DOCSLIB.ORG

For the Love of Metaphysics: from the Revolution in Thinking Towards the Renewal of Thinking

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
For the Love of Metaphysics: from the Revolution in Thinking Towards the Renewal of Thinking FOR THE LOVE OF METAPHYSICS: FROM THE REVOLUTION IN THINKING TOWARDS THE RENEWAL OF THINKING by Karin Alina Nisenbaum A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Copyright © 2014 by Karin Nisenbaum Abstract For the Love of Metaphysics: From the Revolution in Thinking towards the Renewal of Thinking Karin Alina Nisenbaum Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 2014 One of Kant’s most original insights is the notion that we can construct a philosophical argument—a transcendental argument—whose central premise makes a first-personal appeal to our moral sentiments. Kant characterizes the epistemic force that accrues to the concepts and ideas that are justified by this form of philosophical argument as “moral belief” or “moral certainty,” and he calls the propositions that are demonstrated by such arguments “postulates of practical reason.” My dissertation has two interrelated aims. First, to exhibit the most significant repercussions of this basic Kantian insight for philosophical methodology, for our conceptions of human freedom and moral agency, and for the possibility of religious belief. Second, to show that Franz Rosenzweig’s theism is supported by what we may regard as a transcendental argument that reveals the conditions of possibility for understanding ourselves as beings endowed with ethical value. Because the repercussions of Kant’s discovery of a “moral proof” came into focus in the two decades after the publication of the first Critique, my dissertation starts by interpreting the philosophical significance of the early reception of Kant’s Critical philosophy. I argue that two of Kant’s earliest critics, Salomon Maimon and F. H. Jacobi, compelled the post-Kantian idealists to broaden the scope of Kant’s “moral proof” and transform his original insight into the idea that philosophy as a whole should be established on a practical foundation. My dissertation then examines how J.G. Fichte and ii F.W.J. Schelling appropriated Kant’s idea of a “moral proof” and transformed the idea into the more radical view that reason, as a whole, is practical. The final part of my dissertation brings the discussion about the nature of transcendental arguments to bear on topics in the philosophy of religion. I show how the metaphysical and theological framework that Schelling develops in his 1809 Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and in his 1811–1815 Ages of the World fragments grounds his conception of freedom and moral agency, and I argue that Schelling’s theology is the main source of inspiration for that developed by Rosenzweig in the Star of Redemption. iii Acknowledgments While writing this dissertation, and in the years leading up to it, I received help and support from many different people, in many different ways. I am deeply grateful to my father, Samuel Nisenbaum, for his generosity, warmth, wisdom, and emotional support. I thank my mother, Nancy Anderson, for turning my education into one of her greatest passions. I thank Emma Nisenbaum for her love and sage advice. I thank my sister, Aliza, for her joie de vivre, and for all that we have shared. And I thank David and Isabel for enriching my life with their presence. Rick Furtak read every chapter, many times. His comments expressed how he understands part of what it means to love another person: to love her as a valuing subject with an unrepeatable perspective on the world, and to aid and encourage her pursuit of the good. I thank him for this form of love, and for so much else. This dissertation is dedicated to him. For trusting in my ability to carry out a project that at first seemed far too unwieldy, and for helping me to wend through the difficult parts, I thank my dissertation committee: Paul Franks, Robert Gibbs, Ulrich Schlösser, and Sergio Tenenbaum. My indebtedness to their teaching and writing will be clear throughout the dissertation. I owe special thanks to Paul Franks for formative conversations about Rosenzweig’s work, the motivation of post-Kantian German Idealism, transcendental arguments, and varieties of skepticism. I also thank him for upholding for me in word and action an example for emulation; his example continues to schematize for me the concept of a philosopher. By serving on my area committee Lambert Zuidervaart and Rebecca Comay helped to shape the dissertation proposal. I am profoundly grateful to both for guidance iv and support during the first few years. I also thank Lambert Zuidervaart and Joyce Recker for inspiration and friendship. Soon after I joined the Collaborative Program in Philosophy and Jewish Studies, the Centre for Jewish Studies was created. It was largely through Hindy Najman’s visionary directorship of the Centre that a few graduate students from the Philosophy Department found a real home at the University of Toronto. I owe her special thanks for supporting the idea to found and edit the University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought. I also gratefully acknowledge Michael Della Rocca’s support of my project: in particular, I thank him for probing comments on the first three chapters of the dissertation and for the invitation to participate in his seminar on monism at Yale during the spring of 2012. Sebastian Gardner served as the external examiner for my dissertation defense. I am sincerely grateful for his very generous and encouraging report, and I thank him for questions that will help me turn the dissertation into a publishable monograph. Many friends and colleagues commented generously on parts of the dissertation. I benefitted greatly from conversations with the following people: Myriam Bienenstock, Anthony Bruno, Samuel Caldwell, Olivia Casanueva, Benjamin Crowe, Sol Goldberg, Alex Green, Matthew Handelman, Michael Morgan, Paul Nahme, Michal Pagis, Sarah Pessin, Julia Peters, Benjamin Pollock, Jessica Radin, James Reid, Christine Rooks, Shane Ryan, Simon Schuez, Sue Sinclair, Ronen Steinberg, Eran Tal, Daniel Telech, Owen Ware, Norbert Waszek, Claudia Welz, Daniel Whistler, Ynon Wygoda, and Stephen Zylstra. Never could I have imagined the community of fellow Schellingians that I found at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the Bavarian Academy of Humanities and Sciences. I am profoundly grateful to Thomas Buchheim, Thimo v Heisenberg, Axel Hutter, Alois Wieshuber, and Arne Zerbst for unforgettable conversations, institutional support, and friendship. For financial support, I gratefully acknowledge the Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto; I also thank the Leo-Baeck Institute and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Last, but not least, I thank Margaret Opoku-Pare for her patience, kindness, and help solving all sorts of practical issues. I still remember how surprised I was the first time that I called the University of Toronto Philosophy Department and found a person so willing to answer all of my questions about the program. That call assured me that I was going to the right place. vi “So, this is how the matter truly stands: first Critical Philosophy undermines metaphysics theoretically, for the love of science; then, since everything now tends to sink into the wide open, bottomless, abyss of an absolute subjectivity, it undermines science practically, for the love of metaphysics.” __________________________________ F.H. Jacobi vii Contents Introduction 1 Part I 1 The Legacy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Restoring Human Reason in its Full Measure 11 2 The Legacy of Salomon Maimon: Philosophy as a System Actualized in Freedom 51 Part II 3 The Deduction of Freedom as a Model for Philosophical Methodology: The Performative and First-Personal Aspect of Transcendental Arguments 111 4 The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: A Theoretical Puzzle, or a Practical Demand? 152 Part III 5 Why Is There a Realm of Experience at All? Love and Defiance as the Two Forms of Human Individuation 186 6 The Star of Redemption as a System of Philosophy: The Human Word as a Response to the Word of God, and Human Words and Actions as the Means for the Unification of God 223 Conclusion 270 Bibliography 275 Author’s note Abbreviations used in the notes are explained in the bibliography viii INTRODUCTION In a 1923 open letter to Martin Buber discussing the attitude of the Jew towards the particular laws and practices observed in the Jewish tradition, Franz Rosenzweig writes: “From Mendelssohn on, our entire people has subjected itself to the torture of this embarrassing questioning; the Jewishness of every individual has squirmed on the needle point of a ‘why.’”1 My dissertation is motivated by an interest in Rosenzweig’s response to that question. Yet anybody who studies Rosenzweig’s works in order to understand anew the significance of leading a Jewish life must come to terms with the fact that when The Star of Redemption was published in 1921, Rosenzweig was profoundly disappointed by the reception of the book that was the culmination of his lifetime engagement with philosophy: The Star of Redemption was initially read as a “Jewish book”2 showing the way back to the old law. However, in 1925 Rosenzweig wrote “The New Thinking,” an essay responding to the amicable “echo” that the book aroused during the first few years of its publication, which explained the content and structure of the Star in terms that would be more accessible to the layman. In this essay, Rosenzweig argues that the Star is not, at least in any straightforward sense, a “Jewish book,” and he says that it does not “claim to be a philosophy of religion.”3 Instead, Rosenzweig insists that we should understand his magnum opus as a “system of philosophy.”4 By making this claim, Rosenzweig situates his greatest work at the end of a trajectory that begins with Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”5 1 DB, 703; TB, 78.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Kant and Spinozism
    Kant and Spinozism Transcendental Idealism and Immanence from Jacobi to Deleuze Beth Lord Renewing Philosophy General Editor: Gary Banham Titles include: Lou Agosta EMPATHY IN THE CONTEXT OF PHILOSOPHY Karin de Boer ON HEGEL The Sway of the Negative Kyriaki Goudeli CHALLENGES TO GERMAN IDEALISM Schelling, Fichte and Kant Keekok Lee PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTIONS IN GENETICS Deep Science and Deep Technology Beth Lord KANT AND SPINOZISM Transcendental Idealism and Immanence from Jacobi to Deleuze Vincent W. Lloyd LAW AND TRANSCENDENCE On the Unfi nished Project of Gillian Rose Jill Marsden AFTER NIETZSCHE Jean-Paul Martinon ON FUTURITY Malabou, Nancy & Derrida Simon O’Sullivan ART ENCOUNTERS DELEUZE AND GUATTARI Thought Beyond Representation Peg Rawes SPACE, GEOMETRY AND AESTHETICS Through Kant and Towards Deleuze Celine Surprenant FREUD’S MASS PSYCHOLOGY Alberto Toscano THE THEATRE OF PRODUCTION Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze Vasiliki Tsakiri KIERKEGAARD Anxiety, Repetition and Contemporaneity Philip Walsh SKEPTICISM, MODERNITY AND CRITICAL THEORY Martin Weatherston HEIDEGGER’S INTERPRETATION OF KANT Categories, Imagination and Temporality Renewing Philosophy Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–91928–6 (hardback) 978–0–230–20086–9 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of diffi culty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN
    [Show full text]
  • Spinoza's Ethics Beth Lord
    EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDES Spinoza's Ethics Beth Lord Spinoza’s Ethics Edinburgh Philosophical Guides Series Titles in the series include: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Douglas Burnham with Harvey Young Derrida’s Of Grammatology Arthur Bradley Heidegger’s Being and Time William Large Plato’s Republic D. J. Sheppard Spinoza’s Ethics Beth Lord Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy Kurt Brandhorst Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology Katrin Joost Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra Martin Jesinghausen and Douglas Burnham Spinoza’s Ethics An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide Beth Lord Edinburgh University Press © Beth Lord, 2010 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/13pt Monotype Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3449 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3450 7 (paperback) The right of Beth Lord to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Series Editor’s Preface vi Acknowledgements vii List of Figures viii Introduction 1 1. A Guide to the Text 15 Part I: Being, Substance, God, Nature 15 Part II: Minds, Bodies, Experience and Knowledge 49 Part III: The Affects 83 Part IV: Virtue, Ethics and Politics 103 Part V: Freedom and Eternity 136 2. Study Aids 159 Glossary 159 Further Reading 167 Types of Question you will Encounter 168 Tips for Writing about Spinoza 169 Bibliography 173 Index 179 Series Editor’s Preface To us, the principle of this series of books is clear and simple: what readers new to philosophical classics need fi rst and foremost is help with reading these key texts.
    [Show full text]
  • Dieter Henrich's Turn
    The Problem of Subjectivity: Dieter Henrich’s Turn 189 The Problem of Subjectivity: Dieter Henrich’s Turn Gerhard Preyer The German philosopher Dieter Henrich has worked on the problem of subjectivity since the 1950s.1 In his lecture at the “Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche der Stiftung Weimarer Klassik” (2003) he has reformulated the problem of subjectivity in the context of a revisionary approach. This is worth emphasiz- ing, since Henrich’s analysis is focused on the limits of the position of subjec- tivity in the world. He calls his turn a revisionary metaphysics because he sees subjectivity not as self-grounded but as part of an All-Einheit (all-unity), thus evoking a motive of Plato’s philosophy.2 In the present article, I will first deal with Henrich’s turn to the question of subjectivity. Secondly, I re-interpret his analysis of conscious self-reference (subjectivity) which starts from the condition of primary self-consciousness as immediate consciousness. Henrich also claims to give an answer to the mind-body problem in the context of the much changed questions of philosophy of mind since the 1950s. Thirdly, I consider Henrich’s view of the body (Leib) as a position in the world which goes along with subjectivity. Fourthly, this leads me to his discussion of the principle of consequence and of free choice as well as to the interplay between subjectiv- ity and practical self-reference considered as self-determination (Selbstbestim- mung) and self-relationship (Selbstverhältnisse).3 Studying the philosophical work of Henrich again I read it, in the current philosophical context, as a contribution to an existenzial phenomenology, given from the subject’s point of view.
    [Show full text]
  • PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS Metaphysics And
    Hartford Seminary 77 Sherman Street, Hartford, CT 06105-2260 PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS Metaphysics and the Quest(ion) of God After Kant (TH-626 – Fall Semester 2016) Instructor: Prof. Dr. Fábio Henrique de Abreu Visiting Professor of Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion Email: [email protected] COURSE DESCRIPTION The starting point for modern philosophy in general and the philosophy of religion in particular belongs to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). It is well recognized in the secondary literature that Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” has placed traditional (pre-critical) metaphysics and, by extension, the philosophical problem of religion – including his critique of the metaphysical doctrine of God – under such pervasive criticism that religion is now threatened up to the point of becoming nothing more than an illusion. The best example of the powerful and influent character of the Kantian criticism of religion is, perhaps, Ludwig A. Feuerbach’s (1804-1872) understanding of religion as a human projection. One is no longer able to speak of God by means either of the authority of the Scriptures or through an appeal to any kind of supernatural source. The reality of God, as such, is now at stake. This course aims firstly at investigating, historically, the fundamental nature of Kant’s criticism both of religion and of the idea of God. Secondly, it will investigate some selected writings by the young Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) and Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher (1768-1834) as critical responses to Kant’s transcendental philosophical standpoint that have led to a consequent repositioning of the Kantian problematic on religion and the idea of God.
    [Show full text]
  • Fichte's Position
    Fichte’s Position: Self-Awareness and the Space of Reasons Paul Franks I: Introduction Of all the famous figures in the history of philosophy, Johann Gottlieb Fichte may perhaps have the worst reputation. Others have been accused of equivocations, inconsistencies, non sequiturs and other blunders. But Fichte’s view has the distinction that it has regularly been described as verging upon insanity, sometimes even as attaining it. Here, for example, is Bertrand Russell: “Kant’s immediate successor, Fichte, abandoned ‘things in themselves’ and carried subjectivism to a point which seems almost to involve a kind of insanity. He holds that the Ego is the only ultimate reality, and that it exists because it posits itself; the non-Ego, which has a subordinate reality, also exists only because the Ego posits it. The Ego as a metaphysical concept easily became confused with the empirical Fichte . .”i Later, I will cite Jean Paul, a contemporary of Fichte’s, who also associates Fichteanism with a literally crazy subjectivism. Now I want to note that a view of Fichte surprisingly like Russell’s -- and indeed a view of the development of modern philosophy somewhat similar to Russell’s -- can also be found on what we Englishmen quaintly call the continent. Thus Heidegger, like Russell, sees the development of philosophy since Descartes as the ascent of subjectivism, and, again like Russell, Heidegger regards Fichte’s philosophy as a high-point of a regrettable journey.ii For all their differences, both Anglo-American and continental traditions of twentieth century philosophy have shared a common enemy: subjectivism.iii By subjectivism, I think it is fair to say, both traditions have meant the extension of the Cartesian view of the mind to the whole of reality.
    [Show full text]
  • FU/BEST Program
    FU/BEST Program Name: Dr. Detlef von Daniels Email address: [email protected] Course title: The Promise of German Philosophy: Between Kant and Hegel Course number: FU-BEST 9a Language of instruction: English Contact hours: 45 ECTS-Credits: 6 U.S. semester credits: 3 Course description Philosophy has constituted a central element in the development of modern German culture. In the late eighteenth century, German philosophy participated in the broader European Enlightenment culture, which has in turn been connected to the development of modern empirical science. Under the impression of the historical changes brought about by the French Revolution and by the ‘Industrial Revolution’ in Great Britain, a special constellation of German philosophy emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, which has deeply left its mark on subsequent philosophical thinking far beyond Germany. In the course, we follow the emergence and full deployment of German philosophy from its beginnings in Kant’s theoretical and moral philosophy to Hegel’s grand but fragile synthesis. We will also discuss the critique by the Young Hegelians as well as by the late Schelling, trying to understand the richness as well as the limitations of this tradition of German philosophy. The course is based upon contemporary attempts at rethinking a global philosophical perspective. Therefore, the contextual reading of key texts is related to contemporary feminist and postcolonial discussions. Course work/expectations Midterm exam: 20% Term-Paper: 25% Final Exam: 20% Attendance and participation: 25% (including weekly reading responses) Independent Project: 10% Student profile Second-semester sophomore or above Prerequisites Prior knowledge of philosophy is not required, however, an eagerness to engage with densely written texts is indispensable.
    [Show full text]
  • Kant's Transcendental Deduction
    Kant’s Transcendental Deduction Professors James Conant & Robert Pippin Spring 2010 *** Syllabus *** Description of the Seminar This seminar will be devoted to a close reading and discussion of Kant’s First Critique, focusing on the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding. We will also explore carefully explore a handful of proposals for how to interpret the First Critique and especially the Transcendental Deduction, including especially those put forward by Allison, Strawson, and Strawson. We will end the course with a close look at Wilfrid Sellars’s and John McDowell’s respective interpretations of Kant, with special attention to how each of their own philosophies of perception inherit, modify, and explore Kant’s criticisms of traditional empiricism, and how each of them it rework a number of Kantian themes – most notably Kant’s conception of intuition and his account of the relation between intuitions and concepts. The aim of the course is both to use certain central texts of recent Kant commentary and contemporary analytic Kantian philosophy to illuminate some the central aspirations of Kant’s theoretical philosophy and to use certain central Kantian texts in which those aspirations were first pursued to illuminate some recent developments in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Instructors James Conant Robert Pippin Office: Stuart 208 Office: Foster 307 Office Phone: 773 702 6146 Office Phone: 773 702 5453 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] 1 Texts All of the following textbooks have been ordered through the Seminary Co-op and are all required texts for the course: 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Problems and Challenges in Gadamer's Hermeneutics
    Between Enlightenment and Romanticism: Some Problems and Challenges in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics KRISTIN GJESDAL* for post-analytical philosophers such as Richard Rorty and John McDowell, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method (1960) has played an important role in their battles against Cartesian epistemology.1 In this context, it is little known that when Gadamer started working on Truth and Method in the early 1930s, he did not want only to criticize the framework of modern epistemology. Rather, the initial intention of his work was to “demonstrate that art can convey truth.”2 In Gadamer’s view, such a demonstration could not be of a merely systematic na- ture, but also had to engage with the historical development of aesthetics; it had to overcome the way in which Kant and the romantics had come to deny art any significance as knowledge. Since the publication of Truth and Method, Gadamer’s discussion of art and aesthetics—his critique of Kant, the romantics, and the general philosophical paradigm that he terms ‘aesthetic consciousness’—has received only scant atten- tion.3 By contrast, the second and third parts of the work—addressing, respectively, 1For Rorty’s reading of Gadamer, see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 357–95; and “Der Vorlesungsgast,” in Begegnungen mit Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. Günter Figal, trans. Joachim Schulte (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000), 87–92. For McDowell’s application of Gadamerian insights and concepts, see John McDowell, Mind and Nature (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1996), xi–xxiv and 108–26; and “Gadamer, Davidson, and the Ground of Understanding,” in Gadamer’s Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer [Gadamer’s Century], ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy and Museums: Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology
    Royal Institute of Philosophy, Annual Conference 2013 Philosophy and Museums: Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology University of Glasgow and the Burrell Collection, 24th-26th July, 2013 Launch Event: Tuesday 23rd July, 5.30 – 7.30 p.m. Hunterian Art Gallery. Open to the public. Welcome by the Deputy and Senior Vice Principal, Neal Juster. Lecture by Dr Mark O'Neill (Director of Policy and Research, Glasgow Life), 'Museums and their Paradoxes' with comments by Charles Taliaferro (Professor of Philosophy, St. Olaf College, Minnesota). The lecture will be followed by a civic wine reception in the Hunterian Art Gallery. No registration required. Wednesday 24th July (all talks to be held in the Bridie Library, 32 University Avenue, University of Glasgow) 9.00 – 9.30 Welcome 9.30 - 10.50 Garry Hagberg, Bard College, New York, ‘Word and Object’ Refreshments 11.00 - 12.20 Beth Lord, University of Aberdeen, ‘“A Sudden Surprise of the Soul”: Wonder in Museums and Early Modern Philosophy’ 12.20 - 1.00 Anna Bergqvist, Manchester Metropolitan University, ‘Framing Effects in Museums Narrative’ 1.00 - 1.45 Lunch 1.45 - 3.00 Constantine Sandis, Oxford Brookes, ‘Replicas and the Role of Museums’ 3.00 – 3.40 Andreas Pantazatos, Durham University, ‘The Normative Foundations of Stewardship and Trusteeship' Refreshments 4.00 – 5.15 Michael Levine, University of Western Australia, ‘Museums and the Nostalgic Self’ 5.30 – 6.30 Wine and Canapé reception at the Hunterian Museum. Welcome by Museum Director, Professor David Gaimster 6.45 Dinner. Thursday 25th July 9.30 - 11.00 Graham Oddie, University of Colorado at Boulder, ‘What do we see in Museums?’ (Art History Lecture Theatre, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow).
    [Show full text]
  • Kant and Force: Dynamics, Natural Science and Transcendental Philosophy
    Kant and Force: Dynamics, Natural Science and Transcendental Philosophy Stephen HOWARD January 2017 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy. Abstract This thesis presents an interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s theoretical philosophy in which the notion of ‘force’ (Kraft) is of central importance. My analysis encompasses the full span of Kant’s theoretical and natural-scientific writings, from the first publication to the drafts of an unfinished final work. With a close focus on Kant’s texts, I explicate their explicit references to force, providing a narrative of the philosophical role and significance of force in the various periods of the Kantian oeuvre. This represents an intervention into Kant scholarship that seeks to correct the marginal role accorded to ‘force’. The central problem that emerges through the thesis’ attention to force is: how to interpret the simultaneous separation and connection of physical and psychological forces in Kant’s mature, critical philosophy? Physical and psychological forces are strictly separated, and yet a common, ontological conception of force underpins these two domains. I show that this issue has its basis in a tradition of philosophical ‘dynamics’ stemming from Leibniz, which is examined in part one. The three parts of the thesis proceed chronologically through the Kantian oeuvre. Part one reconstructs the historical context of Leibnizian and Newtonian conceptions of force, and presents a narrative of the employment of force in Kant’s pre-critical writings, in their relation to the broad problematic of Leibniz’s dynamics.
    [Show full text]
  • PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT Pittsburgh, Pa 15282 Return Service Requested 3 0 3 Duquesne Graduate Philosophy News Spring 2012 • Volume 5, Issue 1
    DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY 600 FORBES AVENUE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT PITTSBURGH, PA 15282 RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED 3 0 3 DUQUESNE GRADUATE PHILOSOPHY NEWS Spring 2012 • Volume 5, Issue 1 MESSAGES FROM OUR DEAN AND CHAIR DEPARTMENT NEWS I have been the acting dean of the College this year, and in Daniel Selcer has March, was named dean. As such, I have been unable to been serving as interim teach, but have been able to learn a great deal about what is Director of Graduate going on in the College overall—especially the many good Studies, replacing Ron things. One of these is how many faculty, and students, Polansky while he serves outside of the department have interests in philosophy. as interim Chair. Dan has They come from political science, communications, history, recently spoken on early the natural sciences, and English—just to name a few areas. modern materialism at the One bit of news I can report is that the College is proposing to host the University of Pittsburgh, International Merleau-Ponty Circle in September 2013. We hope that this on the importance of history for philosophy at proposal will be successful. The College is also starting a Faculty Debate series. Slippery Rock University, on Spinoza’s account The first featured Dr. Miller and two other faculty members of individualism at the University of Guelph, and in a discussion entitled “Belief Today,” about religion in the on the idea of ‘operative science’ in Bacon and public sphere. - James Swindal Spinoza at Simon Fraser University. We are also pleased to announce that Dan was awarded the I look forward to our continuing as a very vibrant EWS ROM LUMNI 2012 McAnulty College and Graduate School N F A undergraduate and graduate Philosophy Department.
    [Show full text]
  • Against the Fanaticism of Forces: Kant's Critique of Herder's Spinozism
    1 Against the fanaticism of forces: Kant’s critique of Herder’s Spinozism Beth Lord One of the many puzzling features of Kant’s Opus Postumum – the unpublished papers and fragments he was working on up to his death – is his frequent invocation of Spinoza. These references, found mostly in the very late sections of the text, are particularly striking given the content of its earlier sections.1 In ‘Übergang 1-14’ (labelled ‘The Ether Proofs’ in the English translation), written in 1799, Kant argues for a single dynamical continuum, the ether (also called caloric), that is the material of all appearances. Ether is posited a priori as the single object of perception whose moving forces provide the material for all bodies, and enable the subject to perceive things in space and time. This ‘universally distributed, all-penetrating world-material’ originally fills space and time with forces, making experience possible in general.2 Ether is therefore the material condition of experience, or ‘hypostatized’ space. The unity of experience demands that this single, space-filling continuum of forces be posited a priori to exist, not hypothetically, but actually. Kant had long held a dynamical theory of matter and had argued that matter, understood under the principles of natural science set out in the first Critique, is reducible to the interaction of fundamental forces.3 The concept of ether is, however, a significant development of that view. It is envisioned as the original, primary matter, which need not appeal to any ground outside itself for its being or subsistence. It contains the material for all possible experience, but is not an ideal sum-total of all possibilities.
    [Show full text]