The Roots Of Hermeneutics In Kant S Reflective Teleological Judgment

This book challenges the standard view that modern hermeneutics begins with Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher, arguing instead that it is the dialectic of reflective and teleological reason in Kant’s Critique of Judgment that provides the actual proto-hermeneutic foundation. It is revolutionary in doing so by replacing interpretive truth claims by the more appropriate claim of rendering opaque contexts intelligible. Taking Gadamer’s comprehensive analysis of hermeneutics in Truth and Method (1960) as its point of departure, the book turns to Kant’s Critiques, reviewing his major concepts as a coherent system in relation to his sensus communis. At the heart of the book is the interaction between reflective, bottom-up search and teleological, top-down interpretative projection as provided in Part II of the third Critique. This text contends that Kant’s broad definition of nature invites the liberation of the reflective-teleological judgment from its biological exemplifications and so permits us to establish its generalised status as a path-breaking, methodological tool. Kant’s dialectic of reflective search and meaning bestowing, stipulated teleology is asserted to anticipate a series of motifs commonly associated with hermeneutics. Figures covered include Dilthey, Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, Gadamer, Apel, Habermas, Ricoeur, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Vattimo, Nancy and Caputo. Their collective contributions to interpretation allow for a review of the evolution of hermeneutics from the perspective of the Kantian critique of the limitations of human cognition. The book is written for the informed, general reader, but will likewise appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

This book challenges the standard view that modern hermeneutics begins with Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher, arguing instead that it is the dialectic of reflective and teleological reason in Kant's Critique of Judgment that provides the actual proto-hermeneutic foundation. It is revolutionary in doing so by replacing interpretive truth claims by the more appropriate claim of rendering opaque contexts intelligible. Taking Gadamer's comprehensive analysis of hermeneutics in Truth and Method (1960) as its point of departure, the book turns to Kant's Critiques, reviewing his major concepts as a coherent system in relation to his sensus communis. At the heart of the book is the interaction between reflective, bottom-up search and teleological, top-down interpretative projection as provided in Part II of the third Critique. This text contends that Kant's broad definition of nature invites the liberation of the reflective-teleological judgment from its biological exemplifications and so permits us to establish its generalised status as a path-breaking, methodological tool. Kant's dialectic of reflective search and meaning bestowing, stipulated teleology is asserted to anticipate a series of motifs commonly associated with hermeneutics. Figures covered include Dilthey, Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, Gadamer, Apel, Habermas, Ricoeur, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Vattimo, Nancy and Caputo. Their collective contributions to interpretation allow for a review of the evolution of hermeneutics from the perspective of the Kantian critique of the limitations of human cognition. The book is written for the informed, general reader, but will likewise appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

In this book renowned Dilthey scholar Rudi Makkreel offers not simply a new theory of interpretation, but rather a hermeneutics of orientation in the global world of the twenty first century. His starting point is the fact that the differences of national, ethnic, or religious perspectives that make up today s world cannot be reconciled through a benign conception of a fusion of horizons, which ultimately is restricted to the Western tradition. Confronted with the failure of dialogue and dialectic in the face of the conflict between the multiple traditions and the different heritages of today s complex world, Makkreel develops a concept of interpretive insight that aims not only at convergence, but that also acknowledges divergence. He argues that where dialogue fails, reflective judgment becomes necessary, and he presents an impressive rehabilitation of judgment in hermeneutics. In order to tease out the manifold implications of reflective judgment for an orientational hermeneutics, he has recourse to Kant s Third Critique, and especially to Kant s elaborations on reflection and judgment in his various lectures on Logic, which in itself is no small contribution to Kant scholarship. Although technical, and subtle in nature, Makkreel s penetrating conceptual analyses are eminently clear. This book is not only a systematic work, it is also a historical work in that the new conception of hermeneutics is put in a tight and critical dialogue with the post-Enlightenment representatives of hermeneutics, in particular, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas. In the concluding chapter on contemporary art Makkreel considers concrete examples and applications of orientational hermeneutics."

Diese Studie verfolgt das Ziel, eine transzendentale Interpretation der Kritik der Urteilskraft von Immanuel Kant vorzulegen, welche sowohl den Zusammenhang mit den anderen kritischen Werken, als auch die interne Kohärenz des Buches berücksichtigt. Ich bezeichne die Interpretation als transzendental, weil das neu eingeführte Erkenntnisvermögen, nämlich die reflektierende Urteilskraft, zusammen mit seinem a priori Prinzip der Zweckmäßigkeit in den Fokus gerückt wird. Dies sollte es erlauben, die scheinbare Vielfalt der Themen (von ästhetischen Urteilen über Kultur bis hin zu teleologischen Urteilen über Naturzwecke), welche viele Interpreten in die Irre geführt hat, ausschließlich in Abhängigkeit dieses Erkenntnisvermögens und des entsprechenden transzendentalen Prinzips zu untersuchen. Auf diesem Weg wird nicht nur beabsichtigt, die Zugehörigkeit der Kritik der Urteilskraft zum transzendentalen Projekt Kants nachzuweisen, sondern außerdem auch das Prinzip der Zweckmäßigkeit in unserem reflexiven Verhältnis zur Natur zu etablieren. Der wichtigste Beitrag dieser Studie besteht darin, die Kritik der Urteilskraft in das größere kritische Projekt einzuordnen. Ich habe argumentiert, wie das Bedürfnis für die Voraussetzung der reflektierenden Urteilskraft aus dem eigentümlichen Charater unseres sinnlichen und diskursiven Gemüts folgt. Da wir ein sinnliches und diskursives Gemüt haben, verfügen wir nicht über einen unmittelbaren Einblick in alle Merkmale der Gegenstände der empirischen Natur. Die eigentümliche Beschaffenheit unseres Gemüts erfordert begriffliche Vorstellungen, die sich mittelbar auf Objekte beziehen. Das Prinzip der Zweckmäßigkeit, nämlich die Voraussetzung, dass die Natur unserem Gemüt angemessen organisiert ist, ist eine notwendige Bedingung für die Möglichkeit der Reflexion auf die empirischen Merkmale der Natur. Reflexion verweist in meinem Ansatz auf den Prozess der Auswahl von Merkmal für eine Klassifizierung, einschließlich die Reflexion auf die Methode, Mittel und Kriterien. Anstatt einen Beitrag zur Erkenntnis drücken Reflexionsurteile also Unwissenheit bezüglich der Intention hinter dem Entwurf der Natur, wie Geschmacksurteile und teleologische Urteile über organisierte Materie, am deutlichsten aus. So betrachtet hängt Reflexion, egal ob sie sich in Begriffsbildung, wissenschaftlicher Systematisierung, Geschmacksurteilen oder teleogischen Urteilen über organisierte Materie ausdrückt, von einem eigenen Prinzip der reflektierenden Urteilskraft ab, das in einer transzendentalen Untersuchung in der Kritik der Urteilskraft dargestellt und begründet wird. This dissertation aims to deliver a transcendental interpretation of Immanuel Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft, considering both its coherence with other critical works as well as the internal coherence of the work itself. This interpretation is called transcendental insofar as special emphasis is placed on the newly introduced cognitive power, namely the reflective power of judgement, guided by the a priori principle of purposiveness. In this way the seeming manifold of themes, varying from judgements of taste through culture to teleological judgements about natural purposes, are discussed exclusively in regard of their dependence on this faculty and its transcendental principle. In contrast, in contemporary scholarship the book is often treated as a fragmented work, consisting of different independent parts, while my focus lies on the continuity comprised primarily of the activity of the power of judgement. Going back to certain central yet silently presupposed concepts, adopted from previous critical works, the main contribution of this study is to integrate the KU within the overarching critical project. More specifically, I have argue how the need for the presupposition by the reflective power of judgement follows from the peculiar character of our sense-dependent discursive mind. Because we are sense-dependent discursive minds, we do not and cannot have immediate insight into all of nature's features. The particular constitution of our mind rather demands conceptually informed representations which mediately refer to objects. Having said that, the principle of purposiveness, namely the presupposition that nature is organized in concert with the particular constitution of our mind, is a necessary condition for the possibility of reflection on nature's empirical features. Reflection refers on my account to a process of selecting features in order to allow a classification, including reflection on the method, means and selection criteria. Rather than directly contributing to cognition, like the categories, reflective judgements thus express our ignorance when it comes to the motivation behind nature's design, and this is most forcefully expressed by judgements of taste and teleological judgements about organized matter. In this way, reflection, regardless whether it is manifested in concept acquisition, scientific systematization, judgements of taste or judgements about organized matter, relies on a principle of the power of judgement which is revealed and justified in this transcendental inquiry.

In this illuminating study of Kant's theory of imagination and its role in interpretation, Rudolf A. Makkreel argues against the commonly held notion that Kant's transcendental philosophy is incompatible with hermeneutics. The charge that Kant's foundational philosophy is inadequate to the task of interpretation can be rebutted, explains Makkreel, if we fully understand the role of imagination in his work. In identifying this role, Makkreel also reevaluates the relationship among Kant's discussions of the feeling of life, common sense, and the purposiveness of history.

Expressing a variety of philosophical interests and epistemic and ethical views, the essays in this volume acknowledge the ethical dimension of historical enterprise and describe that dimension as integral to what history is. --book cover.

Kant's attempt to establish the principles behind the faculty of judgment remains one of the most important works on human reason. This third of the philosopher's three Critiques forms the very basis of modern aesthetics.

In Kant’s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension, Rudolf A. Makkreel offers a new interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s theory of judgment that clarifies Kant’s well-known suggestion that a genuine philosophy is guided by a world‐concept (Weltbegriff). Makkreel shows that Kant increasingly expands the role of judgment from its logical and epistemic tasks to its reflective capacity to evaluate objects and contextualize them in worldly terms. And Makkreel shows that this final orientational power of judgment supplements the cognition of the understanding with the comprehension originally assigned to reason. To comprehend, according to Kant, is to possess sufficient insight into situations so as to also achieve some purpose. This requires that reason be applied with the discernment that reflective judgment makes possible. Comprehension, practical as well as theoretical, can fill in Kant’s world concept and his sublime evocation of a Weltanschauung with a more down-to-earth worldview. Scholars have recently stressed Kant’s impure ethics, his nonideal politics, and his pragmatism. Makkreel complements these efforts by using Kant’s ethical, sociopolitical, religious, and anthropological writings to provide a more encompassing account of the role of human beings in the world. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of Kant and the history of European philosophy.