In the past, Robert Brandom’s philosophy has provided fruitful grounds for the development of an approach to the history of philosophy. In A Spirit of Trust (2019), however, this approach takes a new form; one that corresponds to a shift of focus in Brandom’s philosophy, from his earlier inferentialism to its later developments in the thesis of rational recollection. This article aims to elucidate and explicate this new approach, which Brandom refers to as forgiveness. By looking into the thesis of (...) rational recollection, the article examines the back-looking attitude that Brandom argues for and how it can be applied to past philosophy. To better understand the novelty of this approach as forgiveness, the article considers other names that Brandom ascribes to this process, which interestingly correspond to different genres in the historiography of philosophy. Lastly, the article discusses whether such a forgiving approach leaves room for criticism and mistakes. (shrink)

The paper explores Hermann Weyl’s turn to intuitionism through a philosophical prism of normative framework transitions. It focuses on three central themes that occupied Weyl’s thought: the notion of the continuum, logical existence, and the necessity of intuitionism, constructivism, and formalism to adequately address the foundational crisis of mathematics. The analysis of these themes reveals Weyl’s continuous endeavor to deal with such fundamental problems and suggests a view that provides a different perspective concerning Weyl’s wavering foundational positions. Building on a (...) philosophical model of scientific framework transitions and the special role that normative indecision or ambivalence plays in the process, the paper examines Weyl’s motives for considering such a radical shift in the first place. It concludes by showing that Weyl’s shifting stances should be regarded as symptoms of a deep, convoluted intrapersonal process of self-deliberation induced by exposure to external criticism. (shrink)

Robert Brandom’s notion of historical rationality seeks to supplement his inferentialism thesis by providing an account for the validity of conceptual contents. This account, in the shape of a historical process, involves the same self-integration of Brandom’s earlier inferentialism and is similarly restricted by reciprocal recognition of others. This article argues that in applying the synchronic social model of normative discourse to the diachronic axis of engaging the past, Brandom premises a false analogy between present community and past tradition, which (...) obscures the important differences between the two axes. This is explored by looking closely at how Brandom’s own engagements with the past exemplify his historical rationality. Taking its cue from Brandom’s critics, the article shows that Brandom’s own discourse with tradition is not, and cannot be, dialogical and, in accordance, that historical rationality is not, and cannot be, governed by the same social structure of inferentialism. The article concludes with the implications of such a claim on Brandom’s thesis as a whole and on the role of tradition in the process of normative change, in light of it. (shrink)

This article introduces the confrontational theology of the rabbinic literature of late antiquity by means of a well-known, yet ill-understood legend. It goes on to argue that Talmudic confrontationalism comes coupled with an insistent dialogism that, unlike any other major human undertaking, displays a profound awareness of the indispensable role of external normative critique in the process of changing one’s mind.

In this study, I juxtapose the views of Edna Ullmann-Margalit and Menachem Fisch on radical changes of mind. I note in particular the common aspects of their proposal that typically, radical change is not, indeed, cannot be justified by reasons. Their responses to and arguments for this threat to rationality are critically examined. Hili Razinsky’s analysis of ambivalence is shown to contribute to the understanding of change by providing a broader perspective on the rationality of belief. Her work thus provides (...) a promising alternative to the above positions and the impasse they confront. (shrink)

In his works from the past decade, Menachem Fisch offered an analysis of a crucial distinction between two modes of rationalized transformation: an intra-framework transformation and an inter-framework one, the latter entailing a revolutionary shift of the framework itself. In this article, I analyze the attempt to produce such a framework transition in the tradition of Jewish Halakha (i.e., Jewish Law) by one of the key figures in its history, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), and to explore how this transition was rationalized (...) and promoted by the utilization of crisis discourse. Using discourse analysis, I analyze the introduction to Maimonides’ great legal code, Mishneh Torah, and explore the modes by which he sought to establish, install and stabilize a homogenous and centralistic legal order at the center of which will lie one – that is, his own – Halakhic book. (shrink)

I examine the way a relevant conceptual novelty in mathematics, that is, the notion of group, has been constructed in order to show the kinds of heuristic reasoning that enabled its manufacturing. To this end, I examine salient aspects of the works of Lagrange, Cauchy, Galois and Cayley. In more detail, I examine the seminal idea resulting from Lagrange’s heuristics and how Cauchy, Galois and Cayley develop it. This analysis shows us how new mathematical entities are generated, and also how (...) what counts as a solution to a problem is shaped and changed. Finally, I argue that this case study shows us that we have to study inferential micro-structures, that is, the ways similarities and regularities are sought, in order to understand how theoretical novelty is constructed and heuristic reasoning is put forward. (shrink)

Robert Hooke’s theory of gravitation is a promising case study for probing the fruitfulness of Menachem Fisch’s insistence on the centrality of trading zone mediators for rational change in the history of science and mathematics. In 1679, Hooke proposed an innovative explanation of planetary motions to Newton’s attention. Until the correspondence with Hooke, Newton had embraced planetary models, whereby planets move around the Sun because of the action of an ether filling the interplanetary space. Hooke’s model, instead, consisted in the (...) idea that planets move in the void space under the influence of a gravitational attraction directed toward the sun. There is no doubt that the correspondence with Hooke allowed Newton to conceive a new explanation for planetary motions. This explanation was proposed by Hooke as a hypothesis that needed mathematical development and experimental confirmation. Hooke formulated his new model in a mathematical language which overlapped but not coincided with Newton’s who developed Hooke’s hypothetical model into the theory of universal gravitation as published in the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687). The nature of Hooke’s contributions to mathematized natural philosophy, however, was contested during his own lifetime and gave rise to negative evaluations until the last century. Hooke has been often contrasted to Newton as a practitioner rather than as a “scientist” and unfavorably compared to the eminent Lucasian Professor. Hooke’s correspondence with Newton seems to me an example of the phenomenon, discussed by Fisch in his philosophical works, of the invisibility in official historiography of “trading zone mediators,” namely, of those actors that play a role, crucial but not easily recognized, in promoting rational scientific framework change. (shrink)

Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism and the limits of cognition, discovered when criticism is pursued methodically, that are due to the perspectival character of the human standpoint. After a period of disparagement, these Kantian insights have been sympathetically construed and are now discussed within contemporary analytic philosophy. However, if Kant’s assumption of a single, immutable, human framework is jettisoned, then the rationality of historical succession is called into question. Moreover, if the (...) revolutionary character of framework transitions is acknowledged, then reason is historicized and even its character as reason is threatened. I argue that Menachem Fisch’s approach to criticism and rationality offers an escape from this post-Kantian predicament that acknowledges revolutionary framework transitions and that draws upon the dialogical traditions of Jewish thought, and I also argue that Fisch’s approach should be seen as thematizing, to use the terms of Kant’s aesthetics and of Fichte’s account of natural right, the reflecting rather than determining status of critical judgement, which involves second-personal address. (shrink)