This article compares the differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of the “transcendental.” It argues that, for Kant, the term “transcendental” stands for what is otherwise called “metaphysical,” i.e. non-empirical knowledge. As opposed to his predecessors, who had believed that such non-empirical knowledge was possible for meta-physical, i.e. transcendent objects, Kant’s contribution was to show how there can be non-empirical (a priori) knowledge not about transcendent objects, but about the necessary conditions for the experience of natural, non-transcendent objects. Hence the (...) transcendental for Kant ends up connoting a philosophy that claims to show how subjective forms of intuition and thinking have objective validity for all objects as appearances. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy takes a different set of problems for its starting point. His quest is to avoid the uncertainty of empirical knowledge about all kinds of objects that present themselves to us as something other than, something transcendent to, consciousness. Transcendental or reliable knowledge is made possible through the phenomenological reduction that focuses strictly on consciousness as immediately self-given to itself—reflection upon “pure” consciousness. The contents of such consciousness are not the same for everyone and at every time, so they are not necessary and invariant in the way that Kant’s pure forms of subjectivity are. Since Husserl however also claims that the all objects, as intentional objects, are constituted in and for consciousness, an investigation into the structures of pure subjectivity can also be called “transcendental” in a further sense of showing the genesis of our knowledge of objects that are transcendent to consciousness. Moreover, since Husserl’s philosophical interest is precisely upon the structures of that consciousness, he also concentrates on necessary conditions for the constitution of these objects in his philosophical work. Hence, there ends up being a great deal of overlap between his own transcendental project and Kant’s in spite of the differences in what each of them means by the term “transcendental.”. (shrink)

The notion of horizonality plays an important role in hermeneutical philosophy above all owing to the centrality afforded the concept of horizon in Hans‐Georg Gadamer's groundbreaking Truth and Method. The notion of the horizon is explicitly introduced as a metaphor for the way that intellectual understanding mirrors everyday perceptions of visible objects in that they always and inevitably take place from a perspective that opens up a space within which some things can easily be seen but which also sets the (...) limits beyond which things cannot easily be seen without additional efforts or movement. Gadamer himself recognizes that the insights into the role of horizons in any understanding developed in the nineteenth century with the rise of historical consciousness in general and then came to be themes of explicit reflection in his own immediate philosophical predecessors, Dilthey, Husserl, and Heidegger. (shrink)

The search for an ethics rooted in human experience is the crux of this deeply compassionate work, here translated from the 1983 German edition. Distinguished philosopher Werner Marx provides a close reading, critique, and _Weiterdenken_, or "further thinking," of Martin Heidegger's later work on death, language, and poetry, which has often been dismissed as both obscure and obscurantist. In it Marx seeks, and perhaps finds, both a measure for distinguishing between good and evil and a motive for preferring the former. (...) The poet Hölderlin posed the question, "Is there a measure on earth?" His own answer was emphatic, "There is none," for he was convinced that the measure for man was to be found only in the domain of the heavenly beings. Such metaphysical assumptions, as well as the attempt to found ethical conduct in the nature of man as a rational being, have been rejected by many contemporary thinkers, particularly Heidegger. Yet these thinkers have not been able to provide a satisfactory alternative to metaphysical foundations of the standards for responsible human conduct. Marx, therefore, goes beyond Heidegger in demonstrating how several of his most basic notions could be relevant to a secular morality in our age. It is death, Marx claims, that unsettles man and transforms his conduct toward his fellow man. the common experience of mortality nourishes ethical life—and leads to the measures of compassion, love, and recognition of one's fellow human beings. "It is only on the basis of these 'traditional virtues,'" Marx writes, "that we can find a motive for averting the impending dangers which have often enough been described so vividly and convincingly.". (shrink)