It's to be published by Harvard University Press on May 31. It would give me the greatest pleasure to send you a copy overnight as soon as it's available (I'll e-mail in May asking for your address). Here's the announcement: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674270343
In case you're not familiar with Geuss's thinking in political philosophy, I would recommend starting with his History and Illusion in Politics, and then perhaps going to his Philosophy and Real Politics.--I've written occasionally about Geuss, though more with an eye to art, as in this review of in 3am magazine of his Reality and its Dreams: https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/reality-and-its-dreams/
One final comment: I just remembered that the philosopher Hans Sluga wrote a blog review a few years ago of Geuss's book Changing the Subject that you may find interesting and would also provide some overview of Geuss's thinking: http://www.truthandpower.com/blog/blog/does-philosophy-have-a-future/
@ John Rapko, could one perhaps say that the "spectacularly bad argument" in "Plato's Blackmail" is made really sharp by Aristotle's 'tertium non datur'? For Plato it seems certain that the "adaequatio intellectus et rei" takes place only in the absolute. This already provides for the direction that every theory or instruction should be absolutely sure and absolutely universal. Aristotle formulates the conditions for the payment of the ransom.
but, very nice review of "reality and its dreams", was fun to read.
Your invocation of Aristotle on the (supposed) law of the excluded middle is apt and indeed penetrating. I'm pretty sure that Geuss would view the Stagirite's argument there as of a piece with the 'either orientation or complete disorientation' view he seeks to undermine. At quite a number of relevant places in his published writings, Geuss invokes by contrast Hegel and especially Dewey's The Logic of Inquiry as a way of thinking about inquiry as open-ended, only ever partially determinate, so not significantly constrained by considerations of the excluded middle, and only ever offering quite limited and context-specific illumination.--Geuss generally is quite hostile to Aristotle, who he refers to as a kind of conservative intellectual who mucked around with lobster pots. More specifically, Geuss is hostile to what he sees as Aristotle's ahistoricism, (perhaps) his claims to systemacity and assumption of the ultimate intelligibility of the world, and especially his conception of the good life for human beings the sustained exercise of the virtues and/or the contemplative life. Geuss oddly thinks that Aristotle encourages the conception of human life as a kind of competitive race or game. On this last point, there is an exchange of outstanding interest in the volume What Happened to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century?: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Alasdair MacIntyre (Fran O'Rourke (ed)), which contains Geuss's essay 'Marxism and the Ethos of the 20th Century (also included in Geuss's volume A World without Why), and MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian response.
It's to be published by Harvard University Press on May 31. It would give me the greatest pleasure to send you a copy overnight as soon as it's available (I'll e-mail in May asking for your address). Here's the announcement: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674270343
ReplyDeleteIn case you're not familiar with Geuss's thinking in political philosophy, I would recommend starting with his History and Illusion in Politics, and then perhaps going to his Philosophy and Real Politics.--I've written occasionally about Geuss, though more with an eye to art, as in this review of in 3am magazine of his Reality and its Dreams: https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/reality-and-its-dreams/
ReplyDeleteOne final comment: I just remembered that the philosopher Hans Sluga wrote a blog review a few years ago of Geuss's book Changing the Subject that you may find interesting and would also provide some overview of Geuss's thinking: http://www.truthandpower.com/blog/blog/does-philosophy-have-a-future/
ReplyDelete@ John Rapko,
ReplyDeletecould one perhaps say that the "spectacularly bad argument" in "Plato's Blackmail" is made really sharp by Aristotle's 'tertium non datur'? For Plato it seems certain that the "adaequatio intellectus et rei" takes place only in the absolute. This already provides for the direction that every theory or instruction should be absolutely sure and absolutely universal. Aristotle formulates the conditions for the payment of the ransom.
but, very nice review of "reality and its dreams", was fun to read.
Achim Kriechel,
ReplyDeleteYour invocation of Aristotle on the (supposed) law of the excluded middle is apt and indeed penetrating. I'm pretty sure that Geuss would view the Stagirite's argument there as of a piece with the 'either orientation or complete disorientation' view he seeks to undermine. At quite a number of relevant places in his published writings, Geuss invokes by contrast Hegel and especially Dewey's The Logic of Inquiry as a way of thinking about inquiry as open-ended, only ever partially determinate, so not significantly constrained by considerations of the excluded middle, and only ever offering quite limited and context-specific illumination.--Geuss generally is quite hostile to Aristotle, who he refers to as a kind of conservative intellectual who mucked around with lobster pots. More specifically, Geuss is hostile to what he sees as Aristotle's ahistoricism, (perhaps) his claims to systemacity and assumption of the ultimate intelligibility of the world, and especially his conception of the good life for human beings the sustained exercise of the virtues and/or the contemplative life. Geuss oddly thinks that Aristotle encourages the conception of human life as a kind of competitive race or game. On this last point, there is an exchange of outstanding interest in the volume What Happened to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century?: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Alasdair MacIntyre (Fran O'Rourke (ed)), which contains Geuss's essay 'Marxism and the Ethos of the 20th Century (also included in Geuss's volume A World without Why), and MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian response.