Idealistic Studies

Much philosophy of the last few decades has witnessed a turn toward otherness and a corresponding calling into question of the autonomy of the agent. In my paper I attempt to re-conceive what agency is in light of this emphasis placed on otherness. I undertake this reconsideration through an analysis of the concepts of unconditionality in Kant and of conditioning by the other in Levinas. Through these analyses I arrive at a new concept: the unconditioning of the agent by the other. I then provide some description of this concept by considering the interpretation of the theological concept of creation in Augustine, Kant, and Levinas.

This article suggests a rereading of Schelling’s theory of freedom in the through Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Schelling’s philosophy of freedom manifested a latent essentialism of the idealistic formulation of human freedom. In Schelling’s scheme, free was “what acts only in accord with the laws of its own being.” In practice, Schelling theory of freedom was based on an intelligible act in the “beginning of creation” which set an eternal unreachable essence to the subject. I propose to read “Schelling through Freud” as a way to revisit this theoretical structure. I argue that Freud’s theory of early libido formation should be recognized as a naturalistic formulation of the intelligible unconscious act. This allows Freud to restructure Schelling’s unconscious eternal essence. Freud’s shift from the metaphysical to the metapsychological drama suggests a human intervention in place of divine redemption, and, thus transpires as a modern articulation of German Idealism.

Since the publication of The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, scholars have insisted that Cassirer’s account of human consciousness can only be found in this posthumous ‘fourth volume of the philosophy of symbolic forms.’ I will argue, however, that Cassirer’s philosophy of culture was already from the beginning essentially also a philosophy of the human being: as I see it, Cassirer consistently holds a ‘functional conception of human consciousness’ that can serve as a foundational element of his thought precisely by remaining in the background of his writings. In his published works, Cassirer adopts Natorp’s reconstructive approach to consciousness within the framework of his philosophy of culture. On this basis, he develops a transcendental, ‘functional’, conception of subjectivity that forms the exact counterpart of his view of objectivity. Cassirer’s metaphysics translates this conception in the language of his contemporaries, but does not substantially alter it.

In his treatise on the essence of human freedom, Schelling recognizes that any true philosophical articulation must begin with the experience of freedom. If freedom as he tells us is the center with respect to which the grounding of all beings emerges, then, the relationship of the human and non-human, along with their taken for granted distinction, must be thought in light of the question of freedom. If such an orientation is to be made within Schelling’s philosophy, the central aspect of the spirit of freedom must be directed away from Heidegger’s generality that “freeing man to himself is a setting free of man in the middle of beings as a whole,” towards the notion that the setting free of the human being in the middle of beings, supposes as its mutual determinant the letting-be free of beings in light of which the human being arrives at a freedom for something. Through a focused evaluation of some of Heidegger’s key texts, this paper seeks to pave the way for an alternative conception of freedom as mutually reflected affirmation, one that would prompt a return to Schelling after Heidegger.

When one attempts to understand and grasp the seemingly simple fact of pain within the realm of human being, it may be inevitable for one to be caught by the question “why do I suffer from pain?” This question, like every other “why” question, belongs to a basic human attitude which cannot accept what is as it is. Considering pain as a manifestation of such an attitude is also determining it as intolerable and reading the experience of pain as an act of rebellion. However, in order to grasp and make sense of the experience of pain, one should first determine against what this act of rebellion is. To this end, this paper tries to articulate the experience of pain within the Hegelian system by focusing on pain’s relation to pleasure, life, death, desire and self-consciousness and infers that any form of reaction to pain is an act of rebellion against death.

I read Tacitus’s valorizing of the Germani (the proto-‘Germanic’ peoples) in Germania and his depiction of Jews in the Annals and Histories as sources of post-medieval Germany’s identity crisis. Tacitus compares German and Jewish sexuality, marriage, morality, religion, superstition, and women. Most importantly, he devises contrasting German and Jewish models of freedom that prefigure this concept’s development in Kantian and Post-Kantian philosophy. This leads to a paradox: although Tacitus denounces Jews for what he praises in the Germani, he admires Jewish anti-idolatry and freedom. But ultimately, Tacitus denounces the Jews in unequivocal terms. Their practices are “quite opposed to those of all other religions,” and they “regard as profane all that we hold sacred . . . they permit all that we abhor.” It will be this slander that is epochal.