Plato's Critique of Impure Reason PDF Download

Author: D. C. Schindler
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 081321534X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Plato's Critique of Impure Reason offers a dramatic interpretation of the Republic, at the center of which lies a novel reading of the historical person of Socrates as the "real image" of the good

Author: Steven James Bartlett
Publisher: Studies in Theory and Behavior
ISBN: 0578886464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 886

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Book Description
The Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the massive work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new Critique focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ conflict with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. The Critique of Impure Reason proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of possible meaning are determined. Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, metalogical projection. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the Critique of Impure Reason develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. CONTENTS AT A GLANCE Preface Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Acknowledgments Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call Introduction A note to the reader A note on conventions PART I WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality PART II THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy 5 Reference, identity, and identification 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference 7 Possibility theory 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference 10 Framework relativity 11 The metalogic of meaning 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness 13 Projection 14 Horizons 15 De-projection 16 Self-validation 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility PART III PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory PART IV HORIZONS 29 Beyond belief 30 Critique of Impure Reason: Its results in retrospect SUPPLEMENT The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference APPENDIX I: The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers APPENDIX II: Epistemological Intelligence References Index About the author

Author: Thomas McCarthy
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262631457
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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These lucid and closely reasoned studies of the thought of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, J�rgen Habermas, and Richard Rorty provide a coherent analysis of major pathways in recent critical theory. They defend a position analogous to Kant's - that ideas of reason are both unavoidable presuppositions of thought that have to be carefully reconstructed and persistent sources of illusions that have to be repeatedly deconstructed.McCarthy examines the critique of impure reason from the complementary viewpoints of the attackers and defenders of Enlightenment rationality. He first analyzes the work of Rorty, Foucault, and Derrida to determine what these radical critics have contributed to our understanding of reason and where they have gone wrong. He explores Habermas's theory of communicative rationality, focusing on the attempt to go beyond hermeneutics, the incorporation of systems theory, the implications of discourse ethics for our understanding of political debate and collective decision making, and the relation of political theology to critical social theory.Thomas McCarthy is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University and the editor of The MIT Press series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. The analysis and assessment of Habermas's recent work in Ideals and Illusions serves as a sequel to his earlier study The Critical Theory of J�rgen Habermas.

Author: Immanuel Kant
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486113027
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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This 1788 work, based on belief in the immortality of the soul, established Kant as a vindicator of the truth of Christianity. It offers the most complete statement of his theory of free will.

Author: James Blachowicz
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438443315
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Proposes a new way of understanding the nature of metaphysics, focusing on nonreductionist emergence theory, both in ancient and modern philosophy, as well as in contemporary philosophy of science. Is metaphysics possible? This book argues that the greatest threat to its viability derives from a self-destructive formalism. If what is essential to the nature of physical entities are the properties they have in common (as formalism holds), the inevitable result will be a reductionist collapse—leaving only “being” or physical “matter” or some other underlying ground. In Essential Difference, James Blachowicz first constructs a one-to-one historical parallel between the modern crisis surrounding formalism (Hume/Kant/Hegel) and the ancient version (Parmenides/Plato/Aristotle), focusing on the principles of differentiation and individuation that underlie Aristotle’s and Hegel’s antireductionist programs. He then proposes a contemporary metaphysical theory of emergence in the context of recent philosophy of science. This theory, founded on the principle of the nonderivability of actual states from possible states, holds that the differences among physical, biological, and mental phenomena are essential to any metaphysics.Essential Difference is the only focused treatment of this problem and is itself essential for any understanding of the nature of metaphysics.

Author: John Rundell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000318028
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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In a new reading of Immanuel Kant’s work, this book interrogates his notions of the imagination and anthropology, identifying these – rather than the problem of reason – as the two central pivoting orientations of his work. Such an approach allows a more complex understanding of his critical-philosophical program to emerge, which includes his accounts of reason, politics and freedom as well as subjectivity and intersubjectivity, or sociabilities. Examining Kant’s theorisation of the complexity of our phenomenological existence, the author explores his transcendental move that includes reason and understanding whilst emphasising the importance of the faculty of the imagination to undergird both, before moving to consider Kant’s pluralised, transcendental notion of freedom. This outstanding book will appeal to scholars with interests in philosophy, politics, anthropology and sociology, working on questions of imagination, reason, subjectivities and human freedom.

Author: Eric D. Perl
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 079148002X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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The work of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite stands at a cusp in the history of thought: it is at once Hellenic and Christian, classical and medieval, philosophical and theological. Unlike the predominantly theological or text-historical studies which constitute much of the scholarly literature on Dionysius, Theophany is completely philosophical in nature, placing Dionysius within the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy and emphasizing, in a positive light, his continuity with the non-Christian Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Eric D. Perl offers clear expositions of the reasoning that underlies Neoplatonic philosophy and explains the argumentation that leads to and supports Neoplatonic doctrines. He includes extensive accounts of fundamental ideas in Plotinus and Proclus, as well as Dionysius himself, and provides an excellent philosophical defense of Neoplatonism in general.

Author: DC Schindler
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
ISBN: 0227906225
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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The Perfection of Freedom seeks to respond to the impoverished conventional notion of freedom through a recovery of an understanding rich with possibilities yet all but forgotten in contemporary thought. This understanding, developed in different but complementary ways by the German thinkers Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, connects freedom, not exclusively with power and possibility, but rather, most fundamentally, with completion, wholeness, and actuality. What is unique here is specifically the interpretation of freedom in terms of form, whether it be aesthetic form (Schiller), organic form (Schelling), or social form (Hegel). Although this book presents serious criticisms of the three philosophers, it shows that they open new avenues for reflection on the notion of freedom; avenues that promise to overcome many of the dichotomies that continue to haunt contemporary thought - for example, between freedom and order, freedom and nature, and self and other. The Perfection of Freedom offers not only a significantly new interpretation of Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, but also proposes a modernity more organically rooted in the ancient and classical Christian worlds.

Author: Andrew Gibson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474293182
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments both for and against it, and its significance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a philosophy. It is an inconsistent thought, and so has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motörhead it has had a very long life, vast historical purchase and is seemingly indomitable and unignorable. Human beings have always nursed a profound distrust of who and what they are. This book does not seek to rationalize that distrust, but asks how far misanthropy might have a reason on its side, if a confused reason. There are obvious arguments against misanthropy. It is often born of a hatred of physical being. It can be historically explained. It particularly appears in undemocratic cultures. But what of the misanthropy of terminally defeated and disempowered peoples? Or born of progressivisms? Or the misanthropy that quarrels with specious or easy positivities (from Pelagius to Leibniz to the corporate cheer of contemporary `total capital`)? From the Greek Cynics to Roman satire, St Augustine to Jacobean drama, the misanthropy of the French Ancien Regime to Swift, Smollett and Johnson, Hobbes, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, from the Irish and American misanthropic traditions to modern women`s misanthropy, the book explores such questions. It ends with a debate about contemporary culture that ranges from the `dark radicalisms`, queer misanthropy, posthumanism and eco-misanthropy to Houellebecq, punk rock and gangsta rap.

Author: D. C. Schindler
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802869335
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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The Catholicity of Reason explains the "grandeur of reason," the recollection of which Benedict XVI has presented as one of the primary tasks in Christian engagement with the contemporary world. While postmodern thinkers -- religious and secular alike -- have generally sought to respond to the hubris of Western thought by humbling our presumptuous claims to knowledge, D. C. Schindler shows in this book that only a robust confidence in reason can allow us to remain genuinely open both to God and to the deep mystery of things. Drawing from both contemporary and classical theologians and philosophers, Schindler explores the basic philosophical questions concerning truth, knowledge, and being -- and proposes a new model for thinking about the relationship between faith and reason. The reflections brought together in this book bring forth a dramatic conception of human knowing that both strengthens our trust in reason and opens our mind in faith.