Walter Benjamin and the Post-Kantian Tradition engages with Benjamin as a theorist of a historical and philosophical problematic, and demonstrates how Benjamin moves from an aspiring idealist philosopher to a politically engaged Marxist critic without abandoning the theoretical project he develops early on.

The essay explores the meaning and implications of Milbank's claim that the post‐Kantian presuppositions of modern theology must be eradicated. After defining and locating the post‐Kantian element in the context of Milbank's broader concerns, the essay employs a comparison between Milbank and Barth to draw out the differences between radical orthodoxy and neo‐orthodoxy with respect to the Kantian ideal of “mediation” between theology and culture. The essay concludes with comparisons of Milbank's metanarrative concerning “modern” thought (...) with those offered by Hans Blumenberg and James Edwards. The effect is not only to suggest the apparent arbitrariness of Milbank's account, but also to indicate the evident futility of arguing with Milbank's theological position on the basis of alternative accounts of the post‐Kantian tradition. (shrink)

_An examination of the philosophical notion of sacrifice from Kant to Nietzsche._.

This paper fundamentally deals with J. G. Fichte’s philosophical views, which reshapes intellectual-philosophical bases of the post-Enlightenment era and makes a strong criticism of Kantian thinking. Philosophically, Fichte’s philosophy, more representing a return to romanticism, will be debated on the basis of some concepts, among of which has been reason, science, tradition, religion, state, individual, and community. From his viewpoint, it will interrogate relationships among ego, morality and moral order. Based on these relationships, it will be tried (...) to explain what man’s moral nature is and how moral consciousness is conceptualized in Fichte’ thought. The debates between these concepts will provides basis for a political theory framed by Fichte. Also, it will indicate how a political theory there was developed, outlined by Fichte for German nation over two basic concepts, moral nature and moral consciousness. Taking account of all these discussions, in conclusion it will argue that his political theory had more liberal-conservative implications, along with nationalist ones. (shrink)

Despite our common self-conceptions, we philosophers have our myths, heroes, and guiding narratives. Our work may emphasize conceptual clarity and deductive arguments, but these more sober and discursive elements of our work always occurs within the context of a broader, often implicit, and frequently illusive orientation, within the scope of some particular vision of our vocation, our history, and our place within the contemporary world. These visions are meta-philosophical: they precede and frame philosophical work, and they engender the most intractable (...) philosophical disputes. Thus, for the sake of self-knowledge and rational discussion, we should constantly struggle to articulate and scrutinize these myths and narratives. Which predecessors do we continue to read? Why? What repeated stories and anecdotes generate our common and competing identities? What do past episodes in the history of philosophy mean, and how do they direct our current endeavors? Like every community, we philosophers sustain our collective work through stories, through the celebration of our heroes, and through repeated reference to paradigmatic arguments and texts. We should reflect upon these sustaining elements of our community, even if this requires modes of thought that lie beyond conceptual analysis, deductive argument, and the careful interpretation of canonical texts. -/- In this paper, I excavate and criticize the contours of one narrative that still guides us, the common celebration of Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical, farsighted, disruptive, irresistible, and irrevocable break with the religious and metaphysical dogmatism of its age. In Section 2, I briefly sketch two complementary versions of this narrative, the accounts provided by the Hegelian philosopher Eduard Gans and by the poet Heinrich Heine. Drawing various parallels with the French Revolution, these thinkers significantly overemphasize the skeptical, destructive, anti-metaphysical, anti-religious and historically discontinuous aspects of Kant’s critical philosophy, which they portray as the inauguration of a new and robust philosophical movement, one that rapidly vanquished its intellectually beleaguered and reactionary opponents. In Sections 2–4, I then turn to consider three of the more active and vociferous opponents of the Kantian movement: Basilius von Ramdohr, Friedrich Nicolai, and Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob. Contrary to the standard version of events, these men had little sympathy for metaphysics, religion, rationalism, and dogmatic certitude. In fact, they principally opposed the Kantian movement as the unwelcome resurgence of an outdated form of quasi-religious enthusiasm, as a form of philosophical Schwärmerei that threatened to appropriate the banner of reason and hinder the progress of enlightenment. -/- Drawing upon a wide range of late eighteenth-century German texts on the dangers and varied manifestations of Schwärmerei, I reconstruct Ramdohr’s, Nicolai’s, and Jakob’s vision of the Kantian movement. I argue that the charges of philosophical Schwärmerei highlight three meta-philosophical disputes that pitted these anti-Kantians against many proponents of the Kantian movement. These disputes involved: (a) the social role of the philosopher and her relation to the general public; (b) the place of internal and/or private experience within the open and polyphonic domain of public discourse; and (c) the merits of philosophical systematicity, technical neologisms, and more hermetic versions of semantic holism. -/- A consideration of these meta-philosophical disputes allows us to position Kant’s critical philosophy more accurately within its historical context, to highlight its significant continuities with the intellectual assumptions of the Berlin Enlightenment, those assumptions that largely inform Ramdohr’s, Nicolai’s, and Jakob’s attacks on the so-called Kantian movement. These continuities then reveal the meta-philosophical distance between Kant and “the Kantian movement”, between the texts of the critical philosophy and the projects of Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This challenges the traditional account. We often celebrate Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical break with the past, as the inauguration of new and fundamentally modern assumptions, which were then developed and elaborated by the post-Kantian Idealists. By contrast, I argue for a series of complex, ambivalent, and often unintended breaks: while occasionally celebrating his intellectual achievements as an epochal “Copernican Revolution”, Kant largely remains true to the guiding assumptions and philosophical values of his age, only occasionally deflecting them in minor but portentous ways. By contrast, while Reinhold and Fichte at least initially proclaimed their fidelity to the “spirit” – if not the letter – of Kant’s philosophy, they nonetheless managed to release a new and strange philosophical spirit, a potent, quasi-secularized, and post-Enlightenment form of Schwärmerei. (shrink)

Individuals who value personal autonomy and sympathize with others can be guided by a set of central obligations that are familiar to those sharing in the Western moral tradition. These obligations may not be applicable to every imaginable situation, but the informed determination to act upon them is necessary for combating serious and easily identifiable moral evils. This overall argument is called a post-Kantian moral image. Here, "moral image" is understood as a comprehensive pattern of ethical thought (...) that retains a high level of generality and imposes some order on our normative considerations. The characterization "post-Kantian" indicates that the proposed moral image is inspired by and draws upon Kant's practical philosophy. At the same time it avoids certain problematic Kantian positions and incorporates others that have been vehemently rejected by Kant— like the key role of emotion— in undertaking and justifying morality. (shrink)

By drawing on the insights of diverse scholars from around the globe, this volume systematically investigates the meaning and reality of the concept of negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy—German Idealism, Early German Romanticism, and Neo-Kantianism. The reader benefits from the historical, critical, and systematic investigations contained which trace not only the significance of negation in these traditions, but also the role it has played in shaping the philosophical landscape of Post-Kantian philosophy. By drawing attention to historically neglected (...) thinkers and traditions, and positioning the dialogue within a global and comparative context, this volume demonstrates the enduring relevance of Post-Kantian philosophy for philosophers thinking in today’s global context. This text should appeal to graduate students and professors of German Idealism, Post-Kantian philosophy, comparative philosophy, German studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

This article examines three moments of the post-Kantian philosophical tradition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Kantianism, Post-Kantian Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism. It elucidates the distinctive methods of a tradition that has never entirely disappeared and is now acknowledged once again as the source of contemporary insights. It outlines two problematics—naturalist scepticism and historicist nihilism—threatening the possibility of metaphysics. The first concerns sceptical worries about reason, emerging from attempts to extend the methods of natural (...) science to the study of human beings. Kant’s project of a critical and transcendental analysis of reason, with its distinctive methods, should be considered a response. The second arises from the development of new methods of historical inquiry, seeming to undermine the very possibility of individual agency. Also considered are Kant’s successors’ revisions of the critical and transcendental analysis of reason, undertaken to overcome challenges confronting the original versions of Kant’s methods. (shrink)

Hume and contemporary Humeans contend that moral sentiments form the sole and sufficient basis of moral judgments. This thesis is criticised by appeal to Hume’s theory of justice, which shows that basic principles of justice are required to form and to maintain society, which is indispensable to human life, and that acting according to, or violating, these principles is right, or wrong, regardless of anyone’s sentiments, motives or character. Furthermore, Hume’s theory of justice shows how the principles of justice are (...) artificial without being arbitrary. In this regard, Hume’s theory belongs to the unjustly neglected modern natural law tradition. Some key merits of this strand in Hume’s theory are explicated by linking it to Kant’s constructivist method of identifying and justifying practical principles (à la O’Neill), and by showing how and why Hegel adopted and further developed Kant’s constructivism by re-integrating it with Hume’s central natural law concern with our actual social practices. (Slightly revised English translation by the author of „Von der Konvention zur Sittlichkeit. Humes Begründung einer Rechtsethik aus nach-Kantischer Perspektive“, on which see below.). (shrink)

After two centuries of Kant interpretation there is still no general agreement over the nature of Kant’s most basic philosophical commitments. One issue in particular about which it is difficult to find consensus is his metaphilosophical attitude towards the very project of metaphysics itself. Recently, a type of deflationist reading of Kant has been appealed to in order to address the problems inherent in his more traditional construal as a metaphysical skeptic who denies us the capacity to have any knowledge (...) of “things in themselves”, but who nevertheless seems to centrally rely on the existence of just such things.1 But how is either deflationism or skepticism consistent with Kant’s avowed intention in the Critique of Pure Reason to put metaphysics on the path of science,2 or with his signaled but unfulfilled intention to write a “Metaphysics of Nature”? (shrink)

The first study of its kind, The Impact of Idealism assesses the impact of classical German philosophy on science, religion and culture. This fourth volume explores German Idealism's impact on theology and religious ideas in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With contributions from leading scholars, this collection not only demonstrates the vast range of Idealism's theological influence across different centuries, countries, continents, traditions and religions, but also, in doing so, provides fresh insight into the original ideas and themes with (...) which Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling and others were concerned. As well as tracing out the Idealist influence in the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century theologians, philosophers of religion, and theological traditions, from Schleiermacher, to Karl Barth, to Radical Orthodoxy, the essays in this collection bring each debate up to date with a strong focus on Idealism's contemporary relevance. (shrink)

This book argues that the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin should primarily be understood through British idealism. Though he adopted Kantian methodology and a view of people as purposive beings, he rejected the Idealists' monism and theories of positive liberty. Robert A. Kocis demonstrates how, like Michael Oakeshott and R. G. Collingwood, Berlin can be seen as a 'post-Idealist' thinker, invested in the implications of that rich tradition.

The article attempts to define the concept of “post-neo-Kantianism” based on the nature of its relationship to the concept of “neo-Kantianism”. Concerning this matter, the author poses the following tasks: to characterize the phenomenon of neo-Kantianism, to point out the problems of its definition, to identify the relevance of the term “post-neo-Kantianism” and its relation to the philosophy of I. Kant in particular. The author emphasizes the need to introduce this term in the classification of philosophy of the (...) XX century with the appropriateness of building the model of “Kantianism - Neo-Kantianism - Neo-Neo-Kantianism - Post-Neo-Kantianism”, where each new stage is determined by the nature of the reflection of thinkers of a certain period over the fundamental philosophical problems articulated in Kant's “Critics”. Among the post-Neo-Kantians, A. Noras names thinkers traditionally considered to be german phenomenologists, such as E. Husserl and M. Heidegger: it is from the philosophical concept of Husserl that one can speak of the emergence of post-Neo-Kantianism, and the semantically correct interpretation of Heidegger, according to author, is most clearly understood in the framework of Baden Neo-Kantianism. Investigating the phenomenon of post-Neo-Kantianism, the need is established for answering a question regarding the preceding Neo-Kantian tradition, within which there is still a number of contradictions unresolved in the history of philosophy regarding the classification of Neo-Kantian schools and the distinction between the two periods of Neo-Kantianism: early and late. Neo-Kantianism shows the relevance of Kantian philosophy, highlighting the ongoing debate about understanding the Kantian “Critique of Pure Reason”. Post-Neo-Kantianism plays an important role in terms of the perspectives of modern Kant studies, which include Gottfried Martin, Manfred Brelage, or Hans-Michael Baumgartner. (shrink)

The Kant-Hegel relation has a continuing fascination for commentators on Hegel, and understandably so: for, taking this route into the Hegelian jungle can promise many advantages. First, it can set Hegel’s thought against a background with which we are fairly familiar, and in a way that makes its relevance clearly apparent; second, it can help us locate Hegel in the broader philosophical tradition, making us see that the traditional ‘analytic’ jump from Kant to Frege leaves out a crucial period (...) in post-Kantian thought; third, it can show Hegel in a progressive light, as attempting to take that tradition further forward; fourth, it can help us locate familiar philosophical issues in Hegelian thought that otherwise can appear wholly sui generis; and finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, focusing on this relation can help raise and crystalise some of the fascinating ambiguities concerning Hegel’s outlook, regarding whether Hegel’s response to Kant shows him to have been a reactionary, Romantic, pre-critical thinker, who sought to turn the philosophical clock back to a time before Kant had written, or a modernist, Enlightened and essentially critical one, who remained true to the spirit if not the letter of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

Tradition II Hermeneutics, Ethics, and the Dispensation of the Good Stephen H. Watson Examines concepts of tradition in 20th-century Continental philosophy. In Tradition II, Stephen H. Watson engages post-Kantian Continental philosophy in his continuing investigation into the concept of tradition which he began in his work, Tradition. According to Watson, the problem of tradition became explicit in 20th-century philosophy, and is especially apparent in the work of Heidegger, Gadamer, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno, Levinas, (...) Kristeva, and Derrida, among others. By formulating a series of dialogues between these philosophers and their predecessors, Watson articulates the issues and concerns surrounding tradition and traditionality. Taking on topics such as the hermeneutics of the self, the rationality of tradition, the pluralistic nature of historical interpretation, and the question of the "other," Watson emphasizes the importance of classical accounts of ethical and political discourse for contemporary philosophy and today’s multicultural world. Watson extends his analysis of tradition to include the problems of meaning and narrative and the nature of the self. He also considers the meaning of the Good and how Good is dispensed in the world. By questioning past philosophical narratives and their influence on modern and postmodern philosophy, Watson brings fresh perspective to the complex meanings of tradition for a pluralistic world. Stephen H. Watson is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Extensions: Essays on Interpretation, Rationality, and the Closure of Modernism and Tradition: Refiguring Community, Remembrance, and Virtue in Classical German Thought. Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, general editor June 2001 320 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index cloth 0-253-33900-6 $35.00 s / £26.50. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition ed. by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia NassarAlison StoneKristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar, editors. Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 336. Hardback, $99.00."How plausible, [Dalia Nassar and I] kept asking, is it that women published philosophy in the early modern period and then simply ceased to think (...) and publish philosophy in the nineteenth century?" remarked Kristin Gjesdal recently (interview with Richard Marshall, 3:16am [blog], https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/gadamer-herder-and-the-womenphilosophers-of-the-long-nineteen-cent ury?c=end-times-series). Not plausible at all—yet this is what historians of women in philosophy often seem to have assumed, judging by the remarkably small amount of scholarship on nineteenth-century women philosophers compared with those of the early modern period or the twentieth century. Eileen O'Neill, for instance, claims that it was "not a particularly friendly century for women philosophers" (1). In fact, as Gjesdal and Nassar observe, women were "significant contributors" to the "thriving intellectual cultures in German-speaking countries" at this time (1). Gjesdal and Nassar contrast Germanic countries to France and Britain in this regard, yet I would add that nineteenth-century Britain too had a vibrant print and periodical culture that created openings for women philosophers such as Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, and many others. The broader point remains: the nineteenth century has only seemed empty of women philosophers because we have not yet investigated the women thinkers of this period or challenged the canons and narratives from which they have been excluded.Recognizing German women philosophers is particularly important because the vast majority of scholarship on the nineteenth century focuses on the German tradition. Consequently, unless we recover the work of German-speaking women, we will never change the narrative about this period. This makes the present anthology invaluable for both teaching and research. Edited by Gjesdal and Nassar, it contains new translations, nearly all by Anna Ezekiel, of texts by historical German-speaking women philosophers.Regarding teaching, many courses on post-Kantian European philosophy include no women until Beauvoir or Arendt. Such courses typically cover Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. The editors have clearly designed this volume to enable instructors easily to bring women into such courses, by providing extracts—of suitable lengths for teaching—from women affiliated respectively with German idealism and Romanticism (Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, and Bettina von Arnim), Marxism (Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg), Nietzscheanism (Hedwig Dohm, Lou Salomé), and phenomenology (Edith Stein, Gerda Walther). Some of these women are already well-known as political activists, as with Luxemburg and Zetkin, or under the elastic heading of "writers," as with Staël and von Arnim. But this collection presents these women's writings in a new light, showcasing their philosophical side. After all, we have learned to read Marx and Nietzsche philosophically: why not extend the same courtesy to Staël or Luxemburg?For researchers, this collection will likewise be invaluable. Post-Kantian European philosophy has been slow to respond to the wider questioning and broadening of the traditional philosophical canon. It remains sadly common for narratives of nineteenth-century German philosophy to discuss men only—a position that this book makes untenable. [End Page 336] Hopefully it will galvanize philosophers to integrate these women into the historiography of the post-Kantian tradition at last.In the introduction, the editors helpfully contextualize the selected writings, arguing that these women's exclusion from academic institutions led them to philosophize in ways that spoke to general audiences, connected with lived experience, and addressed practical and political concerns. In short, these women did a type of philosophy that was not purified but socially engaged, and can be a model for us today. Thereafter the book consists of sections on nine women philosophers, ordered chronologically. Each section begins with an editorial introduction to the philosopher and her interests, ideas, writings, and interlocutors.The writings included from Staël—whose work spans the period from the French Revolution into Romanticism—are "On Women Writers" from... (shrink)

Tradition(s) accomplishes this through a series of original readings of Kant and post-Kantian German philosophy, in which topics such as Kant on friendship, nature in post-Kantian thought, HeideggerÕs relationship to Hobbes, and HegelÕs ...

This paper challenges the commonly made claim that the work of Pierre Bourdieu is fundamentally anti-Hegelian in orientation. In contrast, it argues that the development of Bourdieu's work from its earliest structuralist through its later 'post-structuralist' phase is better described in terms of a shift from a late nineteenth century neo-Kantian to a distinctly Hegelian post-Kantian outlook. In his break with structuralism, Bourdieu appealed to a bodily based 'logic of practice' to explain the binaristic logic of (...) Lévi-Strauss' structuralist analyses of myth. Effectively working within the tradition of the Durkheimian approach to symbolic classification, Lévi-Strauss had inherited Durkheim's distinctly neo-Kantian understanding of the role of categories in experience and action—an account that conflated two forms of representation—'intuitions' and 'concepts—that Kant himself had held distinct. Bourdieu's appeal to the role of the body's dispositional habitus can be considered as a retrieval of Hegel's earlier quite different reworking of Kant's intuition-concept distinction in terms of distinct 'logics' with different forms of 'negation'. Bourdieu commonly acknowledged the parallels of his analyses of social life to those of Hegel, but opposed Hegelianism because he believed that Hegel had remained entrapped within the dynamics of mythopoeic thought. In contrast, Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss, he claimed, by instituting a science of myth, had broken with it. This criticism of Hegel, however, relies on an understanding of his philosophy that has been rejected by many contemporary Hegel scholars, and without it, the gap separating Hegel and Bourdieu narrows dramatically. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is one of Alain Badiou’s principle philosophical enemies. Kant’s critical philosophy is anathema to Badiou not only because of the latter’s openly aired hatred of the motif of finitude so omnipresent in post-Kantian European intellectual traditions—Badiou blames Kant for inventing this motif—but also because of its idealism. For Badiou-the-materialist, as for any serious philosophical materialist writing in Kant’s wake, transcendental idealism must be dismantled and overcome. In his most recent works, Badiou attempts to invent a non- (...) class='Hi'>Kantian notion of the transcendental, a notion compatible with the basic tenets of materialism. However, from 1988’s Being and Event up through the present, Badiou’s oeuvre contains indications that he hasn’t managed fully to purge the traces of Kantian transcendental idealism that arguably continue to haunt his system—with these traces clustering around a concept Badiou christens “counting-for-one”. The result is that, in the end, Kant’s shadow still falls over Badiouian philosophy—this is despite Badiou’s admirable, sophisticated, and instructive attempts to step out from under it—thus calling into question this philosophy’s self-proclaimed status as materialist through and through. (shrink)

Although Hegel has been rediscovered frequently, few have focused on Hegel’s speculative theology. Since Hegel criticizes traditional theology, it is widely assumed that he must be an atheist. But Hegel rejects the alternatives of a fossilized orthodoxy and a post-religious secularity. Hegel’s speculative philosophy has profound significance for Christian theological reconstruction. This essay focuses on Hegel’s philosophy of religion as a philosophical theology in the post-Kantian, post-Enlightenment context. Hegel rejects philosophies of finitude as nihilistic. Second, it (...) examines how Hegel’s attempt to provide a logical map of world religions demonstrates the impossibility of such a logical mapping. Third, it concludes with an examination of eschatology: Hegel criticizes the dualist eschatology of religious representation because it undermines the actuality of reconciliation. The eschatology of the concept can only be taken up in the context of Hegel’s views concerning tragedy and the death of God. The suffering God excludes any triumphalist realized eschatology or end of history culmination. (shrink)

The post-modern, post-enlightenment debate on the nature of being begins with Heidegger’s assertion that the “ancient interpretation of the being of beings” is informed by “the determination of the sense of being as ... ‘presence.’”[i] This understanding, which reduces being to temporal presence, is supposed to have set all subsequent philosophical reflection. At its origin is “Aristotle’s essay on time.” In Heidegger’s reading, Aristotle interprets entities with regard to the present, equating their being with temporal presence. He also (...) takes time itself as a present entity--i.e., “as just one being among others.”[ii] In an interpretation that is essentially “oriented to the world,” Aristotle thus collapses being and temporal presence to the point that the countable nows are, in their presence, taken as entities. Aristotle’s essay, Heidegger claims, “has essentially determined every subsequent account of time--Bergson’s included.” Even “the Kantian interpretation of time” remains under its sway.[iii] Given this, the “destruction” of the tradition that Heidegger proposes[iv] is a destruction of this account.[v] Only through such a destruction can we uncover what the Aristotelian account conceals. In making time objective, it hides Dasein’s (or human being’s) role in temporalization. The project of Being and Time is to uncover this through “the repeated interpretation of the structures of Dasein ... as modes of temporalization.”[vi]. (shrink)

Post-Kantian philosophers typically hold there to be a coincidence between reason and freedom. In this paper, I question their ability to secure this coincidence. I do so in particular by examining the work of John McDowell: probably the leading light of contemporary analytic post-Kantian philosophy, and certainly someone for whom the coincidence is important. Working through McDowell, I argue that in order to be considered ‘rationally free’ in relation to the external world, the world itself needs (...) to, at at least some level, elude rational understanding. In the conclusion, I claim that this invites greater engagement – particularly by post-Kantian philosophers working in the analytic tradition – with the work of Theodor Adorno. (shrink)

Although Hegel has been rediscovered frequently, few have focused on Hegel’s speculative theology. Since Hegel criticizes traditional theology, it is widely assumed that he must be an atheist. But Hegel rejects the alternatives of a fossilized orthodoxy and a post-religious secularity. Hegel’s speculative philosophy has profound significance for Christian theological reconstruction. This essay focuses on Hegel’s philosophy of religion as a philosophical theology in the post-Kantian, post-Enlightenment context. Hegel rejects philosophies of finitude as nihilistic. Second, it (...) examines how Hegel’s attempt to provide a logical map of world religions demonstrates the impossibility of such a logical mapping. Third, it concludes with an examination of eschatology: Hegel criticizes the dualist eschatology of religious representation because it undermines the actuality of reconciliation. The eschatology of the concept can only be taken up in the context of Hegel’s views concerning tragedy and the death of God. The suffering God excludes any triumphalist realized eschatology or end of history culmination. (shrink)

RESUMENEl intento del presente artículo es investigar el lugar de Ortega en el panorama del pensamiento europeo, especialmente alemán, de la primera mitad del siglo XX, utilizando uno de los conceptos fundamentales de su filosofía, es decir, el concepto de la «generación». Por tanto se defiende la tesis de que Ortega puede ser considerado como uno de los representantes de la generación post-neokantiana llamada por él mismo la generación de 1911 y que el pensamiento orteguiano se inscriba en el (...) programa intelectual de filósofos como: Nicolai Hartmann, Heinz Heimsoeth, Karl Jaspers o Martin Heidegger. Todos estos filósofos brotan de la tradición neokantiana y la superan creando una nueva actitud filosófica centrándose en la reflexión ontológica y en el proyecto de superar el idealismo moderno.PALABRAS CLAVESORTEGA, GENERACIÓN, NEOKANTISMO, POST-NEOKANTISMO, ONTOLOGÍA, IDEALISMO ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to investigate the site of Ortega in the panorama of European, especially German thought, in the first half of the twentieth century, using one of the fundamental concepts of his philosophy, that is, the concept of «generation». Therefore I will defend the thesis that Ortega can be considered as one of the representatives of the post-neo-Kantian generation, called by himself the «generation of 1911» and that Ortega’s thought participates in the intellectual program of philosophers such as: Nicolai Hartmann, Heinz Heimsoeth, Karl Jaspers or Martin Heidegger. All these philosophers emerge from the neo-Kantian tradition but it overcomes, creating a new philosophical attitude, focusing on ontological reflection and on the project to overcome modern idealism.KEYWORDSORTEGA, GENERATION, NEO-KANTIANISM, POST-NEO-KANTIANISM, ONTOLOGY, IDEALISM. (shrink)

Hegel broke open the deadliest assumptions of Western thought by conceiving being as becoming and consciousness as the social-subjective relation of spirit to itself, yet his white Eurocentric conceits were grotesquely inflated even by the standards of his time. With In a Post-Hegelian Spirit, Gary Dorrien emphasizes both sides of this Hegelian legacy, contending that it takes a great deal of digging and refuting to recover the parts of Hegel that still matter for religious thought. By distilling his signature (...) argument about the role of post-Kantian idealism in modern Christian thought, Dorrien fashions a liberationist form of religious idealism: a post-Hegelian religious philosophy that is simultaneously both Hegelian as it expounds a fluid, holistic, open, intersubjective, ambiguous, tragic, and reconciliatory idea of revelation and post-Hegelian, as it rejects the deep-seated flaws in Hegel's thought. Dorrien mines Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel as the foundation of his argument about intellectual intuition and the creative power of subjectivity. After analyzing critiques of Hegel by SA, ren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Karl Barth, and Emmanuel Levinas, Dorrien contends that though these monumental figures were penetrating in their assessments, they appear one-sided compared to Hegel. In a Post-Hegelian Spirit further engages with the personal idealist tradition founded by Borden Parker Bowne, the process tradition founded by Alfred North Whitehead, and the daring cultural contributions of Paul Tillich, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosemary Radford Ruether, David Tracy, Peter Hodgson, Edward Farley, Catherine Keller, and Monica Coleman. (shrink)

While almost all of Kant's contemporaries agreed that the Critique of Pure Reason effected a philosophically epochal change, there was far less consensus about what precisely Kant's new critical philosophy had brought about. In large part, this uncertainty was a result of a methodological crisis that Kant's work had sparked: the Critique had shown that traditional dogmatic metaphysics was suspect at best, but what new methods needed to be adopted in the wake of Kant's 'Copernican Revolution'? The Critique stood as (...) the lighting rod at the center of a complicated and especially lively set of debates and disputes that erupted in Germany in the late 1780s and early 1790s: empiricists and rationalists, threatened by the 'all-destroying Kant', leapt to challenge the new critical system; skeptics attacked Kant's claims to have secured a sure footing for empirical knowledge; a few ambitious thinkers sought to complete the critical system by revealing a foundational first principle on which Kant's system could rest. All of these elements conspired to make the early stages in post-Kantian thought one of the richest, most vibrant – and most fascinating – periods in the history of philosophy. The present essay looks at the various figures of the move from Kant to Fichte, and presents some of the excellent new research on the era that has appeared in the last decade or so. The sequel takes up the period from Fichte to Hegel, with an eye toward understanding how Kantian critical philosophy gave way to Hegelian Absolute Idealism. (shrink)

In this sweeping volume, Christopher Norris challenges the view that there is no room for productive engagement between mainstream analytic philosophers and thinkers in the post-Kantian continental line of descent. On the contrary, he argues, this view is simply the product of a limiting perspective that accompanied the rise of logical positivism. Norris reveals the various shared concerns that have often been obscured by parochial interests or the desire to stake out separate philosophical territory. He examines the problems (...) that emerged within the analytic tradition as a result of its turn against Husserlian phenomenology and its outright rejection of what came to be seen as a merely "psychologistic" approach to issues of meaning, knowledge, and truth. Norris shows how these problems have resurfaced in various forms from the heyday of logical empiricism to the present. He provides critical readings of such philosophers as Willard Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michael Dummett, Thomas Nagel, and John McDowell. He also offers a running discussion of Wittgenstein's influence and its harmful effect in promoting a placidly consensus-based theory of knowledge. On the continental side, Norris argues for a reassessment of Husserl's phenomenological project and its potential contribution to present-day Anglo-American debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. He discusses Bachelard, Canguilhem, and the French tradition of rationalisme applique as an alternative to Kuhnian conceptions of scientific paradigm change. This leads him to suggest a non-Wittgensteinian way around the problems that have dogged more traditional theories of knowledge andtruth. In two chapters on the work of Jacques Derrida, Norris explores the "supplementary" logic of deconstruction and compares it with other recent proposals for a nonstandard logic. Here again he stresses the community of interests between the two philosophical cultures and the extent to which continental thinking has engaged certain issues with a rigor largely ignored by Anglophone writers. By bringing a fresh perspective to questions that have often been considered the exclusive preserve of analytic philosophy, Norris offers an overview of current debates that is at once refreshingly open-minded and sure of its own argumentative bearings. (shrink)

A century ago the dominant philosophical outlook was not some form of materialism or naturalism, but idealism. However, this way of thinking about reality fell out of favour in the Anglo-American analytic tradition as well as the Continental schools of the twentieth century. The aim of this book is to restage and reassess the encounter between idealism and contemporary philosophy. The idealist side will be represented by the great figures of the 19th-century post-Kantian tradition in Germany, (...) from Fichte and Schelling to Hegel, followed by the towering Hegelians in Britain led by T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet. Their 20th-century adversaries will be represented by the secular existentialists, especially the famous French trio of Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus, who sought to follow Nietzsche in philosophizing in light of the death of God. And the arena of encounter will be the philosophy of religion-more specifically, questions relating to the nature and existence of God, death and the meaning of life, and the problem of evil. The book argues that the existentialist critique of idealism enables an innovative as well as a more critical and adventurous approach that is sorely needed in philosophy of religion today. Idealism after Existentialism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the history of 19th- and 20th-century philosophy and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The so-called ontological argument has a complex and controverted history, rising to particular prominence in contemporary analytic philosophy. Against this backdrop I will present a non-analytic interpretation of ontological argumentation for God’s existence by attempting to fuse Anselmian and Gödelian perspectives. I defend ontological argumentation in a number of slightly variant forms as neither a priori nor a posteriori, but ab actu exercito. Kantian and especially Thomistic critiques are confronted in the course of explaining how ontological argumentation may be (...) logically valid without depending on or yielding to subjectivist epistemologies. Hence, post-Gödelian ontological argumentation ought to be acceptable to realists. (shrink)

A critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation provides a critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. While Hegel has been recognized as one of the key targets of Deleuze’s philosophical writing, Henry Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze’s antipathy to Hegel has its roots in a problem the two (...) thinkers both try to address: getting beyond a philosophy of judgment and the restrictions of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By tracing the development of their attempts to address this problem, Somers-Hall offers an interpretation of the sweep of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, providing a series of analyses of key moments in the history of thought, including the logics of Aristotle and Russell, Kant’s own philosophy of judgment, and the philosophy of Bergson. He also develops a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, and situates his philosophy in relation to the broader post-Kantian tradition. In addition to Deleuze’s relation to Hegel, the book makes important contributions to the study of Deleuze’s philosophy of mathematics, as well as to the study of several underappreciated areas of Hegel’s own philosophy. (shrink)

While the concept of “second nature” has received remarkable attention in recent years, the discussion has mainly focused on neo-Aristotelian accounts. In this paper, I develop a neglected post-Kantian alternative. Instead of focusing solely on the model of habit, this conception shifts our attention to a different paradigm for second nature: the work of art. Following Kant’s account in the third critique, producing a work of art can be understood as the production of an “other nature”, expressive of (...) freedom. As the post-Kantian tradition from Schiller and Hegel to Marx and Nietzsche suggests, the work of art can thus serve as a model for the kind of second nature we require in order to realize an ethical life. Thus, the production of an ethical second nature is not a matter of mere habituation, but a challenging “art”: it is an aesthetic task, a complex dialectical exercise, and a social practice of objectification. This conception of second nature not only allows us to grasp the relation of freedom and nature more adequately than the dominant neo-Aristotelian conceptions – it also opens up a critical perspective on our contemporary aesthetic self-understanding. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's work continues to be a main focus of attention in almost all areas of philosophy. The significance of Kant's work for the so-called continental philosophy cannot be exaggerated, although work in this area is relatively scant. The book includes eight chapters, a substantial introduction and a postscript, all newly written by an international cast of well-known authors. Each chapter focuses on particular aspects of a fundamental problem in Kant's and post-Kantian philosophy, the problem of the relation (...) between the world and transcendence. Chapters fall thematically into three parts: sensibility, nature and religion. Each part starts with a more interpretative chapter focusing on Kant's relevant work, and continues with comparative chapters which stage dialogues between Kant and post-Kantian philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jean-François Lyotard, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Derrida. A special feature of this volume is the engagement of each chapter with the work of the late British philosopher Gary Banham. The Postscript offers a subtle and erudite analysis of his intellectual trajectory, philosophy and mode of working. The volume is dedicated to his memory. (shrink)

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be (...) interpreted as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

One of the terminological constants in the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze is the word 'immanence', and it has therefore become a foothold for those wishing to understand exactly what 'Deleuzian philosophy' is. Deleuze's philosophy of immanence is held to be fundamentally characterised by its opposition to all philosophies of 'transcendence'. On that basis, it is widely believed that Deleuze's project is premised on a return to a materialist metaphysics. Christian Kerslake argues that such an interpretation is fundamentally misconceived, and (...) has led to misunderstandings of Deleuze's philosophy, which is rather one of the latest heirs to the post-Kantian tradition of thought about immanence. This will be the first book to assess Deleuze's relationship to Kantian epistemology and post-Kantian philosophy, and will attempt to make Deleuze's philosophy intelligible to students working within that tradition. But it also attempts to reconstruct our image of the post-Kantian tradition, isolating a lineage that takes shape in the work of Schelling and Wronski, and which is developed in the twentieth century by Bergson, Warrain and Deleuze. (shrink)

The oeuvre of Hegel, like that of many thinkers of the post-Kantian tradition in European philosophy, has been subject to a number of misreadings and misrepresentations by both specialists and nonspecialists alike that have until fairly recently rendered Hegel’s reception in the Anglo-American philosophical world extremely problematic. These often willful misrepresentations, variously referred to by scholars as the Hegel myths or legends, have given rise to a number of prejudices against Hegel’s philosophy primarily, although by no means (...) exclusively, in the English-speaking world. Among the caricatures that have enjoyed the widest currency are the following: that Hegel denied the law of contradiction; that his dialectical method of argumentation took the form of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad; that he saw the end of history in his own philosophical system; that he tried to prove a priori the number of planets; that he was a reactionary apologist for the Prussian state, or worse, a protofascist; finally, that he was a kind of pre-Kantian metaphysician or “cosmic rationalist” who believed like Schelling and some of the Romantics in a metaphysical world soul. (shrink)

: Peirce's fallibilism is shown to be the "linchpin" of his mature philosophy. In passing, objections regarding a seemingly serious paradox, a textual discrepancy, and the plausibility of an alternative approach to Peirce are answered. Peirce's fallibilism is indeed a puzzling thesis, particularly in that it appears to violate familiar finitist, practical, "here and now" (pragmatist) constraints. But that's precisely where Peirce's ingenuity takes its most interesting form. The solution provided shows the paradox and aporias of Peirce's account to be (...) no more than apparent, the textual infelicity of what would otherwise be a contradiction to be part of Peirce's rhetorical strategy (in combating the effects of James' misreading of his theory of truth), the doctrine of the continuum to be already entailed by Peirce's fallibilism, and the ultimate reconciliation between the infinite limit of inquiry and its finite phases to be essential to Peirce's theory of science cast in terms of what may be described as a Hegelianized reading of Kantian Hope—in effect, a reading of abduction as an original pragmatist version of what may be saved in the sparest way within the post-Kantian tradition. (shrink)

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be (...) interpreted as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

Recent writing on the expression of emotion has explored the idea that there is a symbolic dimension to many “expressive actions.” This paper aims to situate and better understand the “symbolic expression” account by exploring its position in a framework of views from the history of philosophy regarding emotion, action out of emotion, and their place in the good human life. The paper discusses a number of competing views that can be found in this tradition, ranging from irrationalism, through (...) irenicism, self‐externalization, and cognitivism to the symbolist tradition itself. In looking specifically at the roots of symbolism, the paper departs from the common view that Aristotelianism is the central tradition, for us, of thinking about philosophy of the emotions. It suggests that we can get a better grip on the source of these ideas by looking rather at how thinkers in the post‐Kantian and Romantic tradition wrestled with the question of the freedom and rationality of behaviour out of emotion. (shrink)

Dan Zahavi, the editor of this collection, heads the Center for Subjectivity Research, at the University of Copenhagen. The essays reflect the interests of the Center and seek to address the following issue: To what extent can the current discussion of consciousness in mainstream cognitive science and analytical philosophy of mind profit from insights drawn from the investigations of subjectivity found in the Kantian and post-Kantian tradition as well as in the phenomenological and hermeneutical tradition. (...) The contributions include some that are philosophical, while others relate to issues in empirical science, such as psychopathology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology.Contributors include Andrew Brook, John Drummond, Shaun Gallagher, Arne Groen, Josef Parnas, Peter Poellner, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Louis Sass, Dieter Teichert and Dan Zahavi. (shrink)

Kierkegaard is an exegetical interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Vivaldi Jean-Marie elaborates on the philosophical and religious arguments of the pseudonym Johannes Climacus to demonstrate that history is propatory toward the achievement of eternal happiness. The author emphasizes Kierkegaard's heritage in the Post-Kantian tradition by discussing his critique of the Romantics and German Idealists. The exposition of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript is carried out on the basis of the ongoing conversation (...) between Climacus and the Post-Kantian tradition to argue that Climacus wishes to show the limitation of history and philosophy and the necessity of subjective appropriation to transcend the shortcoming of history and philosophy. Climacus's assessment of the prevailing Christian attitudes of the 19th century maps out the possibility of subjective religious experience in freedom. (shrink)

The chapter discusses Quentin Meillassoux's recent interpretation and critique of Heidegger's philosophical position, which he describes as "strong correlationism." It emphasizes the fact that Meillassoux situates Heidegger in the post-Kantian tradition of transcendental idealism that he defines in terms of a focus on the correlation between being and thinking. It is argued that Meillassoux's "speculative" attempt to overcome the Kantian philosophical framework in the name of absolute contingency should be understood as a further development and dialectical (...) overcoming of its ultimate contemporary form, the Heideggerian philosophy of finitude. (shrink)