According to Heidegger's Being and Time, social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by Heidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being-with’ by reconstructing Heidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of Kant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, (...) sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that Christine Korsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of Kant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. Heidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how Heidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating Korsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life. (shrink)

This article argues that Christine Korsgaard gives two accounts of maxims, the identity-priority account and the form-priority account. There is a tension between the accounts because Korsgaard's form-priority maxims account cannot function apart from the identity of a well-formed agent that precedes and tests maxims to determine if they should count as reasons or laws, and Korsgaard's identity-priority maxims account needs the form of the maxim to precede, bind, and constitute the well-formed agent. This tension mirrors the two sides of (...) what Korsgaard has called the “paradox of self-constitution.” The article concludes that Korsgaard's paradox of self-constitution leads to an arbitrariness that undermines the formation of moral laws. (shrink)

Based on an interpretation of the work of martin Heidegger, this article o ers a shi away om social and cultural anthropology, which explores sociocultural aspects, and also om general anthropology, which aims to summarise all dimensions of human being. the author de nes the speci city of existential anthropology: observing and conceiving human beings as they exist and continue to exist towards death. With a few twists in relation to Heidegger’s thought, the author discusses what is theoretically and methodologically (...) at stake in this per‐ spective, opening existential anthropology to a large empirical eld. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes schematism as a (A141/B180–1). While most commentators treat this as Kant's metaphorical way of saying schematism is something too obscure to explain, I argue that we should follow up Kant's clue and treat schematism literally as Kunst. By letting our interpretation of schematism be guided by Kant's theoretically exact ways of using the term Kunst in the Critique of Judgment we gain valuable insight into the nature of schematism, as well as its (...) connection to Kant's concerns in the third Critique. (shrink)

Topology is integral to a shift in socio-cultural theory from a linguistic to a mathematical paradigm. This has enabled in Badiou and Žižek a critique of the symbolic register, understood in terms of pure conceptual abstraction. Drawing on topology, this article understands it instead in terms of the figure. The break with the symbolic and language necessitates a break with form, but topologically still preserves a logic of the figure. This becomes a process of figuration, indeed a process of `deformation'. (...) Badiou/Žižek will then presume a break with the symbolic for `the real'. But topology entails the centrality of not the real but the imaginary. With Castoriadis, this imaginary is understood as productive and social, and with Sloterdijk as spatial. In our times this is a self-organizing socio-technical imaginary. For Niklas Luhmann these socio-technical systems engage in coupling. They structurally couple with other social imaginaries. Their self-organization, going beyond pure functionality, operates through semantic excess: an excess that organizes the system and is their structure. Such structural coupling entails semantic exchange, consisting of not just information but also of images. (shrink)

This essay presents a defence of the hermeneutical and existential standpoint of Being and Time against Cristina Lafont’s historicist and relativist reading. I show that there are substantive and textual difficulties with the Kantian reading of the understanding of being she endorses, which leads her to ignore the existential and hermeneutical aspects of Heidegger’s theory of meaning. The first section shows that the understanding of being is neither an unrevisable synthetic apriori nor a historically contingent conceptual scheme but that it (...) originates from care and that its articulation depends on the disclosure of a world . The second section turns to Heidegger’s theory of meaning qua worldhood. In the first place, I demonstrate that the relativity of meaning to Dasein doesn’t entail the kind of relativism Lafont ascribes to Heidegger and, in the second, how it avoids the supposed tension Lafont identifies in Being and Time between the claim that Dasein constitutes the world and the claim that it depends on a historically and linguistically constituted world. I conclude with some remarks on what is novel about Heidegger’s existential and hermeneutical outlook on meaning. (shrink)

This paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning Kant's model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude [Gröβe]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant's views (...) on these issues. I then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant's theory of perception as elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant's position by considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way to make sense of Kant's argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell's response to Bradley's regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer, in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant's account has significant strengths, a number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps. (shrink)

Kant is often considered to have argued that perceptual awareness of objects in one's environment depends on the subject's possession of conceptual capacities. This conceptualist interpretation raises an immediate problem concerning the nature of perceptual awareness in non-rational, non-concept using animals. In this paper I argue that Kant’s claims concerning animal representation and consciousness do not foreclose the possibility of attributing to animals the capacity for objective perceptual consciousness, and that a non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s position concerning perceptual awareness can (...) actively endorse this attribution. Kant can consistently allow that animals have a point of view on the objective world which possesses a distinctive phenomenal character while denying what seems most important to him – viz. that animals have the capacity to take cognitive attitudes towards, and thus self-ascribe, their own representational states. (shrink)

This article compares two attempts to return to realism after Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’. Quentin Meillassoux, representing the ‘speculative realism’ school, rejects both Kantian and post-Kantian idealism in favour of a materialism based on the epistemology of the modern sciences. But Meillassoux is unaware of the element of choice in his philosophical position, and he does not solve the essential problem posed by idealism which concerns the place of the subject in being. Ricœur, on the other hand, sublates Kant by a (...) deeper embrace of finitude that leads to the self-displacement of the subject, and a ‘Second Copernican Revolution’, one that he freely admits can only be arrived at by Jaspersian ‘Philosophical Faith’. The article concludes by showing how crossing the border into theological faith offers a virtue-ethical perspective on the question of realism and idealism: it is in fact the choice between a childlike humility that receives reality as it is, and an arrogant self-positing that puts the subject in the position of God. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss, in a Heideggerian context, the possibility of de-subjectivizing the notion of the transcendental time-horizon and reinterpreting it as a formally indicated ‘whereto’ of releasement. The structures of the time-horizon depict the way beings unfold in the fullness of time in their alterity, and they orient the subject’s activity of ‘projection.’ What results is a field-oriented (as opposed to self-oriented) transcendental philosophy which would survive Heidegger’s critique of his own transcendental project, and which would avoid mystification. (...) I take three steps. First, I point out that the problematization of ‘transcendental Heidegger’ is based on the subjectivist interpretation of the time-horizon. I problematize a recent account in the subjectivist vein, arguing that it is neither indispensable, nor very plausible, nor the most illuminative of Heidegger’s work. Second, with the help of Dahlstrom, Golob, Engelland, Sheehan, and Vasterling, I gradually dissociate the notion of the horizon from subjectivism, the visual metaphor, and the assumption of an absolute ground. I suggest instead that the horizonality of the horizon be understood temporally, i.e., as an interplay of presencing and absencing where what matter most are the structures, themselves affected by time, which the transcendental field displays when beings unfold themselves within it. Third, I identify three of those structures when performing a de-subjectivizing reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the threefold synthesis in Kant’s A-Deduction. These structures capture the way every being manifests itself, without themselves being necessarily grounded in the subject’s activity. This gives an example of how transcendental philosophy can clarify what the time-horizon is like while bracketing the question of its provenance. (shrink)

Predictive processing is an increasingly popular explanatory framework developed within cognitive neuroscience. It conceives of the brain as a prediction machine that tries to minimise prediction error. Predictive processing has also been employed to explain aspects of conscious experience. In this paper, I critically evaluate current predictive processing approaches to the phenomenology of time-consciousness from a Husserlian perspective. To do so, I introduce the notion of orthodox predictive processing to refer to interpretations of the predictive processing framework that subscribe to (...) representational views of cognition. As it turns out, current predictive processing accounts of time-consciousness are orthodox given their commitment to representational views of both brain functioning and perception, and, on the other hand, their reliance on the primacy of imagination over perception. However, I argue that such accounts are in fact closer to a Kantian-Brentanian approach to the phenomenology of time-consciousness than to the Husserlian account that they attempt to account for. (shrink)

Despite Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornelius Castoriadis placing the imagination centre stage in their respective conceptual theories, little work has been done to bring them into conversation on this issue or, indeed, any other. This is perhaps not surprising given Sartre’s early work on this topic has tended to be downplayed in favour of his affirmation of freedom, while Castoriadis not only denigrates Sartre’s thinking generally and his account of the imagination specifically but also posits their relationship as one of opposition. (...) In contrast, this article brings them into conversation on the question of the imagination to call into question Castoriadis assessment of their relation. To do so, I outline Sartre’s position in The Imaginary, showing that Castoriadis assessment of Sartre’s notion is based on a problematic, if common, misunderstanding of Sartre’s notion of nothingness and its relationship to creativity. Having overcome the opposition that Castoriadis affirms between their respective positions, I argue that, while there certainly are differences between their positions, there are also important points of agreement and overlap between them, especially regarding the constitutive role that the imagination plays for consciousness, and the relationships between the imagination and freedom and the imagination and creativity, that point to a shared and original approach. (shrink)

What is sophistics ? What are the genuine reasons of philosophers'hostility, from Plato and Aristotle to Habermas and Badiou ? This text offers a new definition of sophistics as critique of mainstream ontology and a description of the efficiency of such a critical view, through a comprehensive explanation of the primitive scenery between Parmenides'Poem and Gorgias' Treatise of Non-being, and Aristotle's settlement of the principle of non-contradiction in book Gamma of Metaphysics.

My task is to demonstrate substantial differences in the views of Kant and Heidegger on being. To this end I analyse Heidegger’s work Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics which Heidegger was writing intermittently during the period from 1927 to 1964. It deals not only with the ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason but also with Kant’s pre-critical work, The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), in which Kant explicitly addressed the (...) question of being for the first time. Heidegger focuses on the transcendental power of imagination not only as the “common root” of sensibility and understanding, but also as the fundamental faculty of ontological cognition. He links it with the phenomenon of time, arguing that the object of knowledge as such is also linked with this phenomenon. True, for Heidegger what matters is not a singular empirical object, but the universal noumenal object, including being. Consequently, Heidegger draws a distinction between empirics and sensibility: all empirics is sensible, but not all sensibility is empirical. A triangle in general, a dog in general, etc. have an image, but it is not a singular image, but a schema. Heidegger argues that time as pure intuition is the “field” in which the imagination faculty draws its image schemas. This field is the horizon of objectness, i.e. the possibility of emergence of non-empirical objects, including being. Being, then, is not a Kantian noumenon, not an X, but a sensible, albeit non-empirical, object created by the power of imagination, a correlate of everything cognisable. So understood, being is created by the human, therefore it is not transcendent but immanent to him/her. I also note that in characterising being Heidegger gradually moves from “time” to “work of art” in the frame of which the power of imagination does not simply reflect reality, but creates multiple diverse worlds. (shrink)

In this reply to my reviewers, I touch upon Husserl’s notion of fantasy. Whereas Kant positions fantasy outside the scope of his own work, Husserl brings it back. The importance of this notion lies in freeing imagination from the tight link to images, as for Husserl imagination is an activity that functions as a “quasi perception.” Ihde and Stiegler enrich Husserl’s analysis of imagination with various aspects of technology: Ihde shows how changes in the technologies that mediate our imagination will (...) necessarily change our imagination; Stiegler broadens Husserl’s analysis of retention. The two theories can be combined into a new understanding of subjectivity that is modeled as layers. Some layers can be performed by AI. The second part deals with the question of whether AI can be imaginative. Traditionally, imaginative creativity is associated with art. Bioart and AI art are brought as examples of a new definition of art, according to which art is the arrangement of materials in a way that produces a meaning. This definition does not refer specifically to creativity. In both forms of art, the biological/artificial and the human cooperate so that the former arranges the materials and the latter produces the meaning, albeit this division of labor is not clear-cut. The result is a co-shaping process. My conclusion is that algorithms can be considered creative by human standards, but this entails a new mode of imagination that is co-shaped and co-shared by humans and algorithms. The layer paradigm explains how such co-shaping works in practice. (shrink)

The recent publication of André Bazin's Écrits complets (2018), an enormous two-volume edition of 3000 pages which increases ten-fold Bazin's available corpus, provides opportunities for renewed reflection on, and possibly for substantial revisions of, this key figure in film theory. On the basis of several essays, I propose a drastic rereading of Bazin's most explicitly philosophical notion of “ontology.” This all too familiar notion, long settled into a rather dust-laden couple (“Bazin and ontology”) nonetheless retains its fascination. Rather than attempting (...) to provide a systematic reworking of this couple along well established lines, particularly those defined by realism and indexicality, this article proposes to shift the notion of ontology in Bazin from its determination as actual existence toward a more radical concept of ontology based on the notion of mimesis, particularly as articulated, in a Heideggerian mode, by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. This more properly ontological concept, also paradoxically and radically improper, is shown to be at work already in Bazin's texts, and it allows us to see that far from simplistically naturalizing photographic technology, Bazin does the contrary: he technicizes nature. If Bazin says that the photograph is a flower or a snowflake, he also implies that, like photographs, these are likewise a kind of technical artifact, an auto-mimetic reproduction of nature. Bazin likewise refers to film as a kind of skin falling away from the body of History, an accumulating pellicule in which nature and history disturbingly merge. This shifted perspective on Bazin's thinking is extended further in reference to Georges Didi-Huberman on the highly mimetic creatures known as phasmids, insects that mimic their environement. I extend this into the dynamic notion of eternal return, an implicit dimension of Bazin's thinking, clarified here in reference to Giorgio Agamben and the “immemorial image” which, like Bazin's “Death Every Afternoon,” presents an eminently repeatable deathly image, an animated corpse-world that can be likened to hell. (shrink)

As AI algorithms advance and produce surprising outputs, the question of imagination arises. Can we classify their output as imaginative? And what is their effect on human imagination? Apparently, algorithms follow Kant’s explanations on human imagination, thereby pushing us to update our understanding of imagination by taking into account the co-shaping between humans and their technologies. Such a new understating is offered in this article based on the theories of Don Ihde and Bernard Stiegler. With Ihde, imagination is conceived as (...) tightly linked to perception. Imagination evolves from the modernist task of seeking new points-of-view to a new mode in which technologies present imaginative layers of information on top of reality. With Stiegler, imagination is regarded as tightly linked to memory. He demonstrates how imagination complements memory, serves as a condition to memory/technology and at the same time how imagination itself is conditioned by memory/technology. In this article I develop a new synthesis: imagination as composed of perception and memory. This is the foundation of my layered model of digital imagination. In this model, the task of AI algorithms is the filling in of the layers with data. By producing endless possibilities, these technologies “automate” the Kantian “free play” of imagination, allowing us to examine more options and focus on the best of them. The model reserves the production of meaning to humans. Our role as humans is to generate meaning to the link between layers and establish new layers. (shrink)

The essay examines three major Chinese translations of Heidegger’s Dasein as cizai, yuanzai and qinzai, and their linguistic and philosophical meanings respectively. Looking at these translations individually, I find that each term has its own strengths, and yet none is without drawbacks. Hence, no single one of them could provide a perfect correlation with the meaning and the linguistic composition of the original German word and Heidegger’s Dasein in all aspects. Only through considering all three translations we will get a (...) more adequate picture of the Chinese interpretation and reception of Heidegger’s Dasein. (shrink)

I argue that, for Kant, there is a point at which the notions of self-consciousness and self-limitation become one. I proceed by spelling out a logical progression of forms of self-consciousness in Kant’s philosophy, where at each stage we locate the limits of the capacity in question and ask what it takes to know those limits. After briefly sketching a notion of self-consciousness available even to the animal, we look at whether there could be a notion of self-consciousness available to (...) the capacity of human sensibility. At this stage I argue that Kant and Heidegger (or Heidegger’s Kant) share a conception of what it is to be self-limiting through self-consciousness. I then critically examine this conception, and, specifically, the way in which it fails to account for the most essential form of self-limitation in Kant’s critical philosophy—namely, the form of self-limitation which rejects spatial and temporal articulation. The conclusion we reach is that Kant’s theory of transcendental self-consciousness is a theory of the activity of thinking as determining itself (including its limits) non-spatially and non-temporally. (shrink)

In his genetic phenomenology, Husserl introduces types, pre-predicative frames of experience that guide the perception and cognition of objects. In this essay, I argue that there are two types that are functionally almost identical to Kant’s schemata. To support this conclusion, I first present an interpretation of Kant’s discussion of schemata. I argue that we must see schemata as pure, a priori cognitions that involve only pure intuition, pure concepts of the understanding, and the imagination. I offer two analogies to (...) explain how schemata function to subsume objects under concepts and to anticipate possible objects of experience before moving on to discuss the schema of substance. Next, I present a brief explanation of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, organizing my presentation around the idea of apperception. This paves the way for a demonstration of how the fundamental type is best understood as standing at the center of a cluster of concepts, including apperception, passive belief, natural bodies, and the one spatio-temporal horizon of experience. I argue that the fundamental type is central to Husserl’s attempt to ground logic in pre-predicative experience. Finally, I compare two specific types with schemata on the grounds cultivated in the previous sections. The first of these types, the fundamental type, functions to pre-predicatively anticipate objects of possible experience, just as schemata do. The second of these types, which is implied by but never discussed in Husserl’s work, serves to mediate between a formal system of rules and an intuitive grasp of the world, just as schemata do. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Lyotard's first book was an introduction to phenomenology, most of the work that follows can be said to openly challenge the limits of phenomenological analysis. This is particularly...

This essay shows how Derrida, in a variety of texts, engages directly or indirectly with the Kantian moral law, which rests on the assumption of man's autonomy vis-à-vis his natural inclinations. In the background of this analysis is Derrida's engagement with Freud, the latter having argued that the Kantian moral law is located in, and can be equated with, the superego. Derrida challenges Freud's assignation of the moral law (solely) to the superego, and suggests that what appears to Kant as (...) the moral law and to Freud as the demands of the superego, already involve a limitation of a much more radical demand on the self: that of absolute sacrifice, and which one can understand with reference to Freud's death drive. This demand can be referred to as the law of law, that is, the law which makes of the moral law a law. Within this broader framework, the essay explores in detail Derrida's reading of Kant's notion of respect that is owed to the moral law, the notion of duty, and the formulation of the categorical imperative by Kant in terms of an ‘as if’. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger closes his Winter Semester 1927–28 lectures by claiming that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, read through the lens of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, confirmed the accuracy of his philosophical path culminating in Being and Time. A notable interpretation of Heidegger’s debt to Kant, advanced by William Blattner, presents Heidegger as a temporal idealist. I argue that attention to Husserl’s adaptation of Kant’s critical philosophy shows that both Husserl and Heidegger are realists. I make my case by tracing a unified (...) philosophical problematic through three puzzling passages: the Schematism chapter of the first Critique, Husserl’s thought experiment of the destruction of the world in Ideas, and the passage in Being and Time that motivates Blattner’s idealist reading. Husserl and Heidegger give accounts, derived from Kant, of how the consciousness of time makes it possible for objects to be perceived as enduring unities, as well as ‘genealogies of logic’ that show how a priori knowledge, including ontology, is possible. These accounts are idealistic only in the sense that they concern the ideal or essential features of intentionality in virtue of which it puts us in touch with things as they are independently of the contributions of any mind of any type. -/- . (shrink)

One of the more interesting philosophical debates today centers on the concept of potentiality. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has been one of the main driving forces behind the renewed interest in the concept, as he has made his own particular understanding of potentiality a crucial tool for his analyses in the book series on Homo Sacer.1 Agamben developed his understanding of potentiality through a striking reading of Aristotle that goes against the grain of certain generally accepted truths of Aristotelianism. (...) In particular, he claims that potentiality for Aristotle can be defined as "potentiality not to be", which seems to go against mainstream Aristotelian thought, according to... (shrink)

Philosophy, which does not begin again, always unfolds against the background of the ongoing philosophical tradition, which it needs to interpret. I argue that Heidegger’s theories, like all philosophical theories, can neither be reduced to, nor separated from, the historical context. In that sense they are like all other philosophical views, perhaps in theory ahistorical but in practice historical, hence always bound up with and inseparable from their historical moment. If, as I believe, Heidegger’s theories led him in part toward (...) National Socialism, there is no alternative, if philosophy is to survive in a meaningful sense, to rejecting those aspects of his position, which must now be considered as simply and wholly dead, in favor of other aspects of Heidegger’s thinking that, if they are still living, can possibly be saved. (shrink)

This article tries to show the irreducible connection between vulnerability and violence. This connection leads us back to the ethical level of experience. If vulnerability makes violence irreducible, then at least two reactions to violence are possible. On the one hand, a reaction is possible in which one attempts to negate vulnerability in order to close down the very thing within us that allows violence to enter. This negative reaction is actually the worst violence. On the other hand, a reaction (...) is possible in which one attempts to affirm vulnerability, even though its affirmation opens us to the violence that will happen. Affirming vulnerability is the least-violent reaction. If the formula for the worst violence is apocalypse without remainder, then the least violence is the maintenance of the remainder. The maintenance would happen only by not possessing the remainders, which places us in a new situation of poverty. (shrink)

REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's (...) discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

In times of the Anthropocene, we are in need of philosophical anthropology, revisiting the question concerning the human condition. I suggest rethinking what one may call ‘human transcendence’ in terms of a responsivist paradigm. Drawing on Heidegger and Plessner, the idea is that we should think of the eccentric or ecstatic position of the human in terms of something we undergo, instead of it being a human capability or something we do. It is a gift, emplacing us to the time-space (...) of responsive embodied existence. The paper will follow this agenda in five steps. Having introduced what I take to be the challenge for a timely ontology, I will unfold the problem entailed in the very idea of philosophical anthropology according to Heidegger. I then focus on Heidegger’s (hidden) rapprochement to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropology, recalling Plessner’s analysis of laughter as a bodily expression displaying the ‘eccentric positionality’ of the human. I suggest rephrasing this kind of transcendence in a responsivist paradigm: Humans are responsive beings. (shrink)

Anthropology was a new field of study when Kant first began lecturing on it in 1772, and Kant himself was the first academic to teach regular courses in this area. As is well known, his own approach to anthropology is self-described as ‘pragmatic’, and Kant’s pragmatic anthropology differs markedly from the anthropologies that other early contributors to the new discipline were advocating. In this essay I focus on a fundamental feature of Kant’s anthropology that has been under-appreciated in previous discussions; (...) namely, the particular conception of human nature that he believes anthropology, when pursued properly, leads to. I call this conception a cosmopolitan conception of human nature. In addition to establishing the central importance of this idea for Kant’s project in anthropology, I also try in this essay to unravel some of its ambiguities and tensions as well as to highlight its underlying moral motives. The cosmopolitan conception of human nature that is central to Kant’s anthropology is a further indication of the significance of his anthropology for ethics.Keywords: Immanuel; Kant; Anthropology; Pragmatic; Cosmopolitan; Human nature. (shrink)

Consider two competing interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the epistemic and cognitive interpretations. The epistemic interpretation presents the first Critique as a work of epistemology, but what is more, it sees Kant as an early proponent of anti-psychologism—the view that descriptions of how the mind works are irrelevant for epistemology.2 Even if Kant does not always manage to purge certain psychological-sounding idioms from his writing, the epistemic interpretation has it, he is perfectly clear that he means his evaluation (...) of knowledge to be carried out independently of psychology.3 In contrast, the cognitive interpretation presents the first Critique as a description of the operation of human .. (shrink)

Heidegger also famously says that Being depends on Dasein, even though beings in general do not. This is perplexing. “Heidegger and the “There Is” of Being” offers an interpretation of what’s going on in the passages in which this sort of assertion is made.

Although most scholars trace the Liar Paradox to Plato’s contemporary, Eubulides, the paper argues that Plato builds something very like the Liar Paradox into the very structure of his dialogues with significant consequences for understanding his views. After a preliminary exposition of the liar paradox it is argued that Plato builds this paradox into the formulation of many of his central doctrines, including the “Divided Line” and the “Allegory of the Cave” and the “Ladder of Love”. Thus, Plato may have (...) been the first to formulate the view that Graham Priest calls dialetheism, roughly, the view that some contradictions are, in an illuminating way, inescapable and true. The paper argues that Plato builds this Liar paradox into the formulation of his signature views because he holds that the attempt by finite human beings to theorize about transcendent realities results in the simultaneous necessity, and impossibility, of transgressing the limits of language—leading to the paradoxes. Finally, it is argued that the existence of these paradoxes in these Platonic doctrines is the direct result of an intrinsic hermeneutical circle in Plato’s aforementioned signature views. (shrink)

One of the central debates in contemporary Kant scholarship concerns whether Kant endorses a “conceptualist” account of the nature of sensory experience. Understanding the debate is crucial for getting a full grasp of Kant's theory of mind, cognition, perception, and epistemology. This paper situates the debate in the context of Kant's broader theory of cognition and surveys some of the major arguments for conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations of his critical philosophy.

Existentialist thinkers often publicly acknowledged Husserl’s phenomenology as one of their main points of departure for treatment of such themes as intentionality, comportment, transcendence, and the lifeworld. Several central elements of Husserl’s approach were adopted by the Existentialists, but equal to their gratitude were vigorous declamations of Husserl’s mistakes, dead-ends and failures. Many of the Existentialists’ criticisms of Husserl’s project are well-known and have been rehearsed in various surveys of 20th century thought, but less well-remarked are the discrepancies between their (...) complaints about Husserl’s aborted achievements and what Husserl actually delivered. This paper attempts to uncover the accuracy of some of their assessments of Husserl’s alleged failures and mistakes, whether or not Husserl actually held the position they claim he did, and especially whether or not Husserl was himself aware of some deficiency in his thematic analysis, and thus would have been able to offer a cogent response to critique. In doing so, a good case can be made that Heidegger, for example, quietly adopted some of Husserl’s main insights without credit, slanted his picture of Husserl’s work so that his own reversals had better purchase, or overlooked evidence that Husserl had already moved beyond that position. At least on some key topics, Husserl emerges as an exceptionally self-critical philosopher who had already gained the perspective more usually associated with an Existentialist orientation. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 1, Edition 1 April 2001. (shrink)

The contemporary discussion of non-conceptual content inaugurated by Gareth Evans and John McDowell has generated a range of differing views as to Kant's position on the issues raised. I argue that for Kant perception is prior to thought and that it is as being prior that perception connects us to reality in outer intuition. I then argue that for Kant thought relates to perception by being the rule for perceptual procedures. This accounts for thought's extending in scope beyond what we (...) actually perceive to all that is manifest in space and time. As against Merleau-Ponty this Kantian understanding of thought beyond perception does not distort the nature of reality which remains essentially that which can be engaged. (shrink)

The following reflections examine the new translation of Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie in relation to the former one. These reflections assess the relative merits of both translations and attempt to show how this relation illustrates specific issues in Heidegger’s text concerning the first and other beginnings of Western thought.

Kant proposes a unique and necessary presupposition of our faculty of judgment. Empirical nature, together with its diverse laws, must be judged as if it were a coherent unity. In a teleological judgment, we add that nature must be judged as if it were purposively designed for our faculty of judgment. In this article, I argue that Kant's insights on reflective teleological judgment - the least commentedupon element of the Critical philosophy - are adopted by Dworkin towards a philosophy of (...) law and adjudication. I claim Dworkin's concept of ‘integrity’ strictly, but tacitly, partakes of the structure of Kant's teleological judgment in its presumption of systematicity in juridical laws and unity of community which designs and abides its own principles. Throughout, I draw on Gilles Deleuze - a philosopher who complains of being ‘against judgment’ and wishes ‘to have done with judgment’ - to critique both the presuppositions and effects of such teleological judgment and the image of law it proposes. Using Deleuze I hope to characterize and criticize the teleological theory of judgment and also fruitfully engage Deleuze with problems of law scarcely addressed either by himself or by commentary. Key Words: Gilles Deleuze • Ronald Dworkin • integrity • judgment • Immanuel Kant • law • principle • teleology. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the reading of Heidegger's Kant that Derrida offers in his recently published 1978-9 seminar Donner le temps II (§§12–3). Here Derrida tracks across Heidegger's text the auto-affective or auto-dative structure (namely, the originary synthesis of spontaneity and receptivity) in which the Kantian conceptions of the experience of time and of transcendental imagination converge, and which is seen as scandalously underpinning the conception of respect. In particular, I draw attention to the moment in which Derrida (...) originally accounts for the structure of the Kantian respect as the movement of abandonment or delivery over to the event which he also ascribes to other figures of freedom (or unconditionality without sovereignty) explored in his later writings. My hypothesis is that, in doing so, Derrida may be building a bridge between two thoughts of imagination: on the one hand, imagination as a figure of his early differance, and, on the other hand, imagination as the non-sovereign freedom that undergirds his late work on sovereignty. (shrink)

У статті досліджується кантівська концепція вільної гри пізнавальних спроможностей – виображення і розсуду – в ракурсі проблеми трансцендентальної універсальності. Відзначається універсалізуючий потенціал третьої «Критики», одним із визначальних сюжетів якої є проблема вільної гри, щодо Кантової філософської системи в цілому. Викладаються базові параметри авторської тематизації трансцендентального універсалізму як такого, що ґрунтується на принципах відношення і відмінності і є пов’язаним із конституюванням порядку гіпер-універсальності. Оприявнено й проаналізовано параметри універсальності, імпліковані концепцією вільної гри. Показано, яким чином вихідна універсальність трансцендентального виображення виявляється в рамках (...) вільної гри водночас підваженою і гіперболізованою. Досліджено амбівалентну позицію вільної гри у відношені до пізнання; з метою схоплення універсалістичних імплікацій релевантного вільній грі модусу пізнання – «пізнання взагалі» – введено концепт «пізнання als ob». Встановлено певну асиметрію в рамках вільної гри між статусами виображення і розсуду, а саме – пріоритетність останнього. Проаналізовано специфіку властивої вільній грі суб’єктивної універсальності, виявлено її інтерсуб’єктивні та квазі-об’єктивні засновки; застосовано поняття «als ob-об’єктивності», що характеризує певну тенденцію до універсалізації самої універсальності, позначаючи універсальний вимір на межі суб’єктивного й об’єктивного. (shrink)

Heidegger calls his early philosophy a “science of being.” Being and Time combines phenomenological, ontological, hermeneutical, and existential themes in a way that is not obviously coherent. Commentators have worried in particular that Heidegger’s hermeneutical transformation of phenomenology is incompatible with his “scientific” aspirations. I outline three interpretations on which Heidegger cannot adopt Husserl’s “scientific” conception of phenomenology as eidetic, intuitive, propositionally articulated, and non‐relativistic due to his hermeneutical commitments. I argue that each of these readings rests on a misinterpretation (...) of one or more of three hermeneutical concepts that are central to Heidegger’s early thought: the understanding of being, the hermeneutical situation, and phenomenological destruction. By giving fresh analyses of these concepts, I show that Heidegger retains the scientific conception while refining it to avoid distortions that are introduced when inquiry is “infiltrated with traditional theories and opinions about being.” I also respond to the charge that Being and Time is a “disguised theology.”. (shrink)

مارتین هایدگر در آثار متأخر خود تشریح می‌کند که متافیزیک به مثابه هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی چگونه با توجه صرف به هستندگان آنها را از یک سو به جهت چیستی یا ذات مورد بررسی قرار می‌دهد و از سوی دیگر به جهت بودگی و قرار گرفتن در زنجیرۀ علّی ذیل برترین هستنده یا همان خداوند. وی با نگاه نقادانه به ساختار هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی متافیزیک، بر آن است تا تبیین کند که رویکرد هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسانه هم سبب از دست رفتن فهم هستی شده و هم در نتیجۀ (...) آن الوهیت را از جایگاه اصلی خود خارج کرده است. در این مقاله بر آنیم تا معنای هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی را در تفکر هایدگر متأخر بررسی کنیم و بدین منظور در پی آن هستیم که چگونه متافیزیک نزد هایدگر از نگاه همدلانۀ هستی‌شناسی بنیادین به رویکرد انتقادی هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی تغییر جایگاه پیدا کرد و آثار دورۀ گذار و دورۀ متأخر وی را بدین منظور مورد تأمل قرار می‏دهیم. در این مقاله با تبیین ساختار هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسانۀ متافیزیک از منظر هایدگر نشان خواهیم داد که چگونه هستی مغفول واقع شده سبب تولد الهیات متافیزیکی شده است. (shrink)

Integral Theory as developed by Ken Wilber and other contemporary Integral scholars acknowledge many antecedent foundational influences, and proto-Integral thinkers. Curiously, the philosopher-statesman Jan Smuts’ theory of Holism is seldom acknowledged, although it has significantly contributed, albeit often implicitly, to the development of Integral Theory. This paper and presentation has two central aims: To point out that Smuts can be counted amongst one of the great Integral thinkers of the 20th Century; that Smuts’ notion of Holism had a significant influence (...) on the development of Integral Theory. This paper and presentation will provide a brief outline of Smuts’ theory of Holism as developed in his book Holism and Evolution and other philosophical essays. (shrink)

In cognitive psychology, a false memory refers to a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event that did not actually happen. Both ‘memory-distortion’ and ‘false memory creation’ refer to the processes of recollection in which the recollected events are not actually happened. This paper has three aims: to examine Ricoeur’s analysis of memory and imagination; to explain and reinforce the constructive role of memory; to show in what manner the first two aims lead to the conclusion that the phenomena of (...) ‘distorted or false memory creation’ are reproductive because the nature of recollection is constructive in the sense of representation of past. In this regard, Ricoeur’s trajectory not only displaces the essential structure of memory and imagination behind the curtain of their distinction and connection, but also contributes to the debates in cognitive psychology. (shrink)

This paper unifies the disparate analyses in Heidegger's lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, in a single therapeutic and philosophical project. By taking seriously the text's claim to lead us towards authenticity, I show how Heidegger's analysis of boredom works together with his comparative analysis of man and animal to diagnose and lead us out of our contemporary complacency about being. This reading puts both analyses in a new light, reveals the hidden strategic unity of the (...) lecture course, and brings out the therapeutic dimension of Heidegger's phenomenology. (shrink)

One of the starting points of Derrida’s deconstruction is the idea that metaphysics is dominated by an ontological primacy of the present. It is well known that Derrida took up this thesis of the ‘...