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ABSTRACTThis essay is a translation of one of Salomon Maimon’s ethical writings, accompanied by a brief introduction. In it, Maimon proposes a correction of the Kantian moral principle of duty, as it is articulated both by Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals and his Critique of Practical Reason. In particular, Maimon’s essay reveals the influence of Reinhold’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, especially regarding the role of incentives behind moral action. It reveals as well Maimon’s commitment to the primacy (...) of the theoretical over the practical, drawn from his reading of Maimonides and Spinoza. The essay, therefore, marks an important moment in the development of Maimon’s assimilation of Kantian philosophy, one often neglected in scholarship on his work. (shrink)

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This dissertation treats two themes crucial for the emergence of modern aesthetics. First, it considers the "aesthetic consciousness," which results from a rejection of the Aristotelian mimesis doctrine, and which seeks to establish art as independent from either morality or nature. Second, it treats the "historical consciousness," required to bring about the aesthetic consciousness, and eventually to raise it to the level of a moral ideal. Thus, the dissertation begins by considering that version of the mimetic argument rejected by the (...) moderns: it treats Lessing's moral interpretation of dramatic catharsis. Lessing's moral interpretation of catharsis, it is argued, jeopardizes the harmony between nature, morality and art on which the mimetic argument rests. Thus, the second chapter treats the first decisive challenge to the mimetic tradition: Rousseau's attack on the moral interpretation of catharsis. This attack follows two steps. First, Rousseau argues that the arts efface man's natural moral character. Second, Rousseau's developmental/historical account of man supports this opposition between art, on the one hand, and nature and morality, on the other. Rousseau, thus, is seen to be the first to introduce a historical consciousness of development into discussions of art, which revises the traditional links between art, nature and morality, and established a direction for Kant and Schiller. ;In light of Lessing and Rousseau, Kant's foundation of an aesthetic consciousness can be more clearly understood. Thus, the third chapter considers Kant's argument for aesthetic by considering three themes: first, Kant's notion of autonomy; second, Kant's analysis of the disinterestedness of the aesthetic judgement; third, his account of genius as the cause of fine art. ;Kant's argument, however, suggests that the aesthetic consciousness supercedes morality. Although Kant himself never pursues this suggestion, Schiller does. Thus, the final chapter treats Schiller's attempt to retrieve the moral and the natural without sacrificing the autonomy of the fine arts. Schiller does this by bringing Rousseau's historical consciousness of the human as a development beyond nature with Kant's aesthetic consciousness. This chapter, therefore, treats three themes. First, it considers how Schiller's distinction between naive and sentimental poetry translates into historical categories: ancient and modern. Second, it shows how the goal of the sentimental poet is a "moral unity" between art and nature, the necessity of which is unknown to the naive poet. Third, it considers how, through the search for a moral unity achieved only through a historical consciousness of progress from naive to sentimental, the nature of art becomes, for the first time, a function of human history. The dissertation concludes with a summary of these themes in terms of the distinction between the good and the beautiful. (shrink)

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An introduction to the work and life of the 18th c. philosopher Salomon Maimon, followed by translations (the first into English) of Maimon's final essays.

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A complete English translation of the correspondence between the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the novelist and essayist Ernst Jünger, together with a translation of Jünger’s essay Across the Line.

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Descartes’s Discourse on Method proposes a radically democratic goal, science on behalf of the common good of humanity, and an equally radical elitism, wherein strong minds, possessed of true virtue, direct the efforts of weak minds. In this respect the argument of the Discourse entails what we might call a “revised Averroism”: a distinction between the few and the many intended not to protect the faith of the many, but to suborn it on behalf of the new science Descartes proposes. (...) The goal of this essay is henceforth threefold. First, the essay attempts to show how a distinction between strong and weak minds emerges in the argument of the Discourse; second, it indicates the use toward which Descartes puts this distinction; and finally, it attempts to clarify Descartes’s own relationship to both strong and weak minds. The essay concludes with some thoughts concerning the significance of Descartes’ “revised Averroism.”. (shrink)

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In the 1930s, Martin Heidegger began what would become a lifelong engagement with the work of Ernst Jünger. Part of Heidegger’s interest in Jünger was a result of Jünger’s Nietzsche-inspired cultural diagnosis; in Heidegger’s words, Jünger “makes all previous writings about Nietzsche inessential.” On the other hand, Heidegger was critical of what he deemed Jünger’s “bedazzlement” before the thought of Nietzsche. In this essay, I explore the sources of Heidegger’s interest and his criticism of Jünger’s work. To do this, I (...) focus on elements of their correspondence, but mainly on Jünger’s essay “Über die Linie” of 1950 and Heidegger’s response, “Über ‘die Linie’” of 1955. In so doing, I hope to uncover their shared concern for the fate of Europe at the hands of a nihilism of which World War II was, to them, but an expression. (shrink)

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A new translation of a classic work of philosophy promises not only to refresh its long-familiar language, but also to stimulate and to enrich our understanding of the author and his achievement. Werner S. Pluhar's recent translation of Kant's epochal Critique of Judgment succeeds in both respects. The appearance of this translation is well-timed: as Mary Gregor points out in her foreword to the book, there is at present a revival of interest in Kant-studies of unprecedented magnitude. We may also (...) add that interest in aesthetics has similarly reached a new pitch. It is indeed auspicious then to have in modern English that text which has been justly said to be the crowning phase of the critical philosophy, and which also represents the watershed of modern aesthetics. (shrink)

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One of the goals of examining Hegel's aesthetics, Stephen Bungay points out in his admirably lucid introduction to this topic, is to redeem aesthetics from what Roger Scruton has deemed its "continuing intellectual disaster." For Bungay, what is so compelling about Hegel's aesthetics in this regard is its attempt "to give the determination of beauty and of art in speculative terms," thereby restoring a concern for the philosophical in art, without diminishing the immediacy or "determinateness" of particular arts and artworks. (...) The result: a panoramic depiction of art history as the self-realization of "the concept of art." It is to Bungay's credit that he does not reduce what is problematic in Hegel's project in order to reveal what is provocative. (shrink)

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Northrop Frye once remarked that when art reaches a certain level of intensity it begins to speak about itself. Karsten Harries, in his excellent new book, provokes in the reader an image of the Bavarian rococo church having reached this degree of self-consciousness, to the extent that it calls into question not only its own special limits, but those of all sacred art. In Harries's words, the Bavarian rococo church is "no longer able to take seriously the pathos and rhetoric (...) of the baroque, yet refuses to give them up; so it plays with them." Harries's argument centers around three axes: first, the conflation of painting, architecture, and ornament into a single art form; second, the change in and thematization of the viewer's perspective resulting from this conflation; third, the encroachment of the aesthetic upon the sacramental, an encroachment which follows from this new emphasis on the viewer's perspective. Thus, Harries's claim: the very principles of the Bavarian rococo church lead to its own disintegration at the hands of an "aesthetic attitude," according to which "a work of art is governed by the demands of its own aesthetic perfection.". (shrink)

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