•  6
    “Actuality” in Schelling and Kierkegaard
    In Jochem Hennigfeld & Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard und Schelling: Freiheit, Angst und Wirklichkeit, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 235-252. 2003.
  •  47
    Fichte's Theory of Drives
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (2): 247-269. 2021.
    ARRAY
  •  134
    Fichte on Summons and Self-Consciousness
    Mind 130 (517): 215-249. 2021.
    J. G. Fichte held that a form of intersubjectivity—what he called a ‘summons’—is a condition of possibility of self-consciousness. This thesis is widely taken to be one of Fichte’s most influential contributions to the European philosophy of the last two centuries. But what the thesis actually states is far from obvious; and existing interpretations either are poorly supported by the texts or else render the thesis trivial or implausible. I propose a new interpretation, on which Fichte’s claim i…Read more
  •  51
    Freedom and Immanence
    In James Giles (ed.), Kierkegaard and Freedom, Macmillan/st. Martins. 2000.
  •  11
    Fichte's Ethics
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    One of Fichte's most important ideas - that nature can place limits on our ability to govern ourselves, and that anyone who values autonomy is thereby committed to the value of basic research and of the development of autonomy-enhancing technologies - has received little attention in the interpretative literature on Fichte, and has little currency in contemporary ethics. This volume aims to address both deficits. Beginning from a reconstruction of Fichte's theory of rational agency, this volume …Read more
  •  72
    Individuality and Rights in Fichte's Ethics
    Philosophers' Imprint 17. 2017.
    I propose solutions to two longstanding interpretive questions about J.G. Fichte’s 1796–97 Foundations of Natural Right: 1. What does Fichte mean when he describes the theory of right as ‘independent’ of moral theory, and what motivates that independence thesis? 2. What does Fichte mean when he describes requirements of right and the principle of right as ‘hypothetical’ imperatives, and how is that characterization consistent with his claim to have derived the concept of right as a condition of …Read more
  •  110
    This is a short, accessible introduction to John Rawls' thought and gives a thorough and concise presentation of the main outlines of Rawls' theory as well as drawing links between Rawls' enterprise and other important positions in moral and political philosophy.
  •  273
    'Despair' in Kierkegaard's Either/Or
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (1): 85-97. 2006.
    : The category of despair plays a central role in Kierkegaard's pseudonymous corpus, but its meaning is controversial. This paper offers an interpretation of its use in Either/Or (in particular, in the claim the aesthetic life is despair and the ethical life freedom from despair). After examining and rejecting two recent alternatives, I argue that despair is the conscious or unconscious assumption of a passive or fatalistic attitude toward one's existence, which attitude is informed by a miscons…Read more
  •  1
    The dissertation traces the approach to the problem of free will---in particular, the question of whether moral evil can be freely chosen---from Kant through Schelling to Kierkegaard. The goal is to clarify the historical transition from German idealism to the first version of existential philosophy, by showing the philosophical concerns of the latter to be implicit in unresolved problems in the former. I begin by examining Kant's attempt to reconcile what is essentially an incompatibilist notio…Read more
  •  132
    Formal Freedom in Fichte's System of Ethics
    Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus / International Yearbook of German Idealism 9 150-168. 2013.
  •  104
    Introduction
    Philosophical Forum 43 (3): 243-246. 2012.
  •  173
    J.G. Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics is seldom read, despite the fact that it remains, after more than two centuries, one of the most original and insightful efforts at a systematic normative ethical theory on Kantian foundations. Part of the reason for its obscurity lies in the perceived implausibility of Fichte’s account of practical deliberation and of the authority of individual conscience. The view typically attributed to Fichte is a conjunction of four claims: that moral deliberation consis…Read more
  •  241
    Michelle Kosch examines the conceptions of free will and the foundations of ethics in the work of Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. She seeks to understand the history of German idealism better by looking at it through the lens of these issues, and to understand Kierkegaard better by placing his thought in this context. Kosch argues for a new interpretation of Kierkegaard's theory of agency, that Schelling was a major influence and Kant a major target of criticism, and that both the theory and t…Read more
  •  212
    What Abraham couldn't say
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 82 (1): 59-78. 2008.
    The explicit topic of Fear and Trembling's third Problema (the longest single section, accounting for a third of the book's total length), the theme of Abraham's silence stands not far in the background in every other section, and its importance is flagged by the pseudonym—Johannes de silentio—under which Kierkegaard had the book published. Here I aim to defend an interpretation of the meaning of the third Problema's central claim—that Abraham cannot explain himself, 'cannot speak'—and to argue …Read more
  •  136
    In an earlier paper I argued that J.G. Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or II . There I offered a list of reasons for thinking that Hegel was less important than some believed and that Kierkegaard addressed Kantianism largely in its Fichtean form. In the interim I have discovered another reason to add to that list: as it happens, there was a quite general consensus among philosophers i…Read more
  •  126
    Gasché on Scheler
    Philosophical Forum 41 (1-2): 127-130. 2010.
  •  152
    Idealism and Freedom in Schelling's Freiheitsschrift
    In Lara Ostaric (ed.), Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
    The 1809 essay Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters marked a turning point in Schelling’s thinking about freedom. In various early works he had endorsed a compatibilist account of free will, arguing that acts could be free in the sense required for morally responsible agency, while still being necessary from a causal and even a metaphysical point of view. In later work he would endorse an incompatiblist conception of freedom as involving radical choi…Read more
  •  254
    Kierkegaard's ethicist: Fichte's role in Kierkegaard's construction of the ethical standpoint
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 88 (3): 261-295. 2006.
    I argue that Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam of the two) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard's Either/Or II. I then explain how looking at Kierkegaard's texts with Fichte in mind helps in interpreting the criticism of the ethical standpoint in works like The Sickness unto Death and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, as well as the significance of the discussion of secular ethics in Fear and Trembling. I conclude with a brief loo…Read more
  •  101
    Horstmann on Cohen
    Philosophical Forum 39 (2): 139-142. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  150
    Kierkegaard
    In Michael Forster Kristin Gjesdal (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of 19th century Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2015.