ASH GOBAR

My metamotivation harbors two interrelated aspects. A moral motif represented by the ideal of Higher Humanism as a healing paradigm for the bedwarfed image of Man in our time. And a theoretical motif represented by the ideal of Truth from the vantage of epistemology as well as ontology.

I take the conceptual turn beyond the “linguistic turn”; I assume the perspective of dialectical realism  beyond the congeries of “reductive realisms”;  I seek to overcome the “fragmented world” of deconstruction by the inquiry into the possibility of a reconstruction toward a “Worldview”. Call it a Neotranscendentalism built by transcendental arguments and hermeneutic discourse.

Philosophic Foundations of Genetic and Gestalt Psychology
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1968. Wherein I introduce the concept of phenomenological spectrum as corrective to reductionism.

Philosophy as Higher Enlightenment
(Paradigms Toward a Worldview from the Perspective of Dialectical Realism) New York / Bern / Frankfurt a.M. / Vienna: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. 1994.  The two disparate conceptions of philosophy, as metascience and worldview, find a dialectical integration here.

Higher Humanism
(A Neotranscendental Philosophy of Life) NewYork / Bern / Frankfurt a.M. / Vienna: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. 2017.  Wherein I evoke the ideal of “higher humanism” (relative to the human psyche as the bearer of conscience) challenging the diminished image of Man in the milieu of the “bourgeois humanism” of modern civilization.

Essays on the Question of Truth:

—“A Critique of Current Theories of Truth”, Philosophical Inquiry, 1982, v.4, no. 1.

—“Are There Types of Truth?” International Philosophical Quarterly, 1987, v .27, no. 3.

—“Truth and Marginal Philosophers”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 1991, Bd. 45, no. 3.

Essays in the philosophy of Science:

—“Les relations entre l’épistémologie et la psychologie”, Congrès Inter-Americain de Philosophie, Laval / Canada 1967.

—Abstract Entities in the Natural Sciences”, XIV Internationale Kongress für Philosophie, Vienna: Herder Verlag 1968, I.

—“Conceptual Turn in Recent Philosophy”, Critica, 1985 (17) no. 49.

—“Philosophy of Science Revisited: Dialectical Realism” Russian Version in the Journal of the Academy of Philosophical Sciences, Tbilisi / Georgia 1990. (Invited Paper).

—“Physics illumined by Metaphysics: Logical Derivation of Newton’s ‘First Law of Motion’ from Descartes ‘First Law of Nature’” / Inaugural Lecture in my Philosophy of Science course at Transylvania University (Lexington) 1969/1992.

—“A Philosophical Letter to a Student of Science”, Contemporary Philosophy (ed. A. E. Koenig) 1986 (11) no. 6.

Interpretive Essays:

—“The Phenomenology of William James”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia), 1970, (114) no. 4, arguing that James advanced a “phenomenology of lifeworld” of which “pragmatism” was but a secondary dimension (malgré received opinion).

—“Erklärung and Begründung in Kantian Epistemology”, Journal of Philosophical Research, 1989 (14) — A re-reading of synthetic apriori propositions and their significance for the philosophy of science (malgré Bertrand Russell).

— “Socratic Truth Revisited: Heidegger’s Illumination of Socratic Truth (Αλήθεια) in the Light of Recent Epistemology”, Greek Philosophy and Epistemology (ed. K. Boudouris) Athens: Ionia Publications, 2001 (Invited Paper).

“Critical Reviews of two World Congresses of Philosophy (by invitation of the Editor):

—“The Big Questions and the XVth World Congress of Philosophy” (Varna) Philosophy Today, 1976 (20) no. 4.

— “Some Big Questions Revisited: XVIth World Congress of Philosophy” (Düsseldorf) Philosophy Today, 1982 (26) no. 3/4.

Essays on the Philosophy of Life:

—“Significance of the Mountain Image for the Philosophy of Life”, Philosophy Today, 1981 (25) no. 2/4.

—“Philosophy and the Shape of Things to Come”, XVIIth World Congress of Philosophy, Montreal 1983.

—“The Ideal of Higher Humanism in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment”,VIIth International Congress on Enlightenment, Academia Scientiarum Hungaricae, Budapest 1987.

—”A Reconstruction of the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God”, A Journal of Liberal Arts (ed. Washington and Jefferson College) Pennsylvania 1988, No. 41 (Spring Issue).

—“Philosophy as cultural Healer: A Recurrent Theme in Plato and Heidegger”, in Polis and Cosmopolis (ed. K. Boudouris) Athens: Ionia Publications 2003 (Invited Paper).

—“Critical Role of Weltanschauung”/ Round Table organized by Ash Gobar (Transylvania University) with the collaboration of D. R. C. Reed (Wittenberg University) and Josef Seifert (Internationale Akademie für Philosophie) at XXth World Congress of Philosophy / Boston 1998.

Current and Recurrent Interest:

The theme of “Weltanschauung” as a transcendental paradigm.