“Dialectic” has been a matter of growing interest in contemporary philosophy. The present article analyzes dialectical methods and positions them by reference to two paradigmatic texts of German idealism and analytic philosophy, i.e. J.G. Fichte’s Science of Knowing (1804) and J. McDowell’s Mind and World. Both dialectical approaches will be interpreted with regard to their contribution in the debate on reductionism and anti-reductionism: both Fichte and McDowell claim that philosophical positions and logical terms stand in a dualistic relationship to one (...) another, on the one hand, but are separated by a gulf, on the other. I will argue that for McDowell dialectic seems to be an alternative to one-sided reductionisms as well as to normal anti-reductionistic holism. Furthermore, for Fichte dialectic is an adequate method for describing the relationship of reductionism and anti-reductionism itself. Both see in dialectic a technique for bridging the gulf between binary opposite terms of logic as well as mutually exclusive positions, such as mind and world, subject and object, or idealism and realism. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz wird die bislang kaum beachtete frühe Moralphilosophie von Max Horkheimer aus den 1930er Jahren in ein produktives Spannungsverhältnis zu den Grundannahmen des ethischen Naturalismus gesetzt. Horkheimer versteht die Moral als ein normatives Instrument, mit dem die menschliche Gattung ihr gesellschaftliches Leben zu organisieren versucht. Die natürliche Normativität der menschlichen Lebensform ist für Horkheimer selbst historisch bestimmt, als die menschliche Lebensform sich notwendig nur historisch realisieren kann. In der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist diese Normativität nach Horkheimer widersprüchlich verfasst: Einerseits (...) sollen die Menschen moralischen Normen und nicht allein ihren eigenen Interessen folgen, andererseits erfordert die bürgerliche Gesellschaft gerade das rücksichtslose Verfolgen eigener Interessen, da sonst die Selbsterhaltung der Menschen gefährdet würde. Die Auswirkungen dieser Widersprüchlichkeit werden hier anhand von drei Aspekten untersucht: die Opazität und Naturhaftigkeit der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, das Leiden der menschlichen Natur, Geschichte als Anpassungsprozess der menschlichen Natur. Abschließend wird Horkheimers Ansatz hinsichtlich seiner theoretischen Reichweite in den moralphilosophischen Diskussionen der gegenwärtigen Kritischen Theorie verortet. (shrink)

In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a bridgeconcept (...) that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

In this paper recognition is taken to be a question of social ontology, regarding the very constitution of the social space of interaction. I concentrate on the question of whether certain aspects of the theory of recognition can be translated into the terms of a socio-ontological paradigm: to do so, I make reference to some conceptual tools derived from John Searle's social ontology and Robert Brandom's normative pragmatics. My strategy consists in showing that recognitive phenomena cannot be isolated at the (...) level of human interaction, and are, rather, in part proper to animal interaction as well. Furthermore, it is argued that recognitive powers are constitutive powers more basic than deontic ones and play a role much broader than the one they in fact assume in Searle and in Brandom. (shrink)

In this article I take a closer look at Adorno's methodology, and specifically the question of how – in Adorno's view – philosophy ought to be done. In this, my aim is to see whether there might be ‘quietist’ elements in his methodological account, i.e. the meta‐philosophical position of quietism as it stands against (scientific) naturalism in recent discussions. Recent work on Adorno and classical critical theory has discussed numerous similarities and overlaps with the post‐analytical work of, e.g., John McDowell (...) and Michael Thompson. Building on this recent work, my article suggests further points of contact, by focusing on the interplay of question and answer present in both McDowell and Adorno. To do this, I first outline McDowell's version of quietism. From there, an interpretation of Adorno can proceed along the lines developed with McDowell, centering the idea of unanswerable philosophical questions that need to be treated instead of answered straightforwardly. I demonstrate the relation he draws from disappearance of questions to ‘praxis’ and suggest how this differs from McDowell yet might still be viewed as an account related to quietism. I conclude by suggesting taking up Adorno's term ‘immanent criticism’ as a methodological concept. (shrink)

The concept of natural history has received a great deal of attention in contemporary practical philosophy, especially as a result of Michael Thompson's concept of natural-historical judgments which aims to explain the normativity of the human life-form. With this concept, the norms effective in a life-form are understood as something natural and constitutive for that life-form. Although Thompson does not present a historical-philosophical model, he claims to be able to determine the normativity of the historically developing human life-form. By contrast, (...) Theodor W. Adorno developed his own concept of natural history on the one hand as an interpretative conceptual model of historical reality, on the other hand, to indicate the normativity of the natural-historical course of human history itself. The normativity of natural history that Adorno focuses on is historically and socially determined, in contrast to the categorically conceived natural normativity that is at the heart of Thompson's approach. This article analyses the similarities and differences between the two approaches in such a way that it becomes clear to what extent ethical naturalism also provides possibilities for critique that can be made fruitful for a critical theory inspired by Adorno. (shrink)

Critical theories often express scepticism towards the idea that social critique should draw on general normative principles, seeing such principles as bound to dominant conceptual frameworks. However, even the models of immanent critique developed in the Frankfurt School tradition seem to privilege principles over particular moral experiences. Discussing the place that particular moral experience has in the models of Honneth, Ferrara and Adorno, the article argues that experience can play an important negative role even for a critical theory that is (...) committed to the necessity of conceptual mediation, as moral experiences can undermine our confidence in the appropriateness of our moral concepts. Building on McDowell’s account of moral perception and Brandom’s interpretation of Hegel’s theory of experience, one can reconstruct Adorno as providing a “radically negativist” approach to immanent critique that takes particular moral experience seriously. (shrink)

I suggest that we can read Marx in the light of recent analytic, neo-Hegelian thought. I summarize the Pittsburgh School philosophers’ claims about the myth of the given, the claim that human experience is conceptual all the way out, and that we live in a space of reasons. I show how Hegel has been read in those terms, and then apply that reading of Hegel to Marx’s argument that capital is akin to what Hegel called Geist, or spirit. We can (...) understand capitalism as a space of reasons that is contradictory: while the space of reasons is supposed to make human freedom possible, our space of reasons makes freedom impossible. Reading Marx in this way is helpful, because it avoids the flaws of analytical Marxism, existentialism and structuralism. However, it raises a large problem of its own: Can the theory of the space of reasons be applied to a society that is not free of alienation? I argue that it can, but only in ways that would not satisfy the analytic neo-Hegelians themselves. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the human dimension of technology-enhanced learning; many suppositions are made about this but the amount of attention it has been given relative to that paid to technology is quite limited. It is argued that an aspect of the question that deserves more attention than it has received in the work on the application of technologies to education is epistemology on the grounds that the nature of knowledge and the general character of mind are critically important. (...) As regards epistemology this paper draws on recent developments in philosophy by John McDowell and Robert Brandom that deal with the relation of mind to world and the nature of experience. From McDowell it draws on the idea of second nature and particularly the argument that human beings acquire their cognitive capacities by initiation into language and tradition. From Brandom it draws on the idea that humans stand apart from animals and machines in that they respond to reasons as well as to causes. It is argued that the implication of these ideas for education differ radically from the pedagogic models that underpin much work on technology-enhanced learning where the suppositions about experience are quite different. Indeed the nature of knowledge is usually presumed rather than examined and often what is taken for granted is awareness as a conceptually unmediated response to the world. These questions are raised in the context of so far disappointing results of the use of technologies to enhance learning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘second nature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic nature’, in order to (...) elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘second nature’. (shrink)

In his most recent work, McDowell argues that the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism can be avoided only by an ‘equipoise’ between the objective and the subjective. However, I argue that Adorno’s ‘cognitive utopia’ is a genuine 4th option distinct from equipoise and from the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism. McDowell’s inability to acknowledge the cognitive utopia is traced to his overly abstract conception of the disenchantment of nature, in contrast to Adorno’s (...) emphasis on the domination of nature. This difference is traced to their different interpretations of Hegel. (shrink)