Residues of (Post-)Kantian Philosophy in Early Scientific Psychology and Hermann von Helmholtz’s Idealism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liesbet de Kock
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Hermann Von Helmholtz ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
Kantian Philosophy

German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) is widely acknowledged as one of the leading intellectuals and scientists of his time. Originally trained as a physiologist, Helmholtz contributed substantially to the fields of mathematics, physics, acoustics, ophthalmology, and the emerging science of psychology, amongst others. Not only did Helmholtz’s research interests cover a vast array of different topics, he furthermore paired his scientific endeavors with a continuous philosophical reflection upon the nature of science and knowledge, and of human cognition in general. Helmholtz’s philosophical interests were especially salient in his theory of perception, in which he attempted to reconcile his empirical viewpoint with insights derived from the idealist philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This dovetailing between empiricism and (transcendental) idealism has fascinated philosophers ever since the publication of Helmholtz’s work. Although Helmholtz famously rejected Kant’s theory of space, he considered his own theory of perception as a further elaboration and empirical confirmation of Kant’s and (to a lesser degree of) Fichte’s philosophical systems. Notwithstanding the abiding philosophical interest in the nature and extent of Helmholtz’s allegiance to German Idealism, the philosophical dimension of his work has not received the attention it deserves in the historiography of psychology. Revisiting Helmholtz’s intellectual relation to transcendental idealism, however, could not only help correct and enrich simplified accounts of his psychological and epistemological position, it furthermore provides a highly interesting illustration of the hitherto poorly understood relation between (neo-)Kantianism and the dawn of scientific psychology in 19th-century Germany.

W poszukiwaniu błękitnego kwiatu, czyli o romantycznym ideale Bildung w Henryku von Ofterdingen Novalisa

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (1 (247)) ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
Malwina Rolka
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Friedrich Schlegel ◽  
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ◽  
German Culture ◽  
The 19Th Century

The main aim of the paper is reconstruction of the concept of Bildung (considered as forming the man’s personality) in an educational novel entitled Henry von Ofterdingen written by Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Novalis’s novel – inspired by Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister Lehrejahre – is one of the most original early romantic works which prove the importance of the idea of Bildung for German culture at the beginning of the 19th century. In the first part of the text the author discusses the literary image of Bildung presented in the plot of the novel and then indicates its inner contradiction. In the second part of the article the author reconstructs the philosophical roots of this ideal regarding Novalis’s notion of Bildung in light of the thought of German idealism (transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in particular) because the theory of romantic progressive poetry (elaborated most fully by Friedrich Schlegel) originates there. The perspective taken in the paper allows the author to reveal the universal significance of the inner contradiction of the romantic idea of forming man’s personality as a sign of the fundamental crisis of the modern ideal of humanity.

German Idealism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Redding
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ◽  
Logical Foundations ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
The Will

Politically, idealism would eventually be replaced by “materialism” in Karl Marx's transformation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's “absolute idealism,” while philosophically idealism was replaced by various anti-idealist doctrines in the twentieth century. But idealism still has its advocates, one recent supporter, in claiming “idealism as modernism,” essentially reinstating Friedrich Schlegel's assessment. For such a view, idealist philosophy, like the French Revolution and modern literature, is grounded in the characteristically modern idea of human freedom. This article discusses some of the implications for political thought to be found in three leading idealists from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Hegel. It examines Kant's “idealist” philosophy and its consequences for political theory, his transformation of the natural law and social contract traditions, Fichte's application of the “Wissenschaftslehre” to political philosophy and his views on intersubjective recognition, Hegel and the logical foundations of political philosophy, the will and its right, ethical life and the structure of the modern state, and Hegel's political solution of constitutional monarchy.

Nambara Shigeru (1889–1974): how a Japanese liberal conceptualized eternal peace, 1918–1951

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Inoguchi
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Post War ◽  
Difficult Times

AbstractNambara Shigeru was a rara avis of Japanese liberal academics at hard times in that he survived difficult times without being punished by the oppressive government in the pre-war Japan and the occupation authorities in the immediate post-war Japan. He specialized in Western political philosophy especially in Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, known as proponents of German idealism and nationalism. His magnum opus was published, without being punished, in 1944, arguing that the Nazi politics was totally against the Western political tradition. In 1945–46, he made clear his opposition to the draft new Constitution in which the emperor be symbolic and the armed forces be abolished. In 1949–1950, he made clear his view that Japan, once Japan admitted to the United Nations, what would become Japanese Self-Defense Forces should donate portions to what would become United Nations Peace Keeping Operations. On the basis of his writings in the war period and the occupation period, comparisons of his positions with Roger Scruton, Vladislav Surkov, Yanaihara Tadao, Akamatsu Kaname, Nitobe Inazo, and Yanagida Kunio on such concepts as democracy promotion, national self-determination, peace keeping are attempted to see the extent to which the pent-up Wilsonian moment burst in the immediate post-war period.

Hegel: Minds, Masters, and Slaves

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
General Philosophy ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Kantian Philosophy

This chapter examines G. W. F. Hegel's dialectic of the master and the slave which he articulated in his book Phenomenology of Spirit and how it is related to his general philosophy. Hegel thought that everything the mind, any mind, experiences is in some sense a product of mind itself. One way of explaining how he arrived at this strange idea is by describing how he responded to the thought of Immanuel Kant. Kantian philosophy features a set of dualities or oppositions, such as those between freedom and necessity, between the sensibility and the understanding, between the analytic and the synthetic, and between the infinite and the finite. Whereas Kant loved dichotomies, Hegel abhorred ultimate dichotomies in the scheme of things. The chapter considers some tenets of Absolute Idealism in order to elucidate some of the more general philosophical questions with which Hegel was concerned in the course of his master/slave discussion.

Transcendental idealism and metaphysics: Kant’s commitment to things as they are in themselves

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Allais
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
Metaphysical Position ◽  
The Way

Abstract One of Kant’s central central claims in the Critique of Pure Reason is that we cannot have knowledge of things as they are in themselves. This claim has been regarded as problematic in a number of ways: whether Kant is entitled to assert both that there are things in themselves and that we cannot have knowledge of them, and, more generally, what Kant’s commitment to things in themselves amounts to. A number of commentators deny that Kant is committed to there actually being an aspect of reality which we cannot cognise; they argue that he is committed merely to the idea that we cannot avoid the concept of things as they are in themselves. I will argue in this paper that while transcendental idealism is partly an epistemological position, it is also partly a metaphysical position, and in specific, that Kant is committed to the claim that the things we cognise have, in addition to the way they appear to us, a nature that is independent of us, which we cannot cognise.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Philosophy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
The Self ◽  
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Third ◽  
Fourth Level ◽  
German Nation ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Over Time

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (b. 1762–d. 1814) is the first representative of what has been called “German idealism.” He precedes both Schelling, who was considered his disciple until their final break, and Hegel. Regarded as a disciple of Kant in 1793, Fichte nevertheless reproached him for not having succeeded in founding the content of his philosophy on an absolute principle. His primary purpose is therefore to make philosophy into a rigorous science. Fichte therefore begins to elaborate in 1794 on what he calls the “Science of Knowledge” (Wissenschaftslehre; WL). He tirelessly proposes new versions of this Science of Knowledge, insisting through the repetition of the title, on the permanence of his initial motivation: to find an absolute foundation for knowledge. The versions of Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (a dozen in total, distinguished by their date: 1794, 1801, etc.) reflect the most general and abstract level of philosophical thought. This first level of philosophy, which is the most general and abstract, is called by Fichte “first philosophy.” The second level corresponds to theoretical philosophy (or the philosophy of nature) and practical philosophy (or ethics as developed, for example, in his Systems of Ethics, in 1798). The third level represents the “particular sciences,” which study more specific and concrete fields, including subdisciplines such as biology and physics, or “natural right” (i.e., “theory of right”) and philosophy of religion. Finally, a fourth level is constituted by the so-called popular writings, aimed at a public of nonphilosophers, for example, The Vocation of Man, The Way Towards the Blessed Life, and Addresses to the German Nation. The contrast between the clear and literary language of these popular writings and the arid abstraction of the Sciences of Knowledge has often been emphasized. Fichte’s body of work seems to pose a problem of continuity for many commentators. Are the multiple versions of Science of Knowledge compatible with each other? To this question, the answer is more often than not a negative one. Fichte’s commentators divided these versions into two or, sometimes, three periods. The vast majority of interpretations assert that Fichte’s thought evolved over time. Such a change is more often expressed as the passage from a doctrine of what is finite (the subject, the “Self”) to a philosophy of absolute (God, Being). The problem of this evolution has become one of the most difficult aspect of interpreting Fichte’s thought.

scholarly journals Framing Humanity by Framing Nature: John Maxwell Coetzee's Disgrace in the Context of Kant's Theory of Morality // Encuadrar a la humanidad encuadrando a la naturaleza: Desgracia de Coetzee en el contexto de la teoría moral de Kant

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Kamil Michta
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
The Third ◽  
Formula Of Humanity ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Kant's Ethics ◽  
Kantian Philosophy

The essay discusses the correlation between Immanuel Kant’s ethics, especially his views on human duties toward animals, and John Maxwell Coetzee's literary depiction of man’s struggle to rediscover the meaning of humanity by tending unwanted animal corpses. Hence, it firstly concentrates on the key issues concerning Kant's moral philosophy, placing particular emphasis on the third formula of his categorical imperative, the so-called formula of humanity as an end in itself, and on elucidating the thinker's contention that good treatment of animals, that is, as if they were moral agents, improves in humans the propensity to treat other people well. The essay argues that the manner in which people treat animals, approached from the Kantian perspective, partakes in the duty to improve their own morality and, thus, their humanity. After examining Kant's outlook on animals, the essay discusses Coetzee's 1999 novel Disgrace. In particular it scrutinizes the figure of an aging literature professor, David Lurie, who, having been expelled from his university for sexual abuse, moves to the country. Here he engages in putting down unwanted animals and also in taking personal care for incinerating their bodies with decency and respect. Adopting the perspective of Kantian philosophy, the essay argues that Lurie's concern for animal corpses, despite its apparent pointlessness, can be seen as indicating the renewal of his humanity. In a sense, then, it is nature (unwanted animals and their corpses) that makes Lurie rediscover his humanity. The essay concludes by maintaining that Disgrace, when coupled with Kant's moral theory, is a novel conveying the (Kantian) idea that the manner in which people frame nature, that is, how they relate to it, is formative of the manner in which they frame their own humanity. Resumen   Este ensayo analiza la correlación existente entre la ética de Immanuel Kant, especialmente sus opiniones sobre las obligaciones de los seres humanos hacia los animales, y la descripción literaria que hace John Maxwell Coetzee de la lucha de un hombre por redescubrir el significado de su humanidad ocupándose de cadáveres de animales no deseados. Se centra, por ello, en su primera parte en los temas clave de la filosofía moral de Kant, haciendo especial hincapié en la tercera formulación de su imperativo categórico, es decir, la llamada formulación de la humanidad como un fin en sí misma, y en la elucidación de la controversia kantiana de que el buen trato dado a los animales, o sea, el hecho de tratarlos como si fueran agentes morales, mejora la propensión del ser humano a tratar bien a las demás personas. El ensayo sostiene que la manera en que la gente trata a los animales, examinada desde una perspectiva kantiana, contribuye al deber de mejorar su propia moralidad y, con ello, su humanidad. Tras la parte dedicada al punto de vista kantiano sobre los animales, el ensayo examina la novela Desgracia de Coetzee, publicada en 1999, y, en particular, el personaje de un profesor de literatura cincuentón, David Lurie, quien, tras haber sido expulsado de su universidad por acoso sexual, se traslada al campo donde se dedica a eutanasiar e incinerar con decencia y respeto a animales no deseados. Desde la perspectiva de la filosofía kantiana, el ensayo argumenta que la preocupación de Lurie por los cadáveres de animales, a pesar de su aparente falta de sentido, podría ser considerada como un signo de la renovación de su humanidad. En cierto modo, es la naturaleza (los animales no deseados y sus cadáveres) la que hace redescubrir a Lurie su humanidad. El ensayo concluye sosteniendo que Desgracia, combinada con la teoría moral de Kant, es una novela que transmite la idea (kantiana) de que la forma en que los seres humanos encuadran a la naturaleza, es decir, su forma de relacionarse con ella, configura la manera en que encuadran a su propia humanidad.  

The Longing for a System: German Idealism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Hösle
Keyword(s):  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
World History ◽  
Complex Form ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling ◽  
Almost All

This chapter examines German idealism, which is the only philosophical school of thought has retained the epithet “German.” The reason being is because it was the most intellectually ambitious philosophy that Germany has produced; and because it succeeded in integrating almost all the innovative achievements of earlier German philosophy in the shape of a system, the most complex form of philosophical thought. The religious motivation of the three main figures within this movement contributed to the emergence of a kind of philosophical religiousness that was new in world history. These three crucial figures are Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).

Transcendental Idealism: What Jerusalem Has To Say to Königsberg

Dialogue ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Mark Glouberman
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Human Case ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Anthropological Approach ◽  
Creation Stories

ABSTRACT: The Bible illuminates Kant’s distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves. The two biblical creation stories, in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2, offer different ontological parsings, only the second of which, like Kant’s appearances, is relativized to the human case. But while Kant’s other region remains undercharacterized (it is either understood negatively, as differing from the realm of appearances, or else uninformatively, as the object of supra-human cognition), the Bible articulates quite fully the world as it is before the advent of men and women. The Bible treats this realm from the sub-human standpoint. This broadly anthropological approach to the idea of appearances clarifies transcendental idealism.

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