William F. Bristow
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199290642
- eISBN:
- 9780191710421
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290642.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This book presents a study of Hegel's hugely influential but notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel describes the method of this work as a ‘way of despair’, meaning that the reader who ...
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This book presents a study of Hegel's hugely influential but notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel describes the method of this work as a ‘way of despair’, meaning that the reader who undertakes its inquiry must be open to the experience of self-loss through it. Whereas the existential dimension of Hegel's work has often been either ignored or regarded as romantic ornamentation, this book argues that it belongs centrally to Hegel's attempt to fulfil a demanding epistemological ambition. With his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant expressed a new epistemological demand with respect to rational knowledge and presented a new method for meeting this demand. This book reconstructs Hegel's objection to Kant's Critical Philosophy, according to which Kant's way of meeting the epistemological demand of philosophical critique presupposes subjectivism, that is, presupposes the restriction of our knowledge to things as they are merely for us. Whereas Hegel in his early Jena writings rejects Kant's critical project altogether on this basis, he comes to see that the epistemological demand expressed in Kant's project must be met. This book argues that Hegel's method in the Phenomenology of Spirit takes shape as his attempt to meet the epistemological demand of Kantian critique without presupposing subjectivism. The key to Hegel's transformation of Kant's critical procedure, by virtue of which subjectivism is to be avoided, is precisely the existential or self-transformational dimension of Hegel's criticism, the openness of the criticizing subject to being transformed through the epistemological procedure.Less
This book presents a study of Hegel's hugely influential but notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel describes the method of this work as a ‘way of despair’, meaning that the reader who undertakes its inquiry must be open to the experience of self-loss through it. Whereas the existential dimension of Hegel's work has often been either ignored or regarded as romantic ornamentation, this book argues that it belongs centrally to Hegel's attempt to fulfil a demanding epistemological ambition. With his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant expressed a new epistemological demand with respect to rational knowledge and presented a new method for meeting this demand. This book reconstructs Hegel's objection to Kant's Critical Philosophy, according to which Kant's way of meeting the epistemological demand of philosophical critique presupposes subjectivism, that is, presupposes the restriction of our knowledge to things as they are merely for us. Whereas Hegel in his early Jena writings rejects Kant's critical project altogether on this basis, he comes to see that the epistemological demand expressed in Kant's project must be met. This book argues that Hegel's method in the Phenomenology of Spirit takes shape as his attempt to meet the epistemological demand of Kantian critique without presupposing subjectivism. The key to Hegel's transformation of Kant's critical procedure, by virtue of which subjectivism is to be avoided, is precisely the existential or self-transformational dimension of Hegel's criticism, the openness of the criticizing subject to being transformed through the epistemological procedure.
Graham Priest
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199263301
- eISBN:
- 9780191718823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263301.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
This chapter focuses on the aim of this book, namely, to argue for the existence of dialetheias, and to discuss their logic, epistemology, and some issues in their metaphysics. It provides an ...
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This chapter focuses on the aim of this book, namely, to argue for the existence of dialetheias, and to discuss their logic, epistemology, and some issues in their metaphysics. It provides an introduction to dialetheism, via a brief discussion of Kant and Hegel.Less
This chapter focuses on the aim of this book, namely, to argue for the existence of dialetheias, and to discuss their logic, epistemology, and some issues in their metaphysics. It provides an introduction to dialetheism, via a brief discussion of Kant and Hegel.
R. Kevin Hill
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199285525
- eISBN:
- 9780191700354
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285525.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This book gives a new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and examines in detail his debt to Kant, in particular the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of ...
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This book gives a new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and examines in detail his debt to Kant, in particular the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgement. Nietzsche, it argues, knew Kant far better than is commonly thought, and can only be thoroughly understood in relation to Kant. Nietzsche's Critiques maintains that beneath the surface of his texts there is a systematic commitment to a form of early Neo-Kantianism in metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, grounded in his reading of the three Critiques, Kuno Fischer's commentary on the first Critique, and Friedrich Lange's discussion of Kant in The History of Materialism. The book also documents the decisive influence Nietzsche's close reading of the Critique of Judgement had on the writing of the Birth of Tragedy, and offers a remarkably accessible interpretation of Kant's system, while clarifying such difficult issues as the interpretation of Kant's ‘Transcendental Deduction’ and his notion of reflective judgement.Less
This book gives a new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and examines in detail his debt to Kant, in particular the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgement. Nietzsche, it argues, knew Kant far better than is commonly thought, and can only be thoroughly understood in relation to Kant. Nietzsche's Critiques maintains that beneath the surface of his texts there is a systematic commitment to a form of early Neo-Kantianism in metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, grounded in his reading of the three Critiques, Kuno Fischer's commentary on the first Critique, and Friedrich Lange's discussion of Kant in The History of Materialism. The book also documents the decisive influence Nietzsche's close reading of the Critique of Judgement had on the writing of the Birth of Tragedy, and offers a remarkably accessible interpretation of Kant's system, while clarifying such difficult issues as the interpretation of Kant's ‘Transcendental Deduction’ and his notion of reflective judgement.
Paul Abela
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199242740
- eISBN:
- 9780191697173
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199242740.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Immanuel Kant claims that transcendental idealism yields a form of realism at the empirical level. Polite silence might best describe the reception this assertion has garnered among even sympathetic ...
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Immanuel Kant claims that transcendental idealism yields a form of realism at the empirical level. Polite silence might best describe the reception this assertion has garnered among even sympathetic interpreters. This book challenges that prejudice, offering a controversial presentation and rehabilitation of Kant's empirical realism that places his realist credentials at the centre of the account of representation he offers in the Critique of Pure Reason. This interpretation ranges over the major themes contained in the Analytic of Principles and relevant portions of the Dialectic. Kant's analysis of the conditions necessary for determinate representation is shown to involve a realist understanding of the relation of mind and world. The realist character of Kant's account of empirical truth, and his commitment to the unity of nature, are defended against competing empiricist, pragmatist, and methodological readings. This title links Kant studies to contemporary philosophical debates, and will appeal to scholars and students of Kant, as well as epistemologists, metaphysicians, and philosophers of science interested in a powerful, experience-sensitive, form of realism.Less
Immanuel Kant claims that transcendental idealism yields a form of realism at the empirical level. Polite silence might best describe the reception this assertion has garnered among even sympathetic interpreters. This book challenges that prejudice, offering a controversial presentation and rehabilitation of Kant's empirical realism that places his realist credentials at the centre of the account of representation he offers in the Critique of Pure Reason. This interpretation ranges over the major themes contained in the Analytic of Principles and relevant portions of the Dialectic. Kant's analysis of the conditions necessary for determinate representation is shown to involve a realist understanding of the relation of mind and world. The realist character of Kant's account of empirical truth, and his commitment to the unity of nature, are defended against competing empiricist, pragmatist, and methodological readings. This title links Kant studies to contemporary philosophical debates, and will appeal to scholars and students of Kant, as well as epistemologists, metaphysicians, and philosophers of science interested in a powerful, experience-sensitive, form of realism.
P. F. Strawson
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198250159
- eISBN:
- 9780191598470
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198250150.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Gathered in this volume are selected essays by P. F. Strawson from the 1970s to the 1990s in two areas of philosophy to which he has most notably contributed. The first 12 pieces concern the ...
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Gathered in this volume are selected essays by P. F. Strawson from the 1970s to the 1990s in two areas of philosophy to which he has most notably contributed. The first 12 pieces concern the philosophy of language, a broad heading under which many controversial philosophical issues can be fruitfully approached. Questions such as the following are discussed: Do general properties exist as well as the particular things that have them? What is involved in reference to particular things? What exactly is formal logic as we now understand it? What do we mean when we say that something may happen or might have happened? What do we mean when we speak of the meaning of what we say? The volume is completed by four studies of Kantian metaphysics: these develop and strengthen Strawson's influential view of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and bring out the implications of this view for current metaphysical debates.Less
Gathered in this volume are selected essays by P. F. Strawson from the 1970s to the 1990s in two areas of philosophy to which he has most notably contributed. The first 12 pieces concern the philosophy of language, a broad heading under which many controversial philosophical issues can be fruitfully approached. Questions such as the following are discussed: Do general properties exist as well as the particular things that have them? What is involved in reference to particular things? What exactly is formal logic as we now understand it? What do we mean when we say that something may happen or might have happened? What do we mean when we speak of the meaning of what we say? The volume is completed by four studies of Kantian metaphysics: these develop and strengthen Strawson's influential view of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and bring out the implications of this view for current metaphysical debates.
Robert Hanna
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199285549
- eISBN:
- 9780191713965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285549.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter explores the same basic Kantian presuppositional links with respect to causation. It begins by unpacking the basics of Kant's metaphysics of causation, with special reference to the ...
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This chapter explores the same basic Kantian presuppositional links with respect to causation. It begins by unpacking the basics of Kant's metaphysics of causation, with special reference to the three Analogies of Experience and the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason. It then analyzes the problem of free will and works out a new version of Kant's theory of freedom, called the Embodied Agency Theory. Some of the intimate Kantian links between freedom and nature are explored, and a biological interpretation of the Embodied Agency Theory is developed. It is argued that for Kant, the irreversibility of time — ‘Time's Arrow’ — entails a necessary connection between naturally mechanized causation and the possibility of human practical causation.Less
This chapter explores the same basic Kantian presuppositional links with respect to causation. It begins by unpacking the basics of Kant's metaphysics of causation, with special reference to the three Analogies of Experience and the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason. It then analyzes the problem of free will and works out a new version of Kant's theory of freedom, called the Embodied Agency Theory. Some of the intimate Kantian links between freedom and nature are explored, and a biological interpretation of the Embodied Agency Theory is developed. It is argued that for Kant, the irreversibility of time — ‘Time's Arrow’ — entails a necessary connection between naturally mechanized causation and the possibility of human practical causation.
Martin Hollis
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198296102
- eISBN:
- 9780191599583
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019829610X.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Martin Hollis (in one of his last writings before his untimely death) opens up the first section, Is Universalism Ethnocentric?, with a fiery defence of Enlightenment universalism and an attack on ...
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Martin Hollis (in one of his last writings before his untimely death) opens up the first section, Is Universalism Ethnocentric?, with a fiery defence of Enlightenment universalism and an attack on the relativist who says ‘Liberalism for the liberals; cannibalism for the cannibals.’ Focusing especially on universal claims about human nature, civil society, and the best forms of government, Hollis argues for a substantive and not merely procedural liberalism as a ‘fighting creed with universalist pretensions’ that can justify ‘robust and sharp‐edged moral declarations’. As Hollis argues, universalism works for minorities too. This is because excluded minorities must show that they have been wrongly excluded; they need a standpoint that is ‘not cognitively arbitrary’ to exclude racists and sexists.Less
Martin Hollis (in one of his last writings before his untimely death) opens up the first section, Is Universalism Ethnocentric?, with a fiery defence of Enlightenment universalism and an attack on the relativist who says ‘Liberalism for the liberals; cannibalism for the cannibals.’ Focusing especially on universal claims about human nature, civil society, and the best forms of government, Hollis argues for a substantive and not merely procedural liberalism as a ‘fighting creed with universalist pretensions’ that can justify ‘robust and sharp‐edged moral declarations’. As Hollis argues, universalism works for minorities too. This is because excluded minorities must show that they have been wrongly excluded; they need a standpoint that is ‘not cognitively arbitrary’ to exclude racists and sexists.
Jacqueline Mariña
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199206377
- eISBN:
- 9780191709753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206377.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter examines several fundamental philosophical problems regarding the conditions of the possibility of moral transformation preoccupying the younger Schleiermacher, especially as he ...
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This chapter examines several fundamental philosophical problems regarding the conditions of the possibility of moral transformation preoccupying the younger Schleiermacher, especially as he struggled to come to terms with Kant's practical philosophy. Included in this set of issues is the problem of transcendental freedom and how it relates to an agent's character, as well as the problem of the relation of the faculty of representation (knowing) to the faculty of desire (doing). Both questions have to do with how we are to conceive of the unity and continuity of the self throughout its changing states. Schleiermacher's compatibalist view of freedom is examined, as well as his analysis of Kant's fundamental division of the sources of human knowledge into spontaneity and receptivity. The principle focus of the chapter is Schleiermacher's early essay On Freedom.Less
This chapter examines several fundamental philosophical problems regarding the conditions of the possibility of moral transformation preoccupying the younger Schleiermacher, especially as he struggled to come to terms with Kant's practical philosophy. Included in this set of issues is the problem of transcendental freedom and how it relates to an agent's character, as well as the problem of the relation of the faculty of representation (knowing) to the faculty of desire (doing). Both questions have to do with how we are to conceive of the unity and continuity of the self throughout its changing states. Schleiermacher's compatibalist view of freedom is examined, as well as his analysis of Kant's fundamental division of the sources of human knowledge into spontaneity and receptivity. The principle focus of the chapter is Schleiermacher's early essay On Freedom.
Jacqueline Mariña
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199206377
- eISBN:
- 9780191709753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206377.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter continues the analysis of Spinozism. It focuses on Schleiermacher's long discussion of personal identity, which is extremely significant for Schleiermacher's later understanding of ...
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This chapter continues the analysis of Spinozism. It focuses on Schleiermacher's long discussion of personal identity, which is extremely significant for Schleiermacher's later understanding of reflective self-consciousness. In it Schleiermacher reveals himself to be intimately acquainted with both Kant's transcendental deduction as well as Kant's chapter on the Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason. Schleiermacher argues, in agreement with Kant, that we have no access to a substantial noumenal self. Rather, identity of the subject is cognizable only in and through the synthesis of the manifold of intuition. The only reflective access we have to self is through the products of its transcendental activity; the transcendental activity itself, however, cannot become an object for consciousness but is only given in immediacy. The philosophical position Schleiermacher develops here is key to gaining an understanding of the position he develops in the Monologen.Less
This chapter continues the analysis of Spinozism. It focuses on Schleiermacher's long discussion of personal identity, which is extremely significant for Schleiermacher's later understanding of reflective self-consciousness. In it Schleiermacher reveals himself to be intimately acquainted with both Kant's transcendental deduction as well as Kant's chapter on the Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason. Schleiermacher argues, in agreement with Kant, that we have no access to a substantial noumenal self. Rather, identity of the subject is cognizable only in and through the synthesis of the manifold of intuition. The only reflective access we have to self is through the products of its transcendental activity; the transcendental activity itself, however, cannot become an object for consciousness but is only given in immediacy. The philosophical position Schleiermacher develops here is key to gaining an understanding of the position he develops in the Monologen.
Fiona Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748621224
- eISBN:
- 9780748652327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748621224.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Drawing on resources from both the analytical and continental traditions, this book argues that a comprehension of Immanuel Kant's aesthetics is necessary for grasping the scope and force of his ...
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Drawing on resources from both the analytical and continental traditions, this book argues that a comprehension of Immanuel Kant's aesthetics is necessary for grasping the scope and force of his epistemology. It draws on phenomenological and aesthetic resources to bring out the continuing relevance of Kant's project. One of the difficulties faced in reading ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ is finding a way of reading the text as one continuous discussion. This book offers a reading at each stage of Kant's epistemological argument, showing how various elements of Kant's argument, often thought of as extraneous or indefensible, can be integrated. Arguing for the centrality of aesthetics in philosophy, and within experience in general, it challenges a blind spot in the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy and will contribute to a growing interest in the general significance of aesthetic culture.Less
Drawing on resources from both the analytical and continental traditions, this book argues that a comprehension of Immanuel Kant's aesthetics is necessary for grasping the scope and force of his epistemology. It draws on phenomenological and aesthetic resources to bring out the continuing relevance of Kant's project. One of the difficulties faced in reading ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ is finding a way of reading the text as one continuous discussion. This book offers a reading at each stage of Kant's epistemological argument, showing how various elements of Kant's argument, often thought of as extraneous or indefensible, can be integrated. Arguing for the centrality of aesthetics in philosophy, and within experience in general, it challenges a blind spot in the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy and will contribute to a growing interest in the general significance of aesthetic culture.
Kees Hengeveld and J. Lachlan Mackenzie
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278107
- eISBN:
- 9780191707797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278107.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
This chapter, the longest in the book, presents the Representational Level of FDG, which is a layered structure indicating the part-whole relations among semantic categories. After a discussion of ...
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This chapter, the longest in the book, presents the Representational Level of FDG, which is a layered structure indicating the part-whole relations among semantic categories. After a discussion of the hierarchically related categories, the chapter progresses to those that enter into equipollent relations, and finally to reflexive language.Less
This chapter, the longest in the book, presents the Representational Level of FDG, which is a layered structure indicating the part-whole relations among semantic categories. After a discussion of the hierarchically related categories, the chapter progresses to those that enter into equipollent relations, and finally to reflexive language.
J. Rixey Ruffin
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195326512
- eISBN:
- 9780199870417
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326512.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
By the middle of the 1790s Bentley was arrayed against classical liberalism in both its Christian and its economic forms. Those forms had in fact come together in a newly powerful symbiosis, both in ...
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By the middle of the 1790s Bentley was arrayed against classical liberalism in both its Christian and its economic forms. Those forms had in fact come together in a newly powerful symbiosis, both in the tangible sense of the Federalist Party and in the ideological sense of encouraging a mutually beneficial confluence of self‐defined morality, wealth, and divine pleasure. If Birmingham in 1791 and then the embargo in 1794 had begun the schism between Bentley and his liberal peers, Thomas Paine's Age of Reason finalized it. Bentley was not a deist, but Christian naturalism was ontologically no different than deism. So he was lumped in with Paine as a threat to Christianity by supernaturalists who themselves had decided to put aside their soteriological differences and unite against the philosophical threat. The second half of the decade brought more radicalism yet, most notably the writings of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, just when Federalist fears and their resultant sedition laws aimed more suspicion yet at men like William Bentley. By 1800, a defensive Bentley's transformation from classical liberal to republican was complete.Less
By the middle of the 1790s Bentley was arrayed against classical liberalism in both its Christian and its economic forms. Those forms had in fact come together in a newly powerful symbiosis, both in the tangible sense of the Federalist Party and in the ideological sense of encouraging a mutually beneficial confluence of self‐defined morality, wealth, and divine pleasure. If Birmingham in 1791 and then the embargo in 1794 had begun the schism between Bentley and his liberal peers, Thomas Paine's Age of Reason finalized it. Bentley was not a deist, but Christian naturalism was ontologically no different than deism. So he was lumped in with Paine as a threat to Christianity by supernaturalists who themselves had decided to put aside their soteriological differences and unite against the philosophical threat. The second half of the decade brought more radicalism yet, most notably the writings of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, just when Federalist fears and their resultant sedition laws aimed more suspicion yet at men like William Bentley. By 1800, a defensive Bentley's transformation from classical liberal to republican was complete.
Karl Ameriks
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199205349
- eISBN:
- 9780191709272
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205349.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; this book examines how. The book compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers ...
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Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; this book examines how. The book compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers before and after him (Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Jacobi, Reinhold, the early German Romantics, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx). A systematic introduction argues that complexities in the interpretation of Kant's system led to a new emphasis on history, subjectivity, and aesthetics. This emphasis defined a distinctive interpretive style of philosophizing that has become especially influential and fruitful once again in our own time. The individual chapters provide case studies in support of the thesis that late 18th-century reactions to Kant initiated an ‘historical turn’, after which historical and systematic considerations became joined in a way that fundamentally distinguishes philosophy from science and art, without falling back into mere historicism. In this way it is shown that philosophy's ‘historical turn’ is both similar to and unlike the turn to history undertaken by most other disciplines in this era. Part One argues that close attention to the historical context of Kant's philosophy is crucial to avoiding frequent misunderstandings that have arisen in comparing Kant with other major modern philosophers. Part Two contends that it was mainly the writing of Kant's first major interpreter that led to special philosophical emphasis on history in other major post-Kantian thinkers. Part Three argues that Hegel's system and its influence on post-Hegelians were determined largely by variations on Reinhold's historical turn. Part Four engages with major contemporary philosophers who have combined a study of particular themes in Kant and German Idealism with an appreciation for phenomena closely associated with the general notion of an historical turn in philosophy.Less
Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; this book examines how. The book compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers before and after him (Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Jacobi, Reinhold, the early German Romantics, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx). A systematic introduction argues that complexities in the interpretation of Kant's system led to a new emphasis on history, subjectivity, and aesthetics. This emphasis defined a distinctive interpretive style of philosophizing that has become especially influential and fruitful once again in our own time. The individual chapters provide case studies in support of the thesis that late 18th-century reactions to Kant initiated an ‘historical turn’, after which historical and systematic considerations became joined in a way that fundamentally distinguishes philosophy from science and art, without falling back into mere historicism. In this way it is shown that philosophy's ‘historical turn’ is both similar to and unlike the turn to history undertaken by most other disciplines in this era. Part One argues that close attention to the historical context of Kant's philosophy is crucial to avoiding frequent misunderstandings that have arisen in comparing Kant with other major modern philosophers. Part Two contends that it was mainly the writing of Kant's first major interpreter that led to special philosophical emphasis on history in other major post-Kantian thinkers. Part Three argues that Hegel's system and its influence on post-Hegelians were determined largely by variations on Reinhold's historical turn. Part Four engages with major contemporary philosophers who have combined a study of particular themes in Kant and German Idealism with an appreciation for phenomena closely associated with the general notion of an historical turn in philosophy.
Karl Ameriks
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199205349
- eISBN:
- 9780191709272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205349.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter offers a general introductory argument for maintaining an authentically historical perspective on the main issues arising from the key texts of modern philosophy, and for approaching ...
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This chapter offers a general introductory argument for maintaining an authentically historical perspective on the main issues arising from the key texts of modern philosophy, and for approaching even the briefest subsections of these texts with sensitivity to their full historical context. Without denying the need for developing some kind of corrective to the overly historical approaches that still dominate continental philosophy, it is argued that it is important to counter stereotypical views of Anglophone philosophy and to try to explain why, after decades of neglect, historical considerations have also become central components in the writing of many leading late-20th-century analytic philosophers.Less
This chapter offers a general introductory argument for maintaining an authentically historical perspective on the main issues arising from the key texts of modern philosophy, and for approaching even the briefest subsections of these texts with sensitivity to their full historical context. Without denying the need for developing some kind of corrective to the overly historical approaches that still dominate continental philosophy, it is argued that it is important to counter stereotypical views of Anglophone philosophy and to try to explain why, after decades of neglect, historical considerations have also become central components in the writing of many leading late-20th-century analytic philosophers.
Karl Ameriks
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199205349
- eISBN:
- 9780191709272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205349.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter combines an analysis of the structure of Kant's critique of earlier metaphysics with a historical account of how this critique could have had as its fate the remarkable rise of a new ...
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This chapter combines an analysis of the structure of Kant's critique of earlier metaphysics with a historical account of how this critique could have had as its fate the remarkable rise of a new kind of metaphysics in the era of German Idealism. It begins with the general observation that the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason does not attempt, let alone accomplish, the kind of complete destruction of metaphysics that many of its readers have supposed. Many traditional transcendent metaphysical ideas are allowed to be not only coherent but also assertable, once the demands of regulative and practical reason are allowed to supplement the thoughts of constitutive theoretical reason. Moreover, the Critique's stress on notions such as idealism, things in themselves, and the ‘unconditioned’ created (as William Hamilton noted) a ‘spectre’ that ‘haunted’ and stimulated German Idealism's new metaphysics of the ‘absolute’. Although Kant offers a radical critique of all earlier systems of a spiritualist or materialist kind, he also believes that something metaphysical should be affirmed beyond the spatiotemporal features of our experience. It is argued that for both Kant and German Idealism, this metaphysics is at least not any kind of subjectivism, and it need not present a special threat to most of our common realist beliefs.Less
This chapter combines an analysis of the structure of Kant's critique of earlier metaphysics with a historical account of how this critique could have had as its fate the remarkable rise of a new kind of metaphysics in the era of German Idealism. It begins with the general observation that the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason does not attempt, let alone accomplish, the kind of complete destruction of metaphysics that many of its readers have supposed. Many traditional transcendent metaphysical ideas are allowed to be not only coherent but also assertable, once the demands of regulative and practical reason are allowed to supplement the thoughts of constitutive theoretical reason. Moreover, the Critique's stress on notions such as idealism, things in themselves, and the ‘unconditioned’ created (as William Hamilton noted) a ‘spectre’ that ‘haunted’ and stimulated German Idealism's new metaphysics of the ‘absolute’. Although Kant offers a radical critique of all earlier systems of a spiritualist or materialist kind, he also believes that something metaphysical should be affirmed beyond the spatiotemporal features of our experience. It is argued that for both Kant and German Idealism, this metaphysics is at least not any kind of subjectivism, and it need not present a special threat to most of our common realist beliefs.
Karl Ameriks
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199205349
- eISBN:
- 9780191709272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205349.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter explains how Reinhold's Letters took the form of a ‘short’ Critique, which immediately after its publication was much more influential than the complex details of Kant's lengthy ...
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This chapter explains how Reinhold's Letters took the form of a ‘short’ Critique, which immediately after its publication was much more influential than the complex details of Kant's lengthy original. In the Letters, Reinhold simplified matters hugely by not venturing at all into the complexities of the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. He jumped ahead to the moral and historical implications of the end of the Dialectic, arguing that Kant's espousal of a Critical and moral form of rational religion was the ideal solution to the battles between supernaturalism and naturalism that were raging in Germany after Jacobi had ignited the Pantheism Dispute. Admitting that he was not yet tracing Kant's notion of pure practical reason and rational religion back to its ‘grounds’ in the first Critique, Reinhold satisfied himself and his audience with the claim that the ‘results’ of the Critique met the fundamental ‘need’ of the time (fully to satisfy popular Enlightenment morality through a hope in a ‘highest good’ warranted by rational religion) — just as Jesus had satisfied the ‘common sense’ of his time by turning dogmatic religion into rational morality.Less
This chapter explains how Reinhold's Letters took the form of a ‘short’ Critique, which immediately after its publication was much more influential than the complex details of Kant's lengthy original. In the Letters, Reinhold simplified matters hugely by not venturing at all into the complexities of the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. He jumped ahead to the moral and historical implications of the end of the Dialectic, arguing that Kant's espousal of a Critical and moral form of rational religion was the ideal solution to the battles between supernaturalism and naturalism that were raging in Germany after Jacobi had ignited the Pantheism Dispute. Admitting that he was not yet tracing Kant's notion of pure practical reason and rational religion back to its ‘grounds’ in the first Critique, Reinhold satisfied himself and his audience with the claim that the ‘results’ of the Critique met the fundamental ‘need’ of the time (fully to satisfy popular Enlightenment morality through a hope in a ‘highest good’ warranted by rational religion) — just as Jesus had satisfied the ‘common sense’ of his time by turning dogmatic religion into rational morality.
Peter Dula
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195395037
- eISBN:
- 9780199894451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395037.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Some readers of Wittgenstein think that he provides a conclusive refutation of skepticism. Others, like the pragmatists, think he renders skepticism's questions irrelevant. Cavell takes up these ...
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Some readers of Wittgenstein think that he provides a conclusive refutation of skepticism. Others, like the pragmatists, think he renders skepticism's questions irrelevant. Cavell takes up these issues in detail in his longest and greatest work, The Claim of Reason. There, he rejects both options and, instead, insists that philosophy must remain open to external world and other mind skepticism as a “standing threat to thought and communication.” This chapter provides a brief summary of some key themes of that complex text. It also asks, “What is it Cavell discovers about skepticism that necessitates the turn to companionship, and what is it about those discoveries that invites theological engagement?”Less
Some readers of Wittgenstein think that he provides a conclusive refutation of skepticism. Others, like the pragmatists, think he renders skepticism's questions irrelevant. Cavell takes up these issues in detail in his longest and greatest work, The Claim of Reason. There, he rejects both options and, instead, insists that philosophy must remain open to external world and other mind skepticism as a “standing threat to thought and communication.” This chapter provides a brief summary of some key themes of that complex text. It also asks, “What is it Cavell discovers about skepticism that necessitates the turn to companionship, and what is it about those discoveries that invites theological engagement?”
Steven Lukes and Quentin Skinner
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197262788
- eISBN:
- 9780191754210
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262788.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
Martin Hollis, a philosopher with an unshakeable belief in the power of reason, was Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1990. He ...
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Martin Hollis, a philosopher with an unshakeable belief in the power of reason, was Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1990. He contributed logical puzzles to the New Scientist, and his most important books included Models of Man and The Cunning of Reason. Obituary by Steven Lukes FBA and Quentin Skinner FBA.Less
Martin Hollis, a philosopher with an unshakeable belief in the power of reason, was Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1990. He contributed logical puzzles to the New Scientist, and his most important books included Models of Man and The Cunning of Reason. Obituary by Steven Lukes FBA and Quentin Skinner FBA.
Paul Crowther
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579976
- eISBN:
- 9780191722615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579976.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, History of Philosophy
This chapter addresses and revises a foundational feature of Kant's epistemology, namely the Transcendental Deduction. It shows how Kant's argument attempts to prove that the objective unification of ...
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This chapter addresses and revises a foundational feature of Kant's epistemology, namely the Transcendental Deduction. It shows how Kant's argument attempts to prove that the objective unification of a sensible manifold (achieved through the categories) and the objective unity of self-consciousness (or, as Kant sometimes terms it, the ‘pure’ or ‘original unity’ of ‘apperception’) are reciprocally dependent. One cannot have the one without the other. Kant's arguments on these lines (in the revised ‘B’-version of the Critique of Pure Reason) are analyzed critically. His basic position is then reconstructed in a more viable form. This involves three stages that make use of ideas from Gareth Evans and Shaun Gallagher. Special attention is paid to the role of the categories and productive imagination in the ontogenesis of experience.Less
This chapter addresses and revises a foundational feature of Kant's epistemology, namely the Transcendental Deduction. It shows how Kant's argument attempts to prove that the objective unification of a sensible manifold (achieved through the categories) and the objective unity of self-consciousness (or, as Kant sometimes terms it, the ‘pure’ or ‘original unity’ of ‘apperception’) are reciprocally dependent. One cannot have the one without the other. Kant's arguments on these lines (in the revised ‘B’-version of the Critique of Pure Reason) are analyzed critically. His basic position is then reconstructed in a more viable form. This involves three stages that make use of ideas from Gareth Evans and Shaun Gallagher. Special attention is paid to the role of the categories and productive imagination in the ontogenesis of experience.
Vincent Sherry
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195178180
- eISBN:
- 9780199788002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
What basis did the Great War of 1914-1918 provide for the verbal inventiveness of “modernist” poetry and fiction? This book reopens this long unanswered question with a work of original historical ...
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What basis did the Great War of 1914-1918 provide for the verbal inventiveness of “modernist” poetry and fiction? This book reopens this long unanswered question with a work of original historical scholarship. It directs attention to the public culture of the English war. It reads the discourses through which the Liberal party constructed its Cause, its Great Campaign. A breakdown in the established language of liberal modernity—the idiom of Public Reason—marks the sizeable crisis this event represents in the mainstream traditions of post-Reformation Europe. Identifying it as such, the book outlines the occasion for momentous innovations in the work of Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. If modernist writing attempts characteristically to “talk back” to the standard values of Enlightenment rationalism, this book has recovered the cultural setting of its most substantial—and daring—opportunity. The literature that witnesses this exceptional moment in historical time regains its proper importance as the book retrieves the means of reading it accurately. In this book, the records of political journalism and popular intellectual culture combine with abundant visual illustration to provide the framework for groundbreaking engagements with the major texts of Woolf, Eliot, and Pound. The book relocates the verbal imagination of modernism in the context of the English war and, by restoring the historical content and depth of this literature, reveals its most daunting import.Less
What basis did the Great War of 1914-1918 provide for the verbal inventiveness of “modernist” poetry and fiction? This book reopens this long unanswered question with a work of original historical scholarship. It directs attention to the public culture of the English war. It reads the discourses through which the Liberal party constructed its Cause, its Great Campaign. A breakdown in the established language of liberal modernity—the idiom of Public Reason—marks the sizeable crisis this event represents in the mainstream traditions of post-Reformation Europe. Identifying it as such, the book outlines the occasion for momentous innovations in the work of Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. If modernist writing attempts characteristically to “talk back” to the standard values of Enlightenment rationalism, this book has recovered the cultural setting of its most substantial—and daring—opportunity. The literature that witnesses this exceptional moment in historical time regains its proper importance as the book retrieves the means of reading it accurately. In this book, the records of political journalism and popular intellectual culture combine with abundant visual illustration to provide the framework for groundbreaking engagements with the major texts of Woolf, Eliot, and Pound. The book relocates the verbal imagination of modernism in the context of the English war and, by restoring the historical content and depth of this literature, reveals its most daunting import.
