Guenter Zoeller

Der Beitrag eruiert den Metaphysikbegriff Kants in der systematischen Spanne zwischen Wissenschaftslehre und Weisheitslehre. Der erste Abschnitt erörtert das architektonischmethodologische Verhältnis von transzendentaler Kritik und theoretischer Metaphysik beim kritischen Kant, insbesondere in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Der zweite Abschnitt präsentiert Kants kritische Konzeption einer limitativen Metaphysik des Anti-Materialismus, Anti-Determinismus und Anti-Fatalismus in den Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik. Der dritte Abschnitt behandelt Kants kritische Konzeption einer praktisch-dogmatischen Metaphysik des "Übersinnlichen in uns, über uns und nach uns" im Fragment der Preisschrift über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik.

The essay examines Kant’s Enlightenment conception of metaphysics as a science to be kept free of ideological prejudice and extrarational cognitive resources and to be established under the conditions of public, intersubjectively valid discourse. I analyze Kant’s self-interpretation of his transcendental philosophy as “metaphysics of metaphysics” and argue for the extensional partial identity of the critique of metaphysics and the metaphysics so rendered possible. In particular, I identify the “future metaphysics” envisioned by Kant as the “metaphysics of nature in general” or the “physiology of pure reason,” which was projected by Kant but never carried out by himself and is not to be confused with the “metaphysics of material nature” presented by Kant in his Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science. I further show how in Kant the “restriction” of the understanding and its pure concepts to sensible intuition is counterbalanced by the “bounding” of sensibility and its formal conditions to the appearances, at the exclusion of the “empty space” of the non-sensory. In drawing on Kant’s distinction between “limit” and “boundary”, I establish the precise position of critical metaphysics “on the boundary” of the world of sense and the world of the understanding. In concluding, I argue that for Kant a “future metaphysics that will be possible as science” is restricted to transcendental philosophy, at the exclusion of the theoretical cognition of the supersensible, which is thereby delegated forever to the object domain of practically based rational but non-scientific belief or faith.

306 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL ~996 exposition of Siris but also in the way he is able to tie it thematically to the earlier periods of Berkeley's life. Much of the content of this book has already appeared in articles published by Berman within the past twenty-odd years. Yet, since some this material resides in journals difficult of access without an excellent library, the volume is a welcome addi- tion to the Berkeley literature. In the enormous wake of his mentor, A. A. Luce, Berman has carefully and skillfully plotted his own course, presenting us with a bal- anced and compelling account of Ireland's greatest philosopher, one in which the man is a more sympathetic and fallible figure that that presented in either Luce's portrait of the "good bishop"--"the man with vision but in no sense a visionary" --or Yeats's sketch of a darker and more devious character. While Berman's Berkeley is one who "united the incompatible virtues of worldly wisdom and childlike inno- cence," and had "a delicate sense of what was required if the world was to be changed" , Berman does not hesitate to examine Berkeley "at his worst: in his biblical endorsement of slavery; his approval of kidnapping for the sake of converting the American Indians; in his theological rejection of all rebellion, no matter how tyrannical the ruler; [and] in his intolerant attitude to free-thinkers" . Even for those who will be dissatisfied with..

This paper examines the relation between intuition and concept in Kant in light of John McDowell’s neo-Kantian position that intuitions are concept-laden. 2 The focus is on Kant’s twofold pronouncement that thoughts without content are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind. I show that intuitions as singular representations are not instances of passive data intake but the result of synthetic unification of the given manifold of the senses by the power of the imagination under the guidance of the understanding. Against McDowell I argue that the amenability of intuitions

Two hundred years after his death, Kant remains one of the most important modern philosophers. The Prolegomena is the ideal introduction to Kant's unique account of the nature human knowledge, according to which we actively shape the world as we know it. This new edition of Kant's own summary of his philosophy is designed specially for students. Guenter Zoeller assumes no prior knowledge of the Prolegomena and provides an extensive and comprehensive introduction which explores Kant's life, the origin and reception of the Prolegomena, the organization of the work, its principal arguments, and its philosophical significance. This edition also includes detailed notes to aid student understanding, as well as a chronology, a glossary and an annotated bibliography.

The essay places the modern Euro-American conception of publicity into the historical and systematic context of the Western political tradition of republicanism. Section 1 features the state as the public realm of political deliberation and decision in the twin traditions of the Greek city state and the Roman republic. Section 2 analyzes the redrawing of the boundaries between the public and the private in early modern political thought. Section 3 examines the transformation of the distinction between the public and the private in politico-philosophical reflection on high modern commercial and civil society. The focus throughout is on the republican requisites of the rule of law and of self-rule in political society

The paper assesses Martin’s recent logico-phenomenological account of judgment that is cast in the form of an eclectic history of judging, from Hume and Kant through the 19th century to Frege and Heidegger as well as current neuroscience. After a preliminary discussion of the complex unity and temporal modalities of judgment that draws on a reading of Titian’s “Allegory of Prudence”, the remainder of the paper focuses on Martin’s views on Kant’s logic in general and his theory of singular existential judgment in particular. The paper argues against Martin’s key claims of the primacy of formal logic over transcendental logic and of the synthetic nature of judgment in Kant. It also takes issue with each of the four interpretations of singular existential judgment in Kant offered by Martin: existence as logical predicate, as copula, as thesis and as logical subject.

Fichte hat nur eine, die allererste und nicht einmal förmlich zum Abschluß gebrachte, Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre publiziert, doch in den nächsten knapp zwei Jahrzehnten bis zu seinem Tod im Januar 1814 die Wissenschaftslehre noch insgesamt fünfzehn Mal öffentlich vorgetragen und dabei dreizehn Mal neu oder verändert dargestellt. Hinzukommen noch drei umfangreiche Ausarbeitungen, die den öffentlichen Vortrag der Wissenschaftslehre vorbereiten bzw. begleiten: »Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie« aus den Jahren 1793-94, die Aufzeichnungen betitelt »Seit d. 1.April 1808. nach den Reden an die deutsche Nation« aus dem Jahre 1808 und wesentliche Teile der als Diarium geführten Notate aus den Jahren 1813 und 1814. Nur wenige von Fichtes Zeitgenossen - praktisch nur die Zuhörer seiner fortgesetzten Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaftslehre in Berlin, Erlangen und Königsberg - haben diese öffentlichen, aber unveröffentlichten Arbeiten zur Kenntnis nehmen können.

Allerdings findet sich die transzendentale Theorie bei Kant in einiger Verlegenheit, wenn es darumgeht, den Status der apriorischen Bedingungen von Erfahrung positiv zu bestimmen. Reine Anschauung und reines Denken werden als Formelemente aller Erfahrung bzw. von deren Gegenständen verstanden. Die Empirie ist demzufolge ein Kompositum von aposteriorischem Material und apriorischer Form. Kants formalistische Auffassung der transzendentalen Bedingungen von Erfahrung läßt nun das eigentliche Zustandekommen der reinen Formen und den ihrer Formfunktion zugrundeliegenden Status ungeklärt. Mehr noch, Kants Verfahren überträgt die problematische Natur des transzendentalen Bedingungsgefüges auf das von letzterem durch Formpräsenz Begründete. Das in die Erfahrung formend eingegangene reine Anschauen und Denken ist selber keine Erfahrung und scheint auch das dadurch Geformte, die Erfahrung, in den nicht zureichend geklärten Bereich des Nicht-Empirischen hinüberzuziehen.

This is the first book in English on the major works of the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It examines the transcendental theory of self and world from the writings of Fichte's most influential period, and considers in detail recently discovered lectures on the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy. At the center of that body of work stands Fichte's attempt to integrate the theories of volition and cognition into a unified but complex 'system of freedom'. The focus of this book is the intricate interplay between thinking and willing in the birth of experience out of the spirit of freedom. Combining incomparable erudition, sensitive readings of some of the most difficult of philosophical texts, clarity in exposition and an acute awareness of historical context this book takes its place as the ideal introduction to Fichte's thought.