Free Will and Continental Philosophy: The Death without Meaning PDF
Preview Free Will and Continental Philosophy: The Death without Meaning
Free Will and Continental Philosophy Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs across the fi eld of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research. Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach The Crisis in Continental Philosophy, Robert Piercey Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon O’Sullivan and Stephen Zepke Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner Free Will and Continental Philosophy, David Edward Rose Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler Heidegger and Happiness, Matthew King Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis Heidegger on Language and Death, Joachim L. Oberst Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin Heidegger, Work, and Being, Todd S. Mei Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman Free Will and Continental Philosophy The Death without Meaning David Edward Rose Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © David Edward Rose 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-8470-6099-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rose, David Edward. Free will and Continental philosophy : the death without meaning / David Edward Rose. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-0474-8 1. Free will and determinism. 2. Continental philosophy. 3. Liberty. I. Title. BJ1461.R67 2009 123’.5--dc22 2009008451 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group For my father, Herbert Rose; obstinately unphilosophical. This page intentionally left blank Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Science, Explanation and Dogma 9 3 Freud and Sartre: The Property of Freedom 23 4 Hegel, Action and Avoiding the Death without Meaning 55 5 Marx and Marcuse: Alienation and Critical Refl ection 85 6 Rawls and Vattimo: Pluralism and Postmodern Liberation 119 7 Conclusion 150 Notes 155 Bibliography 160 Index of Names 165 This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 Introduction The following pages contain a rather brief discussion of freedom and the nature of freewill. Such a statement, or the adverbial phrase at least, will surprise many readers simply because the problem – if there is one – has vexed philosophers and thinkers since the fi rst attempts to cast a conceptual web of intelligibility over the events of the world. So to claim that such a short discussion has anything original to offer is hubris- tic to say the least. It is also a claim compounded by the reliance on the thought of one of the most obtuse thinkers of our tradition as evidenced by the paraphrased subtitle of the present work; that is, Hegel. Yet, there is something still to be said about freewill and an urgency implicit in the saying of it. Let us fi rst, though, make a few remarks about the other main compo- nent of the title. If one is to talk about freewill within the context of a ‘continental tradition’, one does of course need to defi ne that tradition. One rather lazy possibility, prevalent in much English-language philoso- phy, is to characterize it in terms of a contrast with analytic philosophy, as though a geographical identifi er could be opposed to a methodologi- cal one.1 Such a contrast is as illogical as it is inappropriate, starting from the political prejudices contained in the word continental (since as most continentals will tell you, the correct non-anglocentric adjective would more properly be ‘mainlandic’ philosophy and many Scots and North Americans would perhaps fi nd it offensive to learn they are noth- ing but an offshoot of the Anglo-Saxon race, if such a thing exists). Nor does the methodological resonance offer any real purchase on the dif- ference since many non-Anglo-European philosophers use the analyti- cal method and many Anglo-Saxon philosophers reject it.2 Neither does the history of ideas afford any clearer understanding of the distinction, since up until German Idealism the curriculum of established ideas and
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