- https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/staff_profiles/WSU/associate_professor_jennifer_mensch
Jennifer Mensch
Western Sydney University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Intellectual History, Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, History of Science, Eighteenth Century History, Eighteenth-Century literature, and 15 moreSeventeenth Century, German Idealism, English Romanticism, German Studies, German Romanticism, History of Philosophy, History of Natural History, Darwin, Social and Political Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, Medical Ethics, Ecology, History and Philosophy of Biology, Mozart, and History of Race and Ethnicityedit
- Jennifer Mensch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. As a Kant specialist with interdi... moreJennifer Mensch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. As a Kant specialist with interdisciplinary interests in the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Mensch’s research aims to expand the interpretive boundaries that have been long established for the philosophical figures of this period. Her recent book, Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2013), displaces traditional narratives of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy by tracing the decisive role played by eighteenth century embryological research for his theories of mind and cognition. Her current large-scale writing projects include Fractured Enlightenment. Tales of History and Revolution from Kant to Shelley, which works at the intersection of philosophy, science, and literature in describing the rise and subsequent fracturing of genealogical models for understanding historical development in the wake of Buffon’s Natural History, and Bloodlines: Philosophical Anthropology from Kant to Elkin and Coon, which situates Kant against the backdrop of German anthropology in order to show his long, though unrecognized, legacy in the history of anthropology. Before moving to Western Sydney University in 2015, Jennifer Mensch spent twelve years at the Pennsylvania State University where she taught philosophy and the history of science and medicine.edit
Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy, traces the decisive role played by eighteenth century embryological research for Immanuel Kant’s theories of mind and cognition. I begin this book by following the... more
Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy, traces the decisive role played by eighteenth century embryological research for Immanuel Kant’s theories of mind and cognition. I begin this book by following the course of life science debates regarding organic generation in England and France between 1650 and 1750 before turning to a description of their influence in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century. Once this background has been established, the remainder of Kant’s Organicism moves to the influential role played by models of embryological development for Kant’s approach to understanding the cognitive processes responsible for the generation of knowledge, with special attention paid to Kant’s Precritical writings in the 1760s and 1770s. The book closes with a reinterpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason.
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The aim of this volume is to bring together a set of key texts from the eighteenth century life sciences. The grounds for inclusion stem from our sense that there is an argument to be made for connecting two domains of inquiry that have... more
The aim of this volume is to bring together a set of key texts from the eighteenth century life sciences. The grounds for inclusion stem from our sense that there is an argument to be made for connecting two domains of inquiry that have heretofore remained distinct in both their presentation and scholarly analysis: life science debates regarding generation and inheritance on the one hand, and emerging philosophical and anthropological theories regarding both the grounds of racial diversity and the means for its subsequent classification.
The volume has three sections, the first is devoted to selections from life scientists working to create an account of the processes guiding generation and embryogenetic development. Given that at the time there were few ways to definitively prove that babies received contributions from both parents in their creation, mixed-race children became increasingly valuable sources of evidence for those insisting on joint inheritance. This sets up the second section of the volume since one can trace a clear facet of racial biometric science out of this original set of enquiries, however, the bulk of section two is devoted to the many different accounts created at the time to understand and delineate racial differences. The last section is focused on ‘race and empire’ in order to situate the scientific texts of the previous sections in their socio-historical context. By including these pieces we remind readers that scientific curiosity over the nature and origin of racial diversity, for example, did not develop in a vacuum but indeed existed in full knowledge of the exploitation and dispossession of human beings. The ‘materials’ for this research program were in many cases either directly taken from black and brown human beings caught up in Europe’s colonial projects, or reliant upon the data gathered during large-scale expeditions, such as those undertaken by James Cook in the South Pacific during the 1770s, expeditions that were funded in large part by way of profits earned on the sugar and rum produced by plantation slaves. While we lay out the argument for these connections in the Introduction, the value of this volume will be in the curated texts themselves.
The volume has three sections, the first is devoted to selections from life scientists working to create an account of the processes guiding generation and embryogenetic development. Given that at the time there were few ways to definitively prove that babies received contributions from both parents in their creation, mixed-race children became increasingly valuable sources of evidence for those insisting on joint inheritance. This sets up the second section of the volume since one can trace a clear facet of racial biometric science out of this original set of enquiries, however, the bulk of section two is devoted to the many different accounts created at the time to understand and delineate racial differences. The last section is focused on ‘race and empire’ in order to situate the scientific texts of the previous sections in their socio-historical context. By including these pieces we remind readers that scientific curiosity over the nature and origin of racial diversity, for example, did not develop in a vacuum but indeed existed in full knowledge of the exploitation and dispossession of human beings. The ‘materials’ for this research program were in many cases either directly taken from black and brown human beings caught up in Europe’s colonial projects, or reliant upon the data gathered during large-scale expeditions, such as those undertaken by James Cook in the South Pacific during the 1770s, expeditions that were funded in large part by way of profits earned on the sugar and rum produced by plantation slaves. While we lay out the argument for these connections in the Introduction, the value of this volume will be in the curated texts themselves.
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Immanuel Kant’s critical project is thought to have achieved its systematic completion in his third Critique, the Critique of Judgment. In this book Kant investigates two domains of experience: the aesthetic and the teleological. These... more
Immanuel Kant’s critical project is thought to have achieved its systematic completion in his third Critique, the Critique of Judgment. In this book Kant investigates two domains of experience: the aesthetic and the teleological. These experiences are analysed and discussed in two distinct parts of the work: one part is devoted to the beautiful and the sublime, the other is devoted to the natural world. Both parts have had powerful impacts on a variety of fields beyond philosophy proper: art theory, political theory, and conceptions of the natural world have all taken clues from Kant’s Critique of Judgment. However, one of the puzzles of Kant’s discussion—and a puzzle not easily solved—concerns the unity of the book itself. How do the two parts belong together? Can Kant’s analysis of judgment be understood as a unified project in the end? This question takes us to the heart of his analysis of judgment.
One suggestion has been that this unity can be found by focusing on what Kant calls the “Lebensgefühl” or “feeling of life”. Although Kant makes use of this concept at key junctures in the Critique of Judgment, and indeed at points across his corpus, the significant role played by ‘life’ for Kant remains significantly understudied as an area of sustained investigation. This volume contributes to filling that gap, bringing together essays focused on Kant’s conception of life as a throughline for approaching his work, with readings aimed at identifying its connection to Kant’s discussions of the imagination, of our experience of beauty and of the sublime, our approach to the organism, and our understanding of politics and morality. Taken together, these essays serve as an occasion for discovering a keystone concept for understanding the connection and unity of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.
One suggestion has been that this unity can be found by focusing on what Kant calls the “Lebensgefühl” or “feeling of life”. Although Kant makes use of this concept at key junctures in the Critique of Judgment, and indeed at points across his corpus, the significant role played by ‘life’ for Kant remains significantly understudied as an area of sustained investigation. This volume contributes to filling that gap, bringing together essays focused on Kant’s conception of life as a throughline for approaching his work, with readings aimed at identifying its connection to Kant’s discussions of the imagination, of our experience of beauty and of the sublime, our approach to the organism, and our understanding of politics and morality. Taken together, these essays serve as an occasion for discovering a keystone concept for understanding the connection and unity of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.
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Eighteenth-century German writers with broad interests in natural history, and in particular, in the kind of ethnographic reports typically included in travel and expedition narratives, had to be able to access and read the original... more
Eighteenth-century German writers with broad interests in natural history, and in particular, in the kind of ethnographic reports typically included in travel and expedition narratives, had to be able to access and read the original reports or they had to work with translations. The translators of these reports were, moreover, typically forced more than usual into the role of interpreter. This was especially the case when it came to accounts wherein vocabulary did not exist or was at least not settled, and more importantly where scientific understanding was uncertain or altogether lacking, a situation that could only make the creation of semantic categories all the more significant. With this state of affairs in mind, this essay concentrates on Immanuel Kant’s work to develop a specialised racial vocabulary, and does so in a manner that reveals the importance of Buffon’s account of variation as a resource for Kant, even as Kant sought to position the new vocabulary as an improved template for transforming taxonomy or Naturbeschreibung into a genuine historical science or Naturgeschichte.
Research Interests: History of Linguistics, Intellectual History, German Studies, Translation Studies, Languages and Linguistics, and 14 moreHistory of Science, History and Philosophy of Biology, History of Anthropology, Eighteenth Century History, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Enlightenment, Kant's Practical Philosophy, History of Biology, Immanuel Kant, History and Philosophy of the Human Sciences, German Enlightenment, French Enlightenment, and History and Philosophy of Science
It is a remarkable thing to find oneself suddenly surprised by an author after having spent years analysing, interpreting, and teaching their works. And yet, that is precisely the experience of many Kant specialists in recent times, as... more
It is a remarkable thing to find oneself suddenly surprised by an author after having spent years analysing, interpreting, and teaching their works. And yet, that is precisely the experience of many Kant specialists in recent times, as greater attention than ever has been placed on Kant’s discussions of gender and race. Part of the disorientation for Kantians surely comes from the way in which these investigations—oriented as they are by questions of empire as opposed to say, metaphysics—are able to make a body of work that has been long-familiar seem strange and new. It is in this vein that I want to use my discussion here as an opportunity to reconsider one of Kant’s most familiar texts, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in order to focus on the case of moral failure presented by the person who has chosen an easy path in life: one who has ‘seine Talente verrosten ließ’ (4:423; let their talents rust, 75), to use Kant’s phrase.1 With this in focus, I will identify four subsequent counter examples offered up by Kant, each meant to offer specific cases of non-Europeans in a manner that can provide further moral instruction on this point. What this approach should reveal is not only Kant’s unsurprising consistency regarding the need for self-improvement, but also the compatibility he evidently saw between engaging his readers in moral guidance, on the one hand, and identifying non-European others as counterexamples of a morally worthless existence, on the other.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural Studies, German Studies, Maritime History, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 10 moreHistory of Science, Critical Race Theory, Enlightenment, Philosophy Of Race, Immanuel Kant, Moral Philosophy, Social and Political Philosophy, Johann Gottfried Herder, Pacific History, and History of Philosophy
Problematic perceptions about race damage our society. These attitudes can seem impossible to overcome, but philosophers Dr Jennifer Mensch, at Western Sydney University in Australia, and Dr Michael Olson, at Marquette University in the... more
Problematic perceptions about race damage our society. These attitudes can seem impossible to overcome, but philosophers Dr Jennifer Mensch, at Western Sydney University in Australia, and Dr Michael Olson, at Marquette University in the US, beg to differ. They are compiling a collection of 18th-century philosophical and scientific texts that helped shape the way people saw race across the Western world, and were used to justify colonisation. They believe that by exposing these historical roots of racism, opportunities to improve societal attitudes to race will become easier to identify.
This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).
This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).
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When I began to think about a book on Kant and the life sciences, the idea that Kant would ever have been influenced by the ideas coming out of this field seemed impossible to believe. In fact, I spent an entire Summer determined to prove... more
When I began to think about a book on Kant and the life sciences, the idea that Kant would ever have been influenced by the ideas coming out of this field seemed impossible to believe. In fact, I spent an entire Summer determined to prove that my thesis was wrong. The problem was, I kept finding evidence in support of it (fully one third of Kant’s Organicism is devoted to a glut of historical research filling up the endnotes, research stemming, for the most part, from an initial disbelief in my own hypothesis). Most of the scholars who had considered this connection before me had had their training in the history of science. My situation was different, I had been trained in philosophy. I knew my Descartes but I had never read Harvey; I had written on Locke but I had never heard of Ray…
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An article-length summary of the main argument in Kant's Organicism (2013).
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Although scholarly attention has been mostly paid to the many connections existing between Kant and the exact sciences, the landscape of Kant studies has begun to noticeably change during the last decade, with many new pieces devoted to a... more
Although scholarly attention has been mostly paid to the many connections existing between Kant and the exact sciences, the landscape of Kant studies has begun to noticeably change during the last decade, with many new pieces devoted to a consideration of Kant’s relation to the life sciences of his day. It is in this vein, for example, that investigators have begun to discuss the importance of Kant’s essays on race for the development of Anthropology as an emerging field. The bulk of the contributions to this recent trend, however, have focused on Kant’s remarks on organic life in the Critique of Judgment, such that Kant’s “theory of biology” is now seen to be firmly located in that text. Amidst such consolidation, there are a few pieces that have begun to address Kant’s appeal to organic vocabulary within the context of his theory of cognition, though these too remain dominated by the interpretive template set by the third Critique. My own strategy in this essay will be different. Kant did indeed borrow from the life sciences for his model of the mind, but in a manner that would reject a naturalized account. His preference for epigenesis as a theory of organic generation needs to be carefully distinguished, therefore, from the use he would make of it when discussing a metaphysical portrait of reason.
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This essay will lay out the historical case for a broader assessment of Kant’s relationship to Blumenbach by focusing first on Kant’s review of Herder in 1785 as the best lens through which to understand not only their respective theories... more
This essay will lay out the historical case for a broader assessment of Kant’s relationship to Blumenbach by focusing first on Kant’s review of Herder in 1785 as the best lens through which to understand not only their respective theories of generation but indeed the specific motivation leading to Kant’s support for Blumenbach at all. The results of this inquiry will suggest that while Kant might have been interested in gaining the support of the rising star of the Göttingen medical faculty, Blumenbach’s own theories did little to influence Kant’s approach to either generation-theory or race.
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Focusing on Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology, the essay endeavors to address long-standing concerns regarding both the relationship between these empirical investigations and Kant's better known universalism, and more pressingly,... more
Focusing on Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology, the essay endeavors to address long-standing concerns regarding both the relationship between these empirical investigations and Kant's better known universalism, and more pressingly, between Kant's own racism on display in the lectures, and his simultaneous promotion of a universal moral theory that would unhesitatingly condemn such attitudes.
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My discussion in this essay begins with a short rehearsal of Kant’s approach to anthropology and history in order to provide the framework for my subsequent focus on the political commentary that has surrounded the Black Lives Matter... more
My discussion in this essay begins with a short rehearsal of Kant’s approach to anthropology and history in order to provide the framework for my subsequent focus on the political commentary that has surrounded the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement presents the most recent political challenge to white America’s belief in the inevitability of progress and I am interested in the light that might be shed on this challenge when viewed through the lens of Enlightenment conceptions of not just history, but cultural and racial fitness for progressive development. I conclude with suggestions for the direction a new political imaginary might take, one capable of acknowledging the real history of race in America even as it makes room for the still necessary role played by our hope for progress, and the possibility of an expanded moral horizon.
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This paper takes up the possibilities for thinking about human solidarity that can be found in Immanuel Kant’s writings on history. One way of approaching Kant’s philosophy of history is to focus on what would seem to be an antinomy in... more
This paper takes up the possibilities for thinking about human solidarity that can be found in Immanuel Kant’s writings on history. One way of approaching Kant’s philosophy of history is to focus on what would seem to be an antinomy in Kant’s account between the role of nature and the demands of freedom. Whereas nature, according to Kant, ruthlessly drives us into a state of perpetual war until finally, exhausted and bankrupt, we are forced into an international treaty for peace, freedom, and the morality that flows from it, requires that each individual obey the supreme moral principle, namely, that we treat all people as ends in themselves and never merely as means; that we never, in other words, wage war. This antinomy is resolved once we see that, for Kant, a community of moral agents can only arise as a result of a perfect political constitution; a constitution that itself can only arise at the end of a history of war.
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In this essay I lay out the textual materials surrounding the birth of physical anthropology as a racial science in the eighteenth century with a special focus on the development of Kant's own contributions to the new field. Kant’s... more
In this essay I lay out the textual materials surrounding the birth of physical anthropology as a racial science in the eighteenth century with a special focus on the development of Kant's own contributions to the new field. Kant’s contributions to natural history demonstrated his commitment to a physical, mental, and moral hierarchy among the races and I spend some time describing both the advantages he drew from this hierarchy for making sense of the social and political history of inequality between peoples, and the obviously problematic relationship that such views would entail for Kant’s universalism as he began to formulate his ethical program in the 1780s. While there is continued scholarly debate regarding a purported moral “turn” made by Kant once he dropped his commitment to a racial hierarchy in the 1790s, what the narrative as a whole reveals is not only the manner by which questions of racial difference defined physical anthropology from its outset, but the easy and uncomplicated manner by which whole member groups of the population could be excluded from lofty pronouncements regarding the “rights of man”—a fact that was as true for Kant in Königsberg, as it was for Jefferson and Hamilton in Philadelphia.
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In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused... more
In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused significant trouble for Kant in three distinct ways, though in each case the difficulty would turn on Kant's approach to "empirical psychology." The first problem for Kant had to do with refashioning psychology such that empirical psychology could be reassigned to anthropology and rational psychology protected from the spectre of subreption. The second problem, and in many way the larger one for Kant during this time period, followed from Kant's desire to make use of empirical psychology's account of the mental faculties in his own transcendental theory of cognition. This introduced a separate problem for Kant, however, since this was a time during which physiological psychology was on the rise, a psychology that was being promoted by Ernst Platner and his followers, as "anthropology." This left Kant with the unwelcome task of simultaneously distinguishing his own philosophical anthropology from Platner's, and distancing his own transcendental theory of cognition from the likes of Herder and Tetens, given their embrace of the "embodied mind" approach being advanced by the physiological psychologists.
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The investigation that I am going to pursue here is part of a larger effort on my part to understand the relationship between Kant’s so-called “philosophical anthropology” and the development of early German anthropology since it is my... more
The investigation that I am going to pursue here is part of a larger effort on my part to understand the relationship between Kant’s so-called “philosophical anthropology” and the development of early German anthropology since it is my sense that Kant had a determinate, if indirect, effect on the history of that separate field. For now this larger project has three main foci: an account of Kant’s philosophical anthropology in all its parts, an inquiry into Kant’s relationship to the theories engaged by German anthropologists between roughly the 1750s-1790s, and finally, an effort to track the subsequent routes taken by German anthropology in the first half of the 19th-c. In this discussion I am going look at one particular trajectory in anthropological research where we can see Kant’s effect.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, German Studies, Anthropology, Philosophy, Languages and Linguistics, and 12 moreEthnography, Enlightenment, German Idealism, Philosophy of History, Ethnology, Immanuel Kant, Johann G Hamann, History and Philosophy of the Human Sciences, Philosophy of Language (Humanities), Johann Gottfried Herder, Charles Darwin, and Wilhelm von Humboldt
In this paper I trace the manner in which Herder’s philosophy of language grounds his approach to hermeneutical issues regarding history, interpretation, and translation. Herder’s approach to the question of language has been repeatedly... more
In this paper I trace the manner in which Herder’s philosophy of language grounds his approach to hermeneutical issues regarding history, interpretation, and translation. Herder’s approach to the question of language has been repeatedly lauded for its important influence on the later work done by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer, but in this discussion I am going to put him more directly in conversation with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although recent critics have derided Humboldt’s theory as both derivative and wrong, I will argue that we should instead recognize that Humboldt’s philosophy of language represents a significant development of Herder’s thesis. This development is accomplished by way of Humboldt’s application of Kant’s mature theory of reason to a program for comparative linguistics. In Humboldt’s hands, this amounts to a new strain of philosophical anthropology.
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This essay focuses on the attention paid to Prometheus by Goethe and Schlegel. Prometheus serves as an archetypal figure for Goethe, in particular, and as such the Titan can be viewed as a figure whose various appearances represent... more
This essay focuses on the attention paid to Prometheus by Goethe and Schlegel. Prometheus serves as an archetypal figure for Goethe, in particular, and as such the Titan can be viewed as a figure whose various appearances represent genuine metamorphoses or transformations of the archetype in much the same manner that Goethe takes the archetypes of leaf or vertebrae to function in the plant and animal kingdoms. Schlegel’s treatment of Prometheus takes the organic analogy even further. In his fragmentary work Lucinde Schlegel exploits the metaphorical possibilities provided by plant life when thinking about not only the sessile structure of the text as a whole but indeed the internal literary devices capable of simulating the environmental impacts required for the flowering of the plot. The fact that Goethe and Schlegel deliberately leave their discussions in a fragmentary form is discussed in the final section of the essay in a manner that ties the open-ended quality of such productions to Gadamer’s discussion of the Vollzug or performative character of poetry and other works of art.
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Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first... more
Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an ‘intellectual intuition’ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kant's epistemic achievement and what were taken to be the outstanding problems of freedom's relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to ‘intellectual intuition’. Part three begins with Kant's subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goethe's contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself.
This essay traces the central role played by the notion of seeds and germs for understanding the complex metaphysics at work in both Ficino’s reinterpretation of Greek philosophy for a Humanist audience, and in Kant’s own efforts to... more
This essay traces the central role played by the notion of seeds and
germs for understanding the complex metaphysics at work in both
Ficino’s reinterpretation of Greek philosophy for a Humanist
audience, and in Kant’s own efforts to describe the moral shaping
of humankind that he took to be the heart of the Enlightenment
project.
germs for understanding the complex metaphysics at work in both
Ficino’s reinterpretation of Greek philosophy for a Humanist
audience, and in Kant’s own efforts to describe the moral shaping
of humankind that he took to be the heart of the Enlightenment
project.
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John Locke’s theory of classification is a subject that has long received scholarly attention. Little notice has been taken, however, of the problems that were posed for taxonomy by its inability to account for organic processes.... more
John Locke’s theory of classification is a subject that has long received scholarly attention. Little notice has been taken, however, of the problems that were posed for taxonomy by its inability to account for organic processes. Classification, designed originally as an exercise in logic, becomes complicated once it turns to organic life and the aims of taxonomy become entangled with processes of generation, variation, and inheritance. Locke’s experience with organisms—experience garnered through his work in botany and medicine—suggested to him both the dynamism of nature and the artificiality of any a priori system of classification. This reinforced Locke’s critique of classification in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and by tracing its influence it is possible to approach Locke’s nominalism from a fresh perspective.
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This paper examines one of the central complaints regarding Locke’s Essay, namely, its supposed incoherence. The question is whether Locke can successfully maintain a materialistic conception of matter, while advancing a theory of... more
This paper examines one of the central complaints regarding Locke’s Essay, namely, its supposed incoherence. The question is whether Locke can successfully maintain a materialistic conception of matter, while advancing a theory of knowledge that will constrain the possibilities for a cognitive access to matter from the start. In approaching this question I concentrate on Locke’s account of unity. While material unity can be described in relation to Locke’s account of substance, real essence, and nominal essence, a separate discussion will be called for altogether in the case of organic unity. In closing, I turn to Kant as a model for locating Locke’s purported incoherence, suggesting that his “skeptical idealism” yields the same epistemic advantages as those won by Kant’s “empirical realism.”
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This essay examines the impact of the Göttingen review on Kant. Taking up each of the charges laid down in this first, critical review of the Critique of Pure Reason, I will argue that these criticisms stem largely from Kant's account in... more
This essay examines the impact of the Göttingen review on Kant. Taking up each of the charges laid down in this first, critical review of the Critique of Pure Reason, I will argue that these criticisms stem largely from Kant's account in his discussion of the Paralogisms, before going on to defend Kant from the claim that he altered his stance on realism—in reaction to the review—as the only hope for distinguishing transcendental idealism from the immaterialism of George Berkeley.
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Berkeley and Kant are known for having developed philosophical critiques of materialism, critiques leading them to propose instead an epistemology based on the coherence of our mental representations. For all that the two had in common,... more
Berkeley and Kant are known for having developed philosophical critiques of materialism, critiques leading them to propose instead an epistemology based on the coherence of our mental representations. For all that the two had in common, however, Kant was adamant in distinguishing his own " empirical realism " from the immaterialist consequences entailed by Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas. Kant focused his most explicit criticisms on Berkeley's account of space, and commentators have for the most part decided that Kant either misunderstood or was simply unfamiliar with the Bishop's actual position. Rather than demonstrate that Kant understood Berkeley perfectly well—an argument that has already been forcefully made by Colin Turbayne—I want to take a different tack altogether. For it is by paying attention to Berkeley's actual account of space, an account oriented by his rejection of spatial " geometers " like Descartes, and spatial " absolutists " like Newton, that we discover an account of embodied cognition, of spatial distance and size that can only be known by way of the body's motion and touch. Perhaps even more striking, I will want to suggest, is the manner in which Kant's approach to the problem of incongruent counterparts will equally need to rely on a proprioceptive cognition, one requiring a different geometry of position altogether. My discussion proceeds in three stages, with stage one focused on Kant's efforts to distinguish his philosophical project from Berkeley's own idealist system, and stages two and three describing the manner in which their approach to spatial orientation both challenges and extends the traditional narrative of their differences as laid out in stage one.
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Kant’s 1772 letter to Marcus Herz is celebrated for its marking the “critical turn” in Kant’s thought. It is here that Kant famously asks the question concerning the relationship between concepts and objects, telling his former pupil that... more
Kant’s 1772 letter to Marcus Herz is celebrated for its marking the “critical turn” in Kant’s thought. It is here that Kant famously asks the question concerning the relationship between concepts and objects, telling his former pupil that the answer to this question “constitutes the key to the whole secret of hitherto still obscure metaphysics.” But while the letter to Herz is clearly itself a key to what Kant takes to be the ‘secret of metaphysics,’ the questions Kant formulates in this letter pose interpretive problems which need to be addressed. My own interpretation will be driven by three concerns: first, how was Kant initially led to the question concerning concepts and objects as a problem to be resolved; second, is it in fact the objects with which Kant is concerned in this question, or, as some have argued, is he concerned instead to show the possibility of concepts that are a priori; and third, what might we guess Kant’s solution, his ‘key to the whole secret of metaphysics,’ to have been? Only once these questions are answered, I will argue, can we have a secure sense that Kant’s “critical turn” of 1772 was indeed just that, and that the letter to Herz can be rightly seen as setting much of the agenda for the objective portion of the deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason to come.
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This essay discusses Kant’s account of truth, arguing that he offers us a weak coherence theory: weak for his insistence on an independent, sensuous content for intuition, coherentist for the transcendental apparatus supporting... more
This essay discusses Kant’s account of truth, arguing that he offers us a weak coherence theory: weak for his insistence on an independent, sensuous content for intuition, coherentist for the transcendental apparatus supporting experience. While Kant is free to use the language of correspondence within experience, “empirical truth” will always be limited by the formative requirements set by “transcendental truth.” The difficulty, for Kant, is the role played by sensuous content since the sameness of this content in intersubjective experience seems to point outside the conditions of synthesis to a transcendentally real object. While the consequence of this would seem to leave Kant in a contradiction--denying transcendental realism at the same time that he must affirm it--we must read Kant’s insistence on a merely negative use of noumena as evidence that he adopts the role of the skeptic as a means for maintaining his epistemic goals.
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By focusing on the account of synthesis in Kant’s “Transcendental Deduction” we are able to see a greater degree of compatibility between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason than is sometimes thought. The so-called A-Deduction... more
By focusing on the account of synthesis in Kant’s “Transcendental Deduction” we are able to see a greater degree of compatibility between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason than is sometimes thought. The so-called A-Deduction from 1781 emphasizes an account of empirical synthesis even as it also includes a more properly transcendental account of the synthetic unity required for cognition. The second edition Deduction from 1787 simply focuses on this feature of synthesis to the exclusion of the empirical. The result: an account of synthesis with the A-edition starting “bottom up” from sense and the B-edition working “top-down” from thought.
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Pericles (495-429BC) was a statesman who dominated the politics of Athens for thirty years. This period—the so-called Age of Pericles—was a time during which the city’s cultural life flowered, its democracy strengthened, its empire grew,... more
Pericles (495-429BC) was a statesman who dominated the politics of Athens for thirty years. This period—the so-called Age of Pericles—was a time during which the city’s cultural life flowered, its democracy strengthened, its empire grew, and the Acropolis was adorned with the Parthenon. In 431 BC Pericles gave a funeral oration for the Athenians who had died in Athens’s ongoing war with Sparta, a speech that has been celebrated since then as one of the greatest tributes of all time. This semester we will start with a historical overview of the life and times of Pericles before moving on to study literary, philosophical, and historical works by Pericles’s contemporaries and successors, Sophocles, Xenophon, and Plato.
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Although Medieval philosophy is traditionally centered upon the many important works produced by Christian writers during the mid to late Middle Ages—Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham among others—the acknowledged starting point for... more
Although Medieval philosophy is traditionally centered upon the many important works produced by Christian writers during the mid to late Middle Ages—Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham among others—the acknowledged starting point for the Medieval philosophical tradition is Neoplatonism, and indeed Thomas Aquinas’ own great fame lay precisely in his reconciliation of Neoplatonism and Aristotle when it came to establishing Christian doctrine for the church. There were, however, other strands of Medieval philosophy, ones leading more directly from the Neoplatonists—Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus—and focusing on the more mystical elements of Christian spirituality. For these writers, the starting point of their reflections lay in Plato’s dialogues and in the Timaeus in particular. It is this trajectory which we will be tracing this semester, as we aim to chart the course of Greek thinking within the Medieval philosophical tradition.
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Philosophy is sometimes described as an “ongoing conversation” and this is certainly the case when it comes to the epistemology and metaphysics associated with 17th- and 18th-century Modern Philosophy. These were centuries of startling... more
Philosophy is sometimes described as an “ongoing conversation” and this is certainly the case when it comes to the epistemology and metaphysics associated with 17th- and 18th-century Modern Philosophy. These were centuries of startling scientific discoveries and momentous social and political changes, and our authors were responding one and all to the atmosphere around them. At the same time, they were raising questions of enduring philosophical value: what does it mean to know, what is the object of knowledge, and above all, can it be known with any certainty. Trying to answer these questions, our authors appealed to investigations in the sciences when thinking, for example, about the connection between mind and body (Descartes), the relationship between language and things (Locke), the nature of substances (Leibniz), and the superiority of touch over vision (Berkeley). All that said, they were, however, increasingly aware of the inherent limits of scientific investigation (Hume), limits that would ultimately require a radical reformulation of what it means to be an object of knowledge at all (Kant).
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This year marks Kant's 300th 'birthday' with events planned by various Kant societies and organizations all over the world. Why all the fuss? Because Kant is considered by many to be the most important philosopher at work during the... more
This year marks Kant's 300th 'birthday' with events planned by various Kant societies and organizations all over the world. Why all the fuss? Because Kant is considered by many to be the most important philosopher at work during the European Enlightenment. Kant worked across numerous areas: epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, political theory, geography, pedagogy, cosmology, logic, ethnography: if you can think of it, he probably wrote and taught about it! Kant had theories about the winds, he wrote about the volcanoes on the moon, and he even published guidelines for hosting the perfect dinner party. Kant spent most of his life in the bustling seaport town of Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad, Russia) on the far eastern edge of the kingdom of Prussia, teaching at the university, chatting with locals at the lunch houses where he took his daily meals, and enjoying weekends with the families of his closest friends, especially Green and Motherby, two merchants from Hull, England. This context explains perhaps the way in which Kant managed to be 'worldly' without venturing much out into the world himself; for the city and its people were located at a site of intersection between three large geopolitical forces: the German-speaking empire of King Frederick of Prussia, an expansionist Russia under the empress Catherine the Great, and of course, England under King George. These were busy political years for England in particular, with lots of maneuvering, and major losses (the American colonies) and gains (the new settlements in Botany Bay). With all this in mind, the focus for this semester will be on Kant's social and political writings, including consideration of his plans for perpetual peace.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, German Studies, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Enlightenment, and 8 morePhilosophy of History, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, Moral Philosophy, History Of Modern Philosophy, Social and Political Philosophy, Modern Political Philosophy, and History of Philosophy
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What does it mean to govern? From the perspective of many social and political theorists, the place to start answering this question is with the creation of a set of rules that will form the basis of a government. That said, it is the... more
What does it mean to govern? From the perspective of many social and political theorists, the place to start answering this question is with the creation of a set of rules that will form the basis of a government. That said, it is the subsidiary questions—who will come up with these rules, how will the rules function over time as national circumstances change, who will enforce the rules, what can be done when there is disagreement about the rightfulness of the rules—that require the most careful attention, since the answers to these questions will produce a constitution, a congressional and judiciary system, and the bureaucratic infrastructure that will be necessary for the implementation of a society’s governing rules. And there’s more to governing than just this, for a nation also has to be prepared for the possibility of war, perhaps even revolution. It has to think about the political tensions involved in the need for the government to control its citizenry—to literally govern them—and the need to protect their liberty at the same time. A nation has to have an expansive moral horizon, that is, an ability to expand its conception of liberty in a manner that will allow it to become increasingly inclusive. And government, in response to this kind of progress in a nation’s moral sentiments, has to be able to respond: to end the slave trade, to enfranchise women, and most pressingly today, to protect the environment under the shelter of law. This course will consider these issues by tracing a course through key texts in the history of social and political discourse by Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Mill, and Arendt.
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Writers have long been attracted to the possibilities for thinking about contemporary political problems and debates in the format of a literary production. While this was often enough pragmatic—think only of the wisdom in moving court... more
Writers have long been attracted to the possibilities for thinking about contemporary political problems and debates in the format of a literary production. While this was often enough pragmatic—think only of the wisdom in moving court intrigues to distant Rome—it also and importantly allowed authors to imagine different patterns of social life and interaction. In an age of empire and colonial expansion, this kind of opportunity for an artistic ‘encounter’ with non-Europeans would be taken up repeatedly by writers across the continent, with popular stories being reworked into plays, operas, and ballets, and with characters, names, and plotlines reappearing across languages, often enough with varied endings and a changed moral ‘takeaway’ depending upon time and place.
The focus for our discussions this semester will be on these sorts of literary projects appearing across the long eighteenth century, with special attention paid to the work done by female authors. Such works have had particularly interesting reception histories. Typically derided at publication as low-quality products by an inherently inferior class of writer (i.e., women), the pieces would in later years be lauded as texts produced by early feminists. In this vein, non-white protagonists were seen to be vehicles for veiled critiques of domestic politics, and a call thereby for the emancipation of women. And indeed, we will spend time in the middle of the semester looking at some of the more famous direct calls for women’s rights put forward by Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Amalia Holst. That said, feminists have in recent years pushed back against the lionization of many of these literary works, condemning them for ethnocentric bias if not outright racism. We will take a look at all of this throughout the semester, with each of the texts carefully paired with critical contemporary analyses alongside supporting background literature that can orient us as to the social and political context of both the author, and the site, upon which the action will unfold.
The focus for our discussions this semester will be on these sorts of literary projects appearing across the long eighteenth century, with special attention paid to the work done by female authors. Such works have had particularly interesting reception histories. Typically derided at publication as low-quality products by an inherently inferior class of writer (i.e., women), the pieces would in later years be lauded as texts produced by early feminists. In this vein, non-white protagonists were seen to be vehicles for veiled critiques of domestic politics, and a call thereby for the emancipation of women. And indeed, we will spend time in the middle of the semester looking at some of the more famous direct calls for women’s rights put forward by Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Amalia Holst. That said, feminists have in recent years pushed back against the lionization of many of these literary works, condemning them for ethnocentric bias if not outright racism. We will take a look at all of this throughout the semester, with each of the texts carefully paired with critical contemporary analyses alongside supporting background literature that can orient us as to the social and political context of both the author, and the site, upon which the action will unfold.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, German Studies, Comparative Literature, English Literature, and 13 moreFrench Revolution, Enlightenment, History of Slavery, Heinrich von Kleist, Haitian Revolution, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Eighteenth-Century French Studies, Feminism, Philosophy Of Race, Intellectual and cultural history, Mary Wollstonecraft, History of Philosophy, and Olympe De Gouges
This seminar will be looking at debates regarding the origin of language and how these later intersected with theories being put forward by anthropologists, on the one hand, and comparative linguistics, on the other.
Research Interests: German Studies, Anthropology, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language, Enlightenment, and 13 moreGerman Idealism, Immanuel Kant, Johann G Hamann, Philosophy of Language (Humanities), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, Jean Jaques Rousseau, German Enlightenment, French Enlightenment, DIDEROT, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Etienne Bonnot, abbé de Condillac, and Friedrich Schlegel
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Research Interests:
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This summary is for students learning the terms and vocabulary connected to the study of race and racism for the first time.
Research Interests: History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Anthropology, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 15 moreSocial Sciences, Postcolonial Studies, Race and Racism, History of Science, Political Science, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Colonialism, Islamic Studies, Philosophy Of Race, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Islamophobia, Ethnicity, Race, and Critical Philosophy of Race
If the top news story of 2020 was the global pandemic, then coming into second place might well be the widespread protests led by Black Lives Matter activists in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. These demands for racial justice reached... more
If the top news story of 2020 was the global pandemic, then coming into second place might well be the widespread protests led by Black Lives Matter activists in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. These demands for racial justice reached an international audience, inspiring both broad support and calls for attention to the similar problems being faced by disenfranchised minorities the world over. On 6 January, 2021 armed insurrectionists stormed the US capitol building, forcing members of congress to run and hide in fear for their lives. Widely available social media videos of the scenes inside the capitol showed mobs of Trump supporters declaring over and over: “We are not criminals, we are patriots!” “We are real Americans!” “Real Americans, right here, this is our house!” The aim of this unit will be to understand the long historical arc that has preceded and connects these two events. Starting with time spent on Social Contract theories of the state, we will be able to chart a path from early notions of property, inequality, slavery, and race in order to see how so-called ‘authentic’ national identities and their associated rights and privileges gradually disentangled themselves from requirements of class or wealth until the only criterion that mattered was membership in the white race. This discussion will set the stage for an enriched examination of Australian notions of identity and belonging, and the manner in which these notions function in very different registers depending on whether one is a white Australian, a non-white immigrant, a non-Christian, or a ‘traditional custodian of the land.’
Research Interests: History, American History, Philosophy, Social Contract Theory, Abraham Lincoln, and 15 morePolitical Science, Eighteenth Century History, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, History of Slavery, Colonialism, French colonialism, Philosophy Of Race, Immanuel Kant, Social and Political Philosophy, Frederick Douglass, Jean Jaques Rousseau, Decolonial Thought, Race, and American Revolutionary War
This course will concentrate on the history and philosophy of chemistry and natural history as narratives especially suited to demonstrating the intertwining of scientific, philosophical, and religious discourse from the Renaissance to... more
This course will concentrate on the history and philosophy of chemistry and natural history as narratives especially suited to demonstrating the intertwining of scientific, philosophical, and religious discourse from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. The final portion of the course concentrates on the special challenges posed by Darwin's theory of natural selection for all three types of discourse.
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Unit Description: This semester the focus of this unit will be on the history, philosophy, and politics of race and racism. Academic race discourse sits at the intersection of overlapping research programs taking place in a number of... more
Unit Description: This semester the focus of this unit will be on the history, philosophy, and politics of race and racism. Academic race discourse sits at the intersection of overlapping research programs taking place in a number of fields including cultural anthropology, the history of science, sociology, political theory, communication studies, and critical philosophy of race. While the questions being posed by these fields generally start with an analysis of the concept of race-and its various histories as a biological, political, and/or cultural construction-the subsequent investigations cover a wide territory such that analyses of socioeconomic forces, power and oppression in the State, the history and politics of slavery, immigration and asylum, incarceration, and institutional and structural racism, sit alongside separate investigations in black feminism, political phenomenology, standpoint epistemology, and philosophical historiography, to name only a few.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Political Philosophy, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, and 14 moreRace and Racism, Political Science, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Whiteness Studies, Philosophy Of Race, Social History, Islamophobia, Intellectual and cultural history, History of Race and Ethnicity, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, and Critical Philosophy of Race
This semester the focus of this unit will be on the history, philosophy, and politics of race and racism. Academic race discourse sits at the intersection of overlapping research programs taking place in a number of fields including... more
This semester the focus of this unit will be on the history, philosophy, and politics of race and racism. Academic race discourse sits at the intersection of overlapping research programs taking place in a number of fields including cultural anthropology, the history of science, sociology, political theory, communication studies, and critical philosophy of race. While the questions being posed by these fields generally start with an analysis of the concept of race-and its various histories as a biological, political, and/or cultural construction-the subsequent investigations cover a wide territory such that analyses of socioeconomic forces, power and oppression in the State, the history and politics of slavery, immigration and asylum, incarceration, and institutional and structural racism, sit alongside separate investigations in black feminism, political phenomenology, standpoint epistemology, and philosophical historiography, to name only a few.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 7 moreRace and Ethnicity, Social Justice, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Race and ethnicity (Anthropology), History of Race and Ethnicity, Racial Justice, and Critical Philosophy of Race
The manner in which a society understands and treats health and illness reveals not only the state of that society's knowledge, it reflects its values, ideals, governing assumptions, and social hierarchies. This course serves as an... more
The manner in which a society understands and treats health and illness reveals not only the state of that society's knowledge, it reflects its values, ideals, governing assumptions, and social hierarchies. This course serves as an introduction to the history of medicine in the Western world viewed from this broad perspective. We will examine major developments in the understanding of health, illness, medical treatment, and medical practice from ancient times to the present. Relying on both primary and secondary sources, the course will explore such themes as the changing status of medical practitioners, the experience of patients in different historical settings, artistic depictions of illness and healing, and the increasingly prominent role of medicine in public policy in order to better understand the links between medicine and its social, cultural, intellectual, and political contexts.
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This course has a fairly simple goal: by the end of the semester you will have a sense for the various historical developments in embryological theory, classification, natural history, and geology which led up to Darwin's famous Origin of... more
This course has a fairly simple goal: by the end of the semester you will have a sense for the various historical developments in embryological theory, classification, natural history, and geology which led up to Darwin's famous Origin of Species, and you will have a thorough knowledge of that text itself. The semester will end with discussions of religious controversies and the scientific legacy engendered by Darwin's theory of evolution.
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Jennifer Mensch (Western Sydney University) and Michael Olson (Marquette University) are running a three-day seminar at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, 5–8 October 2023. Participants List and Webpage:... more
Jennifer Mensch (Western Sydney University) and Michael Olson (Marquette University) are running a three-day seminar at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, 5–8 October 2023.
Participants List and Webpage: https://www.michael-olson.com/gsaseminar/
Summary: As even a quick glance at the list of “Neue Literatur zu Georg Forster” included at the end of each installment of the Georg-Forster-Studien will attest, scholarly work on Georg and his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, is being produced at a steady clip. The enduring fame of the Forsters begins with their time spent as naturalists on James Cook’s second major expedition to the Pacific in search of a southern continent (1772-75). The Forsters each published important accounts of the voyage, and continued for decades afterward as key disseminators—via translations, commentaries, articles, and books—of travel literature for German readers. For today’s historians of philosophy, however, Georg Forster is best-known for his dispute with Kant on race. But the Forsters’ ethnographic observations and natural historical writings were more broadly influential than this one exchange suggests, and their philosophical reception history remains significantly understudied overall. This seminar aims to begin recovering some of their impact on the philosophical anthropologies produced by Herder, Kant, and Meiners.
Participants List and Webpage: https://www.michael-olson.com/gsaseminar/
Summary: As even a quick glance at the list of “Neue Literatur zu Georg Forster” included at the end of each installment of the Georg-Forster-Studien will attest, scholarly work on Georg and his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, is being produced at a steady clip. The enduring fame of the Forsters begins with their time spent as naturalists on James Cook’s second major expedition to the Pacific in search of a southern continent (1772-75). The Forsters each published important accounts of the voyage, and continued for decades afterward as key disseminators—via translations, commentaries, articles, and books—of travel literature for German readers. For today’s historians of philosophy, however, Georg Forster is best-known for his dispute with Kant on race. But the Forsters’ ethnographic observations and natural historical writings were more broadly influential than this one exchange suggests, and their philosophical reception history remains significantly understudied overall. This seminar aims to begin recovering some of their impact on the philosophical anthropologies produced by Herder, Kant, and Meiners.