The problem of the bridge

Hegel shares the Enlightenment's ambition to make philosophy scientific but thinks it went about it wrongly: too skeptical, too shallow, better at dismantling faith than at offering depth in return.

Hegel sets out to solve the old bridge problem, how to get from mind to world: he will join subject and object, though with a dash of mysticism.

Put simply Hegel sets out to solve an old puzzle: how a mind shut inside its own head can reach the world outside. His answer joins mind and world together, with a touch of mysticism.

Hegel makes history part of philosophy's own substance, reversing a tradition since the Greeks that sought timeless, universal truth and treated the changing and contingent as noise to purge.

Put simply Hegel: since the ancient Greeks, philosophers had looked for truths that never change, and treated whatever changes or happens by chance as noise to get rid of. Hegel reverses this and makes history part of philosophy itself.

Art, whatever its medium, has a single aim: to sweep away the useful symbols and accepted generalities that screen reality from us, and confront us with reality directly.

Put simply Bergson: all art, in any medium, has one aim: to clear away the practical labels and accepted generalities that hide reality from us, and bring us face to face with reality itself.

The thinkers of this era long to reach the real, life at its core, what we feel estranged from; for Shore each in some ways reworks the subject-object bridge problem.

Put simply Shore: thinkers of this period long to reach reality itself, life at its core, which they feel cut off from. Each in some way reworks the old puzzle of how a mind can reach the world outside it.

Phenomenology sets out to escape solipsism, the picture of a mind sealed inside itself with only its own contents for certainty; consciousness can reach its objects and claim objective truth.

Put simply Husserl's phenomenology tries to escape "solipsism," the picture of a mind shut inside itself, sure of nothing but its own thoughts. He holds that consciousness can reach real objects and claim objective truth.

Kant's willingness to set aside the thing-in-itself as unreachable amounts to fatalism, a kind of surrender; the real thing can be reached, with absolute truth and full clarity.

Put simply Husserl: Kant set aside things as they really are, apart from our minds, as out of reach. That is fatalism, a kind of surrender. The real thing can be reached, with absolute truth and full clarity.

Intentionality is the structure of consciousness: always reaching for its object, like a magnet on a string. Neither subject nor object comes first; their relation does, bridged by intentionality.

Put simply Husserl: consciousness is always reaching out toward some object, like a magnet on a string in Shore's image. He calls this "intentionality." Neither mind nor thing comes first; the link between them does, and that link is the bridge.

Husserl, in Shore's judgment, wants to dance at both weddings at once, as the Polish proverb forbids: subjectivity's full depth and objectivity's firm certainty, surrendering neither.

Put simply Shore's judgment: Husserl tries to "dance at two weddings at once," as a Polish proverb says you cannot. He wants all the depth of the inner self and all the firm certainty of objective knowledge, giving up neither.

The subject-object split assumes an Archimedean vantage outside the world. There is none: Dasein is inside, so the bridge problem is not solved but dissolved, since no gap exists.

Put simply Heidegger: the old puzzle of how a mind reaches the world assumes we could stand outside the world and look at it. We cannot. We are already inside, so there is no gap to bridge and the puzzle disappears.

Shore leaves open whether Dasein radically thickens the subject, darker than Descartes', Kant's or Husserl's, or ends it: if subject and object are no longer apart, is there a subject?

Put simply Shore leaves it open. Does Heidegger's "Dasein" make the self far richer and darker than in Descartes, Kant or Husserl? Or does it end the self? If mind and world are no longer apart, is there still a subject?

In her postwar lecture on existential philosophy, Arendt blames Kant: by severing being from thought and putting the thing-in-itself beyond reach, he opened the subject-world gap that alienates us.

Put simply Arendt blames Kant for our alienation. He split thinking from being and said we can never reach things as they really are, which opened a gap between us and the world.

Bracketing subject and object alike and studying only how signifiers interact is structuralism's own route past the bridge problem of how subject reaches world.

Put simply Shore: philosophy long asked how the mind can reach the world outside it. Structuralism sidesteps the question by setting aside both mind and world and studying only how signs relate to one another.

On Shore's account, Kołakowski concedes the subject-object gap cannot be bridged and Husserl's quest fails, yet insists we keep seeking truth: abandon it and ethics goes too.

Put simply Shore's account of Kołakowski: no one can bridge the gap between mind and outside world, so Husserl's search for certain truth fails. Yet we must keep seeking truth, because giving it up means giving up ethics too.