.As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also used her editorial position to philosophize. Her column entitled “Letters from New York” is particularly philosophical, including considerations of infinity, free will, time, nature, art, and history. She especially turned to German philosophers and intellectuals such as Kant, Schiller, Bettina von Arnim, Karoline von Günderrode, Jean (...) class='Hi'>Paul, Herder, and Hegel in an attempt to guide her readers to a rejection of slavery for the right philosophical reasons. I consider the influence of German philosophy on three particular themes in her writings: a Romantic-Spinozistic view of humans and nature; a Kantian conception of conscience; and a Hegelian description of the philosophy of history. (shrink)

Philosophers in the nineteenth century took laughter and its related concepts very seriously. Most philosophers before this period treated laughter as tangential to philosophy’s core concerns, but beginning with Kant’s immediate successors, the family of concepts relating to the laughable—including comedy, wit, irony, and ridicule—took on new significance. They went from describing something derivative about humans to telling us what we, in the most basic sense, are. Well-known philosophers such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche offered substantial treatments of these (...) topics; they were also taken up by lesser-known thinkers such as Rosenkranz, Solger, Jean Paul, Bahnsen, and Bergson. The nineteenth century also saw the introduction of humor in particular as a new and distinct aesthetic category. For several philosophers of this period, humor described nothing less than the relationship between the human and the divine and its implications for how humans should live. It described our awareness of our finitude—our fallibility, our petty concerns, our meaningless obsessions—and the amusement tinged with melancholy this awareness elicits. Despite this wealth of theorizing, the nineteenth century is often neglected in studies of the philosophy of laughter and humor. This essay introduces a volume of articles intended to remedy that neglect. (shrink)

This book offers an analysis of humor, comedy, and laughter as philosophical topics in the 19th Century. It traces the introduction of humor as a new aesthetic category inspired by Laurence Sterne’s "Tristram Shandy" and shows Sterne’s deep influence on German aesthetic theorists of this period. Through differentiating humor from comedy, the book suggests important distinctions within the aesthetic philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Solger, and Jean Paul Richter. The book links Kant’s underdeveloped incongruity theory of laughter to (...) Schopenhauer’s more complete account and identifies humor’s place in the pessimistic philosophy of Julius Bahnsen. It considers how caricature functioned at the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and ethics in Karl Rosenkranz’s work, and how Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made humor central not only to their philosophical content but also to its style. The book concludes with an explication of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s claim that laughter is a response to mechanical inelasticity. (shrink)

Hegel’s philosophical system turns to a species of the laughable at three critical junctures of his dialectic: comedy appears both at the conclusion of classical art and of Hegel’s discussion of poetry, and romantic art ends with humor. But we misunderstand these transitional moments unless we recognize that Hegel did not use comedy and humor synonymously. Comedy refers to a dramatic genre with a 2000-year-old history; humor was a relatively recent aesthetic phenomenon that had become central to philosophizing about art (...) in Hegel’s generation. Hegel also differentiated between subjective humor, which he associated with the novelist Jean Paul’s eccentric excesses, and objective humor. Focusing on the surprising examples Hegel offers of objective humor— from epigrams to Persian poetry to the obscure novels of T.G. von Hippel—I argue that we better understand Hegel’s “end of art” thesis by tracing ways both comedy and humor can end. By understanding those endings, we also come closer to imagining how art can continue. (shrink)

This article outlines a theory of naive probability. According to the theory, individuals who are unfamiliar with the probability calculus can infer the probabilities of events in an extensional way: They construct mental models of what is true in the various possibilities. Each model represents an equiprobable alternative unless individuals have beliefs to the contrary, in which case some models will have higher probabilities than others. The probability of an event depends on the proportion of models in which it occurs. (...) The theory predicts several phenomena of reasoning about absolute probabilities, including typical biases. It correctly predicts certain cognitive illusions in inferences about relative probabilities. It accommodates reasoning based on numerical premises, and it explains how naive reasoners can infer posterior probabilities without relying on Bayes's theorem. Finally, it dispels some common misconceptions of probabilistic reasoning. (shrink)

Mostramos, primero, que lo que caracteriza la pintura holandesa del siglo de oro, según Fromentin, no tiene que ver con la interpretación de la pintura neerlandesa por Hegel, sino con su visión de esta pintura como una transcripción ajena a cualquier consideración moral, emocional o intelectual. Mostramos, después, que la manera como la pintura neerlandesa del siglo xvii representa la guerra contribuye a la construcción de la identidad y de la conciencia nacional de los holandeses a través de una iconografía (...) propagandística. Por último, examinamos el estatuto del sentido moral en la pintura holandesa y nos preguntamos: ¿qué nos dicen las pinturas de género? ¿De qué nos hablan? (shrink)

Por medio de la práctica de la historia el presente se reúne con su actualidad a través de la “cuestión de la revolución”. Primero el fascismo, despuésla guerra y, finalmente, el estalinismo, están en el fondo de la reflexiónde Michel Foucault. En su obra, el retorno de la revolución es nuestroproblema, como bien lo muestra el comentario que da en enero de 1983 deltexto de Kant, “¿Qué es la Ilustración?”, donde las dos preguntas “¿Quées la Aufklärung?” y “¿Qué es la (...) Revolución?” son las dos formas bajo lascuales Kant ha planteado la cuestión de su propia actualidad. (shrink)

v. 1. Platon, Aristote, Suárez, Hobbes, Spinoza -- v. 2. Kant.

Supposons un auteur qui ait vécu au temps de Kant, qui ait influencé celui-ci, mais qui en même temps ait développé sa voie propre… Supposons que cet auteur ait critiqué certains moments de la pensée kantienne, en développant une voie originale sur des questions aussi importantes que celles de l’objectivité, voire du transcendantal… Un tel auteur devrait être considéré comme un protagoniste important dans l’histoire de la philosophie, nous offrant des possibilités de pensée originales. Il devrait jouir d’une grande notoriété (...) et être étudié par de nombreux commentateurs. Un tel auteur existe : il s’agit de Johann Nikolaus Tetens, qui n’est pourtant connu que de quelques spécialistes. (shrink)

Résumé — Cette étude a pour but de montrer comment la pensée de Wolff se distingue de celle de Leibniz, dans la deutsche Metaphysik, quand il s’agit d’affronter le problème de l’actualisation du monde. Dans ce nouveau contexte, la métaphore du miroir doit être appliquée de manière plus traditionnelle aux créatures et il faut concevoir autrement la manière dont opère le principe du meilleur. C’est en fonction de ces transformations que la théorie de l’harmonie universelle et le problème de la (...) causalité seront transmis à Kant.— This study aims to show how Wolff differs from Leibniz, in the context of Deutsche Metaphysik regarding the theme of world actualization. In this new context, the mirror metaphor must be applied more traditionally to all creatures, and the workings of the best of all possible worlds principle must be reviewed. It is on the basis of these transformations that the theory of universal harmony and the causality problem were transmitted to Kant. (shrink)

Pre-Socratic -- Socrates (469-399 B.C.) -- Plato (429-347 B.C.) -- Existentialism -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) -- The ship of Theseus -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- The cow in the field -- David Hume (1711-1776) -- Hedonism -- Prisoner's dilemma -- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) -- Hard determinism -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) -- The trolley problem -- Realism -- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -- Dualism -- Utilitarianism -- John Locke (1632-1704) -- Empiricism versus Rationalism -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) -- (...) René Descartes (1596-1650) -- A-Theory -- The liar paradox -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- Philosophy of language -- Metaphysics -- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) -- Free will -- Philosophy of humor -- The Enlightenment -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) -- The Sorites paradox -- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) -- Aesthetics -- Philosoph of culture -- Epistemology -- Twin Earth -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) -- Karl Marx (1818-1883) -- Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) -- Voltaire (1694-1778) -- Relativism -- Eastern philosophy -- Avicenna (980-1037) -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) -- Phenomenology -- Nominalism -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) -- Ethics -- Philosophy of science -- Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) -- Philosopy of religion. (shrink)

Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism's role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry into the philosophical (...) history of fanaticism a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organised into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the 'manosphere'; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm and misanthropy to the emotions, purity and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also...

"Bernard Groethuysen (1880-1946), philosophe d'origine allemande, partage, dès 1904, sa vie entre Berlin et Paris où il étudie la Révolution française et rencontre, grâce à Bergson, Alix Guillain (1876-1951), traductrice et journaliste à L'Humanité. Vivant avec leurs compagnes dans le phalanstère de la rue Campagne-Première, Groethuysen et Paulhan, devenus amis, oeuvrent à partir de 1920 à La Nouvelle Revue francaise, dont ce dernier prend la direction cinq ans plus tard : ils font découvrir Hôlderlin, Kassner, Kafka, Büchner, Musil... En 1927, (...) ils inaugurent leur collection "Bibliothèque des Idées" par l'essai majeur de Groethuysen, Origines de l'esprit bourgeois en France, "notre premier enfant", écrit-il à Paulhan. Dans son ultime lettre d'Allemagne, de 1931, il s'inquiète : "L'Histoire devrait nous donner des vacances. On en profiterait pour reprendre la vie." En août 1932, devant l'essor du nazisme, Groethuysen s'exile en France. Quant à Paulhan, le Front populaire le voit s'engager aux côtés de Jean Longuet, maire socialiste de Châtenay-Malabry. Arrive la guerre : Germaine et Jean Paulhan quittent leur maison, leur jardin, leurs animaux, dont Alix Guillain et Groethuysen, naturalisé en 1938, prennent soin. Après la défaite de l'Allemagne, le philosophe rêve encore d'utopie, mais il meurt le 17 septembre 1946. Les travaux de Groethuysen m'intéressaient, il s'intéressait aux miens", confiera Paulhan à Ponge. Ce volume prouve leur affectueuse amitié, fondée sur le travail en commun pour la NRF. Mais c'est également un document sur les réseaux intellectuels et politiques de l'entre-deux-guerres: Maria Van Rysselberghe et les amis de Gide, la princesse de Bassiano et la revue Commerce, Paul Desjardins et les Décades de Pontigny, Henry Church et la revue Mesures, Alix Guillain et le Parti communiste, Aline Mayrisch et le groupe de Colpach... "Je n'ai pas connu d'autre homme, écrira Paulhan, pour qui une idée, fût-elle évidemment fausse ou absurde, dès l'instant qu'un homme l'avait inventée, eût un tel prix. Il disait: "C'est une idée" d'un ton de gourmet. C'est qu'il pensait que la vérité ayant été une fois dans la suite des temps atteinte (par Hegel et - pour ce qui concernait son application au monde moderne - par Marx), il ne nous restait qu'à former des idées - plus ou moins agréables, curieuses, attendrissantes de faiblesse." (Mort de Groethuysen à Luxembourg, rédigé en 1946)."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) daily practice reveals that couples are willing to take greater risks than doctors if there is a higher chance of pregnancy. Arising from this is a frequently addressed issue regarding the embryo transfer strategy: single or double embryo transfer? The dilemma is faced by patients, as well as physicians, who are caught between the possibility of no pregnancies at all and facing the prospect of iatrogenic twin gestation. How could the couple's preferences concerning how many children (...) they would like be taken into account in determining the number of embryos transferred? How should the physician exercise his medical responsibility towards his patients and the unborn child? An effective approach could be to enhance a couple’s autonomy by advocating a medical beneficence that incorporates patients’ values. This can be achieved through a case-by-case approach in a deliberative process of decision-making which includes real patient-centred communication. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's description of humans' first encounter with each other depicts a peaceful recognition of mutual worth. G.W.F. Hegel's by contrast depicts a struggle to the death. I argue in this paper that Hegel's description of conflict results in an ethical theory that better preserves the distinctness of the other. I consider Christine Korsgaard's description of first encounters as a third alternative but conclude that Hegel's approach better accounts for the specific commitments we make--as family members, works, and citizens --in (...) ethical life. (shrink)

This article examines Sartre’s works in which his attempt to find an existentialist ethics is evident. Most of the clues to this project are to be found in texts published posthumously since during his lifetime he never managed to fulfil the promise he made at the end of Being and Nothingness. It will be argued that this existentialist ethics owes a strong debt to Kantian philosophy, even if it confronts more directly the historical dynamics of violence and oppression. Despite the (...) fact that this project is unfinished and only sketched out, it is possible to ask what Sartre’s direction of development would have been, pointing to the outline of a normative theory, Critical Existentialism, that could have its place in contemporary ethical debate. (shrink)

Luca M. Possati, Jean Grondin, Paul Ricoeur ; Aurore Dumont, François Dosse et Catherine Goldenstein, Paul Ricoeur: penser la mémoire ; Paul-Gabriel Sandu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Truth of Language. Heidegger, Ricoeur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement ; Paul Marinescu, Marc-Antoine Vallée, Gadamer et Ricoeur. La conception herméneutiquedu langage ; Witold Płotka, Saulius Geniusas, Th e Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology ; Delia Popa, Annabelle Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans (...) la philosophie de Husserl ; Maria GyemantDenis Seron, Ce que voir veut dire. Essai sur la perception ; Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Hans Friesen, Christian Lotz, Jakob Meier, Markus Wolf, Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der Kritischen Th eorie ; Bogdan MincăLarisa Cercel, John Stanley, Unterwegs zu einer hermeneutischen Übersetzungswissenschaft. Radegundis Stolze zu ihrem 60. Geburtstag ; Denisa Butnaru Johann Michel, Sociologie du soi. Essai d’herméneutique appliquée ; Ovidiu Stanciu, Jan Patočka, Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs. Trad. fr. Erika Abrams ; Mădălina Diaconu, Emmanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen, Phänomenologie. (shrink)

This article, corresponding to a part of the restitution of a financed international research project between France, Brazil, Canada, Italy and Belgium, aims to offer a modelisation and qualitative evaluation of mediation care settings based on an original methodological tool that involves identifying the typical games at the foundations of creativity, following a multidisciplinary perspective. Therapeutic mediations are settings or devices organised around a “pliable medium”, often artistic, like painting, modeling, writing, ​and theatre, which are very widespread in institutional practices, (...) both in France and abroad. The scientific objectives of this research consist in a multi-disciplinary exploration (anthropology, criminology, neuroscience, clinical psychology) of the process of creative symbolisation understood as a process of transformation involving play. According to this orientation, play can be defined as a psychic process whereby a subjective experience can be explored with pleasure, and consequently symbolised and appropriated. Our fundamental and original hypothesis is that play is at the source of the creative process, conceived as a work of metabolisation by the psyche of playful experiences during the different stages of life. The review of the understanding of play in psychoanalysis, anthropology, criminology and neuroscience emphasises the richness of this model and the importance of reflecting on the typical games in the field of psychic care. A clinical example of treatment in a pictorial therapeutic mediation setting of a child with psychotic disorders makes it possible to identify a number of typical games as well as the modalities of interpretation of the therapists through play. These multidisciplinary studies lead to the presentation of a general table of typical games, and these first results highlight the richness of identifying typical games in clinical settings. Ultimately, the multidisciplinary approach shows the interest of the model of play in the evaluation of therapeutic mediation settings, with a convergence of the different disciplines emphasising the pertinence of this model. The scientific impact of this research overlaps with its societal impact, through the development of innovative tools for evaluating therapeutic mediations, in order to take account of the evolution of the different forms of social expression of psychic suffering. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Maurice Merleau-Ponty undertook to interrogate Marxism, both in its rhetoric and in its practice. Our project, which is essentially didactic in nature and, for all intents and purposes, free of any secondary literature, consists in following his intellectual development in this respect, from his first political writings in 1945 until 1960 - only a few months before his sudden death, which occurred a hundred days before the erection of the Berliner Mauer. But (...) why is it relevant today to revisit contributions that approach, reach, or even exceed three quarters of a century? It is because the author, and this is certainly not insignificant from the point of view of the history of ideas, saw clearly before almost anyone else. In such a way that he succeeded, by deconstructing the intellectual framework of the System, in identifying, inscribed from the beginning in its own « software », the inevitable asphyxiation of the Soviet regime. This in turn requires us to take note - which Marx himself would not have disavowed, as a contrario - that one cannot unquestionably gag, rooted in the fabric of man, the Will-to-Freedom of these families born of History and Geography, which are the peoples and nations. (shrink)

Bien que Hegel occupe dans les préoccupations philosophiques d'aujourd'hui une place prépondérante, nos contemporains sont peu enclins à accepter, et même à comprendre, ses audaces métaphysiques et systématiques. Tout aussi inacceptable paraît, à première vue, sa prétention d'être l'héritier légitime de Kant, le couronnement nécessaire de l'idéalisme allemand. L'auteur du présent article ne s'attaque pas au problème de la valeur du système et de la méthode de Hegel. C'est en historien qu'il essaie de dégager leur allure propre, en les étudiant (...) à la lumière de l'évolution de l'idéalisme allemand à partir de Kant. Il montre combien les prétentions métaphysiques de Hegel, vues dans cette perspective, sont naturelles. Ce n'est pas, pourtant, que son analyse confirme l'idée d'une connexion nécessaire entre les systèmes. Il souligne l'originalité profonde des grandes idéalistes, dont chacun cherche sans doute son inspiration dans la problématique de son prédécesseur, mais plutôt sous la forme d'un schéma de pensée, qu'il étoffe d'une manière très personnelle. Chez les idéalistes, l'enthousiasme messianique de l'Aufklärung prend une allure presque eschatologique ; ce trait explique pour une part l'ardeur qu'ils ont mise à édifier leur système, ainsi que la tendance de Hegel à présenter sa philosophie comme le sommet de l'histoire. Dans son interprétation de Hegel, l'auteur s'appuie surtout sur la Préface et l'Introduction de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit. Pour éclairer celles ci à la lumière de l'histoire de l'idéalisme, il suit l'itinéraire dressé par Hegel lui-même dans son premier essai philosophique, sur la différence entre le système de Fichte et celui de Schelling. Il décrit l'évolution de la philosophie depuis Kant jusqu'à Hegel comme une réalisation progressive de l'idée d'identité absolue, que Hegel hérite de Schelling mais qu'il interprète d'une manière différente. Cette analyse permet à l'auteur de préciser la méthode de Hegel, les relations entre la Phénoménologie et le système, ainsi que les concepts de vérité, de sujet, d'esprit, d'en soi et de pour soi, dont Hegel se sert pour définir l'Absolu. Par la force même des choses, elle trace également l'évolution de l'idée de Dieu dans l'idéalisme. La conception hégélienne de Dieu est susceptible d'interprétations diverses. Tout en ne cachant pas ses préférences personnelles, l'auteur estime que l'état des études hégéliennes ne permet pas encore de se prononcer avec certitude. C'est sur cette invitation au travail qu'il termine son article. (shrink)

Kant and Hegel share a common foundational idea: they believe that the authority of normative claims can be justified only by showing that these norms are self-imposed or autonomous. Yet they develop this idea in strikingly different ways: Kant argues that we can derive specific normative claims from the formal idea of autonomy, whereas Hegel contends that we use the idea of freedom not to derive, but to assess, the specific normative claims ensconced in our social institutions and practices. Exploring (...) these claims, I argue that each approach encounters certain difficulties. I then argue that Nietzsche develops a theory of normative authority that avoids these potential difficulties. Nietzsche’s theory proceeds, in part, by reconciling the most compelling aspects of the Kantian and Hegelian accounts—aspects that have seemed, to many interpreters, to be incompatible. The resultant theory generates a unique and fruitful account of normative authority. (shrink)

Cuando en el horizonte de un seminario truncado por la muerte sobre el artículo de Kant: ¿Qué es la Ilustración? Habermas plantea el problema de la modernidad en terminos de las conciencia de la discontinuidad del tiempo. Foucault lo hace en terminos del Ethos, reanudando así una vieja tradición que se enraiza en Aristóteles y Teofrasto, y que culmina, de alguna manera, en La Bruyère.

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the (...) most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste. (shrink)

In Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, Roberto Esposito develops a destructionist reading of political philosophy, interested in tracing modernity's attempt to constitute the political as a radical negation of our exposure to others. If the task of contemporary political thinking is to interrupt the myth of the common, without falling back completely into the negative and self-destructive power of immunization, political philosophy must be confronted with itself, searching within itself for the traces and points of departure – hermeneutic (...) supports – for such a destructive gesture. Esposito finds and develops these traces in a genealogical line that, starting with Hobbes, goes through Rousseau and Kant and ends with Heidegger and Bataille. By way of this genealogy, Esposito intends to show how modern philosophy would already have started to interrupt the dialectics between the immunization paradigm and the myth of the common. In this paper I argue that Hegel is not only an interesting figure but also an obligatory step in this effort, and in doing so I will pay particular attention to a notion of being-in-common that arises in The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate from his criticism of the violence of law. Hence, Hegel is read here in the light of an unexplored relationship to Esposito's work in Communitas. (shrink)

Why are Kant and Hegel so notoriously hard to understand? It has hitherto gone unnoticed that Kant and Hegel account for philosophy's necessary obscurity by recasting what they think is an ancient tradition of philosophical esotericism. Reconstructing these accounts generates new interpretations of Kant's deduction of freedom and Hegel's deduction of the concept of science . Both deductions aim to make philosophy universally accessible. Each raises, but fails to settle, the question of philosophy's exclusions. ;Following a procedure of Cavell's, I (...) offer a thematics of esotericism, permitting a wide variety of esotericisms. Recent discussion knows only one: elitist obfuscation. I trace several eighteenth century controversies, showing that elitist obfuscation was rejected by Kant and others, but that other esotericisms remained available. I argue against the interpretation of Kant as a secret obfuscatory elitist. ;I then characterize the shift in Kant's thinking leading to his deduction of freedom and his account of esotericism. Building upon work by Allison and Henrich, I interpret the fact of reason as a practical deduction, consisting in an actualization of the capacity for freedom. The first-personal character of the deduction underlies Kant's explicit recasting of esotericism in his response to Schlosser's Seventh Letter esotericism . Kant's metaphysics of morals is esoteric because it is accessible only through the fact of reason: the first-personal actualization of the capacity for freedom shared by all human beings. Kant locates philosophy's "true secret", which Plato grasped only obscurely, in this esoteric, yet universally accessible, practical metaphysics. ;Finally, I interpret Hegel's Phenomenology as a practical deduction whose first-personal character is expressed by the Hegelian "we". This avoids the circularity problem facing interpretations based upon Kant's theoretical deduction of the categories, and enables the reconstruction of Hegel's account of the esotericism of determinate negation. I argue that Fichte's and Schelling's accounts of esotericism endanger Kant's commitment to universal accessibility and that Hegel seeks to preserve Kant's commitment without abandoning their insights. However, neither Kant nor Hegel accounts sufficiently for the resistance their work encounters. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that changes in academic philosophy in the twentieth century reflected a process in which a discipline that had been earlier closely tied to institutional religion became increasingly laicized and secularized.1 In line with this idea, the idealist philosophy that had flowered within British philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century can look like the last and ill-fated attempt of a Victorian religious sensibility to guard itself against a post-Darwinian God-less view of the world and ourselves.2 (...) Such a view generally represents, I believe, the attitudes of many contemporary philosophers to British philosophy prior to the transforming work of Russell and Moore of about one hundred years ago. Against the luxuriant and mystical metaphysics of the idealists, fuelled by religious longing, the “new philosophy”, it is thought, affirmed the brute materiality of the world and its independence from mind, be it divine or human. A similar development is commonly understood as carrying from Hegel through the “young Hegelians” to the mature Marx. Thus for Feuerbach, for example, Hegel’s idealist doctrine that “nature or reality is posited by the idea” was “merely the rational expression of the theological doctrine that nature is created by God”.3 Hegel’s philosophy had thus provided a “last place of refuge and ... rational support of theology”, and escaping from this condition (more prison than refuge) required rejecting idealism and confronting the fact that “the true relation of thinking and being is simply this. Being is subject and thinking a predicate but a predicate such as... (shrink)

resumo Esse artigo busca mostrar, em contraste com uma tradição já estabelecida, que a filosofia clássica alemã, longe de fazer do indivíduo simples apêndice do Estado, propõe uma verdadeira teoria do Estado de direito , e isso, antes mesmo que esta tenha sido formulada pelos juristas liberais. Mas se trata de uma teoria crítica, que põe em evidência o caráter ilusório da idéia liberal segundo a qual a sociedade civil poderia furtarse inteiramente à tutela do Estado. Para Fichte e para (...) Hegel, mas também para Kant, apenas um Estado verdadeiro, com os atributos de sua potência, pode ser um verdadeiro Estado de Direito. palavras-chave Fichte; Kant; Hegel; sociedade civil; liberalismo; Estado de direito. (shrink)

Mit ihrer Studie liefert Maria Daskalaki eine systematische Rekonstruktion des Vernunftbegriffs in Hegels "Phänomenologie des Geistes", die der Absicht des Philosophen gerecht wird, den Gegensatz bzw. die Antinomie als die unüberschreitbare Grenze der Philosophie zu überwinden. Insofern widerspricht sie nachdrücklich weit verbreiteten Interpretationen der "Phänomenologie", in denen die Einheit und logische Argumentationsstruktur des Werkes in Frage gestellt wird. Die Autorin stellt sich die anspruchsvolle Aufgabe, die Übergänge zwischen den Gestalten des Bewusstseins ohne Anlehnung auf ein dogmatisch angenommenes philosophisches Prinzip (...) nachzuvollziehen. Deswegen setzt sie bei den „natürlichen Bestimmungen“ des Bewusstseins an, wie sie Hegel selbst in der Einleitung festlegt. In ihrer Studie verfolgt sie detailliert die Gestalten des Bewusstseins bis zum Vernunftkapitel und führt die These einer Bewegung von der Substanz zum Subjekt und umgekehrt ein, die alle Gestalten des Bewusstseins durchdringt. Anhand dieser These wird der Versuch Hegels – im Unterschied zu Kant und Fichte – beleuchtet, den Dualismus zu überwinden und die tiefere Einheit zwischen Denken und Sein zu begründen, ohne auf irrationale Mittel zurückzugreifen. Durch ihren innovativen Interpretationsvorschlag zeigt die Autorin überzeugend die Einheit und logische Stringenz der Hegelschen Vernunftbegründung in der "Phänomenologie" auf. (shrink)

This paper examines Hegel’s claim that philosophy “has no other object than God‘ as a claim about the essentiality of the idea of God to philosophy. On this idealist interpretation, even atheistic philosophies would presuppose rationally evaluable ideas of God, despite denials of the existence of anything corresponding to those ideas. This interpretation is then applied to Hegel’s version of idealism in relation to those of two predecessors, Leibniz and Kant. Hegel criticizes the idea of the Christian God present within (...) his predecessors in terms of his own heterodox reading of the Trinity in order to resolve a paradox affecting them -- the “paradox of perspectivism‘. (shrink)

En este artículo se aborda la importancia del reconocimiento mutuo en la filosofía socio-política contemporánea, desde la perspectiva de Ricoeur, y se marca la recepción, pero también la diferencia, respecto de las propuestas de Hegel y su actualización en Honneth. Destacamos que el aporte peculiar de Ricoeur consiste en su énfasis, puesto tanto en el lado activo como en el pasivo del reconocimiento, en un camino que atiende sobre todo a las huellas del don y su agradecimiento, como también a (...) la centralidad del recibir. El nervio es una cierta "generosidad del deseo", su carácter festivo-ceremonial y simbólico, que culmina en estadosdepaz y ágape. El reconocimiento así posibilitado en un régimen de sobreabundancia se revela como fundadorderelación. (shrink)

lydia maria child was one of the best-known women intellectuals of the nineteenth century on the American scene, and yet her name is not often heard today.1 Although it might seem gratuitous to attempt to label a thinker—and, in some cases, not only unnecessary, but demeaning—there is ample reason to think that Child can be called a transcendentalist, as well as an early abolitionist and feminist. In any case, the independent and very forward-looking work of this woman thinker (...) of her time, it can be argued, deserves further consideration and is not without philosophical import.Child’s name comes up now because there is renewed interest in a number of circles in the efforts of abolitionists, both black.. (shrink)

This 2007 book examines the possibilities for the rehabilitation of Hegelian thought within analytic philosophy. From its inception, the analytic tradition has in general accepted Bertrand Russell's hostile dismissal of the idealists, based on the claim that their metaphysical views were irretrievably corrupted by the faulty logic that informed them. These assumptions are challenged by the work of such analytic philosophers as John McDowell and Robert Brandom, who, while contributing to core areas of the analytic movement, nevertheless have found in (...) Hegel sophisticated ideas that are able to address problems which still haunt the analytic tradition after a hundred years. Paul Redding traces the consequences of the displacement of the logic presupposed by Kant and Hegel by modern post-Fregean logic, and examines the developments within twentieth-century analytic philosophy which have made possible an analytic re-engagement with a previously dismissed philosophical tradition. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo analizaremos las nociones de angustia y desesperación desarrolladas por Sören Kierkegaard en El concepto de angustia y en el Tratado de la desesperación con el fin de resaltar la importancia de las mismas para el autor danés y, a su vez, vislumbraremos su papel determinante en las relaciones concretas con el prójimo descritas por Jean-Paul Sartre en El ser y la nada. Nuestra hipótesis de trabajo establece que Sartre sigue el cuadro de la desesperación (...) kierkergaardiana y que por ello condena al fracaso las relaciones con el prójimo. Nosotros consideramos que las nociones de angustia y desesperación de Kierkegaard analizadas en este artículo constituyen el meollo del problema en el autor francés, pues, sólo a partir del estudio de ellas, se podrá discutir e intervenir el concepto de mala fe en Sartre que determina el fracaso de las relaciones concretas con el prójimo en El ser y la nada. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHere, I pursue consequences, for the interpretation of Sellars’ critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’, of separating the modal significance that Kant attributed to empirical intuition from th...

A literary and philosophical examination of art's relation to the absolute as it is explicitly addressed in the works of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.