Sacha Golob

Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) plays a foundational role in early Heidegger. To “work out the question of Being adequately”, Heidegger states, “we must make an entity—the inquirer—transparent in his own Being” (BT 27/7; similarly, BP 103). Authenticity is central to such transparency: if our understanding of Dasein is to serve as “a foundation for the basic question of ontology, then it must first have been brought to light . . . in its possibilities of authenticity and totality” (BT 276/233). Authenticity, in other words, underpins the ontological project. The aim of this chapter is to better understand what authenticity is and why it matters so much to Heidegger.

Kierkegaard and Heidegger both place fundamental emphasis on the possibility of personal transformation, that is, a radical change in an individual's commitments and self-understanding. I argue that juxtaposing them can illuminate some key dynamics in post-Hegelian debates over such change, its limits, conditions, and the forms it can and should take. I concentrate on what Kierkegaard calls "pathos-filled transition", a transformation in which a specific emotion, broadly construed, plays a central role.

Heidegger’s debt to Aristotle is, of course, vast: Volpi went so far as to ask whether Being and Time was a translation of the Nicomachean Ethics. In this chapter, I want to investigate a fundamental divergence between the two, a rejection by early Heidegger of one of the central tenets of Aristotelian ethics. This rejection begins in the years before Being and Time and the forces behind it extend into the post-war period. I will focus in particular on Ga18, 1924’s Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy: what Heidegger’s Aristotle rejects there, in effect, is the notion of character.

What makes this rejection so complex and so revealing is that Heidegger’s
interpretative approach forces him to present disagreement as discovery, as an insight into a true Aristotle who has remained concealed. My claim here is not the familiar one that Heideggerian history of philosophy is exegetically ‘violent’ or that it frequently tells us more about Heidegger than about its supposed target. Rather, it is more specific. Texts such as Basic
Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy present a unique exegetical situation. This is because Heidegger lacks several of the interpretative tools that will justify his radical reading of Kant just a few years later: I will examine in particular his changing conception of “philology”. The result is that, whilst commentators routinely talk of Heidegger’s “appropriation” of Kant,
Heidegger’s early use of Aristotle is simultaneously more complex and less refined. “Perversion” is, one might think, scarcely a rigorous term, but it is, I will argue, the best description of what follows.

This paper argues that Heidegger’s ‘history of being’ is a debunking narrative, characterised by both analogies and disanalogies to genealogy, at least in its Nietzschean form. I begin by defining such narratives in terms of non-truth-tropic explanation. In §2, I argue, contra Foucault, that the debate is not best approached via the idea of an “origin” or “Ursprung”. Instead, having flagged some classic features of at least Nietzschean genealogy (§3), I examine two case studies from Heidegger’s ‘history of being’. The first, I argue, is not a debunking history (§4). The second is – and its target is ironically Nietzsche himself (§5). I highlight Heidegger’s psychological and epistemic claims, and I draw a comparison with MacIntyre’s discussion of ‘dead-end’ problems. I conclude that Heidegger’s history of being *is* a debunking history, but *not* a genealogy, at least in the Nietzschean sense: amongst other things, Heidegger’s method differs in its stance on truth and on the role of polemical writing (§6).

A few years before he died in exile from Nazism, the Austrian novelist Robert Musil delivered a lecture in Vienna, ‘On Stupidity’ (1937). At its heart was the idea that stupidity was not mere ‘dumbness’, not a brute lack of processing power. Dumbness, for Musil, was ‘straightforward’, indeed almost ‘honourable’. Stupidity was something very different and much more dangerous: dangerous precisely because some of the smartest people, the least dumb, were often the most stupid.

Musil’s lecture bequeaths us an important set of questions. What exactly is stupidity? How does it relate to morality: can you be morally good and stupid, for example? How does it relate to vice: is stupidity a kind of prejudice, perhaps? And why is it so domain-specific: why are people often stupid in one area and insightful in another? Musil’s own answer, which centred around pretentiousness, is too focused on the dilettantism of interwar Vienna to serve us now. But his questions, and his intuition about stupidity’s danger, are as relevant as ever.

This paper addresses a central aspect of Kant’s theory of moral progress and its links to both political violence and pedagogy. Kant claims in the Conflict of the Faculties that the reaction to the French Revolution demonstrates that the ‘human race has always progressed and will further progress toward the better’. It thus constitutes a ‘historical sign’, justifying belief in moral development. This paper argues for three points. First, I contend that these claims have been widely misunderstood: in particular, most commentators are guilty of projecting Hegelian arguments onto Kant. Second, I advance a new reading of Kant’s account of the ‘historical sign’ focusing on the epistemic status of the spectator and the role of ‘enthusiasm’. One consequence is that the case for progress is fundamentally different from that in Kant’s other writings. Third, I show how these results inform Kant’s stance on education and the possibility of what he calls ‘popular enlightenment’. Ironically, the details of Kant’s argument may seem to support pessimism rather than any celebration of human progress: the appeal to education is crucial in making that final leap.

The Phenomenological tradition is substantially defined by its attempt to rethink the self and self-awareness. This chapter provides an overview and analysis of some of the fundamental developments within that tradition running from Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty through to later writers such as Henry. I begin by sketching the key features of the movement: its relationship to naturalistic and transcendental approaches, the centrality of the first person perspective, and the hierarchical model of experience which is central to Phenomenology’s vision of experience and to the historiography of the tradition. I next introduce the specifics of Phenomenology’s picture of self-awareness, positioning it between the spectatorial model found in Brentano and a Kantian intellectualism. I then present and analyse some of the key innovations of the tradition: Sartre’s notion of non-positional self-consciousness, Heidegger on the links between the self and the social, and finally Merleau-Ponty’s conception of embodiment.

MacIntyre characterises liberal societies as suffering distinctive forms of structural malaise:
they are a “disaster”, a “moral calamity”, sites of “barbarism and darkness”. I argue that, whilst we well understand why MacIntyre thinks liberalism is false, it is unclear why this falsity should imply such moral catastrophe. I begin by motivating the question and distinguishing it from the classic liberal-communitarian debates (§§1-2). In particular, I highlight liberalism’s ability to offer ‘workarounds’, accommodating at least some of MacIntyre’s commitments and so forestalling the prospect of moral disaster. I then introduce two arguments which supply the missing premises, in each case juxtaposing MacIntyre with critics of liberalism from the left and the right. First, I argue that liberalism’s conception of the private sphere systematically marginalizes MacIntyre’s vision of pedagogy (§3). I compare the argument and the attendant conception of privacy with Adorno’s (§4). In §5, I introduce the second premise: I argue that liberalism espouses a conception of maturity that actively undermines MacIntyre’s model of development, subverting liberal ‘workarounds’. I contrast this claim with recent attacks on liberalism by Deneen. I close with some methodological implications: MacIntyre’s case against liberalism should be seen as a form of external, not immanent, critique.

This paper examines the relationship between “logic,” language, and methodology in Heidegger. I begin by contrasting two ways in which one might understand that relationship: Dummett’s position as articulated in The Logical Basis of Metaphysics and Dreyfus’
influential reconstruction of Sein und Zeit. Focusing on Sein und Zeit §33, I distinguish Heidegger’s own view from each of these. First, drawing on his discussions of “grammar,” I show where and why he diverges not just from someone like Dummett, but also from Kant.
Second, I argue for the difference between my approach and the Dreyfusian one: for Dreyfus, Heidegger’s attack on logic is ultimately a question of content, for me it is ultimately a question of method. I close by indicating how this analysis might be extended to texts from the 1924 Platon: Sophistes lectures to Die Sprache in the 1950s, paying particular attention to the concept of a “metalanguage.”

The structure of this article is very simple. In the first half, I will introduce a sophisticated way of reading Heidegger as a relativist; I draw here on the work of Kusch and Lafont. In the second half, I present the counter-argument. As I see it, Heidegger is not a relativist; but understanding the relations between his approach and a relativistic one is
crucial for an evaluation of both his own work and the broader trajectory of post-Kantian thought.

This paper examines Heidegger's position on a foundational distinction for Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy: that between acting 'in the light of' a norm and acting 'merely in accordance with it'. In section 1, I introduce the distinction and highlight several relevant similarities between Kant and Heidegger on ontology and the first-person perspective. In section 2, I press the Kantian position further, focusing on the role of inferential commitments in perception: this provides a foil against which Heidegger's account can be In section 3, I contrast this Kantian approach with Crowell's highly sophisticated reading of Heidegger on care: I argue that, subject to certain conditions on how we view explanation, the two approaches are compatible and indeed mutually supporting. I close in section 4 by addressing an importantly distinct dimension of normativity, that marked by critique, broadly construed. I argue that we ultimately need to locate Heidegger in a context that runs from Kant's 'What is Enlightenment' through Nietzsche's Genealogy.

Reviews of Heidegger on Concepts, Freedom and Normativity, Sacha Golob (Cambridge University Press)

• Crowell (Rice), Philosophy in Review, pages 2-7.
• Cregan (Oxford), International Journal of Philosophical Studies, pages 8-13.
• Campbell (Nazareth College of Rochester), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, pages 14-18.
• Keiling (Freiburg), Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, pages 19-21.

One way to understand the trajectory of Heidegger’s thought is as a series of engagements with the possibilities and the risks inherent in transcendental philosophy. This approach is the basis of Engelland’s book; as he elegantly puts it, the transcendental functions throughout Heidegger’s career as the ‘shadow’ which he cannot jump over, the hermeneutic situation out of which he writes (p.206 – all references of this format are to the text under review). Heidegger’s attitude to the transcendental evidently undergoes complex shifts, shifts mediated in part by his successive dialogues with Husserl, Kant, and others, but Engelland’s central argument is that this attitude is never purely negative: as he sees it, even the later Heidegger offers what is effectively a ‘transcendental critique of transcendence’ (p.172). In this, the text challenges the oft repeated view that the post-Kehre Heidegger rejects transcendental thinking. Authors such as Crowell and Malpas have recognized the inadequacy of that standard narrative, but, as they themselves admitted, were far from clear on how exactly an alternative reconstruction should proceed:
[W]hile the idea of the transcendental is explicitly disavowed in Heidegger’s later thought, there still seems to be an important sense (though one that remains in need of clarification) in which that thinking retains a broadly ‘transcendental’ character.1
What Engelland effectively offers is the much needed clarification, exegetically and philosophically, of that ‘important sense’.

In the context of a history of the emotions, Martin Heidegger presents an important and yet challenging case. He is important because he places emotional states, broadly construed, at the very heart of his philosophical methodology—in particular, anxiety and boredom. He is challenging because he is openly dismissive of the standard ontologies of emotions, and because he is largely uninterested in many of the canonical debates in which emotions figure. My aim in this chapter is to identify and critique the distinctive role which Heidegger allots to the emotions, focusing on Sein und Zeit's famous treatment of anxiety. Having outlined his position, I close by considering a number of challenges, both methodological and substantive, to Heidegger's approach.

This paper aims to advance our understanding of Heidegger's politics as it is laid bare within the 'Schwarze Hefte'. Yet my interest is not in Heidegger's first order political views, but rather in his conception of the political sphere per se. Beginning from a close analysis of the earliest volume of the notebooks, Gesamtausgabe Bd.94, I suggest that the dominant characterisation of the political space within Heidegger's text is as a threat-to philosophy and to ontology. Underlying that characterisation, however, it is simultaneously possible to identify another pattern, one on which the political is itself gradually suppressed or occluded by the ontological. This tacit occlusion has, I suggest, a number of deeply problematic consequences. I close by indicating how the argument might be extended to the question of a Heideggerian ethics.

There is a podcast of the original version of the paper given in Freiburg 2016 here:
http://podcasts.uni-freiburg.de/philosophie-sprache-literatur/philosophie/heideggers-schwarze-hefte/68671016

Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit is, famously, an unfinished work, rushed in to print in the face of awkward questions from an appointments committee about Heidegger’s lack of publications (Ga14:99). Until the 7th edition in 1953 the published text was labelled as the “first half” of the work, and yet a glance at the plan set out in SZ shows how optimistic even this was (SZ: 39-40). The entire of Part 2 is missing; this was intended to be an exercise in the “destruction”, in Heidegger’s distinctive sense of that term, of “traditional ontology”. But so is the third Division of Part 1, a Division whose title would have been “Time and Being”. It is this omission which is philosophically more significant. Thanks to published texts such as the Kant book, Ga3, and the many historically focussed lecture courses, we have a good idea of what Part 2 might have looked like. Yet the status of Division III of Part 1 is less clear. There is, of course, the 1962 lecture “On Time and Being”, but this is separated from SZ by more than thirty years and a vast array of conceptualistic and stylistic shifts: as Harman observes, it is “nearly comically different in tone” from Sein und Zeit (p.118).1 A much more plausible surrogate is the 1927 lecture course Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, which claims to provide at least some of the missing material (Ga24:1). However, as we will see, matters are not so simple. There are deep internal problems with Ga24 itself. More broadly, this is a period in which Heidegger’s work starts to undergo the multiple methodological and philosophical changes that mark the development and ultimate abandonment of the Sein und Zeit project. Reconstructing Division III is thus not simply a matter of piecing together what it might have contained, but of making sense of why it failed to appear, and why, how and when Heidegger realised that it could no longer function as originally envisaged. Thinking through the fate of Division III thus brings one into direct contact with the key issues that both span and divide Heidegger’s early and later work: consider, for example, his suggestions that Sein und Zeit failed due to its reliance on “the language of metaphysics” or its dependence on a transcendental framework (Ga9:327-8; Ga65 250, 305 468; Ga71:§181). In other words, by understanding Division III, we can come to better understand both Heidegger’s own intellectual trajectory and the merits, or otherwise, of his legacy

HCFN aims to provide a fundamentally new reading of Heidegger’s work from 1919-1935. This afternoon I want to introduce four aspects of the book: I’ll deal in turn with meaning, being (Sein), H’s complex relationship to the canon and finally with his views on freedom and value.

Forum for European Philosophy in Oxford
Heidegger on Concepts, Freedom and Normativity
Book Discussion

Monday, 7 March, 4.00 pm, the Seminar Room, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford

Sacha Golob’s Heidegger on Concepts, Freedom and Normativity (CUP 2014) provides a fundamentally new interpretation of early Heidegger. Drawing on close analyses of Heidegger’s work on intentionality, being, realism and freedom, it argues for a new picture of his relationship to both analytic philosophy, and to Plato and Kant. Join the author and panelists as they discuss and critique a number of the book’s central themes.

Dr Sacha Golob, Lecturer in Philosophy, King’s College, the University of London.
Professor Denis McManus, Professor of Philosophy, the University of Southampton.
Dr Joseph Schear, University Lecturer in Philosophy and  Tutorial Fellow, Christ Church, the University of Oxford.

Chair: Professor Stephen Mulhall, Professor and Fellow in Philosophy, New College, the University of Oxford.

There are three obstacles to any discussion of the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and ethics. First, Heidegger’s views and preoccupations alter considerably over the course of his work. There is no consensus over the exact degree of change or continuity, but it is clear that a number of these shifts, for example over the status of human agency, have considerable ethical implications. Second, Heidegger rarely engages directly with the familiar ethical or moral debates of the philosophical canon. For example, both Sein und Zeit (SZ) and the works that would have completed its missing third Division, works such as his monograph on Kant (Ga3), and the 1927 lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Ga24), place enormous emphasis on the flaws present in earlier metaphysics or philosophies of language or of the self. But there is no discussion of what one might think of as staple ethical questions: for example, the choice between rationalist or empiricist meta-ethics, or between consequentialist or deontological theories. The fundamental reason for this is Heidegger’s belief that his own concerns are explanatorily prior to such debates (Ga26:236–7). By extension, he regards the key works of ethical and moral philosophy as either of secondary importance, or as not really about ethics or morals at all: for example, Ga24, when discussing Kant, states bluntly that “‘Metaphysics of Morals’ means the ontology of human existence” (Ga24:195). Third, the very phrase “Heidegger’s ethics” raises a twofold problem in a way that does not similarly occur with any other figure in this volume. The reason for this is his links, personal and institutional, to both National Socialism and to anti-Semitism. The recent publication of the Schwarze Hefte exemplifies this issue: these notebooks interweave rambling metaphysical ruminations with a clearly anti-Semitic rhetoric no less repulsive for the fact that it avoids the biological racism of the Nazis (see, for example, Ga95:299-300, 381-2; Ga96:243). The purpose of this chapter is to provide, in the light of these difficulties, an overview of the complex and conflicted relationship between Heidegger's work and moral philosophy.

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of
‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they
illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between
Heidegger’s work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early
Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new
assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-athand’
ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading
of Heidegger’s further claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon.
I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger’s position and then
develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing
treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are
unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link.
Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that
assertion is explanatorily derivative.

The aim of this book is to provide a new account of the fundamental concepts and arguments that define Heidegger’s early work; specifically, my focus will be on the period from 1919 to 1935. I am interested in three sets of issues in particular, and in the interaction between them. The first concerns the interpretation and validity of the various philosophical theses which Heidegger advances. How, for example, should we understand his theory of intentionality? In what sense, if any, does he regard linguistic or propositional meaning as a secondary phenomenon or even a distorting one? What exactly is Heideggerian “understanding” or “anxiety” and what, if anything, do these ideas imply for current debates over conceptualism or ‘know how’ or normativity? How do his views on these and other topics relate to those of other phenomenologists, or to contemporary analytic research? The second set of issues concerns the complex links between Heidegger’s own thought and his extensive and vastly detailed commentaries on the philosophical canon. Why, for example, does he place such emphasis on Kant’s Schematism? How does the role of society in texts such as SZ mirror or diverge from its role in Heidegger’s predecessors such as Hegel? Why are Heidegger’s remarks on Plato, whether pages or years apart, so often deeply conflicted, hedged, alternately hesitant and overplayed? I will place particular stress on Kant, an author whom Heidegger knew in huge detail and to whom he devoted more than one thousand pages of intricate commentary: examining the tripartite relationship between Heidegger himself, his reading of Kant, and an orthodox view of the Critical system will prove an important exegetical tool, one which throws into relief many of the unspoken assumptions that underpin Heidegger’s own thought. The third set of issues concerns Heidegger’s distinctive conceptual apparatus and its connection to the development of his philosophy. What exactly does he mean by “being” and what are the implications of that answer for doctrines such as the ontological difference? What precisely is the distinction between discoveredness [Entdecktheit] and disclosedness [Erschlossenheit], or between the different senses of temporality marked by “Zeitlichkeit” and “Temporalität”? What work is being done by those distinctions? Could they be articulated in another philosophical vocabulary — if not, why not? Similarly, what does he mean by “freedom” and how does he ultimately come to see it as “prior even to being and time”?

Readers approaching Heidegger for the first time often find the experience alternately exhilarating and stupefying. In attempting to come to grips with his texts they face a number of familiar obstacles: Heidegger’s highly complex prose style, in turn poetic, incisive, and simply obscure; his tendency to assume close familiarity with vast swathes of the Western canon; the absence of any natural introductory work - there is nothing in Heidegger’s corpus which might play the role which the Enquiry or the Prolegomena do in introducing students to Hume or Kant. There is, additionally, the further problem presented by the development of Heidegger’s philosophy in the decades before, during, and after the war: what is the best way to make sense of the transition from texts such as Sein und Zeit (SZ) to the later reflections on dwelling or on Hölderlin? More broadly still there is, of course, the issue of Heidegger’s politics and of our own reaction to it, especially after the recent publication of the already infamous Schwarze Hefte. Given these obstacles, it is enormously important for there to be an introduction to Heidegger’s work that provides a clear, engaging and insightful overview of his philosophy from SZ through to the 1960s. Braver’s excellent Heidegger: Thinking of Being delivers exactly that.

Between 1927 and 1936, Martin Heidegger devoted almost one
thousand pages of close textual commentary to the philosophy of
Immanuel Kant. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between Kant and Heidegger by providing a fresh analysis of two
central texts: Heidegger’s 1927/8 lecture course Phenomenological
Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his 1929
monograph Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I argue that to
make sense of Heidegger’s reading of Kant, one must resolve two
questions. First, how does Heidegger’s Kant understand the concept of
the transcendental? Second, what role does the concept of a horizon play
in Heidegger’s reconstruction of the Critique? I answer the first question
by drawing on Cassam’s model of a self-directed transcendental
argument,
and the second by examining the relationship between Kant’s doctrine
that ‘pure, general logic’ abstracts from all semantic content and
Hume’s attack on metaphysics. I close by sketching the implications of my results
for Heidegger’s own thought. Ultimately, I conclude that Heidegger’s commentary on the
Critical system is defined, above all, by a single issue: the nature of the
‘form’ of intentionality.

In his new book, Kant’s Radical Subjectivism, Schulting provides a rigorous and persuasive account of the core themes of the Transcendental Deduction. I have learnt a great deal from this work, and I am sympathetic to many of its points. In this response, however, I think it will be most interesting to concentrate on two issues where Schulting and I disagree, and where that disagreement has important structural consequences. The first issue concerns the role of objectivity in Kant’s argument, the second the prospects for nonconceptualism. I shall begin by summarising Schulting’s stance on each. I will then explain where we differ and why it matters.

This article examines the phenomenon of thought insertion, one of the most extreme disruptions to the standard mechanisms for self-knowledge, in the context of Kant's philosophy of mind. This juxtaposition is of interest for two reasons, aside from Kant's foundational significance for any modern work on the self. First, thought insertion presents a challenge to Kant's approach. For example, the first Critique famously held that " The 'I think' must be able to accompany all my representations " (Kant, KrV, B132). Yet thought insertion raises the problem of representations which are 'mine' by many natural criteria, and yet which I am unwilling to self-ascribe. Ultimately, my argument will be that thought insertion simultaneously problematises, and yet to some degree also vindicates, the complex distinctions between activity and passivity which underlie Kant's system. Second, I argue that Kant's position contains resources that allow us to model thought insertion, and its broader implications for self-knowledge, in an interesting and distinctive manner. Kant himself held an extreme view of philosophy's competence in the study of mental disorder: in the Anthropology, he suggests that courts must refer such cases to philosophers, rather than medics (Kant, Anth, p.214). My aim is much more modest: to suggest that a Kantian treatment of thought insertion deserves consideration by both philosophers and clinicians.

James Conant’s recent article, ‘Why Kant Is Not a Kantian’, offers a sophisticated and provocative account of the relationship between sensibility and understanding. It is also an account that I think is mistaken. One consequence is that Conant is unable to do justice to both the differences and the deep continuities that exist between us and non-rational animals. Kant’s own views in this regard, I argue, were both more flexible and more attractive.
https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/the-separability-of-understanding-and-sensibility-a-reply-to-james-conant/#more-4400

This article addresses three questions concerning Kant's views on non-rational animals: do they intuit spatio-temporal particulars, do they perceive objects, and do they have intentional states? My aim is to explore the relationship between these questions and to clarify certain pervasive ambiguities in how they have been understood. I first disambiguate various non-equivalent notions of objecthood and intentionality: I then look closely at several models of objectivity present in Kant's work, and at recent discussions of representational and relational theories of intentionality. I argue ultimately that, given the relevant disambiguations, the answers to all three questions will likely be positive. These results both support what has become known as the nonconceptualist reading of Kant, and make clearer the price the conceptualist must pay to sustain her position.

One of the strongest motivations for conceptualist readings of Kant is the belief that the Transcendental Deduction is incompatible with nonconceptualism. In this article, I argue that this belief is simply false: the Deduction and nonconceptualism are compatible at both an exegetical and a philosophical level. Placing particular emphasis on the case of non-human animals, I discuss in detail how and why my reading diverges from those of Ginsborg, Allais, Gomes and others. I suggest ultimately that it is only by embracing nonconceptualism that we can fully recognise the delicate calibration of the trap which the Critique sets for Hume.
http://www.palgrave.com/in/book/9781137535160

"This paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning
Kant’s model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude
[Grösse]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues
which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent
analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of
the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the
exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant’s views on these issues. I
then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant’s theory of perception as
elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show
how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties
raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant’s position by
considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way
to make sense of Kant’s argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell’s response
to Bradley’s regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer,
in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in
Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant’s account has significant strengths, a
number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological
tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps."

Kant's Transcendental Deduction, by Henry Allison. Oxford University Press, 2015.

The purpose of this book, by one of the foremost contemporary Kant scholars, is to advance a simultaneously ‘analytic and historical’ treatment of the most complex component of Kant’s philosophy: the Transcendental Deduction (p. 1).The approach is analytic in that Allison seeks to provide a rigorous assessment of the multiple lines of argument visible in Kant’s text. It is historical in that this is embedded within a detailed exegetical framework: Allison considers, often line by line, a huge range of sources, beginning with the Prize Essay before moving through the A Deduction and the Prolegomena to the B Deduction. This interweaving of the textual and the conceptual makes the book immensely valuable: by closely tracking the development of Kant’s thought, from its emergence from rationalism through to the modifications implemented over the two editions of KrV, Allison provides a rich picture of the tensions and pressures which shape the Critical system. My aim is to provide an outline of Allison’s analysis, and to identify some challenges which his approach faces.
https://academic.oup.com/mind/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mind/fzw052

This article advances a new account of Kant’s views on conceptualism. On the one hand, I argue that Kant was a nonconceptualist. On the other hand, my approach accommodates many motivations underlying the conceptualist reading of his work: for example, it is fully compatible with the success of the Transcendental Deduction. I motivate my view by providing a new analysis of both Kant’s theory of perception and of the role of categorical synthesis: I look in particular at the categories of quantity. Locating my interpretation in relation to recent research by Allais, Ginsborg, Tolley and others, I argue that it offers an attractive compromise on this important theoretical and exegetical issue.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/kantian-review/article/kant-as-both-conceptualist-and-nonconceptualist/F1548F2F4A3F2536578A868799A04524

Comparative work in the history of philosophy is a difficult thing to do well. It requires bringing into dialogue systems and arguments which are, even when close chronological and intellectual connections exist, often driven by very different ambitions and pressures, and which are frequently couched in terminological and conceptual frameworks untranslatable without remainder. Yet such comparative work is also extremely important. In his book, Sorin Baiasu examines what is, I think, a particularly important comparative case study, that of Kant and Sartre. My aim is to discuss, and to pose some challenges to, Baiasu's reading.OPEN ACCESS AT
https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/sacha-golob-on-sorin-baiasus-kant-and-sartre-re-discovering-critical-ethics/

This paper proposes a new reading of the interaction between subjectivity, reflection and freedom within Foucault’s later work. I begin by introducing three approaches to subjectivity, locating these in relation both to Foucault’s texts and to the recent literature. I suggest that Foucault himself operates within what I call the “entanglement approach”, and, as such, he faces a potentially serious challenge, a challenge forcefully articulated by Han. Using Kant’s treatment of reflection as a point of comparison, I argue that Foucault possesses the resources to meet this challenge. The key, I contend, is to distinguish two related theses about reflection and freedom: Foucault’s position is distinctive precisely because he accepts one of these theses whilst rejecting the other. I conclude by indicating how this reading might connect to the longstanding question of Foucault’s own right to appeal to normative standards.

This article juxtaposes two of the most influential thinkers of the previous century, Georges Bataille and Martin Heidegger: my overarching claim will be that a contrastive approach allows a better understanding of two central dynamics within their work. First, I show that both were deeply troubled by a certain methodological anxiety; namely, that the practice of writing might distort and deform their insights. By employing a comparative strategy, I suggest that we can gain a better understanding of the very specific form this fear takes in them: in each case, it is articulated and justified in terms of the ‘chose’ or ‘Ding’ (‘thing’) or the ‘objet’ or ‘Objekt’ (‘object’). Second, I argue that close textual comparison allows us to identify an important, new dimension in their reactions to this shared anxiety: the thing or object which was originally the site of the anxiety gradually becomes, through series of ontological and textual shifts, the solution to it. I track this transformation across a range of case studies including Heidegger’s later work on the term ‘Ding’ and Bataille’s treatment of prostitution. I close by indicating how these results might create avenues for further research.
http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ccs.2016.0186

Kant's account of the sublime makes frequent appeals to infinity, appeals which have been extensively criticised by commentators such as Budd and Crowther. This paper examines the costs and benefits of reconstructing the account in finitist terms. On the one hand, drawing on a detailed comparison of the first and third Critiques, I argue that the underlying logic of Kant's position is essentially finitist. I defend the approach against longstanding objections, as well as addressing recent infinitist work by Moore and Smith. On the other hand, however, I argue that finitism faces distinctive problems of its own: whilst the resultant theory is a coherent and interesting one, it is unclear in what sense it remains an analysis of the sublime.

The relationship between decadence and aesthetics is an intimate and complex one. Both the stock figure of the aesthete and the aestheticism of ‘art for art’s sake’ are classic decadent tropes with obvious sources in figures such as Théophile Gautier, Walter Pater, Joris-Karl Huysmans. Yet the links between aesthetics and decadence are more conflicted than might first appear: historically, aesthetics has served both as a site for the theorisation of decadence and as the basis of an attempt to stem it. The purpose of this chapter is to examine these intricate ties.

Sacha Golob (co-Director, CPVA) in conversation with the sculptor and performance artist Hester Reeve on the relationship between art and philosophy, her rejoinder to Plato’s Academy, the role of personas in contemporary art, and her interest in the great rationalist thinker Immanuel Kant.

0.31 - Philosophy as Artistic Practice
11.23 - Ymedaca and Plato’s Academy
23.40 - Conceptual Personas: HRH.the
33.10 - Thinking, Dialogue, Speech
40.27 - Materiality
47.58 - Immanuel Kant and the Residency at KCL

Sacha Golob in conversation with the  sculptor Kenny Hunter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Hunter) on the role of public sculpture, its destruction, and its style.

Chapters:

The Monumental Tradition: Approaches to Public Sculpture (0.45)

The Community: Sculpture and Democracy  (4.25)

The Animal and the Human (13.41)

Destroying Sculptures (23.37)

The Toy Aesthetic and Post-Modern Irony (32.46)

The Southwark Memorial (38.32)

Open Call: Artist-in-Residency 2018

CPVA @ King's College London
The Centre for Philosophy and Visual Arts, in partnership with Kunsthuis SYB (the Netherlands), is proud to announce a continuation of their joint residency programme. This two-stage residency is an exciting opportunity for artists with an existing interest or curiosity in philosophy to develop their research, after which they will be awarded time in Kunsthuis SYB to produce (a) new piece(s) of work.
Visual artists working in any discipline or media are invited to write a proposal in response to a topic discussed in one of two lecture series. The Search For Meaning, led by Christopher Hamilton, discusses the human condition in light of philosophical and literary sources. The Ethics of Migration, by Sarah Fine, offers an overview of key debates about the ethics of migration in contemporary political philosophy.
For more information about what this residency offers, or on how to apply, please visit our website. Deadline for applications is midnight on Friday the 3rd of November.

The Centre for Philosophy and Visual Arts
https://philosophyandvisualarts.com/2017/09/30/residency-2018/

On both conceptual and methodological levels, this article explores the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and the work of the poet and visual artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. At the center of Heidegger’s account of experience is the notion of the clearing or the open, a space
within which and against which entities are “disclosed” or become fully apparent. The purpose of this text is to examine how Finlay’s work might be seen as a response to this Heideggerian framework. In particular we look to the poet’s garden Little Sparta, part of which instantiates
Heidegger’s vision of the clearing and of the “Holzwege” or “wood paths” that shape it. We demonstrate the way in which Little Sparta sustains a distinctive form of aesthetic inquiry, from our initial state of doubt in the Holzwege thicket to a deeper understanding of the process of
meaning.

King’s College London’s Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art (CPVA), in partnership with Kunsthuis SYB (the Netherlands), is inviting artists to apply for their first ever joint residency programme. This two-stage residency is an exciting opportunity for artists with an existing interest or curiosity in philosophy to be included in university life and develop their research, after which they will be awarded time in Kunsthuis SYB to develop (a) new piece(s) of work.

The deadline is 2400 on 1st Dec 2016.

Full details including funding are here:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/philosophy/research/cpva.aspx

Questions to:
philosophyandvisualarts@gmail.com

Why does art matter? In this roundtable discussion, philosophers, artists, market professionals and conservators discuss the value significance of art – from its public role to its meaning to its price.

Chair: Sacha Golob (Director, Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts @ King's College London)
Anthony Bennett (The Churches Conservation Trust)
Tommaso Calabro (King's College London)
Anna Fafaliou (Marine Tanguy Art)
Christopher Hamilton (King's College London)

VIDEO AT THE LINK BELOW:
https://vimeo.com/188263753

AUDIO HERE http://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/2016/11/30/philosophy-and-the-visual-arts-salon-philosopher-sacha-golob-in-conversation-with-the-artist-kasia-molga-4-2/


TCCE is delighted to announce our fourth Philosophy and the Visual Arts Salon, developed in collaboration with the Philosophy Department at King’s College London.

We have been running various salons together over a number of years and, in so doing, we bring complex philosophical notions into contact with a wider public sphere. This series explores the relationship between philosophy and the visual arts and, on 26 Oct, we are pleased to present Dr Sacha Golob in conversation with artist Kasia Molga.

Kasia Molga is a fusion artist working mixing media art, interaction design, environmental science and creative coding & technology to working on the intersection of art, science, design and technology. She examines human perception and relationship with the planet/nature/environment in the increasingly technologically mediated world in a context of environmental changes and unforeseen futures. She does so by exploring various aspects of transmitting and manifesting real time environmental and biological data.

At this salon, Kasia Molga and Philosopher Dr Sacha Golob will discuss the digital, the immersive and the environmental.

Marine Tanguy Art and KCL's Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts: A Panel Discussion on the role of philosophy in contemporary artistic practice. FULL VIDEO AT THE LINK BELOW.
http://www.marinetanguyart.com/conferences/kings-college-london/

Speakers: Dr Sacha Golob (King’s College London), Lina Iris Viktor (MTArt), Gretchen Andrew (MTArt), Vanessa Brassey (King’s College London), Marine Tanguy (MTArt)

AUDIO HERE
http://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Alinah-Azadeh-Salon_Part-1.mp3
http://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Alinah-Azadeh-Salon_Part-2.m4a


TCCE is delighted to announce our third Philosophy and the Visual Arts Salon, developed in collaboration with the Philosophy Department at King’s College London.

We have been running various salons together over a number of years and, in so doing, we bring complex philosophical notions into contact with a wider public sphere. Our latest work explores the relationship between philosophy and the visual arts and, on 25th May, we are pleased to present Sacha Golob in conversation with artist Alinah Azadeh.

Alinah Azadeh is a UK artist working across media. Whether a small sculpture or a dialogue with a stranger on the street  – her works are rooted in the disclosure of intimate poetic and personal narratives, which act as a bridge into the work for others to take.

At this salon, Alinah will discuss with Philosopher Dr Sacha Golob how, through acts of gift, ritual and playful exchange, her works create dialogue around the nature of loss, longing and our social and cultural identities.

AUDIO HERE http://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Wildgoose-Salon-2016_edit.mp3

Last month saw the latest in the highly successful series of Art and Philosophy salons - supported by TCCE in conjunction with KCL's Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts. It was a real pleasure to introduce and talk with the artist Jane Wildgoose - full audio at the link above.

ABSTRACT: As Janaway observed, “the topic of Schopenhauer as Educator is really education rather than Schopenhauer”; indeed, Nietzsche described it as addressing a “problem of education without equal” (EH ‘Books’ UM.3). This article reconstructs the pedagogical challenge and solution presented by Nietzsche in that text. It is obvious that Schopenhauer’s example is meant to underpin Nietzsche’s new pedagogy: what is less obvious is how exactly that exemplary role is meant to work. I concentrate on three issues: the exact nature of the pupil’s relationship to the exemplar, the institutional context of education, and the links of both to self-knowledge. Throughout I use as a foil a thinker who discussed these questions at length and who is in many ways Nietzsche’s unspoken target throughout Schopenhauer as Educator: Immanuel Kant. We need to understand, in short, “what, after Kant, Schopenhauer can be to us” (SE 3).

Irene McMullin’s Existential Flourishing (Cambridge University Press, 2018) weaves together virtue ethics and existential phenomenology: the influence of Heidegger and Levinas, in particular, is clear throughout. This paper provides a summary of McMullin’s elegantly argued position and raises a number of possible concerns, particularly regarding the interaction of  Aristotelian and Phenomenological assumptions. I focus specifically on the role of the 2nd-person perspective, on the links between exemplars and socialisation, and on the problem of those who, as Nietzsche put it, “are both evil and happy – a species on which the moralists are silent”.

This work addresses a question that is simultaneously moral, strategic and ontological: by what process, by what mechanisms, is ethical virtue acquired? The delineation of these terms, 'ethics' and 'virtue', and the shifts in their meaning, will be one of my central concerns, but let us start by hearing the question as one about a specific form of excellence or authority: a robust ability to judge, to choose, to live ethically. By what mechanism is this produced? What fact or development or transformation yields it?

This article advances a new analysis of stupidity as a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Section 1 outlines some problems in explicating this notion and suggests some desiderata. Section 2 sketches an existing model of stupidity, found in Kant and Flaubert, which serves as a foil for my own view. In section 3, I introduce my theory: I analyse stupidity as form of conceptual self-hampering, characterised by a specific aetiology and with a range of deleterious effects. In section 4, I show how this proposal meets the desiderata and I clarify how it diverges from existing accounts. My position is close to a 'public health approach', in contrast to the virtue/vice framework employed by Engel or Mulligan.

This paper addresses the question of a subject’s knowledge of his or her own mental states. My interest, in particular, is in an appeal to the concepts of mode and activity when explaining our ability to self-ascribe beliefs. Ultimately, I sketch an agency account of self-knowledge that avoids the excessive rationalism of positions such as Moran’s and Boyle’s.

One characteristic of contemporary politics is that your opponent is not simply wrong but stupid. For one side, this stupidity stems from a lack of education: if only graduates voted, there would be no Trump, no Brexit. For the other side, those same universities churn out what Newt Gingrich, following Nassim Taleb, called “Intellectuals Yet Idiots”, a generation who have studied themselves thick, adrift in a sea of capital-T “Theory”.

Seeing politics in terms of stupidity has far-reaching consequences. The mass of opposing voters are considered fools: at best naive dupes, at worst blind to all reason. At the same time, opposing economists, think tanks and so on are surely too intelligent to believe anything so manifestly idiotic – hence they must have some sinister, concealed agenda. Ironically, a tendency to see each other in terms of these tropes, the mass of fools and the leadership of conspirators, was one of the few communalities between Brexiteers and Remainers. Needless to say, such framing does not foster democratic dialogue. 

But what exactly is stupidity? And how might we go about addressing it?

With fifty-four chapters charting the development of moral philosophy in the Western world, this volume examines the key thinkers and texts and their influence on the history of moral thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day. Topics including Epicureanism, humanism, Jewish and Arabic thought, perfectionism, pragmatism, idealism and intuitionism are all explored, as are figures including Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Rawls, as well as numerous key ideas and schools of thought. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, drawing on the latest research to offer rigorous analysis of the canonical figures and movements of this branch of philosophy. The volume provides a comprehensive yet philosophically advanced resource for students and teachers alike as they approach, and refine their understanding of, the central issues in moral thought.


Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/it/academic/subjects/philosophy/history-philosophy/cambridge-history-moral-philosophy#SKuHy5AdTDKYDw3K.99

What is difference between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy? Why does the answer matter? And how might this familiar opposition be challenged or transformed?

1930, 1st June, Cock Tavern, 23 Phoenix Road, London NW1 1HB.
http://pfalondon.org/kant.html

This presentation locates early Heidegger's work on emotions in the broader context of the Post-Kantian tradition, looking at some of the key roles which such states have played for those thinkers. I argue for an interpretation on which anxiety provides awareness of certain meta-normative facts, and on which 'death' in texts such as SZ is neither a biological nor social phenomenon, but an axiological one. I conclude by considering the issue of pathology and the disclosive or epistemic role of emotions.

The purpose of this talk is to introduce a new reading of the relationship between two of early Heidegger’s central claims – claims about various forms of meaning and their relationship to ontology. The first claim is that propositional intentionality in some sense forces our understanding of entities into certain set channels, channels which at worst actively distort, and at best fail to capture, the true nature of our experience. The second claim is that propositional intentionality is explanatorily derivative.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault famously argued that our modern notion of sexuality is contingent, artificial, and politically dangerous. His views have informed a great deal of later work on gender, sexuality, identity and politics more broadly.  But why did he think these things? And was he right?

We are all going to die. But how should we think about death? In what ways might our health and social systems better deal with it? How have earlier thinkers made sense of it? Is it something that we should fear? Join clinicians, intellectual historians and philosophers as they debate a topic in which we all have a stake.

One central idea in both the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions is that consciousness in some sense implies self-consciousness. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I provide an overview of the radically different motivations for that claim within the two traditions. Second, I argue that, despite those differences, pressing the question of what exactly self-consciousness consists in exposes certain striking, and philosophically important, continuities between them.

In the context of a history of the emotions, Martin Heidegger presents an important and yet challenging case. He is important because he places emotional states, broadly construed, at the very heart of his philosophical methodology—in particular, anxiety and boredom. He is challenging because he is openly dismissive of the standard ontologies of emotions, and because he is largely uninterested in many of the canonical debates in which emotions figure. The aim in this chapter is to identify and critique the distinctive role which Heidegger allots to the emotions, focusing on Sein und Zeit’s famous treatment of anxiety. Having outlined his position, the chapter closes by considering a number of challenges, both methodological and substantive, to Heidegger’s approach.

This article advances a new account of Kant’s views on conceptualism. On the one hand, I argue that Kant was a nonconceptualist. On the other hand, my approach accommodates many motivations underlying the conceptualist reading of his work: for example, it is fully compatible with the success of the Transcendental Deduction. I motivate my view by providing a new analysis of both Kant’s theory of perception and of the role of categorical synthesis: I look in particular at the categories of quantity. Locating my interpretation in relation to recent research by Allais, Ginsborg, Tolley and others, I argue that it offers an attractive compromise on this important theoretical and exegetical issue.