Christopher Lauer

In The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard aims to show the inadequacy of an ironic standpoint not through a generalized dialectical account of its failure onits own terms but through an empirical examination of the actual life of Socrates. Crucial to his methodology, I argue, is his use of the term “suspend” (svæve).Socratic irony is not overcome, superseded, or annulled, but rather “suspended” in its incomplete connection to its community. In both his depiction of Socratesas hanging in a basket and his deification of insubstantial clouds, Aristophanes provides a model for Kierkegaard’s conception of suspension. By bringing Socrates into direct engagement with the Clouds, Aristophanes shows Kierkegaard not just the tendency of Socratic irony to suspend itself, but a way of approaching irony that does not reduce it to a moment of a greater totality.

Introduction -- Suspension -- Hegel and Schelling -- Outline of the whole -- The surge of reason : faculty epistemology in Kant and Fichte -- The first critique's basic distinction -- The third critique -- Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre -- Ascendant reason : the early Schelling -- Of the I -- The treatises -- Metastatic reason : Schelling's nature philosophy -- Organic reason : ideas for a philosophy of nature -- Rational nature : on the world-soul -- Inhibition of nature : the Erster entwurf -- Synthetic reason : the system of transcendental idealism -- The idea of system -- The synthetic method -- History and art -- Reason as reflection and speculation : Hegel's collaboration with Schelling -- The differenzschrift -- Krug's pen -- The sacred abyss : Schelling's identity philosophy -- The darstellung -- System of philosophy in general -- Space, time, and suspension : Hegel's absolute knowing -- The phenomenology's critique of Schelling -- Absolute knowing -- Suspended reason : Hegel on the certainty and truth of reason -- Empty idealism -- Observing nature -- Observing self-consciousness -- Self-actualizing reason -- The project of individuality -- Reason on the periphery : Schelling's freedom essay -- Reason as peripheral -- Pantheism and freedom -- God as existing -- Longing for ground -- The possibility of evil -- The actuality of evil -- System, ground, and indifference -- Reason's systematic excess -- Hegel's system -- The myth of totalizing reason -- The philosophy of nature -- History -- Reason's systematic excess -- Schelling's positive philosophy -- The natural history of reason -- The critique of Hegel -- Now what?

In this paper I argue that one of the most important impulses that structure Hegel's account of religion is the need to show gratitude for the gift of creation. Beginning with the “Love“ fragment and 1805-6 Realphilosophie , I first explore what it means to see God's relationship to spirit as one of externalization or divestment ( Entäusserung ). Then, relying on the Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, I argue that Hegel takes Christianity to be the Consummate Religion because it not only offers its own divestment to match God's, but actually takes itself to participate in God's own divestment. This leads to a discussion of revealed religion in the Phenomenology , which, in contrast to simpler forms of religion such as the worship of luminous being ( Lichtwesen ), is able to conceive of a divine generativity in which spirit actively participates. I conclude by identifying two political implications of the centrality of divestment in Hegel's account. First, it means that, since Hegel takes Christianity to be unique in its representation of divine divestment, he cannot be a simple pluralist on religious truth. Second, Hegel's emphasis on divestment in his various accounts of religion helps set up his critique of sovereignty from the standpoint of philosophy or absolute knowing. While religion still clings to a vision of humanity as sovereign over nature, its origin in gratitude for creation proves to be incompatible with this vision

This essay interprets Schelling's positive philosophy as an effort to conceive nature as a gift. Schelling ruminated throughout his career on the paradoxical relation between humanity and nature that is expressed in the contemporary term “Anthropocene,” but this essay argues that Schelling's most productive response to this paradox can be found in his reflections on how to receive the gift of nature. After laying out the project of positive philosophy, the essay first explores Schelling's effort to conceive nature as a gift in On the World-Soul, and then considers how this project founders in the First Projection of a System of Nature Philosophy. After the resources of the natural sciences showed themselves to be inadequate to the task of conceiving nature as a gift, Schelling returned to mythology in his late philosophy, and the concluding section of this essay traces how an often overlooked Epicurean strain in Schelling's late philosophy can help us see what is entailed in conceiving nature as a gift.

While Hegel argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit’s chapter on “Absolute Knowing” that we must see the necessity of each of spirit’s transitions if phenomenology is to be a science, he argues in its last three paragraphs that such a science must “sacrifice itself ” in order for spirit to express its freedom. Here I trace out the implications of this self-sacrifice for readings of the transitions in the Phenomenology, playing particular attention to the roles that space and time play in absolute spirit’s externalization.

Abstract:This essay maintains that despite the pervasive racism of his writings, Schelling can nevertheless contribute to an understanding of how to inhabit divine places such as the home of the goddess Pele on Hawai’i Island. First, his late Philosophy of Mythology shows how non-religious people can avoid the phenomenon explored by Jean-Luc Nancy of experiencing certain places as sacred and yet without gods. Second, Schelling’s early speculative geology can help make sense of a local issue in environmental justice by articulating why the rupture of the earth can itself be seen as a form of divinity. And third, Schelling’s conception of individuals as “co-poets” (Mitdichter) of nature has broad resonances with present-day scholarly receptions of traditional Hawaiian religion.

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy. After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others.