischen Lineal gemacht. (Briefwechsel, p. 102) If success in solving problems is the hallmark of philosophical great- ness, then Frege was not a great philosopher. But by that same token, very few if any other figure in the history of philosophy will qualify. On the other hand, if the hallmark of philosophical great- ness is the opening up of new conceptual territory and the raising of hitherto unsuspected crucial questions, the shifting of philosophical perspectiv~ and the determination of subsequent lines of enquiry, then Frege must rank among the greatest...

This work resulted from my interests in several flDldam ental issues of contemporary phenomenology. Originally, their focal point was 1) the role and importance of the subject in philosophical activity and 2) the subject's finitude. To gain a perspective on these issues, a possible approach seemed to lie in the direction of the transcendental imagination and its relation to tim e. This focus on the imagination, of course, led to Fichte's egological philosophy that explicitly centers on the imagination. Here both issues are raised together. The reader of the Fichtean texts cannot for long...

The present work is an attempt to analyse critically Plato's views on mind and body and more particularly on the mind-body relationship within the wider setting of Plato's metaphysics. We seek to achieve this by a philosophical examination"-of the dialogues on the basis of a generally accepted order (some revision of this order is a by-product of our examination). Strictly speaking "soul" ought perhaps to be substituted for "mind" in the above. But it seems to be in terms of "mind" that modern philosophers deal with and refer to the problem that Plato tackled (mainly) in terms of psyche, and...

The full century that has elapsed since Nietzsche was at the height of his work did not obliterate his impact. In many ways he is still a contemporary philosopher, even in that sense of 'contemporary' which points to the future. We may have outgrown his style (always, however, admirable and exciting to read), his sense of drama, his creative exaggeration, his sometimes flamboy ant posture of a rebel wavering between the heroic and the puerile. Yet Nietzsche's critique of transcendental values and, especially, his attack on the inherited conceptions of rationality remain pertinent and continue...

The majority of aestheticians have focused their attention during the past three decades on the identity, or essential nature, of art: can 'art' be defined? What makes an object a work of art? Under what conditions can we characterize in a classificatory sense an object as an art work? The debate, and at times controversy, over these questions proved to be constructive, intellectually stimulating, and in many cases suggestive of new ideas. I hope this debate continues in its momentum and creative outcome. The time is, however, ripe to direct our attention to another important, yet neglected,...

The object of this study is to find a coherent theoretical approach to three problems which appear to interrelate in complex ways: (1) What is the ontological status of consciousness? (2) How can there be 'un conscious, ' 'prereflective' or 'self-alienated' consciousness? And (3) Is there a 'self' or 'ego' formed by means of the interrelation of more elementary states of consciousness? The motivation for combining such a diversity of difficult questions is that we often learn more by looking at interrelations of problems than we could by viewing them only in isola tion. The three questions...

Building upon the "preliminary conception of Phenomenology" introduced by Heidegger in section II of the Introduction to Sein und zeit, l one may say that a phenomenology of death would mean: "to let death, as that which shows itself, be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. " Does this mean then, that a properly phenomenological d- cription of death may reveal to us what death as a factical event is like "in the very way in which it shows itself from itself"? Although I cannot experience my death in order to describe it, may some kind of phenomenologica'l...

The Anglo-Saxon reception of Schopenhauer has a long and valuable tradition. An early reaction to Schopenhauer's thought from outside the German-speaking world was the appearance in the Westminster Review for 1853of "Iconoclasm in German Philosophy", an insightful essay of apprecia- tion written by John Oxenford. A gratified Schopenhauer was able to remark: "my philosophy has just set foot in England" (To Lindner, 27. 4. 1853). It remained there and spread throughout the English-speaking countries. In the following decades Schopenhauer's works were translated into English: carrying on the...