Conceptualistic Pragmatism

C. I. Lewis’s version of pragmatism, which he called “conceptualistic pragmatism,” has been little studied and is nowadays overlooked, eclipsed by the more famous pragmatisms of Dewey and James. However, it was Lewis’s version that came to dominate the formation of post-1945 pragmatism in the United States. It provided the framework in which Quine (his former student), Sellars, Davidson, Rorty and Brandom operated. Roughly, that structure involved a passive, sensory ineffable given and an ordering and classification of the given by a priori categories. Comprehending those categories was a matter of apprehending a priori truths, but those categories were also changeable. Rational change involved giving some up and substituting others to meet certain basic human interests. We thus have the picture of mind and world that culminates in a certain sense in Brandom’s philosophy: External causal inputs linked to an internal normative inferential network which then results in causal outputs of linguistic shape. This is very different from the classical German idealist conception of mind and world, which takes the distinguishability-but-inseparability of concept and sensory intuition as its core

Paradoxien der Autonomie (second edition)

Die Reihe „Freiheit und Gesetz“ ist einer Idee gewidmet, die die moderne praktische Philosophie begründet – der Idee, dass die Freiheit des Subjekts und die Verbindlichkeit von Normen („das Gesetz“) nicht im Gegensatz zueinander stehen, sondern durch einander zu erläutern sind: Ein Gesetz ist nur dann verbindlich, sofern wir es uns selbst gegeben haben, so dass sich in dessen Wirksamkeit zugleich unsere Freiheit verwirklicht. Eben darin besteht die moderne Idee der Autonomie. Die Reihe dient der kritischen Untersuchung dieser Idee. Sie fragt nach den Spannungen, die in ihr aufbrechen, den Voraussetzungen, auf denen sie aufruht, und den Folgen, die ihre – politische, rechtliche, soziale – Verwirklichung hat. Der erste Band der Serie beschäftigt sich mit dem Verdacht, dass die Idee der Autonomie von dem Paradox bedroht ist, in Willkür oder Heteronomie, in grundlose Setzung oder unfreie Selbstunterwerfung umzuschlagen. Dieses Paradox, so der Verdacht, besteht darin, dass sich hinter der Verknüpfung von Freiheit und Gesetz Zwang oder Gesetzlosigkeit auftut. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes diskutieren kontrovers, ob diese Diagnose zutrifft; ob die Idee der Autonomie sich in ein Paradox verstrickt; wie das Paradox der Autonomie, wenn es aufbricht, zu verstehen ist; und wie sich das Paradox vermeiden oder so entfalten lässt, dass es lebbar wir

Honneth, Butler and the Ambivalent Effects of Recognition

This paper examines the ambivalent effects of recognition by critically examining Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. I argue that his underlying perfectionist account and his focus on the psychic effects of recognition cause him to misrepresent or overlook significant connections between recognition and power. These claims are substantiated by (1) drawing from Butler’s theory of gender performativity, power and recognition; and (2) exploring issues arising from the socio-institutional recognition of trans identities. I conclude by suggesting that certain problems with Butler’s own position can corrected by drawing more from the Foucauldian aspects of her work. I claim that this is the most promising way to conceptualise recognition and its complex, ambivalent effects

How to Move From Romanticism to Post-Romanticism: Schelling, Heine, Hegel

Kant’s conception of nature’s having a “purposiveness without a purpose” was quickly picked by the Romantics and made into a theory of art as revealing the otherwise hidden unity of nature and freedom. Other responses (such as Hegel’s) turned instead to Kant’s concept of judgment and used this to develop a theory that, instead of the Romantics’ conception of the non-discursive manifestation of the absolute, argued for the discursively articulable realization of conceptual truths. Although Hegel did not argue for the “end of art” (although it is widely held that he did just that), he did, curiously enough, claim that it is art and not philosophy which tells us about the “life” of agents. To see how he reconciles that claim with his otherwise entirely discursively oriented philosophy, it is necessary to look at his thesis of the end of art’s “absolute” importance. Hegel’s worries have to do with the impossibility of fully exhibiting the “inner” in the “outer” in modern art and with the newly emerging problem of “fraudulence” in the poet’s voice. This is illustrated by examples drawn from the history of music and the problems besetting the lyric poet in modern life. Because of these problems, we are, Hegel says, now “amphibious animals” having to live in different and seemingly incompatible worlds. Hegel’s student, Heinrich Heine, found that the only satisfactory way of responding to this was for the modern artist to adopt a distinctive type of irony in response to the Hegel’s worries about modern art. This form of irony, it is argued, is itself Hegelian in spirit

Las Formas de Vida según Hegel.

Este ensayo explica el uso que Hegel le dio al término «formas de vida» (Lebensform) desde sus primeras obras, en las cuales hace referencia a un cierto tipo de unidad «orgánica» entre conceptos e intuiciones, hasta llegar a la Fenomenología del Espíritu en la cual es utilizado como «figuras del espíritu».AbstractThis essay explains Hegel’s use of the term «forms of life» (Eebensform) from his earlier works, in which it express a kind of «organic» unity between concepts and intuitions, to its use in the Phenomenology of Spirit as «shapes of spirit»