This book provides a close examination of Kant’s and Fichte’s idealisms, as well as the positions of their predecessors and successors, in order to isolate and evaluate various essential elements of transcendental inquiry. The authors examine Kant’s and Fichte’s contributions to transcendental idealism, transcendental arguments as a distinctive form of reasoning, and the metaphysically more ambitious forms of idealism developed by philosophers such as Schelling, Hegel, and Cohen. The book also addresses some of the most acute criticisms levelled against transcendental philosophy and explores more recent developments of the transcendental approach in the form of contemporary discourse ethics, especially as represented by Habermas and Apel. The authors also explore the contributions of a number of other important philosophers, including Husserl, Heidegger, Løgstrup, Peirce, and Putnam.

The "transcendental imagination" is a philosophical conception used in this essay to illuminate the ontological significance of the continuing proclamation of the Word of God. It has become necessary for theology to respond to the growth of secularization and the impoverishment of religious language in contemporary experience by initiating foundation al inquiry into the meaning and possibility of theological reflection. The following essay is intended to be a preliminary step toward an understanding of theology and religious discourse as they are intimately bound to the realization of possibilities in the life of the church. There are many people to whom I am indebted for my understanding of theology and for the development of this book. I here would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Professor George Guthrie for introducing me to foundational questions in the study of philosophy during my student years at the University of Toledo; to Professors Schubert Ogden and David Tracy for their careful reading and criticism of this manuscript; and especially to my advisor, Professor Langdon Gilkey, for his encouragement, criticisms, and suggestions during my graduate study at the Divinity School, The University of Chicago. Most importantly, I want to thank my wife Anna, to whom this book is dedicated, for sharing with me her strength, creativity and love.

Kant's influence on the history of philosophy is vast and protean. The transcendental turn denotes one of its most important forms, defined by the notion that Kant's deepest insight should not be identified with any specific epistemological or metaphysical doctrine, but rather concerns the fundamental standpoint and terms of reference of philosophical enquiry. To take the transcendental turn is not to endorse any of Kant's specific teachings, but to accept that the Copernican revolution announced in the Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason sets philosophy on a new footing and constitutes the proper starting point of philosophical reflection. The aim of this volume is to map the historical trajectory of transcendental philosophy and the major forms that it has taken. The contributions, from leading contemporary scholars, focus on the question of what the transcendental turn consists in—its motivation, justification, and implications; and the limitations and problems which it arguably confronts—with reference to the relevant major figures in modern philosophy, including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein. Central themes and topics discussed include the distinction of realism from idealism, the relation of transcendental to absolute idealism, the question of how transcendental conclusions stand in relation to (and whether they can be made compatible with) naturalism, the application of transcendental thought to foundational issues in ethics, and the problematic relation of phenomenology to transcendental enquiry.

Kant's influence on the history of philosophy is vast and protean. The transcendental turn denotes one of its most important forms, defined by the notion that Kant's deepest insight should not be identified with any specific epistemological or metaphysical doctrine, but rather concerns the fundamental standpoint and terms of reference of philosophical enquiry. To take the transcendental turn is not to endorse any of Kant's specific teachings, but to accept that the Copernican revolution announced in the Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason sets philosophy on a new footing and constitutes the proper starting point of philosophical reflection. The aim of this volume is to map the historical trajectory of transcendental philosophy and the major forms that it has taken. The contributions, from leading contemporary scholars, focus on the question of what the transcendental turn consists in—its motivation, justification, and implications; and the limitations and problems which it arguably confronts—with reference to the relevant major figures in modern philosophy, including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein. Central themes and topics discussed include the distinction of realism from idealism, the relation of transcendental to absolute idealism, the question of how transcendental conclusions stand in relation to (and whether they can be made compatible with) naturalism, the application of transcendental thought to foundational issues in ethics, and the problematic relation of phenomenology to transcendental enquiry.

"Maddy's short monograph looks at Wittgenstein's philosophy of logic, from the perspective of the form of naturalism that she calls "second philosophy." That view takes an empirical approach to logical truth -- essentially arguing that if philosophers want to understand the world, they should start from a position informed by scientific understandings of the world, because science is often a reliable guide to how the world works. Similarly, just like science, logic is also grounded in the structure of our world, and our basic cognitive machinery is tuned by evolutionary pressures to detect that structure where it occurs. Ludwig Wittgenstein (particularly in the "Tractatus") also linked the logical structure of representation with the structure of the world, but still insisted that the sense of our representations must be given prior to -- independently of -- any facts about how the world happens to be. When that requirement is removed, Wittgenstein's position in the Tractatus approaches Maddy's Second Philosophy -- that logic is grounded in the structure of the world and our representational systems reflect that structuring. The later Wittgenstein also hews closely to Second Philosophy, holding that our logical practices are grounded in our interests and motivations, and our natural inclinations, and the features of the world. In this sense, logic is no different from other descriptions of the world -- just more general and responding to features so basic and ubiquitous that they tend to go unnoticed. Maddy's Second Philosophy finds Wittgenstein as an important precursor and kindred spirit, and promotes a new view of him as a naturalistic phliosopher"--

Transcendental Guilt challenges traditional ways of understanding moral philosophy by proposing, instead of mainstream ethical theorizing, a serious moral reflection on our ethical finitude, focusing on the concept of guilt. It argues that guilt plays a 'transcendental' role in our ethical lives by being constitutive of the seriousness characteristic of the moral point of view.

The thirteen original essays in this volume represent the most sustained investigation, in any language, of the connections between Heidegger's thought—both early and late—and the tradition of transcendental philosophy.

This book addresses the rift between major philosophical factions in the United States, which the author describes as a "philosophically becalmed" three-legged creature made up of analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and pragmatism. Joseph Margolis offers a modified pragmatism as the best way out of this stalemate. Whether he is examining Heidegger or rethinking the foibles of Dewey, Rorty, and Peirce, much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western philosophy comes into play as Margolis presents his history of philosophy's evolution and defends his views. He does not, however, mean for philosophy to turn to the pragmatism of yore or even to its revival in the 1970s. Rather, he finds in recent approaches to pragmatism a middle ground between analytic philosophy's scientism (and its disinterest in analyzing human nature)and continental philosophy's reliance on attributing transcendental powers to mere mortals.