Logos and Eros: Essays Honoring Stanley Rosen

Stanley Rosen was the student of both Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve. My guess is he was the best student of both. He claimed that Kojeve was the smartest man he ever met but Rosen himself was no slouch. Although both his teachers denied they were philosophers, and Rosen did as well, it is hard not to think of him as one of the best philosophers America has produced. He was good at every side of philosophy; writing in an idiomatic English the opposite of his beloved Hegel covering the controversies both of the history of philosophy and all its major contemporary descendants. He was a remarkably gifted and productive scholar as well as a modest and decent man. This book of essays is an attempt to explore some of the many sides of his concerns. His focus on starting with Kant's distinctions and engaging them with Hegel's and his contemporaries modifications, nuances, and changes of method or understanding of reality shows itself in these essays. A particular essay which picks up His Kant/Hegel contemporary philosophy interests is one by his former student, Robert Pippin. Other essays which take up dialectically opposed positions are Alasdair MacIntyre's, Walter R. Newell's, and other specific studies of particular themes and subjects are connected with Prof. Rosen's multi-sided interests. There are many good essays worth reading and thinking about.