VOLUME 8 • 2009
MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND PETER HØEG: BORDERLINERS AS UNCOVERING AND HAPPENING OF TRUTH
ABSTRACT. Peter Høeg’s Borderliners is one of the most striking books on education and childhood. I approach the book from the beginning and the end of our philosophical tradition, through Aristotle’s Poetics and Heidegger’s hermeneutics. There are three reasons for doing so. Firstly, Aristotle illu..
DINOSAURS, DODOS, HUMANS?
ABSTRACT. This paper offers a short discussion of existential risks, risks that threaten to cause the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or to permanently and drastically curtail its future potential. It argues that existential risks deserve serious attention, and that many of the bigg..
FEIGL & THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
ABSTRACT. This paper describes the development of analytic philosophy at the University of Minnesota from the time Herbert Feigl arrived there in 1940 to the late fifties when the author was there as a graduate student. The author relates how, after Feigl arrived, Wilfred Sellars soon joined the dep..
THE GHOSTLY PROMISE OF ENLIGHTENMENT EUROPE: HABERMAS, DERRIDA AND THE PREDICAMENT OF THE WEST
ABSTRACT. This paper begins by considering the concept of European modernity and claims made for it by Göran Therborn who argues, following Habermas, that it consists in learning to break from the prejudices of its religious past. From this starting point the paper explores the growing political dif..
ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD AS A METHOD FOR TESTING THE LEGITIMACY OF CONCEPTS
ABSTRACT. Traditional attempts to delineate the distinctive rationality of modern science have taken it for granted that the purpose of empirical research is to test judgments. The choice of concepts to use in those judgments is therefore seen either a matter of indifference (Popper) or as important..