Just picked this up. What am I in for? What biases should I be aware of that Rosen might possess in his writings? Thanks
Just picked this up. What am I in for? What biases should I be aware of that Rosen might possess in his writings? Thanks
Joshua Evans
Other urls found in this thread:
mega.nz
twitter.com
Joseph Gomez
No idea, title looks interesting. Would like to hear your opinions on it when you've gone through it.
Jeremiah Turner
First chapter was a founding of Nietzsches philosophy being based upon Greek thought, and that esotercism is a means of hiding universal truth from the lower masses. Will do a full report when I’ve finished for sure
Easton Gonzalez
It's pretty good. It's a collection of essays defending metaphysical speculation, in part a dig at Ordinary Language philosophers, but also defending the idea that common opinion is a fine place for starting with metaphysics (which he takes from his readings of Plato and Aristotle).
Rosen could be described as an "apostate" Straussian; he studied under Strauss directly and was close friends with other Straussians like Seth Benardete and Allan Bloom. He also was a student of Strauss's main philosophical rival (and personal friend), Alexandre Kojeve (the last essay is about Kojeve and Paris's intellectual community). Unlike most Straussians, he spent about years studying mathematical logic and analytic philosophy pretty carefully. He's very well rounded in Ancient, Early Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern philosophy. A true rarity. I don't always agree with his assessments, but he's worth spending time with, and his other books are all very good as well.
He likes elements of analytic and continental philosophy, but thins they both fall prey at bottom to the same problem, in that philosophy either turns into silence, where there can be no discursive accounts given, or into garullity, in which case it also can't be depended on for discursive accounts. He doesn't buy everything either Strauss or Kojeve teach either. He's pretty well-balanced in these respects, not fitting in anywhere, and willing to admit when a school of thought has good points to make, but he's also perfectly capable of fun polemics against everyone. His work embodies a strange combination of philosophical madness and moderation.
Austin Morris
I will add that as a book it's uneven for him, *because* it's a collection of essays and lectures from all over the place. But it's a very good provocation to philosophizing.
Julian Parker
That's more than enough for me to want to pick it up, sounds nice.
Do you think it's a good place to start/dip into Rosen? Also thanks!
Joseph Wilson
I think so, yes. Ancients and Moderns is another good starting place, as is Nihilism. He's written numerous commentaries on Plato, he's written a few books on Hegel, a book on Nietzsche, a book on Heidegger, a book on analytic philosophy, a book on postmodern philosophy. He's covered a lot in his career, so if there's something more particular you'd like to look into, he might have you covered to some degree.
Brandon Thompson
Isn't most of modern philosophy based on it or at least based on something that is based on it?
Jayden Mitchell
Modern philosophy (i.e., the tradition of philosophy that owes much to Machiavelli, Descartes, and Bacon) is characterized by a break with ancient philosophy. It does owe quite a bit to ancient philosophy as passed down by the scholastics, but the break is essential. Examples would be the opening to Machiavelli's Prince where he dismisses ancient political philosophy as idealistic, Descartes's mockery of Aristotle's definition of time in On the World, and Bacon's dismissals of both ancient reasoning and metaphysics in the New Organon.
Probably the most important moment was the break in the understanding of mathematics, which transformed math into the tool used for physics that it is now. A good account of that break is Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.
Ian Evans
Anybody knows where to get an ebook version of this book?