Explores the metaphysical, epistemological, and hermeneutical theories of Schelling’s final system concerning the nature and meaning of religious mythology.

_Explores the metaphysical, epistemological, and hermeneutical theories of Schelling’s final system concerning the nature and meaning of religious mythology._.

Kant's noncognitive argument based on practical reason claims that moral considerations alone suffice to justify the idea of personal immortality as a postulate. Some recent objections are considered here that have charged him with overstepping his own distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. After examining the arguments, Kant is exonerated of having violated his own principles. More troubling, however, is the peculiarity involved in postulating an infinite progression toward a goal whose attainment, by hypothesis, would undermine the very foundations of morality (...) (which for Kant always requires the agonistic condition of struggling to improve one's lower nature). It is argued that this paradox necessitates a reexamination of some tacit cultural presuppositions underlying Kant's conception of the soul. Finally, an examination is made of the thought of Kitarō Nishida, whose Zen Buddhist–inspired dialectic of the basho (logical "place") provides an alternative perspective from which to reconsider the postulate of immortality. Nishida, like Kant, rigorously maintains the phenomenonnoumenon distinction, yet his examination of ethics leads him to postulate an eventual sublation of the "soul" principle. It is concluded that Kant's postulate of immortality, while plausible enough on its own terms, is limited by a Western cultural bias and therefore fails in the end to be compelling. (shrink)

Schelling is best known in the Anglo-American philosophical community for work he did in his twenties, between 1797 and 1803. During this time, he appropriated Fichte’s standpoint of transcendental idealism and developed some of its implications for the philosophies of nature, history, and art. Schelling did not claim at this stage to be formulating an original standpoint of his own, but simply to be extending the Fichtean principles in new directions. In this endeavor he was quite successful, and for a (...) brief period he was lionized as philosophy’s youngest and brightest hope. He has been recognized since then as an important pioneer in the post-Kantian German idealist movement. (shrink)

Dieter Henrich has presented persuasive evidence that Hegel’s logic does not, in practice, provide a linear deduction of logical categories, but rather borrows thought-forms proper to subsequent stages in order to effect its dialectical transitions. In reply, I argue that the presented order of the categories is already implicitly sublated by a deep structure of circularity that determines the development. Thus, Hegel’s dialectic is deliberately nonlinear in terms of both its content and its method. One can therefore acknowledge the astuteness (...) of Henrich’s many insights without regarding them as telling criticisms of the system as Hegel intended it. (shrink)