Angelica Nuzzo

Taking as point of departure Hegelrsquo;s early reflections on his historical present, this essay examines the relationship between dialectical reason and the activity of the understanding in generating contradiction. Dialecticmdash;as logic and methodmdash;is Hegelrsquo;s attempt at a philosophical comprehension of the conflicts and the deep changes of his contemporary world. This idea of dialectic as logic of historical transformation guides the development of consciousness in the emPhenomenology of Spirit/em. Since my claim is that the dialectic of consciousness and its capacity of overcoming contradiction are rooted in the historical situation of 1807, the question is raised of what would be the specific problems encountered by consciousness in our contemporary worldmdash;in 2007. What are the challenges posed by our globalized world to a phenomenology of contemporary spirit; and what is the role that contradiction and dialectic play in the understanding of our own historical present?

“The relation of a trillion to unity is very clearly understood, yet so far philosophers have not been able to make the concept of freedom comprehensible in terms of their unities, i.e., in terms of their simple and familiar concepts.” That this estimation of Kant’s, formulated as early as 1764, still holds true for the state of post-Kantian philosophy becomes evident when one attempts to reconstruct the discussion of the concept of freedom, which was initiated even among Kant’s contemporaries by his formulation of its problematic. The problem connected with this discussion can be understood historically as well as systematically. On the one hand, it is concerned with following the historical inheritance of the Kantian philosophy along the guiding thread of the concept of freedom in the debate between the followers and opponents of Kant. On the other hand, this historical investigation should serve to trace the systematic changes that the concept of freedom necessarily undergoes as soon as it enters a philosophical framework that is different from the Kantian. This dual perspective, under which the theme of “freedom” will be considered, offers the further possibility of marking off the temporal as well as the systematic limits of what is to be investigated here. The main philosophical interest in pursuing the modifications to which Kant’s concept of freedom was subjected in post-Kantian philosophy obviously lies in casting new light on the epochal course of thought that leads “from Kant to Hegel.” A claim to satisfy this interest is justified, however, only after one is clear about the philosophical discussion that had already begun among Kant’s contemporaries even while Kant himself was completing and working out his philosophical program. In short, the transition from the concept of freedom in Kant’s transcendental philosophy to the conception of freedom that is unique to the speculative idealism of Hegel can be explained only in light of a preceding analysis of the transformations that the Kantian theory of freedom underwent even as it was being worked out. These transformations, then, will appear at the same time as alternatives to the Kantian program.

Angelica Nuzzo - Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 577-597 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica Angelica Nuzzo While philosophers since antiquity have offered reflections and theories on subjects such as the beautiful, the sublime, art, and its appreciation, "aesthetics" as a discipline in its own right dates back only to the second half of the eighteenth-century. We owe to Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten the introduction of 'aesthetics' into philosophical discourse. At the moment of its inception, however, this discipline had little to do with art and was not primarily concerned with the beautiful. It was instead a theory of the cognitive value of human sensibility—a doctrine of "sensible cognition." A general historical and systematic question presents itself at this point: How shall human sensibility be conceived in order for aesthetics as a theory of sensibility to gain an independence of its own in philosophical discourse? And accordingly: How shall the human being be conceived in order for our aesthetic experience to claim a philosophical value of its own? In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions. My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle..