Angelica Nuzzo offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Kant's theory of sensibility in his three Critiques. By introducing the notion of "transcendental embodiment," Nuzzo proposes a new understanding of Kant's views on science, nature, morality, and art. She shows that the issue of human embodiment is coherently addressed and key to comprehending vexing issues in Kant's work as a whole. In this penetrating book, Nuzzo enters new terrain and takes on questions Kant struggled with: How does a body that feels pleasure (...) and pain, desire, anger, and fear understand and experience reason and strive toward knowledge? What grounds the body's experience of art and beauty? What kind of feeling is the feeling of being alive? As she comes to grips with answers, Nuzzo goes beyond Kant to revise our view of embodiment and the essential conditions that make human experience possible. (shrink)
Kant and the Unity of Reason is a comprehensive reconstruction and a detailed analysis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. In the light of the third Critique, the book offers a final interpretation of the critical project as a whole. It proposes a new reading of Kant's notion of human experience in which domains, as different as knowledge, morality, and the experience of beauty and life, are finally viewed in a unified perspective. The book proposes a reading of Kant's critical project (...) as one of the most sophisticated attempts in the history of philosophy to articulate a complex notion of human "sensibility" as an alternative to both eighteenth-century empiricism and rationalism. The fundamental contribution of rationality to human experience cannot be fully appreciated if the sensuous component of experience is not adequately taken into account. For Kant, "sensibility" includes functions as different as sensation, intuition, perception, emotion, passion, drive, moral feeling, and feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Kant's idea of "reflective" judgment is the peculiar discovery of the third Critique. Reflective judgment articulates the interplay between sensibility and rationality, the world of nature and the human mind, in order to constitute human experience and the sphere of human intersubjective relationships. In the act of reflection, Kant's philosophy finally comes to reflect upon itself and the meaning of its critical endeavor. (shrink)
Angelica Nuzzo - Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 577-597 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica Angelica Nuzzo While philosophers since antiquity have offered reflections and theories on subjects such as the beautiful, the sublime, art, and its appreciation, "aesthetics" as a discipline in its own right dates back only to the second half of the eighteenth-century. We owe to (...) Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten the introduction of 'aesthetics' into philosophical discourse. At the moment of its inception, however, this discipline had little to do with art and was not primarily concerned with the beautiful. It was instead a theory of the cognitive value of human sensibility—a doctrine of "sensible cognition." A general historical and systematic question presents itself at this point: How shall human sensibility be conceived in order for aesthetics as a theory of sensibility to gain an independence of its own in philosophical discourse? And accordingly: How shall the human being be conceived in order for our aesthetic experience to claim a philosophical value of its own? In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions. My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle.. (shrink)
The book ends with a Hegelian interpretation of the idea of memory mobilized in Toni Morrison's and Primo Levi's literary works—examples of spirit's 'absolute memory.'.
This essay reconstructs the argument of Kritik der Urteilskraft §§76 –77 by placing it in the context of the “Critique of Teleological Judgment”. What role does the problematic and historically so successful figure of the intuitive understanding play in the antinomy of teleological judgment? The answer is considered indispensable to address the issue of the reception of §§76 – 77. The claim is that these sections institute the “closure” of transcendental philosophy—a closure fundamentally misunderstood by the post Kantians. On the (...) series of distinctions drawn to characterize the “peculiarity” of our human understanding and, by contrast, that of a non-human mind hinges the specific transcendental character of Kant’s philosophy. Once the condition that sustains those distinctions is abandoned transcendental philosophy is abandoned as well. (shrink)
Angelica Nuzzo - Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 577-597 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica Angelica Nuzzo While philosophers since antiquity have offered reflections and theories on subjects such as the beautiful, the sublime, art, and its appreciation, "aesthetics" as a discipline in its own right dates back only to the second half of the eighteenth-century. We owe to (...) Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten the introduction of 'aesthetics' into philosophical discourse. At the moment of its inception, however, this discipline had little to do with art and was not primarily concerned with the beautiful. It was instead a theory of the cognitive value of human sensibility—a doctrine of "sensible cognition." A general historical and systematic question presents itself at this point: How shall human sensibility be conceived in order for aesthetics as a theory of sensibility to gain an independence of its own in philosophical discourse? And accordingly: How shall the human being be conceived in order for our aesthetic experience to claim a philosophical value of its own? In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions. My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle... (shrink)
This essay is a renewal of Hölderlin’s poetic question as raised again philosophically by Heidegger, and is an attempt to frame the issue anew bringing Hegel into the conversation. At stake, first, is the way in which poetry and philosophy respectively—or perhaps in conjunction—are able to address the chief question of the time as a question of “truth.” What is it that poetry and the poet properly and uniquely do in relation to their time? Does the poet think, and how (...) does she think poetically in language? And, crucially, how does poetic thinking differ from philosophical thinking? But at stake is also, second, the way in which philosophy can—and should—itself speak of poetry. Significantly, both Heidegger and Hegel propose a thoroughly new way of addressing the question of poetry in philosophy. (shrink)
: This essay analyzes the U.S. political situation before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ties this conflict to the events of 9/11. The guiding thread of the discussion is the definition of “terrorism” that has led to George W. Bush's declared “war on terrorism.” By means of Hegel's dialectic logic, the essay exposes the problem offered by the category of causality involved in the definition of terrorism: Is terrorism the original “cause” of the war declared on it by the (...) United States or is terrorism rather the very “consequence” of that war? (shrink)
This article discusses the role that history and historiography play in Brandom’s Tales of the Mighty Dead . I claim that Brandom’s attempt to integrate a historical dimension in his inferentialist project fails, and argue that the reason for that failure lies in the misconstruction and misreading of Hegel’s idea of rationality with regard, at least, to two fundamental points: to the Hegelian concept of ‘history’ and to his notion of the ‘social’. The further point that I make remains an (...) open question and regards the ideological motives that lead American analytic pragmatists to repeatedly try to institute such a misconstrued contact with Hegel - a contact that is necessarily bound to fail unless the historical dimension of Hegel’s philosophy is not only recognized but somehow integrated into the very idea of philosophy that one systematically practises. Key Words: Robert Brandom • G.W.F.Hegel • history • history of philosophy • historiography. (shrink)
Taking as point of departure Hegelrsquo;s early reflections on his historical present, this essay examines the relationship between dialectical reason and the activity of the understanding in generating contradiction. Dialecticmdash;as logic and methodmdash;is Hegelrsquo;s attempt at a philosophical comprehension of the conflicts and the deep changes of his contemporary world. This idea of dialectic as logic of historical transformation guides the development of consciousness in the emPhenomenology of Spirit/em. Since my claim is that the dialectic of consciousness and its capacity (...) of overcoming contradiction are rooted in the historical situation of 1807, the question is raised of what would be the specific problems encountered by consciousness in our contemporary worldmdash;in 2007. What are the challenges posed by our globalized world to a phenomenology of contemporary spirit; and what is the role that contradiction and dialectic play in the understanding of our own historical present? (shrink)
Taking as point of departure Hegelrsquo;s early reflections on his historical present, this essay examines the relationship between dialectical reason and the activity of the understanding in generating contradiction. Dialecticmdash;as logic and methodmdash;is Hegelrsquo;s attempt at a philosophical comprehension of the conflicts and the deep changes of his contemporary world. This idea of dialectic as logic of historical transformation guides the development of consciousness in the emPhenomenology of Spirit/em. Since my claim is that the dialectic of consciousness and its capacity (...) of overcoming contradiction are rooted in the historical situation of 1807, the question is raised of what would be the specific problems encountered by consciousness in our contemporary worldmdash;in 2007. What are the challenges posed by our globalized world to a phenomenology of contemporary spirit; and what is the role that contradiction and dialectic play in the understanding of our own historical present? (shrink)
“The relation of a trillion to unity is very clearly understood, yet so far philosophers have not been able to make the concept of freedom comprehensible in terms of their unities, i.e., in terms of their simple and familiar concepts.” That this estimation of Kant’s, formulated as early as 1764, still holds true for the state of post-Kantian philosophy becomes evident when one attempts to reconstruct the discussion of the concept of freedom, which was initiated even among Kant’s contemporaries by (...) his formulation of its problematic. The problem connected with this discussion can be understood historically as well as systematically. On the one hand, it is concerned with following the historical inheritance of the Kantian philosophy along the guiding thread of the concept of freedom in the debate between the followers and opponents of Kant. On the other hand, this historical investigation should serve to trace the systematic changes that the concept of freedom necessarily undergoes as soon as it enters a philosophical framework that is different from the Kantian. This dual perspective, under which the theme of “freedom” will be considered, offers the further possibility of marking off the temporal as well as the systematic limits of what is to be investigated here. The main philosophical interest in pursuing the modifications to which Kant’s concept of freedom was subjected in post-Kantian philosophy obviously lies in casting new light on the epochal course of thought that leads “from Kant to Hegel.” A claim to satisfy this interest is justified, however, only after one is clear about the philosophical discussion that had already begun among Kant’s contemporaries even while Kant himself was completing and working out his philosophical program. In short, the transition from the concept of freedom in Kant’s transcendental philosophy to the conception of freedom that is unique to the speculative idealism of Hegel can be explained only in light of a preceding analysis of the transformations that the Kantian theory of freedom underwent even as it was being worked out. These transformations, then, will appear at the same time as alternatives to the Kantian program. (shrink)
