Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an ‘intellectual intuition’ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kant's epistemic achievement and what were taken (...) to be the outstanding problems of freedom's relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to ‘intellectual intuition’. Part three begins with Kant's subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goethe's contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself. (shrink)

Spinoza and Kant are considered to be polar opposites with respect to ethics. The radical difference between them is supposed to consist in Spinoza’s ethical egoism, or interest-based Strebensethik, and Kant’s duty-cantered, deontological Sollensethik. I challenge this opposition and argue that both in Kant and Spinoza we deal with a notion of the self’s realization that is “interest”-based and therefore does not involve self-sacrifice. I show, on the one hand, that the streben in Spinoza’s Strebensethik consists in realising one’s essentially (...) human interest, which resides in ethical-rational action, and, on the other hand, that sollen in Kant’s Sollensethik is in fact a streben of the Kantian “proper self” (eigentliches Selbst) after the realization of its ethical-rational interest. (shrink)

This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of the middle principle of plastik, which would mediate between (...) the Ideas of transcendent reason and mechanical materialism. We find these amendments to Spinoza's philosophy also employed in Herder's contribution to the Pantheism Controversy, in which he too offers a revised Spinozism and introduces his own middle principle of Kraft. This demonstrates an important but under-explored English contribution to a key development in German intellectual history. The Pantheism Controversy was an epoch-making event, helping to bring an end to the German Enlightenment and to inaugurate the Romantic movement. Herder's version of Spinoza's thought revived the philosopher's fortunes, and Herder's notion of Kraft became central to Romantic aesthetics. Finally, Herder's use of Cudworth demonstrates the important but overlooked source of Platonic realism in German Romantic thought. (shrink)

Charles Taylor's influential exposition of Hegel made the doctrine of expressivism of central importance and identified Herder as its exemplary historical advocate. The breadth and generality of Taylor's use of ?expressivism? have led the concept into some disrepute, but a more precise formulation of the doctrine as a theory of meaning can both demonstrate what is worthwhile and accurate in Taylor's account, and allow us a useful point of entry into Herder's multifaceted philosophy. A reconstruction of Herder's overall philosophical position, (...) centred around a refined theory of what this paper labels ?Herderean expressivism?, reveals a naturalistic, teleological metaphysics. This metaphysics fulfils the Hegelian aim of providing what Dieter Henrich has called a ?feedback loop? between ontology and epistemology. Exploring Herder's expressivism, therefore, helps further the case for his decisive impact on Hegel's philosophy. Herder's methodological naturalism, however, represents an obstacle to Hegel's absolute idealism. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar la interpretación y la valoración que Leo Strauss hace de Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, filósofo alemán de finales del siglo XVIII conocido como un enemigo de la Ilustración. Para ello, se analizan la Tesis doctoral de Strauss, dedicada a la teoría del conocimiento de Jacobi y las dos menciones explícitas a él en Die Religionskritik Spinozas. A partir de este análisis, se concluye que la valoración que Strauss hace de Jacobi es positiva y que (...) si bien Strauss no adopta una posición filosófica similar a la de Jacobi, éste constituye una fuente de inspiración para él. En efecto, existe una similitud en la estrategia argumentativa que ambos adoptan contra la Ilustración racionalista: la crítica a la Ilustración se realiza en ambos a través de la crítica a Spinoza y ésta implica una puesta en cuestión de los fundamentos sobre los cuales se erige esa posición, que revela su vínculo con valores prácticos que no se fundan teóricamente. (shrink)