Continental Philosophy Group Talk (Sebastian Gardner, UCL)

The Continental Philosophy Research Interest Group welcomes Professor Sebastian Gardner of University College London, whose research interests include the philosophy of psychoanalysis, Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, German idealism, and the aesthetic turn in post-Kantianism.

Talk Title

“The Legacy of Kant’s Third Critique in Fichte and Schelling”

Talk Abstract

“It is a commonplace that Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement is pivotal in setting the agenda for the development of German Idealism. The manner in which it does so is complex. Determining the significance of the Third Critique for the German Idealists is in part a matter of plotting their agreements and disagreements with Kant regarding the two substantial topics treated in the work, aesthetics and teleology. At a more fundamental level, it concerns the possibility of converting Kant’s bipartite philosophy into a genuinely systematic whole.

Of vital importance here are the claims Kant makes in the Introduction to the CPJ, and the theory of the intuitive intellect that he introduces in §§76-77. I attempt to distinguish the different strategies adopted by Fichte and Schelling in their respective attempts to complete Kant’s project of unifying Freedom and Nature, and the philosophical motivation for each. The contrast that they form can be regarded, I argue, as reflecting a tension, or ambiguity of ambition, within the Third Critique itself.”

About the Continental Philosophy Research Interest Group

One of five departmental research interest groups, the Continental Philosophy Group works in the traditions of textual interpretation of human consciousness, phenomenology, and post-structuralist critical theory, among other related traditions of thought.