The longstanding debate between conceptualists and non-conceptualists on Hegel¡¯s sense-certainty has missed the dialectical forest for the analytical trees. Conceptualists argue sense-certainty¡¯s cognitive contents are concepts (Begriffe); non-conceptualists argue they are not concepts, and are instead representations (Vorstellung). They are both right. While from the perspective of the Understanding (Verstand) sense-certainty¡¯s cognitive contents are representations and as such nonconceptual, from the higher perspective of Reason (Vernunft), sense-certainty¡¯s contents are conceptual. The controversy turns upon the question of the importance of the implicitness or explicitness of the alleged conceptual contents of sense-certainty. If explicitness is taken to be a necessary condition for concepts, then the non-conceptualist reading of sense-certainty is correct: concepts are not explicitly present in sense-certainty. However, explicitness is ultimately an inadequate condition. The implicit presence of concepts is a fundamental and undetachable component of a properly dialectical reading of the refutation of sense-certainty.

Johann Nicolas Tetens is seen by some as a failed transcendentalist, and by others as an empiricist motivated by misgivings about certain aspects of Kant¡¯s approach to grounding. More in the latter camp, I interpret his adherence to empirical methodology as deriving from a holist ethos that is motivated by problems he perceives as inherent in conceptual thinking about grounds, in the form of the risks of simplification, unsafe distinctions, and inventions, as well as the way that these problems contribute to sense that grounding ideas generate an order that is problematically divorced from experienced reality. These concerns are mirrored in a holistic approach, in which thinking and feeling are thoroughly interwoven, and experience happens in the form of wholes, the separation of which in analysis is difficult and potentially arbitrary. I argue that these concerns and alternative strategies explain why Tetens does not pursue a transcendental project, even if he himself remarks that the time is ripe for it.

Human existence is determined on the one hand by having a physical body and on the other hand by being a living body. This existence as a Leibk?rper necessarily leads to a spectrum of different styles of being-in-the-world: existence is necessarily a being-in-the-world in a contingent stylistic way. Having a K?rper in the world means that I am ¡®linearly¡¯ separated from the world, that I stand opposite it, that for me I am the other to the world. To be a Leib in the world means that I am ¡®painterly¡¯ embedded in the world, that I am a part of the world for myself. Against this background, phenomenology, which describes being-in-the-world, is not only, but always also an argument for thinking the diversity between people not only ontically, but also ontologically. Not only are there different people in the world, but people are in the world in different ways as a result of their individual and variable Leibk?rper: sometimes more k?rperlich and linear, sometimes more leiblich and painterly.

This contribution aims to highlight the presence of a performative paradigm underlying Hans-Georg Gadamer¡¯s aesthetics. In line with Erika Fischer-Lichte¡¯s performative aesthetics, in Gadamer¡¯s reflection, art exists in its performance. The latter is based on the interaction between the artist and the audience, and displays a transformative and social character. On this basis, my contribution seeks to indicate the possible opening of Gadamer¡¯s aesthetics to body and corporeality, using the hermeneutical concepts of ¡°gesture¡± and ¡°presence,¡± going beyond Gadamer himself. In particular, the first section is dedicated to showing how the performative paradigm of art is already present in Truth and Method, expressed through the two concepts of Darstellung (which has a broader performative sense) and Auff¨¹hrung (which is restricted to the ¡°performing arts¡± of drama and music). The second section shows how, in Gadamer¡¯s subsequent writings, this performative paradigm is extended to the figurative arts and expressed through the concept of Vollzug. Finally, the third and fourth sections attempt to pave the way for a hermeneutical reflection on the body that brings together its corporeal and historical aspects, sketching the concept of gesture and the possible contribution of Gadamer¡¯s notion of presence to the debates on Body Art.

As in philosophy in general, Critical Theory is not good with feelings. On the one hand, this is not surprising, because Critical Theory is essentially concerned with the problem of legitimizing critique, i.e., with the question of how critique can be justified, and this justification is based on reason as the epitome of justification. On the other hand, the situation is very surprising, because it is an essential part of the self-conception of Critical Theory to present an expanded concept of reason that is not rationalistically limited. The article aims to address this astonishing emotional indeterminacy in Critical Theory. Starting from the founding fathers, it will focus on more recent developments, all of which refer to J¨¹rgen Habermas¡¯ refoundation of Critical Theory. They open up new approaches as to the significance of feelings, but remain in the realm of missed opportunities. In contrast, the lecture concludes by arguing for a thesis that persists within Critical Theory: the expansion of reason requires a translation or transformation of feelings. As far as feelings are concerned, Critical Theory does not mean a theory of exclusion or separation, but a theory of integration, and this specific integration cannot succeed without going back to patterns of aesthetics.

This article is focused on the philosophy of Arnold Gehlen, one of the founders, with Max Scheler and Helmuth Plessner, of the important tradition of German philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century, especially thanks to his masterpiece Der Mensch (1940). After a short introductory section on the struggle of various twentieth century philosophers (mostly in the movements of phenomenology and pragmatism) to redeem embodiment from the oblivion in which Western philosophy and science had put it, and also on the recent contribution offered in this field by the development of enactive philosophies and so-called ¡°4E Cognition¡± approaches, I offer a reconstruction and an interpretation of some fundamental concepts of Gehlen¡¯s philosophical anthropology, with a particular focus on the question of embodiment in Der Mensch. Then, adopting a historico-philosophical perspective and a comparative methodology, I try to establish a conceptual comparison and connection between some aspects of Gehlen¡¯s thinking (with a particular focus on his notions of second nature, environment, and world) and certain philosophical questions about human embodiment that have recently emerged in the context of the diverse variants of contemporary enactivism (sensorimotor, autopoietic, radical, etc.).

This paper investigates Heidegger¡¯s question of affectivity and its essential connection to embodiment and the disclosedness of human existence. I will reconstruct the genesis of the ontological primacy Heidegger ascribes to situatedness (Befindlichkeit), which requires an exploration of the origin of Heidegger¡¯s emphasis on the pre-theoretical sphere of existence and the profound relationship it manifests with respect to the bodily dimension of the human being. The first conceptualisation of the notion of Befindlichkeit may be traced back to Heidegger¡¯s hermeneutical analysis of facticity in his 1920s lectures, where Heidegger confronts Aristotle¡¯s treatment of pathos. In light of Heidegger¡¯s account of affections as inseparable from corporeality, I will show how it offers fundamental insights into the disclosing function Heidegger assigns to affectivity in relation to the embodied thrownness of being-there in the context of his renewed formulation of the question concerning human being (Menschfrage).

Plessner transformed the spiritual status of personhood into a form of life. The co-world of embodied persons answers to the questionability in an eccentric positionality of living nature. Starting from the intrapersonal relation, I present behavioral ambivalences between asserting oneself and being modestly, naivety and reflection, unveiling and concealment. They demand a preservation of dignity. The interpersonal relations are thematized as playing in and acting with roles of persons. The use of personal pronouns opens up an access in the singular to community forms and in the plural to society forms. These forms contain emotional orders between love, performance and functionality. Their existence assumes the linguistic coordination of eye-hand cooperation and the coordination of one¡¯s own voice with other voices. The modern autonomies of science, art and discourse are understood in a semiotic way as schematization, thematization and specification. Living personhood experiences its limits in laughing and crying.

This article analyzes the complex relationship between Georg Simmel¡¯s philosophy and the philosophies of pragmatism and somaesthetics. Although his early theory of truth as grounded in utility was immediately recognized as essentially pragmatist in character, Simmel rejected the connection and sharply criticized pragmatist thought, while affirming a form of idealism against pragmatism¡¯s more thorough naturalism. After analyzing other connections between Simmel¡¯s thought and key pragmatist ideas (including that of meliorist self-cultivation), the essay compares Simmel¡¯s analysis of the senses to the theories of somaesthetics. Simmel¡¯s views on the senses, though insightful, are shown to be too limited in their scope and elitist in character, whereas somaesthetics offers a broader, more democratic view of the senses and embodiment and their role in melioristic self-cultivation.

This paper examines the central role of human bodily experience in the philosophical anthropology that Eugen Fink developed after the Second World War within the framework of his cosmological ontology. Interpreting human existence by means of the notion of ¡°world¡± entails a non-Platonic conception of embodiment, which emerges from Fink¡¯s analysis of various existential phenomena, such as power, work, eros, play, ethics, education, coexistence, fashion, and the relation to death. This account of embodiment constitutes a distinctive case within the phenomenological tradition, whose originality stems from the combination of at least three key aspects: the emphasis on the experiential significance of the corporeal and natural dimension of human existence, the interpretation of this dimension as a mode of openness to Being, and its articulation into anthropological structures that can be compared with the anthropological models of Western philosophical history.

The theme of the specificity of the phenomenological givenness of the Leib and the idea that of the external world we primarily experience efficacy are two salient aspects of Max Scheler¡¯s thought. Scheler makes it clear that what connects the human subject and his milieu (including others) is first and foremost a concrete relationship, not simply a representational one. We do not encounter the world from a kind of level that is as fundamental as it is neutral and through pure representations. Following these guidelines of Scheler¡¯s reflection, this paper focuses on some still fruitful aspects of his perspective: the phenomenology of the Leib, the principle of psychophysical indifference of the Leib and expressive phenomena, the theory of empathy, the idea of the ecstatic matrix of our relationship with the world and the highlighting of the importance of the external world for the understanding and description of our internal states.

This article develops a phenomenological interpretation of Hegel¡¯s logic. I read the logic in terms of the relation between knowing and being, thus as a form of scientific consciousness in which the particular thinker ascends to universal truth. I demonstrate not only that this reading is textually grounded but also has the benefit of opening questions concerning the relation between the historicity of the logical thinker and the apodicticity of logical contents. I argue that, while the historicity of the thinker implies that logical science is open to revision and expansion, it does so without contradicting the possibility of apodictic truth claims. Rather, the phenomenological interpretation demonstrates how apodicticity is disclosed in the logical experience of that particular, historical thinker.

Hegelian philosophy, recently, has been dealing with the naturalistic aspects connected to Hegel¡¯s notion of self-conscious life and has highlighted the tight correlation between the German philosopher and Aristotle when it comes to the definition of the human being, its form of life and its practical and historical dimension. This reading is embedded within a wider debate about contemporary Aristotelian philosophy and the way it accounts for some notions of practical philosophy especially life-form and self-knowledge. In this contribution I will deal with Hegel¡¯s notions of life and self-consciousness, and the impact they have on our understanding of human practices and institutions. I will compare Hegel with authors like Anscombe and M. Thompson and highlight that the notion of life can be deployed to shed light onto the fundamental questions of practical thought and that it is crucial for an appropriate understanding of the practical sphere of the human beings.

Graham Bird and Wayne Waxman have defended Kant against the neglected alternative objection. This objection alleges that the Critique of Pure Reason¡¯s dismissal of the possibility that things-in-themselves are spatiotemporal is unjustified. Proponents of the neglected alternative typically argue that Kant¡¯s thesis that things-in-themselves are not spatiotemporal is inconsistent with his thesis that things-in-themselves are unknowable. Bird and Waxman attempt to demonstrate both that Kant is not inconsistent on this score and that his denial that things-in-themselves might be spatiotemporal is justified. I argue that their defenses of Kant fail and that Kant is indeed inconsistent in holding both that things-in-themselves are not spatiotemporal and that things-in-themselves are unknowable.

This article examines the struggle of states to be recognized as genuinely sovereign entities. In line with Giladi (2022), it challenges the notion that this struggle tends toward a peaceful coexistence among nations, where all states fully recognize one another¡¯s sovereignty, thereby eliminating conflict while preserving independence. However, diverging from Giladi, the article subverts this teleological vision by arguing¡ªin a Hegelian manner¡ªthat conflict-prone, misrecognized states are not remnants of the past but necessary byproducts of substantially recognized states, which secure their distinctiveness by relatively disrespecting others. I conclude that the unavoidable construction of adversaries entrenches division within international anarchy, perpetuating its structure and ultimately reinforcing Hegel¡¯s concept of the ¡°end of history.¡±

Hegel¡¯s psychology provides an account of cognition that is held together by the twofold activity of memory, involving Erinnerung (recollection) and Ged?chtnis (memory proper). While Hegel¡¯s account of cognition is often investigated in relation to conceptual and logical thinking, in this contribution I explore more closely the contribution of memory to the generation of semantic content. I argue that this view of memory sustains critical awareness about representations of facts and events, serving as the foundation for practical philosophy and ethics. To do justice to Hegel¡¯s approach and understand its modus operandi, I reconstruct the dynamics of cognition through the model of sedimentation. This is the theoretical process that generates knowledge by retaining and understanding the content of experience. I proceed by positioning Hegel¡¯s psychology and the role of the mind in its systematic context. Then, I introduce the model of sedimentation, and how this is connected to Hegel¡¯s use of Erinnerung and Ged?chtnis. Next, I distinguish between the sedimentation of images and that of signs, explaining the genesis of thought out of memory. Finally, I offer some reflections on the moral relevance of memory in the context of Hegel¡¯s psychology.

Based on Hegel¡¯s teleology, this paper critically examines the organizational view¡¯s attempt to integrate the etiological and dispositional perspectives on biological functions. It ultimately presents Hegel¡¯s teleology as a genuine unification of these dual aspects. Firstly, the paper will demonstrate how Hegel¡¯s discussion of the shape (Gestalt) of individual organisms resolves the issues of closure and differentiation that arise within the organizational view. Subsequently, it will establish that Hegel¡¯s perspective on the relationship between organisms and their environment, which considers the internal constitution of organisms as the cause rather than the result of natural selection, can effectively account for the phenotypic plasticity proposed by the new theory of adaptation. This paper ultimately argues that Hegel¡¯s teleology, based on the logic of the concept that derives the particular from the universal, can consistently explain shape, assimilation, and reproduction with a unified logic and normativity.

This paper shows how Hegel¡¯s Phenomenology of Spirit criticizes Kant for positing a realm beyond the scope of finite cognition, a ¡°supersensible¡± realm of things in-themselves. Hegel not only rejects Kant¡¯s attempt to ground the supersensible through his theoretical philosophy, but also criticizes Kant¡¯s attempt to provide a practical basis for the sensible-supersensible divide. In the second Critique, Kant claims that practical reason extends theoretical reason by showing that the supersensible is more than a ¡°merely problematic thought¡± since we can populate this realm with the moral postulates of God and the immortality of the soul. Hegel rejects Kant¡¯s attempt to posit a realm beyond theoretical cognition. The moral postulates, Hegel claims, are an ¡°unnecessary hypothesis.¡± Kant imagines [vorstellt] supersensible realm populated with moral postulates, yet Hegel argues this is a dissemblance [Verstellung] that hides a whole ¡°nest of contradictions¡± by shifting thoughtlessly between a finite and infinite perspective.

Kant¡¯s derivation of the table of categories from logical functions of judgments in the metaphysical deduction remains one of the least convincing arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason. This article presents an alternative approach to the question of the a priori origin of the table of categories. By circumventing the metaphysical deduction, I show the possibility of demonstrating the exact functions and necessity of the twelve categorial forms as emerging from the interaction of the synthetic unity of apperception with the manifold content of the a priori intuition of space and time. I argue that this a priori material of cognition imposes a constraint on the spontaneity of understanding, thus giving rise to the specific rules of synthesis that make up the table of categories. On the reading I suggest, the table of categories can be understood as expressing the a priori form of self-consciousness in the face of space and time.

In addition to foregrounding the intimate interconnectedness between the human and the non-human world necro-ecology also undermines the absolute separation between life and death. The purpose of this paper is to deploy these central tenets of necro-ecology to provide a reading of Karoline von G¨¹nderrode¡¯s 1805 ¡°The Idea of the Earth.¡± After discussing a shift that takes place in Schelling¡¯s theory of the relationship between nature, life, and death (Section 1) I turn to the role of corporeal decomposition in relation to the earth as spelled out by G¨¹nderrode in ¡°The Idea of the Earth¡± (Section 2). Though ¡°The Idea of the Earth¡± operates within a naturphilosophical framework, it does so in a way distinct from Schelling¡¯s theologically inflected middle work and in a way that is of relevance to the philosophical history and promise of necro-ecology.

This article is an examination of Borden Parker Bowne¡¯s account of diachronic personal identity. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether the kind of permanence that Bowne ascribes to persons in his analyses of memory and thought is consistent with his more general views about diachronic identity when framed within the context of his accounts of being and substance. The first section provides an examination of how Bowne understands the permanence of selves, with an emphasis on his repeated insistence that they must remain numerically identical across time to make sense of certain kinds of experiences. Section II examines his embrace of a theory of being that is in some ways a forerunner of process philosophy. The article concludes by suggesting that this deeper metaphysical account of being as becoming stands in tension with what he says about the abidingness of persons.

This paper examines the formation of the philosophical canon in the period immediately after Kant. After a general introduction to the ¡°historiography of philosophy,¡± it brings together three strands of contemporary scholarship in this area: a historical criticism of the empiricism/rationalism distinction that is often still used to understand early modern philosophy (Vanzo), histories of the exclusion of women from the history of philosophy in the late eighteenth century (O¡¯Neill), and histories of the exclusion of non-European philosophy (Park). Though these scholars have different agendas, their studies share many conclusions, including the key claim that the little-known Kantian historian of philosophy Wilhelm Tennemann is the central figure in the formation of the standard story. The paper closes by comparing the main outline of Tennemann¡¯s surprisingly familiar narrative of the history of philosophy with the standard text from before the Kantian revolution in the historiography of philosophy.

This paper explores Hegel¡¯s perspective on development within nature, his supposed rejection of evolution, and his concept of nature as a ¡°system of stages.¡± It argues that interpreting Hegel through the lens of emergentist thinking provides a more accurate understanding of his conception of nature and its development, as well as his critique of evolution. The paper is structured in three parts. First, we introduce emergentist theory, exploring its contemporary and historical meanings to establish where Hegel fits within this framework. Second, we carefully examine Hegel¡¯s critique of evolution, particularly his opposition to simple causal chains, and clarify what ¡°evolution¡± meant in his time. Finally, we argue that viewing Hegel through emergentist theory not only rehabilitates his ideas but also resolves lingering concerns about his understanding of development within nature. This paper aims to open new avenues for interpreting Hegel¡¯s Philosophy of Nature.

Against recent naturalist critiques of Kant and interpretations of Hegel, it can be shown that Hegel¡¯s accounts of consciousness and mind (Geist) commit him to a distinctly supernatural, post-Kantian idealist concept of subjectivity. While Kant describes this subjectivity as independent, unconditioned and self-positing, he relies on the notion of an interplay of two distinct realms ¡ª labelled the ¡®natural¡¯-phenomenal and the ¡®supernatural¡¯-noumenal ¡ª to justify it. While Fichte accepts Kant¡¯s description of the structure of supernatural subjectivity, he rejects the two-realms-doctrine by arguing that Kant¡¯s prioritization of the realms¡¯ difference renders their unity unintelligible. Instead, Fichte maintains that all of reality is posited by a subjectivity that posits itself and then posits the objective world, thereby rendering the natural dependent on the supernatural. While Hegel agrees with Kant and Fichte on the supernatural properties of subjectivity, he rejects Fichte¡¯s prioritization of supernatural subjectivity over natural objectivity and argues that both the supernatural and the natural are aspects of supernatural Geist. Although Hegel ultimately contrasts subjective Geist with objective nature, grounding both in the notion of the metaphysical idea, his idealist commitment to the supernatural subjectivity of consciousness and Geist renders his accounts of mind and cognition incompatible with recent naturalist interpretations.

In this paper, I argue that Hegel¡¯s account of causality as developed in the Science of Logic can be described as a ¡®manipulationist¡¯ account of causality. First, some conceptual clarifications will help set our sights on the goal of the paper. What is a theory of causality comprised of? And what is a manipulationist account of causality? Next, I sketch the development of those concepts in the SL that are relevant to the present topic (e.g., causality, objectivity, and the idea). Here, Hegel moves from developing the concept of causality to unfolding a set of objective causal relations. The latter is then understood as a theory and hence as a product of the self-conscious mind that filters for relevancy and usability. I argue that Hegel¡¯s account of causality does meet the criteria for being understood as an example of a MAC.

I begin by distinguishing, in Hegel¡¯s writings, between the subject-matter of the science of logic, and the science of logic itself. I then argue for an interpretation of the subject-matter of logic in terms drawn from the ancient Greek discussions of logos, discussions which Hegel himself exposits at length and applauds in his lectures on the history of philosophy, and which Hegel directly alludes to, at key moments, in the course of presenting the subject-matter of logic in his own voice. Drawing on the fact that logos, in this tradition, is at once ontologically pervasive while also something which in itself does not involve consciousness or self-consciousness (and so is not essentially ¡®psychological¡¯ or ¡®spiritual¡¯, in Hegel¡¯s sense of these terms), I argue against recent attempts to cast Hegel¡¯s logic as about something which is first, foremost, and essentially self-conscious (¡®apperceptive¡¯), and in favor of a more straightforwardly metaphysical interpretation of logic, one according to which logic treats its subject-matter (logos) in a way that is ¡®neutral¡¯ with respect to whether it is realized in spirit or in nature. I conclude by returning to the significance of distinction between logos itself and the philosophical science of this subject-matter for Hegel¡¯s broader system.

This paper discusses what I call ¡°biological individuation¡± in the works of Kant and Hegel. Biological individuation is what makes one organism numerically distinct from another. Following a common distinction in metaphysics today, I separate this discussion into what I call ¡°epistemic¡± and ¡°metaphysical biological individuation¡±. The former is how we distinguish one organism from another, and the latter is how one organism distinguishes itself from another. Metaphysicians today convincingly hold that epistemic individuation presupposes metaphysical individuation. I apply this to the case at hand. It is impossible for us to distinguish one organism from another if this organism has not already distinguished itself from another. However, this poses a problem for a standard reading of Kant¡¯s regulative ideas: it does not allow us to provide a Kantian account of metaphysical biological individuation. This paper offers an alternative, Hegel-inspired reading of the same, one that solves this problem.

My primary aim in this paper is to show that the structure of experience must include a subject (or self). I argue that the subjectless (No-Self) views of our experience must be rejected, primarily because without the consciousness-unifying function of a subject they are unable to account for the unities of consciousness present in our experience. In addition, I contend that such views fail in another respect. They emphasize the streaming of experience, the ever-changing flow of conscious events, but have difficulty identifying what must stand unmoving to provide the contrast needed for the experience of motion.

Anglophone philosophers have shown a surprising interest in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten¡¯s aesthetics in recent years. At the same time, new approaches to aesthetics have been proposed that come very close to the original conception of aesthetics that Baumgarten introduced in the middle of the eighteenth century. In light of these developments, this article undertakes a critical examination of a central concept in Baumgarten¡¯s poetics and aesthetics¡ªextensive clarity. It argues that historians of philosophy and contemporary aestheticians should be wary of this concept for two reasons. First, in Baumgarten¡¯s poetics, the extensive clarity of sensible representations constitutes a dubious standard with which to determine whether those representations are ¡°poetic.¡± Second, in aesthetics, using extensive clarity as an alternative standard with which to determine the perfection of sensible cognition undermines the ¡°marriage of reason and experience¡± that characterized the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy and raises the specter of dualism that Kant tried, with questionable success, to address in the ¡®Schematism¡¯ chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. The article concludes that historians of philosophy should acknowledge the philosophical shortcomings of Baumgarten¡¯s conception of extensive clarity and contemporary aesthetics should not reproduce them.

In Michel de Certeau¡¯s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of m¨¥tis, being ¡°foxlike.¡± And in de Certeau¡¯s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun¡¯s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies and one comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns¡¯ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns¡¯ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau¡¯s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy¡¯s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau¡¯s relevance for revolutionary social justice today.

This paper investigates the relationship between linguistic expression and human reason in Herder¡¯s Treatise on the Origin of Language. I argue that additive theories of human language, which contend that the linguistic capacity is in principle separable from the other cognitive faculties of the linguistic being, cannot be brought into agreement with Herder¡¯s distinctly transformative account of human language and reason. For Herder, the transformation of our sensible faculties through language is required in order to guarantee the unity of human cognition, and hence reason itself is understood as fundamentally linguistic. This positing of a strong unity between language and reason makes Herder an important, if still under-appreciated, precursor of the twentieth-century linguistic turn.

This paper examines the development of the modern concept of substance from Leibniz to Hegel. I will focus primarily on the problem of the inner and outer nature of substance. I will show that if one considers Hegel¡¯s discussion of substance against the background of the controversy between Leibniz and Kant about the inner and outer nature of substance, it becomes clear that for Hegel both Leibniz and Kant grasped the whole concept of substance only partially and in its abstract moments. This is because they both concentrate on one aspect of substance and absolutize it. Hegel, on the other hand, not only overcomes the fundamental difference between the inner and outer of substance, but also develops the connection between the different moments of substance, causality and interaction from the rationalist concept of substance itself.

Despite her emphasis on politics, Hannah Arendt¡¯s account of the existential grounds of action in The Human Condition culminates in a discussion of Jesus of Nazareth that emphasizes the significance of forgiveness for grasping the radicality of human freedom. This essay investigates Jesus¡¯s role in Arendt¡¯s thought by excavating and explicating the premises that undergird her account of Jesus¡¯s political significance. It argues that Arendt¡¯s innovative approach to politics is complemented by a comparably innovative conception of human agency and shows how Arendt¡¯s defense of the autonomy of the political rests on a novel metaphysics of action¡ªa ¡®Kantian existentialism¡¯¡ªthat underlies and explains her account of Jesus¡¯s political significance.

In this essay, I argue that F.H. Bradley¡¯s controversial theory of ¡°degrees of truth and reality¡± is the logical development of Hegel¡¯s own theory of truth when it is placed within the metaphysical system of the Science of Logic. Despite Bradley¡¯s own claim that with regards to the theory of degrees of truth and reality he is indebted even more than anywhere else to Hegel, this connection has been little examined in the secondary literature. Through a careful examination of both Bradley¡¯s works and the structure of Hegel¡¯s logic, it will become clear that Bradley¡¯s development of the theory is the only logical conclusion that the consistent Hegelian can make. This essay has clear ramifications for our understanding of Bradley¡¯s philosophy and, through uncovering the logical connections that led Bradley to develop the theory, I reveal an important implication of Hegel¡¯s thought that has been entirely overlooked.

In this paper, I explore Hegel¡¯s concept of freedom as self-liberation. I consider the struggle between the soul and the body within Hegel¡¯s Anthropology as an example of how conflict can act as a condition for asserting one¡¯s freedom through self-improvement or Bildung. In this regard, there are reminiscent aspects of the famous ¡®Lordship and Bondage¡¯ dialectic within Hegel¡¯s treatment of the body-soul relation. If the initial dominion of nature over the soul can be described as madness for Hegel, habit constitutes the mean through which spirit acquires its freedom.

The central thesis of this article posits that Dilthey¡¯s theory of worldviews initially leans towards historical relativism but ultimately reverts to an unsuccessful ahistorical solution involving the classification of universal types of worldviews. To substantiate this thesis, I will elucidate how Dilthey¡¯s position emerged amidst the intellectual conflicts of materialism, Neo-Kantianism, and its relationship to historicism. Focusing on Dilthey¡¯s seminal work, ¡®The Types of Worldview¡¯ (1911), I will explore how, in response to the constraints of his era and a prevailing fear of relativism, Dilthey ultimately adopts an ahistoricist approach, as exemplified in his brief exchange with Husserl. In conclusion, this article contends that Dilthey¡¯s hermeneutics represents a partial foray into a genuinely historicist philosophy but falls short of fully justifying historical, objective knowledge.

What is the nature of truth? This question has been answered by philosophers in quite different ways, while F. H. Bradley asserts that truths have degrees and that no proposition can be stated to be simply true or false. In this paper, I briefly illustrate what he calls the doctrine of degrees of truth and try to address the problems it entails. I first explain what he means by truth and error/falsehood (he does not make a clear distinction between the two terms); then, I concentrate on his criticisms of three theories of truth, followed by a discussion of his own identity theory of truth. I will be focusing on his doctrine of the degrees of truth and highlight its difficulties. I show that his theory faces some insurmountable difficulties, and it should be motivated by a particular form of monism that he insisted on, saying existence monism.

In aesthetics/philosophy of art, Fichte did not produce works as great as Kant¡¯s Critique of the Power of Judgment or Hegel¡¯s Lectures on Aesthetics. As a result, it was long believed that he had no role to play in the aesthetics of German idealism. Nevertheless, there are a few works in which we can identify the materials for developing an innovative philosophy of art. In this article, it is argued that Fichte takes two fundamental steps in aesthetics: 1) by transferring the weight of the discussion of aesthetics to the philosophy of artistic creation, he makes, as it were, a Copernican revolution in aesthetics and thus transforms the aesthetics of taste into a philosophy of art based on the creative spirit; 2) he raises the status of aesthetics (in fact, the aesthetic sense) to the level of ¡°a (or the) condition for the possibility of philosophy.¡±

Against caricatures of the poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller as an unoriginal popularizer of Kant, or a forerunner of totalitarianism, Frederick Beiser reinterprets him as an innovative, classical republican, broadening his analysis to include Schiller¡¯s poetry, plays, and essays not widely available in English translation, such as the remarkable essay, ¡°On Grace and Dignity.¡± In that spirit, the present article argues that the latter text, misperceived by Anglophone critics as self-contradictory, is better understood as centering on gender and dance. In brief, grace is a virtuous power of beautiful gestures associated with women, while dignity is a power of sublime gestures associated with men, and the improvised combination thereof is a divinely androgynous power of gesture that I term ¡°stateliness,¡± in a three-step choreography of aesthetic education.

In his early writings up unto his so-called ¡°middle period¡± Schelling treats art as having a crucial role with respect to philosophy. Yet there is no consensus in the secondary literature as to the nature of this role, and the extent to which Schelling changed his mind on the subject. The paper will defend the claim that Schelling holds consistently, from his early texts to the Philosophy of Art, that philosophy is in some sense prior to art while essentially dependent on it. The paper will explore the development of this position from various perspectives. This will shed light on Schelling¡¯s view on both art and philosophy and his view that in the future the two will merge.

This article investigates Levinas¡¯s readings of Plato and Descartes in Totality and Infinity, in relation to the question of teaching. Levinas identifies Plato¡¯s Form of the Good and Descartes¡¯s idea of the infinite as two models for his own conception of the Other. Yet while Levinas lauds Descartes¡¯s theory of teaching, he is highly critical of Plato¡¯s. Plato¡¯s theory of teaching as recollection or maieutics is judged by Levinas to display merely the circular return of the Same to its own interiority. In contrast, the Cartesian God supplies the idea of the infinite to a subject incapable of generating it for itself, offering an account of teaching that respects the Other¡¯s transcendent exteriority. I nonetheless argue for the possibility of a rapprochement between Levinas and Plato with regard to teaching. Ultimately, this serves to bolster Levinas¡¯s own theory of teaching, for which both Plato and Descartes can rightly serve as fitting predecessors.

The main aim of the article is to elucidate and trace Jacques Ranci¨¨re¡¯s American pragmatic heritage. This is exemplified by several (anti)conceptual methods of thinking that the French theorist shares with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James. The article examines their shared notions of the symbolic order, transitoriness of concepts, and subjectivization as a way of democratic empowerment of an individual. These three key ideas are then illustrated in the interpreta-tive praxis with Cy Twombly¡¯s anti-conceptual style of painting and the fluid poetry of Frank O¡¯Hara. The conclusion leads to a synthesis of all of these neo-pragmatic approaches into an innovative way of perceiving art and life¡ªthrough the minute gestures and movements of thought, which are considered by all these thinkers to be more substantial than the substantive concepts themselves.

Scholars have recently argued that Hegel posited international recognition as a necessary feature of international relations. My main effort in this article is to disprove this point. Specifically, I show that since Hegel rejected the notion of an international legal system, he must hold that international recognition depends on the arbitrary will of individual states. To pinpoint Hegel¡¯s position, I offer a close reading of Hegel¡¯s intricate formulations from the final paragraphs of the Philosophy of Right¡ªformulations that are easy to quote out of context just as they are transparent when considered in due context.

Schopenhauer is widely held to accommodate no positive aesthetic pleasure. While this may be the case in his mature oeuvre overall, where he insists on the negative character of all gratification, I reconstruct two early accounts of such pleasure in his manuscripts, both of which are a direct result of Schopenhauer¡¯s engagement with Kant¡¯s first and third Critiques. To do so, I analyze his so-called metaphysics of the ¡®better consciousness¡¯ and his transition from it to the metaphysics of will (roughly 1811¨C14). The first account turns out to be an almost literal adoption of Kant¡¯s theory of aesthetic experience as revealing the supersensible character of nature and the cognizing subject. Likewise, Schopenhauer¡¯s second account is a version of the CJ theory of the free interplay of cognitive faculties. These accounts have been underappreciated in Schopenhauer scholarship, but recognizing their importance for the development of his philosophy is essential for gaining a fuller picture of his aesthetics.

Kant, Schelling, and Hegel research has frequently highlighted differences when considering their three respective concepts of philoso-phy. Especially with regard to natural philosophy, there seems to be little common ground between them. In my paper, however, I want to revise this perspective, picking up on what brings them together. Taking the concept of matter as my primary example, I will argue that neither Kant nor Schelling nor Hegel are interested in conceiving of nature from the viewpoint of empirical observation and as independent of the subject. Rather, their respective philosophical inquiries into nature¡¯s first prin-ciples hinge on critical examinations of reason, providing all three with the conceptual resources to address nature from a metaphysical point of view that is ultimately bound up with rational beings.

John Foster, an Oxford analytical philosopher, and Borden Parker Bowne, the founder of ¡°Boston Personalism¡± at the turn of the twentieth century both presented unique arguments for idealism that are deeply different from one another. Because neither is now well known, this paper lays out their reasoning as carefully and as clearly as possible, finding Bowne¡¯s case for personalist idealism to be the stronger of the two in terms of ontology. But the inquiry is framed on the problems of the moral affordances of ontology and of the need of moral philosophy for grounding in ontology. Although this is a very large area, a partial conclusion¡ªthe ¡°half argument¡± of the title¡ªis drawn for further development.

Heidegger¡¯s criticism of the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Husserl is primarily leveled at its underlying understanding of the transcendental subject. Heidegger argues that in order to give an adequate account of the intelligibility of the world, the transcendental subject must be factical. By discussing central aspects of Heidegger¡¯s criticism, this paper shows that his notion of a factical transcendental subject is a necessary step out of aporias of transcendental philosophy. I argue that Heidegger¡¯s emphasis on the facticity of the human being must be understood not as an abandonment of the transcendental standpoint, but as a radicalization of its central ideas. Heidegger is thereby transforming transcendental philosophy into a transcendental ontology. I demonstrate that this allows Heidegger to reconceptualize the constitution of the world as social and historical without having to jettison the role of the transcendental subject.

Fichte¡¯s Wissenschaftslehre of 1801/2 is considered to be the beginning of his late phase. In this phase he supposedly alters his earlier thinking and, instead of the transcendental unity of the I, conceptualizes a higher transcendent and simple unity; a unity that has been claimed to correspond to Neoplatonism. I refute these two arguments here. First, through a comparison between the Wissenschaftslehre of 1801/2 and that of 1794/5, I show that both versions contain a similar analysis of the supreme unity. Second, I show that in 1801/2 Fichte explicitly dissociates the supreme unity from transcendence and simplicity. His conception of the supreme unity in fact levels a critique upon such concept of unity. Instead of the transcendent One, which is hierarchically prior to multiplicity, Fichte formulates in both 1794/5 and 1801/2 a complicated concept of the supreme unity. On Fichte¡¯s account, this unity ¡°hovers¡± between multiplicity and unity as simplicity.

In this article, I explore two neglected works by the twentieth-century Jewish German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left and Natural Law and Human Dignity. Drawing on previous analyses of leftist Aristotelians and natural law, I blend Bloch¡¯s two texts¡¯ concepts of pregnant matter and maternal law into ¡°pregnant materialist natural law.¡± More precisely, Aristotelian Left articulates a concept of matter as a dynamic, impersonal agential force, ever pregnant with possible forms delivered by artist-midwives, building Bloch¡¯s mes-sianic utopia. And Natural Law resurrects the Stoics¡¯ concept of natural law as drawing on a prehistoric matriarchal utopia, later channeled by earth goddess cults misconstrued by the nineteenth-century German anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen as political matriarchy. I then conclude by linking this pregnant materialist natural law to Dionysus as son of the Great Mother Goddess. Though stigmatized throughout homophobic Western history for his queerness and maternal dependence, Dionysus is also the patron god of Bloch¡¯s hero, the slave revolution-ary Spartacus, paramour of a priestess of Dionysus who prophesied his divine mission of liberation.

The main aim of this work is to indirectly display, through an analysis of the concepts of world, God, and human freedom, the shift from a harmonious concept of nature to another chaotic, darker, and pre-rational. It is important to relate this transformation, which takes place around 1807, to (I) the change in Schelling¡¯s ideas about the relationship between God and the world to weaken a previous Spinozist monistic standpoint. These changes in turn affect Schelling¡¯s view of the concept of unity. He now modifies the notions of immanence and pantheism in favour of a (II) dualistic doctrine of particular and finite existence that we could relate to Kierkegaard and later existentialists. Finally, (III) we introduce Schelling¡¯s theory of love. Love is a mode of union through free will and personal choice that neutralizes the totalizing metaphysics of identity associated to the systematic construction of idealism from Spinoza to Hegel, and that Schelling criticizes, in his middle and late philosophy, as a resource to a self-transparent and overdetermining Absolute.

It is one of the crucial insights of pragmatism that our judging is itself a discursive practice. Our judgments are normatively determined performances for which we are responsible. Therefore, judgments are a species of action. For in both actions and judgments, we subject ourselves and others to justifiable norms. Since these insights can already be found in Hegel, Hegel is now often interpreted as a champion of pragmatism. Hegel¡¯s logic is thereby mainly understood as the continuation of the Kantian project of transcendental philosophy. Based upon this pragmatist interpretation of Hegel, the paper reads F.?H. Jacobi¡¯s philosophy as an alternative pragmatism which is explicitly founded on our life praxis rather than our practice of judgment.

Husserl¡¯s theory of types is most often associated with his account of perception. Here, types operate as pre-predicative frames of experience that guide the perception of objects. In this paper, I will argue that Husserl¡¯s theory of types is also central to his account of intersubjectivity. More specifically, I will show that a foundational kind of typical subjectivity is entailed by his discussion of the sphere of ownness. It is by way of this type that even a solitary subject can tacitly anticipate the possibility of other subjects. It is also this type that is enriched through interactions between actual subjects.

Recent discussions concerning the beginning problem of Hegel¡¯s Logic have reached the agreement that any promised interpretation of the beginning of the Logic must reject opposition between the immediacy and mediation and embrace their unity instead. It is how this unity is understood that divides interpreters. Either the mediation precedes the immediacy and justifies it first, or a somewhat one-sided immediacy occurs first and waits to be mediated later in a circular justification. However, both concepts are confronted with their own difficulties. To avoid these difficulties, I propose that the pure immediacy or pure being is justified to be the Logic¡¯s beginning in virtue of its alternativelessness. Only it can measure up to the rigorous requirement implied by the nature of the beginning.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant criticizes his predecessors, specifically Locke and Leibniz, in their one-sided reductions of representation to a single faculty. In his 1802 dialogue Bruno, Schelling develops this discussion into a criticism of Kant¡¯s own one-sided idealism. Focusing on these developments makes clear the manner in which Schelling sees himself as advancing beyond both pre-Critical realisms and Kant¡¯s transcendental idealism. He subsumes realism and Kantian idealism within his own absolute standpoint, providing a ground and rationale for both types of philosophical system as independent approaches, and he asserts that the ultimate foundation and unity of these systems of philosophy is in the absolute which is beyond conceptual thought.

Whilst Kant¡¯s work has been important for understanding the orbit of Schelling¡¯s Naturphilosophie, this is often considered only in relation to the Critical philosophy. The aim of this paper is to suggest a connection between the pre-Critical Kant and Schelling¡¯s Naturphilosophie. Whilst on the surface this may seem like a futile task, in this paper I hope to show that Schelling was engaged with Kant¡¯s early work and that he even offers a critique of it, opening the path to an until now understated area of scholarship on the relationship between the two thinkers. I analyse one section (the Siebentes Hauptst¨¹ck) from Kant¡¯s 1755 work, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels followed by an analysis of one section (the Zweiter Hauptabschnitt) from Schelling¡¯s 1799 work, Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie.

One of the core principles of Paul Ricoeur¡¯s hermeneutics is that interpretation culminates in application, or appropriation. But what exactly is an appropriation, and what makes some appropriations better than others? I try to shed light on these difficult matters by examining Ricoeur¡¯s own appropriation of Alasdair MacIntyre¡¯s notion of the narrative unity of a life, and by contrasting it with Richard Rorty¡¯s appropriation of the same notion. I argue that Ricoeur¡¯s appropriation is more successful than Rorty¡¯s, and that the best explanation of its success is that it respects a distinctive norm that governs the activity of appropriation. I conclude by describing this norm, which I call the principle of ultimate compatibility.

This paper challenges the hitherto common distinction between Hermann Cohen¡¯s early phase of V?lkerpsychologie and his later phase as a critical idealist. Recently, it has been claimed that Cohen¡¯s turn was not a rapid conversion but a development that was already inherent to his early view. This paper argues that even in Cohen¡¯s mature critical idealism, a thin basis of V?lkerpsychologie continues to exist. Cohen¡¯s critical programme is presented as having a twofold aim: On the one hand, it strives to give an account of pure, formal, and logical laws that regulate critical thinking; on the other hand, it offers a reading of Kant¡¯s dualism between matter and form that allows critical thinking to be seen as inevitably embedded in causal laws of psychology, history, and physiology. Concerning the latter, the paper argues that Cohen remained in the tradition of V?lkerpsychologie in his mature ethical thought.

In Fichte¡¯s early views of the basic laws of traditional formal logic, primarily the law of identity, there is a tension that has gone surprisingly unexplored: While Fichte holds the statements of these laws to be self-evidently true and absolutely certain, he nevertheless claims that they remain to be justified by his ¡°Science of Knowledge.¡± The aim of this article is to make sense of this tension and to explore how it translates into the dialectical structure and methodology of Fichte¡¯s first Jena Wissenschaftslehre. This is done by, first, conjecturing¡ªin a somewhat ahistorical, yet Fichte-based, fashion¡ªa reason for Fichte¡¯s justificatory demand. It is argued that the validity of the law of identity can be questioned because our belief in its absolute generality appears to be self-refuting in that it involves an antinomy akin to Grelling¡¯s semantic antinomy of the heterological. This antinomy, when, secondly, related to Fichte¡¯s purported justification of the law of identity, serves as a key to understanding why there is an antinomic conflict between Fichte¡¯s supreme principle¡ªnamely, the self-positing pure I¡ªand its adversary, the not-I, in the first place. Tracing their contradiction (whose synthetic resolution is the main goal of Fichte¡¯s Wissenschaftslehre) back to that semantic antinomy inherent in our formal-logical certainties opens up a new way of seeing Fichte as radicalizing Kant¡¯s critical philosophy, understood as the project of the self-preservation of reason against reason¡¯s own antinomies.

The task of confronting Hegel with the conflicts of our present proves to be indispensable to keep alive the critical scope of dialectics. In a context marked by a new wave of movements that challenge the racist structures that inform our societies, the question of the contribution of Hegelianism to an anti-racist thought takes a significant relevance.The hypothesis of this article argues that it is possible to distinguish two different operations that shape an anti-racist critique with the resources of Hegelian dialectical thought. The first one is constituted by the exegetical practice aiming to identify, within Hegel¡¯s own discourse, a speculative core that allows the definitive overcoming of all ethno-racial particularisms through the postulation of a normative universal horizon. Such interpretative perspective, shared by numerous scholars, seeks the absorption of Hegel¡¯s racist and Eurocentric assertions in the larger and global scope of his system. Once the limitation of this option is shown, we will examine an alternative operation, namely, the rewritings of the dialectical thought in certain philosophical reflections arising from the concreteness of anti-racist movements. To that extent, we will revisit the proposals of W.E.B Du Bois and Frantz Fanon as peripheral enunciations of the dialectic that enable a new understanding on the subjectivation processes and liberation horizons of racialized communities.

In a crossed-out section in his Fisk University commencement address on Otto von Bismarck, W. E. B. Du Bois mentions that Hegel was one of the figures that influenced him early on in his intellectual development. I argue that although Du Bois uses Hegelian language and employs a Hegelian conception of history in his address ¡°The Conservation of Races,¡± he abandons both in his essay ¡°Sociology Hesitant.¡± He became critical of the teleological conception of history because it rests on determinism, which in his view denies the possibility for social change. With what I call his ¡°mystical holism,¡± Du Bois is at odds with Hegel¡¯s methodological holism, a distinguishing characteristic of absolute idealism. Du Bois¡¯s dynamic idealism, which grows out of opposition to Hegelian idealism, leaves us with hope for a world without racism or at the very least in a better position to develop idealism as an anti-racist system of philosophical thought.

This paper transforms elements of Hegel¡¯s thought into antiracism through the work of James Baldwin in three Acts. Act One offers a Hegelian Account of Honesty that is structurally inspired by ¡°conscience¡± from his Phenomenology of Spirit. Honesty has two, seemingly paradoxical, dimensions. To address the unacknowledged whiteness in Hegel, we turn to Baldwin in Act Two. Baldwin deepens and problematizes Hegelian Honesty through a conceptual diagnosis of ¡°double misrecognition¡±: the first is the misrecognition of Blackness as inferior, the second is the misrecognition of whiteness as superior. Act Three articulates how the structure of whiteness forecloses Schuld and shame by connecting this dual foreclosure to the two dimensions of Hegelian honesty and Baldwin¡¯s diagnosis of double misrecognition. We conclude by formulating a sketch of ¡°antiracist idealism¡± as version of what the Germans call Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, that is, doing the hard, uncomfortable labor of comprehending how the present is not separate from but completely composed of old scars, wounds, violence, and atrocities. Antiracist idealism enables us to both learn from yet also challenge canonical idealism through contemporary forms of antiracism.

Due to the difficulties of providing an adequate physicalist solution to the problem of consciousness, recent years have seen explora?tions of different avenues. Among these is the thesis of cosmopsychism, the view that the cosmos as a whole possesses consciousness. However, constitutive cosmopsychism is faced with the difficult problem of de?combination: how to consistently maintain the claim that individual subjects are grounded in one absolute consciousness. This paper sug?gests a solution by outlining a theoretical model of a broadly idealistic and quantitative substance-monistic character. The key idea here is a triadic rather than monistic or dualistic conception of the subject. This conception allows us to affirm that the individual subject exists while simultaneously holding that its substance component is part of the one, undivided substance. This substance is in turn the substantive component of an all-encompassing, absolute subject. Notably, this model avoids the problem of decombination.

This paper aims to defend a dialectical account of selfhood in the context of the contemporary debates on personal identity in Anglo-American philosophy. I interpret Reductionism and Non-Reductionism¡ªthe two dominant positions in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy¡ªas forming something analogous to an antinomy. Reductionists argue that the self is merely an identity that is reducible to a set of facts, while Non-Reductionists argue that the self is a separate entity beyond any set of facts. I argue that a comprehensive view of the self requires aspects from both of these positions. The self, then, should be understood as an ongoing activity that relates the various features of one¡¯s identity together.

This paper claims that the inner drive of the discussion leading to the philosophical rupture between Fichte and Schelling is the problem of the independence of nature. I argue that the otherwise rich literature on the subject, by not engaging with this problem, has led to a false dichotomy between two equally unsatisfactory possibilities of interpretation: (a) Schelling¡¯s misunderstanding of Kant¡¯s transcendental method or (b) his overcoming of it. On my account, once one engages with Schelling¡¯s philosophy of nature, it becomes clear that he, just as Fichte, is exploring the inner tensions of Kant¡¯s philosophy, even though he does it in a different and original direction.

Recent epistemology and value theory have become more open to the role played by affectivity in the constitution of human knowledge of value. In this paper, two figures important to the phenomenological and personalistic traditions are retrieved as precedents for this contemporary development: Edith Stein and Dietrich von Hildebrand. In the first part of the paper, Stein¡¯s phenomenology of affective acts is adapted as an account of the structure of ¡°value-grasping acts.¡± The second part of the paper identifies two difficulties that arise on the basis of Stein¡¯s account: (1) how do we know that an emotion constitutes a response to intrinsic value, and (2) how do we know an emotional response to value is most attuned to its object? The remainder of the paper responds to these difficulties, thereby legitimating the account as a viable moral epistemology. These responses draw inspiration from von Hildebrand¡¯s phenomenological accounts of value-response and freedom.

In ¡°Being Judgement Possibility,¡± H?lderlin posits that the division between subject and object produced in conscious knowledge requires admitting a being as the ground of that knowledge¡¯s unity. Commentators argue over the way to access such being according to H?lderlin. For Dieter Henrich, being is a presupposition recognized reflexively. Manfred Frank, by contrast, maintains that H?lderlin grants direct access to it in an ¡°intellectual intuition.¡± This article addresses the respective interpretations of both authors. It shows that Frank¡¯s interpretation is closer to the textual evidence than Henrich¡¯s interpretation. Frank¡¯s interpretation also allows one to explain better the way in which the division between subject and object avoids leading to dispersal. Finally, this article considers the insufficiency of Frank¡¯s interpretation so as to clarify an issue that he himself advances in the course of his argument: how the I manages to distinguish itself in the sphere of intuitable objects.

Relative essentialism is the novel metaphysical theory that there can be multiple objects occupying the same space at the same time each with its own de re modal truths. Relative essentialism is motivated by Davidson¡¯s semantics and his denial that nature itself is divided into a privileged domain of objects. Relative essentialism was first presented by Samuel C. Wheeler. I argue that Wheeler¡¯s approach to the Davidsonian program needs to be elaborated in terms of various types of preconceptual intentional relations. This elaboration is already largely implicit in Davidson¡¯s own later work and in Wheeler¡¯s relaunching of Davidsonian metaphysics. More specifically, I argue that relative essentialism is ultimately founded not on predication narrowly construed but on intentionality broadly construed. Following Wheeler¡¯s suggestion, comparisons are made between relative essentialism and work within the phenomenological tradition.

This paper engages with Kant¡®s account of space as a continuum. The stage is set by looking at how the question of spatial continuity comes up in a debate from the 1920s between Ernst Cassirer and logical empiricist thinkers about Kant¡®s conception of spatial representation as a pure intuition. While granting that concrete features of space can only be known empirically, Cassirer attempted to save Kant¡®s conception by restricting it to the core commitment of space as a continuous coexistent manifold. Cassirer did not however come up with a transcendental argument for spatial continuity. The paper presents such an argument by providing a reading of Kant¡®s from which it transpires that Kant does not simply rely on supposed into the continuity of space. It is by way ofinstead that we can know space to be continuous and Kant¡¯s distinction between intuitions and concepts does hinge on such knowledge.

It is well appreciated that Moore, in the final years of the nineteenth century, emphatically rejected the monistic idealism of F. H. Bradley. It has, however, been less widely noticed that Moore¡¯s concern to defeat monism remained with him well into the 1920s. In the following discussion I describe the role that Moore¡¯s adoption of a ¡®common sense¡¯ orientation played in his criticisms of Bradley¡¯s monism. I begin by outlining certain distinctive features of Bradley¡¯s sceptical methodology, before describing the contrasting approach of Moore as it appears in 1910-11 and 1925. I bring these methodological differences into relief by assessing the status of common sense claims in the work of each figure. I show that Moore¡¯s common sense methodology was employed against Bradley¡¯s monistic conclusions, and that it was adopted with Bradley squarely in mind.

In recent years, the Neo-Kantian movement has received wide acknowledgment as the hidden origin of several contemporary philosophical discussions. This paper focuses on one specific Neo-Kantian topic; namely, the idea of history put forward by Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915). Even though this topic could be seen as one of the better-known Neo-Kantianism themes, there are certain unnoticed elements in Windelband¡¯s treatment of history that merit further discussion. While the texts in which Windelband deals with the logical problems of the historical sciences have been studied at length, other texts, those in which history is studied in connection with the problem of the philosophical method, have not. This paper argues that, for Windelband, history is not merely an object of epistemological reflection but rather a key component of transcendental philosophy.

Kant¡¯s Copernican turn has been the subject of intense philo?sophical debate because of the central role it plays in his transcendental philosophy. The analogy that Kant depicts between his own proposal and Copernicus¡¯s has received many and varied interpretations that focus either on Copernicus¡¯s heliocentrism and scientific procedure or on the experimental character of Kant¡¯s endeavor. In this paper, I gather and review some of these interpretations, especially those that have ap?peared since the beginning of the twentieth century, to show the many disparate and often contradictory stances that the Copernican turn has elicited. Despite the controversies between the different interpretations, they all are follow ups and reinventions of the single philosophical event named the Copernican turn. This common origin allows me to advance a narrative that portrays that event as an experiment, following Hans-J?rg Rheinberger¡¯s philosophy of experimentation. My position does not entail that an experiment such as Kant¡¯s conforms to what a scientific experiment is, although their histories could be narrated using a similar conceptual framework. In the end, my argument advances an experimental reading of the history of philosophy.

In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty underpins an idea of differentiation without ultimate unification through intertwining. I trace this idea of intertwining to Phenomenology of Perception. I argue that what perception marks is already differentiation prior to any identification. For this purpose, firstly, I will introduce Merleau-Ponty¡¯s depiction of intertwining; secondly, I will elaborate perception in Phenomenology of Perception; finally, I will discuss flesh as intertwining in The Visible and The Invisible.

This article shows that Fichte¡¯s ethics and theology in the Jena period are conceived in intimate connection with each other. It explores what Fichte¡¯s theology, as it is promulgated in the ¡°Divine Governance¡± essay of 1798, might tell us about his account of the ethical law¡¯s material content, as it is expounded in the System of Ethics of the same year. It does so with the aim of defending the standard interpretation of Fichte as a staunch advocate of deontology. From the theological vantage point, a plan for the realization of the final end is laid out in and through the moral world-order. The material of our duty is signified by the place we are assigned in and through the order. On account of our lack of insight into the ¡°higher law¡± through which our place in the order is determined, no abstract, discursive criterion for what we ought to do here and now is forthcoming. While Fichte characterizes ethically right actions in terms of their tendency to produce the final end, he regards them as being so in an ideal, intelligible world rather than the real, empirical one.

In this paper, I will shed light on Karl Leonhard Reinhold¡¯s and Friedrich Schiller¡¯s conceptions of practical self-determination after Kant. First, I outline Kant¡¯s conception of freedom as autonomy. I then explain the so-called ¡°Reinhold¡¯s dilemma,¡± which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions, which arises from Kant¡¯s theory of autonomy. I then show how Reinhold and Schiller tried to escape this dilemma by developing an elaborated theory of individual freedom. I will argue that Reinhold¡¯s and Schiller¡¯s symmetrical account of freedom to act according and against the moral law is not to be confused with freedom of indifference but can be reconstructed in terms of practical self-determination on the basis of first-order desires and second-order volitions.

Merleau-Ponty¡¯s account of phenomena, or appearances, and their relation to things themselves, is obviously central to his project as a Phenomenologist. And yet there is no agreed upon interpretation of the account of appearance that he gives in the Phenomenology of Perception: many commentators suggest that that work is ultimately either Idealist or Realist, or even that his account of appearance there is simply inconsistent. In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty does, in fact, offer a coherent alternative to Realism and Idealism about appearances in the Phenomenology, and I examine some key features of the account that often give rise to the suspicion of inconsistency. I show that these features only appear inconsistent if we adopt certain assumptions about appearance that Merleau-Ponty would reject, and that we have good reason to question as well.