Boundary Concepts in Classical German and Analytic Philosophy

Royal Holloway, University of London and the London Post-Kantian Seminar host a one-day conference on Boundary Concepts in Classical German and Analytic Philosophy. The event receives funding from the British Society for the History of Philosophy.

Drawing the boundaries of the human standpoint is at the heart of both classical German and classical analytic philosophy. Kant introduces the notion of boundary concepts to reckon with our ideas of standpoints and things radically different from those we are familiar with—noumenon, intuitive intellect, and intellectual intuition. Boundary concepts would go on to play a role in his practical philosophy as well. Later on Reinhold, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling take up and transform this project. In the analytic tradition, it is introduced at its outset by Frege and his concern with the unintelligibility and impossibility of alien laws of thought. Both the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein’s Tractarian thinking take up this concern with our urge to reach beyond the limits of human thought and language. This focus on limits and boundaries is then further developed by the later Wittgenstein, Anscombe, and Cavell. To this day, it remains central to the works of contemporary authors as diverse as Bruno, Diamond, Leech, Moore, Mulhall, and Priest. Lately, a renewed interest in the determination of the bounds of the human standpoint has sprung up in fields such as metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and political philosophy. This workshop features new work on boundary concepts in the (post-)Kantian and (post-)analytic traditions and brings together junior and established researchers.

The event is free and open to all! To register and for any inquiries please contact: [email protected].

Schedule:
10:00am:    Introduction
10:15am:    “Kant’s General Will as a Boundary Concept of the Noumenal Republic”, Elisabeth Widmer (LSE)
11:45am:    Coffee
12:00pm:    “A First Principle Without Existence is Empty, Existence Without a First Principle is Blind: Schelling’s Critique of Hegel”, G. Anthony Bruno (RHUL)
1:30pm:    Lunch
3:00pm:    “Belief in Transcendental Idealism”, Jessica Leech (KCL)
4:30pm:    Coffee 
4:45pm:    “‘Surely There Is No Human Being Who…’: Fichte versus Diamond on Misrecognition and the Limits of Humanity”, Jens Pier (RHUL)
6:15pm:    Open discussion and closing
7:00pm:    Conference dinner