NY German Idealism Workshop

Over the last year or so posts have been quite sporadic, but I hope to get back into posting more often. So, expect more posts in the next few days/weeks.

The NY German Idealism Workshop is meeting on Friday, March 26th: "A Dialogue on Fichte and Recognition" with Jay Bernstein (The New School for Social Research) and Fred Neuhouser (Barnard College). Both are featured in the recent publication, The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher Zurn (Lexington, 2010). Prof. Bernstein will give a short presentation of his paper, "Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte's Materialism" (see attached) to which Prof. Neuhouser will respond.

A Dialogue on Fichte and Recognition with Jay Bernstein and Fred Neuhouser
Date: Friday, March 26th
Time: 4:30–6:30
Location: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University

For a copy of Jay Bernstein's paper email Karen Ng:
(karen.ng92@gmail.com).

Kant and Non-Conceptual Content

Dietmar Heidemann (Luxembourg) has organized an exciting conference around the work of Robert Hanna. Hanna has published a number of important works on Kant, but this event appears to be organized around issues addressed in his essay "Kant and Non-Conceptual Content" in European Journal of Philosophy, 13:2 pp. 247–290. I also noticed Hanna has co-authored with Michelle Maiese a new book called Embodied Minds in Action (Oxford, 2008), which looks quite good.

KANT AND NON-CONCEPTUAL CONTENT
Workshop with Robert Hanna

28-29 May 2009
University of Luxembourg (Campus Walferdange)
Department of Philosophy

28 May 2009

14:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kant’s Non-Conceptualism and the Gap in the B Deduction

15:00
Comment: Dr. Stefanie Grüne (University of Heidelberg)

17:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kantian Non-Conceptualism and the Myth of the Myth of the Given

18:00
Comment: Dr. Tobias Schlicht (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

29 May 2009

10:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kantian Non-Conceptualism and Naive Perceptual Realism

11:00
Comment: Professor Dr. Brady Bowman (Penn State)

14:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kantian Non-Conceptualism and a Positive Solution for Benacerraf’s Dilemma

15:00
Comment: Professor Dr. Terry Godlove (Hofstra University, New York)

All talks will be given Room X2.33 (IPSE Building), University of Luxembourg-Campus Walferdange, Faculty of Language and Literature, Department of Philosophy, Route de Diekirch, L-7220 Walferdange/Luxembourg (http://wwwen.uni.lu/Contact/Campus-Walferdange)

For further information and registration (no fees), please contact the organizer Dietmar Heidemann (dietmar.heidemann@uni.lu)

-----------------------------------------
Professor Dr. Dietmar Heidemann
University of Luxembourg
Faculté des Lettres
Department of Philosophy
Campus Walferdange
Route de Diekirch / B.P. 2
L-7220 Walferdange
dietmar.heidemann@uni.lu

NY German Idealism Workshop

The next NY German Idealism Workshop will be Friday, February 20 at 4pm at the New School. Here are the details:

Sebastian Rand (Georgia State University)
"Animal Subjectivity in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature"

Place: The New School
4pm, Friday, February 20
Room: D912 (The building is located at 16th and 5th Ave. The main entrance is on 16th st. between 5th and Union Square. The address is 6 16th).

Karen Ng (New School) will respond.

If you plan to attend and would like to receive a copy of the paper, please email me.

Jacobi in Google Books

Here are two links to some old texts on F. H. Jacobi. The first text is one of the few studies on Jacobi in English and serves as an introduction to his thought: Jacobi Norman Wilde, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: A Study in the Origin of German Realism. I'm not familiar with the second; it looks to be a thesis: Alexander W. Crawford, The Philosophy of F. H. Jacobi. These are old texts, so here is also George di Giovanni's SEP article on Jacobi.

Why is there not more literature on Jacobi in English? The most recent works I know of that handle Jacobi in some detail are Paul Frank's All or Nothing (Harvard, 2005) and Giovanni's Freedom and Religion in Kant and His Immediate Successors (Cambridge, 2005).

Philosophy Today's Fichte Issue

Below is the table of contents for the Fall 2008 issue of Philosophy Today. They published the proceedings of last spring's North American Fichte Society conference dedicated to Fichte's System of Ethics. The conference was held at DePaul University April 10-13, 2008. I attended the conference though chose not to publish my paper, Fichte on Freedom: How-Possible Questions and Transcendental Arguments, since it is, as I see it, still very much a work in progress. The conference was great, and all of these papers are worth reading.

Philosophy Today

Vol. 52, Iss. 3/4

1. Credits

2. Table of contents

3. APRIORITY FROM THE GRUNDLAGE TO THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Sebastian Rand

4. BETWEEN THE IDEAL AND THE EGO IDEAL: COLLECTIVE EVIL FROM FICHTE TO FREUD
Arnold L Farr

5. FEELING IS KNOWING: THE CENTRALITY OF DRIVES AND AFFECT IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Michael Steinberg

6. FICHTE AGAINST KANT IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Isabelle Thomas- Fogiel

7. FICHTE AND NOVALIS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND AESTHETICS
Howard Pollack-Milgate

8. FICHTE AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE MORAL LAW
Claude Piché

9. FICHTE ON THE HIGHEST GOOD: AGENT UNITY AND PRACTICAL DELIBERATION IN THE JENA SITTENLEHRE
Benjamin D Crowe

10. FICHTE, ETHICS, AND THE PLEASURES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
F Scott Scribner

11. FICHTE, ETHICS, AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Tom Rockmore

12.FINITE AND ABSOLUTE REASON IN (AND BEYOND) FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Steven Hoeltzel

13. HEGEL ON FICHTE'S CONCEPTION OF PRACTICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNES: A FUNDAMENTAL CRITICISM OF THE SITTENLEHRE IN THE DIFFERENZ-SCHRIFT
Liu Zhe

14. INTRODUCTION
Tom Rockmore

15. ON FICHTE'S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Marina F Bykova

16. ONE DRIVE AND TWO MODES OF ACTING: COGNITION AND VOLITION
Violetta L Waibel

17. THE BEAUTIFUL SOUL, THE SOCIOPATH, AND FICHTE'S ETHICS
George J Seidel

18. THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIENCE IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Bärbel Frischmann

19. THE CONCEPT OF DRIVE IN THE SITTTENLEHRE (1798): FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF FICHTE'S DOCTRINE OF OIKEIOSIS
Mário Jorge de Carvalho

20. THE EMPIRICAL I IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Jane Dryden

21.THE FIRST-PERSON STANDPOINT OF FICHTE'S ETHICS

Daniel Breazeale

22. THE FUNCTION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LONGING IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Adam Hankins

23.THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIAL IMPERATIVE IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Jacinto Rivera de Rosales

24. TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE: THE FAILED RECEPTION OF FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Günter Zöller

PhilPapers

David Chalmers has announced that PhilPapers has now gone public. PhilPapers is a database of philosophy papers maintained by Chalmers and David Bourget. The database is set up around a category system that organizes papers into various philosophical categories. Under the category History of Western Philosophy, for instance, you will find sub-categories like 19th Century Philosophy, 19th Century German Philosophy, Fichte, and Hegel. The groupings contain links to papers, abstracts, and books. Currently, the database has close to 200,000 entries, and it is expected to grow quickly. I imagine this will become an incredibly useful research tool, and an easy way to access online papers. The project grows out of the MindPapers database Chalmers also maintains, an excellent resource for people working in philosophy of mind.

Paul Redding's Papers and Hegel Scholarship

I want to point readers to a PhD Hegel Scholarship. The scholarship is to work on a project titled "The God of Hegel's Post-Kantian Idealism", with Paul Redding and Paolo Diego at the University of Sydney. This kind of scholarship is a rare and excellent opportunity. The major limitation is that applicants must be Australian citizens, Australian permanent residents or New Zealand citizens. Here are the details.

I also want to point out that Paul Redding has some very interesting papers posted on his homepage. At the bottom of his page you will see an "online papers" section, which includes a great paper on the "Idealism" of Russell and Moore called "Idealism: a love (of sophia) that dare not speak its name". There are also papers up on Hegel and recognition, Brandom and McDowell, naturalism etc.

Terry Pinkard's Papers

Terry Pinkard (Georgetown) has posted a number of his recent papers on his site. There are some interesting papers on Hegel and spirit and Sellars and Post-Kantianism. He has also posted a draft of his new translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which will be published by Cambridge. It is about time a new translation of the Phenomenology appear, and as I have mentioned before, the translation of Fichte's Science of Knowledge, published many years ago by Cambridge, is due for a major revision.

Brandom on Hegel

Thanks to SOH-Dan for posting about Brandom's current work on Hegel. I remembering hearing maybe five or so years ago Brandom was writing a book on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. It was believable since he had already published some articles on Hegel and sections of the Tales of the Mighty Dead dealt directly with Hegel.

I've wondered what form Brandom's book would take. Many works on Hegel's Phenomenology are fairly straight forward commentaries. H. S. Harris's Hegel's Ladder goes far beyond any of the many commentaries in terms of its detail and comprehensiveness. Pinkard's is an interesting Sellarsian take (with some serious Barndomian influences). But I could not imagine Brandom taking the time or interest in this kind of scholarly and reconstructive work. Now after seeing what he's done with Kant and Hegel in his Woodbridge Lectures, it became clearer there was no chance of this. But how does one write on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit without getting caught in commentary mode. One option is the general Heideggerian approach: by writing about a historical figure you write a commentary on yourself. Well, after a brief perusal through Chapter 8 of Brandom's A Spirit of Trust, the title of what apparently is the long-awaited Hegel book, it seems to be somewhere between the traditional commentary and the Heideggerian approach (though this is a fairly speculative comment). There are lots of long quotations interpreted through Brandom's philosophical framework.

The chapter is itself long (256 pages in Word), so, as SOH-Dan points out, this will likely rival Maxing it Explicit in size, but I wonder to what extent it will influence how people understand Hegel. My bet is that Brandom's own philosophical work on inferentialism, semantics and normativity will have a greater influence on Idealism studies than his own commentaries on Hegel or Kant. There is some historical precedence for this. Look at the influence Sellars has had on Kant studies or even McDowell. Strawson's work on Kant might be an exception but the debate over transcendental arguments, one of his greatest legacies, stems originally from Individuals and not the Bounds of Sense. But maybe I'm overstating things in the case of Strawson, he did after all make it permissible, along with Bennett, for Anglo-American philosophers to take Kant seriously. Anyway, these are just some cursory half-thoughts.

You should checkout Brandom's very funny "Untimely Review of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit." Brandom's so-called review can be found here on his webpage, and his chapter along with other Hegel papers here.

Some Kant Links

Here are a few Kant links:

James Conant on on "John McDowell's Kant", a recording of a lecture given at the University of Bergen.

A new Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "Kant's Account of Reason."

A review of Paul Guyer's new book Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume.

Thom Brooks on Publishing

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) of The Brooks Blog just posted here a revised paper that gives what appears to be sound and very helpful advice on publishing essays, replies, book reviews and book manuscripts for graduate students. I take it that his advice will also be quite helpful for recent graduates and young scholars. You might also want to check out this conversation on publishing book manuscripts at Leiter Reports and this one about graduate students and publishing.

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

The other day I was searching for something in Google Books and came across the important 19th Century journal The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. I knew that there were some hard to find translations of Fichte in there as well as some early translations of Hegel, but I did not realize what a goldmine they are, and I certainly did not think to look for them online. Check out some of the journals here. You can actually down load the entire volumes as PDFs. There is another journal called The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and from what I can tell it was started in 1987 and is unrelated.

The first volume of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy is from 1867, and it contains what were at the time new, and I suspect original translations of Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel. Each volume has many translations of German Idealist texts as well as translations of Schlegel, Herder, and articles by Anglo-American philosophers. Anyone interested in the reception of German Idealism in America will find these journals indispensable.

The editor, William Torey Harris, notes in his "Preface" to the first volume that to some the journal's contents might be perceived as "Un-American" in character. It is interesting that there is an apparent distinction between Speculative philosophy and Anglo-American philosophy being made by Harris that resembles the putative divide between analytic and Continental philosophy. It appears that Harris wants to overcome this divide between American philosophy, whatever that may be, and Un-American so-called Speculative philosophy. In doing so, the aim is to achieve universal knowledge, which if objective could not be claimed either American or Un-American. By bringing American scholars in contact with German philosophy, it appears he thinks such a goal can be obtained.

There are too many volumes of the journal online to mention what is worth looking at so I leave it up to you. It's worth mentioning that for some volumes you cannot preview them in Google Books, so if you want to see the contents, you have to download the PDF.

Idealism Texts Online

Recently, I posted about some Hegel material that is online. At the same site there is a good bit of material from other figures:

Kant

Herder

Fichte

Schlegel

Schelling

Pippin's Papers

Many thanks to DuckRabbit for pointing out that Robert Pippin has posted his papers and replies to McDowell and McDowell's response. Also, Pippin has posted a number of papers on Hegel. Worth checking out!!! You can find all of this here on Pippin's site.

Papers

Here at Facts, Ideas and Logic there are some links to papers by Wayne Martin on Fichte and Logic, McDowell papers, some Hegel, Habermas, and Zizek. Plus lots of politics. Cool site.

Text of Brandom's Woodbridge Lectures

Here you will find Brandom's Woodbridge Lectures "Animating Ideas of Idealism". At Selbsttatigkeit, you will find Mr. Selbst's reflections on the lectures. He begins with the title of the series, and promises more reflections in the future. Worth checking out!

Transcendental Philosophy at Essex

Essex looks to have a vibrant workshop series on Transcendental Philosophy and Idealism. Here you can find links to papers on transcendental arguments, idealism, and normativity.

The 51st Philosopher's Carnival

The 51st Philosopher's Carnival is here. The carnival is devoted to mathematics, logic and science, but the last posting, submitted by The Brooks Blog is on Hegel and the Family. You can find more Hegel papers by Thom Brooks (University of Newcastle) on The Philosophy of Right at The Brooks Blog.

Allen Wood Offered Position at Indiana

Allen Wood (Stanford) has been offered a senior position by Indiana University, Bloomington. No word yet on whether he will accept. See Leiter's note here. Wood is well known for his work on Kant, Hegel and Marx, and he has made a number of his paper's available on his personal homepage. There is a newish paper there on "Fichte's Intersubjective I" that was published in Inquiry (Feb. 2006). We'll keep an eye on what happens.

UPDATE: Wood is moving to Indiana. Here for more details.