•  120
    The Development of Freedom
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 81 35-52. 2007.
    This paper elaborates four asymmetrical, developmental stages of the phenomenon of human freedom, starting with a rudimentary sort of freedom, thebasic experience of a relatively unencumbered power to act in alternative ways. The paper argues that structural elements of this rudimentary form of freedomare demonstrable in three distinct, supervening forms of freedom: instrumental freedom, the experience of the self-reflective ability to pursue certain aims, perfectionist freedom, the experience o…Read more
  • Die Altruistische Einstellung
    Jahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik 6. 1998.
    This essay takes a critical look at a specific altruistic interpretation of the moral nature, legitimacy, and value of unselfish actions. The aim of the essay is to raise questions about this altruistic attitude toward the morality of unselfish actions by focussing on certain assumptions that inform that attitude. It is argued that, among those assumptions, the most counterintuitive and deleterious is the notion that the morality of an unselfish action can and should be established by appeal to …Read more
  •  69
    Jacobi and Kant
    Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress 1 907-928. 1995.
  •  51
    The Emergence of German Idealism (edited book)
    The Catholic University of America Press. 1999.
    Immanuel Kant's "critical philosophy" is rightly renowned for its criticism of the metaphysical pretensions of reason unaided by experience. It therefore seems ironic that, within a single generation, some of Kant's most important followers argued that the critical philosophy could be made fully critical only by recourse to the very metaphysical themes that Kant had apparently criticized. The story of the emergence of German Idealism has never been fully told. The story is full of tensions, cont…Read more
  •  219
    Heidegger's transcendentalism
    Research in Phenomenology 35 (1): 29-54. 2005.
    This paper attempts to marshall some of the evidence of the transcendental character of Heidegger's later thinking, despite his repudiation of any form of transcendental thinking, including that of his own earlier project of fundamental ontology. The transcendental significance of that early project is first outlined through comparison and contrast with the diverse transcendental turns in the philosophies of Kant and Husserl. The paper then turns to Heidegger's account of the historical source o…Read more
  •  45
    Challenging twentieth-century skepticism regarding the notion of subjectivity, the author sets for himself the task of elaborating several models of self-consciousness, each differentiated by an advancing degree of complexity. Düsing’s book is accordingly both critical and constructive; its aim is to construct a viable theory of subjectivity and a clear foundation for scientific research, thereby forestalling the naive practice, common among researchers of neural processes, of assuming an arbitr…Read more
  •  159
    Morning Hours, or Lectures on God's Existence
    with Moses Mendelssohn and Corey W. Dyck
    Springer. 2011.
    Morning Hours is the first English translation of Morgenstunden by Moses Mendelssohn, the foremost Jewish thinker of the German Enlightenment. Published six months before Mendelssohn's death on January 4, 1786, Morning Hours is the most sustained presentation of his mature epistemological and metaphysical views, all elaborated in the service of presenting his son with proofs for the existence of God. But Morning Hours is much more than a theoretical treatise. It also plays a central role in t…Read more
  •  59
    Husserl's "Logical Investigations" is designed to help students and specialists work their way through Husserl's expansive text by bringing together in a single volume six self-contained, expository yet critical essays, each the work of an international expert on Husserl's thought and each devoted to a separate Logical Investigation.
  •  80
    The Status of Dispositions
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 88 1-12. 2014.
    This paper addresses puzzling issues concerning the ontological status of dispositions. Following review of debates about a traditional conditional analysis as well as Lewis’s “reformed conditional analysis” of dispositions, the paper analyzes attempts to solve the problem of what makes the relevant conditional true. Reasons are presented for rejecting attempts to locate the relevant truth-maker in a causal basis that allegedly dispenses with dispositions or in properties that are universally di…Read more
  •  58
    Hegel's Appropriation of Kant's Account of Teleology in Nature
    Proceedings of the Hegel Society of America 13 167-188. 1998.
  •  63
    Pragmatist Aesthetics (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 48 (1): 166-168. 1994.
    This engaging work presents a persuasive argument for placing a morally populist and somatic pragmatism at the center, not only of aesthetics and art, but also of what the author calls "the aesthetic life." In the opening chapter the author begins by situating pragmatist aesthetics in its philosophical context, chiefly through a contrast with analytic aesthetics. Casting the contrast as a renewal of the quarrel between Kantians and Hegelians, the author elaborates the fundamental opposition of a…Read more
  •  61
    The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time
    Review of Metaphysics 48 (4): 902-904. 1995.
    The "conceptual story" told by Kisiel neatly divides into three parts, reflecting the genesis of SZ respectively "as a topic, as a program, and as a text". Part 1 begins with the 1919 War Emergency Semester and Heidegger's transformation of Husserlian phenomenology into a "pretheoretical science" of pretheoretical origins, leading to the elaboration of a hermeneutics of facticity and its methodological problematic in concert with the demands of a phenomenology of religion. Part 1 is the lengthie…Read more
  •  41
    Existential Personalism
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 60 263-263. 1986.
  • Baruch A. Brody: "Identity and Essence" (review)
    The Thomist 46 (4): 640. 1982.
  •  121
    Interpreting Heidegger: Critical Essays (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2011.
    This volume of essays by internationally prominent scholars interprets the full range of Heidegger's thought and major critical interpretations of it. It explores such central themes as hermeneutics, facticity and Ereignis, conscience in Being and Time, freedom in the writings of his period of transition from fundamental ontology, and his mature criticisms of metaphysics and ontotheology. The volume also examines Heidegger's interpretations of other authors, the philosophers Aristotle, Kant and …Read more
  •  61
    Hegel’s Principia
    New Scholasticism 55 (4): 421-437. 1981.
  •  69
    Volume Introduction
    The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 8 13-25. 2000.
  •  37
    Heidegger's Heritage
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 59 (4): 981-998. 2003.
    There are several difficulties, largely the product of the distinctive question and paths of Heidegger's thinking, that beset any attempt to determine his philosophical heritage. In the first part of the following paper, after reviewing these difficulties, the author argues that Heidegger is, nonetheless, singularly and quite rightly preoccupied with the heritage of his thinking. In the second part an attempt is made to show how a particular understanding of being, namely, being as presence and …Read more
  •  20
    Realism (edited book)
    National Office of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. 1984.
  •  57
    The Role and responsibility of the moral philosopher (edited book)
    with Desmond J. FitzGerald and John Thomas Noonan
    National Office of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Catholic University of America. 1982.
    Proceedings of the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, held in Houston, Tex., Apr. 16-18, 1982. Includes bibliographical references.
  •  97
    Heidegger and Aristotle (review)
    Ancient Philosophy 28 (2): 489-492. 2008.
  •  58
    Minutes of the Executive Council Meeting
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 56 213-214. 1982.
  •  47
    Der Gottesgedanke in der Philosophie Kants
    Review of Metaphysics 38 (3): 690-691. 1985.
    This well-written, ambitious, and admirably condensed reconstruction of Kant's concept of God in relation to his theoretical and moral philosophy, from the precritical writings to the Opus Postumum, is by its very nature an uneven survey of the works and problems treated. The author strives for a new interpretation of Kant's moral theology by interpreting Kant's practical postulate of God as "eine qualitätive neue Metaphysik," making possible "subjektiven moralischen Glauben an einen wirklichen …Read more
  •  60
    Kant's Theory of Natural Science
    Review of Metaphysics 49 (1): 151-152. 1995.
    The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science was conceived by Kant as an application of the positive conclusions or "general metaphysics" demonstrated in the Analytic of Principles of the Critique of Pure Reason to the specialized objects of knowledge that fall under the concept of matter. The application was meant to provide a metaphysical foundation for natural science, capable of explaining, among other things, how mathematics as an a priori discipline is necessarily applicable to the empi…Read more
  •  45
    Hegel's Encyclopaedia Logic constitutes the foundation of the system of philosophy presented in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Together with his Science of Logic, it contains the most explicit formulation of his enduringly influential dialectical method and of the categorical system underlying his thought. It offers a more compact presentation of his dialectical method than is found elsewhere, and also incorporates changes that he would have made to the second edition of the Sc…Read more