The exercise of judgement is an aspect of human endeavour from our most mundane acts to our most momentous decisions. In this book Wayne Martin develops a historical survey of theoretical approaches to judgement, focusing on treatments of judgement in psychology, logic, phenomenology and painting. He traces attempts to develop theories of judgement in British Empiricism, the logical tradition stemming from Kant, nineteenth-century psychologism, experimental neuropsychology and the phenomenological tradition associated with Brentano, Husserl and Heidegger. His reconstruction of vibrant but (...) largely forgotten nineteenth-century debates links Kantian approaches to judgement with twentieth-century phenomenological accounts. He also shows that the psychological, logical and phenomenological dimensions of judgement are not only equally important but fundamentally interlinked in any complete understanding of judgement. His book will interest a wide range of readers in history of philosophy, philosophy of the mind and psychology. (shrink)

This new interpretation of Fichte's Jena system focuses on the problem of the objectivity of consciousness.

Hegel's very first acknowledged publication was, among other things, an attack on Fichte. In 1801, Hegel was still laboring in almost complete obscurity, while Fichte was an international sensation, though already somewhat past the peak of his meteoric career. In the 1801 Differenzschrift, Hegel cut his teeth by criticizing Fichte's already widelycriticised Wissenschaftslehre, and by demonstrating that Schelling's philosophical system was not simply to be equated with it. Fichte himself never bothered to respond to Hegel's criticisms; indeed he never publicly (...) acknowledged their existence. This was not because he was unconcerned with criticisms of his views; quite the contrary. But at the time he had bigger fish to fry. He responded to Jacobi's criticisms, and to Schelling's; he replied in great detail to critical questions raised by Reinhold, and with vituperative intensity to objections raised by skeptics and purportedly loyal Kantians. But Hegel's Differenzschrift was left without a Fichtean rebuttal. This is a pity, both because of the missed opportunity to illuminate by controversy central issues at stake in the post-Kantian period, but also because it made it easier for Hegel simply to reiterate his youthful criticism as if it were the last word. And reiterate it he did: in one form or another Hegel's early criticisms of Fichte reappear at every subsequent stage of his career: in the Phenomenology, in the Science of Logic, in the Encyclopaedia, as the final chapter in Hegel's History of Philosophy, and in countless other minor works and documents from the Nachlass and correspondence. (shrink)

In this paper I lay the foundations for an understanding of one of Fichte's most neglected and least understood texts: the late lecture course on Transcendental Logic. I situate this work in the context of Fichte's lifelong struggle with the problem of understanding the relation between logic and philosophy – a problem that I show to figure centrally both in Fichte's own revolutionary thinking and in his response to Kant's notorious denunciation of the Wissenschaftslehre. By attending to this context we (...) can understand Fichte's philosophical ambitions in the late lectures: a critique of particular doctrines of general logic; a critique of the conception of thought presupposed both by the traditional logic and by Kant himself; and a new conception of the relation between logic and the philosophical theory of experience. (shrink)

This chapter explores one of the most problematic theoretical commitments of Edmund Husserl's phenomenological projects: the idea of a logic of consciousness or phenomeno-logic. It shows why Husserl is committed to this idea and why it is so out of step with contemporary approaches in the philosophy of mind. It then tries to render the idea intelligible along two paths. First, to take the idea of a logic of consciousness seriously, we must challenge our entrenched atomistic assumptions about conscious states. (...) Second, to recognize the sense in which a science of consciousness might be logical, we must come to terms with Husserl's conception of an ideal science. For on a Husserlian conception, apophantic logic and phenomenology must be seen as two varieties of ideal science: systematic articulations of the content and structure of an ideal that is constitutive for conscious experience of a world. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Husserl's Cartesianism Heidegger's Ontological Critique References and Further Reading.

Hegel’s very first acknowledged publication was, among other things, an attack on Fichte.1 In 1801, Hegel was still laboring in almost complete obscurity, while Fichte was an international sensation, though already somewhat past the peak of his meteoric career. In the 1801 Differenzschrift, Hegel cut his teeth by criticizing Fichte’s already widely-criticized Wissenschaftslehre, and by demonstrating that Schelling’s philosophical system was not simply to be equated with it. Fichte himself never bothered to respond to Hegel’s criticisms; indeed he never publicly (...) acknowledged their existence. This was not because he was unconcerned with criticisms of his views; quite the contrary. But at the time he had bigger fish to fry. He responded to Jacobi’s criticisms, and to Schelling’s; he replied in great detail to critical questions raised by Reinhold, and with vituperative intensity to objections raised by skeptics and purportedly loyal Kantians. But Hegel’s Differenzschrift was left without a Fichtean rebuttal. This is a pity, both because of the missed opportunity to illuminate by controversy central issues at stake in the post-Kantian period, but also because it made it easier for Hegel simply to reiterate his youthful criticism as if it were the last word. And reiterate it he did: in one form or another Hegel’s early criticisms of Fichte reappear at every subsequent stage of his career: in the Phenomenology, in the Science of Logic, in the Encyclopaedia, as the final chapter in Hegel’s History of Philosophy, and in countless other minor works and documents from the Nachlass and correspondence. (shrink)

Hegel's very first acknowledged publication was, among other things, an attack on Fichte. In 1801, Hegel was still laboring in almost complete obscurity, while Fichte was an international sensation, though already somewhat past the peak of his meteoric career. In the 1801Differenzschrift, Hegel cut his teeth by criticizing Fichte's already widelycriticisedWissenschaftslehre, and by demonstrating that Schelling's philosophical system was not simply to be equated with it. Fichte himself never bothered to respond to Hegel's criticisms; indeed he never publicly acknowledged their (...) existence. This was not because he was unconcerned with criticisms of his views; quite the contrary. But at the time he had bigger fish to fry. He responded to Jacobi's criticisms, and to Schelling's; he replied in great detail to critical questions raised by Reinhold, and with vituperative intensity to objections raised by skeptics and purportedly loyal Kantians. But Hegel'sDifferenzschriftwas left without a Fichtean rebuttal. This is a pity, both because of the missed opportunity to illuminate by controversy central issues at stake in the post-Kantian period, but also because it made it easier for Hegel simply to reiterate his youthful criticism as if it were the last word. And reiterate it he did: in one form or another Hegel's early criticisms of Fichte reappear at every subsequent stage of his career: in thePhenomenology, in theScience of Logic, in theEncyclopaedia, as the final chapter in Hegel'sHistory of Philosophy, and in countless other minor works and documents from theNachlassand correspondence. (shrink)

I set out to trace the history of a distinctive conception of self-consciousness -- from its first formulation in the 3rd century BC, through its reception among Roman philosophers around the 1st century AD, and finally to its fate in Enlightenment thought of the 18th century. I use this history to clarify and defend an idea that figured centrally in the history of philosophy, but which has recently come under sustained attack: the idea that human beings are in some very (...) fundamental way self- conscious beings, and that our self-consciousness serves as a kind of foundation or transcendental condition for our other cognitive capacities. Obviously, given the scale of these ambitions, the presentation here should be considered at best a sketch. It is intended not to settle any matters, but at least to bring back into view a line of argument that has been covered over by more recent developments. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the representation of self-consciousness in the still life tradition in the Netherlands around the time of Descartes’ residence there. I treat the paintings of this tradition as both a phenomenological resource and as a phenomenological undertaking in their own right. I begin with an introductory overview of the still life tradition, with particular attention to semiotic structures characteristic of the vanitas still life. I then focus my analysis on the representation of self-consciousness in this tradition, (...) identifying both a Cartesian mode of representation of self-consciousness but also a counter trend. (shrink)

An influential interpretation of phenomenology construes Husserl's project as an attempt to generalize the Fregean notion of sense- an attempt to extend Frege's analysis of the structure of meaningful expressions to a more general account of the structure of meaning in experience . Michael Dummett has articulated a broadly Fregean critique of this Husserlian program, arguing that the project is misguided and retrograde-a relapse into the psychologism and idealism that Frege sought to avoid. A defense of Husserl is offered, based (...) in part on key elements of the theory of meaning articulated in his Logical Investigations . But the main aim is neither to acquit nor to convict Husserl of Dummett's charges; rather it is to use the exchange to investigate some of the philosophical commitments of a broadly Husserlian phenomenology. If we are to understand how Husserl avoids psychologism then we must come to terms with the paradoxical idea of an anti-psychologistic investigation of consciousness (an anti-psychologistic psychology). If we are to understand his complex stance toward idealism then we must not only understand the grounds for his rejection of subjective idealism but also be attuned to the other forms of idealism to which his project is committed. In the course of investigating these matters the author considers how Husserl can reply to the charge of explanatory vacuity, and shows that Frege himself recognizes the legitimacy of something like the Husserlian project. (shrink)

Since Kant, theorists of human consciousness have often made the claim that man's cognitive or theoretical forms of consciousness are rooted in practical forms of consciousness or in one or another form of practice . Although the ancestry of this view can be traced to Rousseau and Kant, it is among the post-Kantian idealists that it first comes to full expression. I examine the emergence of this theme in the first formulations of post-Kantian idealism: the Jena texts of Johann Gottlieb (...) Fichte. ;The first task in understanding Fichte's "primacy of practice" thesis is to understand the general character of his philosophical project. Traditionally, Fichte's philosophy has been thought of as marking the repudiation of Kant's "critical" project in favor of a program of "speculative metaphysics." On this reading, the core of Fichte's thought is a quasi-theological view of the universe as the product of a self-constituting absolute ego. One of my central claims is that this metaphysical reading of Fichte is fundamentally mistaken. Examining Fichte's philosophical aims in their original context , I show that Fichte's central philosophical concern is not a metaphysical but a transcendental issue: the "referentiality" or "objectivity" of consciousness. How, Fichte wants to know, do we come to think of our conscious states as referring to something that we take to exist independently of them? ;At the heart of Fichte's account of referentiality, I argue, is his rejection of naturalistic accounts of subjectivity. If we treat the subject as a natural object in a network of causal relations, he claims, then referentiality remains inexplicable. The first Wissenschaftslehre is then intended to provide an alternative to such naturalism: an account of referentiality that centers on the notion of a self-relating, self-determining subject. It is in this context that the primacy of practice thesis emerges: Any account of theoretical consciousness requires an appeal to an account of human beings as agents. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Very Brief Primer on Dutch Still‐Life Painting Bubbles and Skulls: Pieter Claesz and the Transformation of a Visual Theme The Temporality of Self‐Consciousness in a Late Painting of David Bailly A Concluding Word about Two Portraits.

Russon proposes an intriguing project: a phenomenology of embodiment that uses Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit as its text and structure—a Phänomenologie des Körpers from Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes. What we are given is not commentary or secondary literature on Hegel's text; rather, Russon is making philosophical use of Hegel's dialectical narrative and conceptual framework in an independent theoretical enterprise. Nonetheless, this remains a recognizably Hegelian undertaking. Accordingly, we should not be surprised to find that Russon's phenomenology of the body is (...) intended, in its way, as a rationalization of the body—"the rational comprehension of human embodiment". Indeed, Russon claims that the culmination of embodiment lies in a logical moment: the body is to become mind, to be comprehended in what Russon calls the logos, the topic of Hegelian logic. We are even told, at a late stage in the dialectic, that "to be is to be a sign". (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 693 between the world of our sense perception and the world of objects "in and for themselves," had suggested that the failure to appreciate this distinction was a "Grundvorurteil" common to all controversies, and, finally, had argued for the need to distinguish between the self revealed in "inner sense" and the self as it is in itself, unknowable to us. In his extremely valuable article, "Funzioni logiche (...) e categorie in Kant," Silvestro Marcucci retlects on a complex of issues surrounding Kant's claim to have discovered some sort of correspondence between the components and structure of a "table" of logical functions and those of a set of"pure concepts" or "categories" for the objective determination of objects through the contents of human sensibility. Of central concern to Marcucci is the error of supposing that what is in question is either a mere parallel between functions of judgment and categories or some sort of real identity between them. What is in question, according to Marcucci, are three "uses" but only two "levels" (piani): the foundational level is that of an operative.judgmental "functionality" by which the categories and the pure forms of general logic are produced. He argues that Kant is appealing here neither to pure logical form nor to logical "functions" that are in some way identical with the categories of understanding, but rather to functions of judgment more fundamental than either. The final two essays deal with two of Kant's immediate heirs, Reinhold and Fichte. In "The Sun of Enlightenment" Nathan Rotenstreich argues that Reinhold's notion of Enlightenment had an important social aspect, which is concerned with the distribution of enlightenment and is distinguished from his systematic view. Claudio Cesa, in "Die Vieldeutigkeit des Begriffes 'Trieb' von J. G. Fichte" traces the development of this important concept from Reinhold's concept "Kraft," which was itself neither sensible nor intellectual but changed depending upon its objects: sensibility, understanding, or reason. Cesa goes on to outline how Fichte developed a more positive notion including the conception of inner purposiveness expressing itself in humans as a form for realizing the I. JANE KNELI.ER Colorado State University RICHARD AQUILA University of Tennessee George J. Seidel. Fichte's "Wissenschaftslehre" of z 794: A Commentary on Part I. Purdue University Series in the History of Philosophy. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993. Pp. ix + 126. Cloth, $25.00. Paper, $12.95. The recent revival of interest in Fichte is now well entrenched in North America and has begun to yield a fairly diverse harvest: new translations, articles, monographs, and, predictably, conferences and a scholarly society. With this volume, however, we have the first entry in the "commentary" category. Given its notorious obscurity and disarray, Fichte's corpus--particularly his Jena corpus, which has remained the main focus of attention--would seem to be an apt subject for the genre. The work to which Seidel has 694 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER ~995 devoted his attention--the Foundations of the Entire "Wissenschaft~lehre"--particularly invites this sort of undertaking; it is a text which, by Fichte's own account, was intended to be accompanied by elaborations, illustrations and explanations. Seidel focuses on what is certainly the most interesting and important part of the text, the first three sections (about 3~ pages in all) which together make up "Part I" of this version of the Wissenschaftslehre. It is here that Fichte tries to articulate the basic principles that will govern his entire philosophical investigation. He uses as the lever for his enquiry two fundamental logical dicta--the principles of identity and contradiction--claiming to uncover three fundamental principles which underlie them: the principles of selfpositing, counter-positing and limitation. The body of the Wissenschaflslehreitself is an elaborate dialectical attempt to work out the implications of these basic features of human subjectivity--in particular to use them to give a deduction of the fundamental categories of human experience. There are a number of different approaches that a commentary might take to this dense piece of text. At one extreme stands the example provided by Findlay, whose commentary on Hegel's Phenomenology takes the form of a detailed paraphrase... (shrink)

In a well-known passage from the Analytic of the second Critique, Kant makes reference to what he calls “an unavoidable need of human reason”—the need to find “the unity of the entire pure faculty of reason.” The remark is made in passing, and Kant himself deals only obliquely with the question as to how this need might be met. Indeed, two centuries later we may be inclined to say that Kant’s legacy was less to unite theoretical and practical reason than (...) to sunder them—relegating them to the distinct philosophical subdisciplines that have become an institutional fact of life. For Kant’s most controversial disciple, however, satisfying this “unavoidable need” was to become something of a philosophical obsession. From his earliest forays in systematic philosophy we see J. G. Fichte determined to uncover the deep unity of rational human subjectivity and thereby to exhibit the unity of theoretical and practical reason. (shrink)

The Cambridge series of companions already includes a volume on Kant, another on Hegel, and yet a third promised on Fichte. So it may come as a surprise to find this further volume devoted to German idealism as a whole. The decision to add to the bookshelf of companions obviously makes financial sense for Cambridge, but in this case it is also amply justified by the interesting and provocative set of essays gathered together here by Karl Ameriks. The broader scope (...) of this volume allows for more penetrating comparative studies, as well as the inclusion of figures who were important within the idealist tradition but who tend to get overlooked in collections that focus on one or another of “The Greats.” Since much of the best recent scholarship has focused on comparative questions and on the contributions of various figures outside the standard canon, the volume also serves to illustrate the state of the art in German idealism studies. (shrink)