This paper uses Maurice Blanchot’s image of the corpse as a trope by which to offer a unique quasi-material reading of the German Idealist notion of speculative suicide. And its method of interpretative retrieval, like these idealists, works to think the relevance of idealism today by affirming the spirit against the letter. The paradox of suicide—that we aspire to be witness to our own death—presents itself as a double, as interpreted in works of Fichte and Schelling. This double, the very core of speculative aspiration, is essentially a temporal other whose prosthetic character suggests that the speculative power of spirit is simultaneously technological, and that the limit-condition of suicide be found not in an ethereal speculative unity but rather in the intractable materiality of our own corporeal remains.

In this article I show how Schelling elaborates the fundamental topic of the ontological proof, from the first phase of his philosophy on. I make clear how he keenly penetrates the formulation of Descartes, establishing that it is insuf­ficient in order to demonstrate the existence of God. The fact is, Descartes says that it would be contradictory with the nature of the perfect being that he existed only accidentally; so that it can exist only necessarily. But it is different to say that God can exist only necessarily, and to say that He in fact exists necessarily. From the first sentence, descends only that He exists necessarily if He exists, but this does not imply that He exists in fact. To arrive to the existence, the only possible way is through experience: the reason gives the concept, the experience gives the existence. On this difference is based the hendiadys between negative and positive philosophy, the nature of which I cleared up in the last part of the article.

Kant’s elevation of practical reason to a position of primacy in relation to theoretical reason is certainly well known. With this, though, comes also a new articulation of what the task of philosophy is. This paper addresses how Kant thinks that philosophy must actively promote and work to bring about the essential ends of human life, namely, moral goodness and a just society. This means that philosophers must direct the use of their reason to the public sphere. In this, the primary occupations of philosophy for Kant can be seen to be moral education, which aims at the moral goodness of individuals, and political critique, which seeks to bring about a society in accord with universal law.

A reading of Kant’s viewpoint on objectivity is suggested that finds inspiration in the second part of the third Critique, on living systems. It develops the idea that the need to articulate the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity only emerges to the extent that something resists the anticipative procedures of a living, actively engaged being. The possibility of objective knowledge, so it is argued, rests on the possibility of developing an adequate orientation in a phenomenal world, i.e., the possibility of actively distinguishing an “outside” from an “inside”—this not on the basis of an a priori principle, but by taking into account the punctual resistances and disappointments that appear within contingent encounters leading to pleasure and displeasure. We consider negation as a constitutive factor in the emergence of this very basic distinction, as well as in more elaborate and complex differentiations between objectivity and subjectivity.

In an analysis of Fichte’s theoretical reflections read in the light of decisive biographical events, the present paper examines the following question: to what extent are we to assent to Fichte’s own assertion that his system is from the very outset a system of freedom? Kant’s philosophy provided the catalyst for the young Fichte because it promised a way out of the impasse of determinism. I will argue that the ultimate goal of Fichte’s lifelong struggle was to furnish a foundation for genuine freedom. In reaction to both Jacobi and Schelling, Fichte’s philosophical and political investigations pursue at once the problem of grounding the “Absolute” and the relationship between individual freedom and reason as a whole.—These tensions are especially visible in Fichte’s path from the Addresses To the German Nation to the virtually unknown “Philosophical Diaries” of the final days of his life.

Studies of Reinhold have not paid sufficient attention to the systematic connection of the early Elementarphilosophie with the history of philosophy. Reinhold understands his own system as the last historical step of a purposive philosophizing activity of reason that ends the history of philosophy and enables the accomplishment of the true Copernican revolution. Reinhold discusses different aspects of this self-understanding in the writings of 1789–1791. Reinhold develops the core of this approach in a neglected and not republished essay from 1791: “Ueber den Begrif der Geschichte der Philosophie: Eine akademische Vorlesung.” The complete picture of Reinhold’s approach emerges only after the respective arguments of the Versuchschrift, Beiträge vol. 1, Ueber das Fundament, and “Ueber den Begrif ” are methodically integrated. In addition, “Ueber den Begrif ” fulfils another unnoticed function; it reveals the role that Reinhold’s theory of representation plays in the systematic construction of the rational history of philosophy.

G. W. F. Hegel is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the history of moral philosophy. On one hand, he is frequently regarded as an infamous critic of Kantian moral individualism. From the standpoint of Kierkegaard’s Socratic revival, Hegel is seen as ignoring or even suppressing the individual in favor of a ‘systematic’ form of philosophy. This paper addresses both criticisms by reconstructing Hegel’s unique contribution to the history of moral philosophy. Refusing to reduce Hegel to a foil for either Kant or Kierkegaard reveals his own inheritance of a Socratic ethic. I argue that Hegel revives a long-suppressed form of moral and practical philosophy: the Bildung of one’s self-understanding that involves both self-knowledge and self-transformation. Understanding the way in which Hegel resurrects and reinterprets this conception of moral philosophy requires that one pay attention to the close connection between his systematic method and his unique version of skepticism.

Commentators on the Phenomenology of Spirit have offered careful but conflicting accounts of Hegel’s chapter on sense-certainty, either defending his starting point and analysis or challenging it on its own terms for presupposing too much. Much of the disagreement regarding both the subject matter and success of Hegel’s chapter on sense-certainty can be traced to misunderstandings regarding the nature and role of certainty itself in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Specifically, such confusions can be traced to a failure to appreciate the connection between sense-certainty as a particular way of approaching and knowing the world, and the assumptions regarding the nature of the world it comes to know that Hegel attributes to sense-certainty. The “certainty” of sense-certainty is not so much an explicit attitude or conception it adopts but is rather something implicit in its practice of knowing through immediate or direct sensation.

Hegel indicates toward the end of his Phenomenology of Spirit that there would be a parallelism in the categories of his later system to the various configurations of consciousness in the Phenomenology. Some general correspondences have been indicated by Otto Pöggeler and suggested by Robert Grant McRae, but I argue in this paper that there are at least four important and more specific parallels, bringing out simultaneously a similarity of content and a difference of approach and methodology in the two works: 1) in the philosophical construal of “categories”; 2) in the conceptualization of a “phenomenology”; 3) in the analysis of the dialectical relationship of religion and art; and 4) in the relationship of the history of philosophy to the Absolute.

In this paper I argue that there are two distinct senses of contingency operative within Hegel’s philosophy, and that the failure to sufficiently distinguish between them can lead to a misrepresentation of Hegel’s idealism. The first sense of contingency is the categorical one explicated in the Science of Logic, in which contingency carries the meaning of dependence and conditionality, while the second sense of contingency, predominantly found within the Philosophy of Nature, means irrationality and chance. Not only does Hegel acknowledge a systematic place for the necessity of contingency within his ontological logic, but he also admits the existence of real chance and multiplicity in nature. However, I claim that these two acknowledgements should not be collapsed since they involve different senses of contingency.

The ancient problem of mind-matter relationship still has traction. Cartesian dualism created a seemingly impossible divide here. But with the decline of mechanism on the matter sides the issue of trans-categorical causality no larger secured insurmountable. However, with a more open concept of causality in view, there is no reason to think that the causality at issue here is a one way street from matter to mind. The mind-brain can be seen as a unified hermeneutical engine that permits of two-way operation. Mark Twain asked “When the body is drunk, does the mind stay sober?” But one may just as well ask “When the mind says ‘Write!,’ does the hand remain immobile?”

A problem arises in Schopenhauer’s claim that each individual person’s will, or intelligible character, is timeless. The principium individuationis depends upon spatio-temporal determinations governing the world as representation. As individual, one’s individual character would seem to depend upon spatio-temporalconditions. Yet, Schopenhauer adopts the Kantian distinction between empirical character and intelligible character, with the individual’s intelligible characterremaining the timeless Ding-an-sich, or will. In response to this problem, I proceed in four stages. First, I examine why Schopenhauer appropriated the Kantiandistinction between intelligible and empirical character. Secondly, I argue in favor of the solution which indicates that, for Schopenhauer, each individual’s intelligible character is related to the Platonic Idea unique to that individual. In the third stage, I determine how the teleological claims in Schopenhauer’s doctrineof Ideas bear on the problem. In the fourth stage, I suggest how Schopenhauer’s account presents a phenomenology of the unity of consciousness.

This paper focuses on Schopenhauer’s On the Will in Nature (1836), a book which is generally underestimated by scholars interested in Schopenhauer’sphilosophy. This essay analyses its genesis in Schopenhauer’s manuscripts, examines its role in Schopenhauer’s thought and its relationship with The World asWill and Representation, and locates its content and meaning with reference to the philosophical and scientific context. Aim of the article is a better understanding of Schopenhauer’s treatise, and such a scope is pursued by accurate insight of its central theme: the notion of Bestätigung, that is the scientific corroboration of the philosophical knowledge.

This essay explores Kant’s account of judging. In it, I argue for two central claims. First, Kant defines the act of judgment as the exercise of a particular type of authority (Befugnis). When a person makes a judgment, she makes a claim to speak for everyone, and not just herself. She puts something forward as true. Kant’s term for this discursive authority is “objectivity validity,” and he identifies this as the essential feature of judging. Second, the Categories and the Principles are what authorize a person to put something forward as true. This means that the objective validity of a judgment is supplied by the rules of the understanding rather than by something outside the mind.

In this paper I discuss the development of Kant’s Critical project in the pre-critical writings. I am particularly focusing upon the problems that Kant encounters in developing the idea of a transcendental subject. This helps us to understand the radical nature of Kant’s project in which he does not merely turn around the relationship between subject and object, but also has to redefine the nature of the subject. The development of the subject starts with Kant’s idea of an observer who actively determines qualities in the object (instead of passively taking it in). Ultimately the spectator becomes a subject that is constituted a priori, independent of experience. In order to arrive at this idea of a subject, Kant needs to overcome the tradition that in many ways still determines his thinking.

This paper aims at engaging Kant’s and Schelling’s theories of time in dialogue. It begins with Schelling’s famous criticism of Kant’s theory of time in his Weltalter (Ages of the World). It will examine this question from four main perspectives, namely the unity of time; time and a unitary object of experience;subjectivity of time; and the problem of infinity of time. It will show that Schelling’s criticism may instigate some fundamental reflections on Kant’s theory oftime, the relation between objective and subjective time, and the possibilities of connecting Kant’s different meanings of time in his first Critique. Further, it willshow that despite the fundamental differences between Kant’s and Schelling’s philosophical systems, some of Schelling’s ideas about time may have their earlier expressions in Kant. While Schelling has gone further and radicalized some insights from Kant in his own version of idealism, his criticism of Kant may find possible responses from the latter’s first Critique.

My article utilizes the insights of F. W. J. Schelling’s work on aesthetics to explain the unique appeal of cave painting for people of the Upper Paleolithic,focusing mostly on the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux. Schelling argues that the unique value of artistic practices comes in the way they reconcile agents withtheir deepest ontological contradictions, namely, the tension between biological necessity and human freedom. I argue that the cave paintings of Chauvet andLascaux fit well with Schelling’s approach and his insight that art seeks to reveal the contradictory capacities of self-conscious beings in a state of fundamentalattunement rather than in discordance and disharmony. My contention is that in taking this approach, whereby aesthetic practices engender an intuition of theabsolute identity between nature and mind, we can better explain why the practice of cave painting endured for over twenty-thousand years as one common styleof artistic practice.

This article examines the relationship between theology and ethics through the critique of original sin that the German-Jewish thinker Hermann Cohen advances. The concept of original sin has tacit normative consequences through conceiving the human condition as constitutively imperfect and prone to moral evil. Cohen criticizes the consequent theological ethics that privileges salvation from this world over justice in this world. Through Cohen this article argues that rather than focusing on explicitly normative precepts, a critical account of the relationship between theology and ethics needs to examine how theologicalconcepts shape ethical affects and commitments.

The paper identifies a possible precedent for Kant’s Refutation of Idealism in the work of Johann Nicolaus Tetens. An attempt is made to reconstruct the reasoning that led Tetens to reject idealism as a false starting point, and some parallels are drawn between Tetens’s psychologistic approach to the problem andKant’s transcendental methodology.