I aquired this book at a APA meeting a few weeks ago and it has been a great reference - although it is not as indepth as it could be - but for the range of topics and philosophers it is very good - don't worry it is not just analytic philosophy - it covers continental too - and some non-western philosophies but not many - the style of writing is very clear and easy to read - it's worth the money -

Joseph Margolis is one of the most radical philosophers of contemporary philosophy and he even outshines Derrida and the other poststructuralist. But unlike them he is a very responsible philosopher, who rigorously argues for his thesis. I think Margolis has managed to express his ideas best in this book. This might be because it isn't a collection of old essays but a coherent book. Margolis' major aim is to show that relativism can be formulated coherently. In order to do this he argues that it isn't necessary for reality to possess an invariant structure. And when this is proven he tries to show that the law of excluded middle and the law of contradiction don't apply universally.

In this book Margolis' main interest is in the ontology of the cultural world. According to him analytic philosophers have never understood the complexity of this world. Margolis calls the characteristic properties of cultural entities Intentional, which cannot be reduced to physical properties. Cultural entities lack a definitive nature; therefore he considers them as "careers", whose nature is defined by their history. The existence of Intentional properties is always based on a cultural context or a conceptual scheme, but because these contexts change also the properties of cultural entities change. And there you have Margolis' relativism in a nutshell. It's very simple but I find it ingenious.

I have heard that Margolis is considered to be the only contemporary philosopher, who masters both the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy. This is very evident in this book and he explicitly says that his aim is to combine the best parts of both traditions. He considers and criticizes many analytic philosophers, especially Davidson, Dummett and Quine. Clearly from the continental tradition he has inherited most from Gadamer and from his ideas of the historical nature of thinking.

Although I find Margolis a great philosopher I disagree with him on many matters. First of all he neglects the relevance of the context where the artwork emerged. If this is conceded I think it is wrong to say that cultural entities lack a definite nature, because this context in part determines its nature. I think you could argue against Margolis that it is possible to separate ontology from epistemology. In doing so we could show that there is nothing in the nature of an artwork that prohibits the giving of a correct interpretation, but we just don't know it. Interpretations can be endless but not because cultural entities lack a definitive nature but because we don't have the relevant information for determining what that nature is.

An amazing collection of essays defending non-reductive materialism and the emergence of the cultural from the natural. The argument running through the essays is that reductive or externalist accounts of humanity are bound to fail. The essays cover analytic philosophy of art, including Goodman and Danto, the philosophy of interpretation, and the ontology of individual persons. Persons, Margolis argues, are hybrid between natural and cultural modes of being, and is not prone to complete understanding on a scientific model. Extremely interesting, and quite well written.

These 18 selections, by 17 professors and one Research Director (in the Hegel Archives at the University of Bochum, Germany), while within the realm of thoughts "On Philosophy and Politics," offer an education in Heidegger far broader than how his unique place in philosophy and support for the NSDAP (you should know who I really mean) are now topics subject to debate. I have read far more on Nietzsche than about Heidegger, and tend to be disappointed that the thought of Nietzsche looms like an already settled metaphysics of will to power in some of these selections, but the evaluation of either individual thinker seems to require an openness to how other philosophers are making their interpretations. Since this book was published in 1992, the overwhelmingly negative consensus about Heidegger's embrace of what is German, as an inner truth about some level of greatness in his esteem, has been the major objection to anything which he thought.

As a consideration of alternatives, philosophy offers thinkers the opportunity to discuss ideas in a manner which does not commit the speaker to an absolute commitment, one way or the other. I find this particularly true of the use which this book makes of the comments of Rudolf Bultmann, who was about five years older than Heidegger, studied and taught at Marburg, and who gets mentioned in this book more often than the listings in the index:

31, 106, 128, 317, 265; Heidegger's correspondence with, 15-16.

The correspondence had not been published when this book was written. The first page listed, 31, mentions a conversation between Bultmann and Heidegger after World War II, not a time when Heidegger was open to suggestions about what other people thought he ought to do. The source of this information was a biography of Martin Heidegger by Hugo Ott, published in 1988. This book, THE HEIDEGGER CASE, also contains an article by Hugo Ott, "Biographical Bases for Heidegger's `Mentality of Disunity,' " which starts with a description by Heidegger of an inquisition, "in December 1945, when I was brought before the faculty in the inquisition's cross-examination to answer the twenty-three questions and I broke down completely, Dean Beringer of the Medical School (who had seen through the whole charade and the intentions of the accusers) came to me and simply took me away . . ." (p. 93). Ott explains that "Martin Heidegger was in need of very intensive medical care" (p. 95), which I tend to see as politically motivated, but "the medical care came from Professor Beringer himself, who was then the director of the University Psychiatric Clinic: Heidegger was placed in the sanatorium Schloss Hausbaden . . . from February to the end of May 1946. After that time, the psychotherapeutic treatment continued with Gebsattel." (p. 95). Even Archbishop Conrad Groeber was interested in his care, and sent a report to a priest in Rome. Ott is interested in the religious connection, even including a few lines in latin of famous Bible verses. "We should bear in mind the Twenty-third Psalm in discussing Heidegger." (p. 96). But Heidegger found more salvation in Luther than in the system which he considered "the essence of Catholic faith." (p. 106). Having seen the choice that Luther made, "After this, Heidegger came to be considered the Protestant who had come from Catholicism, . . . as Rudolf Bultmann wrote at the end of 1923 after participating in the St. Paul seminar that Heidegger offered following his call to Marburg." (p. 106).

The following selection, "Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Politics" by Otto Poeggeler, includes a portion of the letter from Bultmann, dated December 23, 1923, about his seminar on the ethics of St. Paul. "This time the seminar is especially instructive for me, due to the participation of our new philosopher, Heidegger, a student of Husserl. He comes from Catholicism, but is entirely Protestant. . . . The older generation is unable to participate, as its members no longer even understand the problem to which we are lending our efforts." (p. 122). Though the title for this subsection is "Decline and Destruction," the scientific advances of the century "which vastly lengthened the time of the origin of the universe," (p. 122) seemed to bring philosophy to a new consideration of time.

As an example of reading philosophy, the tenth selection, "A Comment on Heidegger's Comment on Nietzsche's Alleged Comment on Hegel's Comment on the Power of Negativity" by Leszek Kolakowski, checks out a comment in "Der Siegel" just after Heidegger's death, in which "Heidegger asserted that whoever had ears to hear knew that he had criticized the Nazi regime in his Nietzsche lectures." (p. 255). On the contrary, this selection is intended "to suggest, on one small point, that Heidegger employed his peculiar reading of Nietzsche to express--obliquely but clearly--his commitment to German imperialism." (p. 255). At this point, people who have been hearing anything about the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, might not be surprised that Leszek Kolakowski is listed in this book as a Professor there. The questions that are considered tend to be murky, even before Heidegger, and the philosophical attempt to come up with something positive, in spite of it all, ends with the conclusion that Heidegger "was not the only thinker whose work could have been employed for evil purposes without distortion, while at the same time it actually advanced in a seminal way the work of civilization." (p. 262).

Being very interested in various aspects of moral philosophy, I am none the less not a philosopher, in the sense of being primarily interested in the history and comparison of ideas for their own sake. What interests me are the validity, structure, construction and application of the ideas. This is irrespective of whether we are dealing with application to abstract or material subjects. From this point of view I am perhaps an unfair choice of reviewer; the author seems to have been writing for professional philosophers and the result is pretty intensely tedious to the layman: So&so said such&such which put him into camp x, except for the following aspects in which he agreed with Bill Bloggs and disagreed with Fred Floggs, while Gawdelpus first said gribble, then changed his mind and now is uncertain whether briggle or grillib. Who cares???

I did not find it very well written either. The author did say that he had written it in a brief interlude of available time, but that is only an explanation, not much of an excuse.

Still, I stuck it out to the last chapter which turned out to be the bit that I had bought the book for, the bit where the author says what he thinks and why, and cheap at the price, and I only encountered injury after insult. He proposes his idea of (to be fair) an outline of a sketch of how he would go about basing an ethical system on no principles. My blood pressure went through my eardrums when I found that he not only tried to justify imperatives on no sounder basis than any of the writers he had criticised, but suggested as his basis, the hierarchy of ideas of what would be most universally regarded as (un)desirable by everyone. Then he glibly selected items which were diametrically opposed to what a lot of people think, and not only those in remote cultures which certainly would stare in bemusement at his idea of the unthinkably horrible. Many (most?) who more or less share his culture, might none the less invert much of his hierarchy of (un)acceptability. Certainly some of the things which he thought the worst of all worlds, seemed to me less of a concern than some he regarded as in comparison just so-so horrible.

This is a particularly inept idea, compelling acceptance of principles on the basis that no doubt everyone agrees on some universally common and non-trivial denominator of them. That way cogency certainly does not lie, whether he goes back to elaborate his thoughts and expand his outline to a completed structure or not. To assume that his pet hierachy of hates and loves and griefs should command the outlook and moral compulsions of the human race is smug beyond belief. (We e e elll, would you accept "beyond belief in a professional philosopher"?)

Now, you may think I am being stupid or nasty or just plain halitotic, but if anyone wants to argue the point, it had better be the author, because I damwell refuse to reread that book to defend my views against anyone else. Fortunately I doubt that the one person with what I regard as the moral basis for demanding that I defend my criticism, will be at all interested in my doing so.