: The object of G. F. Meier's Vernunftlehre and its abridgement for courses, the Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, does not consist exclusively in the elaboration of the formal aspects of logic, but rather in the individuation of the elements of thought and language, which make human understanding possible. Instead of limiting himself to formal truth, Meier investigates the realms of epistemic, aesthetic, and historic truths, of horizons, and prejudices. Kant used both Meier's Vernunftlehre and its Auszug for about forty years (...) in his logic-lectures. Kant's Logik, and also his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, were thus strongly influenced by Meier. (shrink)

This paper considers philosophical approaches that are relevant to the intertwinement of logic, metaphysics, and psychology proposed by the Aquinas commentator Tommaso de Vio Cardinal Cajetan, the humanist Petrus Ramus, the pure Aristotelian Cornelius Martini, the Semi-Ramist Bartholomaeus Keckermann, and the lexicographer Rudolf Goclenius. Mostly, however, it is about Ramus and his followers, the Ramists, because of the role they played in exacerbating a discussion on the constitution of objectivity during the Renaissance that was to have an impact on Cartesian (...) andpost-Cartesian theories of subjectivity. Finally, keeping in mind that Kant was familiar with the secunda Petri, i.e., with the second part of Ramus's logic, namely the theory of judgment, some common ground is recognizable between Ramus and Kant as well. (shrink)

G. F. Meier was born in Halle in 1718 and died there after an uneventful life in 1777. He may not be well known to the English speaking public, but he is important because he was among the most authoritative figures of the Aufklärung and in particular because his influence on Kant was considerable. In accordance with the understanding of logic that prevailed during the eighteenth century, Meier’s Vernunftlehre and its abridgment for courses, the Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, both published (...) in 1752, are at the same time and especially an introduction to the whole of philosophy. In fact, their goal is not just the elaboration of the formal aspects of logic, but rather the individuation of the elements of thought and language that make human cognition possible. What is peculiar in Meier’s approach is that instead of limiting himself to formal truth, he includes in his logic all kinds of epistemic truths. Meier deals not only with “dogmatic” and “historical” truths, but also with “merely aesthetic,” “merely philosophical,” and even “aesthetical-philosophical” truths. Moreover, Meier’s logic is not only inclusive of aesthetics, it is at the same time rhetoric. In fact, at the beginning of both books, Meier declares that under Vernunftlehre he understands a science that deals with the rules of philosophical cognition and philosophical speech. Kant adopted Meier’s two logic books for his lectures on logic for forty years. It is not at all surprising, then, that Kant’s own logical writings and even his Critique of Pure Reason were influenced by Meier. So too, one finds in Kant’s Reflections on Logic and Lectures on Logic elaborations of some of the fundamental issues addressed by Meier, such as the analysis of prejudices and the articulation of the conditions for the constitution of a horizon. In this context, Locke’s philosophy plays an especially important role. In fact, Meier served as mediator between Locke and Kant. Meier not only knew Locke well and appealed to his theories in his writings; he also helped to introduce Lockean issues such as the “extent of human knowledge” and the “degrees of assent” to the teaching of logic in the German universities; and, most important, he made such issues salient for the philosophy of Kant. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 1 Seiten: 185-188.

One can say, then, that Imperial philosophers look at themselves in the same way that we call “modern,” when they study the “ancients,” from which they depend and from which they come from. In fact, beginning with the first century A.D. the followers of long-standing philosophical traditions start feeling the novelty, and thus the modernity, of the issues that were raised by their own age. Of course, traditions of Hellenistic philosophy such as cynicism, stoicism, skepticism, and empirical medicine continue to (...) flourish during the Imperial Age, while keeping a strong tie with their philosophical heritage. Most remarkable is the great season of Neoplatonism, which notwithstanding its roots lying beyond Hellenistic philosophy, namely in. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 3 Seiten: 471-472.

Hanewald questions three main interpretations of Fichte’s relation to Kant, namely, that the Wissenschafstlehre illegally trespasses the limits by the critique of reason, that Fichte is the one who brought Kant’s transcendental philosophy to its completion by finding out and by remediating Kant’s systematic loophole, and finally that Fichte’s correction to Kant does not go far enough and has to wait for its completion through Hegel. There is something true in these mainstream interpretations, and something that needs to be corrected, (...) says Hanewald. In order to reconstruct in the most exact way where Fichte stands with regard to Kant, the first thing to do is to put into brackets what Fichte himself says about the primacy of practical philosophy, for instance in the detailed stances on Kant from the Erste und Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, which do not represent anymore the stand of the first Wissenschaftslehre and rather mirror that of the Wissenschafstlehre nova methodo, as one can see, for example, as regards the role played by the pure ego as the principle of philosophy. This means that one should rather proceed by directly comparing Kant’s and Fichte’s argument and look for agreements and disagreements, which is what Hanewald effectively does. For example, while for Kant the unity of manifold representation must precede the identical self-reference of identity, for Fichte the contrary is the case, namely, that identical self-reference is the presupposition of all synthesis. Besides, Fichte explores other forms of self-referential ego, from which he deduces among others the relation of subjects and accidents. In this case Kant cannot obviously be counted among Fichte’s sources, because for Kant the category of substance is tied up with what is permanent in the flux of the accidents, which is something that finds expression in the schema of the permanence of time. Among the merits of Hanewald’s book is that it shows that the role played by the intellectual intuition in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo marks a significant development from the first Wissenschaftslehre and at the same time a significant distance from Kant’s theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

The merit of this eminently historical book consists in the accurate rendering of possibly all critiques directed at the Science of Logic from its very appearance until Hegel's death in 1831. The subject-choice bears witness to the author's ability to skip the obvious remark--why another book on Hegel's Logic?--pointing out a set of arguments which are, at least in part, of noticeable theoretical interest. The historian of philosophy, while commenting a writing by a philosopher of the past, ought to occupy (...) himself with any of the following four perspectives: immanent interpretation; finding the sources; reconstruction of the immediate incidence; and reconstruction of the contemporary incidence. It is clear that by choosing the third, and without forgetting the first and the fourth perspective, Burkhardt did not undertake an easy task, but surely a task with great rewards. (shrink)

This volume is the revised version of a Ph.D. dissertation at the Technische Universität Braunschweig under the direction of Claus-Heinrich Scheier. Like the one by Scheier, but not quite as large, this volume purports to provide a section to section commentary of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. It follows another path, though. This path is already made clear by Falke in the title of his book, which is a famous quotation, “conceived history.” In fact, this interpretation relies on the following three (...) premises. First, “in all experiences of consciousness Hegel refers himself to determinate historical positions”. Second, “the criticism of the form of consciousness implies at the same time an exposition of the whole system”. Third, “the Phenomenology is a work in progress”. These premises may appear at first sight puzzling. Nevertheless, they show coherence. Falke does not maintain that the Phenomenology refers to a set of historical events or positions, he rather says that it should be read “as a systematic reconstruction of historical positions”. That a criticism by Hegel implies a positive account of his own system is something every reader of the Phenomenology knows too well. What one tends to ignore is, as suggested by Falke, that the arguments of the Phenomenology grew to their final shape while Hegel was at work. The evidence for this assumption is to be found in the oftentimes irritating ruptures in the historical or material development, which evidently point to systematic reinterpretations of already composed text parts. (shrink)

This book has appeared in the Italian Literature and Thought Series of Yale University Press, and not by chance the cover bears the green, white, and red of the Italian flag. The book is on political philosophy, although its subject matter is restricted to the role of culture. Finocchiaro investigates two Italian thinkers: the conservative Gaetano Mosca, author of The Ruling Class, and the communist Antonio Gramsci, founding father of the Italian Communist Party and author of the Prison Notebooks. While (...) Mosca is a classic source for the elitist school in political sociology, Gramsci is the originator of a cultural version of Marxism that proved to be immune to the intellectual criticism and economic failures that have rendered other versions obsolete. The point Finocchiaro makes is that Mosca and Gramsci belong to the same tradition of political theory, namely “democratic elitism” and that their differences are eventually far smaller than assumed. According to Finocchiaro, Gramsci is much less of a political revolutionary, and Mosca much closer to the political center and Gramsci and Mosca are closer to each other than commonly supposed. Besides, Finocchiaro’s interpretation also implies that “theoretically, intellectually, and conceptually they are much more radical than is ordinarily believed because democratic elitism represents an extremely distinctive orientation in political theory”. Hence Finocchiaro’s interpretation “also undermines the viability of the dichotomy between the Left and the Right,” which also explains the reference to what is “beyond right and left” in the title. (shrink)

This book collects nine papers on Kant’s philosophical theology written between 1975 and 1992 by Aloysius Winter, who teaches fundamental theology and philosophy of religion at Fulda’s Catholic Theological Faculty. Its object is clear and important. It aims at presenting a different reading of several Kantian texts in order to refute the common interpretation of Kant as an agnostic and highlight instead an overall theological orientation of his philosophy. As remarked by Norbert Hinske in his foreword to this volume, Winter (...) has been looking for “another Kant,” which eventually turns out to be the more authentic one. Indeed, Kant had been considered by most Catholic thinkers to be despicable, momentous, and dangerous. A wholesale evaluation took place that began with the two volumes of Benedikt Sattler’s Antikant, which appeared in 1788, and was sealed by the insertion of the Critique of Pure Reason in the Index librorum prohibitorum in 1827. The reason for this rejection, argues Winter, probably lies in certain formulations of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that superficial readers may have regarded as offensive. However, this is not enough, says Winter, to dismiss a philosopher at once. In fact, Kant offers a number of positive suggestions and reflections that can, especially today, be of great help also to Catholic theology. The first essay deals with Kant and the confessions. One should not forget the cautious Renaissance of Kant’s transcendental philosophy initiated in the first half of the twentieth century by Joseph Maréchal, Emmerich Coreth, Bernard Lonergan, Johannes B. Lotz, André Marc, and Karl Rahner. It is true that Kant understood himself first and foremost as a scholar of “rational religion,” by this implying the legitimacy of his taking distance from all confessions, and it is also true that Kant’s positions on free will and God’s grace can be considered pelagian. Yet, this is Winter’s point, the fact of the matter is not so simple. We should rather remember that Kant, when dealing with free will, speaks only for the aspect of quoad nos, and that he does not deny that effects of grace could precede our efforts. The second essay proposes a reconstruction of the theological sources Kant was acquainted with from his student years to his mature age. The third essay deals with Kant’s elaborations on prayer and mass. The forth delves into the soul seen as a problem of transcendental philosophy. The fifth investigates the proof of God’s existence from the standpoint of practical reason. The sixth essay reads the Critique of Judgment from the perspective of Kant’s philosophy of religion. The seventh, entitled “Transcendental Theology of Cognition,” is dedicated to theological receptions of Kant’s Critiques, first and foremost to Rahner’s understanding of transcendental theology as a systematic doctrine that makes use of the tools of transcendental philosophy and thematizes the a priori conditions the believer refers to by the cognition of important truth of faith. Finally, the eighth and ninth essays propose a list of the sources of Kant’s philosophy of religion from the history of theology and from religious literature. (shrink)

This book investigates the relation between mathematics and philosophy in Kant with special focus on the doctrine of the magnitudes. Without doubt, Moretto, who is himself both a mathematician and a philosopher, achieves final results on this matter, because not only does he provide an immanent interpretation of all parts of Kant’s systematic construction of magnitudes, he also provides a detailed history of Kant’s development. Kant gave courses on mathematics during the first eight years of his teaching at Königsberg and (...) warmly recommended the study of mathematics to his most gifted disciples. He himself expressed a profound admiration for it. He wrote in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God that infinitesimal analysis, or, as he calls it, “higher geometry... in its account of the affinities between various species of curved lines,” reveals many of “the harmonious relations which inhere in the properties of space in general.... All these relations, in addition to exercising the understanding by means of our intellectual comprehension of them, also arouse the emotions, and they do in a manner similar to or even more sublime than that the contingent beauties of nature stir our feelings”. In On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, Kant wrote that pure mathematics “provides us with a cognition which is in the highest degree true, and, at the same time, it provides us with a paradigm of the highest kind of evidence in other cases”. Besides, the mathematician-philosophers of the Leibniz-Wolff school, J. A. Eberhard, J. C. Schwab, J. G. E. Maaß at Halle, and A. G. Kästner at Göttingen, were among the very first to move critiques against the Critique of Pure Reason by focusing on the problem of the foundation of mathematics. They defended Leibniz against Kant, which prompted Kant to start a mathematical school of his own at Königsberg, and J. Schultz, J. G. K. C. Kiesewetter, and C. G. Zimmermann were Kant’s most notable defenders. Finally, one should not forget that it was in order to introduce a completely new set of ideas concerning the philosophy of mathematics that Kant laid out not only the distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments, but also the whole of the transcendental aesthetics. In fact, Kant proposed giving foundation to rational absolute numbers by means of synthetical a priori judgments; he also considered all arithmetical judgments as synthetical a priori; and by dedicating two antinomies to infinite series he suggested analogies to the representation of infinite series of irrational numbers. (shrink)

Bondeli starts his book with the following remark: “Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s philosophical viewpoint, with which he went public in 1800 in Jena, at the beginning of his academic teaching, is everything but presupposition-less. It is the result of a step by step appropriation, critique, and overcoming of Kant’s philosophy dating back ten years”. The goal of Bondeli’s book is to provide a new and comprehensive discussion of Hegel as a critical reader of Kant from 1790 to 1800. As is (...) well known, Hegel scholars are divided on this issue, particularly because we have no definite proof that Hegel ever read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason before writing extensively about it in Faith and Knowledge, which appeared in 1802. Moreover, Bondeli reminds us that today it is still fairly common to characterize the foundation and methodology of new philosophical standpoints by referring to either Kant or Hegel. Also, many issues concerning the foundation of knowledge or of ethics can be identified as confrontations between Kantian or Hegelian positions. Bondeli shows, however, that there is a considerable deficit in Hegel’s arguments against Kant as we know them from Faith and Reason, the Encyclopedia, and the Lectures on History of Philosophy. In these texts Hegel deals with Kant from the rather hermetic standpoint of the system of absolute identity, while giving no proper charge to Kant but that of having remained within the realm of reflection. Bondeli tries to challenge this argumentative deficit of Hegel’s appropriation and critique of Kant by reconstructing its motives as well as the actual or the possible series of arguments. (shrink)

Bondeli starts his book with the following remark: “Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s philosophical viewpoint, with which he went public in 1800 in Jena, at the beginning of his academic teaching, is everything but presupposition-less. It is the result of a step by step appropriation, critique, and overcoming of Kant’s philosophy dating back ten years”. The goal of Bondeli’s book is to provide a new and comprehensive discussion of Hegel as a critical reader of Kant from 1790 to 1800. As is (...) well known, Hegel scholars are divided on this issue, particularly because we have no definite proof that Hegel ever read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason before writing extensively about it in Faith and Knowledge, which appeared in 1802. Moreover, Bondeli reminds us that today it is still fairly common to characterize the foundation and methodology of new philosophical standpoints by referring to either Kant or Hegel. Also, many issues concerning the foundation of knowledge or of ethics can be identified as confrontations between Kantian or Hegelian positions. Bondeli shows, however, that there is a considerable deficit in Hegel’s arguments against Kant as we know them from Faith and Reason, the Encyclopedia, and the Lectures on History of Philosophy. In these texts Hegel deals with Kant from the rather hermetic standpoint of the system of absolute identity, while giving no proper charge to Kant but that of having remained within the realm of reflection. Bondeli tries to challenge this argumentative deficit of Hegel’s appropriation and critique of Kant by reconstructing its motives as well as the actual or the possible series of arguments. (shrink)

This book is a printed dissertation directed by Norbert Hinske and defended at Trier in 1996. It deals with the relationship between formal and transcendental logic from the standpoint of the history of Kant’s development, of Kant’s sources, and, more generally, of the history of concepts. In 1932, Klaus Reich summarized the status quaestionis thus, “Observing the destiny of Kant’s sketch on pure general or formal logic, which lies at the foundation of both the edifice and the realization of the (...) Critique of Pure Reason, one cannot help to marvel at the discrepancy of the opinions of the interpreters and of Kant himself”. Vázquez Lobeiras mentions three main Kant interpretations in the twentieth century: one based on the theory of knowledge, the second based on metaphysics, and the third based on the history of logic. She declares to follow the logical-historical interpretation. The first chapter is dedicated to a detailed reconstruction of the status quaestionis, beginning with Kant’s contemporaries, going through the famous controversy between Norman Kemp-Smith and Herbert Paton, the former maintaining the primacy of transcendental against formal logic, the latter the opposite, and ending with Gerold Prauss and Giorgio Tonelli. The second chapter explores the fate of the distinction between transcendental and formal logic in the history of Kant’s development. Vázquez Lobeiras concentrates her attention on a famous section of the Critique of Pure Reason, the “Introduction: Idea of a Transcendental Logic”. Her intention is to interpret it by relating it with pertinent passages from Kant’s Lectures on Logic, Lectures on Metaphysics, the program on the False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, and the dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis. “Form” is the concept she focuses on, on the basis of an impressive list of parallels she has found that connect the distinction between formal and transcendental logic with the distinction between usus logicus and usus realis of the dissertatio. She points to a telling argument Kant makes in Reflection 1599, that namely the subject of formal logic is “the usage of the understanding in general,” while that of metaphysics are “the objects of pure reason.” But what would these “objects of pure reason” be? Vázquez Lobeiras refers them to the rationis purae objecta of the dissertatio, which are free from sensible determinations while remaining subject to the laws on the intellectual world. In this reflection she sees the stage that immediately precedes the “Introduction: Idea of a Transcendental Logic” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The third chapter concludes by investigating the progressive establishment of new boundaries set by Kant to metaphysics. (shrink)

The present book was inspired by Hermann Schweppenhäuser, one of the last direct pupils of T. W. Adorno and the coeditor of the critical edition of Walter Benjamin’s works. Its goal is to show that the critique of metaphysics and its restitution are tied up in a “logical unity,” which Hegel’s Science of Logic has taken to its most extreme consequences. Coming from one scholar that places herself in the lager of Frankfurter critical theory, this statement may surprise. It is (...) nonetheless consequential to a trend that Jürgen Habermas has made out since 1985 in the form of answers to questions such as how to compensate for the loss of sense in modernity or how to provide for the need of an interpretation of the self and of the world in the context of a cultural process of the development of science in which individuals are enabled to rely on situational truth and therefore have stopped looking for a permanent foundation. Obviously, the metaphysical content of the Science of Logic transpires from the systematicity of Hegel’s determinations of thought. Not only do the latter fulfill the metaphysical claim that truth is immanent, they also represent, in the view of Harnischmacher, the “increasing socialization of cognition”, which they actually push forward, insofar as they mediate subjective and objective moments of thought by exhibiting the totality of the modes of their relations. To give an idea of the structure of the book, be it indicated that chapter 1 deals with the systematicity of the subject and the subjective structure of Hegel’s system, chapter 2 with the integration of thought to a system, that is, with the idea of a self-generating system, and chapter 3 with the coming together of freedom and necessity. (shrink)

This is a collection of articles written by Kenny on the Aristotelian tradition mostly during the 1990s. Three of them bear on moral philosophy, four on the philosophy of mind, and the last three on twentieth-century developments. Given the recent renewed breadth of research in the history of Aristotelianism and its impact, Kenny’s introductory essay on “The Aristotelian Tradition”, is obviously of the highest interest. Kenny’s point is simple. It is wrong to follow A. N. Whitehead’s hint that the European (...) tradition in philosophy consists “of a series of footnotes to Plato.” It is true that Aristotle indeed owed an enormous debt to Plato, and he showed the latter’s influence in almost everything he wrote. But it is also true, says Kenny, that in philosophy Aristotle’s “scope was broader and his judgment sounder than that of his master,” so that “it would be absurd to see him only as the first and greatest of history’s footnotes”. The stress on the opposition between Plato and Aristotle began during the Renaissance. The truth, is, however, that modern historians have proved to be less perceptive than the very many commentators in late antiquity who saw their duty to construct a harmonious concord between the two greatest philosophers of the ancient world. For instance, Byzantine scholars used to express their views in favor of Plato in the form of commentaries on Aristotle. This was because, says Kenny, “Aristotle took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching was often more a modification than a refutation of Platonic doctrines”. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to two philosophicohistorical categories, whose origin dates back to Bacon’s famous simile of the ants, the spiders, and the bees, and which are widely diffused as a consequence of Hegel’s reconstruction of the history of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel began his exposition of philosophy in the modern age with Bacon’s empiricism and Descartes’s rationalism and he has been followed in this by virtually all historians (...) of philosophy to the present day. Engfer, however, mentions Hegel only when he comes to discuss the position of Bacon. (shrink)