Philosophical Legacies: Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and Their Contemporaries (Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Volume 50)

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CUA Press, 2008 - Philosophy - 267 pages

Immanuel Kant, the Prussian thinker at the forefront of the German Enlightenment, decisively shaped what is arguably the central philosophical legacy of his era, a legacy of critical rationality and ethico-political self-determination. In Philosophical Legacies, Daniel O. Dahlstrom brings exceptional scholarship to an examination of the diversity and lasting influence not only of Kant but also of some of his most prominent contemporary critics.

Dahlstrom makes a thorough study of various authors such as Johan Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Friedrich Schiller, and later Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He shows that the legacy of German Idealism remains undeniably relevant today. He examines diverse aspects of these philosophers' legacies--legacies which continue to find their way into contemporary philosophical debates.

Among the many topics Dahlstrom discusses are the relation of science to ethics and the different modes and conditions of knowledge. He also considers the nature and legitimate reach of aesthetics; the ends of history and art; the place of conscience in ethical life; the religious significance of philosophy and art, and the political potential of art; the roots of ethics in sexual life; the morality of equal opportunity; and the speculative idea of a philosophical responsibility that cannot be deferred.

The essays trace carefully the histories of the influences of earlier thinkers and their legacies upon later thinkers. But the essays engage these histories with a view to indicating, and in some cases critically weighing, the significance of these legacies--spawned by one of the most fertile periods of German thought--for philosophical thinking in the present.

Daniel O. Dahlstrom is professor of philosophy at Boston University. He has authored, edited, or translated numerous publications including Husserl's Logical Investigations, Philosophy and Art, Nature and Scientific Method, Das logische Vorurteil, Heidegger's Concept of Truth, Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, and Schiller's Essays.

 

Contents

1 The Unity of Kants Critical Philosophy
1
2 Knowing How and Kants Theory of Schematism
17
3 The Natural Right of Equal Opportunity in Kants Civil Union
33
4 Jacobi and Kant
43
Hamann Herder and Schiller
67
Friedrich Schillers Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind
93
Countering the Skeptical Legacy of Formalism in Philosophy
103
Hegel on the Religious Legacy of Modern Philosophy
120
10 The Dialectic of Conscience and the Necessity of Morality in Hegels Philosophy of Right
152
Evolution and the Teleological Legacy in Biology
163
12 Marxist Ideology and Feuerbachs Critique of Hegel
179
13 Human Nature and the PostHistorical Crisis of Recognition
194
14 The Religion of Art
207
15 Hegels Questionable Legacy
228
Bibliography
249
Index
261

Hegels Reading of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit
141

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About the author (2008)

Daniel O. Dahlstrom is professor of philosophy at Boston University. He has authored, edited, or translated numerous publications including Husserl's Logical Investigations, Philosophy and Art, Nature and Scientific Method, Das logische Vorurteil, Heidegger's Concept of Truth, Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, and Schiller's Essays.

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