Online research in philosophy

Berkeley's idealism started a revolution in philosophy. As one of the great empiricist thinkers he not only influenced British philosphers from Hume to Russell and the logical positivists in the twentieth-century, he also set the scene for the continental idealism of Hegel and even the philosophy of Marx. This edition of Berkeley's two key works has an introduction which examines and in part defends his arguments for idealism, as well as offering a detailed analytical contents list, extensive philosophical notes, and an index.

This paper assesses the role of the Refutation of Idealism within the Critique of Pure Reason, as well as its relation to the treatment of idealism in the First Edition and to transcendental idealism more generally. It is argued that the Refutation is consistent with the Fourth Paralogism and that it can be considered as an extension of the Transcendental Deduction. While the Deduction, considered on its own, constitutes a 'regressive argument', the Refutation allows us to turn the Transcendental Analytic into a 'progressive argument' that proceeds by the synthetic method.

Book description: This outstanding collection of specially commissioned chapters examines German idealism from several angles and assesses the renewed interest in the subject from a wide range of fields. Including discussions of the key representatives of German idealism such as Kant, Fichte and Hegel, it is structured in clear sections dealing with: * metaphysics * the legacy of Hegel’s philosophy * Brandom and Hegel * recognition and agency * autonomy and nature * the philosophy of German romanticism. Amongst other important topics, German Idealism: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives addresses the debates surrounding the metaphysical and epistemological legacy of German idealism; its importance for understanding recent debates in moral and political thought; its appropriation in recent theories of language and the relationship between mind and world; and how German idealism affected subsequent movements such as romanticism, pragmatism, and critical theory.

While considerable ink has been spilt over the rejection of idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the end of the 19th Century, relatively little attention has been directed at Russell’s A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, a work written in the early stages of Russell’s philosophical struggles with the metaphysics of Bradley, Bosanquet, and others. Though a sustained investigation of that work would be one of considerable scope, here I reconstruct and develop a two-pronged argument from the Philosophy of Leibniz that Russell fancied—as late as 1907—to be the downfall of the traditional category of substance. Here, I suggest, one can begin to see Russell’s own reasons—arguments largely independent of Moore—for the abandonment of idealism. Leibniz, no less than Bradley, adhered to an antiquated variety of logic: what Russell refers to as the subject-predicate doctrine of logic. Uniting this doctrine with a metaphysical principle of independence—that a substance is prior to and distinct from its properties—Russell is able to demonstrate that neither a substance pluralism nor a substance monism can be consistently maintained. As a result, Russell alleges that the metaphysics of both Leibniz and Bradley has been undermined as ultimately incoherent. Russell’s remedy for this incoherence is the postulation of a bundle theory of substance, such that the category of “substance” reduces to the most basic entities—properties.

Berkeley's Idealism both advances Berkeley scholarship and serves as a useful guide for teachers and students.

Two of the major arguments for idealism in the last century, one from analytic metaphysics and one from American personalism, are examined and evaluated.

Central to any examination of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism—as it appears in the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason—are questions about what sort of “idealism” it is trying to refute and what the precise steps of the supposed refutation might be. The first question is one regarding the nature of the claims made by Kant’s opponent, whilst the second traces the structure of the argument. Once upon a time the concern was that the Refutation turned out to be a voracious refutation of all idealism, including Kant’s own transcendental idealism. That issue has been resolved, however, by the ever more rigorous appreciation of the differences between Kant’s transcendental or formal idealism and the forms of Cartesian and Berkeleian idealism for which the refutation is intended. The Refutation of Idealism, then, is no self-refutation but the soundness of the actual execution of Kant’s argument in the Refutation of Idealism needs to be considered. What I want to demonstrate here is that the argument does not withstand critical scrutiny, precisely as a “refutation of idealism.” I will argue two issues. First, I want show is that as a “refutation of idealism”—considered within and without the broader commitments of transcendental idealism—Kant’s argument fails. This is because it misses a step which leaves the skeptic reasonable space to deny correlation between our representations and outer objects. The step is that of showing that external objects determine the content of our representations. This, I think, is not simply a failing in Kant’s exposition of the Refutation of Idealism but is the culmination of an enormous tension in Kant’s position between his twin commitments to transcendental idealism and empirical realism. This leads to a second important issue: the Refutation of Idealism, I will argue, relies on a notion Page 1 of 21 of “outer objects” that cannot be maintained within the framework of transcendental idealism. I am thereby at odds with Kant’s insistence, within the context of the Refutation at least, that the “transcendental idealist....

Analytic philosophy has become the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. This book illuminates that tradition through a historical examination of a crucial period in its formation: the rejection of Idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the subsequent development of Russell's thought in the period before the First World War.