Ideas Under Fire Historical Studies of Philosophy and Science in Adversity

by Lavery, Jonathan; Groarke, Louis; Sweet, William

• ISBN13: 9781611475425
• ISBN10: 1611475422
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-11-16
• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Summary

Since Aristotle's famous declaration that the speculative sciences originated with the emergence of a leisure class (Metaphysics I, i), it has been accepted as a truism that intellectual activity requires political stability and leisure in order to flourish. Paradoxically, however, some of the most powerful and influential contributions to Western intellectual culture have been produced in conditions that were adverseindeed hostileto intellectual activity. Examples include Socrates' stirring defense of the examined life before a hostile Athenian jury, Boethius writing The Consolation of Philosophy under the specter of impending torture and execution, Galileo devising key notions for modern mechanics while under house arrest, and Jean-Paul Sartre drafting portions of Being and Nothingness in his war diaries, to name only a few of the most famous incidentsall extraordinary achievements spawned, developed or completed in adversity. In cases such as these, a philosopher or scientist must manage somehow to remain intellectually creative and focused despite living in conditions that are adverse or hostile to thought. In brief, they are working on ideas under fire. This book is a survey of several momentous cases of philosophers and scientists working under fire. Each chapter of Ideas Under Fire considers a particular case or set of related cases. In each case contributors consider two questions: How did the individual at the center of a particular moment of discovery overcome such formidable obstacles to leisure and conceptually abstract thought? And how did adversity shape their thinking under fire?Each chapter has been written by a specialist on its respective subject, and the book covers every period of Western history. All the chapters are written in an accessible style that is intended to appeal to both specialists and generalists.

Author Biography

Jonathan Lavery is associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. Louis Groarke is associate professor of philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada. William Sweet is professor of philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction: Prophets and Gadflies, Leisure and Adversity	p. 1
Ancient and Medieval
Plato in the Crito	p. 37
Grief and Homecoming in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy	p. 67
A Universe, Created and Eternal: The Crisis of Faith and Reason in the Thirteenth Century	p. 89
Renaissance and Modern
Why Giordano Bruno's "Tranquil Universal Philosophy" Finished in a Fire	p. 109
Galileo under Fire and under Patronage Maurice	p. 123
The French Revolution, Science, and the Arts	p. 145
"The Preface," Hegel's Legal Philosophy, and the Crises of His Time	p. 161
Twentieth Century
The Political Commitment of the Philosopher: Henri Bergson's Wartime Discourses: Paradox or Ambiguity?	p. 193
Simone Weil and the Traps of Intellectual Engagement	p. 217
The Impact of World War II on Jean-Paul Sartre's Writing	p. 231
Philosophy under Apartheid	p. 251
Contemporary
Guerrilla Theory and the Origins of the Second Wave: FBI and CIA Harassment of Second-Wave Radical Feminists in the 1960s and 1970s	p. 273
Was Science under Fire from the Bush Administration in the United States?	p. 295
The Limits of Philosophy: Setting Out the Legal Framework of Dissent	p. 321
Bibliography	p. 341
Index	p. 355
About the Contributors	p. 371
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