Since at least Galileo, not only the technological abilities of natural science but the meaning of science's claims have been shaken to their very foundations, according to Edmund Husserl. We know what scientists say, but we do not know what they mean. Nor, Husserl claims, do they know what they mean. They do what works. They measure, they tabulate, they calculate. But they do not thereby really know the world. And since they are the standing authorities of knowledge in our (...) culture, we do not have a reliable referent to which we can turn for an appropriate standard of meaning. At some level we realize that this piece of paper in my hand is not precisely a geometrical rectangle, in which all four angles are exactly ninety degrees and both sets of sides are exactly parallel to each other, but for the most part we simply identify it as a rectangle and move on. In our everyday experience, Husserl would say, we tend to conflate geometrical space and experiential space. We do not, however, have any real idea why we can do so effectively, even if we are engineers or physicists. Geometrical shapes are categorically different from the shapes we daily experience in our interactions with the world. No matter how carefully I draw lines or cut edges, I can never make a piece of paper (or, for that matter, a cow) that exactly meets the requirements of a geometrical rectangle. Even the fact that geometrical rectangles are, by definition, plane figures, which means they only have two dimensions, rather than the (at least) three that structure any perceptible thing, prevents perceptible things from ever meeting the strict requirements of geometrical figures. Given this basic disparity, what is it that justifies our using these geometrical figures to describe the perceptible world in which we live? If we want to know the world, Husserl tells us, we need to know what our scientific claims mean. This, he claims, is the only way we can meaningfully ground our increasingly science-governed lives. Plan of the Dissertation In this dissertation, then, I undertake the project of identifying more precisely what this problem is and offering some solution to it. My argument will have three steps. I shall argue first that to solve the problem Husserl so helpfully lays out, we need to go back to Aristotle's Metaphysics; second, that although Aristotle proposes a solution for the metaphysical problems implied by using mathematics to know perceptible things, this solution fails to answer the questions as he presents them, even if it is broadly interpreted; and, finally, that there are within Aristotle's metaphysical thought implicit resources for constructing this missing metaphysical justification, and that these can be found explicitly in his way of thinking about the distinction between actuality and potency, in his discussion of the metaphysical implications of knowing, and in his discussion of material causality. The basic problem is that mathematical objects and perceptible things are different kinds of things. We would not say that `Joe's idea is hungry' in anything other than a very metaphorical way, because we recognize that ideas are not the kinds of things that get hungry. Hunger is the province of animals. Ideas are not animals. Ideas, then, cannot be hungry. Mathematical objects and perceptible things, though, while also different kinds of things, are regularly combined. We do say, `This piece of paper is rectangular', although it would seem that pieces of paper (or cows) are not the kinds of things that could be rectangles. In this dissertation, I begin in chapter one with a careful recapitulation of Husserl's articulation of this problem of thoughtlessly conflating mathematical and experiential things. Husserl takes this to be the root of the crisis, not only of the meaning of the sciences, but also of all human meaning. I use Husserl's articulation, rather than simply explaining the problem as I understand it and moving directly to Aristotle's Metaphysics, where I see the roots of its solution, in part because Husserl's work was so influential in shaping my own understanding of the problem. More importantly, though not unrelatedly, Husserl helpfully contextualizes the problem both culturally and historically. He tells us why this matters, and he tells us how it seems to have happened. Both of these seem to me to be crucial to any ultimately successful resolution to the problem. In Husserl's articulation of the problem, he identifies Galileo as responsible for taking it as `obvious' that the `universally valid' shapes of geometry constituted the objectively real component of all things. He argues that Galileo inherits a tradition in which our approximations to `limit shapes' and the increased precision in replicating these made possible by technological advances gradually meld together, such that we learn to take the world to be fundamentally a mathematical manifold. In taking over this tradition, Galileo simply presumes that the world is fundamentally mathematizable and sets about developing methods by which even the concrete sensory plena through which any experienced shape is necessarily presented can be mathematized. Since we take as `given' these assumptions, whose origin Husserl attributes to Galileo, and which remain unjustified metaphysically, Husserl's tracing of the development of these assumptions can help us notice and evaluate them. This will be helpful in recovering the meaning of our mathematical scientific claims, and, ultimately, in recovering the meaning of our non-scientific claims. While Husserl helpfully identifies the problem and begins the historical tracing he proposes with his analysis of Galileo's assumptions, he does not complete the latter project, in part because he died so soon after beginning it. His project in the Crisis, as with many of the projects he undertook as a scholar, gets developed in many different directions, without any of these being completed. He proposes a philosophical-historical retracing of the assumptions of geometry, from its earliest inception through the present. He proposes a simultaneous careful consideration of the metaphysical assumptions at work in mathematical science and the justification necessary for it. He proposes transcendental phenomenology as the way to correctly understand the correlation between mathematical claims and the perceptible world they describe. While the development of transcendental phenomenology and the ways that it can help us come to understand more correctly our interaction with the world are fascinating, in this dissertation I want to focus on Husserl's other proposals toward a solution, namely the philosophical-historical retracing of assumptions and the metaphysical analysis. Specifically, I want to focus on the metaphysical analysis that Aristotle performs on the problems generated by presuming that one can use mathematical objects to know perceptible things. In chapter two, then, I explain more thoroughly the first two proposals toward a solution that Husserl proposes, and defend my claim that this metaphysical analysis in Aristotle is an appropriate continuation of Husserl's project. For completeness, Husserl's project needs, in addition to his tracing of the historical sources of lazy assumptions, an Aristotelian metaphysical analysis of what material and mathematical things are, to clarify whether and how mathematics could be appropriately (or inappropriately) applied to material things. In chapter three, I turn to Aristotle's Metaphysics and cull from its pages, primarily from Books III and XIII, the basic metaphysical questions and problems that arise in Aristotle's discussion of the use of mathematical objects to know perceptible things. I organize these into six central questions: 1) What exactly are the mathematical objects Aristotle discusses? 2) Are these mathematical objects substances? 3) Are these mathematical objects separable from perceptible things? 4) Are these mathematical objects constituents of perceptible things? 5) Are these mathematical objects principles or causes of perceptible things? 6) Is knowledge of these mathematical objects somehow knowledge of perceptible things? From these six questions, the basic problem that emerges is that knowledge of mathematical objects requires these objects to be exact, unchangeable, and indivisible, whereas the perceptible things of which they are supposed to provide knowledge are less determinate, changeable, and divisible. It seems like the mathematical objects would have to be separate from these perceptible things to be objects of mathematical knowledge, but if they were so, it is unclear how knowledge of them could be taken to also be knowledge of the perceptible things. These mathematical objects would have to somehow be part of the causal structure of these perceptible things for knowledge of them to be knowledge of these perceptible things. In chapter four, I take up the solution that Aristotle proposes for these difficulties, the `insofar as'/ `qua' (hêi) structure of knowing. Various attributes belong to a given perceptible thing in virtue of various ways of its being. Being green belongs to a plant, for example, insofar as it is a surface. The method of abstraction (aphairesis) allows us to separate out in thought the relevant way of being of the thing, so as to make the appropriate attribution to it. We can know a thing as something, even if that `something' is not itself actually separable. This proposal of Aristotle's begins to resolve some of the metaphysical problems that chapter three articulated. It is not itself, however, metaphysically justified. While it seems that we do regularly make these kinds of claims about perceptible things, it is not clear what justifies us in separating in thought what is not separate in fact, nor just how these various ways of being belong to the unified perceptible thing such that knowledge of them provides knowledge of the thing. This difficulty in giving a metaphysically coherent account of Aristotle's model of abstraction pervades the scholarly literature. Aristotle, it seems, does not have a satisfactory solution to the troubling metaphysical problems he raises about using mathematical objects to know perceptible things. In my fifth, and final, chapter, I undertake to construct from other texts in Aristotle's corpus a metaphysical justification for his model of abstraction that can, in fact, resolve the metaphysical problems that he and Husserl have raised. I find this metaphysical justification in an implicit claim of Aristotle's, to be found in the same section where he proposes his model of abstraction as a solution (Met XIII.3): the claim that mathematical objects are potential substances. I examine what these potential substances are, how they are related to their own actualizations and how they are related to the perceptible things of which they are supposed to provide knowledge, relying primarily on Metaphysics VIII and IX. I consider how knowledge of these could be possible, using texts from De Anima III, and then explore a connection between these potencies and the material cause of perceptible things in Physics II.9. I conclude at last that we are, in fact, justified in using mathematical objects to describe perceptible things. These objects, however, are mathematically describable only insofar as they are material, by which Aristotle means, insofar as they are potential, rather than actual. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's last essay about art, Eye and Mind, refers to many painters, to painting, and even to sculpture. Yet there is hardly any use of the traditional categories used in art criticism to categorize artistic movements or to evaluate painters' contributions to their period. Instead, he uses terms such as `body' and `flesh' that are alien to that tradition, thereby indicating that he clearly intends to go beyond commenting on and assessing the artistic value of the works he mentions. (...) Instead, the essay is a reevaluation of meaning of painting as a whole. Merleau-Ponty says that all painting from Lascaux to our day has been a celebration of `the visible.' However, to understand what he means by `the visible' involves considerable complexity. The standard by which Merleau-Ponty evaluates painting emerges from his phenomenological and ontological research into perception. I argue that in fact Eye and Mind answers a question that arose in his first major book concerning the relationship between consciousness and nature. Because the evolution of the ideas underlying the Eye and Mind's answer is so vast, the goal of this dissertation is to trace the thread leading from his earlier work in order to provide a unifying viewpoint that will ground an adequate understanding of the essay's various arguments. The dissertation argues that Merleau-Ponty's notion of the Gestalt or structure is the framework for understanding the origin and depth of the aperçus developed in Eye and Mind. Ironically perhaps, this notion is not mentioned in Eye and Mind. As if it had lost its original meaning, it is only referred to indirectly and vaguely in terms of transcendence. Nevertheless, the main issue settled in The Structure of Behavior dominated his understanding of the body in The Phenomenology of Perception, and underwent a transformation when Merleau-Ponty discovered language as a diacritical structure. This made possible the radical use he made of it in Eye and Mind without expressly mentioning it. Once the interpretation of Gestalt in relation to Paul Klee and Rudolf Arnheim had been worked out, this dissertation could use this notion--usually undervalued in Merleau-Ponty scholarship--to make sense of Eye and Mind's main contention in light of the interpretive reconstruction of the notions of expression, reversibility, body, and flesh Merleau-Ponty elaborated on the way to that essay. Part I of the dissertation deals with the phenomenology of the Gestalt structure prior to Merleau-Ponty's ontological turn, which in turn frames and underpins many of the insights achieved in this pre-ontological period, especially those about the body. The first two chapters introduce the notion of structure as it emerges in its application to behavior, and explain Merleau-Ponty's own contribution to the notion through the overcoming of earlier psychologists' static reduction of the notion to the physical level. The third and last chapter of Part I discusses the structural dimension of the body. There are two extraordinary things in Eye and Mind: the first is Paul Valery's statement that the painter "takes his body with him"; and the second is the analogy between the problems of the body and the problems of painting, by which Merleau-Ponty proposes that understanding one is indispensable for understanding the other. To clarify his proposal we have to return to The Phenomenology of Perception's analysis of the body according to embodied intentionality or motor intentionality, in which the body operates according to an "I can" that must replace the mechanical reaction to a stimulus. Here Merleau-Ponty was helped by Kurt Goldstein's insight into the body as a Gestalt. The dissertation illustrates what this could mean for the structure of a painting by using examples. What was formerly Part II profiles Merleau-Ponty's embodied notion of the Gestalt form against Arnheim's aprioristic account, which explains the relationship between consciousness and nature through an isomorphism that is even more ambitiously totalizing than the ones envisioned by the original Gestalt psychologists. Because of the detailed nature of our account this part is in two appendices. What is now Part II focuses on the problem of painting more directly. Using both the Notes de Cours (where Merleau-Ponty's most extensive comments on Paul Klee occur) and Paul Klee's own celebrated Notes, Chapter Four on Paul Klee reconsiders the relationship between consciousness and nature as the one between the painter and the world. Klee interpreted abstraction in terms of Gestalt as a form of transcendence involving the visible and the invisible, in contrast to Sartre's idea of transcendence, which also employs the figure/ground formation of the Gestalt. In Eye and Mind the expression of painting is interpreted as "a `visible' to the second power, a carnal essence or icon of the first." So Chapters Five and Six discuss the notion of structure from the viewpoint of expression. The doubling of expression in painting is seen first as analogous to philosophy as a hyper-reflection, and then in the linguistic distinction between le langage parlé et le langage parlant, which allowed Merleau-Ponty to interpret and generalize the model of expressive language via the diacritical structure of language and not restrict expressive language to bodily gestures. Rather than a return to the original (as The Phenomenology may have suggested), the point of this doubling aspect of expression is the recognition of the qualities of reversibility and difference that constitute `depth.' With the clarification of terms such as `perceptual faith' and `style,' Chapter Seven introduces the notion of reversibility before exploring its meaning, specifically in the second chapter of Eye and Mind. In Chapter Eight the earlier focus on the beginning of the definition of a painting as "a `visible' to the second power, a carnal essence or icon of the first," shifts to the meaning of the term "icon." This rounds off the meaning of `depth' and completes the exploration of the theme of the Gestalt structure. Now it becomes clear that the meaning of `depth' is articulated as the depth between the visible and the invisible, because the model used to understand depth is the by now very familiar basic articulation of the perceptual Gestalt: the articulation of a figure over a ground. Like a stain on a rug--in painting, in history, in philosophy, in language, or in perceptual faith--the crystallization of what appears always disguises an invisible dimension, whose invisibility is what makes the visibility of the visible possible. Chapter Nine then concludes the dissertation. It first considers Jean-Luc Marion's use of the icon in painting, in which, as in our interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on depth, uses his own idea of the depth between the visible and the invisible; and second, it responds to observations on Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of art by Veronique Fotí and criticisms of it by Michel Haar. (shrink)

Title: Martin Heidegger's Critique of Freedom Author: Charles Robinson Advisor: Professor Susan Shell Boston College Political Science Department This is a study of thought and politics of Martin Heidegger. It presents an examination of his understanding of freedom, principally as he expressed it in Being and Time, but also considers some of his subsequent essays and lectures, as well as his Rectorate Address. Ever since Heidegger's public embrace of National Socialism, his defenders and critics have argued about the possible relation (...) between his thinking and his infamous political commitments. While many of his critics have linked his commitments to an alleged lack of understanding of freedom, some of his scholarly defenders have sought to present interpretations of his concept of freedom at odds with his infamous politics, in order to separate his thought from any association with Nazism. The conclusions of these critics and defenders of Heidegger are both mistaken: in Being and Time Heidegger sought the meaning of being in the authentic experience of human self-determination revealed by the conscience, which he worked out as "forward running resolve." It was this militant concept of freedom that grounded his project for a destined community of battle to be championed by a free corps of freedom fighters, and led him to embrace, in the very name of freedom, the tyranny of Hitler's new Reich. The study of Heidegger's concept of authentic freedom reveals that, far from lacking any understanding of freedom, it was rather a central theme and concern of his philosophical efforts, and that his infamous political commitments were indeed its necessary and coherent practical consequence. Heidegger's thought thus poses a more trenchant and pressing challenge to liberal (and leftist) politics than many of his critics and defenders appreciate. There have been comparatively few sustained thematic treatments of Heidegger's understanding of freedom in English. This study accordingly hopes to contribute to an understanding of this central theme of Heidegger's philosophical efforts, which not only reveals their necessary connection to his politics, but also promises to improve our access to the coherent intelligibility of his thought as a whole. (shrink)

In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the project of developing virtue and of being virtuous is always realized in one's immediate, particular circumstances. Given that perception is the faculty that gains access to the particular, Aristotle seems to afford perception a central role in ethical life. Yet Aristotle does not provide an account of ethical perception: he does not explain how the perceptual faculty is able grasp ethically relevant facts and how the perceptual capacity can do so well, nor does he explain (...) the manner in which perception influences ethical decisions and actions. It is the project of this dissertation to provide such accounts. There are two main difficulties in the notion of ethical perception in Aristotle's thought: first, perception appears ill-suited to ethical life because the objects of perception are always perceived with respect to the individual's subjective condition--her desires, fears, etc. The information relayed by perception is always relative to the perceiver, i.e. merely the apparent good. Second, virtue is the excellence of the rational soul, while perception is a faculty shared by non-rational animals. It appears, then, that perception must be limited to playing an instrumental role in ethical reasoning and action. This dissertation addresses these difficulties by developing an account of uniquely human perception that is influenced and informed by the intellectual element of the soul. I argue that the project of ethical development, for Aristotle, is the project of integrating one's perceptual faculty with the intellectual capacity, such that one's perception transcends the natural relativity to the perceiver and gains access to the true good as it emerges in one's particular situation. (shrink)

This project sets out to answer the following question: according to Aristotle, what does movement contribute to or change about being? The first part works through the argument for the existence of movement in the Physics. This argument includes distinctive innovations in the structure of being, notably the simultaneous unity and manyness of being: while material and form are one thing, they are two in being. This makes it possible for Aristotle to argue that movement is not intrinsically related to (...) what is not: what comes to be does not emerge from non-being, it comes from something that is in a different sense. The second part turns to the Metaphysics to show that and how the lineage of potency and activity the inquiry into movement. A central problem is that activity or actuality, energeia, does not at first seem to be intrinsically related to a completeness or end, telos. With the unity of different senses of being at stake, Aristotle establishes that it is by showing that activity or actuality is movement most of all, and that movement has and is a complete end. Thus, it is movement that leads Aristotle to conclude that substance and form are energeia, and that unity of being is possible. (shrink)

This dissertation offers a critical response to the fundamental sacramental theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet drawing on the works of Bernard Lonergan. Chauvet has articulated a significant critique of the western theological tradition's use of metaphysics, especially in interpreting doctrines relating to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, liturgical sacrifice, and sacramental causality. Chauvet's criticisms raise questions about what philosophical tools allow theologians to develop a fruitful analogical understanding of the mysteries communicated in the sacraments. This dissertation responds to Chauvet's (...) challenge to theology to adopt a new foundation in the symbolic by turning to the derived, critical metaphysics of Bernard Lonergan. The dissertation argues that Lonergan's critical metaphysics can help theologians to develop fruitful understandings of doctrines relating to Eucharistic presence, liturgical sacrifice, and sacramental causality. In addition Lonergan's categories of meaning offer resources for interpreting sacramental doctrines on the level of the time, while maintaining the genuine achievements of the past. Chapter one presents a survey of some recent Catholic Eucharistic theologies in order to provide a context for our investigation. Here we identify existentialist-phenomenological, postmodern, and neo-traditionalist approaches to Eucharistic doctrines. Chapters two, three, and four present a dialectical comparison of Chauvet and Lonergan on metaphysics as it pertains to Eucharistic theology specifically. Chapter two examines Chauvet's postmodern critique of metaphysical foundations of scholastic Eucharistic theology. Our particular concern will be with Chauvet's methods, especially whether his appropriation of the Heideggerian critique of scholastic theology offers an accurate account of Thomas Aquinas, and whether it offers a fruitful way forward in Eucharistic theology. Chapter three explores Lonergan's foundations for metaphysics in cognitional theory and epistemology. Lonergan's critical groundwork in cognitional theory attends to the problems of bias and the polymorphism of human consciousness that lead to a heuristic metaphysics rather than a tidy conceptual system. Chapter four explicates Lonergan's heuristic metaphysics and articulates the elements of metaphysics that enable an understanding of the general category of causality in critical realist metaphysics. Chapter five explores Lonergan's foundations for theological reflection paying particular attention to the importance of intellectual conversion before going on to survey Lonergan's categories of meaning. Chapter six engages the task of systematic theology and proposes an understanding of Eucharistic doctrines grounded in Lonergan's critical realist philosophy and transposed into categories of meaning. (shrink)

In this thesis, I will explore the natural tension that exists between philosophy and politics; theory and practice, and thought and action, especially as manifest in contemporary society. In order to investigate this tension, I will use a lens presented by Hannah Arendt and her writings, in particular the Human Condition and the Jewish Writings . I will use these works to illustrate Arendt's own conflict between the role of politics and philosophy in human affairs as experienced in her transition (...) from a political journalist to a political theorist. I will argue that a comparison of these works shows Arendt's struggle with the tension between philosophy and politics; thought and action, and theory and practice. A comparison of these works also illustrates Arendt's paradoxical conclusion of the Human Condition: that in times of unprecedented crisis, although theory and philosophy are precisely what are necessary to prevent further destruction and tragedy, they unfortunately become superfluous, and then immediate (even if groundless) action becomes necessarily the only human capacity that can "save" the world. (shrink)

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a novel whose protagonist seeks intellectual knowledge and spiritual fulfillment over a lifetime of scientific experimentation and solitary rumination. The culmination of his efforts is not to independently verify the Islamic faith, as his final product differs dramatically from their dogma. Instead, he is looking to seek knowledge, not empathy from his Creator by knowing him directly, instead of worshiping him through the process of prayer. This education alienates him from the society on the other island, (...) as they are unable or unwilling to follow his example. By accepting this path, instead of following the dominant creed and code of the populous, Hayy is unable to live comfortably within that setting and must return to his place of solitaire amongst nature. (shrink)

This dissertation assesses the relevance and significance of Lonergan’s work to feminist philosophy. In particular, this work examines the debate between several contemporary feminist philosophers regarding the question of the relation between sex and gender, as well as their critiques of the Western metaphysical tradition. Ultimately, the trajectory of the work argues that Lonergan’s philosophy, in particular his re-envisioning of the meaning of what it is to do metaphysics, provides a unique and compelling response to the critiques made by feminist (...) philosophers, despite the appearance of overt sexism in his writing. In fact, Lonergan’s approach clarifies the relevance of metaphysical thinking to feminist philosophical analysis. The first chapter examines likely feminist criticisms of Lonergan’s philosophy, as well as points of commonality, particularly between Lonergan’s cognitional theory and various feminist epistemologies. In particular, this chapter undertakes an analysis of Lonergan’s notion of “the pure desire to know” which he claims is a primordial, normative human response to our experience of the universe of being. Chapter Two focuses on the feminist debate regarding the “sex/gender” distinction. This chapter examines the analyses of sex and gender by four prominent feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Moira Gatens, and Judith Butler, and their critiques of the Western metaphysical tradition. Chapter Three explicates Lonergan’s cognitional theory, as well as his analysis of four patterns of experience – the biological, aesthetic, intellectual and dramatic. In addition, the notion of “neural demands” developed by Lonergan is discussed, as well as the connection between “neural demand functions” and patterns of experience. Chapter Four is dedicated to an exploration of the complexity of Lonergan’s approach to metaphysics. The chapter begins with Lonergan’s notion of being, and moves on to explore his notions of finality, emergent probability and objectivity. I turn next to a discussion of Lonergan’s revision of the traditional metaphysical vocabulary of potency, form, and act. This is followed by an examination of Lonergan’s understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and development, as well as dialectic. Chapter Five elaborates a dialectical exchange between Lonergan’s philosophy and the philosophy of Irigaray, Grosz, Butler, and Gatens. In addition, this chapter articulates Lonergan’s notion of anti-essentialism, and argues that his unmistakably clear rejection of essentialism supports the repudiation of the idea that human natures are fixed and determined by biological sex. In addition, Chapter Five explores the metaphysical and ethical significance of classical and statistical law, as well as the relationship between metaphysics and ethics as it pertains to feminist philosophy. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid are philosophers who, while writing from very different historical and intellectual contexts, both share a common conviction as epistemological realists. This paper will argue that, despite any initial appearances of conflict, their arguments and conclusions are both compatible and complementary, and that through such an agreement we can come to a richer understanding of the realist tradition. At the heart of this unity lie the shared principles that: * Knowledge involves a direct apprehension of things (...) themselves. * Ideas are not themselves objects or intermediaries, but the active means by which the intellect understands. * The relationship between the mind and its object is not one of a material likeness, but of a formal likeness. * The existence of external objects of knowledge is not demonstrable, but is a self-evident first principle. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop an engaged understanding of objectivity, or good knowledge practices. I argue that for knowledge practices to be good, they must both be truth-conducive and engaged, that is, explicitly implicated in the critical appraisal of background values and assumptions. I pursue this argument in six stages. First, I consider work in epistemology that countenances a place for values in objectivity. I conclude from this that truth-conduciveness is not sufficient for objectivity, and that a social approach to (...) knowledge is called for. Second, I consider standpoint theory, a prominent feminist approach to objectivity. This allows me to show the possible insights available to marginalized perspectives, while indicating that this will be a component of rather than itself offering an account of objectivity. Third, I consider a more comprehensive approach in Helen Longino's critical contextual empiricism, which locates objectivity in the social features of inquiry. Her approach is promising, but requires the insights of early phenomenology in order to develop that potential. I develop the phenomenological framework in Chapter 4, where I consider Husserlian phenomenology. Fifth, I bring the insights of phenomenology to the challenges presented by critical contextual empiricism, and develop my positive view, critical phenomenological objectivity. On this view, inquiry is objective when individuals and communities foster critical perspectives, seek transformative epistemic experiences, build coalitions, foster diversity, and pursue empirical adequacy. In the final chapter, I consider a case study that enables me to defend the merit and warrant of these features of objectivity. (shrink)

Through a close reading of Immanuel Kant's late book, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, the dissertation clarifies the political element in Kant's doctrine of religion and so contributes to a wider conception of his political philosophy. Kant's political philosophy of religion, in addition to extending and further animating his moral doctrine, interprets religion in such a way as to give the Christian faith a moral grounding that will make possible, and even be an agent of, the improvement of (...) social and political life. The dissertation emphasizes the wholeness and structure of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason as a book, for the teaching of the book is not exhausted by the articulation of its doctrine but also includes both the fact and the manner of its expression: the reader learns most fully from Kant by giving attention to the structure and tone of the book as well as to its stated content and argumentation. The Religion provides the basis not only for a proposed reenvisioning of the basis of existing religious creeds and practices, but along with this a devastating critique of them in particularly moral terms. This, however, is only half of what constitutes Kant's political philosophy of religion; Kant goes beyond the philosophical analysis of the social-political context of religion and pursues, alongside this effort, a political presentation of philosophy which is intended to relieve the reader's anxieties concerning the tension between philosophy and political life that it is in the interest of the partisans of the church-faith to encourage. (shrink)