Response to Doctor Marti

Doctor Marti is to be commended for compressing such a rich variety of historical reminders and flashes of philosophical insight within the scope of his brief and suggestive paper. Among the important reminders culled from the tradition are, first of all, the pivotal importance of St. Augustine’s fusion of philosophical inwardness and Christian doctrine, then a correct and careful estimation of Kant’s location of the ethically active self within the noumenal order, and finally a lucid synthesis of Schelling’s insights into the possibility of a philosophical religion. Marti understands that to repeat the tradition philosophically is to renew and restore it. But he also brings novel insights to bear upon the Kantian-Hegelian tradition, the most striking of which are the assertions that the work of ratiocination is guesswork, and that obligation becomes objective only in and with the act of taking responsibility. Each of these gems deserves to be cut, polished, and set within its own extended treatment.