Revitalisasi Humanisme dan Kritik Gadamer atas Metodologi

Setelah memperkaya pengetahuan di bidang filologi, Gadamer pada akhirnya mengembangkan kajian hermeneutika yang berujung pada terbitnya buku Truth and Method. Ketika itu gagasan positivisme dan perkembangan ilmu baru, yaitu sosiologi, perlahan-lahan mendominasi khazanah ilmu-ilmu humaniora. Dominasi itu akhirnya direspons dan dilawan oleh sejumlah filsuf yang menganggap bahwa positivisme mengabaikan dimensi manusia yang begitu kompleks dan berbeda sama sekali dengan obyek penelitian ilmu-ilmu alam. Gadamer mengkritik keyakinan bahwa hanya melalui metodologi ilmu-ilmu alam, manusia dapat mencapai kebenaran. Gadamer menawarkan diskursus humanisme di tengah kepungan dominasi metodologi untuk mengembangkan humaniora. Gadamer mengangkat empat konsep penting dari tradisi humanisme, yaitu Bildung, sensus communis, pertimbangan, dan selera.

Cosmopolitismo y lenguaje en la Antropología en sentido pragmático de Kant

En la Antropología en sentido pragmático (ApH), Kant establece que el estudio de esta disciplina se orienta al conocimiento del ser humano como ciudadano del mundo (Anth, AA 07: 119). El propósito del presente trabajo es mostrar la manera en que el lenguaje forma parte de este conocimiento. Para ello me referiré al sensus communis de la Crítica de la facultad de juzgar y tomaré en cuenta las recientes investigaciones de Michael Forster y Paul Redding en torno a la tradición de la filosofía del lenguaje en la filosofía alemana del siglo xviii; éstas las acompañaré de la interpretación de Michel Foucault en su estudio introductorio a la ApH de Kant, donde sostiene que el ciudadano del mundo es el que habla

La philía politiké como amor mundi: La recepción de Hannah Arendt de la amistad política de Aristóteles

Este trabajo examina la recepción de la philía aristotélica por parte de Hannah Arendt. Primero, exponemos las notas de la philía en la Ética a Nicómaco y la proyección política de la amistad como synaísthesis. Segundo, argumentamos que tanto en un destacado fragmento de “Truth and Politics”, como en la Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Arendt termina de esclarecer su noción de amistad como lazo mundano y político. Allí no alude a Aristóteles, sino a Kant y a sus reflexiones sobre el sentido del gusto y el sensus communis.

Deleuze’s reading of the Critique of Pure Reason

The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason such as it appears in his 1963 monographic work La Philosophie critique de Kant. We will show that the originality of Deleuze’s reading lies in reading the critical project in retrospect, taking the sensus communis problem from the Critique of the Power of Judgment and applying it to the first Critique. In so doing, he points out the survival of a pre-established harmony, now interiorized, both between heterogeneous faculties and between the matter of phenomena and the Ideas of reason. This implies a reinterpretation of the critical project that has passed unnoticed within Kantian studies and that places the Third Critique as the ground of the previous ones, unveiling common sense as a condition of possibility of knowledge.

Rationalizing: Kant on Moral Self-Deception

Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. The paper argues that Kant’s conception of rationalizing (“Vernünfteln”) helps us to avoid the Socratic Paradox, and to understand how immoral actions can be imputed to our individual freedom and responsibility. In rationalizing, we misuse our capacity of reason in order to construct the illusion according to which we are not bound to the absolute demand of the moral law, but rather subject to exceptions and excuses. Finally, the paper interprets the three rules of “common sense” (sensus communis) in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in terms of an antidote to rationalizing.

Cruel Insensibility and an Ethics Without Authority

This article considers the phenomenon of being insensible to animal cruelty, and how such insensibility relates to human transgressions of the planet. I consider the visualization of animal culls that appeared upon the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. The spectacular wasting of animal life, I argue, discloses the economic logic by which humanity secures itself as a sovereign species. Such a logic and its visuality are not only underpinned by a broader necropolitical paradigm, moreover, they co-constitute a primal scene that enables the liquidation of animal life to the point of extinction. Following the evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, I consider animal culls in relation to the phenomenon of virus dumping, a systemic perturbation of forest ecologies preceded by the influx of capital in agricultural markets that results in the release and rapid evolution of viruses. I therefore recapitulate the relationship between animal cruelty and the economy of planet wasting that subtends it. In this vein, I consider how the visuality of animal cruelty is predicated on a banal violence. Yet, drawing from Hannah Arendt, I call for an ethics without authority, a version of the Sensus Communis by which we might witness cruelty from within the depths of planetary transgressions.

Sociability, Censorship and the Limits of Ridicule from Shaftesbury to Hutcheson

This chapter discusses Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour. The Sensus Communis became the urtext of the ridicule debate for the remainder of the century. The chapter situates Sensus Communis in its political context and shows how Shaftesbury's commitment to ridicule received an early test when the High Churchman Henry Sacheverell used a sermon at St Paul's Cathedral to mock Whig pieties concerning toleration. By agreeing with Whig efforts to suppress Sacheverell's sermonizing through parliamentary impeachment, Shaftesbury conceded that the coercive power of the state was sometimes needed to create space for the more sociable exchanges he preferred. The chapter concludes in the 1720s with two of Shaftesbury's most influential early readers: Bernard Mandeville and Francis Hutcheson. The chapter shows that it was in the disagreement between these two philosophers (one a champion of Shaftesbury, the other his most trenchant critic), that the significance of ridicule to the debate on sociability comes truly into focus.

Gadamer’s Appropriation of Pietism

A foundation stone of Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is the notion of the sensus communis. The philosophical significance of a “sensus communis” (common sense) begins with Aristotle, who offered scattered reflections. The topic was taken up in earnest in Enlightenment thought and in German idealism, but it became more of an individual faculty, lacking the deep sense of community and tradition found in earlier formulations. In this paper, the author demonstrates Gadamer’s debt to Pietist thought, examining his appropriation and use of the theology of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782), a leading figure in Swabian Pietism, whose ideas had a significant impact in theological circles and broader cultural life. Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment’s ‘prejudice against prejudice,’ owes a debt to the Pietist conception of the sensus communis and his practical philosophy to Pietism’s emphasis on ‘application’ as a fundamental aspect of a hermeneutical triad.