Edgar Wind was one of the most distinguished art historians and philosophers of the twentieth century. He made crucial contributions to debates on aesthetics and on the interdisciplinary nature of cultural history involving such other leading figures as Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky. It is not always realised, however, that his early thinking was moulded by a concern with the German philosophical tradition, culminating in the analysis of the meaning and function of scientific experimentation and proof. This first edition in (...) English of Edgar Wind's important work Das Experiment und die Metaphysik: Zur Auflosung der kosmologischen Antinomien (1934) also carries a new introduction by Matthew Rampley, placing Wind's philosophical thinking in context. The work is being published to coincide with the opening in 2000 of the Sackler Library at Oxford, which will include a Wind Reading Room. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive account of Kant’s development from the 1755/56 metaphysics to the cosmological antinomy of 1781. With the Theory of the Heavens (1755) and the Physical Monadology (1756), the young Kant had presented an ambitious approach to physical cosmology based on an atomistic theory of matter, which contributed to the foundations of an all-encompassing system of metaphysics. Why did he abandon this system in favor of his critical view that cosmology runs into an antinomy, according to (...) the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)? This book answers this question by focusing on Kant’s methodology and the internal problems of his 1755/56 theory of nature. A decisive role for Kant’s critical turn plays the argument from incongruent counterparts (1768), which drew much attention among philosophers of science, though not sufficiently in Kant research. Furthermore, the book analyses the genesis of the cosmological antinomy in the 1770s, the logical structure of the antinomy in the CPR, its relation to transcendental idealism, as explained in the “experiment of pure reason” (1787), and its role for the teleology of human reason. The book is addressed to Kant scholars, philosophers of science, and students of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

Wolff’s relation to Leibniz and Kant’s relation to both are notoriously vexed questions. First, this paper argues that Wolff’s most serious departure from Leibniz consists in his (so far overlooked) rejection of the latter’s infinitism. Second, it contends that the controversies that surrounded Wolff’s early acceptance of infinite causal regress and prompted his conversion to finitism played a prominent role in shaping the theses of Kant’s Antinomies. Whereas Leibniz and the early Wolff considered infinite regress to provide support for (...) the contingency of the world and the existence of God, Wolff’s enemies condemned it as Spinozistic. After Wolff, the claim that an infinite chain of causes is impossible became the standard view among both Wolffian and anti-Wolffian metaphysicians. (shrink)

Kant’s first antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason deals with the question of the size of the world. The temporal portion of the problem, on which I will focus in this paper, concerns the question of whether the world has a beginning in time or whether it exists eternally. Kant is sometimes understood as arguing that since neither one of the conflicting options can be confirmed, one needs to reject the common mistake of both opponents, namely, that we know (...) the world as a thing in itself, and embrace instead Kant’s transcendental idealism. In view of modern cosmology, Kant’s resolution of the first antinomy may appear outdated. Modern cosmological theories, after all, do suggest that the world evolved from a singular point by a big bang or through a cycle of successive expanding and contracting phases. I wish to argue in this paper that Kant’s analysis of the first antinomy does not involve questions of confirmability and that its lessons apply to modern cosmology as well. Kant’s analysis challenges the view that the world as a whole is a proper object for human investigation, but it does not reject the legitimacy of the cosmological project of explaining the current state of the universe and its evolution in terms of earlier events in the history of the world. It merely shows that modern theories are misguided only insofar as they attempt to affirm that the singular point is the absolute beginning of the world or that the cycle of expansion and contraction is ultimately infinite. Thus, Kant does not deny science as a legitimate avenue of research. He rather keeps cosmology from sliding into the dogmatic paths of traditional cosmological speculations, which purported to account for the absolute origin of the world by means of theological and metaphysical considerations. (shrink)

The cosmology elaborated in the Hengxian is eclectic. Its most salient point is the notion of self–generation which most probably stems from some other independent source no longer extant today. Apart from the cosmology of self–generation, there existed three other types of cosmology in ancient China: ‘nonpresence to presence’ cosmology, numerological cosmology, and mythological cosmology. Interestingly, the pursuit of the cosmological problematic led ancient Chinese thought to two antinomies. The first one revolved around the issue of whether the (...) world and the myriad things have a beginning. The latter antinomy regarded the question of whether the generation and transformation of the world and the myriad things is caused by ‘some agency’ or whether there is ‘no maker’ involved in the cosmological process. These two antinomies have their close counterparts in two of the four antinomies introduced by Immanuel Kant, which attests to the depth of philosophical reasoning in ancient China. (shrink)

Kant’s first antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason deals with the question of the size of the world. The temporal portion of the problem, on which I will focus in this paper, concerns the question of whether the world has a beginning in time or whether it exists eternally. Kant is sometimes understood as arguing that since neither one of the conflicting options can be confirmed, one needs to reject the common mistake of both opponents, namely, that we know (...) the world as a thing in itself, and embrace instead Kant’s transcendental idealism. In view of modern cosmology, Kant’s resolution of the first antinomy may appear outdated. Modern cosmological theories, after all, do suggest that the world evolved from a singular point by a big bang or through a cycle of successive expanding and contracting phases. I wish to argue in this paper that Kant’s analysis of the first antinomy does not involve questions of confirmability and that its lessons apply to modern cosmology as well. Kant’s analysis challenges the view that the world as a whole is a proper object for human investigation, but it does not reject the legitimacy of the cosmological project of explaining the current state of the universe and its evolution in terms of earlier events in the history of the world. It merely shows that modern theories are misguided only insofar as they attempt to affirm that the singular point is the absolute beginning of the world or that the cycle of expansion and contraction is ultimately infinite. Thus, Kant does not deny science as a legitimate avenue of research. He rather keeps cosmology from sliding into the dogmatic paths of traditional cosmological speculations, which purported to account for the absolute origin of the world by means of theological and metaphysical considerations. (shrink)

In his Critique of Pure Reason, in the chapter on the antinomy of pure reason, Kant not only argues that aprioristic cosmology is doomed to failure; he also implies that empirical knowledge about the universe is impossible. Today, such a negative verdict about the possibility of cosmological knowledge seems implausible because physical cosmology has made substantial progress. In particular, the spatiotemporal extension of the universe now seems a matter of empirical investigation in which models figure centrally. But I think (...) it is worth considering the possibility that Kant got something right and that he offers insights that can help us to better understand problems in present-day cosmology. In this article, I explore a striking coincidence: according to both Kant and current wisdom, cosmology faces a serious underdetermination problem regarding the spatiotemporal extension of the world. As a closer analysis reveals, however, Kant and modern cosmology differ on the reasons why underdetermination arises. In current cosmology, underdetermination follows from laws that are knowable a posteriori, and not only from the very idea of cosmological knowledge, as Kant would have it. This suggests that the current underdetermination problem is not fully a Kantian one. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Kant's theory of the regulative use of ideas of reason has been clarified considerably in recent scholarship. Little attention has been paid, however, to the question of whether the three classes of transcendental ideas—psychological, cosmological, and theological—may differ with regard to their regulative use. This article argues that there is a fundamental difference between the classes of ideas in this respect and that an examination of this heterogeneity can provide much‐needed insight into Kant's account of the utility of the (...) cosmological ideas. First, I set out Kant's distinction between the cosmological ideas and their psychological and theological counterparts. Second, I clarify the two distinct regulative uses of each cosmological idea. I argue that the two opposed sides of the cosmological antinomies provide two different heuristic functions, aligned with the theoretical and practical interests of reason. (shrink)

Scholars commonly assume that Kant never seriously engaged with Spinoza or Spinozism. However, in his later writings Kant argues several times that Spinozism is the most consistent form of transcendental realism. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the first Antinomy, debating the age and size of the world, already reflects Kant's confrontation with Spinozist metaphysics. Specifically, the position articulated in the Antithesis ? according to which the world is infinite and uncreated ? is Spinozist, not Leibnizian, (...) as commonly assumed. In the second part of the paper, I raise the chief Spinozist challenge to the Antinomy, arising from Spinoza's reliance on a cosmological `totum analyticum' ? an infinite whole which is prior to its parts. In conclusion, I begin to elaborate a defence of the Kantian position, confronting Spinoza's infinite whole with Kant's account of the absolutely infinite in his discussion of the sublime. (shrink)

In this paper, I will show to what extent we can use our modern understanding of the Square of Opposition in order to make sense of Kant 's double standard solution to the cosmological antinomies. Notoriously, for Kant, both theses and antitheses of the mathematical antinomies are false, while both theses and antitheses of the dynamical antinomies are true. Kantian philosophers and interpreters have criticized Kant 's solution as artificial and prejudicial. In the paper, I do (...) not dispute such claims, but I show that our modern understanding of the Square of Opposition enables us to more naturally deliver the result Kant was aiming at. Accordingly, the paper does not pretend to be exegetically accurate. It is an attempt to revise the antinomies with the help of standard classical logic. And although such a revision entails some re-interpretation, in the end, it will actually help to unveil some of Kant 's thoughts. (shrink)

A recent proposal by Dr. W. H. McCrae, cosmologist and mathematician, to the effect that decisions between such cosmogonies as those of Hoyle and of Gamow are experimentally impossible by virtue of a general cosmological indeterminacy principle, is here examined and elaborated upon. Some comments on the "antinomies" in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" are made in reference to this principle as well as to the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle. If McCrae's principle is accepted, we will have moved a (...) long way toward Kant's conclusion that a logically consistent understanding of an underlying "ultimate reality" is outside the confines of science--whatever one may think of Kant's own line of reasoning. (shrink)

The thesis that existence is radically different from the determinacy of an actually existing thing –Kant considers this thesis to be the unsurmountable objection against the cosmological and the ontological argument– is the same thesis that demands a specific explanation of the existence of that actually existing thing. The notion of existence that results from its complete exclusion from the realm of the contents thoroughgoing determined by real predicates requires, thus, precisely because this thoroughness excludes it, a specific reason (...) that explains that in the actually existing thing its own actual existence is in fact united with its own determinacy; that notion of existence, however, cancels at the same time the requirement of a sufficient reason of the existence of what actually exists, and again for the same reason, namely, because since existence is as such excluded from the determinacy of the existing things, it radically differs from the specific realm where determinacy is constituted (that is why existing things are thoroughgoing determined as possible), and, therefore, it invalidates any application to itself of the logical laws that are valid only for the merely possible domain of determinacy. (shrink)

The Thesis of Kant’s Third Antinomy asserts that, because it is “necessary to assume another causality through freedom” in order to derive all the appearances of the world, “causality in accordance with the laws of nature is not the only one” (A444/B472). The argument Kant supplies in support of this, however, has been the subject of interpretative disagreement since at least Schopenhauer, with the most plausible reconstructions being dismissed as question-begging, resting on a conflation relating to the principle of sufficient (...) reason, or attacking a straw-man of the Antithesis position. In this paper, I attempt to provide a novel interpretation of the argument for the Thesis position, one that offers a more compelling case against a charitably interpreted Antithesis position. (shrink)

In this article, I claim that the Antinomy of pure reason emerges as the result of synthetic activities that require succession. In this regard, I show that cosmological conflicts involve different kinds of representations: cosmological ideas, purely conceptual representations of the unconditioned and the product of non-temporal synthetic activities; and putative complete series of spatiotemporal conditions, which require temporal synthetic activities. As I show, purely conceptual representations cannot produce cosmological conflicts: The Antinomy requires the interaction of reason, (...) understanding, and sensibility. I also discuss the maxim and principle of pure reason, how they lead to the unconditioned, and how the cosmological syllogism produces the Antinomy. (shrink)

An ancient cosmological debate lies behind the spatial part of the first antinomy in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Against the Aristotelian conception of a finite universe, a thought experiment proposed we imagine ourselves situated on the boundary of the world: what happens if we stretch a hand beyond the boundary? This article first shows that aspects of this debate persist in the cosmological claims of Huygens, Wolff, and Crusius. With his presentation of opposing arguments in the first (...) antinomy, Kant famously rejected both sides of the debate and asserted that we cannot meaningfully inquire into the spatial boundary of the world. I then argue that the critical-period Kant nevertheless does not simply dismiss the issue of an outer boundary of the world: he rather reconceives it as the question of the boundary of the legitimate use of our cognitive faculties. The cosmological question of the boundary of the world is transformed—from Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation through his Reflexionen of the 1770s to the first Critique—into the critical question of the boundary of reason. -/- . (shrink)

In spite of successful tests, the standard cosmological model, the $$\varLambda$$ CDM model, possesses the most problematic concept: the initial singularity, also known as the big bang. In this paper—by adopting the Kantian difference between to think of an object and to cognize an object—it is proposed a degree of scientificity using fuzzy sets. Thus, the notion of initial singularity will not be conceived of as a scientific issue because it does not belong to the fuzzy set of what (...) is known. Indeed, the problematic concept of singularity is some sort of what Kant called the noumenon, but science, on the other hand, is constructed in the phenomenon. By applying the fuzzy degree of scientificity in cosmological models, one concludes that cosmologies with a contraction phase before the current expansion phase are potentially more scientific than the standard model. At the end of this article, it is shown that Kant’s first antinomy of pure reason indicates a limit to our cosmological models. (shrink)

This is a descriptive review of Falkenburg's book: Kant’s cosmology: from the pre-critical system to the antinomy of pure reason. At the end, the author specifies what is, in his opinion, the book's target audience.

This paper describes a “double move“ made by Maimonides, Kant, and Hermann Cohen when they simultaneously dismiss and resolve the cosmological problem of the origin of the universe in time in order to represent creation as a moral issue. Maimonides claims to lack a compelling metaphysical argument regarding creation. However, a reading of Maimonides inspired by the views of Hermann Cohen finds him to be a Platonist who accepts creation from absolute privation so as to establish a moral world (...) in which revelation establishes a correlation between humans and God. For Kant, metaphysics also cannot address the origin of the universe, but he positively describes the regress towards the origin as indeterminately large to derive the unconditioned ideal of reason that supports the regulative use of reason. Cohen, therefore, follows the precedents set by Maimonides and Kant when he claims that the Jewish concept of creation is an ethical and logical problem rather than a cosmological one, even though his account of creation presupposes his era's dominant scientific model of the eternity of the universe. (shrink)

This article argues against scientistic arguments of the redundancy of religious belief structures due to the explicability of the physical world, as exemplified here by a discussion of the “popular science” of Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. It is claimed that the root of belief in “sense” is in animation, rather than in cosmological creation myths. The paper displays that the ideal of the absolute is linguistically signified by the termini “survival” and “freedom” in human understanding. However, it does (...) not appear through human understanding as an illusion stemming from the illegitimate inference of a pantheistic spirit or prime mover. Instead, human reason builds an analytical understanding upon a fundamental instinct, which long predates human-level consciousness. Approaching the subject’s role in the physical world, the article displays that animation itself, as the primal form of awareness and agency, is the urge to overcome an inherent antagonism in the structure of being. It is argued that the cosmological argument is mirrored by an argument that has no strict theoretical cogency, but is likewise irreducible and irrefutable by science. Science investigates the object empirically but has limited explanatory capabilities when it comes to subjective being. (shrink)

This volume of essays, written in English and German, focuses primarily on Kant's concept of transcendental freedom. The first Critique famously introduces this concept of freedom in the third antinomy, where Kant examines the apparent tension between the world's need for an uncaused cause and the world's thorough causal determination. Thus, Kant's concept of transcendental freedom is, as this volume emphasizes, a cosmological conception of freedom. Although the volume claims to consider Kant's conception of cosmological freedom from both (...) historical and systematic perspectives, the bulk of the essays focus more heavily on historical matters. Most of the essays in the volume compare and contrast Kant's conception of... (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano criticised Kant's philosophy so vehemently that his pupil Franz Prihonsky called him "Anti-Kant". One of his criticisms concerns Kant's cosmological antinomies. The context of this critique is the problem of limits of knowledge. Kant wanted to prove that there are such boundaries, and to show where these are located. In this paper we will (i) schematize Kant's antinomies (to see what Bolzano really criticised on them) and (ii) summarize Bolzano's criticism, which is distributed over his (...) and his student's work. At the beginning we will work out the (more fundamental) theoretical differences between Kant's and Bolzano's philosophy to see what roles these play in the construction of the antinomies. (shrink)

The paper presents a detailed interpretation of Edgar Wind’s Experiment and Metaphysics, a unique work on the philosophy of physics which broke with the Neo-Kantian tradition under the influence of American pragmatism. Taking up Cassirer’s interpretation of physics, Wind develops a holistic theory of the experiment and a constructivist account of empirical facts. Based on the concept of embodiment which plays a key role in Wind’s later writings on art history, he argues, however, that the outcomes of measurements are contingent. (...) He then proposes an anti-Kantian conception of a metaphysics of nature. For him, nature is an unknown totality which manifests itself in discrepancies between theories and experiment, and hence the theory formation of physics can increasingly approximate the structure of nature. It is shown that this view is ambiguous between a transcendental, metaphysical realism in Kant’s sense and an internal realism in Putnam’s sense. Wind’s central claim is that twentieth century physics offers new options for resolving Kant’s cosmological antinomies. In particular, he connected quantum indeterminism with the possibility of human freedom, a connection that Cassirer sharply opposed. (shrink)

When philosophers of science relate Kant‘s theory of nature to modern physics, they neglect the critical parts of the Critique of Pure Reason. My paper focuses on the way in which Kant wanted to demonstrate the limitations of physical knowledge by means of the cosmological antinomy. According to Kant, cosmology gives rise to four variations of one-and-the-same antinomy of pure reason. He wanted to show that any attempt to complete our spatio-temporal or dynamical knowledge of the world is based (...) on a self-contradictory world view. Obviously he criticized the cosmological debates of his day whose topics are obsolete in our days. However, his doctrine of the antinomy of pure reason has a rationale which concerns the foundations of physics in Kant’s day as well as in ours. After giving a sketch of the subjects and of the structure of Kant’s antinomy, I present four variations on the theme "experience and completeness in physical theory" from a modern point of view. The fourth variation will indeed yield a conflict between the claims of completeness and the finite conditions of possible experience within physics which captures the rationale of Kant’s antinomy. Finally, I try to point out briefly how this rationale relates to Kant’s distinction of phenomena and noumena, and how this distinction can be re-interpreted in the context of modern physics. Indeed Niels Bohr made a similar distinction when he developed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano criticised Kant's philosophy so vehemently that his pupil Franz Prihonsky called him "Anti-Kant". One of his criticisms concerns Kant's cosmological antinomies. The context of this critique is the problem of limits of knowledge. Kant wanted to prove that there are such boundaries, and to show where these are located. In this paper we will schematize Kant's antinomies and summarize Bolzano's criticism, which is distributed over his and his student's work. At the beginning we will work (...) out the theoretical differences between Kant's and Bolzano's philosophy to see what roles these play in the construction of the antinomies. (shrink)

The article offers an analysis of Kant’ s “Third Antinomy of Pure Reason” (in which he examines the possibility of reconciling Transcendental freedom with natural Determinism), in order to show the lack of grounds of the interpretation that claims that the critical resolution of the antinomy implies a shift with respect to the cosmological terms in which the conflict was initially stated. Through a detailed analysis of the sources, we will suggest that the conflict analyzed in the Third Antinomy (...) is not exclusively cosmological, but rather that it also –and to the same degree– constitutes a practical conflict, and, secondly, that the critical solution is not developed in exclusively practical terms, but that it also involves certain aspects directly linked to the cosmological question initially formulated. (shrink)

The article offers an analysis of Kant’ s “Third Antinomy of Pure Reason” (in which he examines the possibility of reconciling Transcendental freedom with natural Determinism), in order to show the lack of grounds of the interpretation that claims that the critical resolution of the antinomy implies a shift with respect to the cosmological terms in which the conflict was initially stated. Through a detailed analysis of the sources, we will suggest that the conflict analyzed in the Third Antinomy (...) is not exclusively cosmological, but rather that it also –and to the same degree– constitutes a practical conflict, and, secondly, that the critical solution is not developed in exclusively practical terms, but that it also involves certain aspects directly linked to the cosmological question initially formulated. (shrink)

The article offers an analysis of Kant’ s “Third Antinomy of Pure Reason” (in which he examines the possibility of reconciling Transcendental freedom with natural Determinism), in order to show the lack of grounds of the interpretation that claims that the critical resolution of the antinomy implies a shift with respect to the cosmological terms in which the conflict was initially stated. Through a detailed analysis of the sources, we will suggest that the conflict analyzed in the Third Antinomy (...) is not exclusively cosmological, but rather that it also –and to the same degree– constitutes a practical conflict, and, secondly, that the critical solution is not developed in exclusively practical terms, but that it also involves certain aspects directly linked to the cosmological question initially formulated. (shrink)

This series publishes outstanding monographs and edited volumes that investigate all aspects of Kant's philosophy, including its systematic relationship to other philosophical approaches, both past and present. Studies that appear in the series are distinguished by their innovative nature and ability to close lacunae in the research. In this way, the series is a venue for the latest findings in scholarship on Kant.

Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. (...) Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegelian RhetoricThora Ilin BayerIntroduction: Rhetoric and DialecticAristotle in the famous first line of his Rhetoric defines the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic: "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic" (1354a). Both rhetoric and dialectic belong to no definitive science. They treat those things that come within the purview of all human beings. As an antistrophes to dialectic, rhetoric concerns particular cases and "may be defined as the faculty [dynamis] of (...) observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (1355b). Dialectic concerns reasoning on general issues and in its generality it is like deduction. But unlike deductive demonstration, dialectic, as Aristotle says in Topics, "reasons from reputable opinions," rather than from premises that are true and primitive (100a).Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason takes a more extreme view of dialectic than Aristotle. Kant regards dialectic as a logic of illusion (Schein) that occurs when reason takes its powers beyond experience to make claims concerning the nature of the soul, world, and God. When reason attempts to determine the nature of what the soul is in itself, its assertions end in paralogisms; when it does so about the world its claims end in antinomies; and when it does so about God its efforts end in the impossibilities of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. Kant regards rhetoric as having no role in the philosophical pursuit of truth. In the Critique of Judgment Kant classifies rhetoric (Beredsamkeit) as belonging [End Page 203] to fine art. He regards ars oratoria as an art of manipulation and deception that achieves its end by a beautiful show (Schein) of speech that plays upon human weaknesses. He says oratory deserves no respect whatsoever—"ist gar keiner Achtung würdig" (1951, 172n50; 1974, 185n).1 Kant's exclusion of rhetoric from Kritik (with which he identifies philosophy) establishes the general exclusion of rhetoric in the development of philosophical idealism.Hegel interpretation for a century and a half presumed that rhetoric was irrelevant to understanding Hegel's thought. It considered Hegel's dialectic as a method independent of any connection to rhetoric. The first book on Hegel in English, James Hutchinson Stirling's The Secret of Hegel, published in 1863, regards the key to Hegel's system as his formulation of the concrete universal (Begriff). He makes no reference to rhetoric as an element in Hegel's thought (1887, xxii). In his preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel mentions Plato's Parmenides as "surely the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic," but he makes no mention of rhetoric (1952, 57; 1977, 44). A ground for ignoring rhetoric as important for Hegel's philosophy is the fact that Hegel himself ignores it. There is no discussion of rhetoric (Redekunst) in his whole corpus beyond a few pages concerning the differences between poetry and prose in his Lectures on Fine Art (1986, 15:257–68; 1998, 2:986–95).All of the approaches to Hegel in nonrhetorical terms changed with the appearance of Donald Phillip Verene's Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit" (1985) followed by John H. Smith's The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of "Bildung" (1988).2 Verene's work showed that there is a dialectic between image (Bild) and concept (Begriff) within Hegel's mode of expression that provides the reader with a necessary means of access to the work. Smith's study showed not only that Hegel employs rhetorical principles in the composition of the Phenomenology but that Hegel in his early years studied rhetoric closely and was concerned to master it. Smith's work, although developed independently of Verene's, joined with it to present a new reading of Hegel. This poetical and rhetorical grasp of Hegel's thought has been recently restated in Verene's Hegel's Absolute (2007).My views that follow begin where Verene's and Smith's accounts leave off. I wish to consider two questions that extend what has been broached in their readings of Hegel. (1) In what sense does Hegel's Phenomenology embody a transformation of the Aristotelian conception of rhetoric as an antistrophes to dialectic? (2) To... (shrink)

Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber offers an interpretation of Kant’s “confession,” in the Prolegomena, that “it was the objection of David Hume that first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber.” It argues that Hume roused Kant not, as has often been thought, by challenging the principle “every event has a cause” that governs experience, but by attacking the principle of sufficient reason, the basis of rationalist metaphysics and of the cosmological proof of the existence of (...) God. This proposal makes it possible to reconcile Kant’s declaration about Hume with his later assertion that it was the Antinomy of pure reason that first woke him from dogmatic slumber, because the Antinomy, like Hume’s challenge, is directed against the dogmatic use of the principle of sufficient reason. The proposal put forward here also makes it possible to understand why Kant speaks of “the objection of David Hume” after mentioning Hume’s attack on metaphysics; for the “objection” that Kant has in mind, it is argued here, is a challenge to metaphysics, rather than to the foundations of empirical knowledge. (shrink)

Scholars who consider that the Transcendental Analytic contains the core of what Kant calls ‘transcendental idealism’ are mistaken. Indeed, Kant’s transcendental idealism of space, time and spatiotemporal objects is sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic and does not depend on complementary claims made later on in the Critique. This does not mean, however, that we are allowed to subscribe to the so-called separability-thesis, which states that we can endorse Kant's views in the Transcendental Logic without endorsing the results of the (...) expositions and arguments laid out in the Aesthetic. Nor does it mean that the Aesthetic contains the only proof for transcendental idealism. Indeed, as Kant himself explicitly recognizes, the antinomies provide the premise for an indirect or mediate proof of his position with respect to the nature of space and time. First, I analyze Kant’s argument for the claim that the production of transcendental illusion is inherent to the function of human reasoning, and therefore inevitable. I then follow the presuppositions and the argumentation of the mediate proof of transcendental idealism and argue that it has a more general validity than could be assumed on the basis of Kant’s text, because it is in its essence independent from the particular determinations of the cosmological idea in the form of the four antinomies. Indeed, as I argue, the nature of reason itself and the content of the general cosmological idea suffice as elements for a mediate proof. Thus, I claim that transcendental idealism can be mediately established on the basis of the general antinomical relation between transcendental realism and material idealism, without any requirement to refer to the particular realisations of this antagonism as they are presented in the four antinomies. If the argument is correct, it shows that the mediate proof of transcendental idealism does not depend on a sympathetic account of the antinomies and is not automatically invalidated if the proofs of thesis and antithesis are considered unconvincing. (shrink)

Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber offers an interpretation of Kant’s “confession,” in the Prolegomena, that “it was the objection of David Hume that first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber.” It argues that Hume roused Kant not, as has often been thought, by challenging the principle “every event has a cause” that governs experience, but by attacking the principle of sufficient reason, the basis of rationalist metaphysics and of the cosmological proof of the existence of (...) God. This proposal makes it possible to reconcile Kant’s declaration about Hume with his later assertion that it was the Antinomy of pure reason that first woke him from dogmatic slumber, because the Antinomy, like Hume’s challenge, is directed against the dogmatic use of the principle of sufficient reason. The proposal put forward here also makes it possible to understand why Kant speaks of “the objection of David Hume” after mentioning Hume’s attack on metaphysics; for the “objection” that Kant has in mind, it is argued here, is a challenge to metaphysics, rather than to the foundations of empirical knowledge. (shrink)

This paper begins the last instalment of a six-part project correlating the key aspects of Kant’s architectonic conception of philosophy with a special version of the Chinese Book of Changes that I call the “Compound Yijing”, which arranges the 64 hexagrams (gua) into both fourfold and threefold sets. I begin by briefly summarizing the foregoing articles: although Kant and the Yijing employ different types of architectonic reasoning, the two systems can both be described in terms of three “levels” of elements. (...) Starting at an unnumbered level devoid of any element (the tao or thing in itself), the system proceeds by elaborating a key fourfold distinction (or “quaternity”) on the first level, a twelvefold distinction on the second level, and twelve quaternities (grouped in four quadrants, each with a set of three quaternities) on the third level. Each set of three quaternities (i.e., each quadrant) on the third level corresponds to one of the four “faculties” of the university, as elaborated in Kant’s book, The Conflict of the Faculties. Previous papers have examined the correlations between three key quaternities that Kant defends in relation to each of three faculties (philosophy, theology, and law) and the 12 gua that correspond to that faculty in the Compound Yijing. The final step is to explore the fourth quaternity on the third level, the 12 gua corresponding to the medical faculty. The “idea of reason” in Kant’s metaphysics that guides this wing of the comparative analysis is freedom, and the ultimate purpose of this faculty of the university is to train doctors to care for people’s physical well-being, as free agents imbedded in nature. But this paper will focus only on the four gua that correspond to four basic concepts in Kant’s theory of medicine. The two quaternities in the “yin-yang” (medical) quadrant of the Compound Yijing that will be skipped here are as follows. First, Kant’s account of the idea of freedom itself, which gives rise to the area of traditional metaphysics known as rational cosmology, comes in the first Critique’s Dialectic, in the section on the Antinomy of Reason (CPR A405-567/B432- 595). There he examines four irresolvable issues: whether the world has a beginning in time; whether composite substances consist of simple parts; whether a causality of freedom operates in the natural world; and whether an absolutely necessary being exists. Later I will argue that these correspond to the quaternity consisting of gua 15, 22, 36, and 52. (shrink)

It is common knowledge that many problems in contemporary physics, particularly in microphysics and cosmology, present various infinities of which it is difficult to dispose, and that their role in mathematics is so considerable that it is often defined as the discipline of the infinite. Therefore it would be difficult to deny that infinity exists. But it is just as well known that, over the entire history of science, recognition of infinity has resulted in various difficulties, contradictions, aporias, antinomies, (...) paradoxes — in a word, "much that is impossible," as Aristotle puts it. As phrased by one of the outs tanding mathematicians of the last century, David Hilbert, infinity offers a real challenge to our thinking. (shrink)

Despite the opinion held by some that Kant’s Critical philosophy is no longer relevant this essay shows that the problems it deals with are ever present. Kant’s critical insights into these problems can be revealed by citing his open invitation to his critical reader to devote to the first antinomy his chief attention. This paper cites Hegel’s response to this invitation and shows where Hegel failed to meet with Kant’s critical demands. An analogous resolution is proposed that falls in line (...) not only with Kant, but with the science of big bang cosmology. An open as opposed to a closed interpretation of Kant is also argued for that leads to the judgment that Kant did not attempt to put an end to speculative metaphysics, but rather, he attempted to inspire metaphysicians to the end of a science of metaphysics. (shrink)

This work addresses and resolved Kant's first antinomy, and brings metaphysics in line with advances in he science of big bang cosmology, introduces a new philosophical argument for the existence of a Supreme Being, and is presented in three versions, with the first version quoting Kant's most relevant remarks with regard to what he calls a science of metaphysics, and an abbreviated version without any quotes, as well as a one page abstract diagram of the argument.