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Herder's Essay on Being
- from Part II - Critical Essays
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- By Manfred Baum, vice chair of the Kant Gesellschaft
- Edited by John K. Noyes
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- Book:
- Herder's Essay on Being
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 13 April 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 December 2018, pp 77-88
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Summary
From Idealism to Spinozism and Back Again
HERDER'S “METAPHYSICAL EXERCITIUM” (FHA 1:9; EB, 55) on Being is introduced by the “Prolegomena” and is concluded by a “Concluding Remark” (FHA 1:20; EB, 71). These sections contain epistemological reflections on the formation of concepts in human and divine thought. In the introductory part of his essay Herder first deals with the empiricist thesis that all our concepts are derived from the senses. In its Lockean form this thesis amounts to the denial of inborn truths (angeborene Wahrheiten). If John Locke's distinction of inner sense from outer senses is also accepted, the empiricist claim could be stated more precisely in the following manner: there is no other way to consciousness or inner sense than through the outer senses. That all our concepts are sensible would then mean that the content of these concepts is provided by the outer senses and that their function as concepts is due to the reflection of this content in inner sense. In this theory of concept formation it is presupposed that there are objects outside the mind that affect the outer senses and thereby make possible concepts of the inner sense, which could not be produced in any other way.
Although this empiricist theory seems to be well founded by facts of experience, it has a metaphysical implication that is not obviously true, viz., that there are objects outside the mind that are the causes of its concepts. This metaphysical claim cannot itself be established by empirical knowledge, since what is at issue here is not one or another experience, but the explanation of the possibility of experience in general in terms of the relation of things to the mind. This relation can and must be called into question. For the empiricist account of experience takes for granted what the idealist doubts, viz., that there are objects whose activity produces concepts in the mind such that experience of these objects is possible. It follows that there cannot be an empirical refutation of idealism, since experience itself could have more than one cause.
Other than being generated by objects of the outer senses, there is another possibility that must be considered, namely, that experience is the product of an inner principle of the human mind, viz., that of imagination.
6 - Common Welfare and Universal Will in Hegel's Philosophy of Right
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- By Manfred Baum, Professor of Philosophy Bergischen Universität, Wuppertal
- Edited by Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago, Otfried Höffe, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
- Translated by Nicholas Walker
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- Book:
- Hegel on Ethics and Politics
- Published online:
- 14 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 04 March 2004, pp 124-149
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Summary
In the history of political ideas concerning the proper end and purpose of the state, philosophers have sought and discovered various ways of legitimating the political power that human beings exercise over each other. But there are essentially two fundamental types of approach. Either the state (qua institution) is interpreted as an administrator of the welfare of its citizens, the preservation and promotion of which is also supposed to guarantee the properly understood and long-term welfare of these citizens, or the state is interpreted as that condition of society where the universal will of the political citizens governs the latter. On this view, the universal will is conceptualized as the only possible source of positive law because it is only through its deliverances (as laws) that the rights of those subjected to it can be upheld. According to this second type of approach (for which Rousseau and Kant are representative), the purpose of the state lies in the actualization of the rule of the universal will, that is, of right. According to the first type of approach (for which Plato and Aristotle are representative), the purpose of the state lies in the realization of “the good life” of its citizens. One can understand the Hegelian conception of the state as an attempt to combine and unify both these ideas of the state that derive from the Enlightenment and from classical antiquity respectively.
9 - The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature
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- By Manfred Baum
- Edited by Sally Sedgwick, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
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- Book:
- The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy
- Published online:
- 03 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 22 May 2000, pp 199-215
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Summary
Schelling's philosophy of nature is known to be the counterpart to his version of transcendental idealism which dominated his first writings from 1794 on (Über die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie überhaupt). Only after he had left the Tübinger Stiff and entered the university of Leipzig in 1796 in order to study mathematics, natural sciences, and medicine, did he become more interested in the field of physics and other sciences. His Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur of 1797 was the first of a series of books and articles that made him famous for being the inaugurator of the new, speculative “Natur-philosophie” that marked his place in the history of post-Kantian philosophy.
In light of the recent discovery and publication of his early commentary on Plato's Timaeus, the story of his philosophical development has to be rewritten. The early influence of Kant's and Leibniz's philosophy of nature can no longer be considered the main factors contributing to the new conception of a cosmology that could satisfy the conditions set by the revolution in philosophy due to Kant and Fichte. The text of Schelling's commentary also documents the great impact that Reinhold's early philosophy made on him, although for only a short time. Schelling's later reputation as the Plato of his time, which was ill-founded as long as his youthful attempts to interpret and transform Plato's thought were not taken account of, also now gains at least some plausibility.