•  145
    Kant's account of nature's systematicity and the unity of theoretical and practical reason
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (2). 2009.
    In this paper I argue that if one is to do justice to reason's unity in Kant, then one must acknowledge that reason's practical ends are presupposed in every theoretical investigation of nature. Thus, contrary to some other commentators, I contend that the notion of the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature should not be attributed to the “dynamics of reason” and its “own practical purposes.” Instead, the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature is in fact an indispensable and necessary n…Read more
  •  96
    In this paper I argue that, on Kant's view, the work of genius serves as a sensible exhibition of the Idea of the highest good. In other words, the work of genius serves as a special sign that the world is hospitable to our moral ends and that the realization of our moral vocation in such a world may indeed be possible. In the first part of the paper, I demonstrate that the purpose of the highest good is not to strengthen our motivation to accept the moral law as binding for us but, rather, to s…Read more
  •  62
    Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology: Form and World (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (1). 2008.
    In Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology, Fiona Hughes argues that aesthetic judgment is exemplary of the subjective activity of judgment, the harmony of imagination and understanding, necessary for any cognition in general . Unlike ordinary empirical judgment, aesthetic judgment phenomenologically reveals to us the synthesizing activity of the power of judgment that remains concealed by the cognitive aim of ordinary empirical judgments . According to Hughes, aesthetic judgment is exemplary for cognitio…Read more
  •  45
    Kant on the Normativity of Creative Production
    Kantian Review 17 (1): 75-107. 2012.
    In this essay, I argue that a genius's creation consists of a special unity of free human activity and nature, whereby ‘nature’ signifies not just another aspect of, but rather something that transcends, creative subjectivity. This interpretation of a genius's creative process throws a new light on a special normative status of a genius's rule, i.e. its originality and exemplarity. With respect to the former, I demonstrate that because the organizing principle of the works of genius remains insc…Read more
  •  43
    This essay argues that, contrary to the prevailing view according to which reflection in Kant's aesthetic judgment is interpreted as ‘the logical actus of the understanding’, we should pay closer attention to Kant's own formulation of aesthetic reflection as ‘an action of the power of imagination’. Put differently, I contend in this essay that the rule that governs and orders the manifold in aesthetic judgment is imagination's own achievement, the achievement of the productive synthesis of the ‘…Read more
  •  40
  •  25
    Review of Robert R. Clewis, The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (12). 2009.
  •  24
    Symbolic Representation in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 60 (3): 648-650. 2007.
  •  15
    Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2014.
    This book is the first collection of essays on Schelling in English that systematically explores the historical development of his philosophy. It addresses all four periods of Schelling's thought: his Transcendental Philosophy and Philosophy of Nature, his System of Identity [Identitätsphilosophie], his System of Freedom, and his Positive Philosophy. The essays examine the constellation of philosophical ideas that motivated the formation of Schelling's thought, as well as those later ones for wh…Read more
  •  12
    Absolute Freedom and Creative Agency in Early Schelling
    Philosophisches Jahrbuch 119 (1): 69-93. 2012.
    The following essay has three main objectives. (1) By arguing that the connection between Schelling’s reception of Plato and Kant’s conception of genius is relevant for Schelling’s early development, I show that Schelling’s early Idealism brings to the general problem that plagues German Idealists, i.e., the search for an unconditioned principle that unites theoretical and practical reason, the solution that is genuinely his own. This original solution consists in Schelling’s conception of “crea…Read more
  •  8
    In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant’s seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant’s discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts…Read more
  •  7
    In Kant scholarship the significance of the beauty of nature for Kant’s aesthetics has been traditionally favored over the beauty of art. By focusing on Kant’s characterization of genius as a gift of nature, my aim is to show that, in contrast to the already existing interpretations of this issue in Kant literature, the works of art as the works of genius can indeed serve as ‘signs’ that nature and the world as a whole is hospitable to the realization of our moral ends, or is morally purposive. …Read more
  •  4
    Aesthetic Judgment and the Completion of Kant’s Critical System
    In Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 679-690. 2013.
  • In secondary literature, Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is most commonly discussed within the context of Kant’s epistemology and the transcendental deduction, which was swiftly identified by the generation of young Kantians as a skeptical problem, i.e., the need to demonstrate that our a priori conditions of knowledge indeed determine their object. In this paper I argue that the central concern that motivates Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is better understood within the context of the question of u…Read more
  • Martin Muslow/Marcelo, Konstelatellations-Forschung (review)
    Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus / International Yearbook of German Idealism 4 354-361. 2007.