The Sensible And Intelligible Worlds

The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds represents a new wave of interest in 'the metaphysical Kant'. In recent decades Kant scholars have increasingly become skeptical of interpreting Kant as a philosopher who wished to truly "leave metaphysics behind". The contributors to this volume share a common commitment to the idea that Kant's philosophy cannot be properly understood without careful attention to its metaphysical presuppositions and, in particular, to how those metaphysical presuppositions are compatible with Kant's critique of more "dogmatic" forms of metaphysical thought. The authors approach Kant's thought from a wide variety of different perspectives - emphasizing not just the familiar Leibnizian background to Kant's metaphysics, but also its broadly Aristotelian underpinnings and its relationship with metaphysical themes in post-Kantian German Idealism. Similarly, although most of the essays in this volume relate in some way to the familiar question of how best to interpret Kant's transcendental idealism, they also deal with a wide range of other topics, including Kant's modal metaphysics, his views on the continuum, his epistemology of the a priori, and the foundations of his "metaethical" views.

The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds represents a new wave of interest in 'the metaphysical Kant'. In recent decades Kant scholars have increasingly become skeptical of interpreting Kant as a philosopher who wished to truly "leave metaphysics behind". The contributors to this volume share acommon commitment to the idea that Kant's philosophy cannot be properly understood without careful attention to its metaphysical presuppositions and, in particular, to how those metaphysical presuppositions are compatible with Kant's critique of more "dogmatic" forms of metaphysical thought.The authors approach Kant's thought from a wide variety of different perspectives - emphasizing not just the familiar Leibnizian background to Kant's metaphysics, but also its broadly Aristotelian underpinnings and its relationship with metaphysical themes in post-Kantian German Idealism.Similarly, although most of the essays in this volume relate in some way to the familiar question of how best to interpret Kant's transcendental idealism, they also deal with a wide range of other topics, including Kant's modal metaphysics, his views on the continuum, his epistemology of the apriori, and the foundations of his "metaethical" views.

Examines the first theory of consciousness in Western philosophy, dispelling the dogma that consciousness studies begins with Descartes.

In the mid-eighteenth century metaphysics was broadly understood as the study of three areas of philosophical thought: theology, psychology and cosmology. This book examines the fortunes of the third of these formidable metaphysical concepts, the world. Sean Gaston provides a clear and concise account of the concept of world from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, exploring its possibilities and limitations and engaging with current issues in politics and ecology. He focuses on the work of five principal thinkers: Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida, all of whom attempt to establish new grounds for seeing the world as a whole. Gaston presents a critique of the self-evident use of the concept of world in philosophy and asks whether one can move beyond the need for a world-like vantage point to maintain a concept of world. From Kant to the present day this concept has been a problem for philosophy and it remains to be seen if we need a new Copernican revolution when it comes to the concept of world.

The universe is nothing like how it appears to us. So, what's it really like? What is it in itself? Neither our senses nor any experiments can reveal the ultimate truth of existence. Fortunately, one thing can: reason. We inhabit the Mathmos: the mathematical cosmos. This book reveals the compelling secrets of the hidden reality that we will never once "see", but we can surely know - thanks to mathematics. Do we live in a rational universe or a random universe? This is the choice between a mathematical universe and a scientific universe. The mathematical universe has a rational ultimate answer, the scientific universe does not. The scientific universe is magicked out of non-existence, as if out of a magician's top hat. Are you a member of the magicians' cult of science? Nothing is more alchemical than modern science. You can generate a cosmos out of randomness in nothingness, which is a much greater trick than merely manufacturing gold from lead.

This book offers a radically new interpretation of the entire philosophy of J. G. Fichte by showing the impact of nineteenth-century psychological techniques and technologies on the formation of his theory of the imagination—the very centerpiece of his philosophical system. By situating Fichte’s philosophy within the context of nineteenth-century German science and culture, the book establishes a new genealogy, one that shows the extent to which German idealism’s transcendental account of the social remains dependent upon the scientific origins of psychoanalysis in the material techniques of Mesmerism. The book makes it clear that the rational, transcendental account of spirit, imagination, and the social has its source in the psychological phenomena of affective rapport. Specifically, the imagination undergoes a double displacement in which it is ultimately subject to external influence, the influence of a material technique, or, in short, a technology.

Die neuere Forschung zur modernen Philosophiegeschichte hat ihren Blick immer mehr auf die Wurzeln der klassischen deutschen Philosophie in der antiken und spätantiken Gedankenwelt gerichtet. Dieser Sammelband untersucht die Genese und Entwicklung des Deutschen Idealismus anhand der Rezeption und Transformation der Platonischen Tradition bei J. G. Fichte, F. Hölderlin, G.E. F. Hegel und F.W. J. Schelling. Gezeigt wird, inwiefern diese Denker die Leitmotive und die primären Bestimmungen ihres Problemhorizonts im Platonismus entdecken, ihn aber in ihrer eigenen philosophischen Situation grundlegend ändern.

This volume brings together a number of original articles by leading Leibniz scholars to address the meaning and significance of Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible worlds. In order to avoid the conclusion that everything that exists is necessary, or that all possibles are actual, as Spinoza held, Leibniz argued that not all possible substances are compossible, that is, capable of coexisting. In Leibniz’s view, the compossibility relation divides all possible substances into disjoint sets, each of which constitutes a possible world, or a way that God might have created things. For Leibniz, then, it is the compossibility relation that individuates possible worlds; and possible worlds form the objects of God’s choice, from among which he chooses the best for creation. Thus the notions of compossibility and possible worlds are of major significance for Leibniz’s metaphysics, his theodicy, and, ultimately, for his ethics. Given the fact, however, that none of the approaches to understanding Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible words suggested to date have gained universal acceptance, the goal of this book is to gather a body of new papers that explore ways of either refining previous interpretations in light of the objections that have been raised against them, or ways of framing new interpretations that will contribute to a fresh understanding of these key notions in Leibniz’s thought.

This book focuses on a dimension of art which the philosophical tradition (from Plato to Hegel and even Adorno) has consistently overlooked, such was its commitment - explicit or implicit - to mimesis and the metaphysics of truth it presupposes. De Beistegui refers to this dimension, which unfolds outside the space that stretches between the sensible and the supersensible - the space of metaphysics itself - as the hypersensible and show how the operation of art to which it corresponds is best described as metaphorical. The movement of the book, then, is from the classical or metaphysical aesthetics of mimesis (Part One) to the aesthetics of the hypersensible and metaphor (Part Two). Against much of the history of aesthetics and the metaphysical discourse on art, he argues that the philosophical value of art doesn't consist in its ability to bridge the space between the sensible and the supersensible, or the image and the Idea, and reveal the sensible as proto-conceptual, but to open up a different sense of the sensible. His aim, then, is to shift the place and role that philosophy attributes to art.