In this paper, I shed light on Kant’s notion of Erkenntnis or cognition by focusing on texts pertaining to Kant’s thoughts on logic. Although a passage from Kant’s Logik is widely referred to for understanding Kant’s conception of Erkenntnis, this work was not penned by Kant himself but rather compiled by Benjamin Jäsche. So, it is imperative to determine its fidelity to Kant’s thought. I compare the passage with other sources, including Reflexionen and students’ lecture notes. I argue that several (...) of the text’s peculiarities stem from Jäsche rather than Kant, but that nevertheless Jäsche largely got Kant's view right, with two major exceptions. First, Jäsche’s text fails to reproduce Kant’s key thesis that kennen and verstehen are jointly sufficient for Erkenntnis. Second, Jäsche’s text gives the false impression that Kant holds that animals have consciousness. (shrink)

Sartre’s phenomenological view of consciousness gives primacy to the thesis that all consciousness is nonthetically aware of itself, i.e., pre-reflectively aware of itself but not as an object. Few commentators, however, have explained Sartre’s grounds for holding this thesis, despite his view that the thesis’s truth underwrites the certainty of the Cartesian cogito and thereby the method of Sartre’s own phenomenological ontology. I document three lines of support for the thesis, the most promising of which consists in a proof by (...) cases. Namely, Sartre’s texts contain the argument that the existence of nonthetic consciousness is the only satisfactory explanation of the Cartesian cogito’s certainty. The paper concludes with an examination of whether and how nonthetic consciousness can serve as a foundation for Sartre’s method of phenomenological ontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in the sense of greatest epistemological concern for Kant, empirical cognition is “rational sensory discrimination”: the identification or differentiation of sensory objects from each other, occurring through a capacity to become aware of and express judgments. With this account of empirical cognition, I show how the transcendental deduction of the first Critique is most plausibly read as having as its fundamental assumption the thesis that we have empirical cognition, and I provide evidence that Kant (...) understood Hume as granting this assumption. (shrink)

This chapter argues that J. P. Sartre has overlooked two motivations in developing his theory of temporality: first, to found the method of phenomenological ontology; and, second, to show that human freedom, pace I. Kant, must be situated within the empirical world. Sartre argues that consciousness is nothingness’s origin by having the ontological characteristic of being “its own nothingness”. Sartre begins his account by noting that temporality is “an organized structure” such that the three temporal dimensions—past, present, and future—are not (...) externally related but rather internally or synthetically related to one another. Sartre then uses phenomenological description to elucidate the past’s true ontological status. Sartre seeks an account according to which time’s successive moments are not only separable but also unified in some way, i.e. have “a form of synthesis”. Sartre clarifies that it is one and the same phenomenon both for a present to change into the past and for a new present to arise. (shrink)

This paper examines how Sartre’s early phenomenological works were influenced by Emmanuel Levinas’s The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Sartre embraced two key aspects of Levinas’s interpretation of Husserl: 1) that phenomenology is an ontological philosophy whose foundation is the doctrine of intentionality; and, 2) that consciousness’s being consists in intentionality, which entails that consciousness is non-substantial as well as pre-reflectively or non-thetically aware of itself. In addition to adopting these views, Sartre also became gripped by a methodological problem (...) raised by Levinas. Namely, phenomenology reflects on consciousness, yet reflection modifies the consciousness it reflects on. I argue that Sartre responds to this problem by developing two of Levinas’s ideas: that reflection is a motivated act and that reflection must adequately grasp consciousness’s temporality. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s primary epistemological concern in the Critique of Pure Reason’s transcendental deduction is empirical cognition. I show how empirical cognition is best understood as “rational sensory discrimination”: the capacity to discriminate sensory objects through the use of concepts and with a sensitivity to the normativity of reasons. My dissertation focuses on Kant’s starting assumption of the transcendental deduction, which I argue to be the thesis that we have empirical cognition. I then show how Kant’s own subjective deduction (...) fleshes out his conception of empirical cognition and is intertwined with key steps in the transcendental deduction’s arguments that the categories have objective validity and that we have synthetic a priori cognition. (shrink)

Containing all of the key writings leading up to the publication of his Philosophical Essays in 1777, this volume presents complete works by Johann Nicolaus Tetens (1736-1807) in English for the very first time. These important essays focus on method in metaphysics and mathematics, the analysis of language, and various anthropological questions that occupied thinkers of the period. Key features of the volume include: · Accurate, readable translations · Detailed scholarly notes · A substantial introduction situating Tetens's works in historical (...) context · A German-English glossary This collection marks a significant contribution to scholarship on Kant and 18th-century German philosophy. (shrink)

Review of Béatrice Longuenesse, I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.