In this chapter, I reconstruct the metaphysical deductions that, in my account, Kant presents in the Aesthetic, Analytic and Dialectic, respectively. I read metaphysical deductions as accomplishing the first task of transcendental philosophy as it is established in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely the task of cataloguing pure root concepts (Stammbegriffe) for the cognition of objects and to track their origin. I argue that the metaphysical deductions do not simply assume a distinction between different faculties. Rather, they contribute to establishing this distinction by identifying the origin of the root concepts they clarify and catalogue. Moreover, I show that Kant does not follow a univocal model in the different deductions. Rather, his approach is pluralistic.

Hegel dedicates ‘Teleology’ in his Logic to resolve Kant’s antinomies about causality: the third antinomy of reason and the antinomy of judgement. This chapter first connects these distinct Kantian antinomies. I argue that Hegel is right that the opposition of the causal concepts involved in them is substantially the same. I also advocate that Hegel is right too in supposing that for Kant the conflicting concepts remain opposed after the ‘solution’ to the different logical conflicts in the various Critiques is reached. I argue that, in contrast, Hegel’s own resolution tries to deliver a proper unification of these concepts.

Jacobi argues that although Spinoza produced the most consistent rational system, its complete rational explanation leads to fatalism, mechanism, and atheism. The concern in this chapter is with how Jacobi stimulates Kant on issues of faith in relation to autonomy and practical reason (ethics), and how Kant’s “moral faith” seeks to avoid the pitfalls of mechanism while integrally linking faith with reason.

This chapter examines Jacobi’s critique of traditional philosophical theology and what he considered to be its conceptual annihilation of the reality of God. What emerges is that Jacobi had a refined understanding of the seductive workings of instrumental reason, proposing an alternative philosophical theology by which immediate faith in God must be confirmed in reflection.

Several central themes of Schelling’s celebrated 1809 Freedom Essay were constructed in direct response to Jacobi. This chapter touches on two themes in which Schelling opposes Jacobi, and in doing so pushes Schelling’s thinking on human freedom into entirely fresh terrain: the first theme is Jacobi’s concept of reason, and the second is Jacobi’s understanding of pantheism as logically entailing determinism.

Jacobi’s claims concerning the relationship between philosophy and religion are complex and often expressed in varied ways. This chapter sorts out the arguments Jacobi brings in support of his conception of epistemic realism, the opening of reason to suprasensible reality, as well as the relationship between Jacobi’s philosophy and Christianity.

Prevailing scholarly interpretations cast James Wilson's Lectures on Law (1790–1791) at the College of Philadelphia as paradigmatic of the founding era’s allegedly rationalist, heterodox natural theology. Yet Wilson’s Lectures point in quite the opposite direction: to a vision of the founding era jurisprudence that was self-consciously rooted in a divinely created and rationally intelligible moral order that was both complemented and presupposed by Christian revelation. So understood, Wilson’s Lectures bring into focus the limitations of the common scholarly conventions and categories that contrast enlightenment and religion, reason and revelation, or Nature’s God and the God of Abraham. In Wilson’s Lectures, these are not “either/or” categories but are rather presented together in a synthesis that emerged from the long Christian engagement with the natural-law tradition.

This chapter explores the beginning of the end of the emotional regime of Romantic sensibility and the origins of surgical scientific modernity. It illuminates this crucial period of transition through the juxtaposition of two distinct but conceptually and ideologically intertwined moments in surgical history. These are, firstly, the debates surrounding the practice of anatomical dissection that came to the fore in the 1820s and culminated in the passage of the Anatomy Act in 1832, and, secondly, the introduction and early use of inhalation anaesthesia in the later 1840s. In both instances it highlights the powerful influence of utilitarian thought in divesting the body, both as object and subject, of emotional meaning and agency. In the former instance it demonstrates how an ultra-rationalist understanding of sentiment was set in opposition to popular ‘sentimentalism’ in order to divest the dead bodies of the poor of emotional value. Meanwhile, in the latter, it considers how the emotional subjectivity of the newly anaesthetised patient was swiftly tamed by the operations of a techno-scientific rationale.

This book revives a contested moment in the history of aesthetic theory when Romantic-period writers exploit the growing awareness of irresolutions in Kant’s third Kritik, especially in his critique of judgements of the sublime. Read with hindsight, these openings can be seen to have generated literary opportunities for writings that explicitly embraced the philosophical significance delegated to the aesthetic by Kant, but then took advantage of the licence he had conceded. Romantic writing claimed a wider significance of its own that philosophy now had to learn to rationalise. Consequent aesthetic reorientations, in which splendours and miseries become interchangeable, reflect political instabilities already exploited by feminist and nationalist writing. Falling becomes a kind of rising, and literature’s unregulated power of metamorphosis persuasively challenges hierarchies of all kinds, including its own.

This chapter reconstructs Heidegger’s 1955–56 interpretation of the principle of reason as a principle that resonates or sounds variously in the history of philosophy. The principle is first fully formulated by Leibniz as the principle of sufficient reason, which states that there is no true fact or proposition without sufficient reason for it being so and not otherwise. Heidegger takes Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason to be a historically specific version of the principle of reason, which is a fundamental ontological principle holding that nothing is without a reason or ground, and so that being is ground/reason. Heidegger hears this association between being and ground resonating in the ancient Greek concept of logos, which is taken up but distorted by the Romans in the concept of ratio. From there, the ontological principle develops into the principle articulated by Leibniz and comes to express the distinctive commitments of modern philosophy and technology. While Heidegger’s historical story is not entirely plausible and contains significant omissions, attempting to reconstruct it reveals why this purported history of the principle of reason is relevant to Heidegger’s broader ontological project.

Love and rhetoric are two major topics in Plato’s Phaedrus, unified by the dialogue’s theme of psychagōgia, or soul-leading. In Socrates’ great speech, the Palinode, Socrates explains how properly directed eros can assist souls in becoming the types of souls who will be capable of ascending closer to the forms and who will know themselves better. The Palinode is also itself an example of Socratic soul-leading with Phaedrus. Socrates acts akin a true lover to Phaedrus, in leading him towards philosophy and a philosophically informed view of rhetoric.

Philosophy, like other disciplines in the humanities (and social sciences), is one of the “soft disciplines” with a low paradigm consensus. With the plurality of ideas about what counts as philosophy and what methods are appropriate to it, it comes a special challenge in articulating any broadly acceptable vision for how best to implement undergraduate research in philosophy. Although philosophical research involves much collaboration, including layers of peer review feedback and multiple presentations of works in progress, it continues to culminate almost exclusively in the single-authored manuscript. Certainly, a common perception among philosophers has been that one’s own research is most efficiently and successfully undertaken by oneself without the drag of overseeing more or less novice, apprentice collaborators. Where the undergraduate mentee takes on research that is not connected to one’s own, the drag productivity is expected to be even greater.

The classical definition of theology reflects fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). This definition underscores the premier role of faith, reason, and critical thinking in the exercise of theological studies. Religious studies for its part is a social science study of religion, which also applies critical thinking and reason in its research, but does not necessarily require faith. Therefore, both theology and religious studies have thrived by the application of the tools for critical thinking and reason. For undergraduate research in theology or religious studies, the methodological approach of students depends on the focus of the course. The different sub-disciplines of theology or religious studies adopt different approaches to research. Therefore, a course on the history of the Bible would require different research method and approach than a course about social justice or comparative religion. However, regardless of the course, it is important to always bear in mind that a typical piece of research on religious studies or theology will likely adopt diverse research approaches and methods.

Ulysses’ mad pursuit of virtue and knowledge presumed that an exploration of physical facts can yield an understanding of value. In the examination on love in the heaven of the fixed stars, St. John first asks not what love is, but where Dante’s soul is pointed. To love is to have an aim, a point, a target. It is to value something more than other things and, in the hierarchy of all good things, there must be one that is the best of all. It is from the sphere of the constellations, of which Ulysses necessarily lost sight when he ventured beyond the known world into the southern hemisphere, that Adam reveals that the cause of his long exile was a trespassing beyond the sign. Since language, the logos, is what humans use to discern what is good and what is harmful, it enacts the role of the God of Bible who promised to reveal to Moses “every value.

Neil Sinhababu is interested in showing the significance of TSZ for today’s philosophical work in moral psychology. According to Sinhababu, this book is the only place where we can find Nietzsche’s most compelling critique of the rationalist idea that reason is independent of the passions and constitutes a person’s true self as well as the ground of his virtue. Through a close examination of two chapters from the start of TSZ, Sinhababu shows how Nietzsche defends the Humean claim (as perhaps absorbed from his reading of Schopenhauer) that the bodily passions use reason as their tool and constitute a person’s self and virtues. He also shows how Nietzsche anticipates and rebuts the recently influential counter-arguments of Christine Korsgaard and John McDowell. In Sinhababu’s analysis, Nietzsche would have rejected Korsgaard’s unified agent requirement and would have argued that the phenomenology of bodily passions is sufficient to explain McDowell’s idea of perceptual saliences.