Although cities have been philosophically important since ancient times, the development of phenomenology and, to a lesser degree environmental and everyday aesthetics, made possible the aesthetic consideration of urban life. Unlike much of Western philosophy, phenomenology takes seriously that human beings inhabit a lifeworld, in which they live as embodied beings together with others. These three emphases—world, embodiment and intersubjectivity—together make possible the aesthetic investigation of urban life. I provide a brief survey of current work in urban aesthetics before introducing (...) the five papers that comprise this issue. (shrink)

The ArgumentDuring the last two decades the debate on the use and abuse of narrative in historiography has taken a new form: ideological instead of methodological. According to poststructuralist critics, the representation of past events and processes in the form of a coherent story turns history into mythology, which is (or serves) conservative ideology. This is so because the fabrication of organic continuity and unity between the past and the present (as well as the future) of society depicts its most (...) fundamental laws and institutions as divine-natural rather than human creations and thereby renders them impervious to any rational or historical refutation. The main aim of this essay is to reclaim some credibility for narrative history against its critics, both ancient and modern, and on both methodological and ideological grounds, by reappraising the role of myth in the constitution of all norms and forms of life. Setting out from the observation that the narratives and other symbolic interpretations of historical reality in which the people believe are as real as the conditions and events in which they actually live, the author calls upon historians not to eliminate, but to illuminate, myths in history, by showing their extension or configuration of historical reality. (shrink)

Résumé Si l’absence de moralité des psychopathes a été largement étudiée, il existe peu de recherches sur leurs capacités esthétiques. Pourtant, beaucoup d’études cliniques de cas montrent qu’ils présentent un grave déficit dans ce domaine. Cet article se propose d’en chercher les causes. Il analyse les forces et les limites de l’hypothèse d’un manque d’empathie pour expliquer ces carences esthétiques, et montre pourquoi l’hypothèse d’un manque de distance psychique se révèle plus féconde. Celle-ci permet en outre de comprendre le lien (...) de l’esthétique et de l’éthique par leur filiation commune : elles ont pour socle commun la capacité à prendre de la distance par rapport à des intérêts étroitement égoïstes. (shrink)

This article seeks to bring small talk about cinema – the type of conversation that can begin with the question “Have you seen any good movies lately?” – into the analytical ambit of cinema and media studies. In order to do so, I argue that such conversation is relevant to the philosophical project of Stanley Cavell. Throughout his attempts to wed film analysis and philosophical reflection, including his seminal studies of Hollywood genres, Cavell has remained committed to the idea that (...) philosophy is not a search for objective absolutes or momentous conclusions. This is a characteristic inconclusiveness that small talk shares. While small talk is often derided as unimportant on account of this very inconclusiveness, the work of Cavell provides a propitious framework for appreciating small talk's underacknowledged philosophical stakes and for reconsidering assumptions about the relative value of communicative practices. In order to better illustrate this relation between small talk and philosophy, this art... (shrink)

Ethical pluralists hold that moral values and systems are irreducibly diverse and incommensurable according to a common scale. One criticism of the view is that accepting such incommensurability renders them unable to criticize values, practices, institutions, and so forth that are genuinely bad. This paper considers two ways that pluralists have appealed to human nature to answer this criticism. One way appeals to nature to ground a positive conception of human flourishing, whereas the other appeals to nature as a source (...) of constraints. I argue that both views fail to meet the criticism in a satisfactory way and then advance a view that improves upon the existing options. Specifically, I argue that human nature is the standard by which it is possible to assess humaneness, which is a kind of beauty that represents the elevation or refinement of human nature. Accordingly, pluralists can deploy judgments of humaneness to criticize practices, institutions, and so forth that are not worth tolerating without violating the spirit of pluralism. (shrink)

Inspired by a passage from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, this article considers the possibility of a “medical sublime.” It works through a history of the sublime in theory and in the arts, from ancient times to the present. It articulates therapeutic dimensions of the sublime and gives contemporary examples of its medical relevance. In addition, it develops the concept of sublime-based stress-reduction workshops and programs. These workshops bring the sublime out of the library and the museum into the lives of (...) the healthcare community—patients, families, clinicians, staff, concerned others—in the service of better navigating human vulnerability and finitude. Opening the cannon of aesthetic theory and the arts as resources for the human condition is at the heart of health humanities. The sublime can be an invaluable tool in this task. (shrink)

The development of art marketing as a new field of management occurs in a context of great confusion as to what constitutes the very definition of art, one aspect of this confusion being nothing else but the confusion between art and marketing itself. This confusion leads to conflicts between those who consider that art should be defined by a clear aesthetic criterion and those who accept the absence of such a criterion as a legitimate consequence of the principle of freedom (...) which applies both to the creation of the artist and to the taste of the public. This state of confusion does not seem to be experienced in the same way in France where it has tended to be considered as a symptom of crisis in the world of art and in the United States where it has raised as a dominant force in contemporary art. Hence the confusion of art and marketing varies as a function of time (as shown by the emergence of a new field of management) and of space (as shown by the comparison of the French and American cases). It will be proposed that it is possible to account for these historical fluctuation thanks to an institutional approach based on the notion of system of legitimacy. We shall propose the essentially dynamic institutional foundations of modernity leading to the proliferation of innovations which consequences are ever more difficult to anticipate as a reason why, in America, philosophers coming from the analytic tradition found it meaningful to address questions such as “What is art” (Arthur Danto) or “When is there art” (Nelson Goodman”) expressing the need to go beyond pragmatism as expressed by John Dewey’s Art as Experience to promote a positive attitude towards contemporary art, while, in France confusion between art and marketing has been commonly considered negatively as the sign of the triumph of the most radical form of rhetoric, i.e. sophism. (shrink)

My paper consists of four sections. The first is concerned with the distinction and connection between fundamental and human rights. Here I shall just introduce a few conceptual notions and definitions that are more or less widely used, but that may help us to frame the issue and better focus on the most relevant question of the foundation or justification of human rights. In the second and third sections I will present what I believe to be the four fundamental normative (...) situations that shape our understanding and use of human rights. In the second section attention will focus on what in my opinion is the most basic of these four normative situations, which I call the “existential” situation. This is intended to offer a strong foundation for human rights as “not metaphysical,” without appealing to or relying on heavy metaphysical assumptions. I will try to stick more or less to an argumentative strategy based on common sense. The third section, dealing with the three other normative situations, will to some extent be an exercise in eclecticism, trying to combine different approaches to (and schools of thought on) the question of normativity. Here eclecticism will not be trivial, or at least I hope not. In the fourth and final section I will briefly conclude with a general overview on the issue of the “existence” of normativity and human rights. (shrink)

. This essay considers the place of mechanisms in ancient theories of science. It might seem therefore to promise a meager discussion, since the importance of mechanisms in contemporary scientific explanation is the product of a revolution in scientific thinking connected with the late Renaissance and its mechanization of nature. Indeed the conception of astronomy as devoted merely to “saving the appearances” without reference to the physics of planetary motion might seem an instance of ancient science vigorously rejecting mechanisms. This (...) fact should suggest to us that there is no simple truth about the role of mechanisms in science that is not relative to a particular strategy or historical moment in the development of a scientific tradition. It should also remind us of a parallel question concerning scientific theory, the question now expressed in the issue of realism and instrumentalism. A discussion of Aristotle's views on scientific explanation in the Posterior Analytics, and particularly his concept of what is prior and better known by nature, shows the ways in which Aristotle resists a crude choice between realism and instrumentalism. Early modern theories of science were committed to realism, and the notion of mechanisms was important to that commitment. Part of the force of mechanisms was that they were thought to reveal the activities by which phenomena are truly brought into being. In this way they often served early philosophers of science by promising a realistic science, able to discover the actual mechanisms by which phenomena were brought about in a universe increasingly viewed as mechanistic. Mechanisms, then, are of critical importance if one is a realist, but of considerably less importance if one is an instrumentalist. Since Aristotle, at least, was neither a realist nor an instrumentalist, his view might be thought to be typically Aristotelian: in some ways they're important, in some not. A glance at some contemporary instances suggests similarly that there can be no general view from a theoretical perspective of the status of mechanisms. Their place is dependent on specific features of specific projects of scientific research and explanation. (shrink)

The article focuses on re-evaluating Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic by initially highlighting its seemingly negative function within the Critique of Pure Reason as a mere regulative form for cognition and experience. The Dialectic, however, does not only have such a negative-regulative function but also its very own positive and founding character for cognition that even is present in the supposedly most immediate forms of intuition. In exploring this positive side of the Transcendental Dialectic it becomes clear that it manifests itself as (...) a bridge between the so-called theoretical and practical reason inasmuch as it fills in their gap within Kant’s philosophy. From the practical side, the Dialectic is manifest as an action full of purposiveness, maxims, and imperatives within cognition, from a theoretical side it assumes the form of syllogistic inference, which is the adequate and acting theoretical form of practical reason. Therefore, the unity of reason is shown in presenting its inner gap as a dialectical misunderstanding that Kant not only highlights in the Transcendental Dialectic but also tends to leave unsolved mostly. Nevertheless, the Dialectic can be shown as the a priori synthetic act of unifying reason, if investigated in the context of Kant’s complete critical endeavour. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article draws on Daniel Maximin’s extended essay on Caribbean identity, Les fruits du cyclone, to open up the potential in Luce Irigaray’s work for a decolonizing, elemental sublime. In so doing, it hopes to produce the kind of generative crossing that Maximin invokes via the figure of métissage: a term that recalls the forced breeding of the transatlantic slave trade, even as Maximin deploys it to resist the violence of colonialism and to affirm the unmasterable effects of the crossings (...) of difference. The article begins by outlining the importance of the aesthetic in its Kantian sense to Irigaray’s project, showing how Irigaray re-conceptualizes the form-matter relation in ways that also transform the relation between aesthetic judgments and the transcendental aesthetic. It goes on to examine the implications of Irigaray’s subversive re-appropriation of Kant for her approach to nature and art, setting out her reasons for pulling back from the sublime while using the work of other scholars to develop a critique of her privileging of harmony. The final section draws on Maximin’s image of nature as neither in harmony with itself nor with human projects to explore the possibility of an elemental sublime structured by co-existing contraries in ways that allow for a decolonization of difference. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of the link between Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. It does so by articulating a Kantian account of moral psychology by way of aesthetic reflective judgements of sublimity. Since judgements of sublimity enrich the picture of a Kantian subject by forcefully revealing the unbounded power of the faculty of reason, I investigate the possibility that judgements of this kind could serve as a basis for moral motivation. The paper first shows how judgements of sublimity help (...) a subject recognize reason's unbounded nature, and proceeds to analyse the practical effects of a subject judging itself sublime. When judgements of sublimity have as their object the unbounded and unsythesizable power of reason, they may thereby serve as the basis for both the recognition of our moral vocation, and the grounds for determining the will to act from respect for it. Since a judgement of sublimity produces for Kant the experience of an enlivening emotion and an outflowing of vital forces, the paper then develops Kant's concept of “life” motivated by a recognition of its practical orientation. In this way sublimity rather than beauty can be interpreted as symbolic hypotyposis of morality. The paper then takes up less favourable interpretations of the practical effects of self-predicated judgements of sublimity, and constructs critical responses to such positions. I conclude, following Adorno, by stressing the historical and social dimension of the capacities for both making sublime judgements, and being morally enlivened by them. (shrink)

I argue that the exception must be a legitimate possibility within law as a revolutionary project, in much the same way that civil disobedience is. In this sense, the exception is not outside law if by "law" we mean not positive law as defined by extant legal documents (statutes, legislative committee reports, written judgments, etc.) but law as a living tradition consisting of both abstract norms and a concrete historical understanding of them. So construed, the exception is what can be (...) exemplary - a law unto itself that best interprets and creatively extends (and transcends) the law that already exists, in order to make it inclusive of the other. In the final analysis, immigration law forces us to consider both the concrete individuality and abstract humanity of refugees, asylum seekers and other homeless persons who have been displaced by global economic underdevelopment. When combined with the "statelessness" of desperate classes of immigrants, this fact about immigration law reveals a revolutionary possibility for future development and perfection leading to its own transcendence: from an inhospitable immigration law that is administered exclusively by the nation state to a cosmopolitan law of universal citizenship under the auspices of a global human rights regime. (shrink)

A phenomenological model is developed as an alternative to current analyses of the imagination in sport philosophy, heirs to an Enlightenment notion that conceptualizes imaginings as abstract, eidetic, and representational. EC describes how Eidetic and Corporeal Imaginings phenomenologically structure our imaginative undertakings. EIs keep the ‘ideal’ aspect, but CIs—enacted, corporeal, non-representational—are more fundamental and foundational. Sports are particularly suited to express CIs’ muscular imaginings, which result in novel performances. An enactive framework theorizes CIs as non-representational interactions.

This paper shows how a radical approach to enactivism provides a way of clarifying and unifying different varieties of enactivism and enactivist-friendly approaches so as to provide a genuine alternative to classical cognitivism. Section 1 reminds readers of the broad church character of the enactivism framework. Section 2 explicates how radical enactivism is best understood not as a kind of enactivism per se but as a programme for radicalizing and consolidating the many different enactivist offerings. The main work of radical (...) enactivism is to RECtify, existing varieties of enactivism and other cognate approaches so as to strengthen and unify them into a single collective that can rival classical ways of thinking about mind and cognition. Section 3 shows how even seemingly non-enactivist explanatory offerings—such as predictive processing accounts of cognition—might be RECtified and brought within the enactivist explanatory fold. Section 4 reveals why, once RECtified, enactivist offerings, broadly conceived, qualify as genuine and revolutionary alternatives to classical ways of understanding cognition. (shrink)

In the last thirty years of his life Kant was preoccupied with the question of whether or not the "signs of progress" could be elicited from the vale of tears of the historical process. In what follows I am interested in the question of what kind of meaning Kant's historico-philosophical hypothesis of progress can have for us today. In order to provide an answer to this question, I make a distinction between system-conforming and system-bursting, or unorthodox, versions of historical progress. (...) This distinction is made in order to show that only system-bursting versions of progress can prompt us to confer contemporary meaning on Kant's philosophy of history as a learning process that is conflict ridden and without illusions. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the connection between accounts of biological teleology and the biocentrist claim that all living beings have a good of their own. I first present the background for biocentrists’ appeal to biological teleology. Then I raise a problem of scope for teleology-based biocentrism and, drawing in part on recent work by Basl and Sandler, I discuss Taylor and Varner’s responses to this problem. I then challenge Basl and Sandler’s own response to the scope problem for its (...) reliance on a selectionist account of organismic teleology. Finally I examine the prospects for a biocentrist response to the problem of scope based on an alternative organisational account of internal teleology. I conclude by assessing the prospects for teleology-based biocentrism. (shrink)

Frank Jackson formulated his knowledge argument as an argument for dualism. In this paper I show how the argument can be modified to also establish the irreducibility of the secondary qualities to the properties of physical theory, and ultimately "secondary quality eliminativism"- the view that the secondary qualities are physically uninstantiated.

ABSTRACTAt least during his critical period, all of Kant’s philosophical works have a secret political dimension. Among other things, following the analysis of Hannah Arendt, the Critique of Judgment – paragraph 40 in particular – became a main text of political philosophy. In looking at the Critique of Judgement from a political perspective, I shall refer not to paragraph 40 but to the Kantian discussion of pure aesthetic judgement. In my opinion, one can understand Kant’s remarks on aesthetic judgement, and (...) especially transcendental anthropology, as meaning that Kant philosophically attributes the three political ideas of the French Revolution to the whole human being as such, and not just to the intelligible man. (shrink)

To what extent does the construction of any curriculum framework have to contain axiological assumptions? Educators have been made aware of tacit epistemological assumptions underlying existing curricular frameworks by the continual demands for their revision., ) suggested that curriculum policy should be centred around imagination; economic rationalists have suggested that it be made more functional and accountable than traditional university disciplines allow for. Is it possible, as ) suggests, to combine competing traditional ideologies of education in a complex postmodern pastiche (...) which can nonetheless provide standards of assessment and evaluation without presuming a grand narrative? ) suggests not. This paper examines the challenge of maintaining principled standards and recognising postmodern relativities, making particular reference to the notion of the sublime and the arts curriculum. (shrink)

This paper describes and defends two arguments connecting ethics and religion that Kant makes in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. The first argument is that the moral demand is too high for us in our natural capacities, and God's assistance is required to bridge the resulting moral gap. The second argument is that because humans desire to be happy as well as to be morally good, morality will be rationally unstable without belief in a God who can bring (...) happiness and virtue together. The paper states and replies to three objections to each argument. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

What Schelling calls “philosophy of nature,” does not merely and not primarily mean the treatment of a special area “nature,” but means the understanding of nature in terms of the principle of Idea...

In the United States, running as a leisure activity continues to grow in popularity. Healthism can explain some of this popularity, but it does not explain ultradistance running. Motivations for running can be seen through the framework of the Kantian beautiful and the sublime. Beauty arises through extrinsic motivation and relates to an economy of form, while the sublime arises through intrinsic motivation and relates to confronting the challenge of infinity. The commercial, casual, and competitive aspects of distance running correspond (...) to the beautiful, while its wilderness, serious, ultradistance aspects correspond to the sublime. This framework is used to explain the resistance of ultrarunning to the would-be detrimental effects of commodification, as well as ultrarunning’s ‘wild turn.’. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the sublime makes frequent appeals to infinity, appeals which have been extensively criticised by commentators such as Budd and Crowther. This paper examines the costs and benefits of reconstructing the account in finitist terms. On the one hand, drawing on a detailed comparison of the first and third Critiques, I argue that the underlying logic of Kant’s position is essentially finitist. I defend the approach against longstanding objections, as well as addressing recent infinitist work by Moore and (...) Smith. On the other hand, however, I argue that finitism faces distinctive problems of its own: whilst the resultant theory is a coherent and interesting one, it is unclear in what sense it remains an analysis of the sublime. I illustrate the worry by juxtaposing the finitist reading with analytical cubism. -/- . (shrink)

This article advances a new analysis of stupidity as a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Section 1 outlines some problems in explicating this notion and suggests some desiderata. Section 2 sketches an existing model of stupidity, found in Kant and Flaubert, which serves as a foil for my own view. In section 3, I introduce my theory: I analyse stupidity as form of conceptual self-hampering, characterised by a specific aetiology and with a range of deleterious effects. In section 4, I (...) show how this proposal meets the desiderata and I clarify how it diverges from existing accounts. My position is close to a 'public health approach', in contrast to the virtue/vice framework employed by Engel or Mulligan. (shrink)

Unlike Aristotelian physics with its teleological notions, modern physics was developed exclusively in relation to the nonliving domain. This raised the question as to whether mechanics applies to organisms, and if so, to what extent. From the seventeenth century on, mechanistic ideas became prominent in biological and medical theory. Contemporary biology explains essential features of life on the basis of physical laws and processes. This does not prove, however, that the early mechanists were essentially right. In the eighteenth century, following (...) Cartesian notions of mind-body separation and preformation theories of organismic development, they tended to exclude major biological questions rather than answering them. It was those who insisted on the organizational features of organisms, like Stahl and Wolff, who paved the way for solutions to such crucial problems as the psychological basis of human nature and behavior and the generation of form in the course of reproduction. Though they underrated the potentials of a future, extended physics for understanding biology, their case against reductionist exclusion should not be considered outdated even today. (shrink)

Justificatory liberalism is liberal in an abstract and foundational sense: it respects each as free and equal, and so insists that coercive laws must be justified to all members of the public. In this essay I consider how this fundamental liberal principle relates to disputes within the liberal tradition on “the extent of the state.” It is widely thought today that this core liberal principle of respect requires that the state regulates the distribution of resources or well-being to conform to (...) principles of fairness, that all citizens be assured of employment and health care, that no one be burdened by mere brute bad luck, and that citizens' economic activities must be regulated to insure that they do not endanger the “fair value” of rights to determine political outcomes. I argue in this essay: a large family of liberal views are consistent with the justificatory liberals project, from classical to egalitarian formulations ; overall, the justificatory project tilts in the direction of classical formulations. (shrink)

Kantian socialists at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as contemporary authors seeking a principle with which to condemn capitalism, have turned to Kant’s Formula of the End in Itself. This article assesses the arguments from FEI against capitalism from the perspective of the issues that arise in interpreting and applying Kant’s formula. There are various strategies with which a Kantian might use FEI to condemn conduct that Kant did not use FEI to condemn. The article asks whether (...) any of the existing arguments from FEI employ plausible versions of these strategies to derive a strict duty from that formula’s Never Merely as a Means principle that condemns capitalism. (shrink)

This paper calls attention to a philosophical presupposition, coined here the continuity thesis which underlies and unites the different, often conflicting, hypotheses in the origin of life field. This presupposition, a necessary condition for any scientific investigation of the origin of life problem, has two components. First, it contends that there is no unbridgeable gap between inorganic matter and life. Second, it regards the emergence of life as a highly probable process. Examining several current origin-of-life theories. I indicate the implicit (...) or explicit role played by the continuity thesis in each of them. In addition, I identify the rivals of the thesis within the scientific community — the almost miracle camp. Though adopting the anti-vitalistic aspect of the continuity thesis, this camp regards the emergence of life as involving highly improbable events. Since it seems that the chemistry of the prebiotic stages and of molecular self-organization processes rules out the possibility that life is the result of a happy accident, I claim that the almost miracle view implies in fact, a creationist position. (shrink)

How is one to navigate between a thinking grounded in the individual and a claim for communality? In Emerson, this kind of difficulty comes into view in familiar sentences such as Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense.’ How does the relationship between the personal and the universal look and function? In this paper, it is argued that Emerson may bring us clarity regarding the difficulties we are facing when it comes to questions about how we (...) are to frame human personality, morality, and knowledge in the field of tension created by distinctions such as private/public, original/conventional, and particular/universal. A crucial thought in this line of reasoning is that that the critical philosophy Emerson pursues is also self-critical. The idea that true critique is self-criticism is then used as a tool to make clear that there’s no fundamental gap to be bridged here. The self-critical dimension makes clear the ways in which coming to share a world—learning from one’s tea... (shrink)

How is one to navigate between a thinking grounded in the individual and a claim for communality? In Emerson, this kind of difficulty comes into view in familiar sentences such as Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense.’ How does the relationship between the personal and the universal look and function? In this paper, it is argued that Emerson may bring us clarity regarding the difficulties we are facing when it comes to questions about how we (...) are to frame human personality, morality, and knowledge in the field of tension created by distinctions such as private/public, original/conventional, and particular/universal. A crucial thought in this line of reasoning is that that the critical philosophy Emerson pursues is also self-critical. The idea that true critique is self-criticism is then used as a tool to make clear that there’s no fundamental gap to be bridged here. The self-critical dimension makes clear the ways in which coming to share a world—learning from one’s teachers for example—is a matter of earning (shared) words. Therefore, Emersonian self-cultivation does not stand apart from the cultivation of something shared, but should be seen as a form of path towards a shared world. (shrink)

Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) has become famous, and perhaps infamous, for many reasons. Presently, he is probably most widely-known for his paintings of plants and animals in his very popular book, Art Forms in Nature, originally collected and published in 1904. However, in addition to Haeckel’s art, he is also well-known for his advocacy of Darwinism and Social Darwinism, for first coining the term ‘ecology,’ for having his work utilized by Nazi pseudo-scientists (Dombrowksi in Tech Commun Q 12:303–319, 2003), and for (...) famously (perhaps fraudulently) producing drawings of animal and human embryos so as to confirm his biogenetic law (Gould in Nat Hist 109:44–45, 2000). Something Haeckel is not as well-known for today is the fact that he seemed to be both a strenuous critic of the metaphysical and moral philosophies of Immanuel Kant and yet also something of an adherent to Kant’s aesthetic views. In terms of metaphysics and morality, Haeckel sought to exorcise Kant’s ideas as much as possible from twentieth century views on science, humanity, and nature; however, in terms of aesthetic theory, Haeckel seemed to embrace a distinctly Kantian approach to art and artworks. This essay proposes to: (1) carefully examine Haeckel’s refutations of some of Kant’s central metaphysical concepts, (2) explore some of the, arguably Kantian, assumptions underlying Haeckel’s approach to aesthetics and his artistic practice, and (3) combine these two lines of inquiry into a portrait of Haeckel’s mind as one that is conflicted about the role Kantian philosophy, and more specifically Kantian noumena, should play in twentieth century science and art. This unresolved tension in Haeckel’s mind regarding Kant’s noumenal realm is what I propose to call his ‘Kant Problem’. (shrink)

This article follows the development of Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy from his 1947 text, Humanism and Terror, through a number of essays in the Adventures of the Dialectic, to the Preface to Signs published in 1959. It shows the process by which Merleau-Ponty escaped the “grip of marxism” as a philosophy of history. It notes the link between his philosophy of history and the concrete historical events of his times, particularly the Russian Revolution and its degeneration into Stalinism. It suggests a (...) certain analogy between Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the October Revolution and Kant’s reflection on the French Revolution. The notion of the universal class of the proletariat is the guiding thread in the analyses of both Merleau-Ponty’s proximity to marxism and the process by which he frees himself from its grip. We observe the role that this concept plays in Humanism and Terror and in the essays on Weber and Lukacs in the Adventure of the Dialectic where we eventually see its dissolution. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty arrives at a new conception of historical meaning which is neither totalizing or empiricist. The paper concludes by presenting an outline of the direction that his philosophy of history took after he extricated himself from marxism. This new philosophy took the form of a critical reflection on the role of the “notion of the hero” in 20th century political philosophy in general, particularly in Heidegger and Sartre. (shrink)

Agnes Arber (1879-1960) was a British botanist who was a leading plant morphologist during the first half of the 20th century. She also wrote on the history and philosophy of botany. I argue in this article that her philosophical work on form and on how the work of the mind and the eye relate to each other in morphological research are relevant to the science of today. Arber's unusual blend of interests - in botany, history, philosophy, and art - put (...) her in a unique position to examine issues of form. Even her unorthodox ideas on evolution can now be seen as fitting in well with discussions of natural selection as the predominant engine of evolutionary change. Arber's views also throw light on present work dealing with developmental plant genetics and with the study of protein form. I will further argue that her marginal position relative to institutional science, while it may have left her vulnerable to criticism, also made possible her deep philosophical reflections on morphology. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of authority for Kant’s understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation. Beginning with the separation of the faculties of Theology and Philosophy in Conflict, it will be shown that Kant sees a clear distinction between the authority of reason and that of revelation. However, when one turns to Religion, it is also clear that Kant sees an important, perhaps necessary, relationship between the two. Drawing on a variety of texts, in particular those concerning the (...) public and private use of reason, this paper then explores the relationship between the authority of reason and that of revelation. From this discussion, several conclusions will be drawn regarding Kant’s understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation, namely that while distinct, the two are not necessarily in conflict and that, ultimately, the proper functioning of public reason must include some reference to revelation. (shrink)

The new mythology for which the German Romantic period called was not envisioned as antithetical to empiricism or experiential/experimental knowledge, but rather as emerging in dialogue with it to form a cultural foundation for such inquiry. Central to the mytho-scientific project were problematic theories of sexual division and generativity that established cultural baselines. This article examines the mythological investments of two influential thinkers of the period—Goethe and Schelling. It then analyzes Goethe’s unique merger of mythological approaches to sex and generation (...) with empirical observation in The Metamorphosis of Plants. It next traces Schelling’s expansion of Goethe’s theories of nature beyond their empirical justifications to develop a metaphysics of sexual differentiation. Finally, the article illuminates Goethe’s final reply to the sexual dynamics of Naturphilosophie at the end of his life, through the analysis of a single poem, “Finding Again,” in the collection God and World. Ultimately and in spite of its empirical commitments, Goethe’s more flexible view of sexual correlations would lose ground to the powerful metaphysical mythology of sexual opposition as both scientific and cultural bedrock. (shrink)

It might at first seem that the senses (the five traditionally recognized conduits of outer sense) would have very little to contribute to an investigation of Kant's aesthetics. Is not Kant's aesthetic theory based on a relation of the higher cognitive faculties? Much however can be revealed by asking to what degree sight is essential to aesthetic judgment (of beauty and the sublime) as Kant describes it in the 'Critique of Judgment.' Here the sublime receives particular attention.

Benoit B. Mandelbrot, when discussing the global appeal of fractal patterns and designs, draws upon examples from across numerous world cultures. What may be missed in Mandelbrot's presentation is Immanuel Kant’s precedence in recognizing this sort of widespread beauty in art and nature, fractals avant la lettre. More importantly, the idea of the fractal may itself assist the aesthetic attitude which Kantian beauty requires. In addition, from a Kantian perspective, fractal patterns may offer a source for a sense of community (...) with humanity. I close with an excursus on the more sombre note of Kantian sublimity which fractals can also present. (shrink)

This paper examines how aesthetic ideals shaped the practice of Nazi medicine. It proposes that Nazi eugenics relied on the conflation of norms of health with norms of beauty determined and performed by Nazi cultures of action. Though theories of biological holism served as vehicles of Nazi ideology, they did so contingently. The anti-totalitarian thinking of biological holist Kurt Goldstein shows that the use of biological holism to promote Nazi ideology was not inevitable. This examination of aesthetic influences on Nazi (...) medicine shows that traditionally speaking ‘non-rational’ factors shaped the Nazi biomedical program’s aims and methods. (shrink)

This paper engages Freud’s relation to Kant, with specific reference to each theorist’s articulation of the interconnections between ethics and religion. I argue that there is in fact a constructive approach to ethics and religion in Freud’s thought, and that this approach can be better understood by examining it in relation to Kant’s formulations on these topics. Freud’s thinking about religion and ethics participates in the Enlightenment heritage, with its emphasis on autonomy and rationality, of which Kant’s model of practical (...) reason is in many ways exemplary. At the same time, Freud advances Kantian thinking in certain important respects; his work offers a more somatically, socially, and historically grounded approach to the formation of rational and ethical capacities, and hence makes it more compatible with contemporary concerns and orientations that eschew the pitfalls of ahistorical idealist orientations. (shrink)

Persons are not just mechanical systems of instinctual animalistic proclivities, but also language-producing, existentially aware creatures, whose experiences and actions are drenched in subjective meaning. To understand a human being as a person is to understand him or her as a rational system that wants, fears, hopes, believes, and in other ways imbues the world with meaning, rather than just a mechanical system that is subject to the same chains of cause and effect as other animals. But contemporary personality psychology (...) has, to a great extent, focused on the behavioral side of personality, while neglecting its meaning side, failing to realize that subjective meanings are part of the very constitution rather than just causes of personality. My overarching purpose with this dissertation is, consequently, to contribute to the establishment of a genuinely non-reductive science of personality that systematically studies the systems of meaning that comprise a person’s worldview in their own right, as sources of meaning in personality. I both establish conceptual and theoretical foundations for the psychology of worldviews and present empirical research on worldviews. The conceptual and theoretical issues are addressed in the introductory chapters and the first paper. I begin by explicating a non-reductive realist philosophy of personality that steers between reductionism and social constructionism, and by suggesting that we need a more coherent understanding of personality and a richer study of it, rather than a radically new methodology. I continue by discussing the limitations of, and conceptual issues with, previous approaches to personality, and by outlining the conceptual foundations for a psychology of worldviews to remediate their weaknesses, demarcating worldview constructs as referring to presuppositions, concepts, and narrative scripts that, by working as the substrata, or background, for intentional thought, feeling, and action, form the most central sources of meaning. I continue by discussing the structure and dynamics of worldviews in terms of the relationship between innate meaning-making mechanisms and the universal features of the existential condition that they address. I conclude the introductory chapters by describing the background of the empirical research and by discussing limitations with the present thesis and directions for future theory and research. I continue, in the first paper, to argue that the study of traits and the study of worldviews form mutually irreducible parts of personality psychology and that worldviews are not inherently less universal in terms of structure, or in other ways less basic, than traits. I conclude this paper by emphasizing the need to address coherence not just in behavior, but also within worldviews and between traits and worldviews, and to complement traditional individual differences research with personalistic methodology. The empirical research is presented in the second and third papers included in this thesis. This research addresses Humanism and Normativism, which are arguably the two broadest and potentially most important worldview constructs in the research literature today, representing whether human beings are thought of as intrinsically valuable and ontologically important or as acquiring value and reality only through the attainment of external norms and ideals . Although originally thought to be opposites, previous research has suggested that they are uncorrelated. In the first empirical paper, I introduce a hierarchical model of their structure, develop scales to measure their facets, and demonstrate through confirmatory factor analysis that they are, contrary to previous wisdom, negatively related in terms of view of human nature, attitude to affect, and interpersonal attitude, but unrelated in terms of epistemology and political values. I present evidence also of discriminant and predictive validity in relation to other worldview variables, life goals, educational field, political and religious orientation, and the Big Five aspects. In the second empirical paper, I use humanism and normativism to explain the broad systems of meaning that potentially underlie, and intersect with, variables from the most important models of the underpinnings of political ideology today, through path modeling. The results suggest that humanism is related to political ideology through preference for equality, as mediated by moral concern with fairness and the avoidance of harm, emotionality, and honesty-humility, and that normativism is related to political ideology through conservative attitudes in general, as mediated by system justification, moral concern with authority, loyalty, and purity, and low openness. Both of the empirical articles provide ample evidence of broad systems of meaning cutting across different aspects of the worldview and of their explanatory power with regards to other psychological phenomena. These studies thereby help to substantiate the viability of the psychology of worldviews. (shrink)

The author presents Deluze-ian concepts and ideas in actu. The author provides explanations of their context and use.