Critical Philosophy Research Articles

Humanist Redemption and Afterlife: The Frankfurt School in Communist Romania

Abstract This paper discusses the reception of Frankfurt School critical theory in Communist Romania. After some opening remarks concerning the relevance of this topic, Section 2 sketches the evolving political and historical contexts that circumscribed this philosophical reception. The content and configuration of the Romanian reception of critical theory is then discussed in a double sequence: first (Section 3), by surveying and analysing the main clusters of arguments developed in these texts, which are filtered and classified into four categories: a) general considerations and strategic approach to critical theory; b) positive assessments; c) philosophical critiques; d) politico-practical critiques. Then, Section 4 attempts to delineate the divergent paths adumbrated in this field of critical reception, which it illustrates through the specific authorial trajectories of the main Romanian interpreters (Tertulian, Marga and Tismăneanu). Finally, the concluding remarks are devoted to some brief comparative and historical considerations on the meaning, value and amplitude of this critical reception.

Agamben on secularization as a signature

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs Agamben’s contribution to the secularization debate. To this aim it clarifies Agamben’s determination of the category of secularization as a signature. It first presents the relevant passages on secularization from across Agamben’s corpus, placing them in the context of the classic secularization debate between Blumenberg, Schmitt and Löwith. Second, it elaborates on Agamben’s theory of the signature. Third, it proposes how we can understand secularization as a signature. Fourth, it examines the different strategic functions of secularization and profanation in Agamben’s critical philosophy. The article argues that Agamben’s account of secularization comprises two distinct levels. Agamben develops a general theory of secularization as a signature, which implies that it is an operator that orients hermeneutic understanding by referring secular elements to the discursive field of religion and theology (or vice versa), and that always performs a strategic function. To what strategic function Agamben puts secularization to use himself, corresponds to the second, particular level of Agamben’s understanding of secularization. Secularization is in Agamben’s critical project subservient to the operation of profanation. The article is in light of the secularization debate most concerned with the general level of Agamben’s account of secularization.

The Ethics of Innovations in Genomic Selection: On How to Broaden the Scope of Discussion

The use of genomic selection in agricultural animal breeding is in academic literature generally considered an ethically unproblematic development, but some critical views have been offered. Our paper shows that an important preliminary question for any ethical evaluation of (innovations in) genomic selection is how the scope of discussion should be set, that is, which ethical issues and perspectives ought to be considered. This scope is determined by three partly overlapping choices. The first choice is which ethical concepts to include: an ethical discussion of genomic selection approaches may draw on concepts central to (Anglo-Saxon) applied ethics, but some critical views have been based on concepts from critical animal studies and continental philosophy. A related choice is to what extent discussion should focus on new ethical issues raised or on existing ethical issues that will be ameliorated, perpetuated or aggravated by an innovation in genomic selection. The third choice is to treat an innovation in genomic selection either as a technique on itself or as a part of specific practices. We argue that ethical discussion should not limit attention to new issues or ignore the implications of particular ways of applying genomic selection in practice, and this has some consequences for which ethical concepts ought to be included. Limiting the scope of discussion may be defensible in some contexts, but broader ethical discussion remains necessary.

Kant's Conception of Freedom: A Developmental and Critical Analysis by Henry E. Allison

Reviewed by: Kant's Conception of Freedom: A Developmental and Critical Analysis by Henry E. Allison Timothy Aylsworth Henry E. Allison. Kant's Conception of Freedom: A Developmental and Critical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 531. Hardback, $140.00. It is difficult to overstate the importance of freedom in Kant's critical philosophy, and there are few scholars whose expertise on this subject could rival Henry E. Allison's. In this magisterial commentary, Allison meticulously chronicles the development of Kant's theory of freedom from his earliest precritical works all the way through the Metaphysics of Morals. Great care is taken to explain how and why Kant's views changed over time, and Allison provides compelling, sympathetic interpretations at every turn. The first four chapters deal with Kant's precritical writings and his lectures on metaphysics and ethics from the 1760s. The general narrative here is likely to be a familiar one for the target audience, but Allison's reconstruction of this development is rich in illuminating details. For instance, most readers will already know that Kant initially held a position akin to Wolff's compatibilism, but Allison carefully explains how Kant modified the account in response to criticisms from Crusius. In these chapters, Allison also discusses Kant's famous encounter with Rousseau and his brief (but influential) attraction to Hutchesonian sentimentalism. In addition to drawing on Kant's published works and lectures, Allison combs through Reflexionen from the "silent decade" to explain what motivated Kant's critical view of freedom. It is here that Kant begins to articulate many of the central tenets of transcendental freedom that emerge in the first Critique. The departure from Wolff becomes very clear as Kant abandons the compatibilist concept of "relative spontaneity" in favor of "absolute spontaneity"—a first beginning that begets a new causal series from itself (von selbst), independent of any external determining grounds. Of course, Kant cannot account for such an idea without the critical distinction between things in themselves and appearances. Thus, Allison turns to the first Critique in chapter 6, where he explains Kant's resolution of the apparent conflict between freedom and determinism in the Third Antinomy. So it is here, for the first time, that readers encounter Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism according to which things in themselves are to be understood as "things considered in abstraction from the temporal relations in which they stand as objects of possible experience" (254). Even readers who hold a different view of transcendental idealism will still find a great deal of common ground in Allison's compelling reconstruction of Kant's resolution of the antinomy. Toward the end of the chapter, Allison wrestles with the alleged inconsistency between Kant's discussions of practical freedom in the Canon and the Dialectic. In the Canon, practical freedom looks like an empirically knowable, compatibilist concept, but in the Dialectic it seems more like an incompatibilist notion that requires transcendental freedom as a necessary condition. Allison rejects the uncharitable "patchwork" reading, which suggests that the inconsistency is the result of Kant sloppily patching his notes together when writing these sections of the first Critique. I am inclined to agree with Allison that we should [End Page 350] avoid the patchwork reading if we can, but I was not entirely convinced by his resolution. It remained unclear to me how, on Allison's view, Kant can suggest that transcendental freedom cannot be proven by any experience while also claiming that practical freedom (which requires transcendental freedom) is cognized through experience. Chapters 7 and 8 deal with freedom as it arises in the Groundwork and the second Critique. There is far too much in these 110 pages to summarize comprehensively here, so I will highlight what I take to be the most important point. Allison once again endorses the "great reversal" interpretation, according to which Kant recognized the deduction of Groundwork III as a total failure and reversed the order of the argument in the second Critique with his infamous "fact of reason." Many commentators have adopted this interpretation, but I tend to agree with dissenters like Allen Wood and Sergio Tenenbaum, who argue that the two texts are actually consistent. It...

Kant's Theory of the Intuitive Intellect

Abstract Kant's theory of the intuitive intellect has a broad and substantial role in the development and exposition of his critical philosophy. An emphasis on this theory's reception and appropriation on the part of the German idealists has tended to divert attention from Kant's own treatment of the topic. In this essay, I seek an adequate overview of the theory Kant advances in support of his critical enterprise. I examine the nature of the intuitive intellect's object; its epistemic relation to its object; its mode of comprehension; the relationship between these cognitive elements; and I ask which minds Kant regards as intuitive intellects.

Synchronising Positive Law and Islamic Law Within a Justice Concept in Concurrent Elections 2024: From The Philosophical Perspective of Islamic Law

Synchronising Positive Law and Islamic Law Within a Justice Concept in Concurrent Elections 2024: From The Philosophical Perspective of Islamic Law

The Relationship between Moral Philosophy and Political Philosophy in William James

Abstract This review essay is occasioned by two books on the moral and political thought of William James. Sarin Marchetti’s Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James and Trygve Throntveit’s William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic pose crucial questions for how we are to frame, interpret, and assess the philosophical contributions of William James more than one hundred years after his passing. In offering interpretations of James as contributing to social and political questions through his moral philosophy, both books raise important questions that bear on contemporary debates in political philosophy between ideal theorists and political realists. If ideal theorists put moral philosophy first and extract a political vision therefrom, political realists seek to begin theoretical reflection in the specifically political circumstances of our lives. This review essay is centered on the following question: through which of these two lenses should the writings of William James be received?

The Educational Philosophy of Kant and Iqbal: A Comparative Study

The main purpose of this study is to compare the educational philosophies of two great philosophers namely, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) a German philosopher of the 18th century, and Allama Iqbal (1877-1938) 20th-century philosopher from the Indo-Pak subcontinent. Both came from two different periods with their respective social, cultural and educational background but occupy a unique place in their respective areas of influence in the modern, western, and eastern philosophical worlds. Kant’s worldview and educational thought are based on the ideas of rationalists and empiricists. While Iqbal’s educational ideas are based on idealism and spiritualism. Kant’s philosophy is known as critical philosophy and is blended with experience and reason. While Iqbal’s philosophy is based on the concept of self and is blended with oriental, western, and spiritual values. Both worked for the progress of humanity and considered education as the main weapon for the upliftment of the nation. They insisted that education should be imparted according to the needs of society. Kant believed that human beings are unique existence and need moral education but held the view that religion as a theology should not be taught to young people while on the other hand Iqbal also stresses moral education along with religious education. Hence through this paper, an attempt has been made to explore and analyze the educational philosophies of Kant and Iqbal and find out how much there are similarities and differences between them. The nature of the present research is qualitative and the researcher has analyzed both primary and secondary sources related to the theme through the approach of content analysis. Keywords: Transcendental, Rationalists, Art, Ego, creativity, moral duty, self-realization.

The Unity of Space in Kant’s Pre-Critical Philosophy

Much recent attention has been paid to Kant’s account of the unity of space in the Critique of Pure Reason, not least because of the significant implications of that view for other key critical-period doctrines. But far less attention has been paid to the development of Kant’s account of the unity of space. This paper aims to offer a systematic account of Kant’s pre-critical account of the unity of space. On the view presented herein, Kant’s early account of the unity of space is deeply rooted in his pre-critical cosmological views. In particular, I argue that Kant sees the unity of space as grounded in the cosmological unity of the world of substances, which is itself rooted in the divine conservation of all substances in relations of mutual causal dependence. I contend that the seeds of this view are present in the late 1740s and 1750s, but that this view receives its fullest and most complete expression in the 1770 Inaugural Dissertation. The final section of the paper considers the fate of Kant’s pre-critical account of the unity of space. I contend that the theory is excluded from the Critique of Pure Reason in light of the strict epistemological strictures adopted in that text. But considerable textual evidence shows that Kant continues to aver the theory throughout the 1770s and 1780s in the looser epistemic context of his lectures. I contend, then, that this theory is not abandoned at all. Rather, like Kant’s 1763 proof of the existence of God, it is epistemically demoted: it is Kant’s preferred view, but one that falls short of the demanding epistemic standards of the critical philosophy.

From the Boundary of the World to the Boundary of Reason: The First Antinomy and the Development of Kant’s Critical Philosophy

From the Boundary of the World to the Boundary of Reason: The First Antinomy and the Development of Kant’s Critical Philosophy

Transcendental idealism as formal idealism

AbstractTranscendental idealism is the basic worldview shaping Kant's critical philosophy, but its proper interpretation is enormously contested. I identify five constraints on an adequate interpretation, which collectively stand in apparent tension. These serve to highlight internal difficulties of the view itself, and also to reveal serious challenges for both the more standard phenomenalist and deflationary interpretations, and newer “moderate metaphysical” approaches. Difficulty centers on how to reconcile Kant's widespread claims that things in themselves are identical to appearances, in some sense, with his equally widespread insistence that they are (and must be) non‐identical. I suggest that Kant's view must have been that the objects of knowledge are (strictly) partially mind‐dependent, and that the Kantian hylomorphic idea of formal idealism can explain this partial mind‐dependence. The result points toward an anti‐metaphysical interpretation of Kantian idealism, according to which the metaphysical question of identity between things in themselves and appearances should be rejected as illegitimate, rather than answered.

FILOSOF A PEDAGOG KULTURY SERGEJ HESSEN A IDEA UNIVERZITY

This analytical study is dedicated to notable Russian philosopher in exile and theoretical pedagogue of culture Sergei Iosifovich Gessen (1887-1950), who is a somewhat forgotten personality in Czech pedagogy today. It aims to elaborate on those of Hessen's ideas which are at the heart of his concept of pedagogy and of the university as an institution, and which can provide an important frame of reference for the criticism of today’s instrumental approach to education and university reform. Gessen is presented as an ever-inspiring, timeless thinker who developed his philosophical anthropology and general theory of education on the principles of neo-Kantian critical philosophy, and as a representative of humanist educational ideals. The analysis is supplemented by a contradictory perception of Gessen's legacy in the Czech pedagogical environment, which has been negatively impacted by the social and political conflicts of the 20th century. The study employs theoretical analysis of primary and secondary sources, as well as hermeneutic-interpretive methods.

The role of metacognition and motivated reasoning in the response of psychologists to philosophical criticism.

The role of metacognition and motivated reasoning in the response of psychologists to philosophical criticism.

The Question Answered: What is Kant’s ‘Critical Philosophy’? (Translated by Alexey Zhavoronkov)

This paper answers the question, what is Kant’s ‘Critical Philosophy’? The answer is not provided by a bibliography of Kant’s main works, nor by his transcendental idealism. The answer consists in Kant’s critique of our human capacity to judge and of those rational principles by which we can properly judge matters accurately and cogently. To show this, three key features of Kant’s critique of rational judgment are examined: Five constitutive characteristics of our human capacity to judge (§2), two basic theses of Kant’s Critical Philosophy (§3) and a table of basic systematic questions and their Critical answers (§4). This conspectus is philosophically significant because it clearly identifies Kant’s Critical method and its key considerations, which continue to be widely neglected when considering philosophical method (§5).

The relevance of J.G.Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (towards the 260th anniversary of the thinker’s birth)

260 years since the birth of Fichte give a good reason to turn to his Wissenschaftslehre, which, together with Kant’s critical philosophy, is a bridge from the past to the future state of philosophical and scientific culture. The first and second parts of the article explore the little-known to Russian historians of philosophy controversy about the spirit and letter of Kant’s teaching, which flared up at the end of the 18th century in Germany and had a discrepancy between Kant’s intention to turn metaphysics into a science and the negative result of all three of his “Critics” in this point. In a dispute with Reinhold, Kreuzer, Schulze (Enesidem), Schmid and Krug, who interpreted Kant’s critical philosophy as based on sensory-rational experience, Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling and Hegel acted as a united front on the side of Fichte. Their consolidation was needed in order, in the struggle against the quasi-philosophy of their time, to support the movement started by Kant and continued by Fichte to reveal the basis of experience, neutralizing dogmatic and skeptical conclusions from the naive-realistic theory of knowledge. In the third part of the article, the reason for this instructive controversy is clarified and it is shown that the innovations of the late period of Fichte’s work do not concern the monistic principle of Wissenschaftslehre, but affect that has become negative the thinker’s attitude to the history of philosophy. It is concluded that the need to overcome Fichte’s ahistorism does not detract, but, on the contrary, only increases the relevance of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre as one of the most important moments of the historical development of the logical method.

Critique in the Age of Indifference

In After Finitude, Meillassoux asks an epoch-defining question: how can we criticize both ideological dogmatism and skeptical fanaticism if the rise of skeptical fanaticism is an effect of the Kantian critical philosophy one must employ against ideological dogmatism? Meillassoux's answer is to argue in favor of thought's ability to access the absolute necessity of contingency. Agamben and Laruelle give an alternative answer. Although very different in style and argument, both aim to disqualify fanatical positions by showing how "the belief that belief is all there is" is not all there is because of the contingent nature of thought about the real. I will argue that while pursuing logics of disqualification, all three thinkers nonetheless employ arguments that render positive claims that sit uncomfortably within their respective systems. The upshot is that the transcendental gesture of critical philosophy—what are the conditions of our positive claims about thought and the world—is halted by an uncritical appeal to the condition of all conditions; intellectual intuition in Meillassoux and an indifferent thought/real in Agamben and Laruelle. But what options remain, given that the problem of critique in an age of indifference is a problem that critical philosophy itself has created? The task, I will argue, is to express the transcendental conditions of what we know about the world and how we know what we know about the world in a manner that retains the contingency of both. But are there variants of contemporary thought that can express the contingency of the real and of thought while remaining within the transcendental apparatus providing the necessary criteria for the challenge of both ideological dogmatism and skeptical fanaticism? I shall bring the argument to a close by suggesting that two such variants are available—transcendental naturalism and transcendental aestheticism—and that the latter provides a secure but non-dogmatic ground for critique in an age of indifference.

Poetry and Survival

I propose a critique of Heidegger’s poetics, and show that poetic critique of Heidegger is also philosophical critique on Lévinasian lines. I identify an obsessional erasure of absence in Heidegger’s poetics, a neglect of the immemorial other. Lévinas frames this critique through Valéry’s Eupalinos, a dialogue of an immemorial Socrates, in Limbo after his own death, praising architecture over his own, lost, philosophy. Separating poetics from ontology, Lévinas’s immemorial acknowledges irrecuperable traces, murmurs, or echoes of alterity; poetry, as commemoration, marks the distance between loss and absence. This contrasts with Heidegger’s eulogy of Max Scheler and its echo in the Gedachtes, metaphysical (“metontological”) and poetic monuments that seek an incompletable divorce from sensation and persons. I present Mark Doty’s elegy Atlantis as an illustration of Lévinas’s central philosophical critique of Heidegger’s thinking of death and persons. Atlantis embodies the immemorial; architecture alive with sound, an impossible city populated by absence.

The pedagogical teaching of Immanuel Kant in the light of his philosophical anthropology

Introduction. The humanistic understanding of the goals and objectives of upbringing and education presupposes the expediency and fruitfulness of the fundamental idea of the comprehensive and harmonious development of human. The task of forming a personality comes to the fore here, and not just transferring a certain amount of knowledge and skills to a student. One of the founders of this approach in upbringing and education is Immanuel Kant (1724–1824), which makes the analysis of his philosophical and pedagogical views relevant. The object of study in the article is the critical philosophy he created in unity with other parts of his system, and the subject is his pedagogical legacy. The purpose of the work is to analyze the main provisions of the concept of upbringing and education of Kant in the light of the project of philosophical anthropology developed by him, to determine the relationship between his pedagogy and anthropology. Materials and methods. The general basis of the study was the method of philosophical and anthropological reconstruction and the method of content-semantic interpretation, through which the analysis of the pedagogy of the German thinker was carried out. The work also used the modeling method and the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. Research results. Kant created pedagogical doctrine on the basis of the doctrine of human, the essence of which lies in the reason. The philosopher saw the rationale for the need for upbringing and education in morality. The goal of the development of society is the moral improvement of mankind on the basis of the development of abilities given by nature in the individual. Schooling refers to physical upbringing and involves the development of bodily properties and mental abilities of individuals; it is aimed at acquiring knowledge, developing skills and acquiring skills. Education refers to practical upbringing; it is aimed at the development of morality and the spiritual world of the individual. The main goal of upbringing is the formation of a person as a rationally thinking and freely acting member of society. Therefore, upbringing, together with care and discipline, includes education and training. The task of school-mechanical education is the acquisition of skills useful for life, the task of pragmatic education is the achievement of rationality, the task of moral education is the formation of morality. Conclusion. Contained in the three “Critiques”, the ideal of “educational human”, as a comprehensive and harmonious moral personality, is based on his understanding as a rational, free and creative being. The programs of transcendental anthropology, moral anthropology and empirical anthropology developed by Kant were implemented by him in the conceptual models of “physiological human science” (the study of what nature makes of a person) and “pragmatic human science” (the study of what he, as a free being, makes of himself), which are steps on the way to building a holistic doctrine of human. But the philosophical anthropology of the Koenigsberg scientist is not a “concrete human science”, but rather his idea, a project where the doctrine of upbringing and education in individual development and in the course of social history serves as the basis for meaningful knowledge about a human as a representative of the genus Homo sapiens with reason.

The uses of polemic in Ancient Philosophy

ABSTRACT: Polemic in ancient philosophy must be understood in terms of the evolution of critical rationality from the Presocratics until the Hellenistic schools. I argue that it takes three forms, of varying importance at different times, that both helped to define philosophy as a distinct social practice and methodologically drove its internal evolution. These forms are criticism of non-philosophical ignorance, attacks on alternative cultural practices, and technical criticisms of other philosophers and schools of thought. Technical criticisms only become more prominent than polemic against ignorance and alternative sources of expertise with the evolution of oral dialectic, while subsequently in the imperial era a textual approach to philosophy subordinated criticisms of other schools to the common rhetorical norms of literary and historiographical polemic.

Practical direction toward education model in critical rasionalist philosophy

Practical direction toward education model in critical rasionalist philosophy