Plan for blog entry: History of Modern Philosophy

What I have slowly come to realise - after having read Sophie's World and hearing the history of Jewish philosophers since Kant in 1 hour - is that a lot has happened in between Kant and now, that is usually taken for granted i.e. the whole split between continental and analytic philosophy. At the moment, my understanding of how this split happens, who is involved and what the main points of departure are; is very blurred. I have thus been incredibly unsuccessful in my former resolution to try to learn Levinas. Atm, I know thus much:

• Aristotle laid down a system of logic back in his day mostly unchanged till 19th century
• Leibniz did some unrecognized work on mathematical logic in 17th century
• In late 19th century (time of German Idealist view that maths and science are products of the mind and Husserlian phenomenology), Gottlob Frege made significant progress with mathematical logic, seeing it as objective (existing independent of human thought) and thus more useful for understanding the world than the prevalent Cartesian focus on epistemology 'what can we know?'
• In England, Bertrand Russell developed & popularised Frege's work, and taught Wittgenstein. People now analysed 'What are we really saying when we say so-and-so?'
• Both Russell and Wittgenstein's work heavily influenced a group of guys called 'the Vienna Circle' popular in the 30s.
• Ernst Cassirer (a major German philosopher who studied with Herman Cohen and developed a philosophy of culture as a theory of symbols founded on a phenomenology of knowledge) and Heidegger (another German known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being") had a massive debate once in Davos.
  
• This debate was attended by Levinas (who afterwards reenacted the debate playing as Cassirer). He said of it “a young student could have had the impression that he was witness to the creation and the end of the world.”
• Rudolf Carnap (a member of the Vienna Circle) also attended that debate and went on to wage a notorious attack on Heidegger's philosophy. He was a great influence on the famous analytic philosopher Quine.
• To be continued...
  

I am now setting upon myself the task of struggling through books like '12 Modern Philosophers' and 'Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos' and Wiki trips on logical-positivism and ne0-Kantianism and Berkeley webcasts on existential-phenomenology, philosophy of mind and anthropology, until I can sort of get it. Then, I will hopefully be able to neatly summarise the story here, 'Sophie's World'-style. Please comment so as to make me feel like posting this served some purpose (i.e. revealing to me the uselessness of such information)

Post-Limmud Oz

Limmud Oz was an incredible opportunity to remind oneself of the interesting things in life. The chance to listen to renowned Jewish scholars covering a broad array of topics was just what I needed to get back into reflective mode. From deep analysis of medieval poetry and yiddish literature, to advocating for Aboriginal social justice, hearing a Monash Lecturer question two proud Australian Palestinians why they can't make room for the Great Zionist Dream, witnessing Israel's youngest Knesset member explain her one-state solution and concluding the weekend with a comprehensive kabbalah lesson. Every interval, you had to pick one and miss 11 others!

Along with now wanting to build up Aboriginal communities, tell Netenyahu how to solve the Middle-East conflict and start plowing through all the great Jewish writers, I left committed to trying to work out the basic gist of all this Jewish Neo-Kantian Phenomenologism, which I incessantly see referenced (with a Sholem Aleichem novel or two for when that stuff gets a bit too complexifying).

My post Limmud-Oz Journey began by looking into a further David Solomin one hour lecture time-lining major Jewish thought post the Western-European enlightenment (1700s). So… Moses Mendelssohn, a practicing German orthodox Jew, apparently won an essay competition that Kant came second place in. And apparently after that, Kant still praised Jerusalem (Mendelssohn’s famous apologetic masterpiece) as being irrefutable. Then, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason explained that what we know of reality can only be through categories of relation in our minds (i.e. time, space, cause and effect etc.), but reality as it is in actual fact is incomprehensible. Hegel’s dialectic theory (thesis + antithesis = synthesis) then philosophises about how this reality-as-it-actually-is (Hegel’s geist) is slowly coming to a state of self-realisation via the universal strivings of the human mind. Kierkegaard then kicks off the existentialist movement by not only asking ‘What the heck does that mean?’ as I’d like to know, but ‘what does all this mean for me?’ Then comes the Jewish Hermann Cohen who, after spending most of his life denying the existence of all the stuff Hegel was into, decides that Kant’s reality-as-it-is is G-d. Cohen’s Correlation theory stated that the only 2 interdependent things in reality are Being (G-d) and Becoming (Humanity). Later to befriend Cohen, is Franz Rosenzweig whose Star of Redemption states that there’s actually 3 symbiotic entities comprising reality: G-d, Humanity and the World. G-d is revealed to the world through the process of ‘Creation’, to Man through ‘Revelation’ and Man is revealed to The World through ‘Redemption.’ Franz also befriended the Chasidus-loving Martin Buber, for whom I’ll have to refer you to Ittay’s Limmud-Oz discussion to get more detail, but basically he claimed that “G-d is in the spaces between people.” The lecture then finally began to look at what I’d been waiting for: the assimilated Husserl’s fathering of Phenomenology. However, as time was now running short, Husserl was only quoted as being the teacher of Heidegger, who is was only quoted as being a supporter of Hitler and thus disparaging the French Jew Emmanuel Levinas who ended up in a German POW camp. Levinas was quoted for influencing people like Derrida by showing in his Totality and Infinity that contrary to Heideggere, it’s impossible to reduce the difference between oneself and ‘other.’ The lecture then concluded with Rav Soloveitchik influenced by all of the above, and Rabbi Sacks.

My Journey now begins with me learning Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ (which I will do, but based entirely on Amazon reviews) and Levinas’ Talmudic writings from a student of one of his students J