Rationalizing (Vernünfteln)

Kant was a keen psychological observer and theorist of the forms, mechanisms and sources of self-deception. In this Element, the author discusses the role of rationalizing/Vernünfteln for Kant's moral psychology, normative ethics and philosophical methodology. By drawing on the full breadth of examples of rationalizing Kant discusses, the author shows how rationalizing can extend to general features of morality and corrupt rational agents thoroughly (albeit not completely and not irreversibly). Furthermore, the author explains the often-overlooked roles common human reason, empirical practical reason and even pure practical reason play for rationalizing. Kant is aware that rationality is a double-edged sword; reason is the source of morality and of our dignity, but it also enables us to seemingly justify moral transgressions to ourselves, and it creates an interest in this justification in the first place. Finally, this Element discusses whether Kant's ethical theory itself can be criticised as a product of rationalizing.

Doing Without (Arguing about) Desert

This chapter was originally a contribution to a book symposium on Manuel Vargas’ Building Better Beings (2013a), focusing on the revisionist treatment of desert therein. By means of an analogy between morality and sport, it examines some seemingly peculiar implications of Vargas’ teleological and revisionary account of desert. It also considers some general questions of philosophical methodology provoked by revisionary approaches.

Free-Range Philosophy: Modes of Philosophical Analysis across the Discipline … and across the Road

Philosophy’s richness comes in part from the wide range of conceptual frameworks from which meaning can be made of aspects of the world. Philosophy can be done from feminist, Marxist, positivist, or Freudian standpoints. The difference in the sorts of analyses produced by these different approaches can be tricky to explain to undergraduates. Contained here are short explanations of the nature of a collection of these frameworks and a fun example of each, an analysis of the chicken crossing the road joke to be used to give undergraduates a sense of the breadth of philosophical methodology.

Kant's Prolegomena

The Prolegomena is often dismissed as Kant's failed attempt to popularize his philosophy, but as the essays collected here show, there is much to be gained from a careful study of the work. The essays explore the distinctive features of the Prolegomena, including Kant's discussion of philosophical methodology, his critical idealism, the nature of experience, his engagement with Hume, the nature of the self, the relation between geometry and physics, and what we cognize about God. Newly commissioned for this volume, the essays as a whole offer sophisticated and innovative interpretations of the Prolegomena, and cast Kant's critical philosophy in a new light.

The Phenomenon of a Thing in the Transformational Manifestations of Mass Culture

The research deals with a different understanding of things in the context of culture. An attempt was made to analyze the phenomenon of a thing through the scientific­methodological approach of Lacan, Marx, and Heidegger. The article also attempts to answer the main question: what does a thing mean in modern society, and what transformations of this concept took place in a historical perspective. The article analyzes such order of things in which things at different levels (physical, social, axiological, etc.) manifest themselves in different ways, as well as possess different qualities and characteristics, which gives us the opportunity to talk about a new understanding of a thing in the context of an information society, in which the physical thing is nullified and the symbolic thing appears. To distinguish these two concepts, we need to understand how the thing is realized in the desire, because the desire itself is the direction that motivates a person to make a choice, and this is what a person is deprived of the XXI century. The purpose of this article is a thorough consideration of thing in the context of mass culture. Designation of connections between human “I” and a thing in the context of the new information society. The relevance of this article consists in the fact that in modern Western societies there is a loss of the value of a thing as a value that is not only inside the thing itself, but also goes beyond the material world. This is primarily due to mass production and the emergence of a consumer society. The methodology: the author uses a systematic approach and the analytics is made from the point of view of materialism, existentialism, and psychoanalysis. The results: the author identifies ten points that characterize the thing in the context of mass culture. The emphasis is on mediocrity as the main agent of consumerism. A broad analysis of the subject is given in the context of social criticism of the USSR and Western societies of the modern type. The topicality. This article for the first time specifies a correlation between things in popular culture and mediocrity as an extra class phenomenon that significantly affects social processes. It also for the first time analyzes things on the basis of the fundamental philosophical teachings of the XX century and makes connection between Marxism, phenomenology and psychoanalysis, which for a long time have been considered methodological antagonists. The removal of this conflict leads to the discovery of new methodological studies in the field of culture, since they can study human activity from different sides (each with its own), but also closely cooperating with each other. Practical value. Research in this area using philosophical methodology gives us the opportunity to comprehend the concept of mediocrity and trace its connection with the thing, which in its turn opens up opportunities for us for a deeper understanding of the processes that began to take place after the Second World War. For a modern person, it is very important to ask yourself questions about the relationship between me and things. Questions like these are just as important in the educational process.

Gift Game Metatheory: Social Interaction and Interpersonal Growth

This paper analyzes Game Theory (GT) from the point of view of moral psychology and makes explicit some of its assumptions regarding the human person as a moral agent, as well as the ends of human action, and reciprocity. Using a largely philosophical methodology, we will argue that GT assumes an instrumental form of rationality underpinned by a logic of self-interest, hence placing individuals, communities, and their social practices in service of external goods and their maximization. Because of this, GT is not adequate to describe the entirety of human social existence and interaction. Nevertheless, by revealing these assumptions, GT can be amplified with another form of rationality based on realist ethics and a personalist anthropology reinforced by the logic of gift. This rationality values the singularity of each person as a holistic unity, as the center of the social realm and as an end in herself called to growth and flourishing with others, nurturing the human community through giving and receiving. We will thus provide a wider philosophical framework for GT with a series of non-mathematical axioms of what can be called a Game Metatheory (GMt). These axioms refer to society as a complex system, not to particular interactions. GMt axioms are not a model of social games, but rather an axiomatic description of social life as a game, revealing its systematic character, complexity, and possible deterioration.

Wolf and eclecticism: from the concept of an open system to systematic intelligence

The paper (1) provides a comparative analysis of the programs of reforms of philosophy developed by Christian Wolff and the members of the Eclecticist school; (2) it reveals the critical foundations of the concepts of the system by both schools and (3) assesses the prospects of their further development. Although Wolff is often inconsistent, nevertheless, he is largely closer to Descartes and Leibniz, and therefore to the Platonic tradition. The Eclecticists, on the other hand, are closer to the Peripatetic tradition, and therefore to empiricism. From the point of view of the history of philosophical methodology, Wolff’s program combines Cartesianism and the German tradition of methodical thinking (J. Jung, E. Weigel and Leibniz), which both were oriented towards mathematics. The Eclecticists, on the other hand, used the dialectical model, which they modernized by introducing the principle of historicism and applying it to the history of philosophy. When the program of the Eclecticists was guided by the critical selection of knowledge by members of the “scientific community” and the concept of an open system, Wolff’s synthesis of knowledge is carried out on the basis of a rigorous method. He puts forward a fundamentally new idea of a universal system based on new normative requirements for the system-forming principle, namely, it must be fundamental, generally valid and immanent in the system of knowledge. Wolff does not reject the critical program of the Eclecticists. In debates with them, he tries to prove that the successful implementation of their program is possible only if there is a basic system of truths and a reliable method. In his treatise On the Difference Between Systematic and Non-systematic Intellect, Wolff laid the foundation of “systematic eclecticism” and “speculative criticism”, which was substantiated in the works by “classics of German idealism”, primarily by C. L. Reinhold and Hegel.

What is Worldly Logic and Why Might it Lead to Suicide? Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and the Critique of Logic

In contemporary philosophy, there is a growing interest in how Søren Kierkegaard’s metaphilosophy and philosophical methodology may have influenced Ludwig Wittgenstein. This paper contributes to this discussion by arguing that each shares and critiques a particular conception of logic that I term “worldly logic.” Roughly, “worldly logic” contends logic and metaphysics are intimately interconnected. It further argues that reading Kierkegaard’s brief thoughts on logic, in the Climacus texts, through the lens of the later Wittgenstein, helps to clarify the nature of Kierkegaard’s critique. Finally, it argues that their shared abhorrence of a particular sort of philosophy of logic is principled and apt.

Plato's Statesman

Plato’s Statesman reconsiders many questions familiar to readers of the Republic: questions in political theory – such as the qualifications for the leadership of a state and the best from of constitution (politeia) – as well as questions of philosophical methodology and epistemology. Instead of the theory of Forms that is the centrepiece of the epistemology of the Republic, the emphasis here is on the dialectical practice of collection and division (diairesis), in whose service the interlocutors also deploy the ancillary methods of myth and of models (paradeigmata). Plato here introduces the doctrine of due measure (to metrion) and a conception of statecraft (politikē) as an architectonic expertise that governs subordinate disciplines such as rhetoric and the military – doctrines later developed by Aristotle. Readers will find a sustained defence of the importance of expertise (technē or epistēmē) in the conduct of affairs of state, a robust (although not unqualified) defence of the rule of law, and an unsparing but nuanced critique of democratic government. The chapters in this volume provide a comprehensive and detailed philosophical engagement with the entirety of Plato’s wide-ranging dialogue, with successive chapters devoted to the sections of the dialogue as it unfolds, and an introduction that places the dialogue in the context of Plato’s philosophy as a whole. While not a commentary in the traditional sense, the volume engages with Plato’s Statesman in its entirety.