• Not Yet a System, Not Yet a Science
    In María del Rosario Acosta López & J. Colin McQuillan (eds.), Critique in German Philosophy. From Kant to Critical Theory, Suny Press. pp. 111-131. 2020.
  • Introduction
    with María del Rosario Acosta López
    In María del Rosario Acosta López & J. Colin McQuillan (eds.), Critique in German Philosophy. From Kant to Critical Theory, Suny Press. pp. 1-19. 2020.
  •  8
    It is well-known that Immanuel Kant used Meier’s Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason as a textbook in his logic lectures for almost forty years. Kant himself, and most later scholars, regard Meier as a follower of Wolff and Baumgarten; however, when we compare Meier’s Excerpt with Thomasius’ Introduction to the Doctrine of Reason, we find that Meier’s conception of “learned cognition” is derived from Thomasius’ conception of “learnedness.” Kant seems to have developed the pre-critical distinctio…Read more
  •  3
    Immanuel Kant: The very idea of a critique of pure reason
    Northwestern University Press. 2016.
    Immanuel Kant: The Very Idea of a Critique of Pure Reason is a study of the background, development, exposition, and justification of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Instead of examining Kant's arguments for the transcendental ideality of space and time, his deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding, or his account of the dialectic of human reason, J. Colin McQuillan focuses on Kant's conception of critique. By surveying the different ways the concept of critique was used during the ei…Read more
  •  4
    Critique in German philosophy: from Kant to critical theory (edited book)
    with Acosta López and María del Rosario
    State University of New York Press. 2020.
    Critique has been a central theme in the German philosophical tradition since the publication of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Some successors turned Kant's critique against itself and used it to challenge the authority of his system. Others extended his critique, applying it to aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy and generating new forms of criticism that were then taken up by Idealism, Romanticism, Marxism, Neo-Kantianism, Phenomenology, and Criti…Read more
  • Kant and the Science of Logic by Huaping Lu-Adler
    Review of Metaphysics 73 (2): 375-378. 2019.
  • Critique in German Philosophy. From Kant to Critical Theory (edited book)
    with María del Rosario Acosta López
    SUNY Press. 2020.
  •  9
    Aesthetics is the part of contemporary academic philosophy that is concerned with art, beauty, criticism, and taste. As such, it must address metaphysical issues, epistemic problems, and questions of value. This makes it difficult to present a coherent account of the subject matter of aesthetics. In this article, I argue that this difficulty is the result of ambiguities and contradictions that arose in disputes about the relationship between the science of aesthetics, the critique of taste, and …Read more
  •  7
    Baumgarten on Sensible Perfection
    Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (44): 47-64. 2014.
    One of the most important concepts Baumgarten introduces in his Reflections on Poetry is the concept of sensible perfection. It is surprising that Baumgarten does not elaborate upon this concept in his Metaphysics, since it plays such an important role in the new science of aesthetics that he proposes at the end of the Reflections on Poetry and then further develops in the Aesthetics. This article considers the significance of the absence of sensible perfection from the Metaphysics and its impli…Read more
  •  9
    Baumgarten's Aesthetics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2021.
    With contributions by leading scholars in the field, this book is the first collection in the English language devoted to Baumgarten’s aesthetics.
  •  14
    In his new book, Kant and Mysticism, Stephen Palmquist argues that Kant had already formulated his critical method by the mid-1760s and that it emerged from his reflections on Swedenborg’s mystical visions. In order to evaluate these claims, I consider Kant’s correspondence with Charlotte von Knobloch and Moses Mendelssohn before and after the publication of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer; the context in which Kant published Dreams; and the method he employs when he discusses Swedenborg’s visions in th…Read more
  •  16
    The Remarriage of Reason and Experience in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (1): 53-69. 2019.
    This article argues that Immanuel Kant recreates in his critical philosophy one of the most distinctive features of Christian Wolff’s rationalism—the marriage of reason and experience. The article begins with an overview of Wolff’s connubium and then surveys the reasons some of his contemporaries opposed the marriage of reason and experience, paying special attention to the distinctions between phenomena and noumena, sensible and intellectual cognition, and empirical and pure cognition that Kant…Read more
  •  19
    Kant on Scholarship and the Public Use of Reason
    Idealistic Studies 48 (1): 47-68. 2018.
    In “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Kant defines the public use of reason as “that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers.” Commentators rarely note Kant’s reference to “scholarship” in this passage and, when they do, they often disagree about its meaning and significance. This paper addresses those disagreements by exploring discussions of scholarship in Kant’s logic lectures as well as in later works like The Conflict of …Read more
  •  26
    Kant on Scholarship and the Public Use of Reason
    Idealistic Studies 48 (1): 47-68. 2018.
    In “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Kant defines the public use of reason as “that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers.” Commentators rarely note Kant’s reference to “scholarship” in this passage and, when they do, they often disagree about its meaning and significance. This paper addresses those disagreements by exploring discussions of scholarship in Kant’s logic lectures as well as in later works like The Conflict of …Read more
  •  3
    Reading and Misreading Kant's Dreams of a Spirit-Seer
    Kant Studies Online 2015 (1). 2015.
  •  18
    Critique has been a central theme in the German philosophical tradition since the eighteenth century. The main goal of this book is to provide a history of this concept from its Kantian inception to contemporary critical theory. Focusing on both canonical and previously overlooked texts and thinkers, the contributors bring to light alternative conceptions of critique within nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy, which have profound implications for contemporary philosophy. By offer…Read more
  •  1
    Does Kant's Critique Belong to the Tradition of Modern Logic?
    In Roberto Casales García & J. Martin Castro Manzana (eds.), La Modernidad en Perspectiva, Editorial Comares. 2017.
  •  2
    Kant, Heidegger, and the In/Finitude of Human Reason
    CR: The New Centennial Review 17 (3): 81-101. 2017.
  •  6
    The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics (edited book)
    Bloomsbury Publishing. 2012.
    Drawing from ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary sources, this textbook offers a comprehensive and systematic historical overview of aesthetic theory.
  •  21
  •  39
    Kant on the Science of Aesthetics and the Critique of Taste
    Kant Yearbook 9 (1): 113-132. 2017.
    This article considers the reasons Kant rejects the possibility of a science of aesthetics throughout his career. It begins by surveying the background of Kant’s denial, focusing first on the introduction of aesthetics as a new science in the works of Alexander Baumgarten and Georg Friedrich Meier. After showing that there are numerous ambiguities in the way Baumgarten and Meier present their new science, the article considers Kant’s account of the differences between aesthetics and logic in the…Read more