ISBN : 9780198724872
Kant's influence on the history of philosophy is vast and protean. The transcendental turn denotes one of its most important forms, defined by the notion that Kant's deepest insight should not be identified with any specific epistemological or metaphysical doctrine, but rather concerns the fundamental standpoint and terms of reference of philosophical enquiry. To take the transcendental turn is not to endorse any of Kant's specific teachings, but to accept that the Copernican revolution announced in the Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason sets philosophy on a new footing and constitutes the proper starting point of philosophical reflection. The aim of this volume is to map the historical trajectory of transcendental philosophy and the major forms that it has taken. The contributions, from leading contemporary scholars, focus on the question of what the transcendental turn consists in-its motivation, justification, and implications; and the limitations and problems which it arguably confronts-with reference to the relevant major figures in modern philosophy, including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein. Central themes and topics discussed include the distinction of realism from idealism, the relation of transcendental to absolute idealism, the question of how transcendental conclusions stand in relation to (and whether they can be made compatible with) naturalism, the application of transcendental thought to foundational issues in ethics, and the problematic relation of phenomenology to transcendental enquiry.
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Transcendental Turn
1. From Transcendental Realism to Transcendental Idealism: The Nature and Significance of Kant's 'Transcendental Turn'
2. On Reconciling the Transcendental Turn with Kant's Idealism
3. Kant, Naturalism, and the Reach of Practical Reason
4. The 'Synthetic-Genetic Method' of Transcendental Philosophy: Kantian Questions/Fichtean Answers
5. Fichte's Anti-Skeptical Programme: On the Anti-Skeptical Strategies in Fichte's Presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre 1794 to 1801/02
6. Fichte's Transcendental Ethics
7. Finite and Absolute Idealism: The Transcendental and the Metaphysical Hegel
8. Is Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit an Essay in Transcendental Argument?
9. Transcendental Aspects, Ontological Commitments, and Naturalistic Elements in Nietzsche's Thought
10. Husserl and the Transcendental
11. Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy: Making Meaning Thematic
12. Heidegger on Unconcealment and Correctness
13. Transcendental versus Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Being and Time
14. Merleau-Ponty's Transcendental Theory of Perception
15. 'Hopelessly Strange': Bernard Williams' Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Transcendental Idealist
16. Stoic Transcendentalism and the Doctrine of Oikeiosis