I was alerted to Irad Kimhi’s Thinking and Being before its publication by way of a note in Sebastian Rödl’s Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, and though there are other ways of reading Kimhi’s short work—not least as an ambition to meet Parmenides’ challenge of how it is possible to think what is not, by restoring our understanding of Aristotle, Plato, and Wittgenstein—I found myself appreciating it … Continue reading 237. (Irad Kimhi)
Sebastian Rödl is not in this post, but he is behind it. It takes off from his Categories of the Temporal, and contains also some moves borrowed from his newest Self-Consciousness and Objectivity (the idea of a completion that is only complete in containing its own incompletion, for instance). It comes out of some re-reading of Gadamer too, and thinking about how Rödl and Gadamer might be set into conversation. … Continue reading 212. (Sebastian Rödl )
Stevens’ poetry is the culmination of romantic idealism, and in comprehending its method and ambitions, the words of philosopher Sebastian Rödl (from his most recent work, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity) are apposite: This explains what may appear a curious character of the present essay: it propounds no theses, advances no hypotheses, does not recommend a view or position; it does not give arguments that are to support a … Continue reading 200. (Wallace Stevens)
One story of Romanticism (mostly true, however simplified) goes: some poets from 1790s onwards find their freedom in their capacity to imagine the world. It reflects a distortion and exaggeration of idealist philosophy: freedom arrives as man imposes his understanding onto reality. The better, defensible, fruitful story about German idealism goes: in self-conscious actions and beliefs about the world, humanity finds its freedom. (That is … Continue reading 195. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Close kin in to his near-simultaneous monograph Self-Consciousness, Sebastian Rödl’s Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect (publ. in German, 2005; in English, translated by Sybille Salewski, 2012) is a book that, despite its daunting title, non-Philosophers would enjoy. The reach of its ambitions, its elegance and efficiency of argument, and the sense of style born of necessity and urgency rather than self-awareness or … Continue reading 190. (Sebastian Rödl)
My limited experience reading contemporary philosophers has convinced me that Wittgenstein, Kant, and Aristotle need to be read alongside one another, and that a tangle or confusion in one of the three is often worked out by the strength of a concept or line of argument in another; that view has itself been shaped and strengthened by the concurrent realization that the contemporary interlocutors and … Continue reading 156. (Hannah Ginsborg)
Sebastian Rödl is a philosopher, not a poet, novelist, dramatist, or essayist. His appearance on this blog is an anomaly, prompted by the excitement and pleasure I took, as a non-philosopher, in reading his book, Self-Consciousness. I’m not qualified to assess his argument philosophically, but others have done so, and even as a non-philosopher, I can appreciate the movement, scope, and subtlety of his arguments. The … Continue reading 128. (Sebastian Rödl)
