The reason why German idealism didn’t have a strong standing in the UK is due to their local strong positions of Utilitarianism.
Brits preferred more practical and quantifiable systems.
German romanticism
Johan Herder
Novalis
The Schiegel brothers
Friedrich Schleiermacher
All of these thinkers had revolted against “the age of rationality”, despite disagreeing between each other.
On the periphery there was also
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
The Nazis saw themselves as heirs to the Romanticists, rather than Kant and Hegel.
Advances of the sciences
In physics, Maxwell discovered the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation
In mathematics, Dedekind pioneered number theory, Georg Cantor did the same for set theory, who Ernst Cassirer and Bertrand Russel drew from significantly, respectively
In Biology, Darwin (ofc) and Humboldt are important
Freud, Bertrand and Russel all heavily drew upon Darwin.
Sociology and Psychology emerge as a consequence of the attempts to marry science and philosophy
Philosophy of science was created by Ernst Mach
Husserl was heavily influenced by people like William James and Franz Brentano, who worked in Psychology
A lot of philosophers were trained in the scientists. Bergson was a trained mathematician, Husserl was a trained logician.
The early 20th century marked the start of many “paradigm shifts”
In science, with Albert Einstein in general relativity
In the arts, e.g. “Stream of Consciousness” in literature.
We will be talking about philosophy that tries to answer the questions of life and consciousness
Edmund Husserl is the found of phenomenology.
Husserl Archive in Leuven
After Husserl dies in ‘38, a father takes it upon himself to transfer all of his works to Leuven to preserve them, as Husserl was of jewish descent.
From “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science” (published in Logos 1910/11)
to the “Crisis of European Studies” (1935)
Sigmund Freud:
trained as a neurologist
the underlying theory of “unconsciousness”
Henri Bergson: “Bergsonism”
Mathematician-turned philosopher and Nobel Prize laureate
Elan vital and evolution
Elan vital was a notion that he used to try to connect all of the lives in natural history, in evolution.
All 3 of them devoted themselves to the philosophy of consciousness
Philosophy “The Linguistic Turn”
Some philosophers are obsessed with life, while others believe that language is the foundation of philosophical theory.
Gottlob Frege’s work was what gave the footing for …?
The “continental-analytic divide”
Continental philosophy tended to work less with language, while Analytic philosophy focused on language (not colloquial - logical language)
Logicism: mathematics grounded on logics
“Someone who wants to learn logic from language is like an adult who wants to learn how to think from a child. When human beings created language, they were at the stage of childish pictorial thinking.”
Frege’s letter to Husserl, Oct. 30, 1906
Ferdinand de Saussure: Structuralism
A linguist by trade, his main legacy is the “Course in General Linguistics”, which is a compilation of course notes made by his students, that was created and published thanks to his students.
Took a detour through russia (where he congregated with formalists or something) and the US, where ..???
Will be talking about his structures in one of the following weeks.
La belle epoque is a sentiment, part of which was german idealism. The philosophers mentioned above are notable representatives and contributors to that movement.
The “short twentieth century” - 1914 to 1991 (fall of the soviet union YIPPIE!!!!!!!)
the short twentieth century in general was a dark, shitty time (“an age of crisis and decline”)
Oswald Spengler “Decline of the West” talked about how the age of the west is on its last days and that other cultures are slowly replacing its hegemony.
Spengler described western culture as “Faustian”,
Vita activa
- Leo Strauss - conservatism
- Theodor W. Adorno - critical theory
- Hannah Arendt - republicanism
- Simone de Beauvoir - feminism
- Isaiah Berlin - liberalism
all of these philosophers were born in early 20th century, which means their childhoods were spent during WWI and their young adulthoods in WWII
(before/during/after war)
Isaiah Berlin:
Before: Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford
During: diplomatic service in Washington
Arendt:
Before: Studied under Heidegger and Jaspers
During: Earned a minimal living in Manhattan
Adorno:
Before: taught in Frankfurt
During: Exiled to “German California” (Weimar under the palms)
Beauvoir:
Before: Graduated from the Ecole normale superieure
During: Dismissed from teaching post
Strauss:
Before: Rockefeller fellowship in Paris and Cambridge
During: Secured a position in New York (Columbia University)
The texts we are going to read in this seminar are all written in the 50s
The 50s are a special period, because the war is over, Germany is divided and the cold war has started. People now have the time and material condition to reflect on what has happened in Europe.
How can we prevent these issues from happening again?
how do we prevent totalitarian regimes. What is the origin, mechanism, notion?
The holocaust was only widely publicized when .. was abducted from Argentina to Israel and placed before a court as an alleged war criminal. There, Arendt wrote her book “The Banality of Evil”.
What is political philosophy and what is its use?
Subjective opinions, return to science?
“The political” in an everyday, existential sense: feminism.