Kant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other early modern rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Providing reasons for prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity.

"Kant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other 17th-century rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Arguing that by prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity."--

This book offers new perspectives on the theoretical elements of the Opus postumum (OP), Kant’s project of a final work which remained unknown until eighty years after his death. The contributors read the OP as a central work in establishing the relation between Kant’s transcendental philosophy, his natural philosophy, practical philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and his broader epistemology. Interpreting the OP is an important task because it helps reveal how Kant himself tried to correct and develop his critical philosophy. It also sheds light on the foundational role of the three Critiques for other philosophical inquiries, as well as the unified philosophical system that Kant sought to establish. The chapters in this volume address a range of topics relevant to the epistemological and theoretical problems raised in the OP, including the transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to physics as an answer to a deficiency in critical thought; the notion of ether and, more specifically, its transcendental deduction; self-affection and the self-positing of the subject; and the idea of God and the system of ideas in the highest standpoint of transcendental philosophy. Perspectives on Kant’s Opus postumum will be of interest to upper-level students and scholars working on Kant.

The present collection aims to examine this fertile period in the history of philosophy concerning its significance for understanding the relation between theoretical and practical reason, or, relatedly, facts and values. Our contributors have explored different important ways in which both the shortcomings and insights of the theoretical/practical distinction have shaped Western philosophy.

Hope is understood to be a significant part of human experience, including for motivating behaviour, promoting happiness, and justifying a conception of the self as having agency. Yet substantial gaps remain regarding the development of the concept of hope in the history of philosophy. This collection addresses this gap by reconstructing and analysing a variety of approaches to hope in late 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy. In 1781, Kant's idea of a “rational hope” shifted the terms of discussion about hope and its role for human self-understanding. In the 19th century, a wide-ranging debate over the meaning and function of hope emerged in response to his work. Drawing on expertise from a diverse group of contributors, this collection explores perspectives on hope from Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, J. S. Beck, J. C. Hoffbauer, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Kierkegaard and others. Chapters consider different aspects of the concept of hope, including the rationality of hope, appropriate and inappropriate applications of hope and the function of hope in relation to religion and society. The result is a valuable collection covering a century of the role of hope in shaping cognitive attitudes and constructing social, political and moral communities. As an overview of philosophical approaches to hope during this period, including by philosophers who are seldom studied today, the collection constitutes a valuable resource for exploring the development of this important concept in post-Kantian German philosophy.

The Latin American philosopher Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla published the first study of Kant's concept of nothingness in 1965. This translation of Mayz Vallenilla's ground-breaking work makes it available in English for the first time. Mayz Vallenilla's interpretation is deeply informed by Heidegger's reading of Kant, against the background of the early 20th century neo-Kantian tradition. He offers a detailed interpretation and critique of “nothing” as it appears in the Amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason and presents an analysis of Kant's Table of Nothing which understands temporality as the horizon of all possible cognition[AE1] , including cognition of real nothings. Accompanied by translator's notes and a glossary, Addison Ellis' translation includes extensive commentary and an introduction providing historical context and references to the original sources in German. He preserves key terminology and phrasing from the original text and allows an often-neglected connection to be made between the Kantian tradition in Latin America and the tradition in the Anglophone world.

Freedom after Kant situates Kant's concept of freedom in relation to leading philosophers of the period to trace a detailed history of philosophical thinking on freedom from the 18th to the 20th century. Beginning with German Idealism, the volume presents Kant's writings on freedom and their reception by contemporaries, successors, followers and critics. From exchanges of philosophical ideas on freedom between Kant and his contemporaries, Reinhold and Fichte, through to Kant's ideas on rational self-determination in Hegel and Schelling, we see Kant's original arguments transformed through concepts of autonomy, freedom and absolutes. The political aspect of Kant's freedom finds further articulation in chapters on Marx and Mill who developed their own notions of political freedom after Kant. Revealing how Kant's concept of freedom shaped the history of philosophy in the broadest sense, contributors chart the development of an ethics of freedom in the 20th century which brings Kant into conversation with Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Levinas and Murdoch. This line of thinking on freedom signals a new departure for Kantian studies which brings his ideas into the present day and traverses major schools of thought including Idealism, Marxism, existentialism and moral philosophy.

Kantian and Hegelian conceptions of freedom guide this collection of essays that engage with the linguistic turn in continental philosophy to explore contemporary interpretations of freedom. Using a broad approach to the tradition of German Idealism, this volume considers its modern recasting of philosophy as a rigorous thinking practice with profound implications for individual and communal praxis and wellbeing. Philosophy, Freedom, Language, and its Others further cultivates and demonstrates the freedom to think and engage philosophy in a critical dialogue with other fields of inquiry. This method is exemplified in the philosophy and teaching of Professor Jere P. Surber, whom this book honors by using his interdisciplinary method as a springboard for new understandings of freedom in contemporary life. Expert scholars working in the philosophy of language, continental philosophy of religion, ancient philosophy, critical theory, and ethics engage seminal thinkers on freedom including Plato, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Debord to provide a diverse range of perspectives on freedom. In so doing, they address the complex legacy of philosophical freedom across subjects from contemporary media and political patrimonial culture to literary imagination and the politics of Nelson Mandela.

Kant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other early modern rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Providing reasons for prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity.

The contemporaries of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) openly acknowledged his towering importance. Both Fichte and Hegel praised him in the same breath with Kant as having launched the philosophical revolution they sought to complete. Yet for more than a century, misrepresentations of Jacobi's thought have stood in the way of a proper appreciation of his insights. In her study of this long-neglected German philosopher, internationally-renowned Jacobi expert Birgit Sandkaulen interprets his philosophical writings in their intellectual context. Originally published in German and translated into English for the first time, this is a major contribution to reading the life, work, and legacy of Jacobi. The biographical chapter on Jacobi's life as a public intellectual was written specifically for this English edition. Offering new perspectives on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Sandkaulen focuses on Jacobi's specific conception of practical realism. This conception, the source of Jacobi's famous defense of faith and human freedom, matches his critique of the German Idealists: the post-Kantian systems of German Idealism were bound to fail. Sandkaulen shows us that long before 20th-century philosophers took up this line of thought, indeed at the very origin of the epoch-making developments of classical German philosophy, Jacobi articulated a practical, ethical, personal realism that is as philosophically appealing and relevant today as it was in its time.