On Sebastian Rödl’s “Self-Consciousness and Objectivity”, Or, The Refutation of Absolute Idealism

 

SEBASTIAN RÖDL | Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism | Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2018

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By Robert Hanna

Sebastian Rödl’s recent book, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism, just like Robert Brandom’s A Spirit of Trust (Brandom 2019), Irad Kimhi’s Thinking and Being (Kimhi 2018) and Robert Pippin’s Hegel’s Realm of Shadows (Pippin 2018)—all of these books appearing within the last two years, like so many oranges tumbling out of a dropped shopping bag—is another first-rate example of what I have called “Pittsburgh/Chicago-neo-Hegelianism-with-a-serious-dash-of-neo-Aristotelianism” (see Hanna 2018). Rödl’s book, in turn, strongly encourages me to expand that handy label into “Pittsburgh/Chicago/Leipzig-neo-Hegelianism-with-a-serious-dash-of-neo-Aristotelianism”.

Over een extreem fenomenalistische lezing van Kant

 

EMANUEL RUTTEN | Contra Kant. Herwonnen ruimte voor transcendentie | Utrecht: Kok, 2020

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7 April: An English translation can be downloaded here

 

Door Dennis Schulting

Het komt niet vaak voor dat er in het Nederlands een filosofisch werk uitkomt dat gewijd is aan Kants theoretische filosofie. Er bestaat in het Nederlandse taalveld niet een heel grote traditie van Kant-onderzoek, althans niet als geïnstitutionaliseerde academische wijsgerige activiteit (een enkele welkome uitzondering daargelaten). Daar zijn allerlei oorzaken van historische en sociologische aard voor aan te wijzen. Maar feit is dat met name in Nederland serieus onderzoek naar de filosofie van Kant in de naoorlogse tijd het ondergeschoven kindje is gebleven. Aangezien Kants Kritiek nu eenmaal vaste prik is in het onderwijscurriculum, waant elke filosoferende onderwijzer zich vaak een Kant-expert. Je als Kantiaanse filosoof laten voorstaan op echte expertise wordt dan gezien als zelfwaan. Met zo’n mentaliteit gedijt serieus Kant-onderzoek vanzelfsprekend niet goed.

Reply to Michael Friedman

 

HENRY E. ALLISON | Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. An Analytical-Historical Commentary | Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015

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By Henry Allison

I wish to thank Michael Friedman for both his extraordinarily rich discussion, which amounts to a commentary of his own on the B-Deduction, and his generous comments about the import of my own work. Given the detailed nature of his reading of the text, with much of which I am in agreement, I shall not here attempt to comment on his account as a whole, since that would require a reply of almost equal length to his. Instead, I shall focus first on what he suggests is our major point of disagreement, namely, the conceptual-non-conceptual issue, and then consider some of our more specific differences.  

In recent years, the contrast between conceptualist and non-conceptualist readings has become the great divide in interpretations of the Transcendental Deduction. And, as Friedman notes, the focal point of the dispute is the note that Kant attaches to the first paragraph of §26 of the B-Deduction. It reads:

Reply to Lucy Allais

 

HENRY E. ALLISON | Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. An Analytical-Historical Commentary | Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015

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By Henry Allison

I wish to thank Lucy Allais both for her extremely generous comments and her attention to many of the often messy details of my account. She has given my book what I believe any self-respecting author should want: a close and fair minded read. I am particularly pleased by the many points of agreement that she notes and by the fact, which she also notes, that many of our disagreements are relatively minor. Since she had taken a somewhat more combative stance towards my non-metaphysical or, as she put it in her book, “deflationary” interpretation of this idealism in her own recent book (Allais 2015), I was pleasantly surprised to see that even in this area we share more common ground than I had previously supposed.