Ken Foldes

This is a preparatory work. My original intention was to write a thesis relating to my main interest, namely the transformation of philosophy into science or the idea of a "science of philosophy," as articulated in Schelling and Hegel. But as I found that the latter's concepts of "science" were the result of a transformation/completion of Kant's position--transcendental idealism --I realized that I needed first to go back to Kant to obtain a clearer understanding of his standpoint. ;The final form of my dissertation was the result of two factors: my director's interest in Allison, Strawson and other Anglo-American Kant interpreters, and my gradually coming to see, as a result of studying Kant's Critique in conjunction with the writings of his followers, both what the true meaning of T.I. is, and that the Anglo-American interpreters have missed Kant's point and appear to be entangled in "transcendental realism." Briefly, T.I. is the teaching that mind and universe, subject and object , the representation and object, are in reality one and inseparable, the object does not exist independently of experience. That is: the world is empirically real yet transcendentally ideal; the world has a being "for us" but not "in itself"; the "in itself" is only an "in itself for consciousness." ;On the transcendental level and in truth, the world of objects is ideal , but on the empirical level the world is real . Thus T.I. concerns a fundamental yet necessary "ILLUSION" and its overcoming or exposure through transcendental investigation. ;In Chapters One, Two and Three, I develop and defend my interpretation of T.I. by textual analysis of Kant's Critique. In Chapter Four, I evaluate the T.I. interpretations of Allison, Strawson, and W. Waxman, showing they are unaware of the "illusion" at issue in T.I., as insisting on the object's independent existence. In particular I argue that Allison mistakenly posits a separation between the object and our mode of representation and employs an uncritical "re-presentational model" to interpret the Kantian relation between inner and outer sense--the Transcendental Deduction being regarded a failure. Finally in Chapter Five, I give a concise exposition of Hegel's "version" of T.I. as presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit. ;I also include an appendix with a summary of Fichte's "version" of T.I. My work on the "science of philosophy" will be preceded by an expanded version of my thesis to be entitled, " thinspace 'The Standpoint,' In Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel."

Ken Foldes and I agreed to present what we consider an important controversy concerning the actual interpretation of Hegelian philosophy as regards the nature of the relationship between Man and God. Ken wants to argue for the oneness of God and Man, with the unity and exclusive Being of God as the Absolute Truth, making all being other than God illusory. On the other hand, I want to show the simultaneous identity and difference of Man and God dynamically integrated as a variegated system that is chiefly characterized as pure negative activity, or self-thinking-thought, in which God and Man and the World each have a distinct yet harmonized relationship when considered in their negative or sublated significance with respect to God.

In the wake of the postmodernist onslaught one thing is certain: morality is in crisis. Where are we to look for answers? Perhaps to the German idealists—that is, to their bold synthesis of right and freedom. This paper seeks to bring the timely issue of absolute freedom and the possibility of its total realization back into ethical-political discussion. Through a close comparison of the theories of Fichte and Hegel via a critique of the former by the latter, I show that the antidote to many of our political, moral and theological distresses may well be found in Hegel’s concept of the State and Sittlichkeiti. e., truly understood as the realization of absolute freedom, or the "We that is I."

I give reasons to believe that our present situation is not as bleak as some would have it. I show how the historical process can be understood in terms of a Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity division of human history. I argue that both Hegel and Nietzsche were fully aware that Modernity was over and that a negative Postmodern condition was to necessarily precede a consummatory positive one. Also since history may be taken to have reached its goal at the end of Modernity, Postmodernity can best be understood in terms of its central task of elevating all humanity into absolute knowing —an elevation via Reason and Faith achievable only by the abolition of the God outside, i.e., by a negative followed by a positive period of history, which Schelling refers to as the Church of John, a synthesis of Catholicism and Protestantism, the perfected Church.