Freedom And Heteronomy

A collection of essays on the foundational themes of freedom and spontaneity in Immanuel Kant's philosophy.

Is freedom our most essential belonging, the intimate source of self-mastery, an inalienable right? Or is it something foreign, an other that constitutes subjectivity, a challenge to our notion of autonomy? To Basterra, the subjectivity we call free embodies a relationship with an irreducible otherness that at once exceeds it and animates its core. Tracing Kant’s concept of freedom from the Critique of Pure Reason to his practical works, Basterra elaborates his most revolutionary insights by setting them in dialogue with Levinas’s Otherwise than Being. Levinas’s text, she argues, offers a deep critique of Kant that follows the impulse of his thinking to its most promising consequences. The complex concepts of freedom, autonomy, and subjectivity that emerge from this dialogue have the potential to energize today’s ethical and political thinking.

Recognizing the essential heteronomy of postmodern philosophy of religion, Merold Westphal argues against the assumption that human reason is universal, neutral, and devoid of presupposition. Instead, Westphal contends that any philosophy is a matter of faith and the philosophical encounter with theology arises from the very act of thinking. Relying on the work of Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, Westphal discovers that their theologies render them mutually incompatible and their claims to be the voice of autonomous and universal reason look dubious. Westphal grapples with this plural nature of human thought in the philosophy of religion and he forwards the idea that any appeal to the divine must rest on a historical and phenomenological analysis.

This book investigates Hegel's historical conception of philosophy: as built upon and reviving prior views, and as speaking to its historical context.

Exploring the work of one of the most eminent figures in contemporary philosophy, this compelling account includes contributions from Hilary Putnam, Cora Diamond, Jim Conant and Stephen Mulhall.

Otherness and Ethics demonstrates how Levinas and Confucius (Kongzi) develop their ideas of otherness and ethics. Most of all, the meaning of inter-subjectivity is examined in order to employ this point as this book delves into the phenomenon of face in Levinas and the significance of ren (human-relatedness) in Confucius (Kongzi). In addition, this book searches their different notions of humanity and relatedness to have a creative discourse for developing the concept of ethics of otherness as it concentrates on the formulation of ethical narratives in Levinas and Confucius (Kongzi). Thus, this book can open a possibility of building of ethics of otherness through reviewing ethical foundations of Levinas and Confucius (Kongzi) and discussing the meaning of otherness.

Addressing the relationship among social critique, violence, and domination, Violence and Reflexivity: The Place of Critique in the Reality of Domination examines a critique of violent and unjust social arrangements that transcends the Enlightenment/postmodern opposition. This critique surpasses the “reflexive violence” of classical enlightenment universalism without committing the “violence of reflexivity” by negating any possibility of collective radical social engagement. The unifying thread of the collection, edited by Marjan Ivković, Adriana Zaharijević, and Gazela Pudar-Draško, is a sensitivity to the field of tension created by these extremes, especially for the issue of how to articulate a non-violent critique that is nevertheless “militant,” in the sense that it creates a rupture in an institutionalized order of violence. In Part One, the contributors examine the theoretical resources that help us move beyond the reflexive violence of the classical Enlightenment social critique in our quest for justice and non-domination. Part Two brings together nuanced attempts to reconsider the dominant modern understandings of violence, subjectivity, and society without succumbing to the violence of reflexivity that characterizes radically anti-Enlightenment standpoints.