Sebastian Rödl

The paper is an idealist attempt at reconciling the tension between the historical, time-bound emergence of metaphysical truths and their timeless validity. Proceeding from the Aristotelian definition of metaphysics as a science which studies being insofar as it is being, and from Plato’s notion from the Theaetetus that the soul does not grasp being by way of an organ but only through itself, the paper defines knowledge of what is insofar as it is as the knowledge of the absolute, hence, an absolute knowledge. Nevertheless, metaphysics passes through a contingent process of being constituted by persons living in a certain society under certain material conditions; in short, metaphysics possesses a history. Thus, a judgment which apprehends itself through itself, hence, a judgment on being qua being, does not lie outside time, but performs a perpetual annihilation of time and its difference between this and that temporal existence thinking it.

This essay critically analyzes Barry Stroud’s book Metaphysical Dissatisfaction. With reference to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Rödl challenges Stroud’s claim of an inherent dialectic of knowledge and dissatisfaction internal to the project of metaphysics as a systematic knowledge of what is insofar as it is. According to Rödl, Stroud takes metaphysics to be the endeavor of comparing the ways in which we think with what is in order to establish whether we, as we think in these ways, can actually grasp what is as well. But this construal of metaphysics makes it appear that there are two things, independently described and subsequently compared: i) how we think, and ii) how what is is, as we are thinking it. According to Rödl, Stroud is right to hold that metaphysics (i. e. the science of what is, insofar as it is) investigates being and thinking. But metaphysics does not investigate a relationship between the two. Rather, metaphysics arises from thought, from the kind of understanding of its object that thought itself is.

The essay represents teaching as the coming to be of the human individual. In order to do so, it reflects on the character of human life by which it is knowledge of itself. Being knowledge of itself, human life is self-determining or free. Therefore generality and particularity come together in the human being in a distinctive way: a human being is not an exemplar, instance or specimen of a species, nature or life-form. Rather, she is her own principle. This is captured in the idea of the human being as an individual. The essay reveals teaching to be the form of coming to be which is proper to what is an individual in this sense. In this way, the essay shows teaching to be internal to human freedom.

In Barry Stroud’s book Engagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction, the eponymous dissatisfaction is said to be due to our inability to obtain certainty about the correspondence between the world and our ways of thinking it. In Stroud’s terms, this dissatisfaction is caused by the failure of the metaphysical enterprise. Beginning with Aristotle’s metaphysics, this paper discusses Stroud’s misunderstanding which stems from his particular construal of the object of metaphysics: There is no metaphysical enterprise and thus, there can be no metaphysical dissatisfaction.

The first part of this essay develops the idea of logic as the science of thought, articulating, and thus being, the self-consciousness of thought. It explains that logic, so understood, is nothing other than metaphysics, the science of what is in so far as it is. Self-consciousness, then, thought itself, is not empty, but the source of all content. The second part of the essay discusses the opening paragraphs of Hegel’sScience of Logic; it shows how, in these paragraphs, thought is revealed to be the source of its own content in virtue of its original negativity. Thus the second part begins to make concrete the idea of logic provided by the first.

Kant asserts that the formula of the schools “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni” is undoubtedly certain when clearly expressed. Conversely, doubt reflects a failure clearly to express it. Once we comprehend the concepts of the formula, of the good and of desire, there is no doubting it. In recent times, the formula has fallen into doubt. If Kant is right, then this shows a lack of clarity with respect to the concepts the formula conjoins. I want to suggest that Kant is right: the formula of the schools is undoubtedly certain. I first explain in Kant’s own terms why there is no such thing as doubting the formula. Then I approach it from a different angle, provided by what I take to be the unclarity that affects current thought on the topic.

Before and in the Groundwork, Kant argues as follows for the validity of the moral law: we want to be free. Following the moral law is the only way to be free. So we should follow the moral law.1 The first premise of this syllogism is treated differently before and in the Groundwork. First Kant thought it an empirical fact that men want to be free and want it more than anything else.2 Later he sought an a priori argument showing that we ought to want to be free and are right in thinking it good.3 The former justification of the moral law is superior. When we look to “salvage the normative core of Kantian moral philosophy” (Guyer 445), we should turn to it. – So far Paul Guyer. It is evident that Guyer fails to describe Kant's thought in the Groundwork. It is equally clear that Kant never held the position Guyer claims he held before the Groundwork. (The quotations Guyer gives in support of his claim show this.) Therefore I shall not discuss Guyer's interpretation of Kant. Instead I shall consider the philosophical merits of the position he ascribes to the pre‐critical Kant, and which he recommends as superior. We shall see that that position makes no sense. This indirectly addresses the interpretive question, as it is a reason against ascribing it to Kant.

The essay argues that there is no such thing as the epistemology of testimony as it is currently conceived: a subfield of epistemology that concerns itself with a special form of acquiring knowledge, a special kind of justification, a special sort of reason for belief. Rather, the concept of knowledge contains an account of the possibility of knowing from others. We cannot find ourselves in this predicament: we comprehend what knowledge is all right, and yet have difficulty seeing how one may, from the words of another, come to acquire that: knowledge. And if we cannot find ourselves in this predicament, then there can be no need to introduce, in response to it, concepts that currently attract much interest—trust, authority, sincerity, etc.