Transcendental Philosophy Research Articles

ТHE REVIEW OF ТHE INТERNAТIONAL SCIENТIFIC WORKSHOP “ТHE ТRANSCENDENТAL ТURN IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY — 8: ТRANSCENDENТAL MEТAPHYSICS, EPISТEMOLOGY, TRANSCENDENTAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND ARIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” (April 20–22, 2023, Moscow, Russia)

This article presents a review of papers of the international scientific seminar “Transcendental Turn in Modern Philosophy — 8: Metaphysics, epistemology, transcendental cognitive science and artificial intelligence,” which was held on April 20–22, 2023 in Moscow. The topics reviewed were the following: “Transcendental Philosophy: Ontology, Metaphysics of Experience or Epistemology,” “Transcendentalism, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence,” “Reception and Development of Transcendental (Phenomenological) Approach in Modern Philosophy,” as well as “Transcendental Phenomenology: Ontology and/or Gnoseology”. The author analyzes the presentations of the participants, grouping them around the following thematic and problematic nodes: the transcendental foundations of cognitive sciences, the understanding and status of the transcendental unity of apperception, the relationship between gnoseology and ontology in phenomenological research, receptivity and construction in forming the subject of knowledge, etc. This approach makes it possible to identify different, sometimes opposing positions of the participants on the same question and to outline ways to overcome the contradictions.

Zwischen Faktizität und Geltung. Zur transzendentalphilosophischen Vermittlung von Prinzip und Tatsache bei Richard Hönigswald

The article presents Hönigswalds version of transcendental philosophy, putting focus on the mediation of epistemological principles and empirical states of affairs. It is shown, that Hönigswald provides an original account of transcendental philosophy, that goes far beyond the common ones, that we know from the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism.

In the Mirrors of Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt

This remembrance of the life and work of our friend and colleague, Drucilla Cornell, is a view of her through the lenses of Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt and through her lively participation in the Caribbean Philosophical Association. As a result, it focuses on her as a philosopher who had mastered the Western tradition of transcendental philosophy. From that base, she engaged the traditions of Western Marxism and Feminism, and was deeply engaged in mastering the traditions of Caribbean Marxism and creolizing theory.

ДУХОВНОЕ ПОЗНАНИЕ В ДИАЛОГЕ КУЛЬТУР

The article analyzes various methodological approaches to solving the problem of the dialogue of cultures. Based on A. Torchinov's work, the article discusses criticism of Eurocentrism and Orientalism, stereotypes in the assessment of Eastern cultures and prob-lems that arise when externally comparing the teachings of the East, in particular Buddhism and some Western philosophical con-cepts (Berkeley, Hume, Husserl). The author specially analyzes the comparative method developed by M.K. Mamardashvili, based on the metatheory of consciousness under the influence of Vijnanavada. The ontologism of consciousness underlying all cultures allows reaching a universal understanding of culture as an all-human phenomenon. For Mamarashvili, it is consciousness that is a culture-forming phenomenon. The possibility of entering the communicative space of the dialogue of cultures through conscious-ness is connected with its transcending nature. This transcendence leads beyond the limits of the mental states of both the specific "I" and cultural characteristics, revealing the immanent depths of universal human culture. Mamardashvili considered himself a Kantian and saw in transcendental philosophy an ontological basis for the dialogue of cultures. The author expresses the conviction that based on the universalism of spiritual cognition as a product of the "Axial age" it is pos-sible not only to build a dialogue of cultures, but also a deep mutual understanding between them. Spiritual cognition also embraces the work with consciousness, on which Mamardashvili insisted, and is able to find common ground between theistic (Christianity, Islam) and non-theistic (East: Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism) cultures on the basis of transcending, revealing the immanent basis – the spiritual archetype of humanity, uniting Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

The concepts of apperception and reflection in Kant and the concept of reflection in Husserl

The article considers reflection as a method and condition of the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Husserl. At the beginning, the author refers to Kant's predecessors who used the term reflection (Wolf, Baumgartner) and concludes that Kant, when referring to reflection, rather adheres to the tradition laid down by Leibniz. Based on the text of the “Critique of Pure Reason”, the article argues that it is with the help of reflection that the formation of a priori categories and a priori synthetic principles can be explained. The author distinguishes between reflection and the transcendental unity of apperception and examines, within the framework of the phenomenological interpretation of the “Critique of Pure Reason”, the role of this unity in the predilection of sensory diversity. The article shows the continuity in the understanding of reflection between transcendental phenomenology and Kant's philosophy. In Husserl's philosophy, reflection as a method is associated with reduction and contemplation. The author dwells on the features of the use of reflection in Husserl's studies, which include, first of all, the temporal language of description and the dependence of reflection on the phenomena to which it is directed. Orlova Yulia Olegovna (1970 2011) – is a Russian philosopher, Ph.D., in 1998 - 2011 worked at the Department of Ontology and Theory of Cognition of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg State University.

Gunkel’s Deconstruction: Between the Fetish and the Need for a Dialectical Renewal

The purpose of the essay is to critically analyze the influence of J. Derrida’s deconstruction on David J. Gunkel’s book Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). Gunkel’s handbook is aimed at making deconstruction a tool of critical thinking accessible to non-professionals. It turns out that accomplishing this task comes at the expense of precisely the critical potential of deconstruction itself. Gunkel is well aware that his arguments are sometimes superficial and overlook deeper problems that should be addressed. Such a failure takes the form of a fetishistic denial, which in psychoanalysis is summarized by the formula “I know well, but all the same.” In turn, deconstruction itself, insofar as it is separated from Kant’s transcendental philosophy and Hegel’s dialectics, becomes an academic ideology. Restoring its proper subversive potential can only be done by returning to a philosophy of reflection, in which the thinker himself must ultimately consider his own position as an author and bring it under criticism. This is the path that Gunkel avoids, because he could then no longer be the author of a handbook on deconstruction, rather than someone who practices deconstruction.
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 Received: 4/11/2022. Reviewed: 13/12/2022. Accepted: 20/12/2022.

Koniec wieku poetów? O zszyciach literatury i filozofii

The article presents an attempt to outline, from a mainly typological and partly historical perspective, what the author considers the most important varieties of the relationship between philosophy and literature (which is, of course, understood here in a working and broad sense, as poesis). In the first of these varieties, for which the fundamental significance is Plato’s gesture of excluding poets from the state, the philosophical logos defines itself in opposition to literature, or mythos. In the second, which appears to predominate from Aristotle to the 18th century, the relationship between philosophy and literature takes on a more neutral character: the former provides the latter with motifs, themes, topics, mainly related to moral philosophy in the broadest sense, while the latter provides the former with discursive modes, such as genre. Modern aesthetics and the philosophy and theory of literature (fundamentally different from the tradition of the great poets and rhetoricians of the 16th and 17th centuries), which emerged together with transcendental philosophy and its reception in German Romanticism, contributed both to the increased interest among philosophers in literature and to a clear embedding, or even closing, of literature in philosophical notions, which originated mainly in the tradition of transcendentalism and dialectical thought. Finally, the beginning of the twentieth century is distinguished, in most of the major continental philosophical traditions, by a tendency to seek, or to find, in literature the most important partner of philosophical thinking, and sometimes even the identity of philosophy.

Hans Wagner’s Transcendental Argument for the Idea of Human Dignity

Hans Wagner (1917–2000), using the achievements of German transcendental philosophy, gives a transcendental argument for the idea of human dignity. He claims that to ground the validity of human thinking and all its products (e.g. culture), we must accept the validity of the idea of human dignity. The structure of my paper is as follows: First, I consider what it means to give a transcendental justification of something. I reconstruct the neo-Kantian’s understanding of transcendental method. Then I argue that Wagner’s idea of human dignity as a foundation of every ethics and law is nothing other than a fruitful interpretation and continuation, perhaps only making explicit Kant’s main ethical ideas. To make this more clear I present the relation between Kant’s ethics and the material ethics of values and, following Wagner, I argue that grounding ethics on the idea of self-determination of human will does not necessarily lead to formalism in the form in which it was criticised by the representatives of the material ethics of values. Finally, I reconstruct Wagner’s argument for the claim that the idea of human dignity is a transcendental condition for the possibility of ethics and law in general.

Note on Du ‘temps’: Elements for a Philosophy of Living

The author probes Jullien on the problem of time, which is at the heart of European philosophy, while allowing himself to embrace an intelligibility of the ‘infra-philosophical’ leading to a ‘living in philosophy’. The question is both intriguing and rewarding: ‘what the Chinese have thought because they have not thought time’. Yet the author wonders: does Jullien pay more attention to the Greeks than to the Hebrews vis-à-vis China with regard to the concept of time? Jullien’s text on time of course is a piece in a much larger set of texts that bring to the fore questions of life; the author offers, with generosity, much broader thoughts on the possibility of Jullien speaking French while thinking Chinese, and the enigma of living (say in Augustine and Montaigne) within a philosophy of transcendence in the West as opposed to the immanence of philosophy of living in China.

A Peircean transcendental framework for conceiving human and non-human culture

Abstract The semiotic realism of the American philosopher and scientist Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) originally emerged out of a systematic critique of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. As such, it does not only offer numerous notions that can be and have been, fruitfully applied to a large variety of cultural phenomena, but it also requires rethinking and reconceiving the concept of culture itself, especially as regards its relation to the concept of nature and its anthropocentric premises and biases. Accordingly, this essay aims to explore how to reconceive culture in a Peircean transcendental framework. I first describe that framework itself, sketching how Peirce’s semiotic realism can be understood as the result of the attempt to realize Kant’s project of a transcendental philosophy more consistently than Kant himself had done. On this basis, I then explore how the relation between culture and nature, and between culture and humanity can be conceived within Peirce’s semiotic paradigm. It is suggested that the relation between culture and nature cannot be sufficiently accounted for in terms of the distinction between symbolic and non-symbolic semiosis, and that various forms of non-human culture, including non-animal and cross-species cultures, are conceivable.

«Атмосфера истины»: модели истории философии в неосхоластике и неотомизме

The article shows the development of historical and philosophical problems in Neo-Scholasticism and Neo-Thomism. There are two key goals that authors of historical and philosophical models of the development of intellectual culture sought to solve: primarily, this is the legitimation of Scholasticism as a philosophical tradition, and secondly, its actualization in the context of the philosophical and theological discussions of their time. After the 1840s catholic intellectuals realized a gap to the medieval and post-medieval scholastic tradition, and their historical and philosophical research ceased to be a tool for legitimizing of interpretation of Thomism, which claims to be authoritative. Intervention of scholasticism into the problems of philosophy in the 19th century led to a determination of their relationship to Kant and post-Kantian projects of transcendental philosophy. As a result, Joseph Maréchal SJ formed a project of Transcendental Thomism: he moved from the strategy of legitimizing scholasticism through historical and philosophical material to the strategy of transformation of Thomism to form the program of Scholasticism that would correspond to the “Epoch of Criticism”.

Amerindian Perspectivism and the Overcoming of the First-Person Perspective

The paper considers a polemic thesis that Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism is characterized by the overcoming of the first-person perspective. Multi-natural cosmological deictic figures instead of the first-person perspective. This opposes the latter to the perspective of transcendental philosophy. The thesis of multiple worlds is an interpretation of the indigenous perspective which is determined, among other themes, by its point of view toward the West. It implies that Amerindian perspectivism should be understood as resistance to naturalism, akin to phenomenology’s origin as it is conceived in eco-phenomenology. The ontological turn of anthropology is the most concerted attempt to formulate an anthropological version of Husserl’s reduction that reduces the division of first and third-person perspectives to reveal the indigenous cosmological deictics. The opponents of the ontological turn oppose it to phenomenology.

Toward Moral Sublimity: Elements of a Theory of Humor

Abstract This article outlines a new theory of humor. The concept of humor is developed in the sense of five dialectical levels, respectively, sequential phenomenalities of humorous consciousness. These range from a level of most inferior (hurtful) humor up to a stage of most sublime humor. Systematically speaking, humor is viewed from an enhanced perspective of transcendental philosophy, namely as a medium of self-unfolding practical reason. It is considered as a complementary potency to the practical force of the latter’s regulative principle, and it fulfils several important functions. The first section provides basic definitions of concepts like humor, sublimity, comicality, etc. Here, the five phenomenalities of humor are introduced. The second section explores and develops these contents more in detail. Some references to the German-speaking tradition in the philosophy of humor provide further input for discussion. The third section presents a thought experiment. Imaginary humorous reactions of Socrates to ridicule and hostility are analyzed in the sense of the present theory.

The Schelling-Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity by Benjamin Berger and Daniel Whistler

Reviewed by: The Schelling-Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity by Benjamin Berger and Daniel Whistler Mark J. Thomas Benjamin Berger and Daniel Whistler. The Schelling-Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 269. Hardback, £80.00. This excellent book focuses on a decisive moment in Schelling's philosophical development: his 1801 dispute with Eschenmayer shortly before publishing Presentation of My System, the inaugural text of his identity philosophy. Carl August Eschenmayer was a German physician whose Kant-inspired writings in the philosophy of nature greatly influenced Schelling, especially with respect to the doctrine of the potencies. Nonetheless, he is a marginal figure in the history of philosophy, and one might assume that this volume will only interest Schelling specialists or those concerned with the minutiae of nineteenth-century Naturphilosophie. That would be a mistake. As Berger and Whistler demonstrate, the 1801 controversy has significant implications for understanding the trajectory of German Idealism and its debates on methodology, the meaning of identity, and the place of nature in philosophy. [End Page 703] Part 1 of this volume contains translations of the two essays at the heart of the dispute, both published in January 1801 (Judith Kahl and Daniel Whistler are the translators). The essay by Eschenmayer, "Spontaneity = World Soul, or The Highest Principle of Philosophy of Nature," critiques Schelling's 1799 nature-philosophy and presents his own Fichte-inspired approach. Schelling's rejoinder is the essay "On the True Concept of Philosophy of Nature and the Correct Way of Solving Its Problems," which anticipates the new identity philosophy he would present later that year. Translations of the two thinkers' correspondence and selections from other works by Eschenmayer are included in appendices. Overall, the translations are precise and quite readable—an achievement for German texts with scientific jargon. Moreover, the translators are thoughtful in their rendering of tricky words like Verhältnis, which can mean "relation," "proportion," or "ratio" in different contexts (see xiii–xiv). Occasionally there are minor inaccuracies, but they do not detract from the texts' main arguments. What, then, are the main points of disagreement between Schelling and Eschenmayer? In the preface, the authors identify a "twofold difference" (ix). The first concerns the relationship of the philosophy of nature to transcendental philosophy. Eschenmayer follows Fichte in including the former within the latter: the "I" is ultimately responsible for nature's determinate features. By contrast, Schelling insists on the self-sufficiency of naturephilosophy and argues for its priority: consciousness and the transcendental standpoint are not original but are derived from nature (9–10). The second difference concerns the source of qualitative difference among natural phenomena. While Eschenmayer reduces quality to mathematical proportions of attraction and repulsion, Schelling argues that such a reduction amounts to explaining nature's diversity through varying degrees of density (56). The bulk of the volume (part 2) is a series of chapters on themes related to the dispute and its aftermath. Though labeled "commentaries," they are really critical essays, providing historical context and analysis while engaging with an impressive range of secondary literature. The first chapter is devoted to the construction of material qualities, the "guiding thread" of Eschenmayer's essay (83). The authors carefully trace the problem from Kant through the two philosophers' evolving conceptions of nature-philosophy leading up to the 1801 dispute. Though Schelling rejects Eschenmayer's account of quality in terms of attraction and repulsion, he is "greatly influenced" by his sparring partner's emphasis on quantitative difference in explaining quality, even adopting some of his mathematical concepts (89). The most important of these is "potency," the subject of the next chapter and one of the central concepts in Schelling's thought for the next forty years. After an account of its roots in mathematics and Eschenmayer's nature-philosophy, the authors analyze core features of potency in the 1801 Presentation, contrasting it with dynamis in Aristotle. Fundamentally, the series of potencies involves differentiation through intensification of the same underlying identity: "Life is nothing more than intensified inorganic matter" (102). The chapter concludes with a strong defense of Schelling against Hegel's charge of formalism—though it still seems to me that the schema of...

Conscience, conviction, and moral autonomy in Fichte’s ethics

ABSTRACT According to Kant, a certain kind of knowledge is essential to the achievement of moral autonomy. In order for an action to be obligatory, it must be possible for me to know not only what I have a duty to do, but also the ground of my obligation. While Fichte too identifies the importance of this epistemic dimension of moral autonomy, some recent accounts of Fichte’s ethics undermine it, either by severing the link between conscience and moral knowledge, as Michelle Kosch does, or by holding that the grounds of our obligations are not knowable by all, but only the transcendental philosopher, as Owen Ware does. I argue that we can save the connection between conscience and moral knowledge by distinguishing between conscience and conviction, but that there is an abiding tension in Fichte’s ethics between the philosophical account of the ground of our duties and the discursive activity of justifying our actions to one another.

Transcendentalizm jako podstawa projektu zradykalizowanego dyskursu metafilozoficznego

The article is a comparative study of selected elements of three philosophical positions which arose on the theoretical underpinning of the concept of transcendental idealism: Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Theory of Knowledge, Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, and Marek J. Siemek’s transcendental philosophy. The primary aims of the study are to examine the epistemological assumptions underlying the three positions, and then critically reconstruct and bring into focus their metaphilosophical component. The article seeks to corroborate the titular thesis that transcendentalism as an epistemological position provides the concepts discussed here with a theoretical framework for a radically conceived interpretation of metaphilosophical discourse.

Where Do All These Ideas Come From? Kant on the Formation of Concepts Under the Guidance of Pure Reason

Abstract It is not just rationalist metaphysics, but also Kant’s transcendental philosophy that is teeming with a priori concepts. According to Kant, some of these a priori concepts are “ideas,” and similar to the categories, some of these ideas in turn belong to the nature of human reason, while others can be derived from them. It is therefore part of Kant’s claim in the “Transcendental Dialectic” to be able to explain not only the leading ideas of rational psychology, cosmology, and theology as natural concepts of reason, but the origin of the entire a priori vocabulary of the metaphysica specialis as well. This article outlines how Kant’s derivations of these concepts work. After explaining Kant’s classification of a priori concepts and the derivation of the transcendental ideas, his derivations are explored in more detail using the example of the concepts of the pure doctrine of the soul. This contributes to a better understanding of Kant’s theory of philosophical concepts while also shedding light on the rather rarely treated topic of the “Transcendental Dialectic.”

Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge, Athens OH: Ohio UP, 2021, pp. 264, ISBN 978-0-8214-2432-2 (hbk) $95.00.

Article Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge, Athens OH: Ohio UP, 2021, pp. 264, ISBN 978-0-8214-2432-2 (hbk) $95.00. was published on July 1, 2022 in the journal Journal of Transcendental Philosophy (volume 3, issue 2).

Matthew Rukgaber, Space, Time, and the Origins of Transcendental Idealism: Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy from 1747 to 1770

Article Matthew Rukgaber, Space, Time, and the Origins of Transcendental Idealism: Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy from 1747 to 1770 was published on July 1, 2022 in the journal Journal of Transcendental Philosophy (volume 3, issue 2).

Atemporal Temporality of the Transcendental Subject

Perhaps one of the main attributes of the subjectivity is temporality in the metaphysical tradition. Subject cannot be found in space, it only exists in time, so the substantial concept of mind originates in the notion of time. On the other side the subject perceives time as such; as Saint Augustine writes in Confessions, “It is in thee, my mind, that I measure times”. Temporality and subjectivity were closely related notions before the transcendental turn. In his explicit argumentation Immanuel Kant considers the subject as a temporal principle; as he writes in The End of All Things, “thinking contains a reflecting, which can occur only in time”. However, Kant does not affirm that the apperception of “ego cogito” can lead to the substantial existence of subject or mind. He regards this deduction as a paralogism. The Kantian disaffirmation of substantial mind enabled the timeless concept of subjectivity in the Early German Idealism.
 The subjectivity notion of Kant and the transcendental philosophy has a special, ambiguous character: in their explicit theories they argue that the subject is mainly a temporal entity, but some special forms of the general subject (transcendental subject, self, Gemüt etc.) are placed out of time in several texts. In the paper I analyse the temporal aspects of the idealist subject concept. The main thesis of the paper is that the subject of the transcendental philosophy is characterised by atemporal temporality.