This chapter emphasizes four crucial differences that serve to distinguish the proto-Marxist interpretation from the standard post-Kantian framework. The first and foundational difference involves the existence of final causality or internal purposiveness in nature. The now-standard post-Kantian interpretation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel presupposes Sellars's core distinction between the realm of "empirical description" and the "space of reasons", a distinction that necessarily presupposes the absence of final causality in nature. The proto-Marxist framework approaches Hegel as the (...) first modern philosopher to overcome the strained but stubbornly persistent fantasy of pure mechanism and to recognize the ineliminable role of Aristotelian final causes in even the most basic domains of nature. The third difference involves the nature of Hegel's dialectic. Fourth, these competing frameworks provide divergent accounts of the constitution of the object. The post-Kantian framework plainly acknowledges Hegel's tendency to talk about organisms, artworks, and institutions as purposively structured wholes that cannot be properly explained in terms of causal laws. (shrink)

This comparative essay about two kinds of interpersonal-centric humanism is dedicated to the memory of professor Janusz Kuczyński and his conception of dialogical universalism as a metaphilosophy, and shows Immanuel Kant’s thought as a ceaseless source of inspiration for all anti-conservatives and universalists. Kant’s philosophy gave man an unforgettable sense of freedom, because it not only posed the imperative of building a pan-human community of all rational beings, but also revealed the above-natural sense of the human species’ imposition of purposefulness (...) upon itself, and the realisation of this purposefulness in the form of a republican federation of free states dedicated to co-creating eternal peace. Kantian ethics did not reach beyond the obligations people had towards one another, hence it was functionally anthropological and uninfluenced by religion, which re-situated philosophy with regard to scientific cognition and religious experience, giving rise to a metaphysics of anthropological responsibility for the condition of the spiritual freedom this ethic propounded. Kant revealed the existence of a metaphysical difference in the sphere of being—between the determinism of nature and the moral kingdom of freedom—without direct reference to the transcendental source of these two essentially different worlds. Kant was the first to set morality rooted in the autonomy and unanimous will of all rational beings—or true humanity—against legal and religious legalism. Kant laid weight on the processual character of man’s self-education to social life through the sense of commitment to self-improvement for the benefit of the solidary co-existence of all rational beings that he developed in himself as a rational being. Thus created freedom is founded on the selflesness of goodness and represents a new quality of being that only manifests itself and evolves in community, interpersonalcentrically. It is a universalistic approach capable of gradually neutralising the human inclination towards radical evil.My attempt to compare these two interpersonalcentric humanism conceptions aims to add some substance to this very delicate element in Kuczyński’s universalism as a metaphilosophy construct. (shrink)

Resumo Não há dúvida que tanto Kant como Hegel viram os seus respectivos trabalhos, como contribuições para aquilo que consideravam ser a “metafísica”. No entanto, a autora argumenta, que isto só deve ser compreendido, tendo presente, as concepções de metafísica de cada um dos autores. A autora, começando pela distinção implícita entre metafísica geral e metafísica especial na Crítica da Razão Pura, argumenta que Kant, Fichte, Schelling e Hegel comprometeram-se com uma investigação que, até essa altura, era do domínio da (...) metafísica geral. A autora, concentrando-se na noção de sistema de razão pura, tal como aludido na Crítica da Razão Pura, mostra, que os sucessores de Kant, interpretaram erroneamente a distinção kantiana entre crítica e sistema, o que permitiu elaborarem um sistema completo de razão pura, contrário àquilo que era intenção de Kant. Palavras-chave : Fichte, Hegel, idealismo alemão, Kant, metafísica, sistemaThere is no doubt that both Kant and Hegel saw their work as contributions to what they considered metaphysics proper. Yet what they meant by this, I argue, can only be understood by taking into account their own conception of metaphysics. Starting from Kant’s implicit distinction between general metaphysics and special metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason, I argue that Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel engaged in the investigation that used to be carried out in general metaphysics. Focusing on the notion of a system of pure reason intimated in the Critique of Pure Reason, I show, moreover, that Kant’s successors, while misinterpreting the Kantian distinction between critique and system, elaborated a method that made it possible to produce a complete system of pure reason, albeit one that differed from the system Kant had in mind. Keywords : Fichte, german idealism, Hegel, Kant, metaphysics, system. (shrink)

Despite our common self-conceptions, we philosophers have our myths, heroes, and guiding narratives. Our work may emphasize conceptual clarity and deductive arguments, but these more sober and discursive elements of our work always occurs within the context of a broader, often implicit, and frequently illusive orientation, within the scope of some particular vision of our vocation, our history, and our place within the contemporary world. These visions are meta-philosophical: they precede and frame philosophical work, and they engender the most intractable (...) philosophical disputes. Thus, for the sake of self-knowledge and rational discussion, we should constantly struggle to articulate and scrutinize these myths and narratives. Which predecessors do we continue to read? Why? What repeated stories and anecdotes generate our common and competing identities? What do past episodes in the history of philosophy mean, and how do they direct our current endeavors? Like every community, we philosophers sustain our collective work through stories, through the celebration of our heroes, and through repeated reference to paradigmatic arguments and texts. We should reflect upon these sustaining elements of our community, even if this requires modes of thought that lie beyond conceptual analysis, deductive argument, and the careful interpretation of canonical texts. -/- In this paper, I excavate and criticize the contours of one narrative that still guides us, the common celebration of Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical, farsighted, disruptive, irresistible, and irrevocable break with the religious and metaphysical dogmatism of its age. In Section 2, I briefly sketch two complementary versions of this narrative, the accounts provided by the Hegelian philosopher Eduard Gans and by the poet Heinrich Heine. Drawing various parallels with the French Revolution, these thinkers significantly overemphasize the skeptical, destructive, anti-metaphysical, anti-religious and historically discontinuous aspects of Kant’s critical philosophy, which they portray as the inauguration of a new and robust philosophical movement, one that rapidly vanquished its intellectually beleaguered and reactionary opponents. In Sections 2–4, I then turn to consider three of the more active and vociferous opponents of the Kantian movement: Basilius von Ramdohr, Friedrich Nicolai, and Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob. Contrary to the standard version of events, these men had little sympathy for metaphysics, religion, rationalism, and dogmatic certitude. In fact, they principally opposed the Kantian movement as the unwelcome resurgence of an outdated form of quasi-religious enthusiasm, as a form of philosophical Schwärmerei that threatened to appropriate the banner of reason and hinder the progress of enlightenment. -/- Drawing upon a wide range of late eighteenth-century German texts on the dangers and varied manifestations of Schwärmerei, I reconstruct Ramdohr’s, Nicolai’s, and Jakob’s vision of the Kantian movement. I argue that the charges of philosophical Schwärmerei highlight three meta-philosophical disputes that pitted these anti-Kantians against many proponents of the Kantian movement. These disputes involved: (a) the social role of the philosopher and her relation to the general public; (b) the place of internal and/or private experience within the open and polyphonic domain of public discourse; and (c) the merits of philosophical systematicity, technical neologisms, and more hermetic versions of semantic holism. -/- A consideration of these meta-philosophical disputes allows us to position Kant’s critical philosophy more accurately within its historical context, to highlight its significant continuities with the intellectual assumptions of the Berlin Enlightenment, those assumptions that largely inform Ramdohr’s, Nicolai’s, and Jakob’s attacks on the so-called Kantian movement. These continuities then reveal the meta-philosophical distance between Kant and “the Kantian movement”, between the texts of the critical philosophy and the projects of Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This challenges the traditional account. We often celebrate Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical break with the past, as the inauguration of new and fundamentally modern assumptions, which were then developed and elaborated by the post-Kantian Idealists. By contrast, I argue for a series of complex, ambivalent, and often unintended breaks: while occasionally celebrating his intellectual achievements as an epochal “Copernican Revolution”, Kant largely remains true to the guiding assumptions and philosophical values of his age, only occasionally deflecting them in minor but portentous ways. By contrast, while Reinhold and Fichte at least initially proclaimed their fidelity to the “spirit” – if not the letter – of Kant’s philosophy, they nonetheless managed to release a new and strange philosophical spirit, a potent, quasi-secularized, and post-Enlightenment form of Schwärmerei. (shrink)

This article features the contributions of Fichte and Schopenhauer to a philosophical account of action against the background of Kant's earlier and influential treatment of the topic. The article first presents Kant's pertinent contributions in the areas of general epistemology and metaphysics, general practical philosophy, the philosophy of law and ethic. Then the focus is on Fichte's further original work on the issue of action in those same areas. Finally, the article turns to Schopenhauer's radical revision of the (...) class='Hi'>Kantian and Fichtean affirmative accounts of acting and willing through the correlated introduction of the irrational will, the self-negated will and ethical inaction. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: On the Modern Philosophical Background On Kant's Relation to the Contemporary Philosophical Background Kant's Letter to Marcus Herz Kant's Two Epistemological Solutions in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant's Copernican Revolution in Philosophy as Constructivism Kant's Copernican Revolution, Science, and Metaphysics Kant's Copernican Revolution in Philosophy and Metaphysics Kant, Hegel, and the Historical Turn.

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 3, pp 410 - 443 This article contends that despite Richard Rorty’s famous rejection of metaphysics, his work nonetheless offers a philosophy of history, and that his account mirrors that of Kant’s, a figure Rorty considered one of his primary conceptual adversaries. Although Rorty often presents his approach to history as a foil to Kant’s, his account has striking parallels to the latter’s regulative meliorism. In similar fashion, far from being a blind optimist, Kant (...) provides a critical, progressive vision of history as necessary for the purposes of social action. Properly understood, Kant buttresses rather than undermines Rorty’s aims, and had Rorty engaged his work on history more seriously, he might have avoided some of the more problematic elements of his own prophetic patriotism. Despite Rorty’s dismissal of his work as the apotheosis of the absolute, this article argues that Kant’s regulative philosophy of history is more pragmatically oriented towards concrete social change than Rorty’s. (shrink)

This article examines three moments of the post-Kantian philosophical tradition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Kantianism, Post-Kantian Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism. It elucidates the distinctive methods of a tradition that has never entirely disappeared and is now acknowledged once again as the source of contemporary insights. It outlines two problematics—naturalist scepticism and historicist nihilism—threatening the possibility of metaphysics. The first concerns sceptical worries about reason, emerging from attempts to extend the methods of natural science (...) to the study of human beings. Kant’s project of a critical and transcendental analysis of reason, with its distinctive methods, should be considered a response. The second arises from the development of new methods of historical inquiry, seeming to undermine the very possibility of individual agency. Also considered are Kant’s successors’ revisions of the critical and transcendental analysis of reason, undertaken to overcome challenges confronting the original versions of Kant’s methods. (shrink)

Badiou claims Deleuze’s thinking is pre-critical metaphysics that cannot be understood in relation to Kant. I argue that Deleuze is indeed a metaphysical thinker, but precisely because he is a kind of Kantian. Badiou is right that Deleuze rejects the overwhelmingly epistemic problematics of critical thought in its classical sense, but he is wrong to claim that Deleuze completely rejects Kant. Instead, Deleuze is interested in developing a metaphysics that prolongs Kant’s conception of a productive synthesis irreducible (...) to empirical causation. Where Badiou’s criticism might tell however is in the risk that Deleuze’s strategy runs of contaminating his new metaphysics with a new kind of transcendental idealism. This reading has recently been developed by Ray Brassier and I explore and evaluate it, concluding that in Difference and Repetition this accusation may be correct, but that by the time of Anti-Œdipus, Deleuze (now with Guattari) has the intellectual resources to resist it. (shrink)

The relativistic revolution led to varieties of neo-Kantianism in which constitutive principles define the object of scientific knowledge in a domain-dependent and historically mutable manner. These principles are a priori insofar as they are necessary premises for the formulation of empirical laws in a given domain, but they lack the self-evidence of Kant’s a priori and they cannot be identified without prior knowledge of the theory they purport to frame. In contrast, the rationalist endeavors of a few masters of theoretical (...) physics have led to comprehensibility conditions that are easily admitted in a given domain and yet suffice to generate the theory of this domain. The purpose of this essay is to compare these two kinds of relativized a priori, to discuss the nature of the comprehensibility conditions, and to demonstrate their effectiveness in a modular conception of physical theories. (shrink)

After two centuries of Kant interpretation there is still no general agreement over the nature of Kant’s most basic philosophical commitments. One issue in particular about which it is difficult to find consensus is his metaphilosophical attitude towards the very project of metaphysics itself. Recently, a type of deflationist reading of Kant has been appealed to in order to address the problems inherent in his more traditional construal as a metaphysical skeptic who denies us the capacity to have any (...) knowledge of “things in themselves”, but who nevertheless seems to centrally rely on the existence of just such things.1 But how is either deflationism or skepticism consistent with Kant’s avowed intention in the Critique of Pure Reason to put metaphysics on the path of science,2 or with his signaled but unfulfilled intention to write a “Metaphysics of Nature”? (shrink)

In this book the author presents an original argument for constitutive and ontological realism, developed against the backdrop of a reconstruction of Kantian philosophy. The first chapter argues that Kant does not primarily reject the epistemological principles of classical empiricism--that there are only two species of epistemic warrant possible for any judgment: logical warrants as analytic entailments and evidential warrants. Rather, Kant rejects its tacit commitment to an epistemological atomism, substituting for this a species of representational holism. The primary (...) question of legitimacy attaches not to individual concepts or judgments but to a larger conceptual structure in which they are embedded as logically indispensable features. Kant's transcendental deduction thus consists in the demonstrations of a family of analytic entailments which collectively secure a logical warrant for meta-judgments expressing the applicability of categorial concepts to, and the truth of corresponding judgments about, a world as a systematic experiential unity. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of a particular form of philosophical spirituality in the emergence of post-structuralist theory. Initially elaborated in the post-Kantian metaphysics of Husserl and Heidegger, and focused in recondite acts of intellectual self-transformation, this form of spirituality was transposed into a literary hermeneutics that permitted its wider dissemination in the Anglo-american humanities academy. Post-structuralist theory is the result of this historical transformation.

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be (...) interpreted as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be (...) interpreted as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

Hegel's doctrines of absolute negativity and 'the Concept' are among his most original contributions to philosophy and they constitute the systematic core of dialectical thought. Brady Bowman explores the interrelations between these doctrines, their implications for Hegel's critical understanding of classical logic and ontology, natural science and mathematics as forms of 'finite cognition', and their role in developing a positive, 'speculative' account of consciousness and its place in nature. As a means to this end, Bowman also re-examines Hegel's relations to (...) Kant and pre-Kantian rationalism, and to key post-Kantian figures such as Jacobi, Fichte and Schelling. His book draws from the breadth of Hegel's writings to affirm a robustly metaphysical reading of the Hegelian project, and will be of great interest to students of Hegel and of German Idealism more generally. (shrink)

Jean Grondin completes the first history of metaphysics and respects both the analytical and the Continental schools while transcending the theoretical limitations of each. He reviews seminal texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in the metaphysical thought of Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and he revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and post-Kantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with (...) twentieth century innovations that upended the discipline, particularly Heidegger's revival of the question of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence by Sartre and the Existentialists, language by Gadamer and Derrida, and transcendence by Levinas. Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, yet by promoting a full understanding of its platform and processes, Grondin reveals its cogent approach to reality and foundational influence on modern philosophy and science. By restoring the value of metaphysics for contemporary audiences, Grondin showcases the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thought and its future possibilities. (shrink)

This paper characterizes two senses in which Hegel interpretations can be (anti-)metaphysical. It argues that Pippin's seminal work misreads Hegel’s Being Logic through reading it anti-metaphysically, in one of these senses. But it also suggests that Pippin’s recent work makes room for a metaphysical (in the corresponding sense) reinterpretation of the Being Logic. So it pushes, in the spirit of a friendly amendment, for a fuller such reinterpretation, one that nevertheless coheres with Pippin’s deep commitments about Hegel as a (...) class='Hi'>post-Kantian philosopher, since the reading remains, in the relevant sense—now the other one—anti-metaphysical. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to (i) reject the notion that one can ascribe no metaphysical commitments to Hegel; and (ii) argue that the kind of metaphysics one ought to ascribe to Hegel is a robust yet immanent/naturalist variety. I begin by exploring two reasons why one may think Hegel’s philosophical system has no metaphysical commitments. I argue that one of these reasons is based on a particular understanding of Hegel as a post-Kantian philosopher, whereas the (...) second reason is centred on a particular understanding of the philosophical viability of metaphysics as a form of enquiry simpliciter. My discussion of these ways of seeing the motivation for regarding Hegel in an anti-metaphysical way concludes with a rejection of the interpretation of conceiving Hegelianism without metaphysics. I then move on to address what I take to be the more pertinent and serious issue of what kind of metaphysician Hegel was. To this end, I argue that the best way of understanding Hegelian metaphysics is by conceiving of it as a combination of Aristotelian first philosophy and Kantian critique. To put this in the form of a slogan, I interpret Hegel’s metaphysics as a form of speculative naturalism. (shrink)

This study of the metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz gives a clear picture of his philosophical development within the general scheme of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Catherine Wilson examines the shifts in Leibniz's thinking as he confronted the major philosophical problems of his era. Beginning with his interest in artificial languages and calculi for proof and discovery, the author proceeds to an examination of Leibniz’s early theories of matter and motion, to the phenomenalistic turn in his theory of substance and (...) his subsequent de-emphasis of logical determinism, and finally to his doctrines of harmony and optimization. Specific attention is given to Leibniz’s understanding of Descartes and his successors, Malebranche and Spinoza, and the English philosophers Newton, Cudworth, and Locke. Wilson analyzes Leibniz’s complex response to the new mechanical philosophy, his discontent with the foundations on which it rested, and his return to the past to locate the resources for reconstructing it. She argues that the continuum-problem is the key to an understanding not only of Leibniz’s monadology but also of his views on the substantiality of the self and the impossibility of external causal influence. A final chapter considers the problem of Leibniz-reception in the post-Kantian era, and the difficulty of coming to terms with a metaphysics that is not only philosophically "critical" but, at the same time, “compensatory.” Originally published in 2050. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This book argues that the development of German philosophy from Kant, through post-Kantian German Idealism, to the thought of Franz Rosenzweig, was largely driven by the perceived promise of Kant's philosophy for solving the conflict of reason, but also by its perceived shortcomings in solving this conflict.

Resumo: O texto aqui apresentado analisa aspectos relevantes da complexa relação que Bergson estabelece com Kant. Defende-se a hipótese de que Bergson não pode ser considerado mero adversário do filósofo alemão, mas seu projeto filosófico tem como objetivo retomar a metafísica, levando em consideração os limites que a crítica kantiana lhe impôs. Nesse sentido, a Crítica da Razão Pura, à qual Bergson dedicou sua atenção, serve de guia e apoio para a colocação das questões propriamente metafísicas, as quais a filosofia (...) da duração busca responder. Procuramos mostrar também que, se Bergson criticou Kant em vários momentos da sua obra, foi apenas na medida em que a Crítica o impedia e impedia os outros de avançar. A relação entre as interdições kantianas para a razão especulativa e as ilusões da inteligência dissolvidas em A Evolução Criadora revela como Kant condensa ilusões que existiam antes dele e que, nesse sentido, Bergson não é nem pré-crítico, nem pós-kantiano. Em suma, defendemos que Bergson desloca as análises críticas e rompe com Kant do interior de sua filosofia, que ele divide em duas tendências - uma que ele rejeita, como antiga, outra da qual ele se apropria.: This paper examines important aspects of Bergson's complex relationship with Kant. Our hypothesis defends that Bergson can not be considered a mere opponent of Kant, but that instead his philosophical project aims to renew metaphysics, taking into account the limits that the Kantian critique has imposed. In this sense, the Critique of Pure Reason, to which Bergson devoted his attention, serves as a guide and support for reworking metaphysical questions that the philosophy of duration seeks to answer. We have also shown that if Bergson criticized Kant at various points in his work, it was only to the extent that the Critique was an impediment to moving forward. The relation between Kantian interdictions to speculative reason and the illusions of intelligence dissolved by the analysis of Creative Evolution shows how Kant condenses illusions that existed before him. In in this sense, Bergson is neither pre-critical nor post-Kantian. To sum up, we argue that Bergson displaces critical analysis and breaks with Kant from the inside of Kant's philosophy, which Bergson divides into two tendencies, one that he rejects as old, another that he accepts. (shrink)

If we are to understand the complex relationship between Bergson and Kant, we must not approach the former’s philosophy as if it could only be either pre-critical or post-Kantian. Instead, the present essay seeks to shed light on this relationship by treating Kant as another “missing precursor of Bergson.” In Bergson’s eyes, Kant, like Descartes, contains two possible paths for philosophy, which reflect the two fundamental tendencies that are mixed together in the élan vital and continued in humankind: (...) intuition and intelligence. Bergson breaks with Kant from the interior of his philosophy, which he divides into two Kantianisms: the one, which he rejects as ancient, and the other, which he appropriates. What the analysis of this Bergsonian appropriation of Kant reveals, however, is not the existence of a latent Bergsonism in Kant, but rather the recovery of a Kantianism that is completed in Bergson—a Kantianism that embarked down a path that Kant himself, who held himself back from following it in order to dispense with all “intellectual” intuition, had only sketched. Thus, if Bergson is to be believed, an intuitive metaphysics, which installs itself in pure duration, is neither below nor beyond Kantian critique, but can pass through it, can traverse it in its entirety, since it proposes to surpass it, to prolong it following the path that Kant himself had cleared in order to fulfill its suppressed virtualities. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s liberal utopia offers an interesting model for those who wish to explore the emancipatory potential of a post-foundational account of politics, specifically liberalism. What Rorty proposes is a form of liberalism that is divorced from its Kantian metaphysical foundations. This paper will focus on the gulf that appears between Rorty’s liberal utopia in theory, the political form that it must ultimately manifest itself in, and the consequences this has for debates on pluralism, diversity, and identity, within (...) liberal political thought. -/- The strength of Rorty’s liberal utopia, in his analysis, lies in the fact that with the rejection of philosophy and metaphysics, we can simply get on with the job of reducing cruelty through experimental tinkering with the liberal political system. Instead of trying to develop intellectually sophisticated justifications for why we act, we should just act. Political action, for Rorty, does not require a philosophical or metaphysical justification. However, upon closer critical examination, we can see that whatever potential Rorty’s liberal utopia may have in theory, this is negated by the fact that at the level of political praxis, his re-description of liberalism leaves us with a conception of liberalism that is essentially unchanged. Whilst Rorty has re-situated liberalism from the philosophical to the political, his solution fails to address any internal problems. (shrink)

Jean Grondin completes the first history of metaphysics and respects both the analytical and the Continental schools while transcending the theoretical limitations of each. He reviews seminal texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in the metaphysical thought of Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and he revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and post-Kantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with (...) twentieth century innovations that upended the discipline, particularly Heidegger's revival of the question of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence by Sartre and the Existentialists, language by Gadamer and Derrida, and transcendence by Levinas. Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, yet by promoting a full understanding of its platform and processes, Grondin reveals its cogent approach to reality and foundational influence on modern philosophy and science. By restoring the value of metaphysics for contemporary audiences, Grondin showcases the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thought and its future possibilities. (shrink)

The generative and governing "idea" of radical modernity is spawned by the technique of mathematical construction deployed and interpreted by the major early-modern thinkers and their legatees. ;Chapter I is a survey of this legacy as it appears in Vico, Kant, Fichte, Marx and Nietzsche and in the post-Nietzschean inheritance of contemporary philosophy, hyperbolic in the case of Derrida et al., elliptical, in the case of Carnap and Goodman. ;In Chapter II I try to show how the pre-modern mathematical (...) tradition, represented by Euclid, aimed at keeping the enticements of technical facility in check by means of didactic phronesis and how the post-Kantian interpretation of "existence" in Euclid as constructibility betrays his usage and self-understanding. I suggest that his focus in the postulates and elsewhere is on the undistorted iterability of graphic evocations of the items already intelligible thanks to the definitions or to the pre-understanding shared by the teacher and student. ;In Chapter III, devoted to Descartes the principal claims of modern constructivism are brought to sight. After examining Descartes' fabulous autobiography and its emphasis on self-origination, I turn to the style, contents and under-pinnings of the Geometry in an effort to extract from that text what he once referred to as "the metaphysics of geometry." The latter yields the conditions of successful problem-solving, i.e., dimensional homogeneity and kinematic continuity. These conditions, in turn, find their justification in Descartes' theses in the Rules concerning order, measure and the uniformity of "mental" activity. In the final section I apply the lessons learned from the Geometry and the Rules to one critical issue in the later Meditations, the transition from essence to existence. Descartes' "solution" generates a sequence of perplexities with Hobbes, Leibniz, Kant and other radical moderns continue to wrestle. (shrink)

In this article, I draw upon the ‘post-Kantian’ reading of Hegel to examine the consequences Hegel’s idea of God has on his metaphysics. In particular, I apply Hegel’s ‘recognition-theoretic’ approach to his theology. Within the context of this analysis, I focus especially on the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. First, I argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion employs a distinctive notion of sacrifice (kenotic sacrifice). Here, sacrifice is conceived as a giving up something of oneself to ‘make (...) room’ for the other. Second, I argue that the idea of kenotic sacrifice plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s account of Christ. Third, I conclude by sketching some of the consequences of Hegel’s idea of a God who renounces his own divinity for an idealistically conceived metaphysics. My main thesis is that the notion of incarnation is conceived by Hegel as the expression of a spirit that advances only insofar as it is willing to withdraw and make room for the other. A kenotic reading of the Hegelian notion of the incarnation is also useful in terms of a clarification of the dispute between ‘left Hegelians’ and ‘right Hegelians’ concerning the status of the idea of God in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

The aims of this paper are twofold: to critique Graham Harman’s avowedly nonrelational object-oriented ontology from the shared relational vantage of ethics, social philosophy, and feminist new materialism; and to articulate the metaphysical basis for a materialist ontology that serves at once as a posthumanist metaethic, or, as I call it, proto-ethic. The nascent movements of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology suggest some fruitful strategies for challenging the anthropocentrism of the post-Kantian philosophical landscape. They do so, however, by (...) simultaneously foreclosing the possibility of thinking with these strategies to address moral and political problems, insofar as they characterize the real as fundamentally nonrelational. I argue that Harman’s adopted noumenalism is ultimately self-undermining, and offer as an alternative a materialist account of reality as intrinsically phenomenal, where phenomenality is unpacked as the excessive, ongoing source of proto-ethical norms to which every human ethical system implicitly appeals. (shrink)

The aims of this paper are twofold: (1) to critique Graham Harman’s avowedly nonrelational object-oriented ontology from the shared relational vantage of ethics, social philosophy, and feminist new materialism; and (2) to articulate the metaphysical basis for a materialist ontology that serves at once as a posthumanist metaethic, or, as I call it, proto-ethic. The nascent movements of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology suggest some fruitful strategies for challenging the anthropocentrism of the post-Kantian philosophical landscape. They do so, (...) however, by simultaneously foreclosing the possibility of thinking with these strategies to address moral and political problems, insofar as they characterize the real as fundamentally nonrelational. I argue that Harman’s adopted noumenalism is ultimately self-undermining, and offer as an alternative a materialist account of reality as intrinsically phenomenal, where phenomenality is unpacked as the excessive, ongoing source of proto-ethical norms to which every human ethical system implicitly appeals. (shrink)

The cognitive problem, which is a main modern theme, arises early in the Greektra- dition. Parmenides, who formulates one ofthe first identifiably "modern" approaches to epistemology, points toward identity as the only acceptable cognitive standard. The paper, which leaves epistemic skepticism for another occasion, reviews versions of metaphysicalrealism identified with Plato in ancient philosophy and Descartes in the modern tradition in suggesting that for different reasons both fail. The paper reviews German idealist versions of epistemic constructivism formulated by Kant, Fichte (...) and Hegel. The criticalphilosophy provides a widely known, complex a priori account of cognitive constructivism.This account is amplified, corrected, and reformulated in different ways by such post-Kantian German idealists as Fichte and Hegel. A key element concerns the restatement ofthe abstract Kantian view ofthe subject as finite human being by Fichte and Hegel.Early in the Greektradition,in equatingthinking and being, Parmenides pointstothree approaches to knowledge as epistemic skepticism, metaphysicalrealism or epistemic constructivism. If epistemic skepticism is unacceptable and, metaphysical realism is implausible,then epistemic constructivism appearsto bethe most promising approach to cognition. (shrink)

Rival Enlightenments, first published in 2001, is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophical doctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historical circumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacralization. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideiai, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This study reveals the extraordinary historical self-consciousness (...) of the civil philosophers, who repudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual formation of those administering desacralized territorial states. The book argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuation of the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike. (shrink)

"Twilight of the Idols" plays an important role in Nietzsche’s work, since it represents the opening writing of the philosophical project called "Transvaluation of all values". In that text, Nietzsche aims to sound out the "eternal idols", which means to disclose the inconsistency of the principles of traditional metaphysics. The way Nietzsche addresses the "old truths" in Twilight of the Idols leads back to his early writings, when his theory of knowledge is first outlined, inspired by Schopenhauer as much (...) as neo- and post-Kantian thinkers such as F. Lange and A. Spir. As I shall show, these observations can be compared with Ernst Mach's anti-metaphisical attitude to the ordinary world-conception, insofar as Mach as much as Nietzsche stressed the importance of a historical approach as instrument to enlighten the "prejudices" of traditional scientists or philosophers. (shrink)

While almost all of Kant's contemporaries agreed that the Critique of Pure Reason effected a philosophically epochal change, there was far less consensus about what precisely Kant's new critical philosophy had brought about. In large part, this uncertainty was a result of a methodological crisis that Kant's work had sparked: the Critique had shown that traditional dogmatic metaphysics was suspect at best, but what new methods needed to be adopted in the wake of Kant's 'Copernican Revolution'? The Critique stood (...) as the lighting rod at the center of a complicated and especially lively set of debates and disputes that erupted in Germany in the late 1780s and early 1790s: empiricists and rationalists, threatened by the 'all-destroying Kant', leapt to challenge the new critical system; skeptics attacked Kant's claims to have secured a sure footing for empirical knowledge; a few ambitious thinkers sought to complete the critical system by revealing a foundational first principle on which Kant's system could rest. All of these elements conspired to make the early stages in post-Kantian thought one of the richest, most vibrant – and most fascinating – periods in the history of philosophy. The present essay looks at the various figures of the move from Kant to Fichte, and presents some of the excellent new research on the era that has appeared in the last decade or so. The sequel takes up the period from Fichte to Hegel, with an eye toward understanding how Kantian critical philosophy gave way to Hegelian Absolute Idealism. (shrink)

La structure du comportement details consciousness-nature relations by navigating between realist and intellectualist alternatives. A phenomenological reading of form guides its attempt to formulate a view that does not reduce consciousness to matter or perceptual structure to a product of mind. I show that this strategy relies on hitherto overlooked idealist commitments. Forms are perceived objects whose intentional structure is intelligibly organized. Having denied that forms are constituted by mind or emergent from matter, Merleau-Ponty likens form-constitution to an ideal process (...) of intentional self-organization. Despite recognizing that Gestalt psychology develops fruitful models of perceptual self-organization, and adopting the transcendental view that form is significant for consciousness, his revisionary interpretation of form outstrips these accounts’ ontologies of mind and nature, and is better understood in light of a post-Kantian philosophical heritage. These results cast Merleau-Ponty’s relation to the Gestalt, post-Kantian, and phenomenological traditions in new light, challenge naturalizing interpretations of Structure, and motivate a rethinking of the status of metaphysics in his early thought. (shrink)

Against recent naturalist critiques of Kant and interpretations of Hegel, it can be shown that Hegel’s accounts of consciousness and mind (Geist) commit him to a distinctly supernatural, post-Kantian idealist concept of subjectivity. While Kant describes this subjectivity as independent, unconditioned and self-positing, he relies on the notion of an interplay of two distinct realms — labelled the ‘natural’-phenomenal and the ‘supernatural’-noumenal — to justify it. While Fichte accepts Kant’s description of the structure of supernatural subjectivity, he rejects (...) the two-realms-doctrine by arguing that Kant’s prioritization of the realms’ difference renders their unity unintelligible. Instead, Fichte maintains that all of reality is posited by a subjectivity that posits itself and then posits the objective world, thereby rendering the natural dependent on the supernatural. While Hegel agrees with Kant and Fichte on the supernatural properties of subjectivity, he rejects Fichte’s prioritization of supernatural subjectivity over natural objectivity and argues that both the supernatural and the natural are aspects of supernatural Geist. Although Hegel ultimately contrasts subjective Geist with objective nature, grounding both in the notion of the metaphysical idea, his idealist commitment to the supernatural subjectivity of consciousness and Geist renders his accounts of mind and cognition incompatible with recent naturalist interpretations. (shrink)

Franz Brentano was a leading philosopher and psychologist of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the impact of his scholarship was so great that he became synonymous with a school of thought and a new approach in scientific philosophy. The Brentano School stood against the Idealistic and post-Kantian German tradition and Brentano played a crucial role in the founding of Austrian philosophy. He had an enormous impact on the work of Husserl and Heidegger, as well as on Moore’s _Ethics_ and (...) Stout and Russell’s analysis of mind. In particular, situated between the phenomenology movement and the analytic tradition, the concept of intentionality was redefined by Brentano and has been—and remains—a key concept of twentieth- and twentieth-first century philosophy of mind. But Brentano not only reshaped philosophy of mind; he was also a remarkable and innovative thinker in several other fields of philosophy, and recent debate in metaethics, metaphysics, and the history of analytic philosophy shows a strong resurgence of interest in Brentano’s thought. Published to coincide with the centenary of Brentano’s death, this four-volume collection, a new title from Routledge Major Works, provides an essential intellectual tool for the exegetical evaluation of all aspects of Brentano’s work. Bringing together early reviews and reactions from his contemporaries—many of which have never before been translated into English—as well as the best critical assessments of Brentano’s work, this ‘mini library’ provides Brentano scholars, historians of philosophy and psychology, and phenomenologists, with a rigorous historical appraisal of Brentano’s thought and influence. Brentano’s relationships with Husserl, Heidegger, and the phenomenological tradition are examined in depth, alongside investigations of key themes from his work on Aristotle, medieval and modern philosophy, philosophy of mind, logic, ontology, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history. (shrink)

In Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew takes up the central question guiding Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy: How could something like phenomenal reality emerge out of the meaninglessness of the Real? Carefully reconstructing and expanding upon his controversial reactualization of German Idealism, Carew argues that Žižek offers us an original, but perhaps terrifying, response: experience is possible only if we presuppose a prior moment of breakdown as the ontogenetic basis of subjectivity. Drawing upon resources found in Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-Kantian (...) philosophy, Carew thus develops a new critical metaphysics—a metaphysics which is a variation upon the late German Idealist theme of balancing system and freedom, realism and idealism, in a single, self-reflexive theoretical construct—that challenges our understanding of nature, culture, and the ultimate structure of reality. (shrink)

Nisenbaum offers an account of philosophical evolution in the wake of Kant’s critical revolution. She intends “to show that the development of post-Kantian German Idealism is propelled by the different interpretations, appropriations, and radicalizations of the Kantian view that the representation of the unconditioned by finite beings is a topic of practical, not theoretical, philosophy”. While this claim is not new, the different constellations within which it is established are new and original, as is the guiding thread (...) of the book’s argument.There are three such constellations. The first inventively combines Jacobi with Maimon. The second conventionally features early Schelling and Fichte. The... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Religion: A Moral‐Metaphysical Interpretation of ‘Positivity’ Love: Outline of an Ethical Relation Law: Death and Absolute Sittlichkeit References Secondary Sources.

In the “Critique of Pure Reason” and subsequent “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics...”, “Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science”, “Opus Postumum” Kant develops one of the modes of his transcendentalism, the metaphysics of possible experience, whose task is to study the transcendental conditions for the possibility of our (cognition), which, according to Kant, has a priori character. P. Strawson calls this mode of metaphysics ‘ descriptive metaphysics ’ and connects it with the analyzing the ‘conceptual structure’ of (...) our thinking about the world. The contemporary realistic trend (primarily within the framework of the analytical philosophical tradition) in the interpretation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy is associated with the modern theory of “two aspects” (80s of the 20th century), which replaced the classical theory of “two objects/worlds” (compare also with the opposition “ theory of appearance vs. theory of appearances ”). Within the framework of this theory, the Kantian ‘appearance’ receives an objectified status, it is not our mental representation, but corresponds (as its signs) to really existing things, or Kantian ‘objects of experience’. The article traces the formation of the historical and conceptual background of the ‘ metaphysics of experience ’ (H. Paton's original expression). Historically, the metaphysics of experience inherits the neo-Kantian approach to interpreting Kant's transcendentalism as a ‘theory of experience’ (H. Cohen, E. Cassirer), then it develops in logical positivism/empiricism (H. Reichenbach, R. Carnap; further in post-posivivism: the theory of I. Lakatos and T. Kuhn), analytical philosophy of science (W. Sellars, G. Buchdal, H. Putnam), and at present the metaphysics of experience is developing in a number of contemporary works of an analytical orientation (P. Strawson, K. Ameriks, L. Allais and etc.). (shrink)

Schopenhauer's claim that the essence of the world consists inWilleencounters well-known difficulties. Of particular importance is the conflict of this metaphysical claim with his restrictive account of conceptuality. This paper attempts to make sense of Schopenhauer's position by restoring him to the context of post-Kantian debate, with special attention to the early notebooks andFourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the reconstruction suggested here, Schopenhauer's philosophical project should be understood in light of his rejection of (...) class='Hi'>post-Kantian metaphilosophy and his opposition to German Idealism. (shrink)

Kant makes a much-unexpected confession in a much-unexpected place. In the Criticism of the third paralogism of transcendental psychology of the first Critique Kant accepts the irrefutability of the Heraclitean notion of universal becoming or the transitory nature of all things, admitting the impossibility of positing a totally persistent and self-conscious subject. The major Heraclitean doctrine of panta rhei makes it impossible to conduct philosophical inquiry by assuming a self-conscious subject or “I,” which would potentially be in constant motion like (...) other thoughts. For it rules out the possibility of completely detached reasoning which necessitates an unchanging state of mind. In this paper, Kaplama uses panta rhei to critically examine the philosophical shortcomings and contradictions of Kantian and Enlightenment ethics. In his examination, he specifically focuses on the teleological nature of Kant’s principle of freedom and ideal of moral autonomy which have dominated the Enlightenment thought. By doing so, he argues that it is essentially inaccurate to posit Überlegenheit (the state of being superior to nature) as the foundation of philosophical inquiry mainly because this would contradict the Enlightenment’s claim to constitute a rupture from classic and medieval metaphysics and would render Enlightenment a mere extension of Christian metaphysics. As in Christianity, Überlegenheit presupposes two separate realms, the actual (contingent) and ideal (pure) realms of thought and assumes that the transcendence commences from the level of the late metaphysical/teleological construction of the ‘subject’ who is completely persistent, self-conscious and immune to change. He then substantiates these points with reference to the philosophical roots of ethnic prejudice displayed by the post-Enlightenment colonialists and the missionaries in Fiji and the Pacific. This brief critical examination of the post-Enlightenment ethnocentrism will be conducted under the following three points: a) On the Enlightenment’s teleological and universalistic understanding of humanity and the concept of progress versus the Fijian concepts of the continuity of life, regeneration, and reproduction b) On the Enlightenment’s ideal of the free-willing and independent individual subject versus the Fijian ideas of 'the cord', reciprocity, and vanua, and c) On the Enlightenment’s (and Christianity’s) strict dualism between physics and metaphysics, nature and human mind, body and soul versus the Fijian bio-centrism, the sanctity of vanua and the cosmological concept of mana. (shrink)

The category of “former friend” is familiar, yet the nature of this relationship type remains underexplored. Aristotle, for example, poses but does not answer the question of what constitute appropriate relations between former friends. To elucidate post-friendship expectations, I promote an account of friendship according to which some of our most significant friendships participate in a type of intimacy characterized by having normative standing to interpret each other in a constitutive manner, which I call the “co-interpretation view” of friendship. (...) Unchecked powers of co-interpretation, however, invite and allow for violations of each friend’s personhood, so I draw on Kantian resources to guide the co-interpretation view and render it more plausible. These Kantian resources help to establish relevant expectations for co-interpretation between friends. This positions me to provide an account of appropriate expectations between former friends, which I analyze in three types of post-friendship circumstance: when the friendship has faded but the parties still share a general outlook; when the friendship has become damaging for the friends but not due to viciousness; and, when the friendship ruptures due to vicious behaviors. (shrink)

In this essay, I call attention to Kant’s and Whewell’s attempt to provide bridging principles between a priori principles and scientific laws. Part of Kant’s aim in the Opus postumum (ca. 1796-1803) was precisely to bridge the gap between the metaphysical foundations of natural science (on the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) see section 1) and physics by establishing intermediary concepts or ‘Mittelbegriffe’ (henceforth this problem is referred to as ‘the bridging-problem’). I argue that the late-Kant attempted to show (...) that the concept of ‘moving force’, an intermediary concept derived from a priori principles, could be given empirical content so that concrete scientific knowledge is arrived at. Thus, the late-Kant wished not only to show that proper scientific laws are necessary a priori (as he had shown in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) but also that intermediary concepts could be derived from a priori principles which, when interpreted empirically, resulted in the specific forces as established by physics (see section 2). Of course, William Whewell never knew about Kant’s Opus postumum and his attempt to bridge the gap between the metaphysical foundations of science and physics. However, it is striking that Whewell had similar concerns about the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science as Kant himself. According to Whewell, the Kantian project was incomplete because it did not show how ‘modifications’ (in the sense of concretizations) of a priori principles could result in empirical laws (section 3). Next, it will be argued, by taking into account several of Whewell’s philosophical notebooks which have scarcely been studied systematically, that Whewell’s doctrine of Fundamental Ideas grew out of his dissatisfaction with the Kantian project with respect to the bridging problem and that his own philosophical position should be seen as an attempt to bypass the bridging-problem. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency advocates a “speculative materialism” or what has come to be called “speculative realism” over against “correlationism” (his term for [nearly] all post-Kantian philosophy). “Correlationism” is “the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other.” As part of his criticism of “correlationism,” Meillassoux argues that it necessarily leads to fideism, referencing (...) the return of the religious in contemporary phenomenology and the fundamentalist fanaticisms of contemporary religion to make his point. It is this criticism of “correlationism” that I will explore in this paper—in two ways. On the one hand, I argue that, at least in the work of thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger, what Meillassoux calls “correlationism” leads to faith in doubt rather than fideism. On the other hand, I argue that “correlationism” has resulted in fideism only to the extent that it follows Hegel and becomes speculative, which raises questions for Meillassoux’s own “speculative realism” and his faith in mathematics as the means to accessing reality in itself. (shrink)

This volume gathers a collection of fourteen original articles discussing the concept of drive in classical German philosophy. Its aim is to offer a comprehensive historical overview of the concept of drive at the turn of the 19th century and to discuss it both historically and systematically. From the 18th century onward, the concept of drive started to play an important role in emerging disciplines such as biology, anthropology, and psychology. In these fields, the concept of drive was used to (...) describe the inner forces of organic nature, or, more particularly, human urges and desires. But it was in the period of classical German philosophy that this concept developed into an important philosophical concept crucial to Kant’s and post-Kantian idealistic systems. Reflecting the complexity of this concept, the volume first discusses historical sources of drive theories in Leibniz, Reimarus, and Blumenbach. Afterwards, the volume presents the philosophical accounts of drives in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and also gives a systematic overview of other important drive theories that were formed around 1800 by Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Novalis, Reinhold, Schiller, and Schopenhauer. (shrink)

My exploration of the work of Pamela Sue Anderson focuses on what she calls “a philosophical imaginary” in her article “Towards a New Philosophical Imaginary,” in which she responds to Judith Butler’s theory of relational ontology and vulnerability. Anderson’s project is to recast the term vulnerable, which is often associated with feminine weakness, as a positive energy. Critiquing Western myths that portray women as less empowered than men, as in Mary Midgley’s reference to Minerva and Owl that denigrates women as (...) other, according to the Lacanian imaginary, Anderson strikes at the root of Western patriarchy. In contrast, she adduces Michèle Le Doeuff’s contemporary myth on Dawn, adapted from the Spanish philosopher Zambrano’s figure of Dawn, and offers us a new paradigm where Dawn’s heart expresses a new framework of love that is liberated from sex/gender discrimination. Although Anderson believed in Kantian philosophy, she did not hesitate to question the limitations of it. In this context, I also discuss the modern Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo’s theory of supramental consciousness, the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theory of intuition, and the ways in which Anderson’s theory of love is grounded in spiritual transformative practice, following Paul Fiddes. Other attractions of Anderson’s essay are the nuances of postcolonial discourse. I explore ways in which the theory of relational ontology proposed by Judith Butler intersects with the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen’s theory of capability/justice. (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest in Hegel's thought by Anglo‐American philosophers in the last 25 years. That expansion of interest was initiated with the publication of Charles Taylor's Hegel (1975). That work stills stands as one of7 the important branches of Hegel interpretation. However the dominance of the strongly metaphysical interpretation of Hegel, which dominated the understanding of Hegel until the 1980s, and of which Taylor's work represents the culmination, has now, at least among the major interpreters of (...) Hegel, given way to what has come to be known as the non‐metaphysical reading of Hegel. This article charts the emergence and development of the non‐metaphysical Hegel, which takes his thought to be a continuation of the Kantian project of critically examining the presuppositions of any normative claim. This article provides an overview of the latest developments in Hegel research, primarily focusing on the English‐language literature. Recent research has placed Hegel's concerns at the centre of contemporary debates in analytic philosophy, particularly concerning the status of norms, the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘myth of the given’. This research has in turn been influential on the two most important figures in English‐language Hegel scholarship (Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard). The article will position this new wave of Hegel scholarship and its influence in relation to the metaphysical interpretation of Hegel and will also provide a brief overview of Hegel's reception in French post‐structuralism, which has largely accepted and promoted a view of Hegel as a metaphysician. (shrink)

Peirce’s response to the anti-metaphysical positivism of his day draws on Kant’s response to Hume, but moves beyond it, being thus a valuable resource, especially in our own post-Logical Positivist era. Kant’s legacy to Peirce was a lasting conviction that metaphysics need not be the hopelessly "airy science" Hume had pooh-poohed, but could and should become a legitimate and valuable area of investigation. Peirce's legacy to philosophy today is a distinctively plausible post-Kantian reconstruction of how this (...) might be achieved. (shrink)

This book explores the main stages and key concepts in the development of Kant's critical philosophy, from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Karl Ameriks provides a detailed and concise account of the main ways in which the later critical works provide a plausible defense of the conception of humanity's fundamental end that Kant turned to after reading Rousseau in the 1760s. Separate essays are devoted to each of the three Critiques, as well as to earlier notes and lectures and (...) several of Kant's later writings on history and religion. A final section devotes three chapters to post-Kantian developments in German Romanticism, accounts of tragedy up through Nietzsche, and contemporary philosophy. The theme of an elliptical path is shown to be relevant to these writers as well as to many aspects of Kant's own life and work. The topics of the book include fundamental issues in epistemology and metaphysics, with a new defense of the Amerik's 'moderate' interpretation of transcendental idealism. (shrink)