Logic and logogrif in German idealism : an investigation into the notion of experience in Kant, Fichte, Schelling

In this thesis I investigate the notion of experience in German Idealist Philosophy. I focus on the exploration of an alternative to the transcendental model notion of experience through Schelling's insight into the notion of logogrif. The structural division of this project into two sections reflects the two theoretical standpoints of this project, namely the logic and the logogrif of experience. The first section - the logic of experience - explores the notion of experience provided in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Judgement and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. I argue that Kant's fundamental question about the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements succeeds in thematising the aporia of cognitive experience but results in a subject-oriented, representational model which radically confines the notion of experience to the constitutive laws of the understanding or to the normative precepts of Reason. Experience is founded upon a sharp division between faith and knowledge, will and logic, desire and reflection, absolute and finitude. Fichte's endeavour to articulate a non-representational account of experience, does not succeed in extricating itself from the representational model, so long as experience is reduced to the ever-producing deeds of the self-positing ego. Despite the serious differences between Kant's and Fichte's notions of experience, both accounts, so long as they unfold from a transcendental standpoint, attempt to resolve experience into conceptual laws or determinations of the ego's absolute will. Experience is transformed into an object of the subject's cognitive or volitional faculties. The paradoxes of man's interaction with the world are intended to be accommodated either by the law-giving spontaneity of the understanding and the Architectonic of Pure Reason or by the overpowerful primordial act of the self-positing ego. This implies the conceptualisation of the self in terms of constant identity-through-time, or sheer self-determination. However, this conceptualisation remains at the normative or prescriptive level, which in turn is projected upon the world. The latter, though appears as the subject's property, essentially remains alien and opaque, confirming the radical limitations of the ego rather than its order-giving authority. Moreover, this notion of experience is ultimately founded upon a radical expulsion of the divine from the world, the de-spiritualisation of the sensual and the de-sensualisation of the spiritual, the sharp juxtaposition between absolute and finitude. This results in a self-defeating subjectivity, whose firm identity and rule-giving authority does not rescue it from its perennial unattainability to 'organise the conditioned' or 'conquer the unconditioned'. In Kant's and Fichte's thought, however, I detect elements that potentially transgress their transcendental account of experience. These are found in Kant's concept of spontaneity and free play between understanding and imagination, and Fichte's concept of productivity. I argue that these elements lose their potential dynamism, so long as they are absorbed by the transcendental demands for the solution of the aporias of logic. However, these elements point to the need for a radical re-conceptualisation of the notion of experience. This is provided by means of Schelling's logogriflic approach, which constitutes the theme of the second section. The second section - the logogrif of experience - attempts to articulate a different approach towards the notion of experience, through an exploration of Schelling's versatile and provocative thought. This section focuses on Schelling's original insight into the notion and act of logogrif, which opens the dialogue between logos and mythos, cosmic becoming and human soul, cosmic imagination and human reflection, faith and knowledge. This section attempts to illuminate Schelling's fascinating philosophical investigations and discoveries that have been rather overlooked, possibly, due to Hegel's overwhelming critique. This section, after a brief critical examination of the Identity Philosophy, attempts to elucidate Schelling's notion of experience through his middle works, Of Human Freedom, Ages of the World, The Deities of Samothrace, which are treated as a self-developing trilogy. Schelling re-addresses the aporias of logic not as part of Reason's self-interrogation but as part of the cosmic paradoxes and living experiences. In this way, Schelling resets the scene of the debate on the conditions of possibility for cognitive experience by putting on the stage the enigmas of the cosmos and life rather than the Tribunal of Reason. Logic itself is conceived as a potency in the cosmic becoming, and consequently can no longer attempt to establish the transcendental conditions for the possibility of cognitive experience. Cosmic becoming, in which man is an active part, is conceived as the process of the movement, the interaction, the transformations and transmutations of multiple potencies. These, far beyond any mechanical conceptualisation, appear as self-moving and yet interdependent, unknown yet familiar, inscrutable and yet manifest powers, describing the mystery of life itself. The latter is depicted as an ever-recurrent act of longing for self-expression as active unity. Experience is conceived as the lived process of a network of living potencies, which may not only resist rational powers but may also puzzle and seize them. In this context, reflection acquires a plastic dimension, as opposed to its rigidity in the representational model of experience. Reflection depicts cosmic longing's self-formation, whose man is part. This self-bending formation partially illuminates the nature of longing, and from this standpoint is the logic of the longing. However, this formation is movable, transmutable and mostly ineffable, and from this standpoint is the logic of a riddle: a logogrif. Logogrif is the transitive term that attempts to describe the transition of experience from its enacted phase to its allusive conceptual utterance, and in this sense the term itself participates in both phases, as both form of thought and form of life. The logogrific approach to experience in turn transposes us as from the realm of pure concepts to the realm of the mystery of life, from pure thought to acts of longing, from the Architectonic of Pure Reason to Cosmic Theurgy. The latter term attempts to grasp the paradox and dynamism of cosmic and non-cosmic becoming by means of multiple, vanishing and ever-recurring, transmutable potencies, or in Schelling's terms 'the magic of insoluble life'. Schelling's logogrific account consists in a powerful voice for the re-enchantment of the world, the introduction into the notion of experience of the imminence of the divine. This is not suggested in terms of the adoption of old religious doctrines but by means of the discovery and re-discovery of the theurgy of life, through the intensification of our artistic mood, the creative expansion of our deeds. This notion of experience allows for the reconsideration of the notion of the self, in terms of a dynamic, conflictual process between conscious and unconscious powers and the critical revaluation of the accounts of subjectivity which reduce it to the sphere of self-consciousness. The thesis concludes with the need for an investigation into the relation between logos and mythos, which only tangentially has been introduced by the present project. In this context it will be possible to re-appraise the potential that the logogrific approach opens for an alternative to both logical and traditional mythological patterns of thinking

History and becoming of science in Jean Cavaillès

This paper is focused on Cavaillès’ theory of science and his peculiar epistemology. In order to understand the position of Cavaillès concerning the becoming of mathematics, it is necessary to start from the way he utilizes the historical method inherited from Brunschvicg. In Cavaillès’ works, historical analysis is not reduced to a mere reconstruction of the past, but is regarded as an instrument to find the necessity that characterizes the movement of science. This movement is originated by the tensions between a necessary internal push and historical contingency, and it goes at its own pace, being determined by nothing else but the mathematics itself. Therefore, Cavaillès also states the failure of all foundational projects and  affirms the complete autonomy of the becoming of mathematics, which develops as a dialectic unforeseeable concatenation of concepts

Some religious implications of Immaneul Kant\u27s epistemological dualism

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1990/thumbnail.jp

A descriptive assessment of sacraments as language events in Louis- Marie Chauvet and David Noel Power

This paper is entitled: A Descriptive Assessment of Sacraments as Language Events in Louis-Marie Chauvet and David Noel Power. What motivates the author to proceed with this topic is that the author feels the need of finding a new and creative approach to the sacraments. The author is determined to discuss this topic using the methodology of library reading. The two theologians whose theologies are being presented in this paper, namely, Louis-Marie Chauvet and David Noel Power, are the main sources. In addition to reading the works of Chauvet and Power, the author also gets into discussions with the supervisor. Since Chauvet and Power live in postmodern world, their theology can be of the good readings for students of theology who are interested in the theology of the sacraments in the midst of this ever-changing world. Chauvet, for example, proposes a new looking into the sacraments as language of the Trinitarian communication with his people. The church is the place where this interaction happens. The interaction itself occurs through the listening of the Scripture, sacraments and ethical commitment. In the same rhythm, David Noel Power suggests a theology where the sacraments are read as the language of God’s giving. They are the language of God’s giving because the church is the bodily present of the Trinity in the church. This present is, in turn, celebrated and relived through the Scripture, the sacraments, liturgy, rite, customs and cultures. Through all these elements, the language of God’s giving in the past is brought to life in the present time through the language of the church. Chauvet and Power recommend a fundamental theology through which the sacraments are no longer viewed as alienated from the daily experience of the church.The paper is written primarily as the author’s personal journey into the reflection on the sacraments. The author, therefore, hopes to achieve nothing more important than the growing of a personal love of the sacraments. In the second place, the author expects to have been able to introduce the fundamental sacraments of Louis-Marie Chauvet and David Noel Power to a larger context

Judgement, Responsibility and the Life-World: Perth Workshop 2011 Conference Proceedings

The workshop was part of the ARC funded project Judgement, Responsibility and the Life-world..

Are phenomenology and naturalism compatible

Abstract: We find in Husserl’s texts – Prolegomena to Pure Logic (1900), Philosophy as Rigorous Science (1911), and Ideas (1913-4) – that the incompatibility of phenomenology and naturalism is self-evident because consciousness is treated: (a) as the foundation of experience of the world in phenomenology and, (b) as other things in the world in naturalism. Secondly, mental experience (a) is approached using intentionality in phenomenology and, (b) is approached using causality in naturalism. In this dissertation, I argue that Husserl does not mean, in all cases, that phenomenology and naturalism are incompatible, specifically, if Husserl’s text, Phenomenological Psychology (1925) is analyzed and the themes of embodiment and enactivism are drawn out from the text. Firstly, I show that since phenomenology treats consciousness as the foundation of experience of the world, including natural experience, phenomenology swallows up naturalism – making them incompatible. Secondly, I abandon the transcendental version of phenomenology and combine some parts of phenomenology and naturalism to explain the mind. By so doing, I draw out, – using the analyses of Jack Reynolds, Francesco Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, – the themes of (a) enactivism from the relationship between phenomenology and cognitive science, and (b) embodiment from the relationship between phenomenology and biological science, noting that the latter are naturalist disciplines. While embodiment studies the mind as it animates the body, enactivism studies the rise of cognition when the acting body interacts with the environment. Lastly, I present the possibility of compatibility of phenomenology and naturalism by analyzing Husserl’s text, Phenomenological Psychology (1925) and drawing out the themes of embodiment and enactivism in the text. I show from the text that Husserl bypasses the transcendental questions and presents phenomenological psychology as a version that is compatible with naturalism.M.Phil. (Philosophy

The problem and possibility of animal minds in Brandom\u27s work: revisiting Heidegger, rationality and normativity

Robert Brandom denies animals implicit reasoning by emphasizing their inability to make inferences explicit, and in so doing, denigrates animals by likening their behavior to that of machines and artifacts. I contest, however, that animals are paradigmatically more than any similarity or analogy to mechanical processing, just as humans are paradigmatically more than any reductive analogy to animals. The human/animal distinction need not come at the cost of ignoring the difference between animals and artifacts, and I believe we can largely subscribe to Brandom’s differentiation of the human in terms of expressionism if we allow that animals can make implicit inferences without making them explicit. After exposing in Chapter One Brandom’s ghettoizing of animal minds, I show in the following chapters what it might look like for humans to perform explication on behalf of implicit animal inferences. In Chapter Two I show where Brandom departs from Heidegger, and how there would otherwise be a place for animals in his thought. After revising Brandom along more orthodox Heideggerian lines, I explore in Chapter Three the early Heidegger’s concept of the world in terms of Dasein, animals, and unworlded things with an eye towards Brandom’s inferentialism. In Chapter Four I employ Mark Okrent’s teleological understanding of rationality to fill out Heidegger’s suggested view of animals. I conclude the thesis by showing how humans make explicit the implicit inferences of animals

Heidegger\u27s relationship to Kantian and post-Kantian thought

I provide a close analysis of truth and freedom in Heidegger’s work during the passage from Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927 to the Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie) in 1938. This analysis demonstrates the passage from a Kantian style transcendental analysis of the self to an Idealist inspired study of being-historical thinking. Throughout this shift in thinking, the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling is shown to play an increasingly decisive role in Heidegger’s thought, finally leading him to an understanding of the self in terms of freedom, community, culture, and history that carries important implications for political philosophy

Liberalism against Liberalism

The defence of the market and economic freedom have been the main objectives of the investigations by liberal thinkers such as Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, F Hayek and L Von Mises. Bearing in mind that the first two economists are the maximum exponents of the Chicago School and the last two of the Austrian School, it is often concluded that the theories of both schools are similar. This book demonstrates that in reality, there is no convergence or complementariness to be found between both schools of thought. The anthropological categories, contributed by Mises, allow us to understand all human phenomena from the view of the man who acts. In this view, economics is part of a philosophical system whose core is the creative capacity of people. Becker’s work, on the other hand, is concentrated on the generalization of the homo economicus as the basis for explaining all human behaviour. He generalizes the maximizing principle to explain all human reality, and extends the scope of the application of a so-called scientific and technical view of the world. In this key volume, an important read for those in the fields of economic theory and political economy, Javier Aranzadi argues, in essence, that the tradition of Hayek and Mises encourages a humanistic liberalism, whereas the Chicago School proposes only a technical humanism