This chapter contains sections titled: Nineteenth‐Century Idealism From Idealism to Nineteenth‐Century Constructivism: The Case of the Historical School From the Turn of the Century to World War II: Disintegration and Reconstruction The Period from 1933 to 1945: “Völkische” Jurisprudence The Period from 1945 to the Present: From Natural Law to Postmodernism References.

Many contemporaries criticized him for smashing the Age of Reason. Goethe, however, remarked that reading a page of Immanuel Kant was like entering a bright and well-lighted room: The great eighteenth-century philosopher illuminated everything he ever pondered. The twelve essays in this volume reveal Kant's towering importance as an ethical and social thinker as well as his enduring influence on the shape of philosophy. Included are excerpts from Dreams of a Visionary, Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, Metaphysical Foundations (...) of Morals, Critique of Judgement , and Eternal Peace . As Professor Friedrich writes in his introduction to this volume: "The problem of freedom, the freedom of the human personality to unfold and fulfill its higher destiny, is the central issue of all of Kant's philosophizing.". (shrink)

According to Immanuel Kant’s well-known account of his own intellectual development, it was the skeptic David Hume who roused him from his dogmatic slumber. According to some popular accounts of post-Kantian philosophy, it was the soporific speculation of the idealists that quickly returned German philosophy to the Procrustean bed of unverifiable metaphysics, where it dogmatically slept for half of the nineteenth century. This popular picture of post-Kantian German philosophy receives some apparent support from the relevant evidence. After all, Kant (...) had allegedly demonstrated the illegitimacy of all metaphysical speculation that transcends the bounds of experience, and the writings of the German idealists - filled as they are with references to what is putatively “absolute” and “unconditioned” - seem to violate Kant’s strictures. In place of this popular conception, I seek to sketch out a rather difference picture of German idealism. The development of post-Kantian German idealism is best described, not as a turning away from skepticism, but rather as a radicalization of it. The radicalization of skepticism from Kant through Fichte to Hegel, however, does not lead away from systematic philosophy. The movement of thought from Kant to Hegel coincides with the gradual realization that skeptical thought is not external to systematic philosophy, but is in fact internal to, or even identical with it. This thesis concerning the progressive “radicalization” or “internalization” of skepticism in German idealism receives some prima facie support form the relevant writings of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth CenturyRobert HannaTom Rockmore. In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Pp. 213. Paper, $24.95.In In Kant's Wake, Tom Rockmore sets himself the almost impossibly ambitious task of telling a coherent story about the sprawling set of thinkers, doctrines, arguments, journal articles, books, social institutions, teachings, and other intellectual practices that make up philosophy in the twentieth (...) century. His highly plausible unifying hypothesis is that twentieth-century philosophy is a series of creative and reactive footnotes to Kant's Critical Philosophy as encapsulated in the Critique of Pure Reason, and in particular, to Kant's transcendental idealism. Of course the same unifying hypothesis is equally plausible of the nineteenth century. In this sense, the history of philosophy since Kant is just the history of post-Kantian philosophy.Rather than telling a single long story, Rockmore tells five shorter stories. He begins his narrative with a chapter on Kant's metaphysics and immediate responses to the Critique of Pure Reason (ch. 2). Then he focuses, in turn, on the diachronic developments of Marxism (ch. 3), pragmatism, (ch. 4), phenomenology (ch. 5), and analytic philosophy (ch. 6). The five stories are framed by a methodological chapter on the problem of interpreting twentieth-century philosophy (ch. 1), and a concluding chapter on the relation between Kant and the overall shape of philosophy in the twentieth century (ch. 7).Three more or less explicitly-stated interpretive principles run through each of Rockmore's historical narratives. The first, as I have already mentioned, is the grand unifying hypothesis of the essentially protean character of Kant's first Critique and the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. The second is that each distinct philosophical movement is [End Page 676] fundamentally organized around the teachings and writings of a few "master" or "strong" thinkers (14). And the third is that the history of philosophy is nothing but a multi-voiced Socratic conversation (13). Everyone knows how even the most intensely animated intellectual conversation can end with an inconclusive whimper instead of a conclusive bang. According to Rockmore, that is basically what happened to the great philosophical conversation of the twentieth century.In the chapter on Kant, Rockmore usefully distinguishes between two strands of transcendental idealism that Kant regarded as fully complementary, but which tended to run and pull in sharply opposite directions in post-Kantian philosophy: (1) the representationalist strand, and (2) the constructivist strand (36). Now Kant's transcendental idealism says four things. First, cognition is the mental representation of objects. Second, the objects we cognize are nothing but appearances or phenomena and never things-in-themselves or noumena. Third, the generic structure of the objects and the world we cognize is identical to the non-empirical or a priori generic structure of the innate cognitive capacities or faculties of our minds. And fourth, the human mind is spontaneously active in producing the specific structures of the very objects we cognize when our faculties are triggered by particular sensory inputs. The first and second theses of transcendental idealism constitute its representationalist strand, and the third and fourth theses constitute its constructivist strand.The decomposition of the orginal Kantian vector into its representationalist and constructivist components helps Rockmore in his interpretation of the four main sub-movements of twentieth-century philosophy. Marxism or dialectical materialism, organized of course around the teachings and writings of Karl Marx, is an economic, social, and political version of post-Kantian constructivism focused on the concrete struggles of alienated individuals and groups to achieve liberation and self-realization in collective action. So too pragmatism, organized around the teachings and writings of C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, is another version of post-Kantian constructivism, this time focused on the idea that the meaning and truth of concepts and propositions is strictly determined by the practical pay-offs of applying those concepts and propositions.By contrast, phenomenology and analytic philosophy are both versions of representationalism. Phenomenology is organized around the teaching and writings of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and focuses on the structures of consciousness and object-directedness... (shrink)

This paper traces the ancestry of a familiar historiographical narrative, according to which early modern philosophy was marked by the development of empiricism, rationalism, and their synthesis by Immanuel Kant. It is often claimed that this narrative became standard in the nineteenth century, due to the influence of Thomas Reid, Kant and his disciples, or German Hegelians and British Idealists. The paper argues that the narrative became standard only at the turn of the twentieth century. This was not due (...) to the influence of Reid, German Hegelians, or British Idealists as they did not endorse the narrative, although Thomas Hill Green may have facilitated its uptake. The narrative is based on Kant’s historiographical sketches, as corrected and integrated by Karl Leonhard Reinhold. It was first fleshed out into full-fledged histories by two Kantians, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann and Johann Gottlieb Buhle. Numerous historians, several of whom were not Kantians, spread it in the English-speaking world. They include Kuno Fischer, Friedrich Ueberweg, Richard Falckenberg, and Wilhelm Windelband. However, the wide availability of their works did not suffice to make the narrative standard because, until the 1890s, the Hegelian account was at least as popular as theirs. Among the factors that allowed the narrative to become standard are its aptness to be adopted by philosophers of the most diverse persuasions, its simplicity and suitability for teaching. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays. Pauline Kleingeld provides a lucid introduction to the main themes of the volume, and three essays by distinguished contributors follow: Jeremy Waldron on Kant’s theory of the state; Michael W. Doyle on the implications (...) of Kant’s political theory for his theory of international relations; and Allen W. Wood on Kant’s philosophical approach to history and its current relevance. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Life of Nietzsche Nineteenth‐century Europe Romanticism and German Idealism Pessimism German Politics The Text.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kant's Critique of Berkeley HENRY E. ALLISON THE CLAIMTHAT KANT'S IDEALISM,or at least certain strands of it, is essentially identical to that of Berkeley has a long and distinguished history. It was first voiced by several of Kant's contemporaries such as Mendelssohn, Herder, Hamann, Pistorius and Eberhard who attacked the alleged subjectivism of the Critique of Pure Reason. 1 This viewpoint found its sharpest contemporary (...) expression in the notorious Garve-Feder review to which Kant responded at length in the Prolegomena. In subsequent times it has been championed by Schopenhauer, and most nineteenth century German commentators on the relation between the two philosophers. 2 In addition, it has been, and continues to be, the prevailing view of the vast majority of British writers on Kant, including, with significant qualifications, Norman Kemp Smith. 3 This tradition continues despite the fact that Kant specifically, and in no uncertain terms, repudiated this identification in the Prolegomena and the second edition of the Critique. In both works he responds to the charges of subjectivism, and in so doing distinguishes his position from that of Berkeley, who in the eighteenth century was commonly regarded as a solipsist and denier of the "external world." 4 In contra-distinction to Kant's own critical or transcendental idealism, which explains the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge within the realm of possible experience, Berkeley is characterized as a "dogmatic" or "visionary idealist." He is judged guilty of "degrading bodies to mere illusion" (B69), of regarding things in space as "merely imaginary entities" (B274), and of holding with all "genuine idealists" that: "all knowledge through the senses and experience is i Cf. Hans Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kant's Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (Stuttgart, Berlin, Leipzig, 1892), II, 494-505. Cf. Friederich Fredericks, Der Phainomenale Idealisraus Berkeley's und Kant's (Berlin, 1871); Robert Zimmerman, "Ober Kant's Widerlegung des Idealismus yon Berkeley" (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Philox.-hist. Kl.), LXVIII (1871); Gustav Dieckert, tiber dos Verhiiltnis des Berkeleyschen ldealismus zu Kantischen Vernun]tkritik (Konitz, 1888). Tiffs is a consequence of the general British tendency to view Kant in phenomenalist terms. A typical recent example is found in P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London, 1966). Kemp Smith in his Commentary to Kant's Critique o[ Pure Reason (2nd ed., rev., 1923) takes greaZ pains to distinguish between the subjectivist strand in Kant's thought, which is essentially identical to Berkeley's position, and the genuine critical doctrine which stands side by side with it in the text. 9 Cf. I-I.M. Bracken, The Early Reception of Berkeley's Materialism 1710-1733, rev. ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965). [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY nothing but sheer illusion, and only in the ideas of pure understanding is there truth" (374). 5 One of the chief reasons for the continuation of the Kant-Berkeley tradition is that these, and similar statements about Berkeley, which we find in these works and in Kant's correspondenc e with Beck, have not been taken very seriously by Kant's critics. They are usually dismissed as obvious misinterpretations, due to Kant's ignorance of Berkeley's actual writings, and of his reliance upon distorted second and third hand accounts of Berkeley's thought such as is to be found in Beattie. Furthermore, this view is often supported by the philological reflection that Kant did not read English, and that Berkeley's writings were not yet available in German translation. 6 The philological argument, however, loses much of its force when we consider that there was indeed a German translation of Berkeley's Dialogues, which although apparently unknown to nineteenth century scholars, was readily accessible to Kant. This is to be found, together with a translation of Collier's Clavis Universalis and critical analyses, in a work by the professor of philosophy at Rostock, Johann Christian Eschenbach, entitled: Samlung der vornehmsten Schri[tsteller die die tFirklichkeit ihres eignen K~rpers und der ganzen Ki~rperwelt leugnen (Rostock, 1756). Furthermore, in addition to this work, which was probably known to Kant, there is Berkeley's important Latin work, De Motu (1721), as well as French translations of many of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 447-448 [Access article in PDF] Brigitte Sassen, translator and editor. Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 331. Cloth, $54.95. Brigitte Sassen has translated and edited an extremely useful collection of texts dating from the years 1782 to 1789. Most of the texts were written by Kant's (...) empirically minded critics, but a few are the work of defenders of the Critical philosophy. Although some have been translated before—e.g., the notorious Feder/Garve review of the first Critique that prompted Kant's vitriolic response in the Prolegomena, the original Garve review that served as the basis of the Feder/Garve review, and Jacobi's critique of Kant's transcendental idealism—the entire anthology is the first ever to be devoted exclusively to English translations of some of the first reactions to and defenses of Kant's theoretical philosophy. All of this makes for an exciting event in Kant studies.Sassen identifies three major trends in Kant criticism that began in 1782. The first is the empiricist reaction to Kant's theoretical writings. Sassen considers the year 1789 the endpoint of this trend, since critical attention, she argues, shifted around that time to the rationalist reaction to Kant's writings. The initial wave of rationalist criticism, which constitutes the second trend, lasted until 1793. The third and final trend, she says, is the more forward-looking one that eventually blossomed into the systems of post-Kantian thought.Given such a wealth of material, Sassen has focused on Kant's empiricist critics, choosing the writers and topics most representative of the overall empiricist critique of the 1780s. The selections are divided into five sections. The first consists of the Feder/Garve and Garve reviews (from 1782 and 1783, respectively). Since these were the very first reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason, they helped to formulate many of the classic objections to it. For example, not only does the standard charge of Berkeleyan idealism originate in these reviews, but Feder and Garve also express concerns about Kant's ability to distinguish between reality and illusion if nothing in sensation itself determines the understanding to combine sensations in one way as opposed to another. The second section contains discussions of the Transcendental Aesthetic, including an early version of the "neglected alternative" charge more famously made by Trendelenburg in the nineteenth century. Hermann Andreas Pistorius, one of the most sophisticated of Kant's empiricist critics, argues that Kant has not ruled out the possibility that space and time are both forms of sensibility and properties of things in themselves. The third section (especially Jacobi's famous critique) explores the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, the problem of affection, and other topics touching on the very nature of Kant's idealism. The fourth section deals with various issues involving the table of categories. For example, Kant's critics had doubts about its completeness, and they were also puzzled as to how a priori concepts could be applied to ordinary experience. The fifth and final section looks at the contrast between empiricism and purism, that is, the overall adequacy of empiricist and Kantian approaches to issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Here we find Pistorius once again writing thoughtfully about the Critical philosophy, this time in response to Carl Christian [End Page 447] Erhard Schmid, the author of a dictionary for the "easier use" of Kant's writings that went through several editions in the late 1780s and 1790s.This brief sketch of Sassen's book gives only an inadequate idea of its richness and usefulness. Her introduction, which is thorough and informative, patiently sorts out the various players in the debates of the 1780s, outlines their arguments with Kant and one another, and even describes the nature of periodical publication in late eighteenth-century Germany. The editorial apparatus includes short biographies of the participants in the debates as well as the other authors mentioned throughout the book... (shrink)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) was not a philosopher. In fact, Winckelmann had a strong interest in distancing himself from academic philosophy as he knew it. As Goethe reports, Winckelmann “complained bitterly about the philosophers of his time and about their extensive influence.” Still less was Winckelmann a Kantian philosopher; the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason did not appear until 1781, thirteen years after the fifty-year-old Winckelmann was shockingly murdered in Trieste. Nevertheless, many of Winckelmann’s ideas (...) were philosophically rich and suggestive and interestingly relevant to the philosophical problems that were later to be addressed by Kant and his philosophical contemporaries. It is no wonder, then, that Winckelmann’s influence can be detected in the works of some of the most important philosophically oriented thinkers of Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to Kant himself, these thinkers included Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). (shrink)

Kant’s ‘Newtonianism’ has been rightly highlighted by figures like Friedman. The follow-up debates led to a more adequate view on Kant’s natural philosophy and in particular his relation towards Newton. But the discussion that evolved did not point to the asynchronicity that takes place in Kant’s struggle with the central Newtonian concepts. Newtonian space and gravity, in revised form, are of central concern to Kant’s critical philosophy. But Kant adapted and re-evaluated these two concepts in an asynchronous way. While Kant (...) tries to integrate a notion of gravity into his theory of matter in his very first published writing, he has at this stage no adequate notion of space. At this time, as in regard to space, he can neither be called a Newtonian nor a proper Leibnizian and misconceives the necessity of an independent space for the foundations of physics. This perspective changes under the influence of Euler at the end of the fifties of the eighteenth century and finally leads to his writing of 1768 and the adoption of transcendental idealism in 1770. In the following, I depict this asynchronicity by taking central pre-critical writings into account while discussing Kant’s concept of space and gravity. This sharpens the picture of Kant’s work and the different stages his philosophy of nature went through. Further, it helps to understand the influence of Euler on Kant’s development in natural philosophy and his critical philosophy in general, as Kant under the influence of Euler formed deeper-going reflections on Newton’s theory of space and these mark turning points of his development. (shrink)

Central Works of Philosophy is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's Republic to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together (...) these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. Much of nineteenth-century philosophy may be viewed as either an affirmation or rejection of Kant. This volume therefore begins with Kant's magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason. Michelle Grier provides a masterly distillation of this monumental work. Curtis Bowman explores the central text of the first of the great post-Kantian idealists, Fichte who extended Kantian philosophy in a new direction. Hegel, one of Kant's most formidable critics, is given incisive treatment by Michael Inwood in his presentation of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, which hoped to solve many of the problems that Kant's philosophy left unsolved is explored in Dale Jacquette's chapter. The moral philosophy of John Stuart Mill, perhaps the only philosopher in this volume to circumvent Kant's influence, is examined in Jonathan Riley's essay on his classic work On Liberty. The philosophical ideas of Kierkegaard, widely credited as the founder of modern existentialism, are explored by Stephen Evans in his essay on Philosophical Fragments. Marx's Capital, one of the most influential books of the modern age, is given expert treatment by Tom Rockmore. The volume closes with Nietzsche, whose appropriation of Kant led to a radical anti-philosophy. Rex Welshon dissects his most philosophical and widely read work, On the Genealogy of Morals. (shrink)

The claim that Rousseau's writings influenced the development of Kant's critical philosophy, and German idealism, is not a new one. As correct as the claim may be, it does not amount to a systematic account of Rousseau's place within this philosophical tradition. It also suggests a progression whereby Rousseau's achievements are eventually eclipsed by those of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, especially with respect to the idea of freedom. In this book David James shows that Rousseau presents certain (...) challenges that Kant and the idealists Fichte and Hegel could not fully meet, by making dependence and necessity, as well as freedom, his central concerns, and thereby raises the question of whether freedom in all its forms is genuinely possible in a condition of human interdependence marked by material inequality. His study will be valuable for all those studying Kant, German idealism and the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas. (shrink)

Designed as a textbook for use in courses on natural theology and used by Immanuel Kant as the basis for his Lectures on The Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, Johan August Eberhard's Preparation for Natural Theology (1781) is now available in English for the first time. -/- With a strong focus on the various intellectual debates and historically significant texts in late renaissance and early modern theology, Preparation for Natural Theology influenced the way Kant thought about practical cognition as well (...) as moral and religious concepts. Access to Eberhard's complete text makes it possible to distinguish where in the lectures Kant is making changes to what Eberhard has written and where he is articulating his own ideas. Identifying new unexplored lines of research, this translation provides a deeper understanding of Kant's explicitly religious doctrines and his central moral writings, such as the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. -/- Accompanied by Kant's previously untranslated handwritten notes on Eberhard's text as well as the Danzig transcripts of Kant's course on rational theology, Preparation for Natural Theology features a dual English-German / German-English glossary, a concordance and an introduction situating the book in relation to 18th-century theology and philosophy. This is an essential contribution to twenty-first century Kantian studies. (shrink)

Karl Leonhard Reinhold is regarded as the most important interpreter and disseminator of Kantian philosophy, and the popularity of Immanuel Kant is closely linked to Reinhold's writings. But his own works also exerted a great influence on German idealism. Nevertheless, he has never enjoyed a similar degree of fame as Immanuel Kant, or even fame itself.In this book, Franziska Götschl devotes herself to Reinhold’s lecture transcripts from the years 1792/93, which were first published in 2015, and (...) sheds light on the relationship between Reinhold and Kant's contemporaneous works—as well as the means Reinhold used in his writings in the late 18th century to bring Kant's critique of reason closer to a broad public. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) quotably wrote in 1929 that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”1 The same could be said, perhaps with even greater accuracy, of the twentieth-century Euro-American philosophical tradition and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).2 In this sense the twentieth century was the post-Kantian century. Twentieth-century philosophy in Europe and the USA was dominated by two distinctive and (after 1945) officially opposed traditions: the analytic tradition (...) and the phenomenological tradition. Very simply put, the analytic tradition was all about logic and analyticity,3 and the phenomenological tradition was all about consciousness and intentionality.4 (See also “The birth of analytic philosophy,” Chapter 1; “The development of analytic philosophy: Wittgenstein and after,” Chapter 2; “American philosophy in the twentieth century,” Chapter 5; and “Phenomenology,” Chapter 15.) Ironically enough however, despite their official Great Divide, both the analytic and the phenomenological traditions were essentially continuous and parallel critical developments from an earlier dominant neo-Kantian tradition. This, by the end of the nineteenth century had vigorously reasserted the claims of Kant’s transcendental idealism against Hegel’s absolute idealism and the other major systems of post-Kantian German Idealism, under the unifying slogan “Back to Kant!” So again ironically enough, both the analytic and phenomenological traditions were alike founded on, and natural outgrowths from, Kant’s Critical Philosophy. By the end of the twentieth century however, and this time sadly rather than ironically, both the analytic and phenomenological traditions had not only explicitly rejected their own Kantian foundations and roots but also had effectively undermined themselves philosophically, even if by no means institutionally.. (shrink)

In the last century there were philosophers who argued that nothing exists but ideas. In our century there are people who write as if there were nothing but texts. These people, whom I shall call “textualists,” include for example, the so-called Yale school of literary criticism centering around Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartmann, and Paul De Man, “post-structuralist” French thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, historians like Hayden White, and social scientists like Paul Rabinow. Some of these people take their (...) point of departure from Heidegger, but usually the influence of philosophers is relatively remote. The center of gravity of the intellectual movement in which these people figure is not philosophy, but literary criticism. In this paper I want to discuss some similarities and differences between this movement and nineteenth-century idealism. (shrink)

The decline of Naturphilosophie deeply polarized the philosophical and scientific debate. Naturalistic–materialistic positions gained powerful influence, but the latent role of the Kantian critical position also re-emerged in the context of an “ideal-realism”. I will first consider in detail two opposing treatments of Kant’s perspective. After Lotze had criticized his earlier materialistic position, advising him to read Kant, Czolbe finally addressed Kant, thereby progressing to a non-materialistic form of naturalism. However, whether to defend or to dismiss naturalism, neither philosopher addresses (...) Kant as a transcendentalist thinker, and I go on to examine this common feature in their writings. This invites us to reconsider what exactly in Kant’s system conflicts with naturalism. Is transcendentalism too broad a requisite for that task? Within “ideal-realism”, the realist part actually implies a denial of transcendental idealism; still, it shows how a realism which refuses to be naturalism could well learn from Kant. (shrink)

The place occupied by Kant’s philosophical ideas in the reflections of the Russian philosopher, Nikolay Strakhov, needs further study. The material for a historical-philosophical reconstruction of Strakhov’s reception of Kant’s philosophy is the Russian thinker’s home library catalogue, his correspondence and his own philosophical works. Among Strakhov’s interlocutors were not only philosophers and natural scientists, but also writers, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Afanasy Fet, who in many ways determined the cultural and intellectual horizon of the epoch. The many (...) years of correspondence with the last two writers went a long way to shape and develop Strakhov’s perception of Kant as a thinker. Indeed, without a virtual dialogue with Kant no modern philosophical system can be built. Strakhov’s reflections on the Kantian style of thinking, adoption of Kantian criticism as the model of epistemic analysis in many ways determined the features of his own philosophical work and became a catalyst of renewed interest in Russia in the Kantian philosophy in the last third of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Like Werner Pluhar's distinguished translation of _Critique of Judgment_, this new rendering of _Critique of Pure Reason_ reflects the elegant achievement of a master translator. This richly annotated volume offers translations of the complete texts of both the First and Second editions, as well as Kant's own notes. Extensive editorial notes by Werner Pluhar and James Ellington supply explanatory and terminological comments, translations of Latin and other foreign expressions, variant readings, cross-references to other passages in the text and in (...) other writings of Kant, and references to secondary works. An extensive bibliography, glossary, and detailed index are included. Patricia Kitcher's illuminating Introduction provides a roadmap to Kant's abstract and complex argumentation by firmly locating his view in the context of eighteenth-century--and current--attempts to understand the nature of the thinking mind and its ability to comprehend the physical universe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 110-112 [Access article in PDF] Terry Pinkard. German Philosophy, 1670-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 382. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $23.00. In one respect, the story related in Terry Pinkard's new book on German idealism is a very old-fashioned one of the "from Kant to Hegel" sort, inasmuch as Hegel's system is (...) here presented as the logical culmination of a single movement of thought, initiated by Kant and carried forward, first by Fichte and then by Schelling; and post-Hegelian philosophy is interpreted as a desperate reaction to the apparent failure of the grand idealist project. In other respects, however, Pinkard offers a welcome variation on this familiar tale by including chapter on less familiar figures and by interpreting the idealist project in the context of some current philosophical concerns.A distinctive feature of this new history is its powerful narrative thrust. Pinkard organizes his tale around a single, central issue, which he calls the "Kantian paradox." The paradox in question is that of self-legislation or self-authorization, a paradox implicit in Kant's claim that one can be bound by laws of which one is also the free author. Though this paradox obviously pertains to Kant's moral philosophy, Pinkard shows that it also extends to the application of any rational norms whatsoever. Pinkard's object is to show how each of the thinkers he discusses responded to this "Kantian paradox," culminating in Hegel's alleged recognition that this paradox is "the basic problem that all post-Kantian philosophies had to solve" (226) and in his effort to provide an essentially social solution to the problem of reason's self-authorization.The book commences with a superb essay on "'Germany' and German Philosophy," examining the relation of "German philosophy" to "Germany" during the period in question, an essay that would be an ideal first assignment for any course on nineteenth-century philosophy. Each of the four major parts of the book begins with a similarly useful, short historical/contextual introduction.Part One is a brilliant summary of the Kantian revolution, not just in epistemology and metaphysics, but also in moral philosophy, aesthetics, and teleology. Without bogging down in unnecessary details or arcane scholarly disputes, Pinkard manages to provide a nuanced account of Kant's arguments and conclusions, emphasizing those tensions and problems in Kant's writings that occupied the attention of the philosophers who followed.Part Two is devoted to the pre-Hegelian "post-Kantians," not just Fichte and the early Schelling, but also Jacobi, Reinhold, Hölderlin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Frederich Schlegel, and Fries. Pinkard's discussions of these lesser-known figures is welcome and illuminating. The same cannot, unfortunately, be said of his discussion of Fichte. Though the paradox of self-authorization is obviously a central Fichtean concern, Pinkard's account of the Wissenschaftslehre seriously distorts Fichte's project and accomplishments—beginning with Pinkard's failure to distinguish between the Wissenschaftslehre itself, as the name for a complete system of philosophy, and the 1794/95Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, which is concerned only with the rudimentary foundations of the same. (This leads him to the mistaken view that Fichte's treatises on right and ethics are "revisions" of the Wissenschaftslehre, [End Page 110] rather than systematic branches of the same.) The account of the Foundations is itself skewed, inasmuch as it fails to take account of how Part III of this text provides a "practical" solution to the "theoretical" impasse of Parts I and II. Instead, Pinkard offers an interpretation of Fichte's early system that simply ignores the centrality thereto of willing and striving, makes no mention of the key role of productive imagination, and characterizes Fichtean intellectual intuition as "an insight into the necessary structure of things themselves" (110). Though Pinkard is aware that the overwhelming majority of Fichte scholars reject such an interpretation, he nevertheless advances it, claiming the right to "argue the opposite view." Unfortunately, he keeps his "argument" to himself... (shrink)

In his book Appearance and Sense Gustav Shpet, comparing Immanuel Kant’s transcendental logic with the traditional probleтs of the philosophy of language, thought it appropriate and conceptually effective to turn to the medieval scholastic debate on universals. Later, in the Hermeneutics and Its Problems, he goes back to this discussion and notes that it was the framework in which the thirteenth-century tradition of “terminist” logic was formed. Shpet attributed the fruitfulness of this approach to his concept of the inner (...) form of the word. Terminist logic is based on the definition and analysis of such terms as significatio, suppositio, expositio, exponibilia, and Shpet, in examining them, demonstrates the consonance of his concept with terminist logic. Proceeding from thirteenth-century logical studies, he proposes his own approach to resolving the contradictions found in Kant’s critical philosophy. Shpet believed that transcendental idealism failed to resolve the problem of the relation between intuition and concept (even though Kantian “schematism” was a search for such resolution). This inherent Kantian problem is for Shpet a take-off point to which he kept returning throughout his career. I will pay particular attention to such works as Appearance and Sense, in which Shpet broadens the problematics of Husserl’s phenomenology, and The Inner Form of the Word, in which he reinterprets Humboldt’s philosophy of language. In both cases Shpet shows that neither Husserl nor Humboldt managed to overcome the Kantian contradiction. So the reference to Kant is a starting point from which Shpet proceeds to put forward and consolidate his hypotheses. It is in thirteenth-century terminist logic that Shpet will see an original way of overcoming the Kantian contradiction and direct us toward interpreting the problems of the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Fichte's reputation at the present time is in some respects a curious one. On the one hand, he is by common consent acknowledged to have exercised a dominant influence upon the development of German thought during the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Thus from a specifically philosophical point of view he is regarded as an innovator who played a decisive role in transforming Kant's transcendental idealism into the absolute idealism of his immediate successors, while at a (...) more general level he is customarily seen as having put into currency certain persuasive conceptions which contributed—less directly but no less surely—to the emergence and spread of romanticism in some of its varied and ramifying forms. On the other hand, however, it is noticeable that detailed consideration of his work has not figured prominently in the recent revival of concern with post-Kantian thought as a whole which has been manifested by philosophers of the English-speaking world. Although his name is frequently mentioned in that connection, one suspects that his books may not be so often read. In part this may be due to his particular mode of expounding his views, which at times attains a level of opacity that can make even Hegel's obscurest passages seem comparatively tractable. It is also true that Fichte's principal theoretical works—if not his semipopular writings—are largely devoid of the allusions to scientific, historical, psychological or cultural matters with which his German contemporaries were prone to illustrate their philosophical doctrines and enliven their more abstract discussions: there is a daunting aridity about much of what he wrote which can raise nagging doubts in the modern reader's mind about the actual issues that are in question. Yet the fact remains that by the close of the eighteenth century his ideas had already made a profound impact, capturing the imagination of a host of German thinkers and intellectuals. The problem therefore arises as to what preoccupations, current at the time, they owed their indubitable appeal and to what puzzles they were welcomed as proffering a solution. If these can be identified, it may become at least partially intelligible that Fichte should have been widely regarded as having provided a framework within which certain hitherto intractable difficulties could be satisfactorily reformulated and resolved. Let me accordingly begin by saying something about them. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an important figure in the popular understanding of America has been rediscovered by scholars and critics, yet there has been no critical study of Emerson's relation to traditional nineteenth-century questions about ethics and epistemology. In Emerson's Epistemology David Van Leer turns to this unexplored area of Emerson's philosophy and especially to the problem of his relation to the central intellectual issue of his age - the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Although Emerson would throughout his (...) life try a number of vocational roles, he considered himself primarily a thinker. He saw his roles as poet and prophet as versions of the more fundamental one of philosopher. Thus an understanding of Emerson's relation to traditional problems about the theory of knowledge clarifies not only the arguments of the specific essays, but the shape of his complex career. (shrink)

This study argues that the early philosophy of Semyon Liudvigovich Frank (1877–1950) exhibits significant intellectual correlations with nineteenth century German Idealist philosophy. The idealists in question are Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1796–1879), G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) and F.W.J. Schelling (1775–1854). It will be suggested that the critical tension of Frank’s early philosophy is precisely a tension between his Hegelian and Schellingian tendencies. The paper will first introduce Frank’s theory of a “personal absolute”, exploring its surprising parallels with the religious philosophy of (...) I. H. Fichte. The analysis then addresses the self-dispersal of Hegel’s absolute, before finally turning to Schelling’s immediate intuition of subject-object identity. (shrink)

The significance or vacuity of the statement, “Everything has just doubled in size,” attracted considerable attention last century from scientists and philosophers. Presenting his conventionalism in geometry, Poincaré insisted on the emptiness of a hypothesis that all objects have doubled in size overnight. Such expansion could have meaning, he argued, “only for those who reason as if space were absolute … it would be better to say that space being relative, nothing at all has happened.” The logical empiricists concurred, viewing (...) the universal doubling hypothesis as illustrating the intrinsic metrical amorphousness of continuous manifolds. It is striking, therefore, to find Kant invoking a universal contraction in space and time to support his famous doctrine of transcendental idealism. In one of several completely neglected passages, he writes: “The proof that the things in space and time are mere appearances can also be grounded on the fact that the whole world could be contained in a nutshell and the entirety of elapsed time in a second without the least difference being met with.” Kant's “also” may suggest an idealist argument distinct from any proposed in published works. Here I ask: What is the meaning of Kant's Nutshell Argument for Idealism? (shrink)

The article consists of a brief biographical account of Immanuel Kant’s life and career, followed by a discussion of his basic philosophy, and a brief discussion of his pivotal point in the history of Rhetoric and Communicology. A major figure in the European Enlightenment period of Philosophy, his Collected Writings were first published in 1900 constituting 29 volumes. He wrote three major works that are foundational to the development of Western philosophy and the human sciences. Often just referred (...) to as the “Three Critiques” informally, the First, the Second, and the Third. These are respectively: The Critique of Pure Reason focused on issues in logic, The Critique of Practical Reason relating ethical guidelines, and The Critique of Judgment exploring issues of aesthetics. He is most famous for his philosophy of transcendental idealism. This version of idealism argues that in logic statements are analytic or synthetic. He further argues that statements are a priori or a posteriori. Models of rhetoric, phenomenological methodology, and the contemporary Perspectives Model of interpersonal communicology are included as the Kantian legacy in the US. Notes provide a guide to edition and philological issues in the Kantian corpus, especially for the hermeneutics of Vorstellung versus Darstellung. (shrink)

Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy, traces the decisive role played by eighteenth century embryological research for Immanuel Kant’s theories of mind and cognition. I begin this book by following the course of life science debates regarding organic generation in England and France between 1650 and 1750 before turning to a description of their influence in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century. Once this background has been established, the remainder of Kant’s Organicism moves (...) to the influential role played by models of embryological development for Kant’s approach to understanding the cognitive processes responsible for the generation of knowledge, with special attention paid to Kant’s Precritical writings in the 1760s and 1770s. The book closes with a reinterpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

The nature of Hegel’s idealism has been much disputed, and this chapter offers an account of it that is distinctive. Against recent commentators such as Robert Pippin, it is argued that Hegel was not a Kantian or transcendental idealist; it is also argued that Hegel was not a mentalistic idealist, offering a kind of ‘spirit monism’ that reduced the world to mind. It is argued instead that Hegel understood idealism to be the view that ‘the finite has no (...) veritable being’, where this leads to a position according to which thought cannot grasp what truly exists through experience but only through a kind of rationalist theorizing, and that this in turn requires us to accept a form of realism about concepts. It is therefore argued that this conceptual realism makes up the core of Hegel’s idealism, understood as the anti-nominalist doctrine that reality is structured by concepts that render it accessible to thought. (shrink)

This volume collects Kant's most important ethical and anthropological writings from the 1760s, before he developed his critical philosophy. The materials presented here range from the Observations, one of Kant's most elegantly written and immediately popular texts, to the accompanying Remarks which Kant wrote in his personal copy of the Observations and which are translated here in their entirety for the first time. This edition also includes little-known essays as well as personal notes and fragments that reveal (...) the emergence of Kant's complex philosophical ideas. Those familiar with Kant's later works will discover a Kant interested in the 'beauty' as well as the 'dignity' of humanity, in human diversity as well as the universality of morals, and in practical concerns rather than abstract philosophizing. Readers will be able to see Kant's development from the Observations through the Remarks towards the moral philosophy that eventually made him famous. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is often depicted in popular and scholarly discourse as a lonely philosopher dealing with abstract concerns unconnected to the intellectual debates of his time and place. Robert C. Holub counters this narrative, arguing that Nietzsche was very well attuned to the events and issues of his era and responded to them frequently in his writings. Organized around nine important questions circulating in Europe at the time in the realms of politics, society, and science, Nietzsche in the Nineteenth (...) Century presents a thorough investigation of Nietzsche's familiarity with contemporary life, his contact with and comments on these various questions, and the sources from which he gathered his knowledge. Holub begins his analysis with Nietzsche's views on education, nationhood, and the working-class movement, turns to questions of women and women's emancipation, colonialism, and Jews and Judaism, and looks at Nietzsche's dealings with evolutionary biology, cosmological theories, and the new "science" of eugenics. He shows how Nietzsche, although infrequently read during his lifetime, formulated his thought in an ongoing dialogue with the concerns of his contemporaries, and how his philosophy can be conceived as a contribution to the debates taking place in the nineteenth century. Throughout his examination, Holub finds that, against conventional wisdom, Nietzsche was only indirectly in conversation with the modern philosophical tradition from Descartes through German idealism, and that the books and individuals central to his development were more obscure writers, most of whom have long since been forgotten. This book thus sheds light on Nietzsche's thought as enmeshed in a web of nineteenth-century discourses and offers new insights into his interactive method of engaging with the philosophical universe of his time. (shrink)

This paper deals with the so-called “external history” of the origin of Critique of the power of judgment that is based primarily on the philosopher’s correspondence in the period between May 1787 and October 1789. Two letters from Kant to Reinhold (28.12.1787 and 12.05.1789) as well as modifications in the interpretation of the term “aesthetics” in the first Critique (KrVA 22, B 35-36) are crucial for the evolution of the project Critique of Taste in the book Critique of the Power (...) of Judgment. Special attention was paid to the debate between some modern scholars and editors about the importance of the reports on ‘Grundlegung’ / ‘Grundlage’ of Critique of Taste in the initial phase of work on the text. However, the available evidence does not allow us to reconstruct the “internal history” of the development of Kant’s thought during the period of writing the third Critique. Some modern scholars try to establish other objective criteria for this kind of reconstruction by identification in the text of Critique direct or hidden hints or citations to the literature of the 18th century. The author considers that the use of so-called “reflections” from the philosopher’s manuscript heritage, which can be seen as the formation and development of certain concepts of Kant’s theory, can be fruitful. The well-known problem of dating the reflections can be partially solved if terminus a quo will be not the published works, but Kant’s lectures on anthropology and logic taught at that time. (shrink)

The received view has it that analytic philosophy emerged as a rebellion against the German Idealists (above all Hegel) and their British epigones (the British neo-Hegelians). This at least was Russell’s story: the German Idealism failed to achieve solid results in philosophy. Of course, Frege too sought after solid results. He, however, had a different story to tell. Frege never spoke against Hegel, or Fichte. Similarly to the German Idealists, his sworn enemy was the empiricism (in his case, John (...) Stuart Mill). Genealogically, this stance is not difficult to explain. Frege grew up as a philosopher in the context of the German Idealists. He was a member of Karl Snell’s “Sunday Circle” of university teachers in Jena. The group was influenced with Schelling and the German romanticists. The first Anglophone scholar to point out what Frege's thought owes to nineteenth-century Germany philosophy, Hans Sluga, argued that Frege followed the philosophical-logical tradition originating with Leibniz and Kant which Trendelenburg and Lotze developed significantly. About the same time, a philosophical historian writing in German, Gottfried Gabriel, did much to bring this tradition to light, casting Frege as neo-Kantian. Advancing beyond Sluga and Gabriel, the present paper reveals that through the mediation of Trendelenburg and especially of Lotze many elements of German idealism found their way into Frege's logic and philosophy. (shrink)

A critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation provides a critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. While Hegel has been recognized as one of the key targets of Deleuze’s philosophical writing, Henry Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze’s antipathy to Hegel has its roots in a problem the two (...) thinkers both try to address: getting beyond a philosophy of judgment and the restrictions of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By tracing the development of their attempts to address this problem, Somers-Hall offers an interpretation of the sweep of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, providing a series of analyses of key moments in the history of thought, including the logics of Aristotle and Russell, Kant’s own philosophy of judgment, and the philosophy of Bergson. He also develops a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, and situates his philosophy in relation to the broader post-Kantian tradition. In addition to Deleuze’s relation to Hegel, the book makes important contributions to the study of Deleuze’s philosophy of mathematics, as well as to the study of several underappreciated areas of Hegel’s own philosophy. (shrink)

The turn of the nineteenth century marked a rich and exciting explosion of philosophical energy and talent. The enormity of the revolution set off in philosophy by Immanuel Kant was comparable, by Kant's own estimation, with the Copernican Revolution that ended the Middle Ages. The movement he set in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous dialectic of `German Idealism', inspired some of the most creative philosophers in modern times: including G.W.F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer as well as (...) those who reacted against Kant - Marx and Kierkegaard, for example. This volume traces the emergence of German Idealism from Kant and his predecessors through the first half of the nineteenth century, ending with the irrationalism of Kierkegaard. It provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original interpretations of these authors. Each chapter is written by a distinguished scholar in the field. A glossary of technical terms together with a chronological table of philosophical, scientific and other important cultural events are provided. (shrink)

The article interprets the reception of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in Poland at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. The author points out that Kantianism, in the Polish philosophical tradition, has been viewed through the prism of its idealistic interpretations. Such a criticism has spread modernism and various other philosophical currents. A part of Polish philosophers of that time were critical in the treatment of the so-called psychological interpretation of Kantianism. They skeptically evaluated the interpretation proposed by Lange (...) and Helmholtz, which underlined Kant’s phenomenalism and subjectivity. The author claims that Polish interprets of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy essentially demanded that results of theory-cognitive research and achievements in the fields of natural sciences should agree with each other. This idea corresponded to the antimetaphysical programme of Polish positivists, especially with its new formula calles “neo-criticism”. Kantianism was treated as a peculiar synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, a universe of phenomena and noumena. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, is one of the landmarks of Western philosophy, a radical departure from everything that went before and an inescapable influence on all philosophy since its publication. This Companion is the first collective commentary on this work in English. The seventeen chapters have been written by an international team of scholars, including some of the best-known figures in the field as well as emerging younger talents. The first two chapters (...) situate Kant's project against the background of continental rationalism and British empiricism, the dominant schools of early modern philosophy. Eleven chapters then expound and assess all the main arguments of the Critique. Finally, four chapters recount the enormous influence of the Critique on subsequent philosophical movements, including German Idealism and Neo-Kantianism, twentieth-century continental philosophy, and twentieth-century Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 259-288 [Access article in PDF] Substitutes for Wisdom:Kant's Practical Thought and the Tradition of the Temperaments Mark Larrimore [Appendix]For much of Western history, the theory of the four temperaments played a vital part in medicine, anthropology, and moral reflection. The Hippocratic foursome of sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic survives on the margins of modernity, but its role in moral theory (...) and practice has been largely forgotten. Premodern understandings of human diversity based in climate, temperament, and politics collapsed with the Galenic medical tradition with which they harmonized. Yet temperament continued to be a feature of moral philosophies and philosophical anthropologies even into the twentieth century, and arguably has had a symbiotic relationship with the egalitarian aspirations of modern moral and political thought. This essay surveys the development and practical consequences of the theory of the temperaments developed by one of the greatest prophets of modern values, Immanuel Kant.Temperament was a feature in Kant's course in anthropology from the 1760s until the end of his life. Kant's teachings on temperament are by turns creative and conservative, and bespeak a deep understanding of the logic and rationale of humoral characterology in ethics. But as Kant moves from an ethics based in feeling to an ethics based on the possibility of autonomy, his theory of temperament also changes. In 1764's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, Kant eloquently celebrates the melancholy as the temperament capable of "genuine virtue" (Obs2:217-18/60); by the time of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), he is commending instead "phlegma as strength" (a variant of a temperament he had earlier dismissed), which can serve as a "substitute for wisdom" (Ant7:290/155). 1 Both of these [End Page 259] positions are distinctive, especially for an eighteenth-century thinker. As we will see, however, they are not without precedent in the tradition of temperament theory. Whether Kant knew he was developing countertraditions of temperament or not, his arguments in each case creatively exploit tensions in the humoral system which go back to its origins in ancient Greece.The mature Kant defended the classic foursome at a time when it had come under fire from many quarters. The early nineteenth century historian of temperament theories Harro Wilhelm Dircksen thought Kant played a decisive role in saving the classical theory from oblivion. 2 Why did Kant think it worth retrieving? One would expect him to reject a category which eighteenth-century German Popularphilosophie understood as a proto-psychological category bridging the gap between body and mind, nature and freedom. Yet, as I shall argue, the very things which might seem to render a theory of temperament incompatible with his mature ethics of autonomy make it important to [End Page 260] Kant. An understanding of human embodiment and diversity like that of the tradition of the temperaments forms part of the background to Kant's practical thought, and ethical formalism makes more rather than less sense if difference is taken seriously. For the same reason, it is important to have the right account of diversity. The complicated view of temperament in the Anthropology furnishes a microcosm of Kant's understanding of the fraught role of empirical considerations in recognizing and promoting freedom in rational agents embodied in human form(s).In this essay I will (1) provide a brief survey of the tradition of temperament theorizing before Kant, and expound Kant's (2) early and (3) mature views of temperament in the context of this tradition, as well as in the context of his emerging practical philosophy. 3 Some well-known parts of Kant's ethics make a new kind of sense when read in the light of the fact that their author thought humanity subdivided into temperaments. 1. The Tradition of the Temperaments 1.1. The history of moralizing about and through the temperaments is complex and—once one moves beyond the melancholy—largely uncharted. Here I will... (shrink)

In his third essay on earthquakes, Kant refers to “Pater Bina’s” electric interpretation of seismic phenomena. Although not a distinguished scholar, and maybe for that reason frequently confused with a certain “Father Isidore Binet”, Bina was nevertheless a noteworthy author. A Cassinese benedictine, Andrea Bina was a philosopher interested in sciences just like Kant; he studied Newton, translated Wolff, invented a seismoscope and was appreciated by his contemporaries at home and beyond the Alps. Kant’s laconic quotation, followed by a value (...) judgement regarding only Bina’s “audacity”, raises some questions, including, in primis those about the meaning of his hasty judgment. A plausible well-grounded answer should be looked for in the bio-bibliographical outline of the neglected author and in the perusal of his writings. The analysis of Bina’s Ragionamento sopra le cagioni de’ terremoti (1751) contributes to our knowledge of the eighteenth-century cultural background and helps us understand the degree of knowledge of the seismic phenomena acquired by men who – amidst many difficulties and hindered by the limits of their science – could only rely on secondhand data often imbued with misconceptions. Comparing Bina’s work – although indirectly – with Kant’s Fortgesetzte Betrachtung der seit einiger Zeit wahrgenommenen Erderschütterungen (1756) may help bring to light some convergences, as well as differences, which might be of use in clarifying some peculiarities of the Prussian Naturforscher. (shrink)

Philosopher and mathematician Mścisław Wiktor Wartenberg, belongs to circles of experts of Immanuel Kant’s thought. How writes Wanda Bajor, the Thorough analysis of the Kantian philosophy gained him the acknowledgement in Poland and with the foreign lands. He tried to show that nor the idealism, nor the phenomenalism will lie, and a consequence of Kantianism is the realism. The critical interest with Kantian dualistic partition on this, what wonderful and is, what noumenal, Polish thinker of the turn of (...) the century translates on the author’s program of philosophy, wherein – asking after the possibility and the need of metaphysics – he undertakes attempt of the qualification of her status. Accordingly reaches for elaborate by Kant the definition of the metaphysics as the critical science about limits of recognition, throwing away simultaneously her primitive, speculative perception relevantly of the science treating about the transcendental world of themselves things in himself. Seeking arguments in defence of metaphysics, Wartenberg marks her high in the system of skills real, going deeply results of detailed sciences. He supposes, that all metaphysical considerations should be preceded by the thorough epistemological analysis, determining terminus a quo of metaphysical considerations. In the article I describe inspired with the transcendental Kant’s thought, project of Wartenberg’s philosophy whose the interpretation determines – dedicated to Adam Mironowski – the research work Obrona metafizyki. Krytyczny wstęp do metafizyki. (shrink)

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and (...) second, the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other. (shrink)

In his introduction to this selection of writings Hans Reiss makes the claim that Kant is not generally regarded in English-speaking countries as a political philosopher of any special significance. He gives several reasons for this neglect and misunderstanding by historians of philosophy and even by Kantian scholars. These historians have neglected Kant’s political writings because the philosophy of his three critiques has absorbed their attention almost entirely. Then too, they have not focused on his political philosophy because (...) he did not write a masterpiece in this field. Also, Kant’s works of critical philosophy are so formidable that they have made his political writings appear to historians of philosophy as much less weighty and have helped to encourage the mistaken assumption by these historians that the latter are not central to his thought. Furthermore, the rise of nationalism has prevented Kant’s work from being the dominant force in German political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which it might easily have been. The Romantic mode of thought instilled in German political thought an element of irrationalism which permeated almost all areas of German thinking for a century and a half between the Napoleonic wars and the end of the Second World War. (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)

The turn of the nineteenth century marked a rich and exciting explosion of philosophical energy and talent. The enormity of the revolution set off in philosophy by Immanuel Kant was comparable, in Kant's own estimation, with the Copernican Revolution that ended the Middle Ages. The movement he set in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous dialectic of "German Idealism," inspired some of the most creative philosophers in modern times: including G. W. F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer as (...) well as those who reacted against Kant--Marx and Kierkegaard, for example. This volume traces the emergence of German Idealism from Kant and his predecessors through the first half of the nineteenth century, ending with the irrationalism of Kierkegaard. It provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original interpretations of these authors. Also included is a glossary of technical terms as well as a chronological table of philosophical, scientific and other important cultural events. (shrink)

The fourth volume of The History of Evil explores the key thinkers and themes relating to the question of evil in Eighteenth and Nineteenth. The very idea of ¿evil¿ is highly contentious in modern thought and this period was one in which the concept was intensely debated and criticized. The persistence of the idea of evil is a testament to the abiding significance of theology in the period, not least in Germany. Compromising twenty-two chapters by international scholars, some of the (...) topics explored include: Berkeley on evil, Voltaire and the Philosophes, John Wesley on the origins of evil, Immanuel Kant on evil, autonomy and grace, the deliverance of evil: utopia and evil, utilitarianism and evil, evil in Schelling and Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and the genealogy of evil, and evil and the nineteenth century idealists. The volume also explores a number of other key thinkers and topics within the period. This outstanding treatment of the history of evil at the crucial and determinative inception of its key concepts will appeal to those with particular interests in the ideas of evil and good. (shrink)

Kant's extant Latin works fall into two groups. First, there are the four academic dissertations which Kant presented to the University and which led him slowly up the rungs of the academic ladder to his full professorship in 1770. They are: Meditations on Fire (his Ph.D. dissertation), the New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical knowledge (his dissertation for appointment as Privatdozent), Physical Monadology (a dissertation submitted in support of Kant's first application for a professorship, which was (...) unsuccessful), and The Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (the Inaugural Dissertation of 1770). These works are of absolutely central importance for understanding Kant's mature philosophy, which begins with the Critique of Pure Reason. The second group consists of two shorter papers: a rectoral address on philosophy and mental health, and a disputation on rhetorical and aesthetic questions presented at a promotion of a former student to a professorship.These are interesting evidence of the breadth of Kant's interests, and are important for the understanding of his treatment of related subjects in the larger German works available in English translation. (shrink)

The rise of the mechanistic worldview in the seventeenth century had a major impact on views of biological generation. Many seventeenth century naturalists rejected the old animist thesis. However, the alternative view of gradual mechanistic formation in embryology didn’t convince either. How to articulate the peculiarity of life? Researchers in the seventeenth century proposed both “animist” and mechanistic theories of life. In the eighteenth century again a controversy in biology arose regarding the explanation of generation. Some adhered to the view (...) that life is a physical property of matter (e.g. Buffon), others saw living entities as the result of the development of pre-existing germs (e.g. Bonnet). Naturalists, lacked a convincing account that could guide their research. In interaction with leading naturalists of his time Immanuel Kant articulated an approach to explaining generation. Kant’s account, delineated in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the power of judgment) (1790), is a combination of Newtonian non-reductionist mechanism in explanation, and a concept of natural end comparable to Stahl’s formal conception of organic bodies. It consists of two claims: a) in biology only mechanical explanation is explanatory, and b) living entities contain some original organisation, which is mechanically unexplainable. In the nineteenth century this approach influenced naturalists as Müller, Virchow, and Von Baer, in their physiological research. Dissatisfied with a sheer mechanistic or, on the other hand, a sheer teleological approach, they appreciated the Kantian account of mechanical explanation of natural ends. In Germany, in the second halve of the nineteenth century, Ernst Haeckel reopened the debate about abiogenesis, which still continuous. (shrink)

The original edition of Kant: Political Writings was first published in 1970, and has long been established as the principal English-language edition of this important body of writing. In this new, expanded edition two important texts illustrating Kant's view of history are included for the first time, his reviews of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind and Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, as well as the essay What is Orientation in Thinking?. In (...) addition to a general introduction assessing Kant's political thought in terms of his fundamental principles of politics, this edition also contains such useful student aids as notes on the texts, a comprehensive bibliogaphy and a new postscript, looking at some of the principal issues in Kantian scholarship that have arisen since the first edition. (shrink)

Common opinion ascribes to Immanuel Kant the view that psychology cannot become a science properly so called, because it cannot be mathematized. It is equally common to claim that this reflects the state of the art of his times; that the quantification of the mind was not achieved during the eighteenth century, while it was so during the nineteenth century; or that Kant's so-called “impossibility claim” was refuted by nineteenth-century developments, which in turn opened one path for psychology (...) to become properly scientific. These opinions are often connected, but they are misguided nevertheless. -/- In Part I, I show how the issue of a quantification of the mind was discussed before Kant, and I analyze the philosophical considerations both of pessimistic and optimistic authors. This debate reveals a certain progress, although it remains ultimately undecided. In Part II, I present actual examples of measuring the mind in the eighteenth century and analyze their presuppositions. Although these examples are limited in certain ways, the common view that there was no such measurement is wrong. In Part III, I show how Kant's notorious “ impossibility claim” has to be viewed against its historical background. He not only accepts actual examples of a quantitative treatment of the mind, but also takes steps toward an explanation of their possibility. Thus, he does not advance the claim that the mind as such cannot be mathematized. His claim is directed against certain philosophical assumptions about the mind, assumptions shared by a then-dominating, strongly introspectionist conception of psychology. This conception did and could not provide an explanation of the possibility of quantifying the mind. In concluding, I reflect on how this case study helps to improve the dispute over when and why psychology became a science. (shrink)