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Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant is the first history of the concept of facticity. G. Anthony Bruno argues that the coining, transmission, and repurposing of this concept by major thinkers has produced a deep and lasting divide between theorists who have, following Kant, addressed the question of whether a science of intelligibility can tolerate brute facts. In the phenomenological tradition, 'facticity' is associated with the undeducibly brute conditions of intelligibility such as sociality, mortality, and temporality. This suggests an affirmative answer to the post-Kantian question. In contrast, however, the original use of the term in the German idealist tradition was associate...
Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant is the first history of the concept of facticity. G. Anthony Bruno argues that this concept's coining, transmission, and repurposing by post-Kantian thinkers leaves a lasting divide concerning the question of whether a science of intelligibility can tolerate brute facts. In the phenomenological tradition, 'facticity' denotes undeducibly brute conditions of intelligibility such as sociality, mortality, and temporality. This suggests an affirmative answer to the post-Kantian question. However, the term's original use in the German idealist tradition is associated with a negative answer: a science of intelligibility must eliminate bruteness in order t...
The current wave of critical and historical engagement with idealist texts affords an unprecedented opportunity to discover the richness and value of the thought of F. W. J. Schelling. In this volume leading scholars offer compelling reasons to regard Schelling as one of Kant's most incisive interpreters, a pioneering philosopher of nature, a resolute philosopher of human finitude and freedom, a nuanced thinker of the bounds of logic and self-consciousness, and perhaps Hegel's most effective critic. The volume provides a wide-ranging presentation of Schelling's original contribution to, and internal critique of, the basic insights of German idealism, his role in shaping the course of post-Kantian thought, and his sensitivity and innovative responses to questions of lasting metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, and theological importance.
Skepticism is one of the most enduring and profound of philosophical problems. With its roots in Plato and the Sceptics to Descartes, Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein, skepticism presents a challenge that every philosopher must reckon with. In this outstanding collection philosophers engage with skepticism in five clear sections: the philosophical history of skepticism in Greek, Cartesian and Kantian thought; the nature and limits of certainty; the possibility of knowledge and related problems such as perception and the debates between objective knowledge and constructivism; the transcendental method as a response to skepticism and the challenge of naturalism; overcoming the skeptical challenge. Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries is essential reading for students and scholars in epistemology and the history of philosophy and will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as religion and sociology.
Several debates of the last years within the research field of contemporary realism – known under titles such as "New Realism," "Continental Realism," or "Speculative Materialism" – have shown that science is not systematically the ultimate measure of truth and reality. This does not mean that we should abandon the notions of truth or objectivity all together, as has been posited repeatedly within certain currents of twentieth century philosophy. However, within the research field of contemporary realism, the concept of objectivity itself has not been adequately refined. What is objective is supposed to be true outside a subject’s biases, interpretations and opinions, having truth cond...
Schelling came of age during the pivotal and exciting years at the end of the eighteenth century, as Kant's philosophy was being incorporated into the German academic world. Distinguishing himself from other thinkers of this period, in addition to delving into the new Kantian philosophy, Schelling engaged in an intense study of Plato's dialogues and was immersed in a Neoplatonic intellectual culture. Throughout the first decade of his adult life, from 1792-1802, Schelling was a mystical Platonist. Attention to these aspects of Schelling's early philosophical development illuminates his fundamental commitments.
This book is a new interpretation of Schelling's path-breaking 1809 treatise on freedom, the last major work published during his lifetime. The treatise is at the heart of the current Schelling renaissance—indeed, Heidegger calls it "one of the most profound works of German, thus of Western, philosophy." It is also one of the most demanding and complex texts in German Idealism. By tracing the problem of ground through Schelling's treatise, Mark J. Thomas provides a unified reading of the text, while unlocking the meaning of its most challenging passages through clear, detailed analysis. He shows how Schelling's implicit distinction between senses of ground is the key to his project of constructing a system that can satisfy reason while accommodating objects that seem to defy rational explanation—including evil, the origins of nature, and absolute freedom. This allows Schelling to unite reason and mystery, providing a rich model for philosophizing about freedom and evil today.
While indeterminacy is a recurrent theme in philosophy, less progress has been made in clarifying its significance for various philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts. This collection brings together early-career and well-known philosophers—including Graham Priest, Trish Glazebrook, Steven Crowell, Robert Neville, Todd May, and William Desmond—to explore indeterminacy in greater detail. The volume is unique in that its essays demonstrate the positive significance of indeterminacy, insofar as indeterminacy opens up new fields of discourse and illuminates neglected aspects of various concepts and phenomena. The essays are organized thematically around indeterminacy’s impact on various areas of philosophy, including post-Kantian idealism, phenomenology, ethics, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and East Asian philosophy. They also take an interdisciplinary approach by elaborating the conceptual connections between indeterminacy and literature, music, religion, and science.
This book develops an original interpretation of the relationship between F.W.J. Schelling and G.W.F. Hegel. It argues that the difference between these philosophers should be understood in light of their shared commitment to the philosophy of nature and the idea that spirit, or humanity, emerges from the natural world. The author makes a case for the contemporary relevance of German idealist philosophy of nature by walking the reader through its major themes, motivations, and arguments. Along the way, Schelling and Hegel are shown to develop key insights about the structure of reality and the dependence of living things and human beings upon inorganic natural processes. In elucidating the details of Schelling’s and Hegel’s respective philosophies of nature, the book challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the scope of philosophical inquiry and the relationship between matter, life, and human existence. Schelling, Hegel, and the Philosophy of Nature will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on German idealism, as well as those interested in contemporary philosophies of nature and the topic of emergence.
The chapters in this volume investigate the question of where, and in what sense, the bounds of intelligible thought, knowledge, and speech are to be drawn. Is there a way in which we are limited in what we think, know, and say? And if so, does this mean that we are constrained—that there is something beyond the ken of human intelligibility of which we fall short? Or is there another way to think about these limits of intelligibility—namely, as conditions of our meaning and knowing anything, beyond which there is no specifiable thing we cannot do? These issues feature prominently in the writings of Kant and Wittgenstein who each engaged with them in unique and striking ways. Their though...