Tom Rockmore (born 1942) is an American philosopher. Although he denies the usual distinction between philosophy and the history of philosophy, he has strong interests throughout the history of philosophy and defends a constructivist view of epistemology. The philosophers whom he has studied extensively are
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
,
Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...
,
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
,
Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...
Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
. He received his Ph.D. from
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...
in 1974 and his
Habilitation à diriger des recherches
Habilitation is the highest academic degree, university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, us ...
from the
Université de Poitiers
The University of Poitiers (UP; french: Université de Poitiers) is a public university located in Poitiers, France. It is a member of the Coimbra Group. It is multidisciplinary and contributes to making Poitiers the city with the highest stud ...
in 1994. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at
Duquesne University
Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit ( or ; Duquesne University or Duquesne) is a private Catholic research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded by members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Duquesne first opened as the Pittsbu ...
, as well as Distinguished Humanities Chair Professor at
Peking University
Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...
.
Philosophy
Rockmore is a strong critic of
representationalism
In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, the question of direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, is the debate over the nature of conscious experience;Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Consc ...
in
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
. This is the view that the mind has access to external reality via copies of that reality that the mind receives from the object.Weber, Eric Thomas. ''Rawls, Dewey and Constructivism: On the Epistemology of Justice''. Continuum, 2010, p.1.. It assumes a metaphysical realism, in which there is an external reality independent of the knower. Instead, Rockmore argues for a constructivist view on the basis of which the mind, on the basis of its experience, forms concepts and ideas that become the basis of its knowledge. This shift has significant consequences for phenomenology, aesthetics, and political philosophy. It further questions the transcendental claims particularly of early phenomenology.
As a historian of philosophy, Rockmore shows how
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
influenced the development of both continental and analytic philosophy. He claims that Marx, in particular, was influenced by the thought of Kant, Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. However, he argues that Marx's thought was significantly misunderstood by
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
that were inconsistent with much in Marx's original thinking.
Rockmore's political philosophy focuses on the effect of representational thinking on certain ideological strains that cause problematic political decisions in both Western and non Western states.
Rockmore has also published on
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
.
Selected bibliography
*''Fichte, Marx, and the German Philosophical Tradition.'' Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980.
*''Hegel's Circular Epistemology.'' Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
*''Habermas on Historical Materialism.'' Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
*''Irrationalism. Lukács and the Marxist View of Reason.'' Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.
*''On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
*''Before and After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's Thought.'' Hackett Publishing, 1993.
*''Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, Antihumanism and Being.'' Routledge, 1995.
*''On Hegel's Epistemology and Contemporary Philosophy.'' Humanity Books, 1996.
*''Cognition: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
*''Marx After Marxism: The Philosophy of Karl Marx.'' London: Wiley Blackwell, 2002.
*''On Foundationalism: A Strategy for Metaphysical Realism.'' Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
*''On Constructivist Epistemology.'' Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
*''Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
*''In Kant's Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.'' London: Wiley Blackwell, 2006.
*''Kant and Idealism.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
*''Kant and Phenomenology.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
*''Before and After 9/11: A Philosophical Examination of Globalization, Terror, and History.'' New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
*''Art and Truth after Plato.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
*''German Idealism as Constructivism.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
*''Marx's Dream: From Capitalism to Communism.'' Chicago: University of Chicago, 2018.
See also
*
American philosophy
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevert ...
*
List of American philosophers
This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.
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