Tag: Kant

Veronica Cibotaru: Le problème de la signification dans les philosophies de Kant et Husserl

Le problème de la signification dans les philosophies de Kant et Husserl Book Cover Le problème de la signification dans les philosophies de Kant et Husserl
Veronica Cibotaru
2023
Paperback
442

Reviewed by: Begüm Özuzun

In her book titled Le problème de la signification dans le philosophies de Kant et Husserl [The Problem of Signification in the Philosophies of Kant and Husserl] (2023) (hereafter abbreviated as PspKH), as the title suggests, Veronica Cibotaru addresses the issue of signification in the works of Kant and Husserl. Within this text, she highlights the similarity in Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) and Edmund Husserl’s (1859-1838) approaches to the problem of signification, both of whom engage with this issue in terms of a linguistic and logical semantic signification specific to an expression. Despite this similarity, it is necessary not to overlook the usage of signification in the sense of ‘meaning’ in Kant. That is why when we aim to examine the similarities and differences in their approaches by comparing Kant’s notion of signification with the problem of signification in Husserl, Cibotaru notes that the words Sinn [sense] and Bedeutung [reference] used by Kant are used interchangeably. However, for the sake of clarity in analysis, she distinguishes between sense and signification, suggesting that due to the linguistic and logical aspects of signification in Husserl, it is advisable to focus generally on places where the term Bedeutung appears in Kant’s writings (PspKH, p. 9). If we delve further into this choice, the word signification in French does not have a direct equivalent in German; hence, when the question of signification arises in Kant and Husserl, the German words Sinn and Bedeutung, meaning ‘sense’ and ‘reference,’ respectively, emerge. Bedeutung carries the connotation of ‘intended meaning’ distinct from Sinn. Hence, just as Sinn directs us to a general meaning, the focus on Bedeutung in Husserl indicates a semantic meaning of an expression, leading us toward a more accurate understanding (ibid.).

As previously mentioned, when discussing the problem of signification in Kant, it is necessary to expand our research beyond the instances where the term Bedeutung appears, because signification in Kant only sometimes entails an investigation and curiosity into the semantic meaning of an expression. Since Kant does not sharply distinguish between two meanings, it is suggested that we would predominantly encounter not the signification we associate with Sinn but rather the word Bedeutung (ibid., p. 10).

While these two philosophers diverge in their approaches to signification, whether focusing on a semantic expression or not, both emphasize the importance of consciousness for us to speak of signification, attributing a similar significance to consciousness (ibid.). The importance of consciousness in Husserl’s thought has always been noticed. This importance is evident in the significance attributed to signification, as early as in the Logical Investigations (1900) (ibid., p. 11).

However, a distinction can be drawn between the two philosophers; while in Kant, the issue lies in the relationship between consciousness and objects, Husserl focuses on this relational situation, radicalizing Kant’s thought by determining consciousness through the harmony it establishes with things. The intentional aspect of consciousness in Husserl also arises from this point (ibid.). This difference stems from a strategic difference between the two philosophers: namely, the motivations behind Kant’s focus on consciousness are not the same as those of Husserl. Kant, unlike Husserl, poses an epistemological question beyond the determination of an object from a phenomenological perspective; this question concerns the possibility of “a priori recognition of things” (ibid., p. 12).

While Kant’s discussion of signification may indeed have an epistemological motivation, the question pertains not to linguistic or logical aspects but rather to the connection between unity of consciousness in terms of concepts and representations of objects. Therefore, it is evident that this thought places importance on discussions of consciousness (ibid.).

In this regard, Cibotaru poses three main questions to address the problem of signification in both philosophers: 1) The question of consciousness as the giver of meaning (through this question, we will also address whether in Kant, in a Husserlian sense, consciousness is placed at the foundation of all meaning); 2) The question of separating signification from sense (through this question, we will ascertain whether in Kant, meaning can be understood as the apprehension of an object by a consciousness); 3) The question of signification within the harmony of consciousness and object (through this question, we will inquire whether in Kant, before Husserl, there is a consideration of consciousness conceptualized in terms of intentionality). This book shapes its research methodology around these three main questions (ibid., p. 13).

Following consciousness, another similarity between the two authors is their shared emphasis on intuition. However, while intuitions, a condition of our experience, serve as a fundamental question to answer the problem of signification in Kant, they will fill in the intentional content in Husserl. Although it may seem that the function of intuition has been set aside in Husserl, it will nonetheless facilitate the fulfillment of this aim via intuition via intentional content (ibid.).

This similarity also gives rise to a divergence. This distinction does not stem from the importance of intuition by the two philosophers but rather from the difference in the understanding of the role of intuition. From this perspective, we can question the applicability of Husserl’s concept of intentional content, which is attributed to intuition in Kantian philosophy. Particularly considering the difference between theoretical and practical significations in Kant, while theoretical signification is linked to our intuitions, our practical significations, deriving their essence from the noumenal realm, carry a meaning independent of our intuitions (ibid.). Regarding a Husserlian notion of signification, will these concepts, developed independently from our intuitions, be meaningless? Considering the different functions attributed to intuition, how successful are we in achieving our goal if we think both philosophers address signification in French with the words Sinn and Bedeutung? In other words, how legitimate is it to approach the problem of signification through the words Sinn and Bedeutung?

Faced with this problem, Cibotaru reformulates the three questions she previously posed: 1) What is the harmony between signification and consciousness? 2) What is the harmony between signification and intuitions? 3) Is there such a stark difference between theoretical and practical signification? (ibid., p. 14).

To answer these questions, Cibotaru presents us with the following method: She divides the study into two main parts, dedicating the first part entirely to the problem of signification in Kant, and in the second part, she reveals the extensions of the conclusions drawn in the first part within Husserlian phenomenology (ibid., p. 17). Thus, she seeks to find an answer to the question of whether the problem of signification can be addressed jointly by these two philosophers. She divides the first part into three main sections following Kant’s three Critiques, thereby addressing the problem of signification independently in each Critique and allowing for a comparison between the concepts of Sinn and Bedeutung (ibid.).

While addressing the first two Critiques, she examines the difference between theoretical and practical signification. When analyzing the Third Critique, she demonstrates how practical significations acquire meaning through the different status accorded to pure concepts such as God and Freedom (ibid.). In the second part, based on the conclusions drawn from the problem of signification in Kant, instead of approaching Husserl’s texts with key terms as in Kant’s texts, she focuses on what Husserl generally says about the connection between signification and consciousness, the connection between consciousness and intuition, and the distinction he makes between theoretical and practical significations (ibid., p. 19).

***

In the section where Cibotaru examines the First Critique, she presents three principal axes of inquiry. The first axis considers the significance of understanding concepts regarding the harmony between them and the object. However, this should not be perceived as a referential signification problem in an empirical sense, as it emphasizes that this harmony occurs not through the compatibility of the concept with the object but rather through the connection of signification to pure sensibility (ibid., p. 131). In the second axis of inquiry, she prefers to approach the problem of signification by examining how concepts are introduced in Kant’s logic lectures. In these logic lectures, concepts appear as a general representation of the modus operandi quality. According to this view, concepts are composed of essence and are not considered in terms of their conformity to reality. However, it is demonstrated that the logic theory in these lectures is based on the teachings of Georg Friedrich Meier (1718–1777), inspired by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s (1646-1716) theory of concepts. This contradicts Kant’s assertion in the First Critique that for signification to be possible, the object must be given, that is, perceptible. Thus, Cibotaru emphasizes the importance of perception in the problem of signification in Kant, in contrast to Leibniz’s theory of two worlds, and shows that Kant’s theory includes the problem of signification between the worlds of senses and reason (ibid., p. 132, 133). Next, Cibotaru examines the relationship between the problem of signification and the question of consciousness in the third axis of her research. She highlights the significance of Kant’s addressing this issue, considering it essential to establish a connection with Husserl’s texts, as it is a relationship often overlooked by Kant’s successors and contemporaries (ibid., p. 133).

From the analysis advancing along these three main axes, two conclusions emerge: 1) In the First Critique, Kant attributes the meaning of being a synthesis procedure of many different elements to the concept. Therefore, the concept always appears as the synthetic unity of consciousness, whether empirical or pure. This synthesis, in Kant, is adapted to our senses through transcendental schemata grounded a priori. 2) In Kant, although consciousness is not intentional in the Husserlian sense, how concepts acquire signification is defined, meaning that consciousness as the constitutive subject is also inherent and fundamental to signification. Thus, if a theory of signification were to be derived from Kant, he neither presents a conceptualist theory that eliminates the concept as a simple image of things nor proposes a nominalist theory that regards the concept as the abstract representation of many similar objects (ibid., p. 133, 134). What leads Kant away from this approach is his treatment of consciousness through its relation to objects, akin to Husserl.

***

In the second main section of the book, Cibotaru lists the sections in Kant’s Second Critique where the concept of Bedeutung is mentioned, this is because she wants to elucidate how Kant approaches the problem of signification in the Second Critique and how he arrives at the distinction between theoretical and practical signification with which arguments (or by what arguments) (ibid., p. 134).

While in the First Critique Cibotaru seeks to answer the problem of signification through the importance of the senses in determining concepts, in the Second Critique, she can develop a more direct method because the problem of signification is addressed more explicitly. She argues that Kant’s more explicit treatment of the problem of signification in the Second Critique is because moral thought is not confined to a single philosophical school and is universally relevant to everyone (ibid., p. 140). Hence, morality must possess a general signification. Additionally, while we do not experience a sense of responsibility for conformity to moral laws in our empirical experience, the justification of morality, which is a product of practical reason independent of the senses, is provided in the noumenal realm, leaving moral laws subject to a certain sense of meaninglessness. Kant endeavors to resolve this sense of meaninglessness.

As practical signification operates independently of the senses, Cibotaru continues to examine the Second Critique by focusing on the concept of Bedeutung rather than Sinn. This allows her to move away from the deficiency of the term “sens,” which remains tied to sensibility, and to explore concepts derived from linguistic practical signification (ibid., p. 140, 141). Indeed, Kant, even in the First Critique, prefers to approach signification linguistically rather than ontologically, as in Kantian thought, the function of the senses only emerges as a condition for signification, and questions such as the meaning of life are not discussed within this philosophy. Instead, the focus is primarily on the signification of concepts (ibid., p. 141).

In this context, Cibotaru focuses on the concept of freedom, which is given a separate status in Kant, and explains how, despite its lack of inherent meaning, it becomes part of the game of signification and emphasizes the difference between theoretical and practical signification, thereby demonstrating that we can still speak of signification. Then, she examines how signification operates in the Second Critique by addressing the idea of God, another pure concept in Kantian philosophy (ibid., p. 142).

Cibotaru asserts that the distinction between theoretical and practical signification is polemically introduced because it is based on a supposed moral assumption. She labels morality as “supposed” because practical signification cannot construct morality, as it is not grounded in morality. For something to have moral value, it must occur in the phenomenal realm where morality is experienced. It gains moral value to the extent that it occurs in the phenomenal realm. In this sense, when the distinction between practical and theoretical signification is initially proposed in the Second Critique, practical signification is not considered moral. Therefore, this distinction arises not initially to interpret our moral actions but rather to describe how we can approach objects of recognition within the framework of any action for specific purposes (ibid., p. 144).

Kant states in the second part of the first book “The analytic of pure practical reason” (Kant, 2015) that he is not concerned with theoretically knowing the nature of a being; for Kant, a being already appears as a pure will. A being must already adhere to causality to determine itself as a pure will (ibid., p. 146). Therefore, Kant excludes freedom from theoretical knowledge. By excluding freedom from theoretical knowledge, he expands the category of causality that depends on it because he demonstrates a practical domain of causality outside the realm of cognition (ibid.). How does Kant determine the special status that allows freedom to appear both as a pure idea and a practical concept, opening up a domain of practical signification distinct from the theoretical?

After the distinction between practical and theoretical signification becomes apparent through the concept of freedom, Kant develops the notion that the concepts of understanding in the First Critique cannot attain signification without recourse to the sensible realm. His argument suggests that while they cannot acquire theoretical signification without resorting to the sensible, they will acquire a different type of signification, namely practical significance, without recourse to the sensible. Thus, although freedom may establish itself as a pure idea in the noumenal realm, Kant demonstrates that it can also carry practical significance. Consequently, the distinct status of freedom does not pose a contradiction in signification, as it can bear both theoretical and practical significance without inconsistency (ibid., p. 147).

Due to freedom’s presence as a pure idea in the First Critique, morality maintains its necessity based on a command from the noumenal realm, even though it only occurs in the phenomenal realm. Even if we do not understand freedom, we must still enact it (ibid., p. 149). The exclusion of freedom from the realm of cognition does not imply that it cannot be thought; instead, I can assume it in the practical domain precisely because I can think it (ibid., p. 149, 150). In this sense, moral causality is not a domain where the concepts of understanding are simply applied to objects; instead, it is the realization of its object’s conformity through a kind of interpretation, through thought (ibid., p. 161).

Freedom, while operating within the framework of moral law in the phenomenal realm and being subject to a kind of causality due to its conformity to the law, demonstrates that members of the ethical community can consist only of rational beings. This is because freedom can only be exercised by agents who apply their will according to conditions and determine themselves. In this sense, individuals can be part of this ethical community to the extent that they can exercise reason; this necessitates an intersubjective moral consciousness in the phenomenal realm (ibid., p. 183).

Following this, Cibotaru addresses the issue of signification in the idea of God, which does not derive its source from the sensible realm but emerges as a pure idea. Although Kant touches upon the immortality of the soul, God, and Freedom as the three concepts of pure reason in the First Critique, in the Second Critique, while discussing God and Freedom as conditions of practical reason, he does not address the immortality of the soul (ibid., p. 195, 196). This underscores that God and freedom have a functional aspect beyond their theoretical significance in practical signification. For instance, Kant discusses the necessity of the idea of God for moral reason in the Second Critique. Kant speaks of an indirect necessity because although the moral law is obligatory, it is subjective rather than objective, and its subjectivity is realized only through an imagination of a good sovereign. Without the functionality of the idea of God, just as it would be without the objective nature, finite beings like us would not be able to fulfill it (ibid., p. 196). It’s essential to emphasize that the function of the idea of God lies not in the possibility of morality but in our ability, as finite beings, to actualize morality by acting under moral reasons. I feel the moral law within me without resorting to the idea of God in my experiences; I am immediately conscious of the moral laws (ibid., p. 197). Thus, although its origin is derived from a residue of thought in the noumenal realm because it is based on the assumption of a world of reason, God can manifest himself in the phenomenal world because of the subjectivity he gains. Through this idea, Kant ensures we can guide our actions within morality and happiness and govern our desires accordingly (ibid., p. 201). Thus, through this special status, God presents himself as the legislator of the ethical community, enabling the subject to govern according to these laws (ibid., p. 202).

Despite the difference between theoretical and practical signification, for instance, connecting practical significations with the phenomenal world through imagination, both signification theories lead to objective reality. The givenness of the sensible guarantees the connection with objective reality in the concepts of the mind. In contrast, in the ideas of pure practical reason, the connection with objective reality is ensured by the subjective necessity of the supreme good (ibid., p. 206).

***

Cibotaru points out that the signification issue is addressed in the three parts of the Third Critique. First, it is discussed in §50 of the “Analytic of the Sublime” section. In this paragraph, it is mentioned that without laws, freedom is merely absurd. The word absurde used in the French translation corresponds to Unsinn in German, meaning freedom lacks meaning without laws or, in other words, without moral causality (ibid., p. 215, 216). Second, in the final paragraph of the “Methodology of Teleological Power of Judgment,” in the section “General Remark on the Teleology,” the concept of Bedeutung, not Sinn, is used (Kant, 2000). Once again, the concept of God is discussed in terms of its limits, with a negative connotation (PspKH., p. 217). Finally, the signification issue is addressed at the end of the “Methodology of Teleological Power of Judgment” (Kant, 2000). Here, Kant also refers to the concept of Bedeutung, discussing signification in the context of the limits of our categories, stating that without these limitations, our categories would be meaningless (PspKH., p. 217).

The issue of signification, although less addressed in the Third Critique, has a broader scope than in the other two critiques. Cibotaru finds the explanation for this in the remarks of Alexis Philonenko (1932-2018), the French edition translator of Critique de la faculté de juger (2000). According to Philonenko, this book presents an intersubjective logic. Thus, Philonenko considers the Third Critique as a logic of signification (ibid., p. 241). Since the act of signification is also a form of communication, it always finds its essence in human encounters. To speak of a universal beauty in these encounters, one must delve into the depths of the issue of signification. Without delving into these issues, such an investigation into signification would not be possible (ibid.). In a sense, although Kant addresses signification in different contexts, he uses signification in meanings found in the assumptions of the First and Second Critiques without introducing a new definition of signification in the Third Critique.

***

Kant and Husserl both agree on the role of intuition in enabling signification. However, as previously mentioned, they attribute different roles to intuition. In the First Critique, Kant pursues pure intuitions to make signification possible, while Husserl defines signification as pure ideality in the Logical Investigations’ First Investigation. After defining signification as linguistically pure ideality, Husserl discusses intuitions’ function in intentional acts. Unlike Kant, he examines intuition not to reach the conceptual domain but to investigate intuition in the conceptual flow (ibid., p. 247). In other words, in the Logical Investigations, the problem of signification arises as a correlation problem between thought [signification] and intuition. At the same time, in the First Critique, Kant arrives at a duality between intuition and thought. This dichotomy, stemming from the radical distinction between the sensible and the intellectual, leads Kant, unlike Husserl, to the inability to conflate intuition and thought (ibid., p. 248).

Husserl proposes categorical intuitions to establish a correlation between intuition and thought. Thus, unlike sensory intuition, which perceives objects in their spatio-temporal extension, Husserl defines intuition as perceiving objects as general and non-temporal entities (ibid.). By giving intuition a categorical meaning, Husserl addresses the problem of synthesis between thought and the sensible world found in Kant (ibid., p. 249).

Linguistic expressions carry meaning through this function of intuition. Husserl distinguishes linguistic signs from indicators. Linguistic signs carry meaning inherently, not based on their relationship with something else; indicators, on the other hand, are part of a process of signification about something external to themselves. By addressing signification through the distinction between linguistic signs and indicators, Husserl elevates signification to an independent structure and ensures its definition as an ideal unity. This ideal unity distinguishes between linguistic expressions and physical phenomena in Husserl’s framework. Physical phenomena, lacking an ideal unity, do not enter into a signification game alone (ibid.). On the other hand, linguistic signs carry a different meaning because they always refer to a determined entity, even if it does not exist (ibid., p. 250).

In this sense, Cibotaru identifies a fundamental difference between the two thinkers. In contrast, Husserl sees signification not as the emergence of the sensory, as in Kant, but as an intentionality inherent in phenomena already carrying meaning (ibid.).

Husserlian thought manifests itself in two senses: Firstly, by distinguishing between physical phenomena and linguistic signs, and by extension, between Bedeutung and Sinn; secondly, by assigning a foundational role to intuition in signification. While Kant uses Bedeutung and Sinn interchangeably, Husserl’s theory assigns distinct meanings to both (ibid.).

Husserl does not directly reference Kant in his discussions on the problem of signification. However, significant Kantian references in Husserl’s texts indicate his stance. For instance, in §100 of Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929), Husserl adopts a critical stance towards Kant’s formal logic. He directs this critique by praising its a priori nature against Humean conceptual understanding (ibid., p. 251, 252). This critique reveals Husserl’s views on formal logic. It reflects his opposition to Kant’s failure to acknowledge the presence of an objective ideal in formal logic within the problem of signification (ibid., p. 252).

The second reference comes from Husserl’s lectures on ethics delivered between 1920 and 1924. Here, Husserl highlights that in Kantian ethics, the phenomenological method is only applied through how words are understood, and he criticizes Kant for not focusing on acts that give meaning instead (ibid.).

The third reference is from an unpublished fragment of manuscript B IV 1, where Husserl draws a parallel between the theory of analytic judgments in his work and Kant’s theory of analytic judgments. This parallelism arises from both gaining their validity through simple significations, implying that in both thinkers, it is possible to establish a connection between simple signification and a simple concept (ibid.).

However, all these references do not provide us with enough material to develop a systematic theory of signification between the two thinkers. This is because Husserl only aligns with Kant on analytic judgments, which remain more within the realm of pure logic, theory of knowledge, and phenomenological methodology due to their applicability only to simple concepts. In other words, there is no parallelism between the two thinkers regarding signification.

***

Cibotaru aims not to examine systematically the moments when the term “signification” emerges or the passages in Husserl’s texts that refer to Kant. Instead, they seek to compare how the two thinkers respond to the question of signification by clinging to the similarity based on the importance given to consciousness and intuition by them.

In Kant, the connection between consciousness and signification is indirect. This connection is established to explain how concepts are possible. Without consciousness, speaking of concepts or any signification is impossible. Thus, Kant’s understanding of constitutive consciousness is similar to Husserl’s. However, Kant does not explicitly characterize consciousness as constitutive; for him, consciousness is seen merely as the field that unifies sensible multiplicity (ibid., p. 260).

Nevertheless, consciousness is a fundamental discussion of signification. On the other hand, Husserl emphasizes more directly in Logical Investigations that consciousness is necessary for all kinds of signification (ibid.). At this point, Cibotaru suggests examining the interconnectedness of consciousness and signification in Husserl’s Logical Investigations and Ideas (1913) texts.

Husserl distinguishes physical phenomena and linguistic expression in the ninth paragraph of First Investigation. He reaches a radical separation between the word and its object, defining the word as an ideal. According to this view, an object can only acquire meaning when a word is intended for it. In other words, when the intended object, targeted by linguistic expression, becomes intended towards the physical object. However, the object intended through consciousness already possesses signification because it comes from consciousness (ibid., p. 261).

Then, in the eleventh paragraph, he presents three reasons the intended object is ideal. Firstly, the intended object is ideal because it can never be reduced to a single word or group of words. In other words, the word itself cannot explain the object’s ideality. The second reason is that the ideal object is never reduced to the relationship between the object and consciousness. Therefore, this ideality cannot be reduced to subjective, ever-changing representations each time. Thirdly, the intended object is ideal because it never becomes identical to the actual object. The concept of ideality, for Husserl, renders the actual object insignificant in terms of the problem of signification, thus diminishing the importance of intuition compared to consciousness. While the intended object presents itself with signification as it is, the actual object only realizes signification in intuition. This indicates that the actual object is the body of the intended object, but to acquire meaning, the actual object does not require intuition afterward (ibid., p. 262). Husserl also states that complex significations combine these simple significations (ibid., p. 265).

Kant, unlike Husserl, does not perceive signification as an ideal objectivity. Still, he defines it based on the relationship between consciousness and an object or an objective reality, as Husserl does (ibid., p. 268). However, in the case of theoretical signification and practical signification, the object intended in Husserl’s theory, as opposed to Kant’s, would be categories rather than objective reality. Cibotaru offers an interpretation at this point: the difference between ideality in Husserl and reality in Kant arises from one being timeless and the other being spatio-temporal. Kant’s theory requires the precondition of pure sensory spatio-temporality for signification. However, according to Husserl, in a Kantian sense, space and time only provide an idealized perception of space-time. In other words, they are not objects perceived empirically (ibid., p. 269). From this perspective, although Kant’s philosophy may not seem to attribute a priori characteristics to reason beyond categories, it legitimizes all our experiences through an idealized space-time, providing us with a philosophy before orientation towards experience in a sense (ibid.).

***

In Husserl, as we ’ve shown, there’s less emphasis on intuition than in Kant. Therefore, Cibotaru turns to Husserl’s Sixth Investigation to compare the relationship between intuition and signification in the Kantian and Husserlian sense. In this book, Husserl investigates not directly signification but rather the possibilities of knowledge. In this sense, he demonstrates that intuitions are necessary not for signification but for knowing. An ideal object must already be presented to our intuitive consciousness for us to know. So, while intuition is not necessary for signification in this sense, it gains a fundamental function in recognizing an object, termed as Auffassungssinn. Through this definition, the function of intuition in the general process of object recognition expands, as it enables a Kantian-like extension of intuitive consciousness (ibid., p. 324), thereby allowing Kant to include the sensory in the realm of knowledge.

However, Husserl attributes a role to intuition quite different from Kant’s. While Kant shows our pure intuitions as conditions for our experience, he does not assign them an operational role in these conditions; if there were to be any operation, it would be performed by the understanding. Conversely, Husserl defines intuition as the meeting point between the ideal and actual objects, asserting that cognition occurs in this manner, thereby intertwining the realms of understanding and intuition. For instance, in Kantian thought, categories belong to the realm of understanding, whereas in Husserl, we can speak of categorical intuitions.

***

The exploration of the topic of signification between Husserl and Kant and its transformation from Kantian thought to phenomenological inquiry is one of the significant areas of inquiry due to its limited treatment and its influence on contemporary French philosophy. In this regard, two points stand out: 1) The frequent examination of the distinction between “sens” and “signification” in contemporary French philosophy (For instance, Jean-Luc Nancy attributes distinct importance to “sens” as opposed to other senses as the provider of externality (Derrida, 1998), while excluding “signification,” which denotes a more active, linguistically meaningful interpretation); 2) This distinction transforms “signification” from being something apprehensible to being an actively given element. From these perspectives, it can be said that this work occupies an essential place among current research endeavors.

While initially, it may seem possible to establish a parallel between Kant and Husserl by examining the roles attributed to consciousness and the practical significance of pure ideas in Kant and to interpret Husserl as a complement to Kantian idealism, it becomes evident that the positions they hold regarding intuition and signification diverge. Kant views intuitions not as where intentionality realizes, as Husserl does, but as conditions for apprehending objects. This indicates that, unlike Husserl’s phenomenological act, Kant does not speak of a general act of signification. With his persistent stance on Bedeutung, Husserl radically distinguishes between “sens” and “signification,” transforming the act of giving meaning into a phenomenological act mediated by intentional consciousness. In this regard, PspKH successfully reveals the fundamental differences between the two thinkers and can be characterized as a significant publication for contemporary research due to its systematic approach.

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Veronica Cibotaru: Le problème de la signification dans les philosophies de Kant et Husserl, Les éditions Hermann, 2023

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Ondřej Sikora, Jakub Sirovátka (Eds.): Kant and the Phenomenological Tradition | Kant und die phänomenologische Tradition, Alber Verlag, 2023

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Martin Heidegger: Histoire de la philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin à Kant, Seuil, 2023

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Zachary Isrow: The Spectricity of Humanness, De Gruyter, 2022

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Cynthia D. Coe (Ed.): The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Phenomenology

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XVII, 590

Reviewed by: Luz Ascárate (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

In response of the increasingly overwhelming interest of today’s scholars in various forms of naturalism and realism, Cynthia D. Coe offers us a look at the opposite side of philosophy, that inhabited by German idealism and phenomenology. Theses traditions, as the editor states, “jointly provide a counterpoint to the veneration of a materialist worldview and empirical methods of investigating reality that have dominated not only the natural and social sciences but also analytic philosophy” (p. 1). We believe that it is important to make this counterpart since, in the face of these tendencies, the Husserlian phenomenological project of saving man from being treated as a fact (Husserl, 1979) cannot be more relevant today: there are indeed still reasons to defend human freedom in terms of an irreducibility of the humanity or the spirit to the material conditions of scientific and technological progress. Unfortunately, the defence of this irreducibility in both German idealism and phenomenology have been widely misunderstood, in the sense that these traditions are accused of flat intellectualism and forgetfulness of reality, to say nothing about the supposed obscurity of the language and theories of their exponents, who have certainly preferred theoretical rigour to clearness of expression.

Now, with respect to the links immanent to the development of the studies of these traditions, much has been said about the influence of thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling or Fichte on the phenomenological proposals of Husserl (Steinbock, 2017, chapter 4), Heidegger (Slama, 2021), Fink (Lazzari, 2009) or Merleau-Ponty (Matherne, 2016), among others. However, this collective work offers us a vision of phenomenology either as a reappropriation, overcoming or continuation of the project of German idealism. Therein lies its importance. According to Cynthia D. Coe there would thus be a continuity to be emphasised between the preoccupation with consciousness in German idealism and the phenomenological preoccupation with first-person lived experience. This continuity is reviewed by the contributors to this book on different thematic fronts which articulate the 6 parts of this book: subjectivity, intersubjectivity and the other, ethics and aesthetics, time and history, ontology and epistemology, hermeneutics.

Throughout the contributions in these parts, we can identify the influence of German idealist thinkers on Husserl and on the phenomenological tradition in general. In addition, some contributors choose to point out the problems of interpretation of either Husserl or other phenomenologists with respect to the most representative texts of German idealism. In other contributions, the influence of the German idealist project on the conception of the phenomenological project can be seen. Finally, it can also be observed that the very definition of phenomenology for some representatives of this movement owes as much to Husserl as to German idealism. There remains, however, an interpretative line to be explored: in what sense phenomenology has been important not only for the reception of German idealism, but also for current studies of this tradition, contributing themes, angles, or interpretative nuances that the specialists of German idealist thinkers may not follow, but with which they discusse and dialogue. Although the importance of phenomenology for current studies in German idealism is a fact that we can ascertain (see for exemple Schnell, 2009), no author of this book cares to make this explicit. The directionality that the dialogue between these traditions thus takes is to start from German idealism to see its influence on phenomenology and to return to German idealism only if there is an error of interpretation to be criticised with respect to a specific problem. But let’s take a closer look at the content of the contributions in this book.

We would say that the concern with the concept of subjectivity can itself characterise both the idealist tradition and the phenomenological tradition. The contributions in the first part of this book are devoted to this common concern. Dermot Moran, in his paper entitled “Husserl’s Idealism Revisited” (pp. 15-40), drawing on Husserl’s understanding of the intentionality of consciousness, reveals that the place given to consciousness leads him to affirm a new kind of transcendental idealism. Husserl’s idealism, akin but not comparable to that of German idealism, gives intersubjectivity a fundamental character. But if Moran focuses exclusively on Husserl’s thought, the two following contributions in this part explore more closely the relationship between Husserlian phenomenology and German idealism.

Claudia Serban’s contribution (pp. 41-62) discusses the relation between the transcendental I and empirical subjectivity in both Kant and Husserl, differentiating their conceptions. The transcendental perspective is positioned here, in both authors, against the psychological and anthropological perspective regarding the concept of the inner man. First of all, the author opposes Husserl’s and Kant’s perspectives on internal and external experience within the horizon of the purely psychological perspective. Serban insists on defending Kant against some of Husserl’s criticisms. This opens the way to the Kantian distinction between the inner man and the outter man that appears in the context of his anthropology. Anthropology will try to be brought closer, by Husserl, to transcendental phenomenology. The paper thus shows how Husserl and Kant converge in the continuation of the transcendental perspective in an anthropology.

Federico Ferraguto, in his chapter (pp. 63-83), explores the relationship between Fichte and Husserl. Ferraguto begins with a reconstruction of Fichte’s influence on Husserl, and then points out the role of the self in the constitution of knowledge and thus in the conception of philosophy as a rigorous science for both authors. While it is clear that subjectivity is a fundamental theme of Husserlian thought, it is also present in other representatives of phenomenology. In this sense, even with regard to subjectivity, the last two contributions of this part follow closely the relationship between Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre and German idealism.

The article “Bodies, Authenticity, and Marcelian Problematicity” (pp. 85-106) by Jill Hernandez explores the influence of German idealism on Marcel’s thought, specifically with regard to the existentialist concept of incarnation and the ethical perspective of a life lived, by the self, in an intersubjective communion. This first part ends with Sorin Baiasu’s contribution (pp. 107-128), in which Sartre’s concept of freedom is established through dialogue and opposition with the Kantian perspective of freedom. Baiasu shows that the differences between the conceptions of these authors should not be understood, as is usually believed, as if the Sartrian view of freedom were an implausible radicalisation of the Kantian proposal.

The second part of this book deals with a perspective that is already present, albeit in the background, in the first part. It is about the importance, given by phenomenology, to intersubjectivity and the other. This importance leads us to the communicating vessels that phenomenology makes possible with social philosophy. The whole complexity here lies in identifying the influence that German idealism may have had on this phenomenological area of study. In some cases phenomenology will radicalise the perspective of German idealism in order to integrate the fundamental role of intersubjectivity, in other cases, the strategy will be to elaborate a critique of the tradition of German idealism against and its treatment of social problems, which will allow phenomenology to show itself as overcoming this tradition in response to these issues.

In his chapter (pp.  131-152), Jan Strassheim thus devotes himself to revealing the influence of the Kantian transcendental perspective on Alfred Schutz’s anthropology of transcendence, passing through Husserl’s critique of Kant’s anthropological theory. Strassheim shows that Schutz will insert intersubjectivity into his anthropological perspective inherited from Kant.  First, the author shows in what sense Schutz’s anthropology has a phenomenological basis. Next, a difference is established between Kant’s and Schutz’s perspectives on transcendence. For the latter, transcendence will not be that which persists beyond all possible human experience, but rather transcendence “is a category for various ways in which human finitude appears within experience” (p. 137). Transcendence will also be understood on the basis of the concept of meaning and the concept of types, which will allow him to enlarge the Kantian categorical perspective. Intersubjectivity will be inserted here in order to understand the formation of the self.

In the article entitled “Moving Beyond Hegel: The Paradox of Immanent Freedom in Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy” (pp. 153-172), Shannon M. Mussett reveals the influence of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit on Beauvoir’s conception of freedom as expressed in situations of oppression. Mussett argues that Beauvoir’s perspective is able to surpass the historical optimism of Hegelian dialectics by showing how immanent expressions of freedom can remain even in situations of oppression but in empty, abstract and ineffective behaviour. The paper begins by articulating the Hegelian notion of negative freedom by giving special attention to the dialectic of master and slave, which is for Beauvoir an instantiation of the optimism of the Hegelian system. Indeed, despite conditions of domination, the subject can, for Hegel, progress. Next, the author shows the ineffective forms of freedom according to Beauvoir, who not only radicalises the Hegelian perspective of freedom, but is capable of denouncing situations of oppression that only express themselves in empty social behaviour.

The last contribution in this part is that of Azzedine Haddour (pp. 173-199), who situates the dialogue between phenomenology and German idealism in the field of decolonial theory, also devotes special attention to the Hegelian dialectic of master and slave. However, this contribution focuses less on the notion of freedom implied in this dialectic than on the extra-philosophical conditions that make Hegel understand the issue of slavery in a particular way. Thus, the author of this chapter first analyses the position of the Hegelian dialectic vis-à-vis historical narratives that are read, by the system, in a teleological way, thus justifying slavery and infantilising people of colour. The Hegelian system is said to be founded on binary oppositions “premised on a Eurocentric and racialized view of the world” (p. 176). Haddour then draws a comparison between the Hegelian conception of slavery and Frantz Fanon’s decolonial theory. For Fanon, the fact that the world of the spirit is governed by rationality and that freedom is not one of its properties shows Hegel’s Eurocentrism. The Hegelian dialectic is dismantled then, in this paper, as counterintuitive.

If the second part of the book introduced social perspectives in the dialogue between phenomenology and German idealism, the third part of the book will deal with a central theme in order to clarify the deep constitution of the social: the theme of value, from an ethical and aesthetic perspective. David Batho’s contribution, entitled “Guidance for Mortals: Heidegger on Norms” (pp. 203-232), deals with the relationship between Heidegger and Hegel with regard to the normative constitution of the social. Batho argues with Robert Pippin, Steven Crowell and John McDowell, and defends that Heidegger’s concept of death as self-awareness of mortality is a necessary condition for grounding action in norms, which shows that Heidegger accounts for the self-legislation of agents as much as Hegel does.

Takashi Yoshikawa (pp. 233-255) focuses on Husserl’s Kaizo articles in order to point out the contribution of transcendental idealism to moral philosophy. Yoshikawa shows the influence of Kant and Fichte on the Husserlian idea of practical reason. In fact, Kaizo‘s ethical perspective shows, according to Yoshikawa, that as in German idealism, Husserl does not reduce reality to subjectivity. Rather, the transcendental idealism of Kant, Fichte and Husserl is not incompatible with empirical realism if we argue that the world exists independently of us. In fact, Kaizo‘s ethical perspective shows, according to Yoshikawa, that as in German idealism, Husserl does not reduce reality to subjectivity. Rather, the transcendental idealism of Kant, Fichte and Husserl is not incompatible with empirical realism if we argue that the world exists independently of us. In ethical terms, this translates into the defence of the virtue of modesty in the face of the incompleteness of our perception and the dependence of our action on the surrounding world.

María-Luz Pintos-Peñaranda discusses, in her chapter intitled “The Blindness of Kantian Idealism Regarding Non-Human Animals and Its Overcoming by Husserlian Phenomenology” (pp. 257-278), the issue of non-human animals. This subject, which would be indifferent to Kantian idealism, can be understood within Husserlian phenomenology. In this sense, the latter represents a real improvement of the idealist perspective. Pintos-Peñaranda first concentrates on Husserlian critique of Kant’s naturalistic logic, and then unveils the affinity of the concept of transcendental consciousness with non-human animals. Insofar as this concept is constituted on the basis of a pre-reflexive understanding that precedes it, animality occupies an important place in the unveiling of the origin of consciousness. Important implications of this are to be found in the phenomenological understanding of will, lived space and the capacity for spatialisation.

The contribution of Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, “Aesthetic Desinterestedness and the Critique of Sentimentalism” (pp. 301-322), explores the relationship between the Kantian tradition of aesthetics and the phenomenological perspectives of Moritz Geiger and José Ortega y Gasset. The absence of interest with which Kant characterises judgements of taste by emphasising the form of the work of art to the detriment of the content is here opposed to sentimentalism as a defect in aesthetic appreciation. Geiger and Ortega y Gasset are equally opposed to sentimentalism in aesthetics following Kant, but the former emphasises aesthetic value while the latter emphasises the formalism of aesthetics.

The fourth part of this book touches on a fundamental theme for both phenomenology and German idealism. This is the one concerning temporality and historicity, which implies going through the concept of memory. Some of the authors in this part argue for a convergence of perspectives between phenomenology and German idealism, while others oppose them, and still others dispute the erroneous readings of German idealism by representants of phenomenology.

Thus, Jason M. Wirth’s contribution (pp. 325-341) brings Schelling and Rosenzweig into dialogue with regard to the time of redemption. On the basis of a cross-reading between the two philosophers, Wirth argues that idealism is redeemed when truth is located between philosophy and theology, between the side of the intellect and that of revelation. In this sense, what is eternal is realised within the concrete completeness of time. Markus Gabriel, in his chapter entitled “Heidegger on Hegel on Time” (pp. 343-359), first reconstructs the reading of Hegel in Being and Time, and then answers it on the basis of a reading of the Hegelian texts. Finally, he criticises Heidegger’s existentialist perspective on temporality. Gabriel argues that Heidegger does not attend to the methodological architecture of the Hegelian philosophical system because he assumes that this system is a historicised form of ontotheology, which is totally inaccurate. In fact, the Heideggerian reflection on time in general fails with respect to the relation between nature and history.

In her paper, Elisa Magrì (pp. 361-383) explores the relationship between Hegel and Merleau-Ponty with regard to sedimentation, memory and the self. Firstly, sedimentation is understood, in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, as inseparable from the institution as a process of donation of meaning. Magrì interprets this understanding as a revised version of Hegelianism. Hegel’s concept of absolute knowledge is comprehended here as a process of sedimentation that implies a process of institution. The Hegelian concept of absolute knowledge is finally related to a kind of ethical memory that reactivates potential new beginnings in history and society as a form of critique. This contribution closes by pointing out the ethical value of memory for contemporary debate. On the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s and Hegel’s thought, we can understand memory, according to Magrì, as the constant institution of the self, and not as its neutralisation. Memory thus helps to avoid repeating mistakes and to germinate a new dimension for collective reflection and action.

Zachary Davis focuses his contribution (pp. 385-403) to Max Scheler’s idea of history and shows how it has been influenced by German idealism. Davis explores the different periods of Scheler’s thought. The first period, strongly phenomenological, is marked by discussions with the Munich circle and their views on history. In this period, Scheler shares with Hegel the belief that there is an idea in history which develops in the life of culture. However, Scheler criticises the Hegelian perspective that would see history solely as the realisation of the spirit and historical progress as the realisation of absolute knowledge. Historical progress is seen by Scheler as the socialisation of material conditions and the individualisation of spiritual values. Scheler opposes Hegel’s impersonal view to a personalistic view of the spirit. In the last, anthropologically oriented period of his philosophy, Scheler refers to Schelling’s thought. Contrary to Schelling’s internalist view, Scheler argues that there are external material conditions for the realisation of history.

The fifth part of this book unveils the ontological and epistemological discussions that phenomenology entertains with German idealism. The latter appears, in these phenomenological perspectives, sometimes as a presence, sometimes as something to be overcome, sometimes as a persistence. The contributions gathered here focus exclusively on the non-Husserlian approaches of phenomenology. Thus, Mette Lebech, in her article entitled “The Presence of Kant in Stein” (pp. 407-428), focuses on the questions of idealism and faith in Edith Stein and how these relate to Kant’s influence on her phenomenological approach. Lebech articulates Stein’s engagement with Kant through Kant’s influence on Reinach and Husserl. This allows him to elaborate an idea of phenomenology as an extension of the Kantian understanding of the a priori and to oppose Husserl whom he labels a metaphysical idealist. Finally, Lebech argues that Kant signifies, in Stein, the beginning of a philosophical thought that can be articulated with faith. For his part, M. Jorge de Carvalho (pp. 429-455) makes us reflect on Heidegger’s interpretation of Fichte’s three principles. These principles will be understood here in an existentialist key with regard to the question of finitude. For Heidegger, Fichte’s preoccupation with constructing a system of knowledge prevents him from exploring the temporal and existential problems of Dasein analysis.

Jon Stewart (pp. 457-480) explores the relationship between the phenomenological method in Hegel and the later movement of phenomenology. Although it is known that Hegel and Husserl do not share the same concept of phenomenology, according to Stewart, some of the post-Husserlian phenomenologists know Hegel well. The question this article attempts to answer is therefore whether they attempt to approach the Hegelian sense of phenomenology. The article begins by showing the meaning of phenomenology for Hegel and then sets out the Husserlian critique of Hegel, before pointing out Hegel’s influence on French phenomenology, specifically on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Stewart concludes that while there are differences between the latter’s and Hegel’s sense of phenomenology, we find in the phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty a clear Hegelian influence because of the importance they gave to Hegelian thinking, unlike Husserl.

The paper by Stephen H. Watson, entitled “On the Mutations of the Concept: Phenomenology, Conceptual Change, and the Persistence of Hegel in Merleau-Ponty’s Thought” (pp. 481-507) somewhat extends the reflections of the previous chapter. Taking as evidence the Hegelian influence on Hegel’s thought, Watson identifies the ideas of Hegel, both systematic and metaphysical, that Merleau-Ponty draws on to elaborate his theory of behaviour and perception in his early thought. We then participate in the resolution of some paradoxes that, in the period of Merleau-Ponty’s expression of thought, appear regarding the relation between system and subjectivity. Finally, Watson shows the influence of Schelling and Hegel on Merleau-Ponty’s last period in which a new ontology is formulated.

Interpretation being one of the fundamental themes of the phenomenological movement, which has made possible the formation of a hermeneutic variant of phenomenology, a final part of this book seeks to identify the influences of German idealism for the proposals of three exponents of this variant: Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur. However, this part of the book escapes the question of whether there would be a real continuity between the phenomenological project and the hermeneutic project, and whether hermeneutics would not have its own origin in the philological sciences and in the interpretation of sacred texts, disciplines that precede the birth of phenomenology. In any case, the question at issue here is whether the hermeneutics that takes place within the phenomenological movement has been influenced by German idealism.

Frank Schalow thus focuses, in his chapter (pp. 511-528), on the importance of Kantian transcendental philosophy for Heidegger’s hermeneutics, which would be a radicalisation of certain Kantian theses, specifically with regard to the power of the imagination. The chapter begins by showing the relationship between the cognitive sense of imagination in Kant and its linguistic and temporal sense. Schalow then shows how Heidegger deconstructs the rationalist tradition of German idealism with his reinterpretation of the Kantian imagination and extends his critical view of Kantian metaphysics to the realm of ethics. Besides, Heidegger’s reading of Kant allows him to distinguish himself from German idealism, in terms of the dialectical method, the metaphysical implications and the place of language in all this. It is here that Heidegger’s hermeneutics finds its specificity, in terms of a deconstructive imagination in which language plays an essential role, as opposed to the systematising rationality of German idealism. Particular attention is given here to Kant’s influence on Heidegger’s aesthetic theory, which also allows him to return to a particular exponent of German idealism, Hörderlin, in order to rediscover the confluence between poetry and truth.

Theodore George’s paper entitled “Gadamer, German Idealism, and the Hermeneutic Turn in Phenomenology” (pp. 529-545) concentrates on the fundamental hermeneutic concepts of facticity, history and language. In contrast to Husserl and Heidegger, Gadamer considers that in Hegel and German idealism we find philosophical perspectives that can be integrated into his hermeneutics, although in order to do so we would have to break with a neo-Kantian reading of this tradition. The author first locates the place of the hermeneutic turn of phenomenology in Gadamer’s thought. Like many students of his generation, Gadamer, according to George, found in both existentialism and phenomenology an alternative way to escape Neo-Kantianism. Later, he was strongly influenced by “Heidegger’s hermeneutical intervention against Husserl’s phenomenology” (p. 534). But if Gadamerian hermeneutics certainly begins with a critique of the inherited forms of consciousness that we receive from German idealism and the Romantic tradition as forms of alienation, we find in it, paradoxically, a positive reception of Hegel. Hegel allows Gadamer to articulate the role of history and language in the hermeneutics of facticity.

Robert Piercey’s contribution shows that Ricoeur’s relation to Hegel is paradoxical since we find different versions of Hegel in Ricoeurian thought. Hegel appears here in methodological, ontological and metaphilosophical form. In fact, the author argues that renouncing Hegel, for Ricoeur, does not mean renouncing dialectical thought altogether or renouncing all Hegelian ontological tendencies. On the contrary, it is a matter of avoiding only unrealistic promises that dialectical thought believes it can keep. It is therefore a critique of a particular metaphilosophy. Although Ricoeur criticises Hegelianism, Hegel is an important philosophical source for his hermeneutical thinking.

The book concludes with a reflection by Cynthia D. Coe (pp. 547-575) that attempts to situate the different historical contexts of German idealism, on the one hand, and phenomenology, on the other, showing that both traditions still have much to offer for the current historical context that is ours. From enviromental ethics to the relationship between life and technology, the sense of humanity and its relationship to the world that we forge through the study of these traditions still has much to offer. We can only invite those interested in these traditions, but also those interested in the various philosophical disciplines, to immerse themselves in the timeless and fruitful dialogue that this book establishes, by many voices, between phenomenology and German idealism.

References

Husserl, Edmund. (1970). Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, David Carr (trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Lazzari, Riccardo. (2009). Eugen Fink e le interpretazioni fenomenologiche di Kant, Milan: Franco Angeli.

Matherne, Samantha (2016). “Kantian Themes in Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of Perception”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 98 (2):193-230.

Slama, Paul. (2021). Phénoménologie transcendantale. Figures du transcendantal de Kant à Heidegger, Cham: Springer, coll. “Phaenomenologica”, vol. 232.

Schnell, Alexander. (2009). Réflexion et spéculation. L’idéalisme transcendantal chez Fichte et Schelling, Grenoble: J. Millon, coll. “Krisis”.

Steinbock, Anthony. (2017). Limit-Phenomena and Phenomenology in Husserl, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

Elena Partene: La norme et l’excédent: Étude sur les prémices du transcendantal kantien, Hermann, 2023

La norme et l'excédent: Étude sur les prémices du transcendantal kantien Book Cover La norme et l'excédent: Étude sur les prémices du transcendantal kantien
Le Bel Aujourd'hui
Elena Partene
Hermann
2023
Paperback 27,00 €
330

Jacques Derrida: Perjury and Pardon, Volume I, The University of Chicago Press, 2022

Perjury and Pardon, Volume I Book Cover Perjury and Pardon, Volume I
The Seminars of Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida. Translated by David Wills. Edited by Ginette Michaud and Nicholas Cotton
University of Chicago Press
2022
Hardback $45.00
368

Karsten Harries: The Antinomy of Being

The Antinomy of Being Book Cover The Antinomy of Being
Karsten Harries. Preface by: Dermot Moran
De Gruyter
2019
Front matter: 22. Main content: 246

Reviewed by: Richard Colledge (School of Philosophy, Australian Catholic University)

Karsten Harries’ The Antinomy of Being, which is based on his final Yale graduate seminar, is a deeply ambitious study that brings to the table vast scholarship across a range of philosophical, as well as literary, theological, early modern scientific, and art historical sources. Focusing especially on what he presents as a key problematic in the work of Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger, Harries demonstrates the way that this notion of the antinomy of Being is at the heart of the condition of possibility of truth, and thus for any response to the spectre of nihilism. When taken as a whole, his arguments make a compelling case not only for the centrality and irreducibility of this issue across a range of philosophical fields, but also for any rigorous meta-philosophical reflection. This welcome development in Harries’ work is a text that challenges contemporary thought across various fields.

The idea of the antinomy of Being is one that Harries has presented and discussed numerous times in his writings over the last decade and a half in particular, generally as part of a more finely focused argument that opens into this larger underlying set of concerns.[1] However, in this 2019 monograph, Harries provides a fully developed account of what he describes as “the unifying thread of [his] philosophical musings” from over half a century of teaching, even if the term itself appeared in his work only comparatively recently (AB, 1).

“Antinomy” is associated with paradox; aporia; the limits of language; cognitive dissonance; and possibly even the limits of logic. More specifically (especially in a Kantian context), it relates to the clash between two apparently contradictory beliefs, each of which is entirely justifiable. Two of the four famous antinomies in Kant’s first Kritik (relating to space and time, freedom, substance and ultimate necessity) are the subject of explicit attention in this book, as is the way that the same fundamental problematic can be seen as being deeply at play in the work of Martin Heidegger and various other post-Kantian thinkers. The ways that these more specific cases arise in Harries’ text will be surveyed below. However, it is important also to note that Harries’ concern is not to simply paint his topic as an issue in the thought of a particular group of philosophers. To the contrary, his larger and more basic project is to show that the antinomy of Being is an irreducible element in all thought, cutting across all disciplines and genres. Consequently, its denial amounts to the distortion of thought, while coming to terms with it is the only pathway to intellectual (perhaps also existential) authenticity. For ultimately, it is a question of how it is possible to respond to the ever-present threat of nihilism (the topic of his 1962 doctoral dissertation). As he puts it early in his Introduction:

[O]ur thinking inevitably leads us into some version of this antinomy whenever it attempts to comprehend reality in toto, without loss, and that a consequence of that attempt is a loss of reality. All such attempts will fall short of their goal. What science can know and what reality is, are in the end incommensurable. Such incommensurability however, is not something to be grudgingly accepted, but embraced as a necessary condition of living a meaningful life. That is why the Antinomy of Being matters and should concern us. (AB, 2)

What is the nub of Harries’ contention? In a sense, the book is something of a manifesto for hermeneutical realism, and in such a way that places equal weight on both hermeneutics and realism as complementary poles of the antinomy of Being as a whole. On one hand, there is an absolute insistence on the finitude of all understanding (“hermeneutics goes all the way down” as the old adage has it), while on the other hand there is an equally strong insistence on the real as that which is finitely understood. In this way, the twin disasters of nihilism – i.e., idealism (nothing can be known; or there is no real as such) and dogmatism (in its many guises, be it scientism, religious fundamentalism, etc) – are both variations on the theme of denial of the ineluctable antinomy of Being. Both idealism and realism contain kernels of truth, but in canonising one side of the antinomy and marginalising the other, both are ideologies that destroy the balance required to underpin the possibilities of knowing in any genuine sense. On one hand, idealism absolutizes the rift between mind and world so that it is portrayed as an unbridgeable chasm that makes knowledge of the real impossible. On the other hand, in its claim to have captured and represented the real, there is something absurd and self-undermining in rationalistic realism, and in presenting a shrunken parody of the real it too vacates the space for nihilistic conclusions.

In seeking to do justice to both sides of the antinomy, Harries is not afraid to defend what he sees as the key insight of the Kantian antinomies that he links respectively (if unfashionably) to the transcendental and the transcendent dimensions of the real:

[T]he being of things has to be understood in two senses: what we experience are first of all phenomena, appearances, and as such their being is essentially a being for the knowing subject. Science investigates these phenomena. But the things we experience are also things in themselves, and as such they possess a transcendent being that eludes our comprehension. The identification of phenomena, of what science can know, with reality is shown to mire us in contradiction. (AB, 1)

I suggest that Harries’ stance invites comparison with other contemporary forms of hermeneutical realism, such as that developed by Günter Figal.[2] Figal’s approach places the focus on the problem of objectivity: of the thing’s standing over against the subject as irretrievably other, even in its being understood and grasped. As Figal puts it, “[h]ermeneutical experience is the experience of the objective [das Gegenständliche]—of what is there in such a way that one may come into accord with it and that yet never fully comes out in any attempt to reach accord.”[3] Similarly, it is this simultaneous knowability and unknowability of things that Harries highlights in his observation of the antinomy that characterises all understanding of the objective, of that which shows itself – only ever finitely and incompletely – as the real.

In the first chapter of the book, Harries sets out his account predominantly with reference not to Kant, but to Heidegger. These pages provide a condensed summary of some of the major aspects of his previously published readings of Heidegger that gather around this theme. For Harries, the confrontation with the antinomy of Being is at the heart of a key tension in Being and Time, a tension that Heidegger repeatedly returns to for the rest of his life. Even if Heidegger never used the term, Harries asserts that it is directly evoked in his notion of “the ontological difference” (the difference between beings and their Being [Sein]), for to attempt to think this difference Heidegger, he claims, “had to confront the Antinomy of Being” (AB, 15). As Heidegger outlines in §§43-44 of Being and Time, but more directly in his summer 1927 lecture course, there is a formidable problem here. On one hand, without Being, there would be no beings, and so Being is transcendental. Further, there is Being only when truth (and thus Dasein) exists, for without Dasein, there would be no revelation of beings. But on the other hand (and here the antinomy becomes evident), it cannot be said that beings, or nature as such, only are when there is Dasein. Nature does not need to be revealed to Dasein (there need be no event of truth) in order to be what it already is. We do not create beings; they “are given to us,” and our “experience of the reality of the real is thus an experience of beings as transcending Being so understood” (AB, 15). Being “transcend[s] … the Dasein-dependent transcendental Being to which Being and Time sought to lead us” (AB, 14). The antinomy of Being thus arises in this distinction Heidegger implicitly notes “between two senses of Being: the first transcendental sense relative to Dasein and in this sense inescapably historical, the second transcendent sense, gesturing towards the ground or origin of Dasein’s historical being and thus also of Being understood transcendentally” (AB, 15-16).[4]

To be sure, with this Heidegger interpretation Harries intervenes in well-established debates within (especially American) Heidegger scholarship. However, unlike the way much of that debate circles around early Heideggerian thought (and sometimes only Division 1 of Being and Time), Harries is concerned with the way that this same issue continued to play out – albeit in different terms –  in Heidegger’s later works. For example, he makes the interesting (unfortunately undeveloped) suggestion that Heidegger sometimes looks to differentiate these two senses of Being via the introduction of the Hölderlin-inspired spelling “Seyn” or in placing “Sein” under erasure. “Sein and Seyn are the two sides of my antinomy,” he explains: “Being understood as the transcendent ground of experience (Seyn) transcends Being understood transcendentally (Sein)” (AB, 16). However, the attempt to comprehend … the presencing (das Wesen) of Seyn will inevitably “become entangled in some version of the Antinomy of Being. Thus:

Any attempt to conceptually lay hold of that originating ground threatens to transform it into a being, such as God or the thing in itself and must inevitably fail. Here our thinking bumps against the limits of language. Being refuses to be imprisoned in the house of language. And yet this elusive ground is somehow present to us, calls us, if in silence, opening a window to transcendence in our world. (AB, 16)

For Harries, the notion of the Kehre in Heideggerian thought – understood as Heidegger himself presents it, as “a more thoughtful attempt to attend to the matter to be thought” –  is a step made necessary by “the antinomial essence of Being, which denies the thinker a foundation.” Indeed, Harries goes still further in doubling back to Kant: the “Antinomy of Being shows us why we cannot dispense with something like the Kantian understanding of the thing in itself as the ground of phenomena, even as the thing in itself eludes our understanding” (AB, 16-17).

In Chapter 2 (“The Antinomy of Truth”), Harries continues his engagement with Heideggerian thought, specifically concerning the paradox of language. Accordingly, language is both the way that beings are revealed and thus (transcendentally) come to be for us, whilst also limiting us to a finite encounter with the real that in itself transcends the limits of linguistic and thus worldly presentation. In other words, as Heidegger emphasised time and again (though it is also an insight voiced throughout philosophical history, from Plato to Wittgenstein and beyond), language both reveals and conceals the real, both revealling and “necessarily cover[ing] up the unique particularity of things” (AB, 25). Harries illustrates this point by opening the chapter with citations from Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s evocative 1902 “Letter of Lord Chandos,” before then showing how Hofmannsthal’s insights were already voiced by figures as diverse as Aquinas, Kant and Nietzsche. After focusing on “the truth of phenomena” through a Kantian lens (in the course of which he illuminatingly quotes Copernicus on his own distinction between appearance and actuality in planetary observation), Harries then provides an extended analysis and critique of Heidegger’s account of truth. In partially sympathising with Tugendhat’s critique of Heidegger’s early notion of truth as alētheia, Harries goes on to maintain that transcendental subjectivity only makes sense in the context of transcendental objectivity. The real is only ever encountered and uncovered perspectivally, but the (infinite) array of possible perspectives (via the contingencies of worlding) points to a transcendent whole that is nonetheless inaccessible in its completeness to the finite subject:

To understand the subject as a subject that transcends all particular points of view is to presuppose that consciousness is tied to perspectives but transcends these perspectives in the awareness that they are just perspectives. The transcendental subject has its foundation in the self-transcending subject. (AB, 45)

In Harries view, in its focus on the finitude of phenomenological access, Heidegger’s early position fails to do justice to this larger context: Heidegger’s fundamental ontology “suggest[s] that the perspectival is prior to the trans-perspectival without inquiring into the meaning of this priority.” Further, it must be recognized that “the perspectival and the transperspectival cannot be divorced,” for human self-transcendence “stands essentially in between the two” (AB, 45). Nonetheless, even given this critique, Harries continues to insist, with Heidegger, on the ineluctability of finitude:

[T]he transcendental philosopher remains tied to a given language and subject to the perspectives it imposes, even as he attempts to take a step beyond them. The absolute of which he dreams must elude him. The pursuit of objectivity cannot escape its ground in the concrete. (AB, 45)

Chapter 3 (“The Architecture of Reason”) is largely devoted to the relationship between Kant and Nietzsche on this question. Focusing especially on the latter’s essay “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense,” Harries is in agreement with Nietzsche in his staunch opposition to linguistic realism: words do not simply express the inner essence of the things they re-present. “What we can grant him is that the thing in itself remains quite incomprehensible,” and so “what we are dealing with are always only appearances.” However, Harries also wants to insist on the key distinction between the thing-in-itself and objective appearance as such. After all, if the phenomenon just is the self-giving of the thing as it is – albeit finitely and perspectivally – then this makes sense of the possibility of similar perceptions; and this in turn is what makes shared concept formation possible. Furthermore, he argues, it is only thus that Nietzsche is able to sustain his own “social contract theory of language” (AB, 55). But on the other hand, Nietzsche’s linguistic idealism produces a savage critique of scientific rationalism which, he suggests, fails to see that its concepts are really metaphors, the product of the imagination. Concepts are “the ashes of lived intuition”, and scientific rationalism is therefore nothing other than a chasing after shadows. In leaving behind lived experience, science leaves us with death: a “columbarium of concepts” (AB, 63).

This link between science and loss – of the dangers of intellectualism that imperils the natural human experience of the real – is accentuated in the following chapter (“The Devil as Philosopher”) that presents an intriguing diptych of Fichte and Chamisso. Harries’ engagement with the former – who is his major philosophical interlocutor in this chapter – surveys the train of thought that led Fichte to the nihilism of his absolute idealist conclusions. But he also addresses the sense in which Fichte’s path of thought equivocally led out the other side through his conception of “conscience” by which a disinterested intellectualism is replaced by a spirit of conviction. It is thus that Harries sees Fichtean thought as subject again to “the call of reality, which is submerged whenever the world is seen as the desiccated object of a detached, theoretical understanding” (AB, 77). The hinge of the aforementioned diptych is made possible by Fichte’s historical exile from Jena to Berlin, where he met and befriended the romantic poet Adelbert von Chamisso, author of the cautionary tale of Peter Schlemihl. In Harries’ interpretation, Schlemihl – a character who (Faust-like) bargains with a demonic (Mephistopheles-like) philosopher to trade his shadow for unending wealth – is emblemic of the dark side of Enlightenment reason that would have us lose our natural embodied selves, our cultural and social particularities, our “homeland,” in pursuit of the ashes and emptiness of objectivity, soulless freedom and universal reason. Only disembodied ghosts cast no shadows. As Nietzsche would later suggest, disembodied reason is a form of living death. The rationalistic road by which Fichte would propose the inescapable mirror of consciousness that posits the world through its own volition is yet another form of failing to think through both sides of the antinomy of Being.

This leads Harries the full circle back to Heidegger, in a chapter titled “The Shipwreck of Metaphysics”, but also to a very contemporary application of the Heideggerian problematic. He begins by recalling his diagnosis of the antinomy of Being that emerges from Heidegger’s early thought (two irreducibly opposed senses of Being), and he notes Heidegger’s own admission (in his 1946/47 “Letter on Humanism”) that “[t]he thinking that hazards a few steps in Being and Time has even today not advanced beyond that publication.” Harries has us dwell on this impass with Heidegger. Was the whole incomplete project of Being and Time was therefore a dead-end? For Heidegger, it was not simply a “blind alley” (Sackgasse), but something far more telling: a Holzweg. The path of his thought was a very particular kind of losing of one’s way that is typical of “a genuinely philosophical problem” as Wittgenstein would put it (AB, 86). The Holzweg of Heideggerian thought leads us directly into the to the aporia of Being as such.

Harries goes on in this chapter to provide a very contemporary and “concrete” illustration of how this plays out in our own time with regard to the contortions of scientific materialism. He might have chosen any number of interlocutors in this field, but instead (in another hint of Harries’ intellectual generosity) he selects an interlocutor close at hand: a philosophically-minded colleague from Yale’s computer science department, Drew McDermott. With a nod to the medieval doctrine of “double truth” (condemned at Paris in 1277), Harries notes the way that his colleague is completely committed to the basic proposition that the natural sciences hold the key to all that is, can be, and will be understood, even as he admits that science cannot explain key aspects of our first-person experience of the world, including values we hold to be true. In this, he was inspired by Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world (that undermined a materialist “present-at-hand” projection of the world) , even though his commitment to the scientific attitude puts him at loggerheads with Heidegger. Harries sees in McDermott’s apparent cognitive dissonance the very aporia with which Kant and Fichte wrestled, and to which Heidegger’s own work was also to point.

The following chapter (“Limits and Legitimacy of Science”) expands upon this problem of the incompatibility of science with meaning, seen through the lens of the nineteenth century German physicist Heinrich Hertz (in his search for simple comprehensive scientific principles to comprehend the world), the early Wittgenstein (who despite similar aspirations famously concluded that “the sense of the world must lie outside the world”), and Kant (who similarly wanted to entirely affirm the scientific attitude even as he affirmed the truth of dimensions that transcend, and are precluded by, the sciences: freedom, immortality, God).

What begins to emerge in Chapter 7 (“Learning from Laputa”) are twin themes that will come to dominate the later parts of the book: the notion of seeking to escape from the confines of earthly existence through rationality and scientific application, and the theme of being-at-home. Harries’ major inspiration here is Swift’s portrayal of the Laputians in Gulliver’s Travels, who in creating their flying island revel in their (albeit ambiguous) transcendence of standard physical constraints and social bonds. These men of Laputa literally “have their heads in the clouds,” as they exist detached from their earthy home. Indeed, Harries notes the allusions here to Aristophanes’ The Clouds, and he sees both productions as parodies of rationalistic hubris (AB, 119). Here we see the link made to Heidegger’s critique of technology, which not only involves the triumph of curiosity (seen also in the Laputians), but also the flight from grounded human dwelling. Like Peter Schlemihl, with technological enframing, we lose our shadows.

Harries’ upward orientation continues in Chapter 8 as he turns to the cosmological revolution of the sixteenth century. A key figure here is Giordano Bruno, whose execution is understood in the context of an absolute commitment to the sovereignty of rational freedom, and more specifically the implications of his championing of the idea of infinite time and space. In such a universe, conceptions of boundedness, constraint, society, embodiedness, home and homecoming – one might say facticity –  are lost. As Nietzsche pointed out, there is no longer any horizon, no up or down. But Harries similarly points to the earlier tradition of Germanic mysticism (from Walther von der Vogelweide, to Ruysbroeck, to Eckhart and Suso) that made similar gestures toward the power of self-transcendence and freedom of thought to leave the body behind and even challenge the boundary between the human and the Divine. Here the thinking of space through intellectual freedom leads to antinomy. On one hand, space must be limited, since otherwise location would be impossible; but on the other hand, space cannot be limited since there can be nothing outside of space.

On the basis of this extensive groundwork, in Chapters 9 and 10 Harries turns, respectively, to other Kantian antinomies: concerning freedom and time. With reference also to Fichte, he sets out the terms of Kant’s antinomy of freedom: that on one hand there are two kinds of causality in the world (via laws of nature, and via the law of freedom, since otherwise it would be impossible to account for spontaneous events that are not reducible to natural cause and effect), while on the other hand freedom is clearly precluded by the necessary laws of nature (since otherwise the flow of events would lose their regularity). He follows this line of thought into Kant’s Critique of Judgment, in which freedom is defended “from a practical point of view” in terms of the experience of persons (AB, 159). But again, Harries is keen to show the perennial nature of this problem, returning to the Paris Condemnations to show that these same irresolvable issues are at play both in terms of the understanding of God’s freedom (Divine voluntarism vs rationalism) and human freedom (in the context of knowledge and sin).

The richly textured chapter on Kant’s antinomy of time (that draws in also Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle, Rilke and Heidegger), takes a series of perspectives on the theme. On one hand, time must be bounded (and the world must have a beginning), since otherwise there could be no foothold in time within which events could occur. But on the other hand, it makes no ordinary sense to conceive of an event outside of time, so time must be infinite. As Harries points out concerning the latter, Kant is thinking here of the idea of time as a complete and infinite whole, an incomprehensible “noumenal substrate.” Here the notion of the sublime in the third Kritik is helpful. Sublime nature, for example, cannot be phenomenonally comprehended as a whole, but it can be thought, and here reason comes to the fore even as imagination and understanding are outstripped. This power of reason to think the infinite, points to the human capacity to transcend its finitude in a certain sense at least that nonetheless conflicts with the ongoing finitude of understanding. The noumenal is thinkable, but not understandable.

It is perhaps something of a shortcoming of the book that Harries doesn’t do the detailed work of relating the structure of the Kantian antinomies in general to his proposal about the antinomy of Being as such. However, the main outlines can be inferred. The logic would seem to be that the “thesis” and “antithesis” sides of Kant’s antinomies speak to the two senses of Being that Harries delineates: the transcendental and the transcendent (or the phenomenological and the noumenal). If, for Kant, transcendental idealism was the means by which these two were held in tension, Harries would seem to be suggesting that we need a robust sense of the Holzwege that both joins and separates what Heidegger wrote of as Realität and des realen: worldly reality and the inaccessible real.[5]

The final chapters of the book (Chapter 11 on “The Rediscovery of the Earth”, and Chapter 12 on “Astronoetics”) focus on this notion of the tension between human finitude and our attractedness to the heavens, to the infinite. We live with a double truth here: we are at home in our local domestic communities even as we are aware that we dwell on a planet that is spinning through space at extraordinary speed. Some of us long to realise the ubiquitous human desire to transcend our earthly dwelling place (as seen in ancient theories and myths, from Thales, to Vitruvius, to Icarus, to Babel, to modern hot air balloons and space flight), and the recent innovation of literal astronautical transcendence of the earth’s atmosphere has given us a taste of what this might mean. In our own times, there is talk of humanity becoming a space-travelling, multi-planetary species. However, Harries insists that we remain mortals, and (for the foreseeable future) creatures of the earth. The brave new world of space flight remains parasitic on the rich and nurturing resources of our home planet. He goes on to reminds us of the long tradition of Christian suspicion of pagan hubris (Augustine vs Aristotle): yes, we are made in God’s image, but human curiosity is also at the root of the fall.

These many themes are continued into the chapter on Astronoetics. The key question here concerns the human relationship to our origin: our earthly home. Are there limits to human self-manipulation and our manipulation of the earth? In order to think through such questions, aeronautics needs to be complemented by what Hans Blumenberg termed astronoetics: the act of thinking or dreaming our way imaginatively through space while remaining “safely ensconced at home.” (AB, 189). This is eventually a matter of thinking deeply about what is at stake in human ambition. Harries presents Jean-François Lyotard and the artist Frank Stella as representatives of the alternative he terms “postmodern levity.” This approach is uninterested in what they characterise as the modern (philosophical and artistic) nostalgic longing for a “lost centre or plenitude,” instead freely revelling in immanence and innovation. If modern art, in its “unhappy consciousness” is “never quite at home in the world,” the post-modern is characterised by a resolute this-worldliness (AB, 204). If modernity looks to evoke that which is finally unpresentable, artists like Frank Stella strive to create works of art that simply satisfy, are fully present, and eschew any ambition to point beyond themselves to obscured dimensions of truth or reality. Needless to say, such an approach is the antithesis of Harries’ account of the incomprehensible presence of the real in things as ordinary and precious as the experience of other human beings and the beauty of nature (see AB, 209).

It cannot be said that Harries’ Conclusion (titled “The Snake’s Promise”) succeeds in pulling together the various threads of his rich and ambitious book. But then again, for a book that deals with the the irreducible antinomy of Being, this seems apt. There are no neat resolutions to be had here. Perhaps this is already intimated in the re-encapsulation of the meaning of the antinomy of Being with which the chapter begins: that “reality will finally elude the reach of our reason, that all attempts to comprehend it will inevitably replace reality with more or less inadequate human constructions.” (AB, 216) In musising further on Heidegger’s critique of technology, Harries shows himself to be largely on the same page as Heidegger, though he is slightly sceptical about a simplistic nostalgic call to return to a pre-industrial golden age. Science and technology have profoundly changed our context, and there is no lineal return.

However, what the final pages do provide is a concluding and scathing critique of the distortions and banishments of the real by science, by art, in education and in popular culture. Science “seeks to understand reality in order to master it” (AB, 233), but in this never-ending quest, it reduces the real through perspectivalism and objectification, alienating us from it. Second, “aestheticizing art” obscures the real insofar as in simply looking to entertain it asks nothing of us. In both cases, the real lies inaccessible and largely forgotten behind the image. In fact, neither the artist, nor the scientist, are second Gods (as per the snake’s promise in the garden), for the work of both is parasitic on the underlying reality that make them possible. Third, and worse still, is the aestheticization of thinking itself: “the transformation of humanistic scholarship into an often very ingenious intellectual game.” (AB, 233) Fourth, and worst of all, is the attempt to aestheticize reality, especially by technological means, for in this way, reality is counterfeited; the real becomes the surreal.

Where does Harries’ extraordinary book leave us? Perhaps most of all with a plea to respect the real, by making a space for its unexpected appearings, to await its uncontrolled showings, and to resist the temptation (driven by our own anxieties) to partialize or even falsify it. I can do no better than to end with Harries’ own appeal:

[E]very attempt to [manipulate reality] … makes us deaf to its claims, denies us access to its transcendence in which all meaning finally has its ground, a ground that by its very essence will not be mastered. To open windows to that reality we must find the strength to abandon the hope to take charge of reality, the hope to be in this sense like God. Only such strength will allow us to be genuinely open to the claims persons and things place on us, will let us understand that we do not belong to ourselves, that we cannot invent or imagine what will give our lives measure and direction, but have to receive and discover it. (AB, 233-34)

[1] See Karsten Harries, “The Antinomy of Being and the End of Philosophy,” in Division III of Heidegger’s Being and Time: The Unanswered Question of Being, ed. Lee Braver (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 133-47; Harries, “The Antinomy of Being: Heidegger’s Critique of Humanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, ed. Steven Crowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 178-198; and Harries, Wahrheit: Die Architektur der Welt (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2012). For a thoughtful engagement with the last of these, see Steven Crowell, “Amphibian Dreams: Karsten Harries and the Phenomenology of ‘Human’ Reason,” in Husserl, Kant and Transcendental Phenomenology, ed. Iulian Apostolescu and Claudia Serban (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 479-504.

[2] For more on this, see my “Thomism and Contemporary Phenomenological Realism: Toward a Renewed Engagement,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 95, no. 3 (2021): 411–432 (esp. 417ff).

[3] Günter Figal. Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy. trans. Theodore George (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 2.

[4] For a not dissimilar reading of the dynamics at play in this area of early Heideggerian thought, and of how this plays out in his later thought, see my “The Incomprehensible ‘Unworlded World’: Nature and Abyss in Heideggerian Thought,” forthcoming in The Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology.

[5] See, e.g., Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 255 [SZ: 212]; Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 217 [GA20: 298].