Pubblicazioni

Autori:

Pozzo, Riccardo

Titolo:

Richard L. Velkley, Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)

Anno:

2007

Tipologia prodotto:

Recensione in Rivista

Tipologia ANVUR:

Recensione in rivista

Lingua:

Inglese

Formato:

A Stampa

Nome rivista:

KANT-STUDIEN

ISSN Rivista:

0022-8877

N° Volume:

99

Numero o Fascicolo:

1 (2008)

Casa editrice:

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002

ISBN:

9780226852560

Intervallo pagine:

112-113

Parole chiave:

Rousseau; Kant; ontologia

Breve descrizione dei contenuti:

This volume contains the reprint of six papers published by Velkley between 1985 and 1997 and three previously unpublished papers. All papers refer to a common issue, the relation of philosophy to culture, which Velkley investigates in a penetrating, scrupolous, and sympathetic way. Velkley asks, „Who is the being called the ‚philosopher‘? What is the relation of the philosopher to something called ‚culture‘?“ (p. 1). His nine essays pursue these questions through examination of writings by Rousseau (p. 12-48), Kant (p. 49-109), Schelling (p. 110-137), and Heidegger (p. 138-150). For the purpose of the present review, however, I shall concentrate on Velkley's four essays on Kant. The point of view chosen by Velkley for his discussion is classical and modern at the same time. He sees culture as a tension between „spirited self-assertion“ and „erotic openness to nature and Being“ (p. 7), whereby „[t]he essence of the effort of Rousseau and later ‚culture‘ is to reconcile modern, metaphysically emancipated science with the attainment of wholeness, which effort gives birth to various speculative theories — the term ‚metaphysics‘ is now used only with reservation or simply refused — of freedom’s self realization“ (p. 4). In the essay on „Freedom, Teleology, and Justification of Reason: On the Philosophical Importance of Kant’s Rousseauian Turn“ (p. 49-61), Velkley starts from the occurrence in the Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen of the phrase „Wissenschaft der Grenzen der menschlichen Vernunft“ (Ak.-Ausgabe, vol. 20, p. 181), and shows that upon discovering Rousseau's new moral principle of self-legislative autonomy „Kant arrives at the most basic concepts of his moral philosophy well before he formulates the arguments for the theoretical critique“ (p. 49 f.) More precisely, writes Velkley, the Rousseauin structure of critical thought is already emerging in Kant’s writings of the late 1760s. In fact, „(1) the account of metaphsyical eros, or projective spontaneity, of reason as the sources of the ills of dialectic and the disproportion between reason’s goals and its powers; (2) the turn to a self-correction of reason in order to discover a truly livable condition of humanity within self-imposed limitations; (3) the resulting insight of the falsity of dogmatic efforts to locate the good in something beyond the will itself, which insight, in the terms of critical philosophy, means the replacemente of precritical theoretical totality with the projects of practical reason. Only the practical form of the unconditioned can satisfy the erotic need for totality without generating dialectic“ (p. 59). In the paper „On Kant’s Socratism“ (p. 65-80), Velkley concentrates on that area of Kant’s philosophy „where ‚belief‘ or ‚faith,‘ rationally purified by ,criticism‘ is given equal rigths with or even a certain priority to knowledge“ (p. 66). Velkley reminds that the core of Kant’s critique to traditional metaphysics lies in the fact that its questions and answers „are not established with the help of something called ‚experience‘“ (p. 66). Consequently, argues Velkley, „Kant’s transcendental logic relates not to inquiry and the soul’s fulfillment therein, but to something called ‚experience.‘ It shares with ‚general logic‘ the characters of autonomy, formality, and completability. Unlike ‚general logic,‘ which we employ for analysis of concepts, transcendental logic is presupposed in all our experience of objects“ (p. 70 f.). In fact, Kant's „transcendental logic‘ appears to combine the uncombinable: a ‚logic‘ of unconscious processes involved in forming ‚experience‘ (the ‚transcendental synthesis‘) and a philosophical inquiry which determines the possibility of metaphysics as science“ (p. 72). Actua

Id prodotto:

58466

Handle IRIS:

11562/346738

depositato il:

14 dicembre 2010

ultima modifica:

14 novembre 2022

Citazione bibliografica:

Pozzo, Riccardo, Recensione a Richard L. Velkley, Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), «KANT-STUDIEN» , vol. 99 , n. 1 (2008) , 2007 , pp. 112-113

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