Abstracts
Spring 2024
February 22
Luca Corti (University of Padua)
Hegel’s Notion of Character: Bringing Nature into History
This paper reconstructs and discusses Hegel’s use of the notion of character. Contrary to the vast literature one finds on this notion in Kant, the scholarship has not devoted much attention to this notion in Hegel. In part 1 of the paper I will highlight the philosophical relevance and significance of Hegel’s notion of character. In part two, I will begin filling in some details of Hegel’s theory. I will start with Hegel’s Anthropology, which is where he defines character, and show that we need to distinguish between a narrow use of the term and a broader one. In fact, like Kant in his Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, Hegel attributes “character” to both individual and collective subjects. He talks not only about individual character but also about national character and racial character. All these dimensions of character are meant to have explanatory import. This explanatory force, I will show, plays out beyond the Anthropology, most explicitly in the Philosophy of history. In general, the guiding aim of this paper is to show that character plays a specific, central role in articulating the dialectics between “nature” and “spirit” within “history” – thus contributing to shape the question of naturalism in Hegel. In sum, I would like to show that character represents one way in which Hegel brings nature into history, one that allows him to capture natural aspects of the spirit which turn out to be central in his explanation of the historical development. As I will discuss in the final part of the paper, this dialectic is highly problematic in various respects.
March 7
Marco Rampazzo Bazzan (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil)
Machiavelli’s Impact on the Political Thought of the Late Fichte
In this talk I delve into the profound impact of Machiavelli's oeuvre on Fichte, particularly the writings and lectures that followed the publication of his essay in the patriotic journal Vesta in 1807 (such as the Rechtslehre 1812 and Staatslehre). Central to my argument is the assertion that Fichte’s rehabilitation of Machiavelli transcends the realm of mere occasional writings. Rather, it provides a crucial means to unravel the underlying core elements of both Fichte's political philosophy and the political essence of his philosophical praxis. In the first part, I will demonstrate how Fichte's essay of 1807 illuminates his intricate engagement with the ideological landscape of contemporary doctrines of right, aiming to underscore the profound significance of his subsequent political endeavors. These endeavors include appeals to the Prussian government, German public opinion, and the collective will of the German people. In the second part, I will focus on the Zwingherr in Fichte's Diary and Lectures on Applied Philosophy of 1813 and interpret this character as an emblematic outcome of Fichte's encounter with Machiavelli.
May 2
Paola Rumore (University of Turin)
Locke's early steps in the German Enlightenment
The huge influence Locke had on the development of the German Enlightenment has become a commonplace in the history of philosophy. In the general view, the peak of Locke's influential presence lies in the role he played in the development of central tenets of Kant's philosophy, for instance the investigation into the boundaries of knowledge and the opposition between rationalism and empiricism. Yet the impact of Locke on German philosophy cannot be limited to such episodic peaks; his ideas rather played a a central role in the main philosophical debates of the time, as well as in theological and scientific disputes, throughout the 18th century. Nevertheless, scholarship has not yet provided a comprehensive account of Locke’s significance for the development of modern German philosophy from Christian Thomasius to Kant. My talk will focus on a single but relevant episode of the German reception of Locke, i.e., on the role of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the notorious struggle between Christian Wolff and the Pietist theologians in Halle and Jena – a struggle that led to Wolff's banishment from Prussia in 1724 and, thus, to an important turn in the conception of the tasks of philosophy. Indeed, the Pietist theologians found in Locke's ideas a successful weapon against the Leibnitio-Wolffian nexus rerum fatalis and its atheistic implications. I will examine this development by highlighting the Pietistic reception of Locke’s theory of the will and his claim about the boundaries of knowledge.
Michael Jaworzyn (University of Edinburgh)
'The System of Ignorance': Locke and Eclectic Metaphysics
The ‘System of Ignorance’ of the title of this paper refers to Jacob Wilhelm Feuerlein’s (1689-1766) alternative to the three prevalent accounts of the commerce or interaction of mind and body, which he argues for in his 1737 Observationes eclecticae ex controversiis de metaphysica Leibnitio-Wollfiana. The paper will situate Feuerlein’s account of mind-body interaction in the broader context of Locke’s influence on early eighteenth-century German metaphysics. As a case study, it indicates that Locke’s influence was not limited to thinkers suspicious of the academic discipline of metaphysics, and that the eclectic school was not necessarily anti-metaphysical (contra scholars such as Hunter 2001 or Gaukroger 2010).
The paper first outlines the (self-proclaimed) Lockean methodology of Feuerlein’s metaphysics, before showing how Feuerlein relies on a broadly Lockean categorical scheme of substances, modes, and relations to improve on other accounts of mind-body interaction, especially physical influx.
The standard versions of physical influx – found among both scholastic Aristotelians and Platonists, according to Feuerlein – fail to recognise that the term influx is ‘allegorical’. In Feuerlein’s account, the apparent causal interaction between mind and body has the metaphysical status of a relation rather than a substance or mode. In accordance with Feuerlein’s view of relations in general, that relation is mind-dependent. We are, however, ignorant – hence the name of the ‘system’ – of the manner in which the mind-dependent relation is grounded in its relata, i.e., the two apparently interacting substances or their modes. Feuerlein and his students claimed to be inspired by Bacon, Locke, and the German representative of occasionalism, Johann Sturm (1635–1703) in providing this metaphysical alternative to Aristotelian, Cartesian, and Wolffian views of causation.
Michael Walschots (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
Locke and Popular Philosophy: Feder, Tittel, and the Rejection of a priori Cognition
One of the major ways in which Locke had an impact on eighteenth-century German philosophy was via the so-called ‘popular philosophy’ movement. My aim in this paper is to analyze the ways in which two figures received and engaged with Locke thought, namely J. G. H. Feder and G. A. Tittel. Feder and Tittel are important figures in this context, among other reasons, because Feder was a figurehead of the popular philosophy movement who wrote many influential textbooks, and Tittel produced a partial German translation of Locke’s Essay.
The paper proceeds as follows: I first outline what I will argue is the most important doctrine of Locke’s for Feder, namely Locke’s rejection of innate ideas. I then consider Feder’s rejection of ideas that do not have an empirical origin, as well as why he thought this doctrine was so important: namely because he took the opposite position (belief in ideas that do not have an empirical origin) to lead to believing in ideas that have no application in the real world, a doctrine that Feder took to be especially dangerous in moral philosophy. I then turn to Tittel to show that he also held Locke’s rejection of innate ideas to have some importance, and that this had consequences for his own philosophy, such as his critique of both Kant’s moral philosophy and theory of the categories. The popularity of Kant’s philosophy even led Tittel to produce a partial translation of Locke’s Essay in an effort to make Locke’s philosophy more widespread. I conclude by arguing that Feder’s and Tittel’s engagement with Locke’s philosophy, and in particular Locke’s rejection of innate ideas, consists in a significant way in which Locke’s philosophy was received and had an impact on late eighteenth-century German philosophy.
May 30
Naomi Fisher (Loyola University Chicago)
Schelling’s Mystical Platonism. 1792–1802 (OUP 2024)
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. At this time, 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. Attention to these aspects of Schelling's early philosophical development illuminates his fundamental commitments. Throughout the first decade of his adult life, from 1792-1802, Schelling was a mystical Platonist. Naomi Fisher argues that Schelling is committed to two overarching theses, which together comprise his mystical Platonism. First, Schelling considers the absolute to be ineffable: It cannot be described in conceptual terms. For this reason, it remains inferentially external to any given philosophical system and is only intimated to us in certain analogical formulations, in works of art, or in nature as a whole. Second, Schelling is committed to a kind of priority monism: All things are grounded in the absolute, but finite things possess an integral unity all their own, and so have a distinct and relatively independent existence.
Highlighting these commitments resolves an interpretive dispute, according to which Schelling is a Fichtean idealist or a Spinozist, or vacillates between these positions. Interpreting Schelling as advancing a mystical Platonism provides an alternative way of interpreting these early texts, such that they are by and large consistent. Fisher presents Schelling's early philosophy as a unique and compelling fusion of the old and new: Schelling fulfills the characteristic aims of post-Kantian philosophy in a way distinctive among his contemporaries, by drawing on and appropriating various strands of Platonism.
Fall 2023
September 23
The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Friedrich Schiller (2023), edited by Antonino Falduto and Tim Mehigan
Friedrich Schiller is justly celebrated for his dramas and poetry. Yet, above all, he was a polymath, whose writings enriched a range of fields including history and philosophy. Until now, no comprehensive accounting of this philosophy has been undertaken. The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Friedrich Schiller makes good this desideratum, treating Schiller's poetry, prose, and dramatic work alongside his philosophical writings and reviewing his thought not only in connection with those who influenced him, such as Kant, Reinhold, and Fichte, but also those he anticipated, such as Hegel, Marx, and the Neo-Kantians. Topics treated in this volume include Schiller's philosophical background, his theoretical writings, Schiller's philosophical writing in light of his entire oeuvre, and Schiller's philosophical legacy. The Handbook also includes an overview of the main topics Schiller addressed in his philosophical writings including philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, moral philosophy, politics and political theory, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of education. Bringing together the latest research on Schiller and his thought by leading scholars in the field, the Handbook draws attention to Schiller's undiminished importance for philosophical debates today.
October 26
Idit Chikurel (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Ampliative Analysis in Maimon’s Thought
In 1795, Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) published two articles describing the outlines of a theory of invention. This theory includes ten methods designed to produce new mathematical knowledge, such as "analysis of the cases of the solution", "analysis of the object" and “analysis of conditions.” Although Maimon does not mention this, his methods of invention are influenced by problem-solving techniques used by ancient Greek mathematicians. I argue that these methods influenced Maimon’s innovative conception of analysis in the broader sense, defined as grounded not only on the principle of contradiction but also on intuition. There are various notions of analysis in a broader sense, and they are presented in a mathematical context as well as in a philosophical one. In Versuch einer neuen Logik published in 1794, Maimon presents two kinds of “analysis of the object” which are grounded both the principle of contradiction and intuition. I begin my talk by presenting Maimon’s notions of analysis defined in a broader sense, and show how these notions contribute to the invention of new knowledge. I then discuss the way he rephrased Kant’s question concerning the possibility of synthetic judgments to include ampliative analytic judgments. I end my talk by arguing that analytic propositions in the broader sense are ampliative and not merely explicative because they serve as grounds for new propositions and have consequences.
November 23
Christoph Binkelmann (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften München)
Schelling's Doctrine of the Potencies in The Ages of the World
Schelling’s incomplete project of the Weltalter (Ages of the World) is still one of the most fascinating in the history of philosophy. However, the texts published posthumously so far make it difficult to assess the structure and meaning of the Weltalter. Taking recourse to the for the most part unpublished “Weltalter Fragments”, this paper aims to shed light on the Weltalter by focusing on two central ideas: the idea of sevenness (Siebenheit) and the idea of minor potencies (kleine Potenzen). The idea of sevenness serves to distinguish seven different stages in both the theogonic and cosmogonic development. It therefore provides a principle that allows us to break down the first book of the Weltalter, “The Past,” as well as to sketch the structure of the unwritten second book. By means of the minor potencies (a=b, a2, a3) Schelling describes the first, initial movement of pure becoming within God, which has not yet made it to the self-sufficiency of the major potencies (A=B, A2, A3) and thus to the real development of the three persons i.e. the trinity of father, son, and holy ghost within God. This stage is known as that of the circulation (Umtrieb) or rotation (“wheel of birth”). By foregrounding these two structuring principles, it becomes possible not only to gain insight into Schelling’s own work on the Weltalter, but also to further an understanding of the project as a whole and possibly think it further.
December 14
Lara Ostaric (Temple University)
The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant's Critical System
In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant's seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant's discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts in his philosophy, and helps the reader to recognize the relevance of his aesthetics and teleology for our understanding of fine arts and genius, the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness, Kant's philosophy of history, his philosophy of religion, and his conception of autonomy. Ostaric's novel and thoroughly integrative presentation of Kant's system will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those working in religious studies, art history, political theory, and intellectual history.
Kristi Sweet (Texas A&M University)
Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment: The Territory of the Third Critique
Kant's Critique of Judgment seems not to be an obviously unified work. Unlike other attempts to comprehend it as a unity, which treat it as serving either practical or theoretical interests, Kristi Sweet's book posits it as examining a genuinely independent sphere of human life. In her in-depth account of Kant's Critical philosophical system, Sweet argues that the Critique addresses the question: for what may I hope? The answer is given in Kant's account of 'territory,' a region of experience that both underlies and mediates between freedom and nature. Territory forms the context in which purposiveness without a purpose, the Ideal of Beauty, the sensus communis, genius, and aesthetic ideas, and Kant's conception of life and proof of God are best interpreted. Encounters in this sphere are shown to refer us to a larger, more cosmic sense of a whole to which both freedom and nature belong.
Spring 2023
February 9
Stephen Houlgate (University of Warwick)
Civil Society and its Discontents: Hegel and the Problem of Poverty
In this essay I argue that Hegel sees in the corporations a solution to the problem of systematic poverty in civil society. Hegel understands such poverty to be caused by the “measureless” desire to maximise wealth and by the overproduction to which this desire leads. Corporations, however, moderate our desire for wealth by developing in their members an ethical concern for one another and by setting limits to the production of certain goods. The state also engenders a sense of common purpose within its citizens, but it does not make them ethical in their particular social and economic activity, as the corporations do. For Hegel, therefore, the principal solution to the problem of poverty lies not in the political state, but in the corporations.
March 16
Peter Dews (University of Essex)
Schelling’s Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel
Recent decades have seen a remarkable upsurge of interest in German Idealism in the English-speaking world. However, out of the three leading thinkers of the period directly after Kant—Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—Schelling has received relatively little attention. In particular, the distinctive philosophical project of Schelling's late period, beginning in the 1820s, has been almost completely ignored. This omission has impaired the overall understanding of German Idealism. For it is during the late phase of his work that Schelling develops his influential critique of Hegel and his definitive response to the central problems post-Kantian thought as a whole. This book is the first in English to survey the whole of Schelling’s late system, and to explore in detail the rationale for its division into a “negative philosophy” and a “positive philosophy.” It begins by tracing Schelling's intellectual development from his early work of the 1790s up to the threshold of his final phase. It then examines Schelling's mature conception of the scope of pure thinking, the basis of negative philosophy, and the nature of the transition to positive philosophy. In this second, historically oriented enterprise Schelling explores the deep structure of mythological worldviews and seeks to explain the epochal shift to the modern universe of “revelation.” Simultaneously, the book offers a sustained comparison of Hegel's and Schelling's treatment of a range of central topics in post-Kantian thought: the relation between a priori thinking and being; the role of religion in human existence; the inner dynamics of history; and the paradoxical structure of freedom.
March 23
Jelscha Schmid (University of Basel)
The methods of metaphilosophy: Kant, Maimon, and Schelling on how to philosophize about philosophy (Klostermann 2022)
On the basis of an examination of Kant's, Maimon's and Schelling's metaphilosophies, this book investigates how, starting from Kant's diagnosis of a "groping metaphysics", a philosophical research program, whose goal is to elucidate the nature and method of philosophy itself, develops. What unites their projects is the thesis that philosophy must begin with an investigation of its own nature, and that this investigation, because of its special object, must be accompanied by a reflection on its method. To this end, their methods are discussed on the assumption that these methods arise from a particular engagement with the theories and practices of the 18th century sciences. Finally, this discussion provides the basis for showing in what ways philosophical experiments, fictions, or models offer methodological solutions to the problem of developing a scientific metaphysics.
April 20
Elizabeth Millán Brusslan (DePaul University Chicago)
Nature, Freedom, and Political Change in Alexander von Humboldt
In my paper I will present Alexander von Humboldt’s view that nature is the “realm of freedom” (Reich der Freiheit). Humboldt’s view of nature is, to use a term developed by Santiago Castro-Gómez, transdisciplinary, blending science, art, and politics. Looking carefully at Views of Nature (1808) and some of the political essays that came out of his travel narrative detailing the time he spent in America (1799-1804), I will explore the question of how the study of nature became political in Humboldt’s work.
May 18
Kant’s Late Philosophy of Nature: The Opus postumum (CUP 2023)
Kant's final drafts, known as his Opus postumum, attempt to make what he calls a 'transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics.' Interpreters broadly agree that in this project Kant seeks to connect the general a priori principles of natural science, as set out in the major critical works, to the specific results of empirical physics. Beyond this, however, basic interpretative issues remain controversial. This Element outlines a framework that aims to combine the systematic ambition of early twentieth-century readings with the rigor of more recent studies. The author argues that a question that has animated much recent scholarship – which 'gap' in Kant's previous philosophy does the Opus postumum seek to fill? – can be profitably set aside. In its place, renewed attention should be given to a crucial part of the manuscript, fascicles X/XI, and to the problematic 'arrival point' of the transition, namely, Kant's question: What is physics?
Fall 2022
September 22
Hegel on Contradictions
In this talk I would like to discuss some aspects of Hegel's concept of contradiction. I will try to show that Hegel is mainly interested in ‘real oppositions’ and that he mainly develops philosophical theses about their structure and meaning (which are at least interesting). Furthermore, I will argue that Hegel believes that what logical contradictions are can only be grasped against such a background of a philosophical conception of real oppositions. I will try to sketch what this means. For the first thesis I will refer to different texts, mainly the Phenomenology of Spirit (second chapter) and the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (preface). For the second thesis I will focus on the Logic of Essence (second chapter).
October 27
Owen Ware (University of Toronto)
Kant and the Causality of Freedom
Kant’s early critics argued that his theory of freedom faced a dilemma: either it reduces the will’s activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will’s activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This article offers a new interpretation and partial defense of Kant’s theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law is the causal law of a free will, and that the ability to choose indifferently between multiple options is an illusion. Freedom, for Kant, is a cosmological power to initiate action from oneself, and the only way to exercise this power is through the law of one’s own will, the moral law. Immoral action is not impossible, but it does not express a genuine ability.
November 3
Arash Abazari (Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran /
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination (CUP 2020)
Recent attempts to revitalize Hegel's social and political philosophy have tended to be doubly constrained: firstly, by their focus on Hegel's Philosophy of Right; and secondly, by their broadly liberal interpretive framework. Challenging that trend, Arash Abazari shows that the locus of Hegel's genuine critical social theory is to be sought in his ontology – specifically in the 'logic of essence' of the Science of Logic. Mobilizing ideas from Marx and Adorno, Abazari unveils the hidden critical import of Hegel's logic. He argues that social domination in capitalism obtains by virtue of the illusion of equality and freedom; shows how relations of opposition underlie the seeming pluralism in capitalism; and elaborates on the deepest ground of domination, i.e. the totality of capitalist social relations. Overall, his book demonstrates that Hegel's logic can and should be read politically.
November 17
Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero (Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia)
The German eighteenth-century debate on the indestructibility of the soul
Leibniz’s doctrine of immortality had a powerful impact on eighteenth-century German philosophers. His distinction between indestructibility (a property of all simple substances) and immortality in the strict sense (a property of rational souls or spirits alone) soon became a cornerstone of most debates on the afterlife. Whereas current research usually focuses on the arguments for immortality proper, my aim is to explore the topic of mere indestructibility. My point is that post-Leibnizian philosophers did not merely recast the traditional argument from simplicity (the soul has no parts, hence it cannot decompose) but also addressed the hypothesis of the soul’s annihilation by arguing that it would be incompatible with the laws of nature. In particular, I propose a new interpretation of the argument for the indestructibility of the soul that Moses Mendelssohn develops from the Law of Continuity in the first dialogue of his Phädon.
December 8
Dalia Nassar (University of Sydney)
Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to Humboldt
In Romantic Empiricism, Dalia Nassar distinguishes and explores an understudied philosophical tradition that emerged in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, traces its development, and argues for its continued significance. Moving from the late Kant's notion of reflecting judgment, to Herder's articulation of the idea of "animal worlds," Goethe's explication of the obligations of the scientist, and Alexander von Humboldt's aesthetic science, Nassar demonstrates how these thinkers developed a sophisticated empirical approach to the natural world, which focuses on the phenomenon while also recognizing the creative role of the knowing subject and the cognitive value of art and aesthetic experience. She explores how these four thinkers worked together-sometimes as rivals, but more often than not as teachers and collaborators-and illustrates how their search for a new methodology culminated in a new, ecological understanding of the world and the human place within it.
Revisiting their thought, especially their distinctive approach to the study of nature, Nassar demonstrates, has the potential to redirect contemporary environmental debates and respond to urgent ecological questions in new and productive ways.
Spring 2022
February 3
Obscuring Reason: Kant and Fichte on Acting against the Moral Law
According to Kant’s “reciprocity thesis” (Allison), “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same” (GMM, 4:447). This raises the question of how we can freely and imputably act against the moral law. In this paper, I argue that both Kant and Fichte develop what I call a conception of “obscuring reason”. This concept is necessary for avoiding the so-called “Reinhold’s Dilemma”, which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions and arises from Kant's theory of autonomy. For this purpose, I focus on Kant’s conception of rationalizing (Vernünfteln), which I will interpret as a way out of Reinhold’s Dilemma. By rationalizing, we imputably misuse our capacity of reason in order to construct a viewpoint from which we are no longer bound to the absolute demand of the moral law, thereby rationally justifying our own actions by means of apparent exceptions or excuses. Fichte, on the other hand, argues that we can imputably block out the absolute demand of the moral law by means of our capacity of reflection, since reflection is not something merely theoretical but rather practical and volitional. Fichte thereby distinguishes three kinds of operations to obscure the moral law, namely (i) abstraction, (ii) delaying, and (iii) downgrading. Hence, both Kant and Fichte argue that we do not directly act against the demand of the moral law, but rather indirectly and reflectively, which allows us to conceive of our own immoral actions as something both rational and imputable.
March 3
Gabriele Gava (University of Turin)
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics
The book (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press) interprets the Critique of Pure Reason as the ‘doctrine of method’ of metaphysics. In this way, it provides a new perspective on its task, which cannot be captured by simply saying that it is an analysis of our faculty of cognition or a propaedeutic to metaphysics. As such doctrine, the Critique must determine that metaphysics can attain ‘architectonic unity’, which I read as requiring more than mere ‘systematicity’. In turn, this approach to the Critique offers a key to understanding the relationship between transcendental philosophy, as a part of metaphysics that is partially established within the pages of the Critique, and the critique of pure reason, as that discipline within the Critique that achieves the latter’s aim as the doctrine of method of metaphysics.
Chapter 3: Metaphysical Deductions
A central claim of the book is that the critique of pure reason, in order to perform its task as a doctrine of method of metaphysics, must establish some doctrines that belong to transcendental philosophy. The parts of transcendental philosophy that are established within the Critique concerns what Kant calls ‘ancestral concepts’ (Stammbegriffe). These are concepts that play a fundamental role in our cognition of objects. They are characterized by being pure (they do not contain anything empirical) and by lying at the basis of synthetic a priori claims. With respect to these concepts, transcendental philosophy must, first, clarify and catalogue them, while also tracking their origin, and, second, establish what kind of validity they have. The first task is pursued by metaphysical deductions, the second by transcendental deductions. Chapter 3 is dedicated to metaphysical deductions. I show that the Critique contains metaphysical deductions of space and time, the categories and the transcendental ideas. I reconstruct each of these deductions in turn. I show that metaphysical deductions do not simply assume an already presupposed distinction among faculties, but contribute to making this distinction by tracking the different origins of ancestral concepts. Furthermore, I argue that Kant does not follow a univocal pattern of argument in these deductions. Rather, his approach is pluralistic, where this suits his aim of tracking the different origins of these concepts.
March 10
Dina Emundts (Freie Universität Berlin)
Hegel on Contradictions
In this talk I would like to discuss some aspects of Hegel's concept of contradiction. I will try to show that Hegel is mainly interested in ‘real oppositions’ and that he mainly develops philosophical theses about their structure and meaning (which are at least interesting). Furthermore, I will argue that Hegel believes that what logical contradictions are can only be grasped against such a background of a philosophical conception of real oppositions. I will try to sketch what this means. For the first thesis I will refer to different texts, mainly the Phenomenology of Spirit (second chapter) and the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (preface). For the second thesis I will focus on the Logic of Essence (second chapter).
March 24 (5.30-7.30 CET)
The Idea of Revolution in Kantian and Early Post-Kantian Philosophy
Three short papers
Kant’s Ammunition against Revolution: Law, Freedom and Power
What kind of political authority needs to be in place in order to safeguard the juridical condition from the threats of degeneration and dissolution? This, I claim, is the systematic question animating Kant’s reflection on all violent revolutions. Such authority must be capable of striking a balance between a right to be free and the duty to uphold the integrity and stability of the state. This paper argues that Kant saw clearly into the fragile nature of the civil condition, prompted by his analysis and ensuing critique of the French Revolution. I want to suggest that Kant’s insistence that a state of anarchy, namely the state that arises after a revolution has taken place, and that persists until a new ‘de facto’ government has been established, is the inevitable result of all revolutionary processes, and one of its biggest threats. To do this, I focus on the notion of Power or Force (Gewalt). So far this notion has not been sufficiently explored, notwithstanding the fact that Kant explicitly posits it as the third, key ingredient, along with Freedom and Law, of any juridical condition.
Fichte’s Early Anarchism
This talk reconstructs Fichte’s anarchist theory of political obligation in his 1793 Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s Judgments on the French Revolution, with special attention to the background influence of Theodor Schmalz’s 1792 text Das reine Naturrecht. I show how Fichte’s radicalization of Schmalz’s account of contractual obligation in a state of nature leads him to endorse a highly individualistic view of the right to revolution.
Erhard on Natural Law and Revolution
This paper reconstructs and evaluates J. B. Erhard’s defence of the right to revolution in his 1795 treatise On the Right of the People to a Revolution. I argue that Erhard’s defence is best understood as critically engaging with the accounts of resistance and revolution offered by the tradition of natural law theory. I explain what is distinctive and innovative about Erhard’s position by comparing it with the positions of natural law theorists such as Aquinas, Wolff, and Achenwall. I argue that Erhard’s central innovation consists in identifying a kind of injustice that overrides the moral considerations that are often held by natural law theorists to count against revolution. This kind of injustice originates in the “basic laws” of a society and it harms the “humanity” of those individuals who are affected by it.
April 28
Fichte’s Engagement With Early Modern Philosophy: Three Short Papers
María Jimena Solé (Universidad de Buenos Aires / CONICET)
Fichte and Spinoza
The nature of Fichte’s relation to Spinoza has been an important topic of discussion among philosophers ever since Jacobi accused the Wissenschaftslehre of being a form of Spinozism in 1799. In this presentation, I analyze the way in which Fichte introduces Spinoza in his Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre of 1794/5, the first public exposition of his system. I do not intend to look for similarities between them, nor to trace a possible influence of Spinozism on Fichte’s doctrine, nor to judge whether Fichte’s interpretation of this system is correct. My aim is to illuminate Fichte’s understanding of Spinozism in this work, in order to determine the role he assigns to him in the foundation and exposition of his own doctrine. I will show that he assumes an ambivalent position towards Spinoza. His initial criticism, based on the identification of Spinozism with dogmatism, gives way to the idea that Spinozism is not false but incomplete and to an effort to defend his insights. Challenging the widely accepted image of Spinozism as an atheistic, fatalistic and dangerous doctrine, Fichte thus builds a new image of Spinoza.
Esma Kayar (Istanbul Medeniyet University)
Leibniz and Fichte on the ‘I Am’
According to Leibniz, Descartes’ judgment “I think; therefore, I am” is a primary truth of fact.
Leibniz states that to think of something differs from considering the one who thinks of it. He identifies the latter as the “I” and distinguishes it from the act of thinking. Fichte follows Leibniz’s interpretation of the clause “to think” in the judgment “I think” by regarding the act of thinking as superfluous to understand the existence of the “I”. But there is a tension in Leibniz’s philosophy between the view that God created the I and, on the other hand, a self-awareness of the I that is independent of God. I argue that Fichte resolves this tension by transforming the necessary existence of God into that of the subject. Thus, whereas Leibniz maintained that only God necessarily exists, Thus, whereas Leibniz maintained that only God necessarily exists, Fichte claims that the I is necessary regarding everything it posits as existing in itself, and this very same I must also posit itself as existing.
Marco Rampazzo Bazzan (Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo, Brasil)
On Fichte’s “Rousseau” Prism
In Fichte's work, the name “Rousseau” can be seen as a prism. Rousseau’s presence in works Fichte wrote between 1792 and 1799 sheds light on the ambition of the German philosopher to create a new vision of law and politics. More specifically, in the light of the Kantian critical turn and the impact of the French Revolution, Fichte aimed at subverting the mechanistic imaginary conveyed by the Staatswissenschaften and Prussian public law. However, the name "Rousseau" refers to different characters, depending on how Fichte summons, defends or criticizes the Genevan author. In Fichte's texts, these characters are played out against each other. So, understanding each time of what “Rousseau” is the name we can identify different planes that are intertwined in Fichte's thought. In my talk, I will focus on Fichte's final lecture in The Vocation of the Scholar (1794) with the aim of showing how his famous critique of Rousseau contains the key to the aforementioned prism and its enigmatic meaning.
May 5
Miguel Herszenbaun (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Kant and the Production of the Antinomy of Pure Reason
In this article, I claim that the Antinomy of pure reason emerges as the result of synthetic activities that require succession. In this regard, I show that cosmological conflicts involve different kinds of representations: (1) cosmological ideas, purely conceptual representations of the unconditioned and the product of non-temporal synthetic activities; and (2) putative complete series of spatiotemporal conditions, which require temporal synthetic activities. As I show, purely conceptual representations cannot produce cosmological conflicts: The Antinomy requires the interaction of reason, understanding, and sensibility. I also discuss the maxim and principle of pure reason, how they lead to the unconditioned (and its different notions), and how the cosmological syllogism produces the Antinomy.
Fall 2021
September 16
Karin de Boer and Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet
The Experiential Turn in Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy
This collection of essays challenges the prevailing assumption that eighteenth-century German philosophy prior to Kant was largely defined by post-Leibnizian rationalism and, accordingly, a low esteem of the cognitive function of the senses. It does so by highlighting the various ways in which eighteenth-century German philosophers reconceived the notion and role of experience in their efforts to identify, defend, and contest the contribution of sensibility to disciplines such as metaphysics, theology, the natural sciences, psychology, and aesthetics. Engaging in depth with Tschirnhaus, Wolff, the Wolffians, eclecticism, Popularphilosophie, the Berlin Academy, Tetens, and Kant, its thirteen chapters present a more nuanced understanding of the German reception of British and French ideas and dismiss the prevailing view that German philosophy was largely isolated from European debates. Moreover, the book introduces a number of relatively unknown, but highly relevant philosophers and developments to non-specialized scholars and contributes to a better understanding of the richness and complexity of the German Enlightenment.
October 7
“The Drive to be an I is at the Same Time the Drive to Think and to Feel.“ Hardenberg / Novalis on Drives, Faculties, and Powers.
Hardenberg / Novalis uses the concept of drive in his Fichte Studies as well as later in an almost exuberant manner. He is inspired by conceptions from Reinhold, Fichte, Platner, and Schiller. According to him, drives stand for the forces and forms of expression of human nature. They represent the mental energies of humans, such as seeing, thinking, or feeling, which arise from the uncontrollable realm of the unconscious. Thus, according to a statement in the Monologue, “this linguistic drive to speak is the characteristic of the inspiration of speech.” Moreover, his statement from the Fichte Studies, “The drive to be an I is at the same time the drive to think and to feel,” emphasises the importance of not only understanding human thought in a classical way, but also exploring its close relationship to the realm of feelings. In this manner, Hardenberg impressively reflects on the reciprocity of thinking and feeling as the fundamental form of philosophising.
October 7
"The I Is Fundamentally Nothing": Hardenberg on I-hood, Philosophy, and the Given
Early on in the Fichte-Studien, in a series of notes that appear to be exploring trenchant criticisms of positions developed in Fichte’s Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/5), Novalis asks: “Has not Fichte too arbitrarily packed everything into the I?” Hardenberg’s notes rehearse throughout a number of well-known claims by Kant and Fichte on the fundamentally active nature of the I, the primacy of the practical (active, moral) point of view, and the autonomy of reason and its philosophical expression. However, Hardenberg occasionally and tantalizingly suggests a rather different picture of the human mind and its philosophical elucidation, one that places a heavier accent on passivity and the role of the given in human aspiration. This talk explores Hardenberg’s emerging views on the given/givenness and some of their consequences for understanding the nature of the I and the possibility and scope of (idealist) philosophy.
October 7
Tower of Babel: Transcendental Linguistics in Friedrich von Hardenberg’s (Novalis) Fichte Studies
This paper provides a new interpretation of the linguistic aspects of Friedrich von Hardenberg’s Fichte Studies. It argues that Hardenberg was searching, among other things, for a transcendental language for philosophy. The possibility of such a language was discussed intensely among his contemporaries, such as Maimon, Niethammer, Reinhold, Weißhuhn, and Fichte. Its necessity, however, had become apparent with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Readers had noticed a disturbing discrepancy between the objective knowledge of transcendental philosophy—which, according to Kant, was supposed to be generally communicable—and Kant’s actual failure to communicate it. Hardenberg’s original insight into the inseparable unity of sign and signified, anticipating modern linguistic theories, led him to the assumption of a lawful relationship between both. From his unsuccessful attempt to disclose these laws, he went on to discover language as an independent realm fundamentally opposed to nature. Precisely because language is a necessary illusion, only the ‘presenting I’ (das darstellende Ich) achieves its end, namely, absolute freedom. Philosophy, therefore, is pure as long as it remains within the boundaries of language alone, that is a language which does not refer to anything outside itself.
October 21
A Defense of Schopenhauer’s Account of Compassion
On the standard reading, Schopenhauer understands compassion as the ability to ‘see through the Veil of Maya.’ The Veil of Maya is the world as representation; what we see through to is the world as will. When we see through the representation of the other, we find a suffering that cannot be differentiated from our own, and so we suffer with them: com-passion. Schopenhauer understands compassion as the recognition of one’s metaphysical identity with the other. For many, the very idea of such a metaphysics is a step too far. As a result, recent commentators like Cartwright propose to naturalize Schopenhauer’s account of compassion by treating the relevant conception of identity as psychological rather than metaphysical. This response draws on contemporary work on projective empathy. There is only one problem with this approach. Schopenhauer explicitly rejected a version of it, namely, the one put forward by Ubaldo Cassina’s 1798 treatise on compassion. According to Schopenhauer, the experience of compassion is rooted in an experience of the feelings of the other that isn’t mediated by an imaginative psychological reconstruction. Contra Cartwright and others, I argue that both Schopenhauer’s philosophy of perception and the phenomenological tradition provides resources for understanding his rejection of Cassina’s psychologism. The result is a theory that reverses the explanatory order of compassion and identification: we don’t have compassion because we identify with someone, but we identify with someone because we have compassion.
November 4
Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber (Oxford UP 2020)
Kant once famously declared in the Prolegomena that "it was the objection of David Hume that first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber." In Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber, Abraham Anderson offers a new interpretation of this utterance, arguing that Hume roused Kant by attacking the principle of sufficient reason, i.e., the basis of both rationalist metaphysics and the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This reading of Kant explains why Kant speaks of "the objection of David Hume" after mentioning Hume's attack on metaphysics. The "objection" that Kant has in mind, Anderson argues, is a challenge to metaphysics rather than the foundations of empirical knowledge. Consequently, Anderson's analysis positions both Kant and Hume as champions of the Enlightenment in its struggle with superstition, thus shedding new light on the connection between two of the most influential figures in the history of philosophy.
November 18
Jacobi and the A Priori Proof of the Existence of God
By Jacobi’s own admission, the problem of the a priori demonstration of the existence of God has been the guiding thread of his deepest philosophical interests. As we read in the autobiographical sketch of his 1787 David Hume, it was Leibniz’s claim that Spinoza’s whole philosophy is but a radicalization of Descartes’s proof in the Meditationes that prompted him into studying Spinoza. A decisive step in this context was certainly Jacobi’s study of Kant’s 1763 essay Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrung zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes. The aim of the paper is to assess the importance of Kant’s Beweisgrund for Jacobi’s philosophy of immediate knowing. It will be argued that Jacobi’s overall critique of Descartes’, Spinoza’s and Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism is modeled on Kant’s polemical thesis according to which existence is not a logical predicate, but an absolute position. I will contend, moreover, that an argument surprisingly akin to Kant’s is to be found in Fénelon’s second Traité de l’existence de Dieu (published in 1718), which Jacobi carefully studied in the mid-80s and which is likely to have influenced his later thought.
Jacobi and Hemsterhuis on Fatalism, Atheism and Spinozism
In the 1785 edition of the Letters on the Doctrines of Spinoza, Jacobi contends that Spinozism amounts to fatalism. In the later parts of the same Letters, however, he identifies Spinozism as atheism. Jacobi himself does not clearly explain the connection between these two claims. In Grund und Ursache (2000), Sandkaulen attempts to explain the connection by examining Supplement VII of the 1789 edition of the Letters on the Doctrines of Spinoza. This paper takes a different approach in that it pays attention to the influence of François Hemsterhuis on Jacobi’s philosophy. The paper is divided into four parts. The first two parts focus on Hemsterhuis’ and Jacobi’s conceptions of fatalism in Hemsterhuis’ 1776 Lettre sur le fatalisme and Jacobi’s 1785 Letters on the Doctrines of Spinoza. In the third part, I examine Hemsterhuis’ Lettre sur l’athéisme which Jacobi translated into German and included as Supplement II of the 1789 Letters on the Doctrines of Spinoza. Finally, I refer to relevant passages in the 1785 Letters on the Doctrines of Spinoza to explain how Jacobi draws a connection among fatalism, atheism and Spinozism.
Moral sense and decorum: F. H. Jacobi’s ethics between Cicero and the British Enlightenment
According to Jacobi, moral acts are not ruled by reason but by the heart. He rejects any type of morality according to laws, which he describes as mechanical or scientific. To understand this position, I will consider the influence of both Cicero and the British Enlightenment on Jacobi’s ethics in two of his works. The first one is the extract On men’s liberty (published in the second edition of Spinoza Letters), in which he discusses the stoic notion of a “sense of honor” (Gefühl der Ehre). The second one is the dialogue added to the 1796 edition of Jacobi’s romance Woldemar, in which Woldemar and his British acquaintance Carl Sidney talk about the fundamentals of morals. The intersection between the “moral sense” of the British (developed foremost by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson) and the notion of decorum (sensus rectis et honesti) in Cicero’s On Duties explains what Jacobi calls “moral unconditional judgements”, that is to say a moral sentiment that judges without reasons. Regarding epistemology, it is well known that Jacobi conceives of the criterion of truth as a self-evident immediate belief (Glauben) prior to reasonings or reflection. Similarly, he considers moral judgments to be based on a self-evident moral feeling or moral faculty that is common to all human beings and does not involve the activity of reason.
December 2
Reality, Infinitesimals and Pure Thinking: On Hermann Cohen´s Interpretation of Kant’s Anticipations of Perception
The goal of this talk is to analyze the connections between Cohen´s approach to differential calculus and his doctrine of pure thinking. I claim that Cohen´s logic of origin is firmly based on his interpretation of the Kantian principle of the anticipations of perception, where Cohen investigates the relations between the concepts of infinitesimal, extensive magnitude, intensive magnitude, and reality (Realität). I will begin by briefly considering Cohen´s early interpretation of differential calculus, contained in The Principle of the infinitesimal method and its history and Kant´s theory of experience. The analysis of these works will provide us with the presuppositions necessary to understand Cohen´s logic of origin. On this basis, I will show how Cohen´s mature doctrine of pure thinking is built upon Cohen´s transcendental approach to infinitesimal analysis.
December 16
Kant’s Ideas of Reason: A Contextualist Interpretation
In this paper, I develop a novel, contextualist interpretation of Kant’s ideas of reason and contrast it with what I call noumenalist and fictionalist interpretations. Drawing on contemporary analytic theories about the context-dependency of semantic content, I argue that for Kant the content of experience and cognition is only sufficiently determined in adequate contexts, and that ideas of reason are needed to map and demarcate these contexts. The regulative use of ideas is understood to produce not descriptions of an existing or merely imagined metaphysical reality, but expressions of contexts of cognition in two respects: (i) subjective contexts of intelligibility, within which a human subject can first conceive of certain experiences as truth-apt, inferentially derivable cognition of objects (of some kind), and (ii) objective contexts of evaluation, within which cognition can be assessed in light of the represented object and as valid for all human subjects on the basis of coherence criteria.