Dialectic Of Reason Research Articles

Понятие метафизического языка и политика перевода у П.А. Вяземского

The article focuses on the notion of metaphysical language which appears periodically in some texts by P. Vyasemsky and A. Pushkin (as well as E. Baratynsky) through the 1820s and up to 1831, when Vyasemsky publishes his translation of Benjamin Constant’s novel “Adolphe.” We attempt to elucidate this rather vague and ambiguous notion, which functions in Constant and Vyasemsky as a product of the “dialectics of reason and emotions.” The language that expresses this dialectics would be metaphysical insofar as it conveys the “truth.” Less poetical than practical, this language of “contemporary” metaphysics aims at solving political, philosophical and military tasks and belongs to newborn Russian elite, both national and cosmopolitan. Such a language could be formed only by confronting other languages, i. e. by means of “translation” which presupposes a deconstruction of semantic and syntactical structures of the mother tongue.

Vernünfteln

AbstractKant attempted to answer the question of whether immoral actions result from a mere lack or failing of reason, or whether they consist in a certain form of rationality, i. e. in immoral reasons. The paper addresses this question by concentrating on Kant’s conception of “rationalising” (“Vernünfteln”). This concept is the key for understanding how immoral actions can be based on reasons and are thus imputable. According to Kant, by rationalising, the moral agent constructs a formal coherence of his maxims that pretends to conform with the moral law but actually follows motives such as self-love or self-conceit. This activity of constructing a rational illusion, which derives from a dialectic of reason, can be imputed to the moral agent. Finally, the paper addresses strategies that Kant develops in order to circumvent the rationalising trap.

Kreines on the Problem of Metaphysics in Kant and Hegel

AbstractThis article offers a discussion of James Kreines’s book Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal. While broadly sympathetic to Kreines’s ‘concept thesis’ as a conceptual realist account of Hegel, the article contrasts two Kantian arguments for transcendental idealism to which Hegel’s position may be seen as a response—the argument from synthetic a priori knowledge and the argument from the dialectic of reason—and explores the implications of Kreines’s commitment to the latter over the former.

Emotions and politics

The theory of affections has seen a renewed conceptual interest both in the role played in the formulation of power structures in modernity, which remains important in understanding the present form of Nation State, and in the possibility to formulate a new interpretation of the social relationship useful to surpass the classical psychological lectures. We aim here to reconsider an affect which in contemporary language is tinged with theological nuances: the affect of fides. We can translate the word using the modern terms of trust and belief, but also loyalty. The choice of this particular affect is due to the centrality that, in our view, it occupies in modern contract theories, and to its ability to reflect, with its multiple conceptual stratification, different perspectives and political proposals. In order to clarify the terms of this discussion, we will henceforth use the term fides, alongside with different meanings which overlap within it, to illustrate two different and divergent proposals that have emerged during the seventeenth century. We consider, in particular, the thought of Spinoza opposed to the social contract theories by Hobbes in order to understand the modern theoretical break with previous political concepts; in particular, we will briefly analyze the different conceptions of Societas civilis that emerge from this division. The background of these considerations is the analysis of modern philosophy‘s use of the theory of affections. The XVII century witnessed the rise of social contract theory. It draws on the concept of the individual, conceived as isolated from others, located in the original state of nature (pre-social), unable to develop its rational part. It is therefore a victim of its own passions, but even more so those of others. The dominant sentiments emerging in Hobbes‘ Leviathan are therefore those of awe and fear. They derive from the constant uncertainty of one‘s power and strength; the uncertainty of being able to maintain everyone‘s domination over others and thus to suffer in turn the others‘ power. From the necessity to control these emotions in a rational way emerges the contractual proposal to transfer the power to an authority (singular or plural) whom all subjects must obey. Philosophical movements such as neostoicism and philosophical works such as Les passions de l‘ame by Descartes, testify in their „rationalist“ proposal the need to keep a constant control over the passions. They open the way for the famous dialectics of reason and passion, a central theme throughout the Enlightenment. This need to dominate the passions arouses from the complex Cartesian metaphysical theory and from its conception of the individual always split between body and soul, reason and instinct. These two models are the ones which have prevailed; this conception of individual and society and this approach to the passions still dominate common sense when we talk about human affections. The paper follows an itinerary across three authors of the modern age. At first we try to delineate the theory of affection by Descartes, and the birth of the dichotomy of body and soul through the focus of two of the most important works by Descartes: Méditations métaphysiques and Traité sur les passions de l‘âme. Then, by analyzing the works of Hobbes (Leviathan), and Spinoza (Ethic and Political treatise) we will describe in which terms the subject carrying his affective baggage interacts in a political space.

Dialectics of Reason and Unreason

Dialectics of Reason and Unreason

Wittgenstein, Kant and Husserl on the dialectical temptations of reason

There is an interesting sense in which philosophical reflection in the transcendental tradition is thought to be unnatural. Kant claims that metaphysical speculation is as natural as breathing and that transcendental critique is necessary to prevent reason from lapsing into a natural dialectic of dogmatism and skepticism. Husserl argues that the critique of theoretical reason is grounded upon a transcending of the natural attitude in which we are at first unjustifiably and naively directed toward objects as separate from consciousness. A perfectly sensible question arises: Why do we need to effect a change in our natural cognitive orientation to both ourselves and the world in order to know each respectively? Why does a sort of dialectical self-deception come so naturally to us, and why is an effort so great as to seem unnatural necessary for philosophical self-knowledge? The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to argue that seemingly compulsory philosophical assumptions are inevitably generated from within reason itself and thus remain resistant to a complete therapy; second, to show how Kant diagnoses reason’s dialectical tendencies as inevitable and ever-recurring without transcendental vigilance; finally, to argue that the early Husserl’s appropriation of a transcendental epistemology is influenced decisively by Kant’s transcendental reflection in order to combat the reigning naturalism of his day. My overall claim is that by thematizing the natural dialectic of reason best articulated in the first Critique, we can disclose the Kantian way in which Husserl conceives of the natural temptation to naturalize consciousness. We first turn, however, to an influential contemporary account of a decidedly non-transcendental philosophy, what has come to be known as “therapeutic Wittgensteinianism.”

Comments on John Friedmann's ‘The dialectic of reason’

Comments on John Friedmann's ‘The dialectic of reason’

Comments on John Friedmann's ‘The dialectics of reason’

Comments on John Friedmann's ‘The dialectics of reason’

The dialectic of reason*

The dialectic of reason*

Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason

Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason

Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason

Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason. By David Ingram, Yale University Press, 1987 263 pages $24 50. Julius J. Jackson, Jr. Julius J. Jackson, Jr. California State UniversitySan Bernardino Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LVI, Issue 3, Fall 1988, Pages 581–583, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LVI.3.581 Published: 01 October 1988