Friday, June 27, 2008

Update

It's been too long since I last posted. I've been traveling some. A few days in Madison, Wisconsin, and a few with the family in Houston. I'm now in Berlin where I will actually be for the next two months. I'm here on a DAAD stipend which allows me to work on my German. Currently, I'm working on a paper on Fichte, pre-reflective awareness, and the body. The paper is called "Fichte and the Possibility of Mindedness." It takes up some issues developed in the Dreyfus/McDowell debate and Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right. I will be presenting a version of it on July 17 at the Philosophisches Kolloquium at the University of Cologne. Besides that, I will be in Berlin working on the dissertation and my German. I do plan to keep up with the blog while in Germany, so keep an eye out. For those of you looking for some idealism related posts, check out SOH-Dan here and here on Hegel.

6 comments:

Duck said...

Hey, have fun in Berlin! Uh, I mean, viel Spass! I look forward to hearing about Fichte and McDowell.

Also, you might be interested in this exchange we had over at Tom's place.

Anonymous said...

All I want to know is, was Fichte right when he said that the non-Ego (It, External World) is purely a product of the Ego? I believe that much depends on the answer to this question.

Bongo Chumunga

Anonymous said...

Self and world.

When I try to experience self, it slips away from me.

When I try to experience world, I can never get hold of it.

Are they real or just names of abstractions?

Bongo

Anonymous said...

Wissenschaft = Science

Lehre = Doctrine or Teaching

Why is "Science of Knowledge" preferred over "Doctrine of Science" when they translate "Wissenschaftslehre"? Is there something about "Doctrine of Science" that is undesirable?

Bongo

Anonymous said...

In Vocation of Man, Bk, II, Fichte wrote: "There is nothing enduring, either out of me,
or in me, but only a ceaseless change. I know of no
being, not even of my own. There is no being. I myself absolutely know not, and am not. Pictures
are: — they are the only things which exist, and they know of themselves after the fashion of pictures : — pictures which float past without there being anything
past which they float; which, by means of like pictures, are connected with each other : — pictures without anything which is pictured in them, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these
pictures ; — nay, I am not even this, but merely a confused
picture of the pictures.. All reality is transformed
into a strange dream, without a life which is dreamed of, and without a mind which dreams it ;—
into a dream which is woven together in a dream of
itself." Is he criticized for his subjective, idealistic, psychologistic assertions? Today, philosophers are very sensitive about having their claims considered to be psychologistic. All serious philosophy is supposed to be objective and based purely on non-psychologistic logic. Such logic is supposed to exist in a real realm of being, apart from any spectators or observers.

Bongo

Anonymous said...

Robert Blakely, in his History of the Philosophy of Mind, Vol. IV, p. 114, London: Longmans, 1850, said of Fichte, "He made no hesitation in pluming himself on his great skill in the shadowy and obscure, by often remarking to his pupils, that 'there was only one man in the world who could fully understand his writings;
and even he was often at a loss to seize upon his real meaning.' " This remark has often mistakenly been attributed to Hegel. It makes Fichte seem as though he intentionally tried to write and lecture in an unintelligible manner. Did Fichte think that obscurity was a mark of profundity?

Bongo