In the last decades, there has been a far-reaching debate about whether reason is a natural power of the human animal or a socio-historical achievement. This paper brings out and criticizes two paradigmatic views of reason entangled in that dilemma: the substantive view which construes reason as a primitive power possessing the basic forms of intelligibility; and the derivative view which traces back reason to non-rational, natural-historic processes. I approach the issue by discussing how Aristotle addresses the underlying predicament in (...) Metaphysics Theta. The predicament persuades us to overdetermine or underdetermine our natural potentiality for reason because it ignores what I call Aristotle's main insight: the understanding from which rational capacities are exercised is acquired by undertaking appropriate activities. The measure of rational capacities is neither merely naturally determined nor merely socio-historically inherited but relies on the engagement with the things falling under the purview of the pertaining activities. We must recover this Aristotelian insight, I argue, to avoid succumbing to either the substantive or the derivative view of reason. (shrink)

In his Philosophy of Mind, Hegel treats human sensibility differently in the sections on anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. With the recent revival of Hegel’s work, there has been a lively debate about how to understand the progression from more primitive to more sophisticated human capacities. This paper differentiates three influential readings to that effect – the animals-first, the emancipatory, and the rational-first reading – and argues that they risk misconstruing mental development as a transition from one category of capacities to (...) the other. The transition is rendered in terms of either accumulation, emancipation, or maturation. But this basic picture confuses the capacities characterizing us as a kind of animal, a kind of consciousness, and a conceptually self-conscious being. This paper explains how anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology articulate complementary, but irreducible categories of human capacities. The apparently more basic capacities are abstractable aspects of those that come later in the order of presentation. The distinct kinds of capacities do not stand separately on a three-step ladder of mental development but are aspects of one singular and synchronous development of the human mind. Their particular development is mutually dependent on each other but can be properly accounted for only in distinctive categorial terms. (shrink)

Considering the dialectical structure of tragic thought in classical philosophy, one can read Nietzsche’s conception of the tragic in a dialectical way. Reading Nietzsche\'s The Birth of Tragedy in this way is justified, as long as the Apollonian and Dionysian are understood as contrasting impulses who work together in their “reciprocal necessity”. Beginning of the fifth chapter of this book, however, there is a second design of the tragic experience; here Nietzsche emphasizes that Dionysian is the affirmative dimension of the (...) tragic. This non dialectical conception of tragic, as Nietzsche builds it along his work, stresses the non necessity to justify life, the affirmation of life as it is, without deploring and rebuilding it, and without giving it an alien meaning. This conception cancels the negativity which founds the dialectical conception of the tragic, in so far as suffering, vain, and finiteness are no longer seen as opposed to life and in need of an appoint justification: they belong to it. The philosophical task is to ask: of what does the tragic of an absolute affirmation of life consist of, if the dialectic contradiction is repealed. (shrink)

Moods are usually taken to be pre-intentional affective states that tune our experience and cognition. Moreover, moods are sometimes considered to not only accompany cognitive acts, but to be understanding phenomena themselves. The following paper examines the assumption that moods represent a specific interpretative skill. Based upon that view, the semantic content of moods seems to be self-determining and to elude conceptual articulation. By contrast, I defend the thesis that the alleged inarticulable intelligibility of affective experiences is possible only due (...) to its belonging to a comprehensive theoretical horizon. For that purpose, I first analyze Heidegger’s influential account on moods in Being and Time, in order to clarify his claim that moods have their own understanding. Although Heidegger asserts that attuned understanding becomes itself when it is interpreted, he nevertheless rejects conceptual unfolding as a legitimate disclosure of the intelligible content of moods. I amend Heidegger’s account by engaging Hegel’s approach to this topic in his Philosophy of Mind. In this text, Hegel argues that feelings cannot give an account of their purport by feeling alone. Affective states not only manifest the need and urge to express themselves, but they reach their full extent when their meaning is disclosed within the entirety of the mind. It may be the case that affective states cannot always be fully clarified, but, even within a non-cognitivist account of moods, their intelligibility requires our acquaintance with articulated understanding. (shrink)

This paper discusses Hegel's conception of self-consciousness in the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. It argues that Hegel articulates self-consciousness as a living being's capacity to conceive of itself in light of the life-form it instantiates. I start by critically reassessing the prevalent readings of the Self-Consciousness chapter, each of which focuses on one of three constitutive aspects of self-consciousness: sociality, corporeality or practicality. Second, I reconstruct how the opening of the chapter aims to reveal that the initial (...) rift between the sensory and the conceptual capacities of consciousness is resolved by the unity of consciousness as a life-form. Third, I discuss the specification of this life-form as Geist and argue that, by introducing the notion of Geist, Hegel indicates that the generic capacity of the human being to conceive of itself in light of its life-form always particularizes itself in a conception of human life that determines a historic and social form of life. Fourth, I outline how the master-slave dialectic illustrates the interdependency between sensory and conceptual capacities. Hegel's tale undermines the assumption of a self-contained capacity for reason by displaying how conceptual capacities, actualized by a living being, rely from the outset on objective constraints. I conclude by contending that the Self-Consciousness chapter paves the way for the central role that the idea of life plays in the Logic in exemplifying the objectivity of the concept. (shrink)

Hegel und Heidegger teilen die Ansicht, dass das, was den Bedeutungsgehalt von Begriffen konstituiert, in ihrer unmittelbaren Verständlichkeit verborgen liegt. Dieser Gedanke bildet den Kern einer Konzeption der Negativität im Sinne einer Auffassung der Art und Weise, in der Sinn von Latenz geprägt ist. Hegel und Heidegger verstehen aber die Natur jener Latenz und das Verhältnis von Sinn und Begriff verschieden. Denn mit einer solchen Konzeption der Negativität ist die Frage verbunden, ob die Konstitution von Sinn begrifflich artikulierbar ist und (...) ob Sinn überhaupt begrifflich verfasst ist. Dieser Frage geht das Buch nach, indem es Hegel und Heidegger in ein Gespräch bringt, um den Stellenwert des begrifflichen Vermögens in der Konstitution und Artikulation von Sinn zu klären. Dabei wird eine Kritik an der Auffassung formuliert, dass die Quelle von Sinn nichtbegrifflich und unbegreiflich ist, und argumentiert, dass nur die begriffliche Artikulation von Bedeutungen die semantische Fülle der Welt verbürgt. (shrink)