In Defence of Speculative Materialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-155
Author(s):  
Cat Moir
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Given ◽  
Western Marxism

Abstract Ernst Bloch’s recourse to speculative philosophy has guaranteed him the position of a perpetual outsider in the history of Western Marxism. When Jürgen Habermas described Bloch’s philosophy in 1960 as a ‘speculative materialism’, it was to denounce him for crossing the boundaries of critical thought set down as much by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as by Marx’s critique of political economy. This article argues that Bloch’s speculative materialism deserves to be re-assessed. Contrary to Habermas’s assertion that speculation is divorced from critique, I argue with Bloch that (1) the speculative hypotheses we unavoidably use to interpret the world around us inform our political beliefs and actions, and (2) to stifle speculative thinking as that creative and inquisitive enterprise which questions and transgresses the given is not only a ‘crime against reason’, as Hilary Putnam once claimed, but also a crime against freedom.

scholarly journals KRITIK IMMANUEL KANT TERHADAP FAHAM RASIONALISME DAN EMPIRISME

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jauhan Budiwan
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

Immanuel Kant is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. This portion will focus on his metaphysics and epistemology in one of his most important works. The Critique of Pure Reason, A large part of Kant’s work addresses the question “What can we know?” The answer, if it can be stated simply, is that our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the -natural, empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics. The reason that knowledge has these constraints, Kant argues, is that the mind plays an active role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind's access to the empirical realm of space and time. In order to understand Kant's position, we must understand the philosophical background that he was reacting to. First, 1 will present a brief overview of his predecessor's positions with a brief statement of Kant's objections, then I will return to a more detailed exposition of Kant's arguments. There are two major historical movements in the early modem period of philosophy that had a significant impact on Kant; Empiricism and Rationalism,

scholarly journals La potencia de la ficción en el pensamiento nietzscheano

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-176
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Phenomenal World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Late Works

La potencia de la ficción en el pensamiento nietzscheano Resumen analítico.-El presente trabajo analiza las implicancias de la ficción sobre la posibilidad del conocimiento y la razón. Partiendo desde la obra de Nietzsche, se recorrerá las diferentes valencias de la ficción tanto en sus obras tempranas como tardías. En tanto el conocimiento, se partirá de la propedéutica realizada por Kant en La crítica de la razón pura haciendo al distinguir entre el mundo fenoménico y el mundo nouménico. Clarificando la metodología kantiana en la obra citada se puede observar cómo las ideas de la razón poseen una faceta ficcional. En el eje de la Razón como nuevo Dios, emerge la propuesta arkhica de un ordenamiento que es la raíz de la metafísica occidental. La mitologización de la razón, tal como lo menciona Adorno, es la creación de una nueva ficción que da sentido a la existencia. Por ello, la logicización del lenguaje, como lo detecta Cacciari, es la respuesta encontrada por Nietzsche en la propia razón para la formulación de un sentido aprehensible de mundo. Palabras claves: Ficción -Razón -Conocimiento -Mitologización –Arkhé The power of fiction in the nietzschean thought Abstract.-This paper analyzes the implications of fiction on the possibility of knowledge and reason. Starting from Nietzsche's work, the different valences of fiction will be traversed in both his early and late works. Concerning knowledge, it will be based on the propaedeutic realized by Kant in Critique of pure reason, distinguishing between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world. Clarifying the Kantian methodology in the cited work, one can see how the ideas of reason have a fictional facet. Being Reason the new God, the arkhica proposal of an order that is the root of western metaphysics emerges. The mythologization of reason, as Adorno mentions it, is the creation of a new fiction that gives meaning to existence. Therefore, the logicization of language, as Cacciari mentions, is the answer found by Nietzsche in his own reason for the formulation of an apprehensive sense of the world. Keywords: Fiction -Reason -Knowledge -Mythologization -Arkhé

scholarly journals Epistemologia Kanta jako rozwiązanie sporu empiryzmu z racjonalizmem

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Michał Wendland
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
Pure Intuition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Ideas

The article concerns some of the most important elements of I. Kant’s epistemology and its connections with earlier epistemological ideas, namely rationalism and empiricism. The history of dispute between rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) and empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) is hereby shortly presented while Kant’s own philosophical achievements are suggested to be both alternative and synthesis of these. The main core of this paper is summary of basis of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; some most important categories are described: apriorism, synthetic and analytical judgements, knowledge a priori and a posteriori, main ideas of transcendental esthetics (two forms of pure intuition: time and space), main ideas of transcendental logic (forms of judgement and twelve categories). Also the meaning of Kant’s „copernican revolution” is presented as a turning point for classical German philosophy as well as for whole modern epistemology.

“Cheap Energy” in Raj Patel and Jason W Moore’s A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-214
Author(s):  
Benjamin Anders
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Price Mechanism ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

This debates essay offers a summary and critique of the chapter “Cheap Energy” in A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Jason W Moore and Raj Patel. In the text of my comment, I suggest that this work—while intellectually generative—pays insufficient attention to broader analytical and theoretical debates within Global Political Economy and the study of science and technology that its analysis addresses. Additionally, the authors do not address the failure of the only major attempt to jettison the price mechanism as a system for allocating resources under conditions of industrialization—the Marxist-Leninist command economies—to generate anything approaching a sustainable society.

Kant’s Cognitive Semantics, Newton’s Rule 4 of Experimental Philosophy and Scientific Realism Today

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Westphal
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Force ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Cognitive Semantics ◽  
Constructive Empiricism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Newtonian Mechanics ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
History Of

AbstractKant’s Critique of Pure Reason contains an original and powerful semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference which has important implications for epistemology and for philosophy of science (and which is entirely independent of Transcendental Idealism). Here I argue that Kant’s cognitive semantics directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of Experimental Philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force. I begin with Newton’s Rule 4 and its role in Newton’s justification of realism about gravitational force (§ 1). I then briefly summarize Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (§ 2), and show that it is embedded in, and strongly supports, Newton’s Rule 4, and that it rules out not only Cartesian physics (per Harper) but also Cartesian, infallibilist presumptions about empirical justification generally (§ 3). This result exposes a key fallacy in Bas van Fraassen’s main argument for his anti-realist Constructive Empiricism, and in many common objections to realism (§ 4). These problems reveal yet a further important regard in which Constructive Empiricism is not (so to speak) ‘empirically’ adequate, not even to Classical Newtonian Mechanics (§ 5). This inadequacy of Constructive Empiricism highlights a chronic empiricist misunderstanding of Newton’s mechanics (§ 6). Finally, Kant’s cognitive semantics improves upon the semantic interpretation of scientific theories, and rectifies the presumption that laws of physics literally ‘lie’ (§ 7). Thus Kant and Newton still have invaluable lessons for contemporary philosophy and history of science (§ 8).

Breathing in India, c. 1890

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 283-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
NILE GREEN
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political History ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Of The Body ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis essay examines a series of ‘Hindustani’ meditation manuals from the high colonial period against a sample of etiquette and medicinal works from the same era. In doing so, the essay has two principal aims, one specific to the Indian past and one pertaining to more general historical enquiry. The first aim is to subvert a longstanding trend in the ‘history’ of religions which has understood meditational practices through a paradigm of the mystical and transcendent. In its place, the essay examines such practices—and in particular their written, and printed, formulation—within the ideological and technological contexts in which they were written. In short, meditation is historicised, and its ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ expressions, compared in the process. The second aim is more ambitious: to test the limits of historical knowledge by asking whether it is possible to recount a history of breathing. In reassembling a political economy of respiration from a range of colonial writings, the essay thus hopes to form a listening device for the intimate rhythms of corporeal history. In doing so, it may suggest ways to recount a connected and necessarily political history of the body, the spirit and the world.

scholarly journals 200 Years To Political Economy in Vilnius University

Ekonomika ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egidija Laumenskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Special Event ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vilnius University

This paper gives a concise overview of the development of the economic thought in Lithuania mentioning the very special event in the history of the economic science - the establishment of the Department of Political Economy in Vilnius University in 1803 as the first Department of Political Economy in the world.

scholarly journals Of empty thoughts and blind intuitions Kant's answer to McDowell

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günter Zöller
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
The Real ◽  
Myth Of The Given ◽  
Passive Data ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Given ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

This paper examines the relation between intuition and concept in Kant in light of John McDowell's neo-Kantian position that intuitions are concept-laden.2 The focus is on Kant's twofold pronouncement that thoughts without content are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind. I show that intuitions as singular representations are not instances of passive data intake but the result of synthetic unification of the given manifold of the senses by the power of the imagination under the guidance of the understanding. Against McDowell I argue that the amenability of intuitions to conceptual determination is not due some pre-existing, absolute conceptuality of the real but to the "work of the subject."3 On a more programmatic level, this paper seeks to demonstrate the limitations of a selective appropriation of Kant and the philosophical potential of a more comprehensive and thorough consideration of his work. Section 1 addresses the unique balance in Kant's philosophy between the work on particular problems and the orientation toward a systematic whole. Section 2 outlines McDowell's take on the Kantian distinction between intuition and concept in the context of the Kant readings by Sellars and Strawson. Section 3 exposes McDowell's relapse into the Myth of the Given. Section 4 proposes a reading of Kant's theoretical philosophy as an epistemology of metaphysical cognition. Section 5 details Kant's original account of sensible intuition in the Inaugural-Dissertation of 1770. Section 6 presents the transition from the manifold of the senses to the synthesis in the imagination and the unification through the categories in the Critique of pure reason (1781 and 1787). Section 7 addresses Kant's formalism in epistemology and metaphysics.

Gottlob Ernst Schulzes skeptizistische Kant-Kritik in ihrer Relevanz für Arthur Schopenhauers Systemkonstitution

Kant-Studien ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-146
Author(s):  
Daniel Elon
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
Positive Answer ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Arthur Schopenhauer ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
The World

Abstract: In 1792, Gottlob E. Schulze published one of the most important treatises in the era of the early critical reception of Kant’s transcendental philosophy: the skeptical treatise Aenesidemus. One of Schulze’s later students was the young Arthur Schopenhauer, whose examination of Kant’s philosophy was significantly influenced by Schulze. In this paper, it shall be established that this influence isn’t limited solely to the details of Schopenhauer’s critique of Kantian thinking, but rather extends to the systematic unfolding of Schopenhauer’s philosophy as a whole. In this respect, Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation can be understood as a direct, positive answer to the questions left open by Schulze’s debate on the internal problems of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

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