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Philosophers

I'm interested in starting a phenomenology study group beginning with Husserl. I would want to start with Husserl's _Logical Investigation_s Volumes 1 and 2 but I was wondering if the abridged version "The Shorter Investigations" will be more than enough to understand Husserl. I would like to be able to study other phenomenologists, but if the abridged version will not do, then reading the full volumes will take up the whole time. In short, has anyone read both the abridged and unabridged _Investigations_, and if so, what are your suggestions? Thank you.

I'd go with the shorter. Moran is an important and highly-respected figure in the field and knows what he is doing in selecting material for the abridgement. Also, I think it would be a shame 'only' to read the Investigations, and not approach Ideas, Cartesian Meditations or the Crisis. Important as that early work is, most of Husserl's thought was in front of him still.
Art

I have listened to various recordings of Handel's Messiah recently. Each has different rendering of the original work. What is the difference between modifying musical works of art and "touching up" a classical painting or poem?

A good question, and highly seasonal!The Messiah is an interesting subject because there is no ONEoriginal. Handel, always both an artist and a businessman, puttogether several different versions for various different occasionsand groups of musicians. So, there are a number of authenticrecordings, all attempting to 'get back' to the original sound of thepiece, which are nevertheless quite different. This is by no meanstrue for all pieces from the classical tradition but one can spot abroad trend, from the 19 th century onwards, for artists tobecome increasingly concerned about the exact state of their work(various musical markings, instrumentation, etc.) and preciseconditions of performance. This suggests a distinction betweenthose variations among performances that can be accounted for by avariation within the original material (the tinkering Brucknerperformed on his symphonies, for another example), and thoseexplained by artistic decisions in the here and now. This distinctionis...
Philosophers

What does Kant mean by "intuition"? I've been reading a small book by Jaspers on Kant's whole philosophy, but he is so unclear about this word "intuition" and the word seem important in some way to what Kant is saying.

Allow me to add a brief note to Sean's answer. 'Sensibility' translates ' Sinnlichkeit ', which isroughly the ability to have intuitions; it is thus contrasted withthe understanding, which is the ability to have (and employ)concepts. 'Sensation', however, translates ' Empfindung ', andmeans roughly what it does in English: the stimulation of one'ssenses by the real presence of an object affecting them. The point ofsaying this is that the two concepts of sensibility and sensation arenot etymologically related in German as they are in English. Thestandard English translations are thus misleading and disguisethe fact that Kant is speaking of two very different things. Forexample, sensibility includes the ability to imagine – that is toform intuitions of things that are not actually there – and stillmore importantly, to have 'pure' intuitions of mathematical objects(e.g. a circle) – which of course could never be there as physicalobjects affecting me. It is precisely because of the...
Philosophers

Hi, I read in a book, which according to Kant, "our concepts seem to agree with the facts because both have a common origin, the human condition. We can explain only those aspects of the world assigned to it by ourselves, so the nature of deep reality remains forever unattainable." In a discussion of physical reality, said that this concept of Kant is outdated. It is true that information? Where can I find this argument against the thought of Kant. Thanks!

Please have a look at responses to similar questions: click on'philosophers' on the list of categories, and then search for 'Kant'. I'd like to comment here on the quotation that you cite, becauseit seems to me (at least when taken out of context) to be amisleading representation of what Kant actually argues. First of all,let of think about the notion of a 'common origin' in 'the humancondition': this makes it sound as though Kant is concerned with thepsychological origin of concepts and of facts, as if his work couldbe without remainder reduced to, say, evolutionary biology,linguistic relativism or cognitive science. All three of these areperfectly interesting fields of enquiry, but they miss the notion ofthe transcendental in Kant. Second of all, the notion of a 'aspects of the world assigned toit by ourselves' seems to entail that there are other aspects of theworld that are not assigned by us. The problem comes from thinkingthat there is a set of 'superficial' aspects S...
Ethics

We often admire people who are true to their convictions, even when we believe that those convictions are actually wrong. Is there anything morally valuable or praiseworthy in simply acting in accordance with what you think is right (regardless of whether it is, in fact, right), or does the moral significance of a particular action have to do only with whether it accords with objective moral standards?

Kant's ethics gives us a convenient way of thinking aboutthis question. He distinguishes between the moral law (categorical imperative)and a 'maxim'. By the latter he means the rule we actually follow in ourdecisions. It is, he argues, a uniquely human characteristic that we canformulate maxims for ourselves and then follow them. But whether the maximOUGHT to be followed can be decided only by testing it with the moral law. So,someone true to his or her convictions (maxim) is displaying the essentiallyhuman quality that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of morality.
Language

I'd like to hear what you - dedicated to answering questions - have to say to the following: 1) Philosophers and scientists seem to believe that a) problems are shared (by people), i. e. are the same (identical?) for every man b) each attempt to solve a problem produces its own solution. Here's my first question: If we think there are as many solutions to a problem as there are written papers, what makes us believe it's different with the problems? What are the criteria for the interpersonal identity of a problem? 2) Relating to the first: If two people refer or at least pretend to refer to the same problem (in solving or just discussing it), and given the thesis that in some way we must understand the problem or at least its verbal expression: What is it, that we know, when we understand a problem? Or, a bit less heavy-weighted:What kind of semantics of questions would enable us to understand how it comes that the problems questions articulate are real and shared by people, while the answers...

An extremely sophisticated question, and one I'm not sure I could address in its entirety. However, I will start and perhaps one of my colleagues can take things much further than I can. I take it that the core of your question is this: why do we assume that problems are 'one' while answers are 'many'? Is this in fact the case? Although as a matter of fact, there will be hundreds (maybe thousands) of papers addressing a particular problem, is there not also a working or regulative assumption that all of these are contributions to an answer (that is, a single answer)? If it turns out that one answer cannot be arrived at then so be it, but I do not believe that is the starting assumption. Also, if there is an irreducible variety of answers then this suggests that the problem itself has been misstated, or perhaps there is more than one problem. Which leads nicely to the second part of my answer. Is it the case that philosophers tend to assume that a problem is the same problem, intersubjectively shared...
Art

How do we say something that is recognizably artistically meaningful? It seems that in order for it to meet that standard, it would have to play on themes that have already established; in order to create something fantastically profound, one would have to create something truly new. But then art experts wouldn't recognize it as such since it wouldn't contain any reference to standards created by previous stuff. So suppose we take the mindset that we are writing for future audiences who will recognize it as a timeless classic. But why does the possible acceptance of our work in this way by future audiences guarantee its profundity? Why should they be favored over the intelligent audiences of today?

An excellent question. The relationship between art, standards or rules, andoriginality has been discussed on this site before. But I'll wade in with a fewcomments. First, if we think of rules or standards as being heavy-handed in theirdetermination, then that causes problems in many more domains than in art. Ifour standards for what makes a good X are entirely dependent upon a repetitionof the qualities that made Xs good in the past, then innovation in any fieldbecomes impossible. A good place to start, then, is with the recognition thatsuch rules or standards must always be a little loose or flexible and capableof evolution. Second, however, the problem becomes exacerbated in the domain of art, if weaccept that one criterion of art is precisely the absence of any determiningcriteria. This idea comes from Kant’s aesthetics and, in various forms, hasbecome a mainstay of philosophical aesthetics. Kant’s solution to how it ispossible to judge despite this (that there is a...
Philosophers

After reading Douglas Burnham's response where he mentioned Deleuze, I tried reading the Stanford Encyclopedia's entry on Deleuze, with little understanding. Could someone please explain what "difference" is in Deleuze and what preeminence of "identity" he is trying to undermine?? And/or recommend further (comprehensible) reading on the matter? Much appreciated.

Hi -- I guess you are referring to an answer I wrote about Nietzsche and the notion of 'eternal recurrence'. I wish I could help you directly, but Deleuze is not one of my areas of specialisation. However, I've always found 'Nietzsche and Philosophy', an early book of his, to be quite readable -- that's bound to be the best place to start.
Art

Can gardening be considered as an art? Thank you.

Well, Kant for one, seemed to ranklandscape gardening very highly, defining it as in essence a kind ofpainting (see section 51 of the Critique of Judgement ). Thepoint is that such gardening is about form, order, harmony andrelationships – it is, let us say, akin to abstract painting(although of course Kant couldn't have said this). Certainly, also,gardens can have affective and symbolic power, and they participatein a dialogue with their own tradition. Obviously, for everycriterion I come up with, someone could come up with acounter-example that is widely considered art but lacks this feature;so listing criteria is a risky business. Nevertheless, I'm havingtrouble thinking of a defensible reason why gardening should benecessarily excluded from the domain of art – other than the factthat it is not widely considered to be so by the people (artists,gallery owners, critics) whose job it is to tell us what is art. Andthere's the rub. In the absence of relatively stable traditions...
War

I hear this argument a lot: If you're old enough to fight for your country, then you're old enough to do X. X might be "drink," or "gamble," or "do crack cocaine," or "rent a car"; basically anything. Whenever people say this, it strikes me as kind of silly. But at the same time it kind of makes sense, because fighting and dying seems more serious than almost anything else you could possibly do. So I wanted to ask: What do the panelists think?

The claim to which you refer, Isuspect, is a shortened version of one or both of two basicinferences. Either, that killing other people/ risking one's own lifeis an enormous and 'grown-up' responsibility; anyone deemed to becapable of such responsibility should surely be capable of lesserresponsibilities; drinking et al are lesser responsibilities;therefore etc. Or, second, that a nation is asking a great deal of aperson in putting them forward for combat; if someone is asked for somuch, and gives honourably, something should be owed in return,especially some degree of rights or privileges; drinking et al arejust such rights or privileges; therefore etc. As they stand, the above mini-argumentsare not terribly convincing. The responsibility argument assumes thatthe condition of being responsible is simple and one-dimensionallyquantitative. But imagine a Mr. X, who holds down a good job inmanagement, raises a family, sits conscientiously on the citycouncil, and so forth – but...

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