r0b’s Reviews > Contemporary European Philosophy > Status Update

‘...there are no other systems so balanced, sober, and rational as those of the metaphysicians.’

‘God’s existence must be acknowledged. Since no irrational thing could possibly exist (because ens et verum convertuntur , one cannot admit the existence of empirically known being without acknowledging a creator.’

‘Induction is not rational inference or the derivation of invariable laws but is a sort of divination.’

‘Metaphysics is born of the wonder at the fact of life, which cannot be explained either mechanically or teleologically.’

‘Nicolai Hartmann is undoubtedly one of the most significant figures in contemporary philosophy and, along with Whitehead and Maritain, a pioneer of twentieth-century metaphysics.’

‘...the nonexistence of God is for Haeckel a demonstrable thesis, for Nietzsche it is a drama. If European philosophy were to follow the lead of thinkers of Haeckel’s type, it would collapse utterly along with European culture itself. [really??] In restoring the tychic element to a place of eminence existentialism has without doubt contributed to the recuperation of our life and thought.’ [hmm, I am rather dubious..]

On Jaspers:

‘Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Max Weber provide Jaspers with inspiration but special note should be made of four thinkers he is in the habit of citing- Plotinus, Bruno, Spinoza and Schelling. These names show beyond doubt that Jaspers is not only an existentialist strongly influenced by Kant; he is also, and perhaps principally, a Neoplatonist.’

‘The position of Gabriel Marcel is so expressly antisystematic that his views are more difficult to put together than those of any other existentialist. In fact no one has as yet succeeded in doing so.’

And still on Sartre:

‘It may be safely said that there has never been a more extreme form of realism in the history of philosophical thought.’

‘Sartre professes a radical phenomenonalism. There is nothing but phenomena, and these only, in fact, in Husserl’s sense.’