Papers by Judith Norman
Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus
Robert Wicks (ed) Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer (Oxford University Press 2020), pp. 49-66, 2020
Schopenhauer is famously abusive toward his philosophical contemporary and rival, Friedrich Willi... more Schopenhauer is famously abusive toward his philosophical contemporary and rival, Friedrich William Joseph von Schelling. This paper examines the motivations for Schopenhauer's immoderate attitude and the substance behind the insults. It looks carefully at both the nature of the insults and substantive critical objections Schopenhauer had to Schelling's philosophy, both to Schelling's metaphysical description of the thing-in-itself and Schelling's epistemic mechanism of intellectual intuition. It concludes that Schopenhauer's substantive criticism is reasonable and that Schopenhauer does in fact avoid Schelling's errors: still, the vehemence of the abuse is best perhaps explained by the proximity of their philosophies, not the distance. Indeed, both are developing metaphysics of will with full and conflicted awareness of the Kantian epistemic strictures against metaphysics. In view of this, Schopenhauer is particularly concerned to mark his own project as legitimate by highlighting the manner in which he avoids Schelling's errors.
Bochumer Studien zur Philosophie, 2000
Philosophy in Review, 2000
Marx and Nietzsche are often compared as practitioners of a hermeneutic of suspicion. I want to ... more Marx and Nietzsche are often compared as practitioners of a hermeneutic of suspicion. I want to pursue this comparison by focusing on an overlooked similarity between the two. In strangely similar passages, Marx (in Capital) and Nietzsche (in the Genealogy of Morals) introduce explicitly theatrical scenarios into the course of their discussions, complete with what Marx calls dramatis personae, where we witness a descent into a workshop (in some sense underground) in order to learn the secrets of production - the production, in both cases, of value. But neither scenario conforms to the structure of the discovery of a concealed truth – in fact, each challenges this structure directly. By looking at the specific nature of these theatrical descents, we can come to a better understanding of the task of the philosopher in both Nietzsche and Marx, as well as the distinctive position of historical knowledge within a hermeneutics of suspicion.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) was a colleague of Hegel, Holderlin, Fichte, G... more Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) was a colleague of Hegel, Holderlin, Fichte, Goethe, Schlegel, and Schiller. Always a champion of Romanticism, Schelling advocated a philosophy which emphasized intuition over reason, which maintained aesthetics and the creative imagination to be of the highest value. At the same time, Schelling's concerns for the self and the rational make him a major precursor to existentialism and phenomenology. Schelling has exercised a subterranean influence on modern thought. His diverse writings have not given rise to a system or school of thought; rather, individual philosophers have been influenced by the resonance of his ideas and their influence on contemporary ideas and movements. The New Schelling brings together a wide-ranging set of essays which elaborate the connections between Schelling and other thinkers - such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Deleuze, and Lacan - and argue for the unexpected modernity of Schelling's work.
Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2010
F.W.J. Schelling’s Ages of the World has just begun to receive the critical attention it deserves... more F.W.J. Schelling’s Ages of the World has just begun to receive the critical attention it deserves as a contribution to the philosophy of history. Its most significant philosophical move is to pose the question of the origin of the past itself, asking what “caused” the past. Schelling treats the past not as a past present (something that used to be a ‘now’ but no longer is) – but rather as an eternal past, a different dimension of time altogether, and one that was never a present ‘now’. For Schelling, the past functions as the transcendental ground of the present, the true ‘a priori’. Schelling’s account of the creation of this past takes the form of a theogeny: in order to exist, God needed to separate the past from the present. By grounding the creation of the past in a free decision of God, Schelling tries to conceptualize temporality so as to preserve the sort of radical contingency and authentic freedom that he considers essential features of history. In so doing, he opens up a way of viewing time that avoids the pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectic and anticipates some of the 20th century developments in phenomenology.
Hegel and Aesthetics (SUNY Press), William Maker, ed., 2000
Continental Philosophy Review 33 , 2000
Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 , 2002
Hegel and the Arts (Northwestern University Press), Stephen Houlgate, ed., 2007
Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus, vol. 6 (2009), Karl Ameriks and Jürgen Stolzenberg, eds., 2009
The Jena romantics are both artists and philosophers, but it is not always clear just what the re... more The Jena romantics are both artists and philosophers, but it is not always clear just what the relation between art and theory is. I start by trying to articulate this relation, focusing in particular on the differences between the romantics and Hegel. I argue that the romantics do not view art as sublated by philosophical theory, but rather as intensified by it. For the romantics therefore aesthetic form is more than the presentation of essentially philosophical propositions in an attractive way: instead, artistic style does real (philosophical) work. In romantic literature, for instance, language is set to work presenting its own unpresentable condition (what Jean-François Lyotard calls the postmodern sublime) in a way that can only be effected within the literary work; accordingly, the literariness of the work is not a mere ornament to a philosophical theses, but actually comprises the thesis.
Alison Stone (ed) *The Edinburgh Critical History of 19th Century Philosophy* (Edinburgh University Press), 2011
‘Romanticism’ is one of the more hotly contested terms in the history of ideas. There is a singul... more ‘Romanticism’ is one of the more hotly contested terms in the history of ideas. There is a singular lack of consensus as to its meaning, unity, and historical extension, and many attempts to fix the category of romanticism very quickly become blurry. As a result, the great historian of ideas, Arthur Lovejoy, famously concludes that: ‘the word ‘romantic’ has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing. It has ceased to perform the function of a verbal sign’ But his pessimistic advice has not stopped scholars from trying to define romanticism. If anything, it has brought renewed vigour to the determination with which critics try to pinpoint the term. There are several approaches to take, for those who attempt to do so. One class of critics tries to enumerate the features shared by the authors and texts generally considered romantic. An alternative approach would try to identify the fundamental unity that informs romanticism and gives rise to the empirical commonalities. But what would this essential feature be? Both of these approaches take an external perspective on romanticism, seeing it as the object of inquiry. An alternative approach, which we will pursue, looks at romantic subjects, and romanticism as a self-constituting category, rather than merely as an externally imposed one. In other words, we will take as basic neither an (empirical) array of candidate properties constituting romanticism, nor a supposed underlying (rationalist) essence from which properties can be derived, but rather we will focus on how the romantics themselves took up the idea of romanticism and transformed it into a self-conscious movement. We will treat the question of romanticism with respect to England, but above all Germany. Although romantic movements arose and flourished elsewhere in Europe (and in France in particular), German and English romanticism were uniquely theoretically sophisticated and philosophically nuanced.
The New Schelling (Continuum Publishers), Judith Norman and Alistair Welchman, eds., 2004
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10. 1 , 2002
Books by Judith Norman
First published in 1818, The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire phil... more First published in 1818, The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion, in an attempt to account for the world in all its significant aspects. It gives a unique and influential account of what is and is not of value in existence, the striving and pain of the human condition and the possibility of deliverance from it. This new translation of the first volume of what later became a two-volume work reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names and bibliography, and succinct editorial notes, including notes on the revisions of the text which Schopenhauer made in 1844 and 1859.
• A new accurate translation providing the reader with an up-to-date version of the text • Contains substantial introduction, editorial notes, bibliography, chronology and glossary for aiding those new to the subject and also for highlighting the connections between Schopenhauer and other philosophers and philosophical issues • Full editorial notes within the text provide a useful resource to higher level scholars
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) was a colleague of Hegel, Holderlin, Fichte, G... more Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) was a colleague of Hegel, Holderlin, Fichte, Goethe, Schlegel, and Schiller. Always a champion of Romanticism, Schelling advocated a philosophy which emphasized intuition over reason, which maintained aesthetics and the creative imagination to be of the highest value. At the same time, Schelling's concerns for the self and the rational make him a major precursor to existentialism and phenomenology. Schelling has exercised a subterranean influence on modern thought. His diverse writings have not given rise to a system or school of thought; rather, individual philosophers have been influenced by the resonance of his ideas and their influence on contemporary ideas and movements. The New Schelling brings together a wide-ranging set of essays which elaborate the connections between Schelling and other thinkers - such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Deleuze, and Lacan - and argue for the unexpected modernity of Schelling's work.
Book Reviews by Judith Norman
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Jun 29, 2014
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Jun 29, 2014
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Papers by Judith Norman
Books by Judith Norman
• A new accurate translation providing the reader with an up-to-date version of the text • Contains substantial introduction, editorial notes, bibliography, chronology and glossary for aiding those new to the subject and also for highlighting the connections between Schopenhauer and other philosophers and philosophical issues • Full editorial notes within the text provide a useful resource to higher level scholars
Book Reviews by Judith Norman
• A new accurate translation providing the reader with an up-to-date version of the text • Contains substantial introduction, editorial notes, bibliography, chronology and glossary for aiding those new to the subject and also for highlighting the connections between Schopenhauer and other philosophers and philosophical issues • Full editorial notes within the text provide a useful resource to higher level scholars