Online research in philosophy

In his critical works of the 1780's, Kant claims, seemingly inconsistently, that (1) theoretical and practical reason are one and the same reason, applied differently, (2) that he still needs to show that they are, and (3) that theoretical and practical reason are united. I first argue that current interpretations of Kant's doctrine of the unity of reason are insufficient. But rather than concluding that Kant’s doctrine becomes coherent only in the Critique of Judgment, I show that the three statements are compatible, providing a new and more coherent account of Kant's 1780's doctrine of the unity of reason.

The Unity of Reason is the first major study of Kant's account of reason. It argues that Kant's wide-ranging interests and goals can only be understood by redirecting attention from epistemological questions of his work to those concerning the nature of reason. Rather than accepting a notion of reason given by his predecessors, a fundamental aim of Kant's philosophy is to reconceive the nature of reason. This enables us to understand Kant's insistence on the unity of theoretical and practical reason as well as his claim that his metaphysics was driven by practical and political ends. Neiman begins by discussing the historical roots of Kant's conception of reason, and by showing Kant's solution to problems which earlier conceptions left unresolved. Kant's notion of reason itself is examined through a discussion of all the activities Kant attributes to reason. In separate chapters discussing the role of reason in science, morality, religion, and philosophy, Neiman explores Kant's distinctions between reason and knowledge, and his difficult account of the regulative principles of reason. Through examination of these principles in Kant's major and minor writings, The Unity of Reason provides a fundamentally new perspective on Kant's entire work.

The Immanent Word establishes that the philosophical study of language inaugurated in the 1759 works of Hamann and Lessing marks a paradigm shift in modern philosophy; it analyzes the transformation of that shift in works of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Novalis and Schlegel. It contends that recent studies of early linguistic philosophy obscure the most relevant commission of its thinkers, arguing against the theological appropriation of Hamann by John Milbank; against the "expressive" appropriation of Hamann and Herder by Christina Lafont and Charles Taylor; and against Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy’s uncritical championing of Schlegel’s ideological position.

Un fait divers, l'apparition en 1764 d'un homme prétendument sauvage dans les forêts de Königsberg, fournit à Kant et Hamann l'occasion d'une confrontation de leurs points de vue sur l'intelligibilité de la naturalité et de la f actualité humaines. Parue dans la Gazette politique et littéraire de Königsberg sous la forme de deux articles (que nous traduisons), cette confrontation dépasse vite l'anecdote pour conduire à la divergence de deux voies, celle implicite de Hamann, l'interprétation théologique, et celle encore « en germe » de Kant, l'application de la méthode expérimentale à l'anthropologie. A singular event — the appearance in 1764 of a so-called “savage man” in the forests of Königsberg — gave Kant and Hamann the opportunity to taste their points of view concerning the intelligibility of both naturality, and human factuality. This confrontation, which appeared in the Political and Literary Gazette of Königsberg in the form of two articles (translated here), goes rapidly over the anecdote to arrive at a parting of the ways — that of Hamann: the theological interpretation; and that of Kant (although still in germination) the application of experimental methodology to anthropology.