Metaphysics and Method

Speakers and Talk Titles:

“Hegel and Hölderlin on the status of philosophy” by Ivan Boldyrev, Radboud University

“Concept as “free love” and “boundless blessedness”. Hegel and Spinoza on universality and particularity” by Michela Bordignon, Federal University of Sao Bernardo do Campo

“The collapse of the distinction between Meaning and Knowledge in Phenomenology” by Frank Chouraqui, Leiden University

“With What must a reason begin?” by Gerad Gentry, Baylor University

“Schelling's Method of Construction and Finite Thinking” by Karen Koch, Basel University

“The Architectonic of Knowledge. Leibniz on the Integration of Philosophy and Science” by Ansgar Lyssy, Leipzig University

“Schelling’s Speculative Absolute” by Gregory Moss, Chinese University of Hong Kong

“Affective Logic. Pain and Rational Subjectivity in Hegel” by Julia Peters, Heidelberg University

“Is weakness of mind (Gemüt) a weakness of the subject? On the determination of mental illness following Kant and Hegel” by Annette Sell, Bochum University

“Reason and us: how to know that one knows” by Sebastian Stein, Heidelberg University

“Empirie und Spekulation. Grundprobleme geschichtsphilosophischer Methode im frühen deutschen Idealismus” by Gesa Wellmann, Oldenburg University

Contra-Cartesianism:  Philosophy and the Dissatisfactions of Self-Consciousness by Joshua Wretzel, Pennsylvania State University

For more information, please contact: [email protected]

Sponsored by the DFG (German Research Foundation) and the philosophy seminar of Heidelberg University

Organized by Sebastian Stein, Julia Peters, Susanne Lenk

Conference Abstract:

Aristotelian and rationalist substance-metaphysics have been read to differentiate philosophical knowledge from empirical knowledge and to describe philosophy in relation to a divine point of view: when we think philosophically and thus truthfully, we, as finite thinkers, participate in god's self-thinking (Aristotle), god's self-love (Spinoza) or philosophically know about a divine point of view that differs from ours (Leibniz). By definition, philosophical knowledge is thus true and beyond the kind of error that defines empirically grounded beliefs, opinions and our finite perspective in general. While the advantage of such a definition of philosophical knowledge is the guarantee of its universal and truthful status, it raises the question of how the finitude and ability to err that defines us finite beings can be left behind in the process of philosophical thinking. We may thus ask: “How can we as finite subjects of knowledge become identified with infinite substance/nature's/god?” and “Is it us who knows philosophically or god/nature/substance?” It seems that either we are the (finite) subjects of philosophical knowledge and thus retain our fallibility and difference to the universal truth we are supposed to conceptually identify with, thus potentially invalidating our notion of philosophy and our philosophical claims. Or the subject of philosophical knowledge is the very universal principle that also informs our existence. In the latter case, our status as knowing subjects becomes questionable. 

This image has been radically questioned by empiricism that initially allows for the concept of god but in its most minimalist version by David Hume focuses entirely on the knowing subject's finitude as it limits itself to an analysis of the mind's theoretical and practical activity. This led some critics to ask how empiricism's philosophical point of view of empiricism is itself justified: is the knowledge that all knowledge is empirical itself empirical and thus fallible knowledge? It might be that empiricism's epistemology undermines its own implicit claim to a universally valid, philosophical point of view. Also to avoid this possibility, one may read Kant and Fichte as defining philosophical knowledge as universal and objectively valid, a priori/synthetic/transcendental knowledge of the categorial structures required to enable theoretical and practical (as well as aesthetic) judgement and thought. And yet, although the kind of philosophical knowledge that transcendental idealism produces is supposed to be universal and objective, its disqualification of a noumenal/divine point of view seems to entail that philosophical knowledge is 'knowledge held by irreducibly individual and thus finite subjects'. This seems to worry Hegel, who, fearing that this renders philosophical knowledge conceptually fallible, demands in the preface Phenomenology of Spirit that philosophical knowledge should not be defined as a love (that is striving) for wisdom/philosophical knowledge but as actual wisdom/knowledge. This raises the question what kind of definition of philosophical knowledge would be able to avoid the notion of a knowledge-undermining difference between universal truth and the finite philosopher without falling back into a substance-metaphysical universalism that deprives the finite philosopher of her status as knowing subject. 

These issues provoke the question of how Hegel attempted to answer this question but also whether this question is well put in the first place. One may thus wonder independently from any idealist commitment or school of thought how philosophical knowledge as such relates to empirical knowledge and also whether any post-Hegelian tradition such as analytic philosophy, phenomenology or existentialism or any individual thinker such as Schelling, Husserl, Sartre etc. were able to methodologically avoid these problematic choices and seeming dichotomies. In order to explore these issues and themes, this conference unites thinkers from the (post-) Kantian idealist tradition with experts in pre- and post-idealist thought to explore the conceptual issues surrounding the traditions' and thinkers' competing (or simply juxtaposed) concepts of philosophy, its relationship to empirical knowledge and their strengths and weaknesses.