scholarly journals Schopenhauer's Contraction of Reason: Clarifying Kant and Undoing German Idealism

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
Metaphysical Claim ◽  
Philosophical Project

AbstractSchopenhauer's claim that the essence of the world consists in Wille encounters well-known difficulties. Of particular importance is the conflict of this metaphysical claim with his restrictive account of conceptuality. This paper attempts to make sense of Schopenhauer's position by restoring him to the context of post-Kantian debate, with special attention to the early notebooks and Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the reconstruction suggested here, Schopenhauer's philosophical project should be understood in light of his rejection of post-Kantian metaphilosophy and his opposition to German Idealism.

scholarly journals Hegel’s logic as the exposition of god from the end of the world

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 852-874
Author(s):  
Jure Simoniti
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute

The article attempts to reconstruct the logical space within which, at the beginning of Hegel?s Logic, ?being? and ?nothing? are entitled to emerge and receive their names. In German Idealism, the concept of ?being? is linked to the form of a proposition; Fichte grounds a new truth-value on the absolute thesis of the ?thetical judgement?. And the article?s first thesis claims that Hegel couldn?t have placed ?being? at the beginning of this great system, if the ground of its logical space had not been laid out by precisely those shifts of German Idealism that posited the ontological function of the judgement. At the same time, the abstract negation, the absence of a relation and sufficient reason between ?being? and ?nothing?, reveals a structure of an irreducibly dual beginning. The logical background of this original duality could be constituted by the invention of the ?transcendental inter-subjectivity? in German Idealism, manifested, for instance, in Hegel?s life-and-death struggle of two self-consciousnesses. The second thesis therefore suggests that ?being? and ?nothing? are elements of the logical space, established in concreto in a social situation of (at least) two subjects one of whom poses an affirmative statement and the other negates it abstractly. From here, one could draw out the coordinates of a sphere by the name of ?public? whose structure is defined by the invalidation of two basic laws of thought, the law of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. The article shows how only the statements capable of absorbing negation, of sustaining a co-existence of affirmation and its symmetrical, abstract negation, can climb the ladder of public perceptibility and social impact.

The Correspondence with Clarke

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-249
Author(s):  
Gregory Brown
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Identity Of Indiscernibles ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World

The correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke—mediated by Leibniz’s erstwhile friend and disciple at the electoral court in Hanover, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, princess of Wales—is arguably the most famous and influential of philosophical correspondences. In this chapter, I begin by tracing the background of the correspondence and the role that Caroline played in its inception and development. I then turn to a discussion of the main themes of the correspondence, paying particular attention to the importance of Caroline’s presence in shaping the themes of the debate: the principle of sufficient reason, the identity of indiscernibles, God’s choice in creating this world, space and time, God’s presence and activity in the world, miracles, and gravity.

Dwa bieguny europejskiej kultury: Karpiński i Leibniz. Próby badań nad dociekaniami filozoficznymi Franciszka Karpińskiego w odniesieniu do filozofii Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibniza

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 44-67
Author(s):  
Jarosław Jarszak
Keyword(s):  
Life Experiences ◽  
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World

The author seeks an answer to the following question: can we relate the work of Franciszek Karpiński to the philosophical achievements of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz? The article proposes to treat Karpiński’s work as a philosophical inquiry and notices in it a clearly defined metaphysical and axiological principle, which can be treated as an independently constructed version of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. The notes in the diary confirm the assumption that painful life experiences did not stop the poet’s efforts to build a vision of the world that we have reasons to call the “philosophy of optimism”.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Tension

The concluding chapter draws on the story of Rosenzweig’s near conversion to Christianity and return to Judaism to explain why, for Kant and his heirs, what is at issue in reason’s conflict with itself is our ability to affirm both the value of the world and of human action in the world. The chapter explains why Rosenzweig came to view the conflict of reason as the manifestation of a more fundamental tension between one’s selfhood and one’s worldliness, which could only be dissolved by understanding human action in the world as the means by which God is both cognized and partly realized. To make Rosenzweig’s ideas more accessible, the chapter compares them with contemporary interpretations of Kant’s views on the nature of practical knowledge and (intentional) action. It also shows how the book’s take on the issues that shaped the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism can help us see that the conflict of reason can be regarded as the underlying concern that recent competing interpretations of this period share.

The Necessity of Sufficiency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce L. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Ontic Structural Realism ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Quantum Phenomena

There is an argument for the existence of God from the incompleteness of nature that is vaguely present in Plantinga’s recent work. This argument, which rests on the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the philosophical deficiency of necessitarian conceptions of physical law, deserves to be given a clear formulation. The goal is to demonstrate, via a suitably articulated principle of sufficient reason, that divine action in an occasionalist mode is needed (and hence God’s existence is required) to bring causal closure to nature and render it ontologically functional. The best explanation for quantum phenomena and the most adequate understanding of general providence turns out to rest on an ontic structural realism in physics that is grounded in the immaterialist metaphysics of theistic idealism.

The Provenance of Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Vision
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Material Base ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Intrinsic Nature ◽  
Fundamental Particles ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason

Unlike brute ‘entities’, if conscious states (c-states) are brute, it will be a consequence of their primitive—viz., not admitting further elaboration—connection to their material base, what is commonly known as emergence. One might suppose the chief challenge to emergence comes from various materialist counter-proposals. However, given the distinctive character of c-states, a class of critics describe even materialist reductions as objectionable forms of emergentism. Instead, their fallback position is a reinvigorated panpsychism: consciousness is the intrinsic nature of the most fundamental particles. In this chapter the author examines that form of panpsychism, tracing its roots to a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and to suggestions aired in Bertrand Russell’s struggles with the issue. He concludes that this panpsychism fails, leaving the field to materialism and emergentist dualism.

Being and Reason

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence And Nonexistence ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Necessary Existence

In Being and Reason, Martin Lin offers a new interpretation of Spinoza’s core metaphysical doctrines with attention to how and why, in Spinoza, metaphysical notions are entangled with cognitive, logical, and epistemic ones. For example, according to Spinoza, a substance is that which can be conceived through itself, and a mode is that which is conceived through another. Thus, metaphysical notions, substance and mode, appear to be defined through a notion that is either cognitive or logical, being conceived through. What are we to make of the intimate connections that Spinoza sees between metaphysical, cognitive, logical, and epistemic notions? Or between being and reason? Lin argues against idealist readings according to which the metaphysical is reducible to or grounded in something epistemic, logical, or psychological. He maintains that Spinoza sees the order of being and the order of reason as two independent structures that mirror one another. In the course of making this argument, he develops new interpretations of Spinoza’s notions of attribute and mode, and of Spinoza’s claim that all things strive for self-preservation. Lin also argues against prominent idealist readings of Spinoza according to which the Principle of Sufficient Reason is absolutely unrestricted for Spinoza and is the key to his system. He contends, rather, that Spinoza’s metaphysical rationalism is a diverse phenomenon and that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is limited to claims about existence and nonexistence which are applied only once by Spinoza to the case of the necessary existence of God.

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