In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume and Tetens Manfred Kuehn Kant was neither the only nor even the first German philosopher who publicly responded to Hume. Indeed, there were many. But there were none who came as close to appreciatingHume as didJohann Nicolaus Tetens, who, in his two main works, the Über die allgemeine speculativische Philosophie or On General Speculative Philosophy (1775), and the Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung or (...) Philosophical Essays on Human Nature and itsDevelopment (1?7), not only argued that Hume was a philosophical force to be reckoned with, but also seemed to think that philosophical progress wasimpossiblewithoutan extensionandfurtherdevelopment ofHumean views. This alone would make him an interesting figure in the history of the reception of Hume's philosophy, but, since Tetens is one ofthe most important representatives ofempiricism in eighteenthcentury Germany, and since he put forward ideas that demonstrably influenced Kant, he is perhaps still more interesting. In any case, it is most regrettable that he still is so little studied in Germany today, and that he is almost completely unknown in English-speaking countries. Though Lewis White Beck has offered an interesting discussion of Tetens' critique ofHume in his book on Early German Philosophy, and though some Anglo-American Kant scholars are somewhat aware of Tetens' influence upon Kant, his name is almost never mentioned by philosophical scholars concerned with Hume. If this paper were to remind them of Tetens and his possible importance for the discussion ofissues raised by Hume, I would be very happy. Nevertheless, I must admit to an ulterior motive, for I am not interested in the relationship ofTetens and Hume per se, but rather in how Tetens' discussion ofHume might have influenced Kant's conception of "Hume's problem." My question is: "What could Kant have learned from Tetens about Hume in 1777, that is, about four years before the publication of his Critique ofPure Reason?" To this end, I shall first briefly review the evidence for Kant's study of Tetens; secondly say something about Tetens' discussion of the self; thirdly sketch his theory ofthe causal principle as a special case ofhis laws of association; fourthly represent an important part of his theory of objectiveornecessarytruth; andfinallytryto showhowall ofthismight be significant for our understanding of the development of Kant's position vis a vis Hume. Volume XV Number 2 365 MANFRED KUEHN IL Johann Georg Hamann, always interestedinliterarygossip and always ready to spread it, wrote to Johann Gottfried Herder on May 12, 1779 that Kant was writing on his Critique, and that he had "always open on his desk" Tetens' work. Two years earlier, on October 12, 1777, he had already told him that Kant was "said to be very full of... Tetens." Hamann, mischievous as he could be, not only wanted to bring Kant's former student up to date on the work of his teacher, but clearly also made a comment on Kant's originality. But there are other indications that Kant carefully studied Tetens between 1777 and 1781. Thus, Kant's correspondence with Herz in 1778 contains references to Tetens as having said things of importance, and his reflections of the period also mention him. One ofthe most telling indications ofhis rather close reading ofTetens is to be found in one ofhis letters to the publisher of his first Critique: On October 15, 1780 he writes to him that he would prefer not to have the book set in the type of Tetens' Essays because the latter is "really tiring" to his eyes. That Tetens' work did not only tire his eyes, but also stimulated his thoughts can be seen from one of his preparatory manuscripts to his Prolegomena of 1783, for there Kant suggested that Tetens could have given people occasion to think about the very problem of the Critique. Though he considered Tetens' attempt concerning the possibility of a priori knowledge as failed, he also viewed it as one of the most important attempts in that direction.??. It is well known that Kant himselfclaimed that "Hume's problem" was what first woke him from his dogmatic slumber. Though there is no similar pronouncement by Tetens, it is clear that he not only knew Hume well, but... (shrink)

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants amongst the pantheon of Western philosophers as well as the one with the most powerful and broad influence on contemporary philosophy. It is well known that Kant spent his entire life in an isolated part of Prussia living the life of a typical university professor. This has given rise to the view that Kant was a pure thinker with no life of his (...) own, or at least none worth considering seriously. In this biography, Manfred Kuehn debunks that myth once and for all. Taking account of the most recent scholarship Professor Kuehn allows the reader to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy. (shrink)

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants amongst the pantheon of Western philosophers as well as the one with the most powerful and broad influence on contemporary philosophy. It is well known that Kant spent his entire life in an isolated part of Prussia living the life of a typical university professor. This has given rise to the view that Kant was a pure thinker with no life of his (...) own, or at least none worth considering seriously. In this biography, Manfred Kuehn debunks that myth once and for all. Taking account of the most recent scholarship Professor Kuehn allows the reader (whether interested in philosophy, history, politics, German culture, or religion) to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy. (shrink)

The interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism has a long history. In spite of Kant's and his commentators’ various attempts to distinguish between traditional and transcendental idealism, his philosophy continues to be construed as committed to various features usually associated with the traditional idealist project. As a result, most often, the accusation is that his Critical philosophy makes too strong metaphysical and epistemological claims.In his The Revolutionary Kant, Graham Bird engages in a systematic and thorough (...) evaluation of the traditionalist interpretation, as part of perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling defence of a revolutionary reading of Kant's thought. In the third part of this special issue, the exchanges between, on the one hand, Graham Bird and, on the other, Gary Banham, Gordon Brittan, Manfred Kuehn, Adrian Moore and Kenneth Westphal focus on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of Kant's first Critique. More exactly, the emphasis is on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of the Introduction, Analytic of Principles and Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique.The second part of the special issue is devoted to discussions of particular topics in Bird's construal of the remaining significant parts of the first Critique, namely, of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Written by Sorin Baiasu and Michelle Grier, these articles examine specific issues in these two remaining parts of the Critique, from the perspective of the debate between the traditionalist and revolutionary interpretation. The special issue begins with an Introduction by the guest co-editors. This provides a summary of the exchanges between Bird and his critics, with a particular focus on the debates stemming from the differences between traditional and revolutionary interpretations of Kant. (shrink)

Volume 1 (c2015) The heavens and the earth -- Nature, number and substance -- The shape and motion of the heavens -- Harmony and complexity -- Earth at the center of the world -- The world of Ptolemy -- Measuring the tropical Year -- Geometrical tools -- The sun, the moon and the calendar -- From Astronomy to cartography -- Climates and continents -- Heliocentrism: hypothesis or truth? -- Earth as a wandering star -- Re-ordering the heavenly spheres -- Celestial (...) physics -- Broken spheres -- Kepler's third law -- Kepler's first and second laws -- Mountains on the moon -- The Medician stars -- The luminosity of variable stars -- Galactic spectra -- Measuring astronomical distances -- A new theory of gravity -- Euclid, Gauss and Mercury's orbit -- A finite universe with no boundary -- The structure of the universe -- Measuring the potentially infinite -- The birth of the Big Bang -- The primeval atom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:46 HUME IN THE GOTTINGISCHE ANZEIGEN: 1739-1800 Surprisingly little historical and systematic work has been done on the early reception of Hume's philosophy in Germany. Although there are quite a number of papers and books devoted to discussing Kant's relation to Hume, these are, for the most part, thoroughly uninformed by the historical background of Kant's reception of Hume. The question of what Kant actually knew of Hume is (...) raised over and over again, but, in the absence of new evidence, does not seem to admit of any satisfactory answer. These two circumstances, namely, the lack of historical work on Hume's reception in eighteenthcentury Germany, and the seeming futility of discussions concerning Kant's knowledge of Hume, are closely related. For, given the relative sparsity of Kant's remarks on Hume, new light on the Kant-Hume relation will have to come from the general background of Kant's thinking and writing. Once we know that works of Hume were known in Germany, how they were seen, and how they figured, if they did, in the thought of Kant's contemporaries, we will perhaps be able to make more sense of Kant's sometimes 2 cryptic remarks about Hume. But I believe it would be a serious mistake to look at Hume's reception in Germany from an exclusively Kantian point of view. Quite independent of the Kant-Hume relation philosophically important as it obviously is — it should prove interesting to see how Hume was received by his contemporaries in Germany, and whether their view of him reveals interesting aspects of his thought that were seen neither in Britain nor in France. It is clear, however, that the discussion of the reception of Hume in eighteenth-century Germany 47 is far too large an undertaking to be attempted in one article. Therefore I shall attempt to trace, by means of a descriptive bibliography, the rough outline of the history of his reception in just one German publication: the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (GGA). This journal seems to me a particularly good place to start an account of Hume's German Rezept ionsgeschichte because, first, it covers the entire period during which Hume could have influenced German thought. For the GGA began appearing in 1739, the very year in which Hume's Treatise was first published, and it is still being published today. Thus it can supply us with a continuous series of documents from 1739 to the present. Second, since the GGA was begun when Hannover, and thus Gottingen, were closely linked to Britain because of the Personalunion, it had a greater interest in British thought than most other German journals. Thus it reported British developments more quickly than did other German 4 journals. Third, and partially as a result of the British connection, the GGA very soon became one of the most prestigious German journals. What was being said in its reviews carried greater weight, or, at the very least, must be assumed to have been more widely read, than what was put forward in many other German publications. It is useful to divide Hume's early German influence into roughly four different periods. The first period lasted from 1739 to the early 5 seventies. This period saw the translation of most of Hume's works into French and German, and it may be characterized as the time of Hume's first reception. The second period began in the early seventies and lasted to the early eighties. During this time, Hume's Scottish critics Reid, Oswald and Beattie, as 48 well as their and Hume's critic, Joseph Priestley, became better known in Germany, and thus changed the German view of Hume. But this change appears also to have been connected with the more thorough discussion of Hume in Germany itself, and with the reception of Hume's posthumously published writings. The third period I see beginning with the appearance of Kant's first Critique (1781) and the Prolegomena (1783), which, at first, were seen by him as well as by his contemporaries as a continuation of the Humean enterprise. This clearly had significant effects on the way in which Hume was... (shrink)

This paper provides a history of the development of Harold Hochman and James Rodgers’ theory of Pareto optimal redistribution, which modeled income transfers as a public good. Pareto optimal redistribution provided an economic efficiency case for redistribution policy. After reviewing the emergence of Pareto optimal redistribution at the University of Virginia and its elaboration at the Urban Institute in the early 1970s, the paper describes James M. Buchanan’s efforts to grapple with his colleague’s ideas in the context of public choice (...) theory. Initially, Buchanan provided an even more expansive argument for redistribution than Hochman and Rodgers. By the mid-1970s, though, Buchanan largely rejected his earlier approach to redistribution and theorized new criteria for redistribution that were narrower in scope. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:25. HUME'S ANTINOMIES I There are many contradictions in Hume. So much is readily admitted by all Hume scholars. But there is little agreement on what these contradictions show about Hume's thought in general. Many interpretations are based upon the view that Hume's contradictions are signs of his carelessness or lack of thoroughness. He is seen either as having lost all interest in giving a comprehensive or consistent account (...) of human nature or as not having pushed far enough his analysis of the philosophical problems facing him. Other interpretations suggest that Hume, the "skeptic," has recklessly introduced these contradictions in order to confuse us. He is perhaps not altogether serious and is laughing at those who take too serious a view of the "science" of metaphysics and his own contribution 2 to it. Others again argue that the contradictions (or some fundamental class of them) are the consequence of Hume's philosophical presuppositions or his psychological method. Given his particular beliefs and his method, these contradictions had to arise with logical necessity. However, the general opinion seems to be that, if Hume is not to be dismissed as a merely negative skeptic whose philosophy is of no great consequence, he needs to be excused or defended, i.e. his contradictions, which are 4 seen as "inconsistencies," have to be explained away. His discussions of the self, causality, substance, or the relationship of reason and the passions must be, and — it is believed — can be shown not to be contradictory, if all the relevant factors are considered. However, reconstructions of Hume's analysis of the self or causality, for instance, which involve the explaining away of contradictions soon find themselves in a rather peculiar quandary, since they also have to show that Hume's own admissions of the contradictory nature of his analysis is mistaken. Such "defenses" issue only in other 26. accusations, namely that Hume, in addition to not having expressed himself very clearly in his writings, failed to understand them himself when he referred back to them. If only for this reason, I think that interpretations which involve an explaining away or minimizing of the contradictions in Hume are suspect. It is my opinion that Hume needs no such defenses or excuses -- at least not in so far as the most important contradictions are concerned. On the contrary, I believe that Hume can be understood properly, only if we take full account of them. I want in this paper to argue that there is in Hume a fundamental class of contradictions which he believed were neither accidental nor created by his analysis, but were essential characteristics of the human mind. The contradictions uncovered by his analysis can be understood only if they are recognised as one aspect of a more complex problematic. They must have a "deeper" significance for Hume because they are the symptoms of the infirmities... which are common to human nature (T265). These are 'Hume's 7 "antinomies. " In this analysis I have allowed myself to be guided by a more or less Kantian conception of "antinomy" and "antinomical." In fact, I believe that there is a definite similarity between Kant's doctrine of the "Antinomy of Pure Reason" and Hume's "operations" which are equally natural and necessary in the human mind, yet in some circumstances... directly contrary (T266). But the present paper is not so much a sustained comparison of Hume and Kant in this regard as it is an attempt to elucidate the g peculiar nature of several contradictions in Hume. For I believe that, if we have a better understanding of the nature of these contradictions, we will also be able to say something more definite about Hume's theory of mental activity and certain aspects of the relationship of skepticism and naturalism (or: Pyrrhonism and Newtonianism, destructive and constructive side, negative and positive phase, etc.) in his thought. To this end, I shall first 27. explain what I mean by "antinomy" here. Secondly, I shall show in what sense Hume was aware of having discovered something very much like an antinomical dimension in human nature, and, finally, I shall offer some suggestions as to the relevance of this... (shrink)

This work attempts to show that the Scottish common sense philosophers Thomas Reid, James Oswald and James Beattie, had a substantial influence upon the development of German thought during the period of the late enlightenment. Their works were thoroughly reviewed in German philosophical journals and translated into German soon after they had appeared in English. Whether it was Mendelssohn, a rationalist, Lossius, a materialist, Feder, a sensationalist, Tetens, a critical empiricist, or Hamann and Jacobi, irrationalist philosophers of faith, important philosophers (...) read the Scots and found them relevant for the solution of their problems. The Scots were seen as not just opposing Hume's skepticism, but also as complementing his more positive tenets. The most important chapter of this work shows that even Kant, who in this regard is known only for his devastating criticism of the Scots, learned much from them. It is argued that the Scottish influence opens a new perspective for the understanding of the German enlightenment, revealing how central were the twin problems of idealism versus realism, on the one hand, and of philosophical justification versus mere descriptive metaphysics, on the other. (shrink)

This paper is based on the linguistic and cultural experiences of three francophone writers: Ahmadou Kourouma (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Suzanne Dracius (Martinique), and Barry Jean Ancelet (Louisiana, United States). Their testimonies are discussed in the opening section. A reading of Jacques Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, enables us to analyze the experiences of these three writers, “whose relation to the French language is as vexed and varied as Derrida's own Algerian inheritance” (in the words of (...) an anonymous reviewer). It leads, in the next section, to a discussion of the impossibility of absolute monolingualism demanded by “linguistic imperialism,” the multiplicity inherent in any language, and the violence of a language which claims to be unique, while serving some ideology or power. In the last part, I address the double interdict to which Derrida believes education must respond, and the double entitlement for which it is responsible. (shrink)

Anastasius of Sinai is best known as a seventh century monk, theologian, and presbyter, whose writings defended the Chalcedonian creed, explored the union of God and humanity, and supported his congregation's faith after the Moslem invasion of Egypt. His Hexaemeron reveals yet another facet of his work: that of biblical scholarship. In this extensive commentary on the creation account of Genesis, Anastasius compares and discusses several Greek translations of the biblical text. Thus he becomes for us an important source of (...) information about the Septuagint and other Greek translations of the Bible circulating during the Byzantine Period, especially those incorporated by Origen into the Hexapla. The Hexaemeron also raises some possibilities about the early library at Sinai and invites a comparison with the famous Codex Sinaïticus. (shrink)

Title: BerkeleyPublisher: Oxford University PressISBN: 0192875469Author: J.O. UrmsonTitle: KantPublisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192801996Author: Roger Scruton.

This paper describes the local context of Kant’s scientific education. It provides an informed sense of what Kant’s scientific training was like by presenting each relevant member of the philosophy faculty at the university in Königsberg where Kant was a student, and the scientific activities each one was engaged in. On the basis of this picture, it is argued that Kant’s relationship with one of his teachers, Martin Knutzen, may have been much more negative or critical than is typically supposed. (...) This evaluation has important implications especially for understanding Kant’s early works in natural philosophy. (shrink)

Among educational theorists and philosophers there is growing interest in the work of Jacques Derrida and his philosophy of deconstruction. This important new book demonstrates how his work provides a highly relevant perspective on the aims, content and nature of education in contemporary, multicultural societies.

This monumental work features the most important German philosophers, jurists, pedagogues, literary critics, doctors, historians, and others whose work has philosophical significance who lived and wrote in the eighteenth century, covering the period between 1701 and 1801. The Dictionary includes work by philosophers whose mother tongue was German, were published in German or who lived in Germany for an extended period of time. Since historic borders are different from today's, the Dictionary includes authors born or who lived in places such (...) as Strasbourg, Danzig, Koenisberg, or Austria. Swiss philosophers are also covered. These philosophers published in German, Latin, French, and Hebrew. Since German philosophy cannot be understood without the influence of French and English philosophers, the work also includes translators and editors. Each entry aims to give the reader insight into the philosophers' life and contribution to the world of thought. Bibliographical references will help with further research. The entries include a biographical sketch, analysis of doctrines with emphasis on historical context, subsequent influences, and bibliography of further works and secondary literature. (shrink)