Kant's Organicism


Book Description

Offsetting a study of Kant's theory of cognition with a mixture of intellectual history and biography, Kant's Organicism offers readers an accessible portrait of Kant's scientific milieu in order to show that his standing interests in natural history and its questions regarding organic generation were critical for the development of his theoretical philosophy. By reading Kant's theoretical work in light of his connection to the life sciences?especially his reflections on the epigenetic theory of formation and genesis?Jennifer Mensch provides a new understanding of much that has been otherwise obscure or misunderstood in it. ?Epigenesis”?a term increasingly used in the late eighteenth century to describe an organic, nonmechanical view of nature's generative capacities?attracted Kant as a model for understanding the origin of reason itself. Mensch shows how this model allowed Kant to conceive of cognition as a self-generated event and thus to approach the history of human reason as if it were an organic species with a natural history of its own. She uncovers Kant's commitment to the model offered by epigenesis in his first major theoretical work, the Critique of Pure Reason, and demonstrates how it informed his concept of the organic, generative role given to the faculty of reason within his system as a whole. In doing so, she offers a fresh approach to Kant's famed first Critique and a new understanding of his epistemological theory.




Kant's Organicism


Book Description

Because it laid the foundation for nearly all subsequent epistemologies, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason has overshadowed his other interests in natural history and the life sciences, which scholars have long considered as separate from his rigorous theoretical philosophy—until now. In Kant’s Organicism, Jennifer Mensch draws a crucial link between these spheres by showing how the concept of epigenesis—a radical theory of biological formation—lies at the heart of Kant’s conception of reason. As Mensch argues, epigenesis was not simply a metaphor for Kant but centrally guided his critical philosophy, especially the relationship between reason and the categories of the understanding. Offsetting a study of Kant’s highly technical theory of cognition with a mixture of intellectual history and biography, she situates the epigenesis of reason within broader investigations into theories of generation, genealogy, and classification, and against later writers and thinkers such as Goethe and Darwin. Distilling vast amounts of research on the scientific literature of the time into a concise and readable book, Mensch offers one of the most refreshing looks not only at Kant’s famous first Critique but at the history of philosophy and the life sciences as well.




Micro and Macro Philosophy: Organicism in Biology, Philosophy, and Politics


Book Description

What role can philosophy play in a world dominated by neoliberalism and globalization? Must it join universalist ideologies as it has in past centuries? Or might it turn to ethnophilosophy and postmodern fragmentation? Universalist cosmopolitanism and egocentric culturalism are not the only alternatives.




Romantic Organicism


Book Description

Romantic Organicism attempts to reassess the much maligned and misunderstood notion of organic unity. Following organicism from its crucial radicalisation in German Idealism, it shows how both Coleridge and Wordsworth developed some of their most profound ideas and poetry on its basis. Armstrong shows how the tenets and ideals of organicism - despite much criticism - remain an insistent, if ambivalent, backdrop for much of our current thought, including the work of Derrida amongst others.




Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics


Book Description

Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics argues that Kant’s political thought must be understood by reference to his philosophy of history, cultural anthropology, and geography. The central thesis of the book is that Kant’s assessment of the politically salient features of history, culture, and geography generates a nonideal theory of politics, which supplements his well-known ideal theory of cosmopolitanism. This novel analysis thus challenges the common assumption that an ideal theory of cosmopolitanism constitutes Kant’s sole political legacy. Dilek Huseyinzadegan demonstrates that Kant employs a teleological worldview throughout his political writings as a means of grappling with the pressing issues of multiplicity, diversity, and plurality—issues that confront us to this day. Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics is the first book-length treatment of Kant’s political thought that gives full attention to the role that history, anthropology, and geography play in his mainstream political writings. Interweaving close textual analyses of Kant’s writings with more contemporary political frameworks, this book also makes Kant accessible and responsive to fields other than philosophy. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars working at the intersections of political theory, feminism, critical race theory, and post- and decolonial thought.




Approaches to Organic Form


Book Description

Frederick Burwick's modest but comprehensive and insightful intro duction is preface enough to these sensible essays in the history and philosophical criticism of ideas. If we want to understand how some in quiring and intelligent thinkers sought to go beyond mechanism and vitalism, we will find Burwick's labors of assembling others and reflect ing on his own part to be as stimulating as anywhere to be found. And yet his initial cautious remark is right: 'approaches', not 'attainments'. The problems associated with clarifying 'matter' and 'form' are still beyond any consensus as to their solution. Even more do we recognize the many forms and meanings of 'form', and this is so even for 'organic form'. That wise scientist-philosopher-engineer Lancelot Law Whyte struggled in a place neighboring to Burwick's, and his essay of thirty years ago might be a scientist's preface to Burwick and his colleagues: see Whyte'S Accent on Form (N. Y., Harper, 1954) and his Symposium of 1951 Aspects of Form (London, Percy Lund Humphries 1951; and Indiana University Press 1961), itself arranged in honor of D' Arcy Thompson's classical monograph On Growth and Form. Philosophy and history of science must deal with these issues, and with the mixture of hard-headedness and imagination that they de mand.




Kant's Tribunal of Reason


Book Description

This is the first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors, whose philosophical importance has so far been overlooked. It will appeal to academic researchers and advanced students of Kant, early modern philosophy, legal philosophy, and intellectual history.




How Kant Matters For Biology


Book Description

Kant denied biology the status of proper science, yet his account of the organism has received much attention from both philosophical and historical perspectives. This book argues that Kant's influence on biology in the British Isles is in part due to misunderstandings of his philosophy. Highlighting these misunderstandings exposes how Kant influenced various aspects of scientific method, despite the underlying incompatibility between transcendental idealism and scientific naturalism. This book raises criticism against scientific naturalism as it demonstrates how some concepts that are central to biology have been historically justified in ways that are incompatible with naturalism. Approaching current issues in philosophy of biology from a Kantian orientation offers new perspectives to debates including our knowledge of laws of nature, the unity of science, and our understanding of organisms. Moreover, new avenues are forged to demonstrate the benefits of adopting Kant-inspired approaches to issues in contemporary philosophy of science.




Goethe Yearbook 23


Book Description

Cutting-edge scholarly articles on diverse aspects of Goethe and the Goethezeit, featuring in this volume a special section on Goethe and visual culture. The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, encouraging North American Goethe scholarship by publishing original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Volume 23 features a special section on visual culture with contributions on the visual aesthetics of Goethe's 1815 production ofProserpina (Bersier); on the Farbenlehre (Lande); on Tableaux Vivants in Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Solanki); on the relationship between Goethe and C. G. Carus and their respective views on the representation of nature in art and science (Allert); and on visual and verbal bricolage in Clemens Brentano's Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia (MacLeod). There are also articles on Goethe and ancient mystery religions (Amrine); on Goethe's fairy-tale aesthetics (Brown); on the concept of neutrality (Holland); on the concept of the mathematical infinite (Smith); on virginity and maternity in Werther (Nossett); on the Classical aesthetics of Schlegel'sLucinde (ter Horst); and on motherless creations in Faust (Nielsen). Contributors: Beate Allert, Frederick Amrine, Gabrielle Bersier, Jane K. Brown, Jocelyn Holland, Joel B. Lande, Catriona MacLeod, WendyC. Nielsen, Lauren Nossett, John H. Smith, Tanvi Solanki, Eleanor ter Horst. Adrian Daub is Associate Professor of German at Stanford. Elisabeth Krimmer is Professor of German at the University of California Davis. Bookreview editor Birgit Tautz is Associate Professor of German at Bowdoin College.




Kant's Transcendental Deduction


Book Description

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem (refuting a global skepticism regarding the objectivity of experience), it addresses a new problem (the role of a priori concepts or categories stemming from the nature of the understanding in grounding this objectivity), and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. Allison locates four decisive steps in this process: the recognition that sensibility and understanding are distinct and irreducible cognitive powers, which Kant referred to as a 'great light' of 1769; the subsequent realization that, though distinct, these powers only yield cognition when they work together, which is referred to as the 'discursivity thesis' and which led directly to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments and the problem of the synthetic a priori; the discovery of the necessary unity of apperception as the supreme norm governing discursive cognition; and the recognition, through the influence of Tetens, of the role of the imagination in mediating between sensibility and understanding. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views, two distinctive features of Allison'sreading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary (the 'non-contingency thesis') and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism (the 'non-separability thesis').




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