Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Rationality
Sets itself the Herculean task of comparing and reconciling the modern and Platonic concepts of rationality.

Modernity's break with the Middle Ages is distinguished by a comprehensive turn to a world of individual, empirical experience, a turn that was a repudiation of Plato's idea that there is a reality of rationality and intellect. Yet already in the Renaissance it was no longer thought necessary to seriously confront the "old" concept of rationality that emanates from Plato. Arbogast Schmitt's book sets itself this until-now-unfulfilled task, comparing the arguments for a life based on theory and one based on praxis in order to provide a balance sheet of profit and loss. Showing that the Enlightenment did not, as often assumed, discover rationality, but instead a different concept of rationality, the book opens one's view to other forms of rationality and new possibilities of reconciliation with one's own - that is, Western - history.
Modernity and Plato was hailed upon its publication in Germany (2003, revised 2008) as "one of the most important philosophy books of the past few years," as "a book that belongs, without any doubt, in the great tradition of German philosophy," and as "a provocative thesis on the antiquity-modernity debate." It is a major contribution to synthetic philosophy and philosophical historiography, in English for the first time.

Arbogast Schmitt is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Greek and Latin Philology at Free University, Berlin and Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology and Greek at the University of Marburg, Germany. Vishwa Adluri teaches in the Departments of Religion and Philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York.
"1102991727"
Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Rationality
Sets itself the Herculean task of comparing and reconciling the modern and Platonic concepts of rationality.

Modernity's break with the Middle Ages is distinguished by a comprehensive turn to a world of individual, empirical experience, a turn that was a repudiation of Plato's idea that there is a reality of rationality and intellect. Yet already in the Renaissance it was no longer thought necessary to seriously confront the "old" concept of rationality that emanates from Plato. Arbogast Schmitt's book sets itself this until-now-unfulfilled task, comparing the arguments for a life based on theory and one based on praxis in order to provide a balance sheet of profit and loss. Showing that the Enlightenment did not, as often assumed, discover rationality, but instead a different concept of rationality, the book opens one's view to other forms of rationality and new possibilities of reconciliation with one's own - that is, Western - history.
Modernity and Plato was hailed upon its publication in Germany (2003, revised 2008) as "one of the most important philosophy books of the past few years," as "a book that belongs, without any doubt, in the great tradition of German philosophy," and as "a provocative thesis on the antiquity-modernity debate." It is a major contribution to synthetic philosophy and philosophical historiography, in English for the first time.

Arbogast Schmitt is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Greek and Latin Philology at Free University, Berlin and Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology and Greek at the University of Marburg, Germany. Vishwa Adluri teaches in the Departments of Religion and Philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York.
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Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Rationality

Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Rationality

Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Rationality

Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Rationality

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Overview

Sets itself the Herculean task of comparing and reconciling the modern and Platonic concepts of rationality.

Modernity's break with the Middle Ages is distinguished by a comprehensive turn to a world of individual, empirical experience, a turn that was a repudiation of Plato's idea that there is a reality of rationality and intellect. Yet already in the Renaissance it was no longer thought necessary to seriously confront the "old" concept of rationality that emanates from Plato. Arbogast Schmitt's book sets itself this until-now-unfulfilled task, comparing the arguments for a life based on theory and one based on praxis in order to provide a balance sheet of profit and loss. Showing that the Enlightenment did not, as often assumed, discover rationality, but instead a different concept of rationality, the book opens one's view to other forms of rationality and new possibilities of reconciliation with one's own - that is, Western - history.
Modernity and Plato was hailed upon its publication in Germany (2003, revised 2008) as "one of the most important philosophy books of the past few years," as "a book that belongs, without any doubt, in the great tradition of German philosophy," and as "a provocative thesis on the antiquity-modernity debate." It is a major contribution to synthetic philosophy and philosophical historiography, in English for the first time.

Arbogast Schmitt is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Greek and Latin Philology at Free University, Berlin and Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology and Greek at the University of Marburg, Germany. Vishwa Adluri teaches in the Departments of Religion and Philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781571134974
Publisher: BOYDELL & BREWER INC
Publication date: 10/01/2012
Pages: 634
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword to the English Edition xiii

Foreword to the First Edition xxi

Translator's Acknowledgments xxvii

Translator's Note xxix

Translator's Introduction xxxi

Introduction 1

1 Difficulties in the Definition and Self-Conception of "Modernity" and die Emergence of "Historical Thinking" 1

2 The Turn toward This World and the Idealization of Nature to "Beautiful" Nature in Modern Art 12

3 The Turn to Experience and the Idealization of die Individual Object to a "Well-Determined" Object in the Scientific Discourses of "Modernity" 17

4 The Turn to Experience and die Rise of die "Modern}' Concept of Thought: Consciousness 30

5 Philosophies of Consciousness and of Discrimination: The Basic Difference in Potential Strategies of Epistemological Justification in Ancient and Modern Philosophy 46

6 Determinacy and Distinguishability as the Basic Philosophical Principles in Plato and Aristotle 57

7 The Renaissance: Not the Rebirth of "the" Antiquity but a Revival of Hellenistic Antiquity 59

8 The Structure of this Book: Part I 62

9 The Structure of this Book: Part II 66

Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity

Chapter 1 Do Freedom and Indeterminacy Make Man a Cultural Being? Or, Why Antiquity Seems Antiquated 75

1.1 The Opposition between Self-Created Culture and Pre-Determined Nature in Man 75

1.2 The Narrowing of the Concept of Rationality through the Opposition between "Sensibility" and "Reason" 94

Chapter 2 "Healthy Common Sense" and die Nature/Culture Antithesis 116

2.1 An Attempt at a Critique of Early Modernity's Antithesis between Nature and Culture 116

2.2 The Original Sin of Rationality 118

2.3 What Is Modern about Early Modernity: Liberation from Intuition or the Dominance of the Concept? 121

2.4 Aporias in the Relation of Intuition to Thought: From the Modern and Ancient Perspectives 123

2.5 Problems of Concept-Formation and Attempted Resolutions 130

2.6 The Primacy of Sensory Cognition over Thought 135

2.7 Concluding Evaluation and Transition 171

Part II "Concrete Thought" as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle

Chapter 3 The Interpretation of "Antiquity" from the Perspective of Modern Rationality 201

Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination 208

4.1 The Principle of Non-Contradiction as die Fundamental Criterion of Rationality in Aristotle 208

4.2 Rational Thought and Historical Understanding in Plato 215

4.3 "Being" as an Epistemological Criterion in Plato 217

4.4 Discrimination as die Fundamental Act of Thought and the System of Science in the "Liberal Arts" 225

Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination 263

5.1 Widening the Concept of Thought 263

5.2 The Unique Function of Thought: Its Independence of the Opposition between the Conscious and the Unconscious 264

Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination 277

6.1 Reason, Feeling, and the Will and Their Interaction in Action 277

6.2 The Intelligence of Emotions and Motivations in Modernity and in Platonic and Aristotelian Psychology 282

Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition 288

7.1 Independent "Free" Will in die Stoa 288

7.2 Desire, Spiritedness, and Rational Volition as the Fundamental Possibilities of Psychic Comportment in Plato 291

7.3 The Epistemological Conditions of Lust and Spiritedness: Perception, Intuition of Objects, and Opinion 300

7.4 Opinion and Emotion 331

Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle 333

8.1 Does Aristotle Reduce Feelings to Abstract Experiences of Pleasure? 333

8.2 The Genesis and Consciousness of Feelings 337

8.3 Abstract Feelings in Euripides and Sophocles 341

8.4 Aristotle's Analysis of Self-Love as an Example of Rational Feelings 346

8.5 Éducation sentimentale in Aristotle 348

8.6 Art as an Education of Feelings: Tragedy as an Example 352

Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man 372

9.1 The State as the Condition of Possibility for Realizing Freedom and Individuality 372

9.2 The Primacy of die Individual over the Community in Homeric Society 376

9.3 The Primacy of the Individual over the State as a Whole in Plato 389

9.4 Individuality as a Given Fact or as a Task 395

9.5 Individual Happiness and Justice in the State 413

9.6 Self-Preservation and Individual Happiness: The Distinction between Survival and the Good Life 419

Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality 452

10.1 The Reinterpretation of Chance, Failure, Evil, and the Destruction of the Individual in the Service of die Development of the Whole 452

10.2 Natural History and History in Aristotle 464

10.3 Rational Self-Realization as a Condition for die Coincidence of Private Advantage with the Well-Being of the Whole 498

10.4 Desire and Need in Aristotle's Economic and Social Theory 502

10.5 The Analysis of the Forms of Decline of State and Society in Plato and Aristotle 506

Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality

Chapter 11 The Contrast "Ancient" versus "Modern" 519

11.1 The Radicality of the Consciousness of a New Beginning and a Transformation in Early Modernity 519

11.2 Notable Characteristics of die Construction of the Antithesis between Antiquity and Modernity 522

11.3 "The Enlightenment of Thought about Itself" as the Criterion for Distinguishing between "Ancient" and "Modern": On die Foundations of a Misconception 524

Chapter 12 Characteristic Differences between the Platonic-Aristotelian and the Hellenistic Understanding of Rationality 530

12.1 Thought Orients Itself toward the Unity of the Object versus Thought Orients Itself toward a Rationally Distinguishable Unity 531

12.2 Epistemology as a Reflection on die Modi of Representation of Given Objects versus Epistemology as a Reflection on the Criteria of Distinguishability 532

12.3 Criteria for the Cognition of Empirical Objects: Integrity, Totality, and Non-Falsity of Perceptible Properties versus Conceptual Comprehension of What a Thing Is Capable of and What Function It Serves 534

12.4 Truth as the Correspondence of Representation and Object versus Truth as the Identity of the Cognitive Act and the Matter 535

12.5 Thought Articulates Itself in Language versus Language Refers to a Cognized Distinction 537

12.6 Thought Is Abstract versus Thought Is Concrete 541

12.7 Thought Does Not Have an Emotional or a Volitional Aspect versus Thought Itself Has an Emotional Component 542

12.8 Thought Gains Its Content via Intuition versus Thought Has Its Own Content through Which It Gives Meaning to Intuition 544

12.9 Thought's Concepts Must Correspond to die Well-Determinedness of Objects versus The Measure of the Determinacy of an Object Is Its Conformity to Conceptual Criteria 544

12.10 Only Conscious Acts Are Thinking Proper versus Consciousness Is an Epiphenomenon of Thought 546

12.11 Only Intuition and Feelings Are Real versus What Can Be Recognized as a Res, That Is, as a Rationally Distinguishable Unity, Is Real 547

Bibliography 549

Index 581

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