Home | Blog

Also a History of Philosophy Notes Marathon

Also a History of Philosophy

My wife gifted me the three volumes of Habermas's Also a History of Philosophy for Christmas today. I am going to actually try to challenge myself to read but also blog each day about whatever I read. Would be a good exercise but also interesting to see the pace of reading a large collection of books each day. It is also a good book to do this since it relates to some of my current readings but also the format of going through each age, starting with the pre-philosophy of the sacred and religion. It also engages with Girard, who, Habermas disagrees with it looks like, but is interesting for a philosopher to engage with. I did not expect Habermas to agree with Girard's narrative anyway.

I have not read much of Habermas. I have read one of his lectures he gave with Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in the book The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, but most of the work I have read are American scholars engaging with Habermas.

I haven't really done this before. I mark up my books quite a bit. I will probably use it as a way to reflect more than 1:1 map the mark ups, expand on the little shorthand mechanisms I make in the margin, and reference other works that I am thinking of in relation to the text.

Volume 1: The Project of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking

Preface

I. On the Question of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking

1. Crisis Scenarios and Narratives of Decline in Major Twentieth-Century Philosophical Theories
2. Religion as a 'Contemporary' Manifestation of Objective Mind?
3. The Occidental Path of Development and the Claim to Universality of Postmetaphysical Thinking
4. Basic Assumptions of the Theory of Society and Programmatic Outlook

II. The Sacred Roots of the Axial Traditions


1. Cognitive Breakthrough and the Preservation of the Sacred Core