DOCSLIB.ORG

Wittgenstein on the Self-Identity of Objects

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Wittgenstein on the Self-Identity of Objects Wittgenstein on the Self-Identity of Objects Cyrus Panjvani, Edmonton, Canada [email protected] Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, states dering). Thus, when Wittgenstein concludes that the prob- that we do not require a sign for identity in an ideal logical lems associated with self-identity will “disappear”, it seems notation. (TLP 5.533) His intention is not to do away with the this should be on finding assertions of self-identity to be notion of identity, but rather to show that we may do without nonsense rather than senseless. On the other hand, Witt- the sign for identity as an expression of our notion of identity. genstein suggests otherwise, also in the Tractatus: “…to say Instead of using an identity sign, we are to express same- of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say ness of object by way of a sameness of sign; difference of of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.” object would then be expressed by way of a difference of (TLP 5.5303). In this remark, the assertion of the self-identity sign. A motivation for this change in conventions is that, of an object is not upheld as nonsense, but rather as saying according to Wittgenstein, the use of the identity sign can “nothing”. This passage suggests that the assertion of self- lead to philosophical confusion. One of the confusions Witt- identity is something different from nonsense, and thus that genstein endeavours to dispel is the view that identity can be “nothing” should be read here as uninformative or trivial (i.e., a relation between an object and itself. If self-identity is to senseless). present a genuine relation, such that it is universally and trivially true of any object that it is self-identical, then self- Turning to the Philosophical Investigations does not identity may be used as a universal necessary condition for help much. Wittgenstein herein states, “ ‘A thing is identical objecthood. The use of such a criterion would allow us to with itself’ - There is no finer example of a useless proposi- refer to objects qua objects, in disregard of their specific tion.” (PI §216). “Useless” may be interpreted as trivial or properties. This criterion is used by Russell in his Axiom of uninformative, and hence senseless. However, if we inter- Infinity, and Frege in his definition of the number zero. pret “useless” as meaningless (as per the statement of Moreover, the use of a criterion of self-identity to refer to the “meaning is use” in PI §43) then an assertion of self-identity totality of objects, qua objects, stands opposed to Wittgen- is meaningless, and hence presumably nonsense. In the stein’s claim that the world is a totality of facts, not objects, least, the matter is ambiguous if we are left to these remarks presented at the outset of the Tractatus. In the following, I on self-identity from the Tractatus and the Investigations. will show why, for Wittgenstein, identity is not a genuine A correspondence between Wittgenstein and Ramsey relation between an object and itself. This will involve show- provides some clarification. Ramsey interpreted identity in a ing that assertions of self-identity are nonsense. These as- way he thought consonant with the Tractatus: He upheld sertions are neither true nor false, and a fortiori, not trivially true identity statements to be tautologies and false ones to or universally true. be contradictions. “In reply”, Hans-Johann Glock conveys, In question is whether assertions of identity between “Wittgenstein insisted that a false identity statement involv- an object and itself are simply without sense, or whether ing logically proper names is nonsensical rather than con- they are nonsense. If these statements are senseless, as all tradictory, and that the same holds for true identity state- mathematical propositions are for the early Wittgenstein, ments, since the negation of nonsense is itself a nonsense.” then they are true but trivially true. That is, it is trivially true (Glock 1996, 167) Thus, despite the noted ambiguity in the that an object is identical to itself, and so it is universally true Tractatus, the early Wittgenstein did affirm that an assertion as well. These statements are senseless for being trivial and of self-identity is nonsense. I will now explain this. uninformative, but they are nonetheless true statements. If Consider this passage from Friederich Waismann (the they are nonsense, however, then they are neither true nor content of which, he remarks, is largely drawn from Wittgen- false; they are meaningless assertions. Thus, if these asser- stein): tions of self-identity are nonsense, then it is not true, and hence not trivially and universally true, that an object is iden- If it makes sense to ask whether the [two] armchairs can tical with itself. The difference between whether statements be distinguished, then they are two armchairs; if this ques- of self-identity are senseless versus nonsense is a differ- tion makes no sense, then it is one chair. In other words, ence between whether self-identity is true of all objects (and the question whether two things are identical is not the thus provides a criterion of objecthood that allows us to refer question whether they can be distinguished, but whether it to objects qua objects, in disregard of any other properties) makes sense to ask whether they can be distinguished. or not true of any object (in which case self-identity is not a (Waismann 1977, 26) criterion for objecthood). According to Waismann, the question to consider concern- At first sight, Wittgenstein seems to be ambiguous on ing the identity of objects is not whether the objects can be this point. On the one hand, he seems to conclude that such distinguished, but whether it even makes sense to ask alleged identity statements are nonsense when, in referring whether they can be distinguished. On Waisman’s reading, if to the identity of objects, he states: “So all problems disap- we affirm that an object is identical with itself, it is not be- pear which are connected with such pseudo-propositions.” cause we cannot in fact distinguish an object from itself, but (TLP 5.535) It does not seem that the philosophical prob- rather because we cannot conceive or make sense of what it lems associated with self-identity would disappear if the would be to distinguish an object from itself. The truth of assertion of self-identity was merely senseless for this still asserting the self-identity of an object is a result, not of the upholds that the assertion is true (albeit trivially true, just as impossibility of denying self-identity, but rather the non- with mathematical propositions). Indeed, it is, and was dur- sensibility of denying self-identity. That is, Waismann con- ing Wittgenstein’s early period, the accepted view that the veys it is correct to assert that an object is self-identical, and assertion of the self-identity of an object is trivially and uni- this truth is the result of nonsense: the nonsense of distin- versally true (and thus senseless under Wittgenstein’s ren- guishing an object from itself. 330 Wittgenstein on the Self-Identity of Objects / Cyrus Panjvani Waismann provides a step in the right direction in in- object qua object, and there does not appear to be one, then terpreting Wittgenstein, but only a step. Consider that, ac- we cannot speak of an object in disregard of any properties cording to Waismann, it makes no sense to even ask and we cannot refer to or identify the universe of objects qua whether a chair can be distinguished from itself. The point is objects. Russell’s Axiom of Infinity, for instance, does just not that it is impossible in fact for me to distinguish a chair this in asserting the infinity of objects in the universe. This is from itself but rather, as Waismann conveys, it impossible an assertion about how many objects there are rather than for me to even conceive of what it would be to do so. That is, an assertion about how many objects of a particular kind it is not that the question of the negation of self-identity lacks there are. (Glock 1996, 167) Again, the repudiation of iden- a positive answer, rather it is that the question cannot be tity as a genuine relation between an object and itself means properly understood (such that we can even begin to con- that we cannot use self-identity as a way of speaking of an sider an answer). Waismann is right about this much, but object qua object. To speak of or refer to an object we must wrong to convey that this implies the truth of the self-identity do so in terms of some property or other. This is a reason of objects. If it is simply the case that it is universally false to why Wittgenstein states, at the outset of the Tractatus, that distinguish an object from itself, then we may affirm that self- the world is a totality of facts, not objects (TLP 1.1). In addi- identity is universally true. However, if it is nonsense to as- tion, if the assertion of self-identity is not a basis for speaking sert that an object can be distinguished from itself – if the of a universe of objects qua objects (by reason of non- question of distinguishing an object from itself does not sense), then the denial of self-identity is not a basis for make sense as a question – then it is also nonsense to as- speaking of a universe or set that is empty of objects qua sert that an object is identical with itself; it is nonsense be- objects (again by reason of nonsense).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza's Ethics
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVI (2002) Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza’s Ethics STEVEN NADLER I Descartes famously prided himself on the felicitous consequences of his philoso- phy for religion. In particular, he believed that by so separating the mind from the corruptible body, his radical substance dualism offered the best possible defense of and explanation for the immortality of the soul. “Our natural knowledge tells us that the mind is distinct from the body, and that it is a substance...And this entitles us to conclude that the mind, insofar as it can be known by natural phi- losophy, is immortal.”1 Though he cannot with certainty rule out the possibility that God has miraculously endowed the soul with “such a nature that its duration will come to an end simultaneously with the end of the body,” nonetheless, because the soul (unlike the human body, which is merely a collection of material parts) is a substance in its own right, and is not subject to the kind of decomposition to which the body is subject, it is by its nature immortal. When the body dies, the soul—which was only temporarily united with it—is to enjoy a separate existence. By contrast, Spinoza’s views on the immortality of the soul—like his views on many issues—are, at least in the eyes of most readers, notoriously difficult to fathom. One prominent scholar, in what seems to be a cry of frustration after having wrestled with the relevant propositions in Part Five of Ethics,claims that this part of the work is an “unmitigated and seemingly unmotivated disaster..
    [Show full text]
  • Identity, Personal Continuity, and Psychological Connectedness Across Time and Over
    1 Identity, Personal Continuity, and Psychological Connectedness across Time and over Transformation Oleg Urminskyi, University of Chicago University of Chicago, Booth School of Business Daniel Bartels, University of Chicago University of Chicago, Booth School of Business Forthcoming, Handbook of Research on Identity Theory in Marketing 2 ABSTRACT: How do people think about whether the person they’ll be in the future is substantially the same person they’ll be today or a substantially different, and how does this affect consumer decisions and behavior? In this chapter, we discuss several perspectives about which changes over time matter for these judgments and downstream behaviors, including the identity verification principle (Reed et al. 2012) — people’s willful change in the direction of an identity that they hope to fulfill. Our read of the literature on the self-concept suggests that what defines a person (to themselves) is multi-faceted and in almost constant flux, but that understanding how personal changes relate to one’s own perceptions of personal continuity, including understanding the distinction between changes that are consistent or inconsistent with people’s expectations for their own development, can help us to understand people’s subjective sense of self and the decisions and behaviors that follow from it. 3 A person’s sense of their own identity (i.e., the person’s self-concept) plays a central role in how the person thinks and acts. Research on identity, particularly in social psychology and consumer behavior, often views a person’s self-concept as a set of multiple (social) identities, sometimes characterized in terms of the category labels that the person believes apply to themselves, like “male” or “high school athlete” (Markus and Wurf 1987).
    [Show full text]
  • The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity Author(S): James Giles Reviewed Work(S): Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol
    The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity Author(s): James Giles Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 175-200 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1399612 . Accessed: 20/08/2012 03:38 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy East and West. http://www.jstor.org THE NO-SELF THEORY: HUME, BUDDHISM, AND JamesGiles PERSONAL IDENTITY The problem of personal identity is often said to be one of accounting for Lecturerin Philosophy what it is that gives persons their identity over time. However, once the and Psychologyat Folkeuniversitetet problem has been construed in these terms, it is plain that too much has Aalborg,Denmark already been assumed. For what has been assumed is just that persons do have an identity. To the philosophers who approach the problem with this supposition already accepted, the possibility that there may be no such thing as personal identity is scarcely conceived. As a result, the more fundamental question-whether or not personal identity exists in the first place-remains unasked.
    [Show full text]
  • Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.Pdf
    PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS By LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN Translated by G. E. M. ANSCOMBE BASIL BLACKWELL TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Copyright © Basil Blackwell Ltd 1958 MY acknowledgments are due to the following, who either checked First published 1953 Second edition 1958 the translation or allowed me to consult them about German and Reprint of English text alone 1963 Austrian usage or read the translation through and helped me to Third edition of English and German text with index 1967 improve the English: Mr. R. Rhees, Professor G. H. von Wright, Reprint of English text with index 1968, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978, Mr. P. Geach, Mr. G. Kreisel, Miss L. Labowsky, Mr. D. Paul, Miss I. 1981, 1986 Murdoch. Basil Blackwell Ltd 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be NOTE TO SECOND EDITION reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or THE text has been revised for the new edition. A large number of otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. small changes have been made in the English text. The following passages have been significantly altered: Except in the United States of America, this book is sold to the In Part I: §§ 108, 109, 116, 189, 193, 251, 284, 352, 360, 393,418, condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re- 426, 442, 456, 493, 520, 556, 582, 591, 644, 690, 692.
    [Show full text]
  • Leibniz: Personal Identity and Sameness of Substance
    ROCZNIKI FILOZOFICZNE Tom LXV, numer 2 – 2017 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18290/rf.2017.65.2-5 PRZEMYSŁAW GUT * LEIBNIZ: PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SAMENESS OF SUBSTANCE Leibniz’s view on personal identity has been the object of numerous dis- cussions and various interpretations.1 Among others, the controversies re- volve around the following questions: (1) What is the relation of Leibniz’s conception to the Cartesian view on personal identity? Is it a completely new idea or some modification of Descartes’? (2) To what extent did Locke’s ideas lay the basis for Leibniz’s conception of personal identity, especially Locke’s distinction between being the same substance, organism, and per- son? (3) What role did psychological continuity play in Leibniz’s conception of personal identity? Did he indeed claim that a person’s identity cannot solely arise out of sameness of substance? (4) Is Leibniz’s solution to the problem of personal identity compatible with his deepest metaphysical com- mitments? Can it be seen as a conclusive solution to the problem? (5) Is Leibniz’s effort to offer an account of personal identity by combining the 2 substance-oriented view with the psychological view a coherent solution? Dr hab. PRZEMYSŁAW GUT, Prof. KUL – Katedra Historii Filozofii Nowożytnej i Współ- czesnej, Wydział Filozofii, Katolicki Uniwersytetu Lubelski Jana Pawła II; adres do korespon- dencji: Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin; e-mail: [email protected] 1 The abbreviations I use are: Erdmann = Gottfried Wilhelm LEIBNIZ, Opera philosophica om- nia, ed. Johann Eduard Erdmann (Berlin: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1840); GP = Die philosophischen Schriften von G.W.
    [Show full text]
  • Overturning the Paradigm of Identity with Gilles Deleuze's Differential
    A Thesis entitled Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy Dr. Ammon Allred, Committee Chair Dr. Benjamin Grazzini, Committee Member Dr. Benjamin Pryor, Committee Member Dr. Patricia R. Komuniecki, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo May 2014 An Abstract of Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy The University of Toledo May 2014 Taking Gilles Deleuze to be a philosopher who is most concerned with articulating a ‘philosophy of difference’, Deleuze’s thought represents a fundamental shift in the history of philosophy, a shift which asserts ontological difference as independent of any prior ontological identity, even going as far as suggesting that identity is only possible when grounded by difference. Deleuze reconstructs a ‘minor’ history of philosophy, mobilizing thinkers from Spinoza and Nietzsche to Duns Scotus and Bergson, in his attempt to assert that philosophy has always been, underneath its canonical manifestations, a project concerned with ontology, and that ontological difference deserves the kind of philosophical attention, and privilege, which ontological identity has been given since Aristotle.
    [Show full text]
  • Theories of Personal Identity
    Dean Zimmerman Materialism, Dualism, and “Simple” Theories of Personal Identity “Complex” and “Simple” Theories of Personal Identity Derek Parfit introduced “the Complex View” and “the Simple View” as names for contrasting theories about the nature of personal identity. He detects a “reductionist tradition”, typified by Hume and Locke, and continuing in such twentieth‐century philosophers as Grice, Ayer, Quinton, Mackie, John Perry, David Lewis, and Parfit himself. According to the Reductionists, “the fact of personal identity over time just consists in the holding of certain other facts. It consists in various kinds of psychological continuity, of memory, character, intention, and the like, which in turn rest upon bodily continuity.” The Complex View comprises “[t]he central claims of the reductionist tradition” (Parfit 1982, p. 227). The Complex View about the nature of personal identity is a forerunner to what he later calls “Reductionism”. A Reductionist is anyone who believes (1) that the fact of a person’s identity over time just consists in the holding of certain more particular facts, and (2) that these facts can be described without either presupposing the identity of this person, or explicitly claiming that the experiences in this person’s life are had by this person, or even explicitly claiming that this person exists. (Parfit 1984, p. 210) Take the fact that someone remembers that she, herself, witnessed a certain event at an earlier time. When described in those terms, it “presupposes” or “explicitly claims” that the same person is involved in both the episode of witnessing and of remembering. Purging the psychological facts of all those that 1 immediately imply the cross‐temporal identity of a person will leave plenty of grist for the mills of psychological theories of persistence conditions.
    [Show full text]
  • 436 Béla Szabados Ludwig Wittgenstein on Race, Gender, And
    Philosophy in Review XXXII (2012), no. 5 Béla Szabados Ludwig Wittgenstein on Race, Gender, and Cultural Identity: Philosophy as a Personal Endeavour. Lewiston, NY and Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press 2010. 300 pages $129.95 (cloth ISBN 978–0–7734–3817–0) As should be clear enough from the title, this is ‘essentially’ a book about Wittgenstein—about the man and his philosophy and what Bela Szabados convincingly argues to have been the intimately close relationship between the two. For Szabados, one of the most significant differences between the ‘earlier’ and the ‘later’ Wittgenstein lies in what he calls (and endorses as) “his turn away from Tractatus-style essentialism” (125) in favour of a ‘family resemblance’ account of meanings, yet he himself, as Laurence Goldstein pointed out in his perceptive review of this book (Notre Dame’s electronic journal of Philosophical Reviews for 2010.08.07), is prepared to “claim that since philosophy is essentially a personal endeavour in truth and in Wittgenstein there is no facet of Wittgenstein’s personality which can be said in advance to be irrelevant to an understanding of his philosophy.” (2) This sentence provides, incidentally, a not too untypical example of those which justify Goldstein’s grumble that “this is a book that deserved better editing”, and deserved it not least because Szabados writes overall in an engagingly direct and personal style. I have to confess that, unlike both Goldstein and Szabados himself, I am no sort of Wittgenstein specialist as such. That said, I found myself fascinated by Szabados’ detailed discussions of the evolution of Wittgenstein’s views on women, music (and more especially on Mahler), and his own Jewish roots, based, as his discussions are, on an extensive and careful use of Wittgenstein’s personal notebooks, his correspondence and other material never intended for publication, but now publicly available.
    [Show full text]
  • A a a How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness
    Draft May 2020 For G. Rabin Grounding and Consciousness (Oxford) How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream: Identity or Grounding?* Adam Pautz Brown Imagine [a picture] with a million tiny pixels. The picture and the properties reduce to the arrangement of light and dark pixels. The supervenience of mind and all else upon the arrangement of atoms in the void — or whatever replaces atoms in the void in true physics — is another case of reduction. David Lewis (1995) The reader is welcome to label ground physicalism a form of “dualism” or “emer- gentism” (or perhaps a new position entirely), so long as she recognizes that ground physicalism is built around the thesis that the mental is not fundamental but rather grounded in the physical. Jonathan Schaffer (2020) Most of nature is pretty is boring: just different arrangements of atoms in the void. But consciousness seems special. When brains reached a certain complexity, a miracle hap- pened. There appeared properties of a wholly novel type: conscious experiences. To explain this, we may have no choice but to posit special “psychophysical laws”. There are possi- ble worlds where these laws don’t obtain, the miracle doesn’t happen, and we are all zombies. This is property dualism. In “Sensations and Brain Processes”, J. C. Smart articulated just how unappealing property dualism is. It provides a complex and nonuniform picture of reality. And he put forward an alternative physicalist dream picture of reality. In sentient as well as in- sentient nature, “there is nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of physical constituents” (1959: 142).
    [Show full text]
  • The Logical Analysis of Key Arguments in Leibniz and Kant
    University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2016 The Logical Analysis Of Key Arguments In Leibniz And Kant Richard Simpson Martin University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Martin, Richard Simpson, "The Logical Analysis Of Key Arguments In Leibniz And Kant" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 755. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/755 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF KEY ARGUMENTS IN LEIBNIZ AND KANT A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Philosophy and Religion The University of Mississippi By RICHARD S. MARTIN August 2016 Copyright Richard S. Martin 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This paper addresses two related issues of logic in the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz. The first problem revolves around Leibniz’s struggle, throughout the period of his mature philosophy, to reconcile his metaphysics and epistemology with his antecedent theological commitments. Leibniz believes that for everything that happens there is a reason, and that the reason God does things is because they are the best that can be done. But if God must, by nature, do what is best, and if what is best is predetermined, then it seems that there may be no room for divine freedom, much less the human freedom Leibniz wished to prove.
    [Show full text]
  • Donald Davidson ERNEST LEPORE and KIRK LUDWIG
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVIII (2004) Donald Davidson ERNEST LEPORE AND KIRK LUDWIG avidson, Donald (Herbert) (b. 1917, d. 2003; American), Willis S. and Marion DSlusser Professor, University of California at Berkeley (1986–2003). Previ- ously Instructor then Professor in Philosophy at: Queens College New York (1947–1950), Stanford University, California (1950–1967), Princeton University (1967–1969), Rockefeller University, New York City (1970–1976), University of Chicago (1976–1981), University of California at Berkeley (1981–2003). John Locke Lecturer, University of Oxford (1970). One of the most important philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century, Donald Davidson explored a wide range of fundamental topics in meta- physics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophies of action, mind, and language. His impact on contemporary philosophy is second only to that of his teacher W. V. O. Quine, who, along with Alfred Tarski, exerted the greatest influence on him. Given the range of his contributions, his work emerges as surprisingly systematic, an expression and working out of a number of central guiding ideas. Among his most important contributions are 1. his defense of the common sense view that reasons, those beliefs and desires we cite in explaining our actions, are also causes of them [11], 2. his groundbreaking work in the theory of meaning, and his proposal, based on Tarski’s work on recursive truth definitions for formal languages, for how to formulate a compositional semantic theory for a natural language [29, 46, 47, 50, 51], 3. his development of the project of radical interpretation as a vehicle for investigating questions about meaning and the psychological attitudes involved in understanding action [7, 15, 42, 44, 48], 309 310 Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Idealism: a Love (Of Sophia) That Dare Not Speak Its Name
    Idealism: A Love (of Sophia) that Dare not Speak its Name PAUL REDDINl;' My first experience of philosophy at the University of Sydney was as a commencing undergraduate in the tumultuous year of 1973. At the start of that year, there was one department of philosophy, but by the beginning of the next there were two. These two departments seemed to be opposed in every possible way except one: they both professed to be committed to a form of materialist philosophy. One could think that having a common enemy at least might have been the cause for some degree of unanimity, but no: the traditional enemy of materialism - idealism - was regarded as having been long dead and buried. For the Marxists in the then Department of General Philosophy, it had been Marx who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, had 'inverted' Hegelian idealism into a form of materialism, while for the analytic philosophers in the Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy, it had been Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore who had triumphed over British idealism at the turn of the twentieth. There may have been many things that were atypical about philosophy as it was done at Sydney in the early 1970s, but its resistance to idealism was not among them. Twenty years later, however, there were signs that old certitudes in Anglophone philosophy were changing, and in 1994, two books were published by mainstream analytic philosophers addressing issues central to analytic concern and suggesting that the philosophy of Hegel held the key to their solution. These books were Mind and World * Paul Redding holds a Personal Chair in Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
    [Show full text]