Fichte's Moral Philosophy

Author(s):  
Owen Ware

This book develops and defends a new interpretation of Fichte’s moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte’s System of Ethics (1798) is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian philosophy and a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte’s moral philosophy evolved and of the specific arguments he offers in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of the study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte’s ethics—freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community—and their connection to his novel but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte’s ethics, a commitment to the feelings of one’s conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others, are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a fresh understanding of Fichte’s System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life.

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
Seth Lobis

AbstractIn his colloquy Amicitia, Erasmus uses Pliny's Historia naturalis as the primary source for an energetic and inventive exploration of the topic of friendship. Like certain animals and objects in the natural world, friends share a natural affinity, but Erasmus goes further than this natural-historical observation, concluding that the moral life requires from us a more active relationship to our instincts and inclinations. Apposing two senses of the word amicitia, natural affinity and personal friendship, Erasmus ultimately suggests an intimate relationship between natural history and moral philosophy.


2020 ◽  
pp. 78-81
Author(s):  
Andrei Nekhaev

George Edward Moore is the brightest philosopher of British neo-realism. During the first half of XX century he remained the undisputed leader of this philosophical movement, which organically and fruitfully combinedele-ments of classical British empiricism with new original tools for the conceptual analysis of ordinary language expressions. By the example of innovative ideas in moral philosophy, outlined by G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica, there is analyzed the intellectual context of the formation of philosophical metaethics in the XX century.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ami Harbin

In Disorientation and Moral Life, I consider disorientations as experiences of not knowing how to go on following serious life events and experiences like those involved in traumas, grief, illness, education, consciousness raising, and migration. I challenge a history of moral philosophy that I claim has been preoccupied by a focus on the best moral agents as those who are most decisive, wholehearted, and clear about how they ought to act. In this piece, I respond to three commentaries on Disorientation and Moral Life. In particular, I offer reflections on how disorientations might be useful in contexts of disability studies, prison abolitionism, professional philosophy, anti-racist action, and political organizing.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 405-431
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Velmezova

In the late 1920s – early 1930s, the Russian poet and novelist Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) wrote four novels which reproduce various discourses pertaining to the Russian humanities (philosophy, psychology, linguistics, study of literature) of that time. Trying to go back to the source of the corresponding theories and "hidden" quotations by identifying their authors allows us to include Vaginov's prose in the general intellectual context of his epoch. Analysing Vaginov's prose in the light of the history of ideas enables us to understand how a number of philological and philosophical trends were interpreted by particular groups of Soviet intellectuals (for instance, writers and poets who were Vaginov's contemporaries). Besides, it allows us to propose a new interpretation of Vaginov's novels and their evolution which corresponds to his perception of humanities around him: their many tendencies and peculiarities become unacceptable for the writer in the 1930s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Stanislav Kushner

The article is devoted to the analysis of the legal theories of P.I. Novgorodtsev and B.A. Kistyakovsky, based on the moral philosophy of I. Kant in comparison with the psychological theory of law of L.I. Petrazhitsky. The unity of the positions of Novgorodtsev and Kistyakovsky in focusing on the ethical aspects of law, as well as highlighting morality as the highest principle, is revealed. Attention is paid to the disclosure of neo-Kantian motives in the philosophy of law and in the context of the development of the theory of natural law in Russia. The main content of the article is a consistent analysis of Novgorodtsevʼs ideas in their dynamics, compared with the neo-Kantian philosophy of law of Kistyakovsky. It is emphasized that the psychological theory of the source of Petrazhitskyʼs legal relations is in the same intention of thought with the motives of the Russian neo-Kantians, which allows them to be compared in the history of the development of the Russian theory of law. The modern scientific literature is analyzed in order to identify the problem of comparing different approaches in the history of Russian philosophy of law, in which German transcendental philosophy is one of the key foundations. The question of the independence of Russian scientists in the construction of ethical and legal doctrines is actualized, but, at the same time, a single motive is emphasized with the Kantian provision on the need to establish a general civil society on the principles of a developed system of rules and norms.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1128-1136
Author(s):  
Olga V. Bershadskaya ◽  

The article studies features of socio-economic and socio-political development of the Black Sea village in 1920s. Documents from the fond of the Black Sea District Committee (Obkom) of the RCP (b) -VKP (b) stored in the Center for Documentation of the Modern History of the Krasnodar Krai allow not only to reconstruct the developments in the Black Sea village in the NEP days, but also to understand the nature of its evolution. Uniqueness of the Black Sea village was greatly determined by its geographical environment. There had formed a sectoral makeup of agricultural production: fruit-farming, viticulture, tobacco growing. Rugged relief forced peasants to form holdings or farms; therefore rural communities were rare. Its another distinctive feature was its motley national composition. Over 50 ethnic groups inhabited the district, among most numerous were the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Armenians, and the Greeks. In the first years of the NEP, the main tasks facing district authorities were to develop ‘high-intensity’ industries and to shape local peasant farms into food base for cities and resorts. While tackling these tasks, they had to deal with shortages of land and poor communications and to bring lease relations and work-hands employment up to scratch. The situation was complicated by socio-political inertia of rural population of the district that came from the absence of community tradition. Study of the documents from the fond of the Black Sea party obkom shows that local authorities were well aware of the peculiarity of their region, but in most cases had to follow guidelines set ‘from above’ to introduce all-Russian standards.


Theoria ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (152) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
James Furner

AbstractThe contradiction in conception test (CC test) is one of two tests posed by Kant’s Formula of the Law of Nature. This article proposes a new interpretation of this test: a causal-teleological version of the Logical Contradiction Interpretation (LCI). Its distinctive feature is that it identifies causal and teleological implications in the thought of a universal law of nature. A causal-teleological version of LCI has two advantages. While the established view of the Groundwork’s applications of the CC test is a hybrid view that treats the Groundwork’s arguments as different in kind, a causal-teleological version of LCI unifies the Groundwork’s applications of the CC test. Relatedly, a causal-teleological version of LCI provides a solution to the problem of how the CC test can confirm the impermissibility of a self-directed maxim.


Author(s):  
Julian Wright

This chapter sets out the specific historiographical basis for a new study of the French socialist movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that one particular framework—that of the reluctant relationship of socialism with power in the capitalist state—has dominated our approaches to writing the history of French socialism, and suggests that a new focus on temporalities, particularly exploring the clash between revolutionary, future-focused socialism, and present-minded socialism, opens up a new range of cultural, intellectual, and biographical sources for understanding the French socialist movement. It provides the specific intellectual context for understanding how historians in France today are seeking to rethink their intellectual inheritance from left-wing writers of earlier generations.


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