Transcendental Philosophy Research Articles

Friedrich Schleiermachers Monologen und der Athenaeums-Kreis Wirkungsabsicht und Wirkungswandel einer frühromantischen Schrift

Abstract Schleiermacher’s anonymous Soliloquies of 1800 were written as a Supplement to his likewise anonymous book On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers of 1799. They are addressed to the circle of intellectuals around the early Romantic periodical Athenaeum, to the „Holy family“ (Friedrich Schlegel), and moreover to the despisers of Transcendental philosophy whose state of discussion is reflected. Thus they belong to the history of modern individual thought. The form of the book follows the contemporary imitation of classical poetic form (Hölderlin) which was prevalent among the Athenaeum Circle as well. Schleiermacher discusses the separation of philosophy and life (Fichte), the forming one’s self and the forming of artistic works (Goethe), i. e. the dichotomy of individuality and artistry. He confesses himself not to be an artist. Schleiermacher’s intention in Soliloquies was to give philosophical idealism a personal depth beyond intellectual speculation. Looking back in 1803 he realizes, in the draft of a poem, that he had idealized his empirical self in his literary self. Except for a few remarks by Schlegel, who at first did not umask the author‘s anonymity, there was no reaction whatever from the Athenaeum Circle. Soliloquies later became a popular Protestant book for spiritual edification.

The Origin and Validity of Root Concepts, the Place of General Logic Within Transcendental Logic and Kant’s Critique of Dogmatism: A Response to My Critics

Abstract In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023), I argue that the first Critique is not only a ‘propaedeutic’ to metaphysics, but actually already establishes parts of metaphysics. These parts belong to what Kant calls transcendental philosophy. Additionally, I also provide an account of Kant’s critique of dogmatism and Wolff as its main defender. In this paper, I take up Luigi Filieri’s and Davide Dalla Rosa’s invitation to further develop my characterization of transcendental philosophy and I respond to Michael Walschots’s objections against my interpretation of Kant’s critique of Wolff’s dogmatism.

Shame in the Philosophical Narrative of the Pour-Soi: On Sartre’s Being and Nothingness

Abstract This paper discusses the relevance and the conceptual role, within Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, of a fleeting impression of shame that reverts the threat of solipsism looming over any project of transcendental philosophy. In reading Sartre’s masterpiece, I underscore two methodological points that tend to be bypassed in standard interpretations and lengthy discussions of the book. On the one hand, I safeguard the strictly descriptive core of Sartre’s presentation of the impression of shame and what it reveals about the formal structures of the (pre-reflective) cogito, as Sartre understands it. On the other hand, my analysis explores the different phases of the (conceptual) narrative of the For-Itself, which Sartre inherits from the Idealist tradition in modern philosophy and applies to the concreteness of a phenomenological description of the main stages of one’s experience of the outside world.

New Explorations into the Thing-in-Itself

In response to the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, Immanuel Kant put forward a transcendental philosophy which distinguished between the appearance and the thing-in-itself (das Ding an sich), in the belief that people can only know appearances, but not thingsin- themselves. The fact that contemporary philosophy has gone far beyond transcendental philosophy can be seen clearly in the following respects: the response to the Scientific Revolution; the theory of primary and secondary qualities; the two concepts of the thing-in-itself; and how to know the thing-in-itself. In order to deepen the discussion of the thing-in-itself, it is necessary to introduce probing new questions and attempt to elucidate a switching theory of reality that distinguishes between the meaning-impoverished thing-in-itself and the meaning-rich thing-in-itself, and advocates placing the focus of philosophical thinking on the latter. Basing ourselves on the switching theory of reality and the concept of perspectival totality that it implies allows us to better understand man’s place in the universe and the mission of philosophy in the post-metaphysical era.

The Transcendental Grounds of Novalis’ Conception of Life as Poetical Work

Abstract The aim of the present paper is to show Novalis’ complete belonging to the history of transcendental philosophy by bringing out the connection between his conception of poetry and the issue of transcendental imagination in Kant and Fichte. Given that solving this problem is the main issue around which Novalisian thought is structured, an attempt is made to consider the writing style adopted by the author as necessary to fulfill this task, and not as an arbitrary rhetorical choice. The connection between poetry and philosophy is then explored in the practical role it has to play among human beings, namely, that of revealing the meaning of the whole reality as a manifestation of the absolute. Thus, life itself is properly displayed by the singular existences as absolute creativity, such as that of poetical creations.

S.L. Frank on the Path to Social Philosophy: Experience of Comparative Analysis: G. Simmel, E. Husserl, M. Scheler

The article discusses the evolution of the views of S.L. Frank (1877–1950) on society and culture up until he created a completed socio-philosophical doctrine in 1929. A comparative textologically substantiated analysis of his views with the views of G. Simmel, E. Husserl, M. Scheler is carried out. The author shows that Frank, who adhered to psychologism in his methodology until 1915, makes a choice in favor of Neoplatonism, the latest form of which he finds in Husserl’s transcendental philosophy. The author believes that the concepts of Frank’s social philosophy were formed, among other things, under the influence of G. Simmel’s principles of “philosophical sociology”, E. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, and his philosophy of social cognition is surprisingly close to M. Scheler’s phenomenological sociology.

Kant’s Transcendentalism as Metaphysics of Possible Experience and its Realistic Interpretation in Analytical Philosophy

In the “Critique of Pure Reason” and subsequent “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics...”, “Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science”, “Opus Postumum” Kant develops one of the modes of his transcendentalism, the metaphysics of possible experience, whose task is to study the transcendental conditions for the possibility of our (cognition), which, according to Kant, has a priori character. P. Strawson calls this mode of metaphysics ‘ descriptive metaphysics ’ and connects it with the analyzing the ‘conceptual structure’ of our thinking about the world. The contemporary realistic trend (primarily within the framework of the analytical philosophical tradition) in the interpretation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy is associated with the modern theory of “two aspects” (80s of the 20th century), which replaced the classical theory of “two objects/worlds” (compare also with the opposition “ theory of appearance vs. theory of appearances ”). Within the framework of this theory, the Kantian ‘appearance’ receives an objectified status, it is not our mental representation, but corresponds (as its signs) to really existing things, or Kantian ‘objects of experience’. The article traces the formation of the historical and conceptual background of the ‘ metaphysics of experience ’ (H. Paton's original expression). Historically, the metaphysics of experience inherits the neo-Kantian approach to interpreting Kant's transcendentalism as a ‘theory of experience’ (H. Cohen, E. Cassirer), then it develops in logical positivism/empiricism (H. Reichenbach, R. Carnap; further in post-posivivism: the theory of I. Lakatos and T. Kuhn), analytical philosophy of science (W. Sellars, G. Buchdal, H. Putnam), and at present the metaphysics of experience is developing in a number of contemporary works of an analytical orientation (P. Strawson, K. Ameriks, L. Allais and etc.).

Friedrich Jacobi: Only Madman Can Be Follower of Kant!

Friedrich Jacobi (1743-1819) is known mainly as a representative of the “philosophy of feeling and faith” and as one of the first critics of Kant, who drew attention to the fundamental contradiction in his system: without the concept of “thing in itself” (or “thing in oneself”) it is impossible to enter into his “Critique of Pure Reason”, but it is equally impossible to remain in it with this concept. The consistent development of the transcendental philosophy system leads to the elimination of its own initial, fundamental premise. The discovery of this contradiction and the indication of its significance for the evaluation of critical philosophy was often seen as almost the only contribution of Jacobi to world philosophy. In the historical and philosophical literature, the opinion prevails is that Jacobi, by and large, simply did not understand Kant and was in comparison with him, just a “grumpy scoundrel” (Heinrich Heine) and a “lower monad” (Kuno Fischer). This pejorative assessment significantly simplifies and distorts both Jacobi’s philosophy and Jacobi’s actual attitude towards Kant, which was not so unambiguous. It should be considered in a much broader historical and problematic context. The study briefly examines the history of the long and difficult relationship between the “privileged heretic” and the “gray eminence” of the German philosophical classics with the creator of the transcendental philosophy system. The main directions of a deeply thought-out and well-founded serious criticism of Kant’s philosophy (i.e. its inconsistency, idealism, rational intellectualism, subjectivism, “speculative egoism”, etc.) are outlined and analyzed from the positions of radical realism, common sense, Christian faith, metaphysical “sense of the supersensible”, direct knowledge of the most important truths for a person, the absolute values of life, moral intuition, freedom, and dignity of the individual.

The Systematic Unity of the Theoretical and Axiotic in Salomon Maimon’s Late Philosophy

By a close reading of Salomon Maimon’s 1794 Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking, this article shows, first, how Maimon radically criticized his previous metaphysical systems while painstakingly reestablishing Kantian transcendental philosophy on a theory of reflexive cognition. Second, it shows how he employed this theory to ground innovative accounts of both formal and transcendental logic, including a reformulation of Kant’s schematism. Third, it shows how he employed it to ground his axiotic philosophy. Specifically, he argued that his reflexive theory of cognition constituted the necessary condition for the theories of Kantian morality, natural rights, works of art, and finally for a metaphysics according to which God creates the world ex nihilo. Maimon’s achievement is impressive and unique. It is a theory of the systematic unity of theoretical and axiotic philosophy that rivals other Enlightenment systems and, if anything, anticipates later works of Hans Wagner and Werner Flach.

Schooling Related Challenges Faced by Displaced High School Students. The Case of Olposimoru Forest Evictees in Narok County, Kenya

Internal displacement is one of the most critical humanitarian issues of current times. The purpose of this research is to investigate the challenges experienced by displaced high school students while schooling as well as the role of the school community in assisting the displaced student to continue in schooling. The objective is this study was to investigate the physical, social, emotional and financial challenges faced by internally displaced high school students as they experienced schooling as well the psycho social support accorded to the students in order to continue with schooling. This study was guided by Phenomenology theory. Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) is widely regarded as the founder of phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy of consciousness. It’s the careful description of experiences in the manner in which they are experienced by the subjects. It’s an inductive descriptive approach that focuses on understanding the response of the whole human beings not just understanding specific parts or behavior. It endeavors to describe an experience as it is lived by the person. Sample size of 96 students was sampled through purposive sampling technique. The participants included displaced high school students, teachers and Principals. The data instruments included questionnaires and semi- structured interviews. The quantitative data was analyzed and presented in frequency distribution tables and percentages. Qualitative data was organized, coded and analyzed based on emerging thematic topics according to the objectives. The study found out that displaced high school students have several schooling challenges in addition to the normal learning challenges facing un-displaced students. Those interviewed agreed that displaced students had the challenges of financial, psychological and social which must be addressed by educational stakeholders. Though the school were trying to alleviate the challenges faced by displaced student, the support provided was not ...

감수성의 통합과 통각의 초월적 통합

Immanuel Kant argued that the object does not represent the state of the thing-in-itself, but becomes a phenomenon constructed by human subjectivity in general, and this is called the Copernican revolution. Kant is a philosopher representing German Idealism, followed by Bradley and Bergson. In the meantime, it has been assumed that Eliot’s core poetics developed from the cognitive framework of Bergson or Bradley: the concept of flux that grasps the time of the past, present, and future as an indivisible continuum in mutually organic relationships, immediate experience, historical consciousness, Impersonality, and unification of sensitivity, etc. in “Tradition and Individual Talent,” “Hamlet,” and “Metaphysical Poets.” However, in the “Report on Kant’s Categories” submitted by Eliot to a philosophy class at Harvard University in Mar. 2013, it can be confirmed that Eliot was already aware of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Eliot’s unification of sensibility, which represents an experience in which, intellect and sensibility are unified, is nothing other than Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception.

Aesthetic Experience and Empathy in Vasily Sesemann’s Phenomenological Aesthetics

ABSTRACTVasily Sesemann’s aesthetics is a transcendental philosophy that seeks to answer the question of how an experience of beauty is possible. Sesemann insists that aesthetics should focus on the study of the aesthetic object itself, and through it go to the problematics of the act of perception and creativity. Sesemann states that not only the relationship between the work of art and the perceiver is important in order to understand the aesthetic object, but also the relationship between the work of art and the creator. The aesthetic object in its sedimented form not only retains indications of the act of creation, but also makes demands on the perceiving subject. Aesthetic objects are sedimented passive structures that can be activated by the performative actions of the perceiver when she discovers the appropriate way of perception. Sesemann, like Moritz Geiger, claims that aesthetics is impossible without an analysis of feelings. He, like Geiger, recognizes the importance of empathy in aesthetic experience. However, Sesemann develops the concept of aesthetic empathy using Max Scheler’s arguments. Empathy is necessary, because the perceiver must be able to understand expressions. The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenological aspects of Vasily Sesemann’s aesthetics. Firstly, this paper analyzes the Sesemann’s phenomenology of aesthetic experience. Secondly, it shows that the analysis performed by Sesemann demonstrates why empathy plays a leading role in aesthetic experience.

Fichte’s formal logic

Fichte’s Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre 1794 is one of the most fundamental books in classical German philosophy. The use of laws of thought to establish foundational principles of transcendental philosophy was groundbreaking in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and is still crucial for many areas of theoretical philosophy and logic in general today. Nevertheless, contemporaries have already noted that Fichte’s derivation of foundational principles from the law of identity is problematic, since Fichte lacked the tools to correctly present the formal parts of Foundations. In this paper, however, we argue that Fichte’s approach intuitively offers an important contribution to transcendental philosophy, and especially to philosophy of logic. We first point out the difficulties of Fichte’s logic in the Foundations and improve it in a second part on the basis of a formal system in which both propositional logic and syllogistic are combined.

Bewußtseinslust. Das freie Spiel der Vermögen in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft als transzendentales Verhältnis

Kant´s critical philosophy as a whole operates on the condition of possibility that the faculties of pure reason can be isolated analytically in order to evaluate them, while at the same time they work together in various effective forms of inter-play. As one of these forms, Kant in the Critique of the Power of Judgment introduces the "free play of imagination and understanding", which plays an important role in setting together the four moments of the aesthetic judgement. Within the last two decades or so it has been discussed widely how this cooperation between these two faculties works, but it barely has been reflected on the question how to address the "free play" properly in terms of a methodological classification. This paper follows the various contexts in which the "free play" is referred to, focusses primarily on the dysfunctional cases in which the cooperation between the two faculties fails or comes to a halt and thus evaluates the basic structure of the "free play" under the perspective of theoretical technique on the horizon of transcendental philosophy. The aim is to eventually propose a more precise title of the free play or alternatively give a reason why such a labelling could not be possible after all.

The Impact of Transcendentalism on Henry David Thoreau’s Perspectives on Consumerist Principles

The principal objective of this investigation was to explore the impact of the philosophy of transcendentalism on Henry David Thoreau’s perspectives on consumerist principles as described in a Life without Principle. In this study, the impact of transcendentalism was examined through the lenses of industrialization, consumerism, and capitalism. The transcendentalist elements of individualism, denouncing large institutions, refuge in nature, rejection of conformity, and free religious practice were analyzed to determine the impact the philosophy had on Henry David Thoreau. By analyzing industrialization through the transcendentalist lens, it became clear Thoreau rejected environmental degradation and strict religious rules. The negative impacts of the materialistic mindset, historically heightened by the Gold Rush, and social conformity became evident through the study of consumerism. Additionally, instrumental reasoning and political atomism espoused in the economic ideology of capitalism were rejected by Thoreau. This study provides evidence that transcendentalist elements led Thoreau to value nature, reject large societal institutions and collectivization, and conclude that consumerism promoted meaningless purchasing cycles.

A Philosophical Explanation for the Islamization of Philosophy: How Can Mullā Ṣadrā’s Transcendent Philosophy Contribute to the Islamization of Philosophy in Iran?

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates the potentials of Mullā Şadrā’s philosophy to explain the possibility of the Islamization of philosophy. This contributes to a more general, yet controversial, project in post-revolutionary Iran, namely the Islamization of knowledge, especially in the humanities. If there would be a mechanism through which Islamization of philosophy – as a historical example and as a field of knowledge that provides theoretical grounds of other humanities – can be plausibly explained, then one might think of Islamizing the humanities, as well. One famous explanation in Iran is based on the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification. It explains how a philosopher is permitted to use the Islamic content in the context of discovery – not justification – and how this helps to Islamize philosophy. In this article, we claim a new explanation which is based on Mullā Şadrā’s transcendent philosophy. Such a philosophical explanation not only acknowledges using the Qur’an and authentic narrations in the context of discovery but also necessitates involving revelation as a philosophical criterion in the context of justification and a highly valid epistemic source in producing the new philosophical content. This provides a strong account of the Islamization of philosophy.

A Commentary on Kant’s Introduction of the Concept of Transcendental Deduction

The aim of this paper is to show the place of legal analogy in Kant’s introduction of the concept of transcendental deduction. After remarks on Kant’s use of the term “deduction,” transcendental deduction is characterised as the method justifying necessary statements about objects. It is argued that this method has normative elements. This leads to asserting similarities between epistemic obligation and legal obligation in the framework of transcendental philosophy.

Dimitry Gawronsky: Reality and Actual Infinitesimals

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze Dimitry Gawronsky’s doctrine of actual infinitesimals. I examine the peculiar connection that his critical idealism establishes between transcendental philosophy and mathematics. In particular, I reconstruct the relationship between Gawronsky’s differentials, Cantor’s transfinite numbers, Veronese’s trans-Archimedean numbers and Robinson’s hyperreal numbers. I argue that by means of his doctrine of actual infinitesimals, Gawronsky aims to provide an interpretation of calculus that eliminates any alleged given element in knowledge.

Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments by Simon Truwant

Reviewed by: Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments by Simon Truwant Hans-Jörg Rheinberger TRUWANT, Simon. Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 288 pp. Cloth, $99.99 The legendary debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in Davos, where the two philosophers met and exchanged views on the occasion of the second Davoser Hochschultage in 1929, has been investigated and commented upon many times. The general tenor of these assessments was, as Simon Truwant states, to conclude either that the young Heidegger won out over his elder contemporary Cassirer, or that in fact they talked past each other, that is, that there was no real debate at all. Truwant sets out to contest both of these conclusions, and he fully succeeds in doing so. What may appear as an unnecessary rehearsal at the beginning reveals itself as a balanced and in-depth assessment of the two philosophical projects of the mature Cassirer and the early Heidegger from within and, more broadly speaking, as the expression of a "parting of the ways" (Michael Friedman) in early twentieth-century Western philosophy. Truwant identifies three core topics in the dispute between the two thinkers: first, their assessment of the core of Kant's transcendental philosophy; second, their stance on the human condition; and third, their position toward the proper task of philosophy. Accordingly, the book with its altogether ten chapters is meaningfully divided into three parts. In each part devoted to each of the three topics, a meticulous and close reading of Cassirer's philosophy of human culture qua philosophy of symbolic forms and Heidegger's existential ontology toward being and time is carried out. As the debate advances from an assessment of Kant's critical project, as exposed in his Critique of Pure Reason, to their takes on the essence of the human condition, and finally to the proper task of philosophy, their respective positions more and more appear to become incompatible. This is to be expected, Truwant argues, since each one's stance toward the task of philosophy determines his view on the human condition and, in turn, his interpretation of Kant's transcendental philosophy. This short review is not the place to enter into the carefully exposed argumentative details of Cassirer and Heidegger's views. Suffice it to say that Truwant successfully demonstrates that neither of the above-mentioned standard accounts of the Davos debate can be substantiated. Heidegger did not outmatch Cassirer. Both philosophers argued from an internally consistent position. Cassirer saw the task of his philosophy of symbolic forms as a cosmopolitan one that ultimately strives toward a self-understanding of human culture in all of its facets. He looked at the [End Page 562] human condition from the perspective of mankind as a species of living beings capable of creating a multiplicity of symbolic forms, from myth to language to science, from religion to economy to politics, and he saw the essence of human culture in precisely this irreducible multiplicity that offered the human being a route to transcend its finiteness. At the same time, he shared with Kant the idea that the sciences offer a privileged perspective for the assessment of man's proliferating symbolic capacities, and he held with Kant that our takes on the world are never immediate but always, and necessarily so, mediated by the means with which we approach it. Heidegger, on the other hand, saw the task of his existential ontology to recuperate the fundamental meaning of the being of beings (das Sein des Seienden) that tended to be forgotten (Seinsvergessenheit) both in the course of the history of philosophy and in the busyness of everyday life. He looked at the human condition as being fundamentally finite, and he articulated the necessity to come to terms with its finitude. Finally, he approached Kant's transcendental philosophy as an attempt to have glimpsed, although it was ultimately eschewed, the unavoidability of such a fundamental ontology. In one respect, however, both philosophers shared a common ground, and it is this common ground that lets their controversy appear as a real dispute in an originary sense. In the introduction to his book, Truwant formulates...

Ideas I: Transcendental Turn in Phenomenological Philosophy

The paper deals with transcendental turn in the development of the phenomenological philosophy witch the founder of phenomenology Edmund Husserl made in his work “Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology”. From this moment until the very end of his life, Husserl defined his philosophy as transcendental phenomenology. This is particularly evident in the title of his last unfinished treatise “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy”. The author tries to clarify the historical and philosophical background of this turn and its influence on the phenomenology and other philosophical trends until now. On the one hand, the transcendental turn in the development of the phenomenological philosophy is the result of the long philosophical tradition that based on Descartes rationalism and Kantian transcendental philosophy and at the same time on the empiricism by Berkley and Hume. On the other hand, this transcendental turn is very important for the modern discussion about the problem of consciousness not only in the phenomenological research, but also in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. For example, the “explanatory gap” problem as one of the most crucial consequence of the mind-body problem can be seen in a new light from the phenomenological point of view. So it is argued that phenomenology is one of the most elaborated version of the transcendental philosophy of experience, and that it is possible to create on the base of transcendental phenomenology the universal methodology of humanities and to bring something new even to the formulation of the fundamental problems of natural sciences.