قراءات إضافية
For compendious recent surveys of the entire Continental
philosophical tradition beginning with Kant and German idealism, see Simon Critchley
and William Schroeder (eds), A Companion to Continental
Philosophy (Blackwell, Oxford, 1998) and Simon Glendinning (ed.),
The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental
Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1999). I have
expanded material from the Introduction to the Blackwell’s Companion in drafting
this book. Chapter 7 of this book appeared in a different form in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 February 1998,
under the title ‘Dare to Think’. For helpful single-volume summaries of the
Continental tradition, see Robert Solomon, Continental
Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988) and
David West, An Introduction to Continental
Philosophy (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996). For anthologies
containing extracts from primary texts, see Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater
(eds), The Continental Philosophy Reader
(Routledge, London, 1996) and Karen Feldman and William McNeill (eds), Continental Philosophy: An Anthology (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1997).
The argument of Chapter 1 was suggested to me by three books: Pierre
Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1995), Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1990), and John Cottingham, Philosophy and the Good Life (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1998). Also, on the question of the relation of science to the
meaning of life, Dostoevsky’s Notes from
Underground was frequently on my mind, a text which is a better
introduction to philosophy than most.
The argument of Chapter 2 was strongly influenced by Michael
Dummett’s Origins of Analytical Philosophy
(Duckworth, London, 1993) and Frederick Beiser’s The Fate of
Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987). For an overview of the shape and progress of German
idealism and romanticism, see the six essays in ‘The Kantian Legacy’ in the
Blackwell Companion to Continental Philosophy.
See also Steven Crowell’s essay on ‘Neo-Kantianism’ in the same volume. For a very
useful overview of German romanticism and idealism and their relevance for
contemporary philosophy, see the work of Andrew Bowie, especially Aesthetics and Subjectivity (Manchester University
Press, Manchester, 1990). John Stuart Mill’s essays on Bentham and Coleridge,
discussed in Chapter 3, can be found in Utilitarianism and
Other Essays (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987). On the question of two
cultures, see Stefan Collini’s very helpful introduction to The Two Cultures (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1998).
Chapter 4 begins by mentioning Rorty and Cavell. The best
introduction to their work is their own writings; see Rorty’s now classic book,
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1980) and Cavell’s wonderfully rich
The Claim of Reason (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1979). On the question of tradition and on much else, see Husserl’s classic
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970) and the
‘Introduction’ to Heidegger’s Being and Time
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1962).
Turning to Chapter 5, for a helpful discussion of nihilism before
Nietzsche, see Michael Gillespie’s Nihilism Before
Nietzsche (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1995). On
nihilism in Nietzsche, see Mark Warren, Nietzsche and
Political Thought (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1988) and Keith
Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche as a Political Thinker
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994). For my own thoughts on how to respond
to nihilism, see Very Little … Almost Nothing
(Routledge, London, 1997).
For the Heidegger-Carnap controversy discussed in Chapter 6,
Carnap’s essay can be found under the title ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through
Logical Analysis of Language’, in Logical
Positivism, ed. A. J. Ayer (Free Press, Glencoe, 1959). The most
accurate translation of Heidegger’s ‘What is Metaphysics?’ can be found in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1998). The interesting ‘Postscript’ and ‘Introduction’ to ‘What
is
Metaphysics?’ can also be found in the same volume. The ‘Yellow Brochure’ can be
found in Otto Neurath, ‘The Scientific Conception of the World’ (1929) in Empiricism and Sociology (Reidel, Dordrecht,
1973).
The argument of Chapter 7 on the problem of scientism and
obscurantism was inspired by the work of Frank Cioffi: see his Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1998). See also Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Polity
Press, Cambridge, 1987) and Richard Bernstein, Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism (University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, Pa., 1983). For the classic statement of the relation between causal
explanation and interpretative understanding, see Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to
Philosophy (Routledge, London, 1990).
On the notion of philosophy as conceptual creation alluded to
in Chapter 8, see the opening chapters of Deleuze and Guattari’s wonderful What is Philosophy? (Columbia University Press, New
York, 1994).