Michael Lewin

Metaphilosophy is often understood as an inquiry into the nature, goals, and methods of philosophy and is sometimes construed as an epistemology of philosophy. Moral questions concerning philosophical practice, however, are no less important and constitute a distinctive field that may be called 'moral philosophy of philosophy' or 'moral metaphilosophy'. This article maps the field by identifying, addressing, and classifying various forms of moral transgressions in, against, and through philosophy. Hermeneutical rational injustices include the devaluation, discrediting, misrepresentation, and non-objective critique within philosophical discourse. Violations within academic philosophical practice encompass such phenomena as intellectual theft; gatekeeping; academic cliques; scholarly neglect; discrimination and favoritism; prestige bias, excellence bias, and other forms of bias oriented toward perceived institutional, professional, evaluative, or symbolic "topness"; unfair peer review; problematic evaluation criteria and rankings; abuses of power; unjust distributions of resources; and the inversion of virtues into vices. External injustices and transgressions concern the public discrediting of philosophy, violence against philosophers, the problematic relation between philosophy and politics, and the impact of extra-academic vices on philosophy. Bringing these issues to light, thereby underscoring the importance of moral metaphilosophy, can help protect philosophers from various forms of harm inflicted by themselves, colleagues, institutions, and other actors across academic and non-academic contexts, thereby rendering philosophical practice fairer and more worthwhile.

Das Forschungsprogramm des reflektierten Perspektivismus untersucht die Perspektivität des Erkennens, der Sprache und der Theoriebildung. Es beruht auf der Einsicht, dass Wahrnehmen, Denken, Wollen, Fühlen, Entscheiden und Handeln perspektivisch verfasst sind, und entwickelt daraus begriffliche, methodologische und normative Konsequenzen. Im Zentrum stehen die perspektivische Grundstruktur des Erkennens, die Perspektivität der Sprache sowie die Bedingungen eines reflektierten Umgangs mit Perspektivität. In metaphilosophischer Hinsicht untersucht das Programm die Perspektivität philosophischer und (meta-)metaphilosophischer Forschung, die ethischen Fragen eines rational gerechten und ungerechten Umgangs mit Perspektivität in der Philosophie, die Perspektivität philosophischer Termini und Begriffe sowie Freiheit und Vollständigkeit von Perspektiven. Der Beitrag skizziert den gegenwärtigen Stand des Forschungsprogramms und seine metaphilosophischen Anwendungen.

Aussagen über Philosophie in der Geschichte der Philosophie und in neueren metaphilosophischen Debatten sind von philosophischen Vorannahmen und Hintergründen ‚erster Ordnung‘ abhängig, was für die Metaphilosophie als Disziplin sowohl ein Problem als auch eine Chance darstellt. Der Artikel zielt darauf ab, ein aktuelles Bild der Metaphilosophie und ihrer möglichen zukünftigen Entwicklung zu geben. Er untersucht das Problem der philosophischen Vorannahmen ‚erster Ordnung‘ in der Metaphilosophie und schlägt eine Strategie für die weitere disziplinäre Entwicklung der Metaphilosophie vor. Zunächst wird das Problem anhand einer Analyse der impliziten (Camus, Husserl, Carnap) und expliziten (Rescher, Williamson, Fraisopi) metaphilosophischen Auffassungen aufgezeigt. Weder eine universelle Konzeption der Philosophie noch eine neutrale Metaphilosophie sind in Sicht. Dennoch zeigt der Artikel als nächstes, dass eine deskriptive Perspektive auf bestehende Beiträge eine gewisse Kontinuität und disziplinäre Struktur in der Metaphilosophie hinsichtlich ihrer Thematik, Platzierung und bestehenden Themen offenbart. Eine ergänzende normative Perspektive, die eine philosophisch orientierte, auf Inklusivität und Universalität ausgerichtete Metaphilosophie fordert, kann zu effektiveren Diskursformationen, Problemlösungen und Wissensmaximierung in dieser Disziplin führen.

Fichte’s first principle is commonly understood as the absolute or self-positing I. Although this interpretation is not incorrect, it captures only a partial truth. The I that posits itself is intrinsically related to reason: the I is itself reason, and self-positing is the essence and original act of reason. This article argues that only a reason-contextual reading of the first principle reveals its full significance. The argument unfolds in two parts. The first examines a corpus of passages in which Fichte employs the term ‘reason’ and the conceptual frameworks that underlie it. The second addresses three questions arising from this analysis: whether the I is identical with reason; whether Fichte proposes a model that redefines the relation between reason and the I beyond Kant’s; and what strategies can be developed to sustain the reason-contextual reading.

The term “metaphilosophy” was first used by Reinhold in the sense of a derived post-philosophy that is dependent on a preceding philosophy. Today, it is understood as a philosophy of philosophy. It is argued that all three dimensions of meaning of the prefix “meta-” should be taken into account: post-philosophy, co-philosophy, and philosophy of philosophy. No metaphilosophy does justice to the generality of the concepts of philosophy and metaphilosophy. This must be demonstrated within the framework of a perspectivist critique, the deconstruction and reconstruction of metaphilosophical statements and theories. Nevertheless, metaphilosophy is a natural and necessary companion of philosophical practice. A differentiated and perspectivist understanding of metaphilosophy—one that is at the same time oriented toward universality and inclusion, that is, a meta-metaphilosophy appropriate to the current situation and its demands—can bring it closer to fulfilling its disciplinary purpose.

Implicit metaphilosophy refers to metaphilosophical statements that are not accompanied by the awareness that they are contributing to metaphilosophical debates. In the history of philosophy, there are numerous judgments about philosophy, its structure, its methods, etc., which are often made only in passing. In accordance with the perspectivist method, Camus’s philosophically preconditioned statement—burdened by his standpoint and focus on the absurd—about the fundamental question of philosophy is first deconstructed. Subsequently, the problematic classification of Husserl’s concept of attitude and the law of perspectival reciprocity, which was ignored by Carnap, are addressed. It will be shown that the conceptions of philosophy and the claims made by Camus, Husserl, and Carnap do not correspond to the generality of the concept of philosophy, but that they can nevertheless be regarded as valid contributions to metaphilosophical debates.

The perspectivist critique makes it clear that the example theories and statements from implicit and explicit metaphilosophy do not satisfy the generality of the concept of philosophy and metaphilosophy. Conclusions must therefore be drawn for the understanding of metaphilosophy. First, the main problem of metaphilosophy is recapitulated, namely the philosophical bias of metaphilosophical views—the metaphilosophy qua post-philosophy. Subsequently, it is shown that metaphilosophy is a discipline in the making, which, despite this problem, exhibits features of unity. These are the domain of inquiry, about which there is broad consensus, the already established discourse formations, and the classification of metaphilosophy. With this differentiated understanding of metaphilosophy, which sufficiently takes the main problem into account, and by drawing on the idea of a discourse oriented toward interperspectivity from the outset, which proposes an orientation toward both universality and inclusion, both metaphilosophical and philosophical practice can be guided.

The epistemological foundation of the essay is a conceptual-logical understanding of perspectivism. The conceptual basis of perspectivism discovered by Kaulbach (“Philosophie des Perspektivismus,” 1990) and Stegmaier (“Philosophie der Orientierung,” 2008) is subjected to an “originalist” conceptual analysis and expanded. It will be shown that concepts such as “position,” “direction,” “horizon,” “domain,” “context,” “point of view,” “relatum,” etc., are not mere metaphors, but constitute elements of every epistemic situation. They condition every attempt to see through an epistemic object (perspicere). The disclosure of the quasi-aprioristic conceptual matrix and the corresponding regularities of the basic structure of cognition establishes perspectivism as an independent research program for the analysis of the factors that condition epistemic situations and lead to statements, for example of a metaphilosophical nature. In this way, they can be subjected to thorough critique, deconstruction, and reconstruction.

Explicit metaphilosophy refers to metaphilosophical statements, theories, and series of theories that are accompanied by the awareness that they contribute to metaphilosophical debates. The metaphilosophical discourse formations concern three levels: individual metaphilosophical questions (for example, the question of whether the concept of philosophical progress must be abandoned (Shan in Metaphilosophy 53:176–184, 2022)), systematic metaphilosophy (for example, from an analytic (Williamson) or pragmatic-contextualist (Rescher) perspective), and meta-metaphilosophy (for example, from a phenomenological perspective (Fraisopi)). The perspectivist critique will show, using selected examples, that it does not satisfy the generality of the concept of philosophy and metaphilosophy, but that it can nevertheless be regarded as a valid contribution to metaphilosophical debates.

Kraus's 'Kant's Ideas of Reason' offers a 'perspectivalist interpretation' of a part of the Transcendental Dialectic. I will focus on two central topics: the concept of ideas and the concept of reason. First, I argue that Kraus's reconstruction of the concept of ideas requires significant refinement. Despite what the title of her work might suggest, her analysis is limited to transcendental ideas without engaging with Kant's broader typology, which includes at least seven distinct types of ideas. Greater attention to the fundamental features of the concept of ideas, as well as to the relevant scholarship, could help avoid the introduction of the problematic 'isms' 'noumenalism' and 'fictionalism'. Second, I highlight that Kraus does not clearly distinguish between reason in its broader and narrower senses, nor does she provide a precise definition of reason in the narrower sense. I propose modifying the 'perspectivalist interpretation' in accordance with my suggestions.