pre-kantian review
Heraclitus through Hume
Compress the pre-Kantian alternatives: flux, Forms, Aristotelian realism, Rationalism, Empiricism, nominalism, and skepticism.
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kant I
analytic/synthetic and Copernican Revolution
Explain necessary/contingent, a priori synthetic truth, innate structures, space/time, and the mind-centered solution.
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- Describe the two philosophic approaches to the question of whether reason can know reality in philosophy prior to Immanuel Kant.
- Explain the distinction between necessary and contingent and how it relates to analytic and synthetic.
- Why did Kant attempt to provide a solution to the question of a priori synthetic truths?
- Explain the steps in Kant’s argument for innate structures of the human mind.
- Why does Kant’s claim of defending objectivity result in subjectivism?
- Explain how Kant attempts to prove the argument for a priori synthesis in the mind.
- Why are space and time so important to Kant’s argument?
- What is the Copernican Revolution at the heart of Kant’s account?
kant II
categories, unknowability, ethics
Connect manifold, synthesis, categories, unity of apperception, noumenal world, duty, and Categorical Imperative.
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- Explain the difference between what Kant calls the sensibility and the understanding.
- Why is it important to Kant to note the flow of experience (the manifold) on the sensory level?
- Given our experience of synthesis of sense experience, what does Kant deduce must be necessary?
- How does Kant explain the necessity of concepts to govern the mind’s activity?
- Explain what Kant means by a “category.”
- What is the Transcendental Unity of Apperception?
- How does Kant think that concepts are used?
- What does Kant believe is inescapable about human concepts?
- How does Kant claim to demonstrate that reality is unknowable as it really is?
- What were the two major approaches to ethics prior to Kant, and why does he reject them?
- Why does Kant eliminate the goal-directedness of conventional ethics?
- How does Kant establish a non-experiential basis for moral obligation?
- What is the Categorical Imperative? How does it connect us to the noumenal world?
hegel
dialectic, Absolute, history, politics
Explain rejection of things-in-themselves, Being/Non-Being, dialectic, coherence truth, historical individuals, and authoritarian implications.
What we call ’existence’ or ’reality’ is merely a product or state of consciousness. In this sense there is no distinction between existence and consciousness according to Hegel. As far as the law of identity is concerned, Hegel explicitly denies it. Everything is itself and non-self, everything is A and non-A at the same time and in the same respect. As long as a philosopher grants some respect to reality and the principles of logic you can follow him no matter what his errors (usually), but once he explicitly rejects reality and the principles of logic the result is inevitably a great deal of gibberish.
- On what grounds does Hegel reject the Kantian idea of things in themselves?
- How does Hegel escape the mistakes he believes that Kant made in reference to reality?
- Why does Hegel’s analysis result in a radical primacy of consciousness?
- Explain how Hegel argues for Idealism in his metaphysics.
- Why is Being the most basic category for Hegel? And how is it the same as Non-Being?
- How does the dialectic process result in a physical world?
- What does Hegel think is the ultimate reconciliation of the Absolute?
- Why does Hegel’s idealism in metaphysics imply an authoritarian politics?
- What are the special individuals who act historically according to Hegel?
- What is the coherence theory of truth? How does it differ from the correspondence theory?
phase problem
Does Kant answer skepticism or relocate it? Present the strongest Hume-Kant-Hegel chain and state where the decisive turn occurs.
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