Michael Lewin

The object of this study is to examine the way in which the later Fichte handles Kantian ideas. In the first part Kant’s theory of principles will be investigated in order to find out how many types of ideas he uses. In the second part the ideas will be assigned to the basic moments of Fichte’s Outlines 1810. Not only the transcendental concepts and postulates play a key role in the Science of Knowledge, but also the methodological ideas of a theoretical and practical reason. While the latter are mentioned by Kant only in passing, in Fichte’s later works they constitute a pivotal part in the reflexions about the faculty of reason.

Unter expliziter Metaphilosophie werden metaphilosophische Aussagen, Theorien und Theorienreihen verstanden, die von dem Bewusstsein begleitet sind, dass mit ihnen ein Beitrag zu metaphilosophischen Debatten geleistet wird. Die metaphilosophischen Diskursformationen betreffen drei Ebenen: metaphilosophische Einzelfragen (etwa die Frage, ob der Begriff des philosophischen Fortschritts aufgegeben werden muss (Shan in Metaphilosophy 53:176–184, 2022), systematische Metaphilosophie (etwa in analytischer (Williamson) oder pragmatisch-kontextualistischer (Rescher) Sicht) und Meta-Metaphilosophie (etwa in phänomenologischer Sicht (Fraisopi)). Die perspektivistische Kritik wird anhand ausgewählter Beispiele zeigen, dass sie nicht der Allgemeinheit des Philosophie- und Metaphilosophiebegriffs genügen, dass sie aber als gültige Beiträge zu metaphilosophischen Debatten gewertet werden können.

Die erkenntnistheoretische Grundlage des Essays ist ein begriffslogisches Verständnis des Perspektivismus. Die von Kaulbach („Philosophie des Perspektivismus“, 1990) und Stegmaier („Philosophie der Orientierung“, 2008) entdeckte konzeptuelle Basis des Perspektivismus wird einer „originalistischen“ Begriffsanalyse unterzogen und erweitert. Es wird zu zeigen sein, dass solche Begriffe wie „Position“, „Richtung“, „Horizont“, „Bereich“, „Kontext“, „Blickwinkel“, „Relatum“ etc. keine bloßen Metaphern, sondern Elemente einer jeden epistemischen Situation ausmachen. Sie bedingen jeden Versuch, durch ein epistemisches Objekt hindurchzusehen (perspicere). Die Offenlegung der quasiapriorischen begrifflichen Matrix und der entsprechenden Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Grundstruktur des Erkennens begründet den Perspektivismus als ein unabhängiges Forschungsprogramm zur Analyse der Faktoren, die epistemische Situationen bedingen und zu Aussagen, etwa metaphilosophischer Art, führen. Damit können sie einer gründlichen Kritik, der Destruktion und Rekonstruktion, unterzogen werden.

Die perspektivistische Kritik macht deutlich, dass die Beispieltheorien und -aussagen aus der impliziten und der expliziten Metaphilosophie nicht der Allgemeinheit des Philosophie- und Metaphilosophiebegriffs genügen. Daraus müssen Schlussfolgerungen für das Verständnis der Metaphilosophie gezogen werden. Zunächst wird das Hauptproblem der Metaphilosophie rekapituliert, nämlich die philosophische Vorbelastetheit metaphilosophischer Ansichten – die Metaphilosophie qua Nachphilosophie. Im Anschluss wird gezeigt, dass die Metaphilosophie eine Disziplin im Werden ist, die trotz dieses Problems Merkmale von Einheitlichkeit aufweist. Diese sind der Gegenstandsbereich, über den weitgehender Konsens herrscht, die bereits gebildeten Diskursformationen und die Einordnung der Metaphilosophie. Mit diesem ausdifferenzierten, dem Hauptproblem genügend Rechnung tragendem Verständnis der Metaphilosophie und mit Rückgriff auf die Idee eines im Vorhinein auf Interperspektivität ausgerichteten Diskurses, die eine Orientierung zugleich auf Universalität und Inklusion vorschlägt, kann sowohl die metaphilosophische als auch philosophische Praxis geleitet werden.

Unter impliziter Metaphilosophie werden metaphilosophische Aussagen verstanden, die nicht von dem Bewusstsein begleitet sind, dass mit ihnen ein Beitrag zu metaphilosophischen Debatten geleistet wird. In der Philosophiegeschichte finden sich zahlreiche Urteile über die Philosophie, ihre Struktur, ihre Methoden etc., die oft nur nebenbei gefällt werden. Entsprechend der perspektivistischen Methode wird zunächst die philosophisch über den Standpunkt und den Fokus auf das Absurde vorbelastete Aussage von Camus über die Grundfrage der Philosophie destruiert. Im Anschluss werden die problematische Einordnung des Begriffs der Einstellung von Husserl und die von Carnap nicht beachtete Gesetzmäßigkeit perspektivischer Reziprozität thematisiert. Es wird sich zeigen, dass Philosophieverständnisse und Ansprüche von Camus, Husserl und Carnap nicht der Allgemeinheit des Philosophiebegriffs entsprechen, dass sie aber als gültige Beiträge zu metaphilosophischen Debatten gewertet werden können.

Der Begriff „Metaphilosophie“ wird zum ersten Mal von Reinhold im Sinne einer abgeleiteten, von einer vorhergehenden Philosophie abhängigen Nachphilosophie gebraucht. Gegenwärtig versteht man darunter eine Philosophie der Philosophie. Es wird dafür plädiert, allen drei Bedeutungsdimensionen der Vorsilbe „metá-“ Rechnung zu tragen: Nachphilosophie,Mitphilosophie und Philosophiephilosophie. Keine Metaphilosophie wird der Allgemeinheit des Philosophie- und Metaphilosophiebegriffs gerecht. Das muss im Rahmen einer perspektivistischen Kritik, der Destruktion und Rekonstruktion metaphilosophischer Aussagen und Theorien, nachgewiesen werden. Dennoch ist die Metaphilosophie eine natürliche und notwendige Begleiterin der philosophischen Praxis. Ein ausdifferenziertes und perspektivistisches, zugleich auf Universalität und Inklusion ausgerichtetes Verständnis der Metaphilosophie – die der aktuellen Lage und den Anforderungen angemessene Meta-Metaphilosophie – kann sie dem Erfüllen ihres disziplinären Zwecks näherbringen.

This chapter examines the relationship between language and thought in Kant and contemporary philosophy. It argues that Kant, despite his substantive contributions to the philosophy of language, would not have followed the linguistic turn in philosophy. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, the sharp distinction between words and concepts, as well as between ‘nominal’ and ‘real’ concepts; secondly, the view that philosophical inquiries are genuinely directed at ‘concepts of things’ rather than at ‘concepts of words.’ The first section analyses the word-concept distinction in Kant. The following section examines the conflation of words and concepts in both everyday and professional philosophical language, as well as Kant’s possible response. The next part is dedicated to the problem of conceptual and topical discontinuity as well as the distinction between words, concepts, and conceptions from both contemporary and Kantian points of view. Finally, the concluding section offers an alternative perspective on the significance of words and continuity in philosophy.

Statements about philosophy in the history of philosophy and in recent metaphilosophical debates are dependent on first-order philosophical commitments and backgrounds, which poses both a threat and a chance for metaphilosophy as a discipline. The article aims at providing a current picture of metaphilosophy and its possible future design. It explores the problem of first-order philosophical preconceptions in metaphilosophy and suggests a strategy for the further disciplinary development of metaphilosophy. At first, it points at the problem via analysis of Camus’, Husserl’s, and Carnap’s implicit and Rescher’s, Williamson’s, and Fraisopi’s explicit metaphilosophical views. Neither a universal account of philosophy nor a neutral metaphilosophy are in sight. Nevertheless, as the article shows next, a descriptive perspective on existing contributions reveals certain continuity and disciplinary structure in metaphilosophy regarding its subject, placement, and existing topics. A complementary normative perspective that demands philosophy-oriented metaphilosophy focusing on inclusivity and universality can lead to more effective discourse formations, problem-solving, and knowledge maximization in this discipline.

Philosophy traditionally deals with such lexicalized concepts as WISDOM, VIRTUE, REASON, WORLD VIEW, INFINITE UNIVERSE, and PHILOSOPHY. They trigger interest in philosophy particularly because they are hard to understand and explain. It is all the more surprising that many contemporary philosophers focus on such concepts as DOG, CHAIR, and FLIGHT to build their theories and provide examples. The article argues that to preserve topical equilibrium and avoid methodological problems, both classes of concepts should be involved in philosophical theorization and exemplification. The first part critically discusses attempts at identifying these classes as ordinary vs. big (Gauker), empirical vs. pure (Kant), and concrete vs. abstract (contemporary psycholinguistics). It introduces the opposite pair simple empirical vs. complex demanding concepts as an alternative heuristic tool to evaluate concepts. The second part elaborates on the concept of concept and structural similarities between the two classes of concepts in semantic and 'onomantic' perspectives. The third part shows that despite structural similarities, such factors as the availability of empirical data, identification of the referent, historical and theoretical loadedness, complexity, and demandingness indicate that simple empirical and complex demanding concepts should be addressed in different ways. The final part elaborates on the notion of topical equilibrium as a philosophical method and norm and discusses two further examples (COW and ARTHRITIS) from contemporary debates in conceptual engineering.

The article explores different ways in which the term ‘metaphilosophy’ or ‘philosophy of philosophy’ can be applied in the context of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. It is argued that despite the terminological differences partially caused by Fichte’s renaming of philosophy and the unclear meaning of ‘metaphilosophy,’ several options are available. The article suggests considering metaphilosophy as one of the many ‘meta-constructions’—such as the thinking of thinking, philosophizing about the philosophizing, and the metaphysics of metaphysics—that can be found throughout the history of philosophy and in Fichte’s thought. They follow the figure of self-application, which is compatible with historical and contemporary translations of ‘meta’ as after, beyond, and about. The available options are the Wissenschaftslehre of philosophy, understood as the revision of philosophy and thematization of deficient or incomplete conceptions of philosophy from the standpoint of the Wissenschaftslehre; the Wissenschaftslehre of the Wissenschaftslehre as the propaedeutic self-reflection, successive reformulation, and picture that emerges with the completion of the system; and philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre. The latter, the external view of Wissenschaftslehre as one philosophy among others, is almost not present in Fichte. However, it connects Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre with contemporary metaphilosophy, as demonstrated by Rescher’s topics, benefiting both Fichte scholars and contemporary metaphilosophers.

The book (I) deals systematically with a conception of reason that creates and deploys ‘ideas’ as pure representations of something that is not or only partially given in experience. This conception—developed in Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic, unfolded throughout his works and set as the highest point in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre—is the most important key to understanding transcendental philosophy and classical German philosophy. Moreover, the book (II) argues that the set of theories regarding reason ‘in the narrower sense’ (the faculty of ideas) constitutes a research program that can be developed further and compete / cooperate with alternate projects (theories of rationality and reasonability) in contemporary contexts; it can also be successfully defended against Pyrrhonical objections and the post-idealistic critique of reason.

The frequent use of the term ‘metaphilosophy’ and the corresponding research in the 1960s may lead to the conclusion that there has been a development of a new discipline, a formation of a new kind of philosophical discourse. Such questions as, “What is philosophy?”, “What kind of questions does philosophy ask?”, “Which methods does it adopt to answer them?” and “Is there progress in philosophy?” are put at the center of attention. They constitute a separate research field. Just as the laws of logic, nature and natural sciences, epistemology, morals, freedom and law, philosophy is one of its own normal topics. Several sources of the need for metaphilosophy can be named, such as the re-orientation in philosophy due to its diversity and possible dissent within itself, justification of philosophy and its relevance against the backdrop of the progress in sciences, or the re-evaluation of a research tradition, such as analytic philosophy or phenomenology. The overall goal of metaphilosophy could be understood as the development of theoretical means for a better understanding of philosophy and for a better philosophical practice.

Recent research gives perspectivism the status of a stand-alone epistemological research program. As part of this development, it must be distinguished from other epistemologies, especially relativism. Not only do relativists and perspectivists use a similar vocabulary—even the supposed tenets (features of the doctrine) seem to partially overlap. To clarify the relation between these programs, I suggest drawing two important distinctions. The first is between the (1) terminological and (2) doctrinal components of epistemologies, the second between the (2a) analytical and (2b) synthetic doctrinal components. The method of the originalistic linguistic analysis that I introduce in this article shows that both relativism and perspectivism use the same matrix of interconnected linguistic expressions that belong to what I call the universal epistemic language. Furthermore, this method reveals which doctrinal components necessarily follow from this linguistic basis and the terms ‘relativism’ and ‘perspectivism’ and which are a result of deliberate philosophical constructions. As for the linguistic basis and analytical doctrinal components, relativism and perspectivism are complementary members of one epistemology. Doctrinal additions that transform the original meaning of the terms ‘relativism’ and ‘perspectivism’, such as ‘indifferentism’ and ‘non-absolutism’, should always be explicitly mentioned to avoid confusion and straw men debates in philosophy.

In recent decades, perspectivism has developed into an independent epistemological research program. Perspectivism is based on the idea that a perspective, as an attempt to get insight into an object, depends on a multitude of factors. Perspectivists are concerned with reconstructing and explaining these factors as well as identifying the conditions of epistemic acts using such concepts as “position” / “point of view,” “view,” “angle,” “horizon,” “focus,” “picture,” “relativity,” and “context”. Although these concepts are part of the perspectivist’s toolkit, their content and interrelationship have not yet been critically and comprehensively analyzed. The article aims to clarify the conceptual basis of perspectivism as an epistemological program, building on previous efforts of F. Kaulbach (1990) and W. Stegmaier (2008). It will conduct a systematic conceptual analysis and present the logical content of perspectivist notions, integrating them into a single coherent model to serve as perspectivism’s conceptual foundation. Perspectivist concepts form a “population” or matrix of the concept “epistemic situation”. When coherently articulated and organized within a conceptual model, they can serve as a tool for nuanced analysis of epistemic situations and their outcomes (theories, positions, views, etc.). The article’s final section will highlight significant implications of this new, programmatic understanding of perspectivism: the status of perspectivist concepts, how perspectivism distinguishes itself from related epistemological programs, and challenges for its continued development.

Philosophers conceptualize a lot, generate, analyze, and engineer concepts. They often either equate ‘words’ and ‘concepts’ or consider words only as means of expression of their ‘concepts’. I suggest that philosophers should learn to distinguish between ‘words’ and ‘concepts’. Philosophers’ terms are often incompatible or partially incompatible with philosophers’ ‘concepts’. Examples are ‘isms’ in philosophy and the conception of reason. If ‘talking about the same matter’ is a prerequisite for fruitful philosophical debates, words and their analysis should have at least some limiting and guiding power over concepts.

In seiner „Kritik der reinen Vernunft“ unterscheidet Immanuel Kant zwischen rationaler und historischer philosophischer Erkenntnis. Erkenntnis ist historisch, wenn man sich nach fremder Vernunft bildet, und rational, wenn man Erkenntnisse aus eigener Vernunft schöpft. Dazwischen liegt die historisch-rationale philosophische Geschichte der Philosophie. Die Beiträge in diesem Band machen sich alle drei Perspektiven zunutze. Unter den behandelten Themen sind formale Logik, das ‚Transzendentale‘, der Begriff des Begriffs, Begriffsanalyse und Sprachanalyse, Vernunft, Biomimetik, Idealismus, logische Analyse formaler und realer Gegenstände, Asylrecht und Umweltethik. Im Fokus stehen dabei Überlegungen zur Aktualität, Zukunftsrelevanz und zu Weiterentwicklungsmöglichkeiten der Theorien von Kant, Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel.

There is a widespread agreement that Nietzsche has developed a kind of position or doctrine called ‘perspectivism’. Scholars go on and develop metaphysical, semantic, epistemic, and psychobiological interpretations of the supposed Nietzschean perspectivism or even ‘perspectivisms’. They engage in debates about whether this perspectivism is relativistic, realistic, or anti-realistic and what the tenets of perspectivism are. In this paper, I suggest putting an end to this practice. I examine Nietzsche’s explicit mentions of the term ‘perspectivism’, the problems associated with the misunderstanding of this term as a label, attempts to reconstruct perspectivism based on explicit mentions of ‘perspective’ and related vocabulary, and doctrinal assumptions scholars try to connect with this terminology.

For Kant, philosophical investigations are inherently analytic. The proper method of philosophy is analysis, and the object of analysis are concepts. Hence, Kant’s short description of philosophy as “rational cognition […] from concepts” (KrV, A 837/B 865) can be substituted by “philosophy is conceptual analysis”. The article shows that Kant follows a representationalism about concepts and a combination of intensional and extensional feature semantics. Against the claim that Kant is a proponent of the concept-judgement-inversion, it is argued that concepts are being articulated in form of singular terms, propositions, and sets of propositions alike. Kant interlinks different kinds of concepts with different kinds of definitions, as the reconstruction of his theory of definitions reveals. Philosophy foremost deals with what Kant calls “given” empirical and pure concepts. Such concepts are object of analysis, i.e., explication and exposition. The article ends with answers to five possible objections. Is philosophy all about analysis?

How surprising is the insight, that being equals I in the 15th lecture of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II? It might have been indeed an unexpected turn for his contemporaries in Berlin listening to Fichte for the first time, but should it be surprising for us, having at least since 2012 (the year the last volume of [Gesamtausgabe] appeared) access to all his published and unpublished works? I want to propose a way of reading Fichte, which bypasses two popular and contradictory interpretations of his philosophy in the post-Jena period: (a) the Absolute is the new first principle (hence the I is just a shadow of the much higher being) and (b) his system basically remains unchanged (hence the being is nothing more than the I). At first, I analyze the functions of later Fichte’s improved version of the Kantian and Reinholdian abstract subject-object-symbolism and assign specific content to it. This will shed light on the structure and the first principle of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II. In the second section I give reasons why Fichte calls both God and I “absolute” and “pure being” and explain their relation to each other referring to a thought experiment sometimes used by Kant—an analogy between the divine and human (pure) reason. The analogical thinking of this kind remains within the borders of transcendental philosophy as long as it is used only for certain didactic purposes.

In recent decades, perspectivism has developed into an epistemological research program claiming its independence. This autonomy stems from Perspectivism’s potential ability to resolve the contradictions between realist and constructivist programs. Perspectivism is based on the idea that the object depends on perspective, which constitutes any subjective attempt to cognize it. Perspectivists reconstruct and explain the factors involved in the formation of perspective, identifying the conditionality of epistemic acts, using concepts such as “position”, “point of view”, “view”, “angle”, “horizon”, “focus”, “picture”, “context”, “aspect”, etc. Although these concepts are part of the perspectivist’s toolkit, their meanings and interrelation have so far been taken for granted and have not yet been critically and comprehensively analyzed. The purpose of this article is to take steps toward clarifying the conceptual basis for defending perspectivism as an epistemological program. Once consistently uncovered and correlated in a conceptual model, Perspectivist concepts can be used as a tool for a detailed analysis of theories, positions, and beliefs. The article begins with a preliminary description of the concept of perspectivism and its brief history as an epistemological program. In particular, the first modern attempts to outline perspectivist epistemology are described in the works of F. Kaulbach (1990), W. Stegmaier (2008), and M. Massimi (2017, 2020). The problem of identifying the special a priori status of perspectivist notions as a strategy for justifying the autonomy of Perspectivism is then posed. A method for demonstrating such a status, based on Kant’s transcendentalism and P. Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics, is then suggested.

Since Nietzsche, the term “perspectivism” has been used as the name for an ill-defined epistemological position. Some have tried to find an adequate meaning for the word “perspectivism,” tacitly investing it with a set of different predicates, such as “the dependence of cognition on position,” “pluralism,” “anti-universalism,” “epistemic humility,” etc. This approach is related to two contestable attitudes: the monolateral linguistic paradigm and the metaepistemological position of multiplicity of incompatible epistemological programs. The monolateral linguistic paradigm proceeds from the assumption that there is no obligatory connection between word and meaning. This makes it possible to denote logical content by any possible sign, and to explicate the sign in any number of ways. The metaepistemological position of multiplicity of incompatible epistemological programs encourages the support of artificial antagonism in the theory of cognition and the creation of “new” positions with different denotations. These attitudes can be contrasted with the method of empirical “originalist” analysis within the bilateral paradigm, as well as the theory of one epistemology and universal epistemic language. The content of the term “perspectivism” can be reconstructed by analyzing the original meanings of its individual constituent morphemes and their combination. The extremely precise and empirically provable definition of the word “perspectivism” is “the tendency to act by seeing through something”. This points to the problem of the impossibility of analytically deducing from it “the dependence of cognition on position,” “pluralism,” and other predicates. The same problem of inconsistency between the name of the epistemological position and its content is also encountered, for example, in the literature on relativism. It freely attributes a set of doctrinal beliefs to the term “relativism” without explicit linguistic signification of the predicates and blurs the difference between perspectivism and relativism. This points to the inexpediency of constructing epistemological positions on the basis of words denoting one of all possible interrelated cognitive actions, and the need to rethink epistemological practice.

In the current dialogue between two authors with different views on analysis, philosophy, and the use of labels, the leading question is: How should one understand the expression ‘analytic philosophy’? Lewin argues that as there are no generally agreed tenets and methods of what is being called ‘analytic philosophy’, the name is to be replaced by a more specific one or abandoned. Williamson defends the use of this phrase, claiming that it is quite serviceable, as it relates to a broad tradition of influence, while it is not even required to adhere to the method of analysis in any distinctive sense. Lewin counters that, in this case, ‘analytic philosophy’ is too empty. One could heal this by conceptual analysis of ‘analytic philosophy’ — but then Kant, for whom philosophy is inherently analytic, would be a proponent of analytic philosophy. Another option is to follow Ryle’s ideal of a label-free, coherent and honest thinking. As Lewin argues, Williamson’s views seem at least partially to agree with Kant’s conception of the difference between philosophy and history of philosophy as well as empirical analysis and the underlying empirical realism. Williamson replies that he uses ‘analytic philosophy’ in its current meaning, which is not composed of the meanings of ‘analytic’ and ‘philosophy’. The current use is different from the earlier ones and not applicable to Kant. He argues against the transcendental idealism and the coarse-grained distinction between analytic and synthetic and a priori and a posteriori that requires an update.

There is a growing interest in both Kant’s conception of philosophy and contemporary metaphilosophy, understood as philosophical inquiry into philosophy, its aims, purpose, subjects, structure, practice and methods. Kant has not contributed to metaphilosophy qua contemporary discipline, but his direct analyses of what philosophy is and how it is to be done can be identified with general subjects and problems constituting the research field of metaphilosophy. Several aspects of Kant’s conception of philosophy and its metaphilosophical value are the subject of current debates, such as the taxonomy of philosophy, relation between empirical and non-empirical philosophy, relation between philosophy and its history, conceptual analysis, deductive reasoning and philosophical disagreement.