Metaphysics/Epistemology

This book introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a ‘relaxed’ problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practising philosopher, from whom we still have much to learn, intelligently and creatively responding to significant questions that transcend his work's historical setting. The book's main project is to command a clear view of how Kant understands various perennial problems, how he attempts to resolve them, and to what extent he succeeds. The constructive portions of the First Critique—the Aesthetic and Analytic—are explored in detail; the Paralogisms and Antinomies more briefly. At the same time the book is an introduction to the challenges of reading the text of Kant's work and, to that end, selectively adopts a more rigorous historical and exegetical stance.

In A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713), George Berkeley argues for the astonishing view that physical objects (such as tables and chairs) are nothing but collections of ideas (idealism), that there is no such thing as material substance (immaterialism), that abstract ideas are impossible (anti-abstractionism), and that an idea can be like nothing but an idea (the likeness principle). It is a matter of great controversy what Berkeley’s argument for idealism is and whether it succeeds. Most scholars believe that the argument is based on immaterialism, anti-abstractionism, or the likeness principle. This book argues that Berkeley distinguishes between two kinds of abstraction, ‘singling’ abstraction and ‘generalizing’ abstraction, that his argument for idealism depends on the impossibility of singling abstraction but not on the impossibility of generalizing abstraction, and that the argument depends neither on immaterialism nor the likeness principle. According to the book, the heart of the argument for idealism rests on the distinction between mediate and immediate perception, and in particular on the thesis that everything that is perceived by means of the senses is immediately perceived. After analyzing the argument, the book concludes that it is valid and may well be sound. This is Berkeley’s most enduring philosophical legacy.

This volume presents a synoptic history of British Idealism, the philosophical school which dominated British philosophy from the 1860s through to the early years of the following century. Offering detailed examination of the origins, growth, development and decline of this School of thought, providing clear explanation of its characteristic concepts and doctrines, and paying close attention to the published works of its philosophers, the volume restores to its proper place an until now almost wholly forgotten period of our native philosophical history. By covering all major philosophers involved in the movement (not merely the most famous ones like Bradley, Green, McTaggart and Bosanquet but the lesser known figures like the Caird brothers, Henry Jones, A.S. Pringle-Pattison and R.B. Haldane) and by looking at all branches of philosophy (not just the familiar topics of ethics, political thought, and metaphysics but also the less well documented work on logic, religion, aesthetics and the history of philosophy) the book brings out the movement's complex living pattern of unity and difference; something which other more limited accounts have tended to obscure.

The book examines the central tenets of Hume's epistemology and cognitive psychology. It adopts a two level approach. On the one hand, it considers Hume's thought in its own terms and historical context. So considered, Hume is viewed as a naturalist, whose project in the first three parts of the first book of the Treatise is to provide an account of the operation of the understanding in which reason is subordinated to custom and other non-rational propensities. Scepticism arises in the fourth part as a form of metascepticism, directed not against first-order beliefs, but against philosophical attempts to ground these beliefs in the ‘space of reasons’. On the other hand, it provides a critique of these tenets from a Kantian perspective. This involves a comparison of the two thinkers on a range of issues, including space and time, causation, existence, induction, and the self. In each case, the issue is seen to turn on a contrast between their underlying models of cognition. Hume is committed to the perceptual model, according to which cognition is regarded as a seeing with the ‘mind's eye’ of the relation between mental contents. By contrast, Kant appeals to a discursive model in which the fundamental cognitive act is judgment, understood as the application of concepts to sensory data. Regarded from the first point of view, Hume's account is deemed a major philosophical achievement, while seen from the second it suffers from a failure to develop an adequate account of concepts and judgments.

This book is about normativity and reasons. It works out the consequences of a currently much discussed account of normativity, according to which all normative propositions are reducible to propositions about reasons, so that the normative domain is the domain of reasons. Part I sets out the foundations of this analysis, basing it on three primitive reason relations. Part II applies the analysis to epistemic reasons, hence to aprioricity, modality and probability, Part III to evaluative and practical reasons, hence value and morality. Part III also discusses the structure of practical reason, arguing that practical reasons have three normative sources, considers the nature of moral judgement, and discusses the relationship between moral judgement and practical reasons. Finally Part IV moves to the metatheory of reason relations, arguing for an irrealist form of cognitivism. It is shown how this metaphysics of reason grounds a new form of Critical philosophy. Freedom and knowledge are possible only if we can have a priori knowledge of reason relations, and such knowledge is only possible because it is grounded in pure spontaneity. Skorupski relates his argument to the insights of two traditions in the history of philosophy: the Critical or Kantian tradition, and the tradition of moral sentimentalism.

This volume contains a collection of seventeen essays which have been previously published on Kant and an addendum to one of these essays that is here published for the first time. Although these essays cover virtually the full spectrum of the author's work on Kant, ranging from his epistemology, metaphysics, and moral theory to his views on teleology, political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of religion, most of them revolve around three basic themes: the nature of transcendental idealism, freedom of the will, and the purposiveness of nature. The first two of these have been the foci of the author's work on Kant since its inception and the essays dealing with them in this volume are intended as clarifications, elaborations, and further developments of what the author has said on these topics elsewhere. Among their major new elements is the introduction of a significant comparative dimension, which is intended both to place Kant's views in their historical context and to explore their contemporary relevance. To this end, Kant's views are contrasted with those of his major predecessors and immediate successors, as well as present‐day philosophers. The concept of the purposiveness of nature is the major contribution of the third Critique (Critique of the Power of Judgment) to Kant's “critical” philosophy and one the main concerns of the essays dealing with it is to demonstrate its central place in Kant's thought.

The German Historicist Tradition is a study of the rise of the German historicism from Chladenius to Weber. The work is an historical survey and philosophical examination of the main thinkers in this tradition. It covers thirteen thinkers: Chladenius, Möser, Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Savigny, Ranke, Droysen, Windelband, Rickert, Lask, Dilthey, Simmel and Weber. Most of these thinkers have been little studied in the Anglophone world, and in some cases this book provides the first general account in English of their historical thought. The book intends to provide an introduction for first‐time readers but also a scholarly interpretation for a more professional audience. I explain the historical context and significance of each thinker, analyze his main arguments, and indicate the chief problems in the interpretation of his thought. My method is both historical and systematic: historical, insofar as I place each thinker in context and trace the evolution of his thought; and systematic, insofar as I examine the validity of his arguments and the logical structure of his philosophy. This book is conceived as a continuation and completion of the grand project begun by Friedrich Meinecke in his Entstehung des Historismus (1936). It was Meinecke's ambition to trace the genesis of German historicism from its beginnings in the late seventeenth century until its culmination in Ranke. Such was Meinecke's thoroughness, however, that after 500 pages he never got beyond Goethe. Although Meinecke's work has great merits his analyses of texts are unfailingly perceptive, and his historical perspective is deep and broad it still has serious flaws that make it an inadequate introduction today. Meinecke ignores crucial figures, his interpretations are often anachronistic, and his conceptual scheme is misleading and simplistic. The present work attempts to retell Meinecke's story in the light of later research.

This is a study of Hegel’s critique of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Its main purpose is to defend the thesis that Hegel offers us a compelling critique of, and alternative to, the conception of cognition Kant argues for in his ‘Critical’ period. It examines key features of what Kant identifies as the ‘discursive’ character of our mode of cognition, and considers Hegel’s reasons for arguing that these features condemn Kant’s theoretical philosophy to skepticism as well as dualism. This study presents in a sympathetic light Hegel’s claim to derive from certain Kantian doctrines clues to a superior form of idealism, a form of idealism that better captures the nature of our cognitive powers and their relation to objects.

Heidegger's early ‘fundamental ontology’ offers a vision of our subjectivity and of the world we inhabit that can appear to be simply truer to life. It allows us to understand the creature that thinks as also one which acts, moves, even touches the world around it — a creature at home in the same ordinary world in which we too live our lives when outside of the philosophical closet. It also promises to free us from seemingly intractable philosophical problems, such as scepticism about the external world. But many of the concepts central to that vision are elusive; and some of the most widely accepted interpretations of Heidegger's vision harbour within themselves deep and important unclarities, while others foist upon us hopeless species of idealism. This book offers a new way of understanding that vision. Drawing on an examination of Heidegger's work throughout the 1920s, it takes as central to that vision the proposals that propositional thought presupposes a mastery of what might be called a ‘measure’, and that mastery of such a ‘measure’ requires a recognizably ‘worldly’ subject. These insights provide the basis for a novel reading of key elements of Heidegger's ‘fundamental ontology’, including his concept of ‘Being-in-the-world’, his critique of scepticism, his claim to disavow both realism and idealism, and his difficult reflections on the nature of truth, science, authenticity, and philosophy itself. According to this interpretation, Heidegger's central ideas identify genuine demands that we must meet if we are to achieve the feat of thinking determinate thoughts about the world around us.