International Philosophical Quarterly

In §§62–82 of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment we find several references to the supersensible in the context of the solution of the antinomy of the power of teleological judgment. It is not, however, plainly clear how these references relate to each other or how they contribute to the proposed solution. Specially puzzling is the way in which the idea of an intelligent author of the world is related to the idea of an intuitive understanding. Some interpreters have considered that the intelligent author of the world should possess an understanding capable of intuition. Kant, however, never expressly establishes this relationship. In this paper I intend to show that the idea of an intelligent author of the world cannot be enlarged with the idea of an intuitive understanding. Both of the references to the supersensible perform different functions.

Descartes’s description of his method for discovering truth provides a helpful tool for interpreting his writings. In this article I offer a sample of how to interpret Descartes by understanding his algebraic method. My test case is the Cartesian teaching on divine freedom, which is well known to be inconsistent and often considered unfounded. I reconstruct the equations that led to these doctrines, arguing that Descartes held that the divine act of creation was both necessary and arbitrary because of the equations that resulted when he applied his method to the natural world.

This article analyzes the “Interlude” in Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. In particular, it examines Johannes Climacus’s response to Hegel’s view that a past actuality is necessary. I provide an in-depth analysis of Hegel’s view of modality (possibility, actuality, necessity) and of what he means when he says that a past actuality is necessary. In contrast to the standard scholarly interpretation, I argue that Climacus need not reject Hegel’s view because Hegel’s view of the necessity of the past is not so controversial or difficult to accept. Finally, I show that Climacus’s main critique is that we cannot know the past as necessary in any meaningful way. He worries that we might get so preoccupied with the futile task of trying to know the Hegelian necessity of the past that we forget to personally appropriate the past in a way that can help us live in the present.

Kant defined moral evil as reversing the order between self-love and morality. For many critics, however, his egoistically-orientated notion of self-love fails to make sense of the infinitely manifold incentives of evil under the human condition. Against this criticism, my article will re-interpret Kantian self-love and empirical self-conception from both the transcendental and empirical level, thus offering a transcendental grounding for the empirical manifestations of evil. In this way I will argue that we can explain rather sufficiently the infinite manifoldness of evil incentives in real human life with Kant’s prima facie simplistic definition of evil.

This essay offers a critical examination of Neil Ormerod’s treatment of the debate between Lonergan and Gilson on the question of being. Although this debate concerns a highly technical issue of metaphysics and epistemology, it remains germane and relevant, especially within the field of Christian thought. In Ormerod’s careful and for the most part generous examination of this debate, he argues that being for Gilson is perceived through the senses, whereas for Lonergan being is intended in the questions that arise from the relevant sense data. Where Gilson’s philosophy gives priority to the metaphysics of being, Lonergan gives priority to epistemology and cognitional theory. In arguing for the superiority of Lonergan’s approach to the question of being, Ormerod relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of Gilson’s metaphysics. By appeal to the more recent work of Kenneth Schmitz, this essay proposes a proper understanding of Gilson’s metaphysics as a basis for a more conciliatory relationship between these two giants in modern Christian philosophy who too often are pitted against one another.

This paper describes an exegetical puzzle that lies at the heart of Frege’s writings—how to reconcile his logicism with his definitions and claims about his definitions. It also reviews two interpretations that try to resolve this puzzle: the “explicative interpretation” and the “analysis interpretation.” This paper defends the explicative interpretation and critiques the careful and sophisticated defenses of the analysis interpretation given by Michael Dummett and Patricia Blanchette. Specifically, I argue that Frege’s texts either are inconsistent with the analysis interpretation or do not support it. I also defend the explicative interpretation from the recent charge that it cannot make sense of Frege’s logicism. While I do not provide the explicative interpretation’s full solution to the puzzle, I show that its main competitor is seriously problematic.

What does it mean to say that a person has dignity, and what explains her dignity? Linda Zagzebski argues that personal dignity entails both infinite and irreplaceable value. Initially she grounds the former claim in the power of rationality and the latter in the uniqueness of one’s subjective lived experience. Later she grounds both in the power of rationality, understood in terms of reflective consciousness. I argue that the latter account is an improvement upon the former but that needless problems arise from both accounts because (1) she conflates properties considered in the abstract with properties instantiated in concrete persons and (2) she fails to recognize an ambiguity in the notion of incommunicability or uniqueness. I also argue that the more fundamental account of rationality should be given not in terms of reflective consciousness but in terms of the ability to understand particulars in light of universals.

Thomas de Vio Cajetan produced a highly influential Thomistic treatise on analogy entitled De nominum analogia. The merits of this work have been contested since the sixteenth century. Notable twentieth-century Thomists who adopted many of the teachings of De nominum analogia include Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon. Joshua Hochschild’s The Semantics of Analogy highlighted the significance of chapter ten, where Cajetan applies his theory to resolve the problem of demonstrations that use analogous terms, with the explicit purpose of addressing a serious challenge from Scotists regarding the use of analogy in metaphysics. This paper examines the criticism of Cajetan’s way of using analogous terms in demonstrations by the seventeenth-century Franciscan Scotist Bartolomeo Mastri. It shows how the Thomist differs from the Scotist and analyzes these rival positions.

Much of Edith Stein’s work on personhood is influenced by Max Scheler’s ethically focused Christian personalism. But Stein’s own treatment of the ethical implications of personalism is not yet well studied. While the ethical theme is visible early on, it is not until the 1930s that the implicitly Christian dimension of her personalism became explicit. Stein mined her Christian personalism for its ethical and pedagogical implications on the topic of self-formation. This paper reviews the lines of development of Stein’s Christian personalism and examines its centrality for a concept of ethical education.

Philosophical skepticism, according to numerous influential accounts of it, is bound up with our failure or inability to adopt an “absolute” standpoint. Similarly, many religions speak of an “absolute” that also is beyond human reach. With this similarity in mind, I will develop what I take to be a religious dimension of skepticism. First, I will discuss the connection that Stanley Cavell draws between his reading of skepticism and the notions of God and original sin. I will then refer to William James’s description of the religious experience of conversion and apply it to the transformative aspect of skepticism. Finally, I will argue with respect to mysticism and negative theology that the transformative experiences one can find in both skepticism and religion can be interpreted as yielding an experiential understanding of the finitude of the human condition.

This paper places Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason within the historical context of the pantheism controversy between Mendelssohn and Jacobi. I argue that reading Religion with this context in mind shines new light upon passages connected with the need for a moral archetype and prototype in the form of Christ, as well as various comments upon the relation between Christianity and Judaism. Within this new viewpoint, we can also see Religion as ultimately concerned with promoting Christianity, broadly understood, as the most appropriate historical vehicle for the promulgation of rational religion, and thus as a cornerstone of the Enlightenment project.