Idolizing the Idea

A Critical History of Modern Philosophy

Wayne Cristaudo

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781978795129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ever since Plato made the case for the primacy of ideas over names, philosophy has tended to elevate the primacy of its ideas over the more common understanding and insights that are circulated in the names drawn upon by the community. Commencing with a critique of Plato's original philosophical decision, Cristaudo takes up the argument put forward by Thomas Reid that modern philosophy has generally continued along the 'way of ideas' to its own detriment. His argument identifies the major paradigmatic developments in modern philosophy commencing from the new metaphysics pioneered by Descartes up until the analytic tradition and the anti-domination philosophies which now dominate social and political thought. Along the way he argues that the paradigmatic shifts and break-downs that have occurred in modern philosophy are due to being beholden to an inadequate sovereign idea, or small cluster of ideas, which contribute to the occlusion of important philosophical questions. In addition to chapters on Descartes, and the analytic tradition and anti-domination philosophies, his critical history of modern philosophy explores the core ideas of Locke, Berkeley, Malebranche, Locke, Hume, Reid, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger. The common thread uniting these disparate philosophies is what Cristaudo calls 'ideaism' (sic.). Rather than expanding our reasoning capacity, 'ideaism' contributes to philosophers imposing dictatorial principles or models that ultimately occlude and distort our understanding of our participative role within reality. Drawing upon thinkers such as Pascal, Vico, Hamann, Herder, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and Eugen Rosensock-Huessy Cristaudo advances his argument by drawing upon the importance of encounter, dialogue, and a more philosophical anthropological and open approach to philosophy.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Ideas and Names—A Philosophical Crossroad
• Chapter Two: Mechanistic Metaphysics, the “Way of Ideas,” and the Understanding’s Rule of the Imagination
• Chapter Three: Metaphysical Quandaries along the “Way of Ideas”
• Chapter Four: The Return of the Idea to the Everyday World
• Chapter Five: Transcendental, Subjective, and Objective Idealisms
• Chapter Six: Schelling on Thinking and Being
• Chapter Seven: Post-Hegelianism—or the Idea in Our Action in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
• Chapter Eight: The Analytic Retreat to Reason and the Relative Splintering of the Idea
• Chapter Nine: Husserl’s Idea of Phenomenology and Heidegger’s Being (an Idea in Spite of Itself)
• Chapter Ten: The Chosen Path of the Idea-isms of the 1960s
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author