The religious feeling considered in this paper is the feeling of awe that can be construed in the extrapolation of the feeling of respect for the law. The latter itself can be better understood in analogy to the feeling of the sublime. Hence the thesis of my interpretation and extrapolation is: a characterization of the religious feeling in Kant’s critiques of reason and their analyses of feelings is possible. It has to be understood in analogy to the feeling of respect (...) for the law and thus to the feeling of the sublime. The religious feeling would, as certain formulations suggest, refer to awe of the inconceivable size of God. The religious feeling of awe would also be a feeling caused by reason -- an instance of a judgement-based feeling. The respective judgement is a reflexive judgement, an achievement of the reflecting faculty of judgement. The religious feeling would resemble Schleiermacher’s ”plain feeling of dependence’, but given the analogy with the dialectics of the sublime, it would also include the complementary component of self-elevation. (shrink)

Was ist eine gute Weltanschauung? Die Aufsätze behandeln einige der großen Themen der westlichen Philosophie unter neuen Gesichtspunkten, wie z. B. das Apeiron des Anaximander, das Leib-Seele-Problem bei Descartes und Wittgensteins Begriff der Sprache und Lebensform. Sie beleuchten aber auch Seitenwege wie z. B. einen Ausflug Schopenhauers, ein „Plagiat" Nietzsches und einige der Aphorismen Ludwig Hohls.

According to Ágnes Heller’s plans in 1989 and 1990, the last volume of her moral trilogy should have been entitled A Theory of Proper Conduct. In 1996 the third volume finally appeared with the title An Ethics of Personality. Its content: a series of philosophical dialogues between many dramatis personæ. The change in style and methodology of the third volume led to many criticisms, amongst them Mihály Vajda’s questioning of the whole project’s consistency. The present paper aims to engage these (...) criticisms by retracing the presence in An Ethics of Personality of the themes that, according to Heller’s previous intentions, should have informed the last part of her moral theory. The contribution analyses Heller’s definitions of modern paideia and moral wisdom, the issue of the possibility of happiness for modern people, and the philosophically problematic concept of moral aesthetics. In conclusion, the ‘literary’ methodology of the book is put in relationship with the non-prescriptive aspect of ethics. (shrink)

This essay develops an approach to a phenomenology of shame by taking recourse to different notions of shame found in various humanistic disciplines and in the history of phenomenology. The first part of this paper analyzes some of the central ideas on the nature of shame to be found in cultural anthropology, pedagogy, history and psychoanalysis. The second part discusses the phenomenological theories of shame proposed by Sartre and Levinas. Since their approaches are opposite to each other in crucial respects, (...) the third part of this paper returns to the analyses of shame undertaken in the first part in order to resolve this apparent conflict and advance a coherent theory of shame. The essay’s final thesis is that shame is neither fundamentally destructive nor fundamentally constructive but that it can assume both guises. While it can threaten the subject up to the point of destruction triggering it in aggressive defensive mechanisms, it can also contribute to the development of the subject into a fully free individual capable of acknowledging and answering to others. (shrink)

The article follows Kant’s different views on aesthetics ranging from the pre-critical period to the Critique of the Power of Judgement. It argues that John Zammito’s psychological explanation of why Kant in the third Critique developed an argument for the transcendental justification of judgements of taste is unconvincing. As an alternative, the article shows how Kant in his published pre-critical discussions of aesthetics was relying upon empiricist sources while he in private comments turned to consider the culture critique of Rousseau. (...) Kant’s preoccupation with questions of culture critique, it is argued, was an important reason to enlarge the doctrines of transcendental philosophy with a third Critique containing a transcendental aesthetics of beauty. Additionally, it is pointed out an interesting similarity throughout the development of Kant’s philosophy. In 1765 and in the third Critique Kant was concerned to keep philosophy and judgements of taste apart from science. (shrink)

The philosophers agree that philosophy begins in wonder. How wonder is understood, however, is not at all clear and has implications for contemporary work in feminist phenomenology. Luce Irigaray, for example, has insisted on wonder as the passion that will renew relationships between women and men, provide a foundation for democracy, and launch a new era in history. She calls on women to enact practices of wonder in relation to men. In what follows I briefly review the most significant claims (...) about wonder in the history of philosophy generally, and as related to the phenomenological practice of the epoché particularly. I consider Irigaray’s claims about wonder as they arise out of this tradition, and try to spell out both what is promised to women and what is asked of them through affirmations of wonder. I suggest that this prescriptive notion is at the heart of a new conservatism in “feminist” thought that turns on nostalgia for age-old beliefs about women’s proper mode of relation toward men and their accomplishments, and is deeply homophobic. I urge readers to adopt a more critical attitude toward wonder as related to sexual difference by historicizing the inquiry in keeping with the phenomenological practice of Simone de Beauvoir. Drawing on Kant, Beauvoir, and contemporary work by Sara Ahmed, I suggest that there is a politics of wonder at work here which feminists have every reason to question. Reflecting on the politics of wonder also discloses some key features of critical feminist phenomenological practice. (shrink)

El articulo explora una alternativa distinta sobre la posible comprensión kantiana de los derechos humanos a la que se muestra en un par de contribuciones recientes por parte de Jürgen Habermas y Otfried Höffe. Se intenta mostrar que la manera como estos teóricos defienden la eventual aportación de Kant a los derechos humanos, sustentada en su apriorística y trascendental doctrina moral, no resiste el análisis si de lo que se trata es defender la cualidad humana de los derechos humanos y (...) su universalidad. En su lugar, y teniendo como base el concepto del “fenómeno de los derechos humanos” defendido por el filósofo y jurista argentino Eduardo Rabossi, se busca mostrar que la posición histórica y antropológica, no trascendental, que Kant sostiene en torno a la relación entre revolución y progreso moral en uno de sus textos sobre El conflicto de las facultades se ajusta más persuasivamente a lo que estos derechos representan. (shrink)

The background of the author’s thoughts is a radical critique of art and science by J. J. Rousseau and genuine aesthetic and moral disposition of a human being outlined by I. Kant in his pre-critic works. According to the author, the art of twentieth century reveals problems of a “nature of a contemporary man”. The author illustrates possible consequences of Rousseau’s critique of an art and science in the present and the shifts of natural aesthetic dispositions, as named by Kant (...) in the contemporary art. (shrink)

Cet article se fixe un double objectif. Tout d’abord, il se propose d’analyser comment Albrecht von Haller s’est efforcé d’allier science et philosophie dans son célèbre « poème inachevé sur l’éternité ». Ensuite, il tente d’élucider comment ce même poème inspira des considérations cosmologiques à Kant dans sa Théorie du ciel tout en lui fournissant un modèle exemplaire de « poésie sublime » dont il analysa les ressorts jusque dans ses derniers écrits en se tournant vers l’esprit qui la produit (...) ou qui s’en inspire. (shrink)

Although research to date has helped in important ways to shed light on the penetration of Burke’s Enquiry into the German-language area, a comprehensive treatment of this reception as a process distinguished not only by changes over time, but also characterized by regional variations, remains lacking. Based on the lectures on aesthetics by August Gottlieb Meißner at Prague University in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the paper seeks to illuminate this underexposed regional aspect. The first phase of the (...) reception of the Enquiry took place especially in Berlin immediately after its publication in London in 1757. The second phase can be located mainly in the northern maritime centres of German culture, particularly Königsberg, Riga, Hamburg as well as Copenhagen. Christian Garve’s translation, published anonymously by Hartknoch in Riga in 1773, and Kant’s Critique of Judgement constitute two peaks of north-German interest in Burke’s Enquiry. The intense reception of the Critique of Judgement within German aesthetics around and after 1800 subsequently led to the polemic with the British author becoming a part of Idealist interpretations for the next few decades. Outlining the three centres of the German reception of Burke’s Enquiry begs the question which of them should be connected with Meißner’s remarks concerning Burke’s ideas. Leipzig is presented as another important German-language centre disseminating knowledge of Burke’s Enquiry, especially in the first half of the Seventies, moreover the decisive intermediary for the penetration of the Enquiry into the south-German Roman Catholic areas, Prague in particular. (shrink)

The author considers arts as various forms of understanding and misunderstanding at the same time. The misunderstandings have several causes and complicate or transform the way of perception and understanding of artworks and produce what the author calls "hushing" or shading aesthetic and artistic qualities of the work. The inability of recognize aesthetic qualities of an artwork complicate its aesthetic effect on the recipient and causes various forms of hostility towards art as a creation and against specific works of art (...) and their authors. (shrink)