Immanuel Kant und die Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft (Kantstudien: Erganzungshefte) (German Edition)

Immanuel Kant und die OEffentlichkeit der Vernunft

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Save immanuel kant to get e-mail alerts and updates on your eBay Feed. Unfollow immanuel kant to stop getting updates on your eBay feed. You'll receive email and Feed alerts when new items arrive. Turn off email alerts. Skip to main content. Refine your search for immanuel kant. Refine more Format Format. No estate is so useless as that of the man of learning in his natural innocence, and none so necessary in conditions of oppression by superstition or by force. Kant, Posthumous works, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. In sentiments which have no effects. Preface to the French edition This book was my first work.

With it I began an inquiry which I later pursued in several studies and which led to the gradual development of a new method for the understanding and explanation of cultural creation.

Kumar, Apaar

When, in this work, I laid the foundations for this type of sociological research, I was of course unaware of the future development of my work. My principal intention at the time was to write a history of dialectical thought which would itself form an essential part of the development ofthat thought. Hegel and Marx have taught us that the problem of history is the history of problems, and that it is impossible validly to describe any human fact without bringing into that description its genesis.

This implies that one must take into account the evolution both of ideas and of the way in which men represent to themselves the facts studied, since that evolution constitutes an important element in the genesis of the phenomenon. Of course, the converse is also valid. The history of problems is the problem of history, and the history of ideas can only be positive if it is closely bound to the history of the economic, social and political life of men.

Finally Marx, in a famous passage referring to Darwin, whom he profoundly admired and to whom, moreover, he had wished to dedicate Capital , formulated a further essential methodological principle of the human sciences in asserting that the anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape. These considerations explain why, in wishing to create a system of dialectical philosophy, I began with its history, and also why, in devoting the first study to the philosophy of Kant, the main emphasis was upon those aspects of his philosophy which pointed towards later developments, and in particular towards the Hegelian dialectic.

In doing so, I formed quite a new picture of Kant's philosophy, which allowed me to bring to light the nature and origins of the neo-Kantian distortion. But whilst the idea of totality is central to this study, another particularly important dialectical idea is unfortunately neglected: This is frequently termed, using Kant's own phrase, his Copernkan revolution. But here too, I believe that the meaning and importance of that 'revolution' can only be properly understood in terms of the Hegelian and Marxist positions.

Kant's Copernican revolution involves three ideas whose later development in philosophical and scientific thought has been extremely fruitful, but which can only be judged and understood in the light ofthat development, viz.: The opposition between universal form and particular content. This has played an important part in the elaboration of the Marxist analysis of man in liberal society and of the distinction central to that analysis between formal democracy and real stratification, between formal equality and real inequality, and so on, a development which culminates in the theory of reification.

This aspect of Kantian analysis is to some extent studied in the present work. The distinction between two kinds of knowledge: For Kant, the distinction is rigid and universal, valid for all human knowledge. Certain later thinkers have tried to give it a basis in empirical reality and in the situation of man in relation to the universe: However much the positions of Durkheim and especially of Piaget may differ from Preface to the ig6?

French edition 75 the rigidity of transcendental analysis, it is nonetheless possible to say that the most general framework in which these reflections are situated is Kantian in character. The idea that man creates for Kant, creates only in part the world which he perceives and knows in experience.

This is the famous transcendental subjectivity of space and time and of the categories. But since this creation clearly could not be attributed to the empirical individual, Kant was obliged to limit it to formal structures and to confer upon it an abstract and transcendental character. The fate of this conception in neo-Kantianism and, in our time, in the thought of Husserl and in phenomenology is well known. Social groups and society, which are empirical realities, create the concrete character of the natural world really by technical action , and, through the mediation ofthat action on nature, create all economic, social and political structures, psychological structures and mental categories whose genetic character has been shown by anthropology, sociology, infant psychology and epistemology.

Here, too, Kant's thought formed a turning-point, opening the way to a scientific epistemology which has no further need for the transcendental ego and can remain wholly on a positive level. Although not completely ignored, this development is but little dealt with in the present volume. Here I can only refer the reader to the now classic chapters on relocation in Georg Lukacs's History andClass-Consciousness For the dialectical thinker, philosophical reflection does not constitute an entirely autonomous reality, radically separated from the remainder of social life.

Whilst recognizing its relative autonomy and its need for extreme internal rigour, dialectical thinkers have always been convinced that the elucidation of the meaning of a philosophical system i6 experienced in practice is an important element for the understanding of its objective meaning and for any judgement wholly founded upon its validity and its limits. In this context, I should like to acknowledge a debt to a school of thought with which I have never been in agreement - existentialism. The philosophy of a period of crisis in Western society, existentialism was principally centred on the limits of individual existence, on death, anguish and defeat.

It is in the name of the classical tradition, of Kant, Hegel and Marx, that, with the majority of dialectical thinkers, I have set against this philosophy the existence of a collective, transindividual subject and the possibility of an immanent historical hope which transcends the bounds of the individual.

Nevertheless, it can be seen today, at a time when philosophical thought is returning either to an abstract and formalist rationalism or to irrationalism, that the powerful development of existentialism has had at least the merit of bringing the philosophical thought of its time - even of those thinkers who did not accept its position - closer to the real and concrete life of men.

By its explicit influence, but also by diffusion, it has contributed to the fact that once again writers and philosophers are being questioned about what might be called the existential sense of their writings. From this point of view -and despite my distance from any form of existentialist thought - the present work contributes to an intellectual climate which I believe is still valid today and which should not be too readily abandoned. At a time when so many brilliant minds and men of remarkable intelligence are neglecting and disowning the humanist tradition and turning towards a formalist structuralism or towards praise of the irrational, at a time when, to the crisis of the social and economic structures of our societies, there seems to be added a no less radical crisis of philosophical thought and the human sciences, I should like to express the hope that this book may help some of its readers to set themselves against the stream.

Were I to rewrite this work today, I should make certain changes in it. Firstly, very often where I wrote 'Kant was the first to. However, I do not think that this calls for any sweeping modification of the work. Kant's thought developed quite independently of Pascal; the analysis of its content, of the influences undergone by it, and of the social conditions which favoured it is thus in no way altered Further, my book was written in under the direct influence of the thought of Georg Lukdcs, whose early works - at that time completely unknown - I had chanced to discover.

In , at Geneva, he took part in the symposium on the European mind, where his exchanges with Jaspers overshadowed all other contributions. After an interruption of almost twenty years, he has now actively resumed his philosophical publications In these circumstances it is no longer necessary to draw the attention of the philosophical public to him, and, with the aid of distance, I believe that today I can see his work in a clearer light. Now essayist, by its very definition, means precursor, one who announces a system but who does not construct it.

Whilst still fully recognizant of the importance of his work, and of the enormous intellectual debt of gratitude that I owe him, I should hesitate today to put him on the same level as Kant, Hegel and Marx, as is done throughout this book. In place of a better world and a better community, new clouds are gathering.

The possibility of another war has become part of the normal order of things.

If one day it breaks out, it will come as a surprise to no one. In the midst of this depression and disquiet, conditions are clearly unfavourable for a philosophy of optimism and hope. Nihilist philosophies and philosophies of despair become ever more widespread and - no less disturbing - on all sides representative voices are raised to disown the heritage of classical humanism in the name of the exigencies of the present and of the immediate future.

We can no longer close our eyes to the fact that humanism today is undergoing a crisis which threatens its very existence, and which demands a rigorous reassessment of the situation. What weight can the works of Kant or of Pascal, of Goethe or of Racine, carry today in the age of atomic weapons? What can they still offer us? What, above all, can they prevent? We have no right to be satisfied with our 'good conscience'. When it loses contact with reality, it also loses any real value and becomes a weakness or an escape.

Against the humanist tradition real forces are drawn up which also speak in the name of a certain future and of a certain culture. Some of these forces by their very reality imply values. Whatever is real is rational, said Hegel. If I am nevertheless reissuing this work, it is because I believe that the crisis, despite its gravity, is a passing one; I am convinced that one day men will succeed in giving a rational meaning to life and a human meaning to the universe.

Whatever is rational is real, said the same Hegel. Like him, I continue to believe in the final victory of man and of reason - a victory to which even those hostile forces which today seem to carry thefieldwill have contributed. The road will no doubt be longer than we thought. But the path which leads to the goal is still the same: From the Preface to the original German edition, The present work is neither a wholly historical or literary study, nor is it wholly self-contained.

It is intended only as the first stone towards the building of a system of dialectical philosophy to be gradually outlined in subsequent works. However, an essential preliminary to such a system is to examine the formulation of the dialectical problem in the history of philosophy. I have begun with Kant because it is with Kant that philosophy first attains knowledge of one of the most important dialectical oppositions - between empiricism and totality, between form and content - and because Kant was the first to set out this opposition in all its starkness and to place it at the centre of his philosophical system.

Nevertheless, I believe that my work also contributes on the purely historical and scholarly level to the clarification of the neo-Kantian misunderstanding, to the overthrow of the 'Kant myth' which grew out of it, and to the restoration of the original meaning of Kant's philosophy. Once again it is clear that a truly historical treatment of philosophy can never be purely 'scholarly' but is only made possible by the actual experience of philosophical problems, whilst being nonetheless indispensable to their solution Introduction i In presenting to the reader today a study of man and human community in the thought of Kant, I feel that I must forestall a number of possible misunderstandings.

From the title, the reader might expect a more or less erudite work on a secondary problem. Indeed, to this day, most of the 'experts' have seen Kant merely as a pure epistemologist, or at most as a systematic moral philosopher, who did occasionally, in a few brief works, express his opinions on the French Revolution, perpetual peace, the society of citizens of the world, and so forth, but for whom such questions were subordinate and peripheral to his philosophical activity.

It is of course conceded that studies on Kant's attitude to 'social problems' or 'questions in the philosophy of history' may be of value, for it is always interesting to know what a great man thought about these things, but no more importance is attached to them than to the writings of a great physicist or of any other specialist, an Einstein or a Planck for example, on contemporary social and political problems.

All this belongs to scholarship, possibly to political polemics, but certainly not to philosophy. To mark the contrast between these viewpoints and my own, I would point out first of all that the theme of man and human community is central not only to Kant's thought but to the whole of modern philosophy. We are concerned with what in Kantian language would be called metaphysics.

In support of this claim and before any further development, I call upon the most authoritative witness, Kant himself. At the beginning of the Anthropology, in the chapter entitled 'On Egoism', Kant distinguishes three types of egoism, which he will subsequently analyse: This much belongs to anthropology. For in so far as metaphysical concepts are concerned with this distinction, it lies wholly outside the field of the science with which we are here dealing.

If the question were merely whether I, as a thinking being, had reason to accept, apart from my own existence, the existence of a corpus of other beings in community with me called the universe , this would not be an anthropological question, but a purely metaphysical one. For Kant, egoism - the problem of man and the human community - has three aspects: The study of the three forms of egoism, and especially of man's relation to 'a corpus of other beings in community with [him] called the universe ', falls into two parts, one of which, according to Kant, belongs to anthropology today we should say to sociology , the other to metaphysics.

I shall attempt to show that the question of man's relation to the I. Introduction 23 community is the essential problem of what Kant calls metaphysics, and which today we should prefer to denote by the less tainted name of philosophy. In addition to the above two points, I should like here to introduce a third: To demonstrate the pervasive importance of the idea of human community in Kant's thought, and since the Anthropology was only published in his old age, I should like further to quote a passage from the period of the formation of the critical philosophy.

It concerns the Dreams of a Visionary. Indeed, I could quote here the entire second chapter from the first part of that work, where the idea of the community ofspirits, a prefiguration of the later notion of the intelligible world, occurs on almost every line. I shall, however, be content to mention the following two passages from the letter which Kant sent with the work to Moses Mendelssohn: However, the first has already been studied in a considerable number of works, whilst the second, to my knowledge, has only been dealt with in two brilliant but today almost forgotten books,5 4.

Letter to Moses Mendelssohn of 8 April ; Phil. Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, Werke, vol. Contrary, no doubt, to the expectations of most of my readers, and in order to confine myself to what is essential, I shall therefore neglect Kant's sociological and political writings and concentrate upon the strictly 'philosophical' texts, in particular, the three Critiques and the corresponding passages from the posthumous works. However, it is proper to add that it would be impossible to make a sharp distinction between the two groups of writings and that in any case there are among the sociological and political fragments some extremely interesting and sometimes prophetic passages; however, to quote them here would be to go beyond the limits of this work.

I could have dealt with the questions which I have set myself while remaining exclusively within the fields of epistemology, ethics and ; and G. It is indeed an accomplishment ofthat character not to have such a pride and even rather to recognize the merits of other peoples than its own. Because it is the design of Providence that peoples should not be combined, but that by a force of repulsion they should enter into conflict with one another, national pride and hatred are necessary to separate the nations.

That is why a people loves its own country before others, whether from religion, believing that all others such as the Jews and the Turks are accursed, or because it attributes to itself the monopoly of intelligence, all others being in its eyes incompetent or ignorant, or of courage, believing that all should fear it, or of liberty, believing that all others are slaves. Governments love this folly. This is the mechanism of world organization which instinctively binds us and separates us. Reason, however, prescribes to us this law: That is why this national folly must be rooted out and replaced by patriotism and cosmopolitanism' xv, No.

Introduction 25 aesthetics, avoiding any empirical and above all any sociological references. The work would then have been more scholarly and more in keeping with usual academic practice, the more so since this was Kant's own method in the three Critiques, and also, in our time, that of Lask in the work referred to above, which is one of the most brilliant analyses of German idealism.

If I have decided nevertheless to refer freely to sociology, it is because I feel that I should neglect nothing which might contribute to a better understanding of the problem, and also in conscious reaction to certain examples of contemporary philosophy, where the 'metaphysical' style in which the problems are dealt with seems to me largely to obscure them and to disguise cross-influences and connections.

One example will suffice, one which is in any case of some importance for our subject, and one of the most celebrated works to appear in recent years: Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. In the latter, however, philosophy, sociology and politics are almost inextricably intermingled, whereas Heidegger has transported the whole debate into the realm of 'metaphysics'. A historian of contemporary thought would find it difficult to understand existentialism, and would in any case form a false picture of its origins, if he were unaware of these connections and if he neglected the influence of political life between and on what I should like to call the young Heidelberg circle.

To distinguish it from the old Heidelberg circle Windelband, Rickert. Lask, who was obviously the centre of the circle, was killed in action in One may conclude from Rickert's obituary article that he had had himself sent to the front more or less voluntarily. Heidegger, on the other hand, directed himself towards 'ontology' and has become the philosopher of anguish, of the 'will towards death', and the most famous thinker of a decadent society.

III The most important of the sociological terms that I shall use is that of classical bourgeois thought and the philosophy which corresponds to it. The word 'bourgeois' has here of course a sociological sense and implies no value judgement. An expression is needed to denote the essential features of Western civilization and thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whilst indicating the ties which bind such apparently diverse phenomena as the emergence of towns in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the birth of the modern nation-state, the culture of the Renaissance, the development of classical philosophy and literature in England, France and Germany, and above all, the progressive and - until a few decades ago - uninterrupted growth in consciousness of the two fundamental values of modern thought: The most general historical and sociological investigation suffices to show that the single element common to all these phenomena is that they are creations of the Third Estate, of the bourgeoisie.

Introduction 27 bourgeoisie, a culture whose limits he clearly perceived without, however, being able completely to transcend them. Nevertheless, it was precisely that clarity which enabled him to take the first decisive steps towards a new philosophical category, that of the universe, of the whole, and thus to open the way for the later development of modern philosophy.

We shall also see this must continually be emphasized in order to avoid particularly dangerous misconceptions that he saw what was ahistorical in bourgeois thought, that he was aware of the eternal human value of freedom, and that he defended this freedom with all his strength against the mystique of feeling and intuition, whose dangers he recognized and unmasked in magisterial fashion more than a hundred years before the arrival of Bergson or Scheler. Depending on the country, the period and the individual, there are essential differences between the thinkers we shall be considering.

These differences constitute what is specific to the work of each of them, and it is just these specific elements which must be picked out. But I believe it is only possible to understand them in terms of that which is common to them all and the foundation of their thought. That is why I feel that a 'purely metaphysical' treatment of the subject, unburdened with any sociological analysis, would have been much less clear and was therefore better avoided.

IV One last point: I wish particularly to emphasize those points which seem to me to have been neglected or distorted by the neoKantian interpretation. I shall attempt to restore to them their true significance. I would add, however, that I have sometimes had to bestow upon certain elements of Kant's thought a value and an importance which differ from those 8. See 'What is orientation in thinking? In doing so, I believe I have remained faithful to the spirit of Kant, who more than once urged his followers not to confuse philosophical study with narrow and blinkered scholarship. Part i Chapter i Classical Philosophy and the Western Bourgeoisie i To begin a philosophical work with a chapter which is for the most part empirical and sociological may appear rash.

It thus seems appropriate to provide some preliminary observations on what the Germans call the 'sociology of knowledge', that is to say, on sociological interpretation of the products of intellect. That being also the aim of the present work, at least in some of its aspects, we must consider to what extent such an undertaking is justified or even possible.

All genuinely philosophical thought sets out from the premiss that there is in human existence something eternal and immutable, the search for which constitutes the principal task of philosophy; this point of departure thus assumes I. See especially his best-known work: However, sociological interpretation, in so far as it relates all knowledge to historical and social conditions, would seem to deny the existence of this objective truth, resulting in a modern and scientific form of an older relativism.

Is there not a contradiction between these two points of view? Is it possible to do philosophy, and at the same time to recognize the credentials of a sociology of knowledge? Is not such an attempt doomed from the outset? At all events, these questions cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, I believe that the idea of a sociology of knowledge involves no contradiction, for although there may always exist one single ob ectiyephilgspphical truth,. And although an individual can perhaps change his own position and broaden his own horizons, this becomes incomparably more difficult, and indeed is usually impossible, for a whole social group, for a nation or a class.

The objection will doubtless be made that in intellectual matters it is individuals, and not social groups, which are in question. But need we accept such a categorical assertion? For the individual whose ideas, however correct, are in conflict with the social interests and conditions of existence of all the groups among which he lives remains a lonely 'eccentric', a genius perhaps, but nonetheless a tragic and unknown figure who will in alf likelihood fall victim to his lack of community and contact with his fellow men.

Who knows how many men of genius have lived and died without any of their ideas having come down to us, simply because they exerted no influence and left no trace? A genuinely great thinker is one who achieves the maximum possible2 truth starting from the interests and social situation of some particular group, and who succeeds in formulating it in such a way as to endow it with real scope and effectiveness. For in philosophy, as in intellectual life 2.

The phrase 'the maximum possible' itself indicates that the thinker must be in the vanguard of the group, leading the way and making no compromise with the actual given thought of its members. Classical Philosophy and the Western Bourgeoisie J J in general, only that which contributes to the transformation of human existence is important; and human existence is not that of the isolated individual, but that of the community and, within this, of the human person, for the two can never be separated.

That is why any endeavour to study a philosophical system of the past must from the beginning take into account the relations between the basic elements of the system and the social conditions of the men among whom it originated and developed, even if sometimes - and such is the case in the present study - this sociological analysis can only be carried out in a very general and schematic way. II Kant's world-view constituted even in his lifetime the philosophical system most representative of the German bourgeoisie, and, with the single exception of the Hegelian period, remains so to this day.

Thus, if we are to begin with an analysis of the social conditions in which the Kantian system was formed, we must first of all study the birth and development of the European bourgeoisie in general and of the German bourgeoisie in particular. The world-view which characterized the European bourgeoisie from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries began with one fundamental concept,Jreedomj from which all the others developed.

The thought of Kant himself must of course be distinguished from that of the neo-Kantians, for the two world-views are essentially different, both in content and historically. Naturally, in the course of its history the European bourgeoisie has often come to act in a way directly opposed to freedom. It was this bourgeoisie which created absolutism: But these were merely passing historical necessities in the struggle against feudalism. That is why most of the ideologists of the bourgeoisie have never seen them as contradictory.

This is merely the other side of extreme freedom: Finally, as a consequence of freedom and individualism, we must add equality before the law, for where privilege exists, there the individual is not completely free. Freedom, individualism, equality before the law. In the different spheres of intellectual life they found various forms of expression; those in the field of philosophy are our primary concern in this work. Here the three elements found a privileged form of expression in rationalism, and another, less important and above all less radical, in empiricism and sensualism as developed particularly in England.

Rationalism means above all freedom - more precisely, freedom in two respects: It would lead us too far out of our way to illustrate the return of bourgeois thought to rationalism with the countless examples afforded by the history of philosophy. Suffice it to mention such well-known cases as the revival of Platonism during the Renaissance, the revival of Stoicism, the close ties between modern philosophy and mathematics in Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, Descartes' 'method of doubt', Classical Philosophy and the Western Bourgeoisie 35 his Treatise on the Passions, and so on.

And since the present work deals with the philosophy of Kant, I quote the following passage from the Critique of Pure Reason: Religion through its sanctity, and law-giving through its majesty, may seek to exempt themselves from it. But they then awaken just suspicion, and cannot claim the sincere respect which reason accords only to that which has been able to sustain the test of free and open examination.

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For where each individual, autonomously, independently and without any relation to other men, decides what is true, good or beautiful, there is no longer any room for a whole which transcends him, for the universe. The universe and the human community then 4. On the subject of freedom, I should like to quote another passage from the Critique of Pure Reason: For at the start we are required to abstract from the actually existing hindrances, which, it may be, do not arise unavoidably out of human nature, but rather are due to a quite remediable cause, the neglect of the pure ideas in the making of the laws.

Nothing, indeed, can be more injurious, or more unworthy of a philosopher, than the vulgar appeal to so-called adverse experience. Such experience would never have existed at all, if at the proper time those institutions had been established in accordance with ideas, and if ideas had not been displaced by crude conceptions which, just because they have been derived from experience, have nullified all good intentions. The more legislation and government are brought into harmony with the above idea, the rarer would punishments become, and it is therefore quite rational to maintain, as Plato does, that in a perfect state no punishments whatsoever would be required.

This perfect state may never, indeed, come into being; none the less this does not affect the rightfulness of the idea, which, in order to bring the legal organization of mankind ever nearer to its greatest possible perfection, advances this maximum as an archetype. For what the highest degree may be at which mankind may have to come to a stand, and how great a gulf may still have to be left between the idea and its realization, are questions which no one can, or ought to, answer. For the issue depends on freedom; and it is in the power of freedom to pass beyond any and every specified limit' i n , ; PureR, ; B This atomistic view is most clearly expressed in the monadology of Leibniz, but it is present no less strongly in Descartes or Malebranche, and even Kant begins his Anthropology with the words: There is no privilege in the knowledge of geometrical theorems or moral obligations.

These few brief and superficial remarks bring us at once to the heart of Kant's philosophy. We can now understand why of the two fundamental categories of human existence freedom or autonomy of the individual on the one hand, and on the other the human community, the universe, the totality as the meaning and product of this freedom in the actions of free men - the most important predecessors of Kant with the sole exception of Spinoza could recognize only the first.

Kant seems to me to be the first modern thinker to recognize anew the importance of the totality as a fundamental category of existence, or at least to recognize its problematic character. Kant's importance lies in the fact that he not only expressed with the utmost clarity his predecessors' individualist and atomist conceptions of the world taken to their logical conclusions, and thereby encountered their ultimate limits which become for Kant the limits of human existence as such, of human thought and action in general: The most economically and politically advanced country was without doubt England.

There the bourgeoisie had very rapidly acquired economic ascendancy, and, after and , also political power. As a result of this early and rapid development, English thought took much more pragmatic and, more importantly, much less radical forms than that of the continent. The young and powerful English bourgeoisie came up against a nobility which was still strong, capable of resisting it and, above all, economically active. There could be no question of completely eliminating the nobility from economic and political life as was later to happen in France; on the contrary, the bourgeoisie often needed the support of the nobility in its struggle against royal absolutism.

That is why, despite the two revolutions of and , the conflict between the two opposed classes ended with a compromise from which the England of today is descended. A compromise is a limitation of one's original desires and hopes accepted under pressure of external reality. Where the economic and social structure of a country is born essentially of a compromise between two opposed classes, the 6. A complete study would naturally have to take into account the other Western countries, particularly Holland, which has played a major role not only in economic history and in the history of painting but also in the history of philosophy: This would seem to be one of the principal reasons for the fact that the philosophical thought of the English bourgeoisie has been empiricist and sensualist rather than rationalist as in France.

Once the individual had been freed from political and ecclesiastical bonds, his dependence upon external perceptions and upon his own sensations, feelings and instincts seemed much less dangerous to English thinkers than to the continental rationalists. This attitude was further reinforced by two other factors which are really only consequences of the first, namely: One can only have recourse to a fact if that j fact is already actual and universally acknowledged.

It was only much Classical Philosophy and the Western Bourgeoisie 39 later - in France a little before the Revolution, and in western Europe generally in the second half of the nineteenth century - when the bourgeoisie had already achieved political ascendancy, that despite all the contrary traditions continental thought could feel a growing sympathy for empiricism and this could become the dominant current of thought, until the grave crisis of the twentieth century once again transformed the situation, allowing mystical and irrationalist tendencies to become the dominant trends ofj Contemporary European thought.

IV If we now direct our attention towards the continent, to France and Germany, we find a quite different situation. Without being oversubjective, I think one may describe the development of France as 'healthy' and that of Germany as 'sick'. I use these terms in the sense they had for Goethe when he said that the classical is the healthy and the romantic the sick. The French state is the product of a normal organic development of the Third Estate which until very recently had never been shaken by a crisis sufficiently profound to put in question the foundations of social and economic life.

Even the years were but a powerful and magnificent episode in an organic development which it neither arrested nor diverted. French absolute monarchy arose out of a struggle against the feudal overlords, and with the aid of a permanent and durable alliance with the Third Estate.

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The bourgeoisie gave the king the financial means to meet his expenses, particularly those of the permanent army of mercenaries; in exchange, the monarchy protected it from the exactions of the nobles and favoured its economic interests. As economic development and the increasing power of the monarchy hastened the decline of the nobility, so the Third Estate, by the buying of offices and the creation of the noblesse de robe, took over the political and administrative apparatus of the state.

When finally the nobility lost all real economic and military power, the Third Estate no longer 40 needed its alliance with the monarchy, which it increasingly regarded as an irksome, unjust and above all costly burden. Its growing opposition culminated in the Revolution and, after the two Napoleonic periods, the birth of purely bourgeois French democracy, in which the nobility as such no longer has any part. In Germany, on the other hand, since the Thirty Years War economic and political development had been extremely slow and was almost at a standstill.

A unitary national state could not be created until , or even, strictly speaking, until the twentieth century. Moreover, this national state was created from above, even partially against the bourgeoisie, and in no way against the nobility. The peace of Westphalia in had divided the country into a large number of sovereign principalities, the smallness of which naturally inhibited any national intellectual life. Many elements of phenomenology take on new meanings against the backdrop of their Platonic origins.

Phenomenology; platonism; Husserl, Edmund. Ideas I; Husserl, Edmund. Edition, English, 4th quarter It takes a stance against a naturalistic as well as a sociological views of this notion and seeks to promote a broadly logical understanding instead. Forms, form of life, naturalism, Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Sprachphilosophie; Logik; Grammatik; Wittgen-. While metaphysics is traditionally seen as dealing with the essence of things, for Wittgenstein it is grammar.

And does he mean the same thing by this word throughout his philosophical career? In this investigation, I strive to contribute to answering to these questions. Language philosophy; logic; grammar; Wittgenstein. This volume re-examines the overall picture of the Enlightenment offered by Horkheimer and Adorno, including their interpretations of Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, and de Sade.

While scholars discussing the Dialectic of Enlightenment have generally concentrated on its fundamental critique of rationality, they have rarely asked whether the philosophers considered by the work are suitable vehicles for critiquing Enlightenment. Critical theory; philosophy of the Enlightenment; The Frankfurt School. Collection, German, English, 1st quarter Helmuth Plessner — re-invented the field of philosophical anthropology, grounding it in natural philosophy and philosophical history. This volume provides the first comprehensive commentary and systematic reconstruction of his principal work in natural philosophy.

It will be an essential tool for philosophers and life scientists of all disciplines to engage with this classical work of the 20th century. Plessner, Helmuth; philosophical anthropology;. All articles offer a fresh and contemporary look at one of the most prolific and important philosophers of the 20th century. The papers are authored by a wide array of scholars working in different areas, such as epistemology, philosophy of culture, sociology, psychopathology, philosophy of science and aesthetics. Philosophy of culture; phenomenology of knowledge.

Series Klassiker Auslegen 65 S. Dewey, John; Pragmatismus; Metaphysik. It shows that pragmatism and metaphysics are compatible, if metaphysics is taken to mean thinking about a world in which stability, order, change and disorder co-exist, and in which no ultimate certainty can be achieved. John Dewey; pragmatism; metaphysics. Series Klassiker Auslegen 66 S. Taking literary, philosophical, sociological, and legal historical perspectives, the essays in this volume reconstruct the varied notions of a new humanism traversing these two decades.

They also shed light on contemporary critiques of humanism. This book surveys recent debates on freedom of will, incorporating the implications of modern brain research. The author develops an original, capability-based conception of freedom of will. Geert Keil proposes that the well-understood capability for deciding one way or another is reconcilable with the findings of empirical science, but not with the metaphysical doctrine of determinism. Determinism; Metaphysics; Freedom of Will. The articles in this volume focus on the ontology of space and time, including the themes of substantivalism vs.

In the current debate on these issues, there is a tendency to separate too rigidly between a priori and a posteriori approaches. This volume aims to bridge the gap between these two perspectives, showing the fruitfulness of combining them to the greatest extent possible. Metaphysics; Philosophy of Physics.

Fano, University of Urbino; F. Orilia, University of Macerata, Italy; G. Epistemology is an important philosophical discipline, yet little research has directly addressed its aims and criteria of success. This study closes the gap by offering epistemological functionalism as a fully worked-out meta-epistemological framework that accommodates not only questions of traditional epistemology, but also more recent developments such as naturalism, social epistemology, pragmatism and feminism.

Social epistemology; feminist epistemology; Thomas S. Series Epistemic Studies 35 pp. Why are there presently conscious beings at all? Relating to central problems in the philosophy of mind and ranging from philosophy to biology and neuroscience, the author introduces and tackles the Natural Problem of Consciousness, offering an original, engaging, and thought provoking philosophical study of a neglected but fundamental question regarding the nature and origin of consciousness. Evolution; phenomenal consciousness; natural selection; mental causation; mind-body problem.

Series Epistemic Studies 36 pp. The book deals with how scientists, especially cognitive neuroscientists, explain phenomena. It systematically analyzes different kinds of experiments performed throughout the discovery process. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation and supplements them with a new catalog of experiments. This marks the beginning of a new era in philosophy of science that takes experimental practice at face value.

Neuroscience; philosophy of science; interventionist causation. The word belief is widely assumed to designate a special class of mental states, the attitude of representing something as being the case. This book provides a critique of representationalism by focusing on the role that psychological concepts play in language, the way in which they are used in practice. Mind, representation, practice, language. What makes a property intrinsic? These questions and the various problems associated with them bear great importance on debates in such diverse fields as ethics, philosophy of mind or philosophy of science.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of central facets of the debates, including both crucial earlier and new contributions. It is indispensable for any serious study of the topic. Extrinsic; Intrinsic; Metaphysics; Properties; Rela-. Epistemic Studies 37 pp. Critical thinking is considered a basic theoretical requirement. But what is critical thinking? Studies conducted from both historical and problemoriented perspectives shed light on the essence, meanings, and forms of philosophical criticism in the European tradition from antiquity to modern times and retrace its significance in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of politics, aesthetics, methodology, and cultural theory, among others.

Das Buch richtet sich an Studierende der Philosophie und anderer Fachgebiete. Erkenntnistheorie; Epistemologie; Wahrheit; Wissen; Rechtfertigung. The successful textbook Analytic Introduction to Epistemology is now in its 2nd edition. It introduces critical questions in epistemology, including a detailed presentation of different positions and arguments in contemporary discourse. The book is intended for students of philosophy and other disciplines, but also provides a useful critical orientation for experts in philosophy.

Series De Gruyter Studium 2. Aiming to bridge the gap between analytical and continental philosophy, this double-blind peer-reviewed series presents innovative studies in contemporary philosophical inquiry, in English or German. Each book contains cutting-edge contributions written by some of the most important philosophers in this field.

The series is a useful introduction to a variety of topics, aimed at readers interested in the concepts, methods, and historical developments of philosophy. Quantum physics, unlike classical physics, suggests a non-physicalistic metaphysics. Whereas physicalism implies a reductive position in the philosophy of mind, quantum physics is compatible with nonreductionism, and actually seems to support it.

The essays in this book explore, from various points of view, the possibilities of basing a non-reductive philosophy of mind on quantum physics. This volume compiles essays from different disciplines on developing an expanded notion of the text. Questioning the meaning and function of textuality leads to the suspension of the traditional operational dichotomy between philosophy and philology, heightens sensitivity to different forms of linguistic-aesthetic presentation, explores new practices of reading, and reflects on their epistemological implications.

Collection, German, 3rd quarter Series Textologie 1 S. Nietzsche, Friedrich; Adorno, Theodor W. Adorno should be regarded as a key characteristic of philosophical argumentation. The aim is a reevaluation of philosophical reading and the development of a philological method that assesses each text in terms of its particular nature and materiality.

Friedrich Nietzsche; Theodor W. Adorno; edition philology; text interpretation; interpretation. Series Textologie 2 S. Published in , this work weaves together epistemological and perceptual psychological studies on the problem of knowledge and intuition to develop an early phenomenological aesthetics.

Now presented with a detailed introduction and documents on its reception, it will be an important source for scholars studying early 20th century philosophy, Gestalt psychology, and the Prague Circle. Edition, English, German, 2nd quarter Perception, speech, thought, and action are symbolic and interpretative processes. Philosophers and other scholars engage in dialogue with Abel on the essential features, hypotheses, and arguments of his thought.

The dialogues reveal the potential relevance of his ideas for natural science, politics, the law, architecture, technology, the arts, and music. It will be of value to graduate students in philosophy, scholars concerned with 20th century Continental philosophy, students of aesthetics and art history and criticism, and persons in and out of academic philosophy who wish to develop their aesthetic understanding and responsiveness to art and music.

Monograph, English, 2nd quarter Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an explicit concern with the subject of the human. This volume outlines the key elements of a hermeneutic philosophy of social science. Contributions by key authors focus on politics, economics, applied ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, education as well as the history of philosophy. Themes in the history of philosophy are drawn from Plato to Descartes to Husserl. Why do we act intentionally?

Which impact do reasons and motives have on our decisions? The crucial linguistic concept of intentionality has a long tradition and its analysis involves a wide range of discussions of meaning, reason, motive and action. The contributions determine the different meanings more precisely and investigate the position that intention takes in the origin and procedure of actions. Philosophy of language; intentionality; action. Series Aporia 10 pp.

In a unique cooperation between philosophy, linguistics, art history, and ancient studies, this volume focuses on ways in which the entangled and embodied nature of image and language enables us to symbolically articulate the world and our experience in a great variety of forms. It lays the foundation for a new cultural anthropology of symbolic processes. This collection of original papers by international experts is devoted to illustrating the applications of logical and mathematical methods to a wide set of philosophical problems ranging from philosophy of mathematics to philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics.

The contributions are related to the work of Sergio Galvan, who is an example of rigour and philosophical insight in the development of formal philosophy in Italy. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei die wichtigsten Stationen der Konflikte und Dialoge beider Disziplinen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, die ambivalente Rolle der Rhetorik in der Philosophie des Rhetorik; Philosophie; Performanz; Diskurs. For the first time, this handbook offers a comprehensive presentation of the complex relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. The focus is on important areas of conflict and dialogue between the two disciplines from antiquity to the present time, the ambivalent role of rhetoric in 20th—century philosophy, and a programmatic outlook on future areas of research on rhetorical philosophy.

Discourse; Performance; Philosophy; Rhetoric. For the first time this study presents and analyzes the early work of the major Chinese philosopher Mou Zongsan — After introducing the contexts in which his thought arose, the book presents aspects of his work on logic, including his ideas on the relationship between logic, perception, and knowledge. Modern Chinese literature, the concept of logic. Ten essays from world-leading anthropologists and philosophers pursue in different ways the perplexing question fundamental to both disciplines: What is it to think of ourselves as human?

The collection will be of great interest to philosophers and anthropologists alike, and essential reading for anyone interested in the interconnections between the two disciplines. Series Berlin Studies in Knowledge Research 12 pp. Online, offline, airline, guideline, line in the sand, the horizon — lines are omnipresent in our daily lives. They also play a central role in the arts, philosophy, and science. Lines are as basic to our understanding of the world as images, writing, and numbers, and they operate in different ways.

The volume presents reflections about lines from the domains of philosophy, mathematics, ethnography, anthropology, cartography, and art theory. Understanding the world; daily life; orientation. Proceedings of the 39th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg. The articles discuss why Wittgenstein wrote so intensively about colour during the last years of his life and what significance these remarks have for understanding his philosophical work in general. Aesthetics is no longer merely the philosophy of perception and the arts. Nelson Goodman, Arthur Danto and others have contributed to develop the former marginal field to one permeating substantial areas of theoretical and practical philosophy.

New approaches like environmental and ecological aesthetics widened the understanding of the aesthetics.

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The chapters in this volume discuss the most important issues in contemporary aesthetics. Can the paradigm of embodiment be used as a foundation for an integrative anthropology? Developed by an interdisciplinary project group at Heidelberg University, this book shows that taking as a starting point the human body and its potentials for perception and movement, it is possible to gain new insights into the origins of language, thought, and human evolution. Aus der Perspektive unterschiedlicher Disziplinen von der Sprachtheorie bis zur Kunstgeschichte werden die wechselseitigen Verflechtungen zwischen den Bereichen bestimmt.

Anhand von Begriffen von active matter bis Szenische Ikonologie gewinnt eine neue Kulturtheorie des Entgegenkommenden Kontur. This volume compiles 23 essays aiming to programmatically define the relationship between the theory of image acts and the philosophy of embodiment. Taking the perspective of different disciplines — from language theory to art history — the authors examine the interconnections between image act and embodiment.

Applying concepts such as active matter and scenic iconology, they begin to shape the contours of a new cultural theory. Image Acts focuses on the counterforce of the form of images. The book subdivides this sphere into three parts: All three parts are contemplated with examples from antiquity through to the present and the iconoclastic controversies of our times.

From this reconstruction of the image act springs the element of a new philosophy of affordance. Ikonische Formprozesse [Iconic Form Processes: The term iconic form processes refers to phenomena that produce transitions between natural and symbolic forms. For example, the fire-scarred surface of a bronze artwork produces effects transcending the realm of artistic intention. This volume furnishes the foundations for a theory of iconic form processes.

Visual studies; Form philosophy. Collection, German, English, 4th quarter Es umgreift Anthropologie, Ethik und Metaphysik. Proceeding from the state of affairs in 20th—century criticism and aesthetics Benjamin, Adorno, Blumenberg, Merleau-Ponty , the epistemology of representation Whitehead, Canguilhem, Bachelard, Rheinberger is revised with respect to critical consequences Derrida, Marin, de Man, Agamben. The essays collected here redirect the logic of research towards the epistemological grounds of an aesthetics underneath the hermeneutics of everyday life.

Emergence, memory; latent vs. Haverkamp, New York Univ. Series Paradigms 5 pp. Kant, Immanuel; Religion; Selbstgesetzgebung; wahre Liebe. Postmetaphysical social philosophy is characterized by a contractualist constraint of morality. It also rethinks the relationships between morality, law, and religion without equating reason and secular thinking. Death is among the oldest themes in philosophy. Many philosophers have viewed death as the most important underlying motivation for engaging in philosophy. The subject of death encompasses anthropology, ethics, and metaphysics.

This volume addresses contemporary discussions on death and dying while also considering the historical background that is crucial for understanding the current debate. Criteria of brain death; fear of death; philosophy of death. The act of reproaching another is a common element of day-to-day life. Yet moral reproach also plays an important role in fundamental philosophical debates. This study examines the nature, appropriateness, and value of moral reproaches, and asks who is in the right position to raise moral objections. Finally, it looks at the relationship between moral reproaches and responsibility.

Moral philosophy; normativity; determinism. The interdisciplinary papers in this volume seek to delineate the critical ethical and legal boundaries between killing a patient and letting him or her die. It thus augments clinical confidence in decisions about terminal care.

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