I’ve diligently read through F.H. Jacobi’s 1785 Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Conversations with Lessing and Mendelssohn and K.L. Reinhold’s 1789 The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge over the last two days. From here I’m going to proceed to G.E. Schulze’s 1790 Aenesidemus essay, which harshly challenged the claims of Kantian-Reinholdian philosophy from the perspective of Humean skepticism. After that I can finally advance into Fichte’s and Maimon’s contributions to the fate of the Critical philosophy in the 1790’s.
Nothing really new from me today. But you can expect something along these lines in the next couple days. I’m quite confident that this study I’m making will prepare me well for an inquiry into François Laruelle’s notion of “the One.†Perhaps a comment on the new Speculative Heresy blog is in the works.
In the meantime, however, I’ve received the latest revision of my paper on Spinoza and Leibniz from Boston University’s Arché magazine for undergraduate philosophy. This piece will appear in the forthcoming issue. Check out the current articles on their site, however; they have an interview with Jaako Hintikka!
That’s an interesting trajectory in terms of getting things together – I’m currently rereading Henrich’s Between Kant and Hegel that came out in a paperback – have you seen that book? If not, it’s a great overview of “German idealism” in a very readable and yet very thought-provoking way…
Mikhail,
Funny you should mention that! I just finished Chapter (Lecture) 14 in that book, on Fichte’s 1794-1795 Wissenschaftslehre. I’ve been reading it alongside the translated texts it discusses. Di Giovanni’s and Harris’ translations in the (similarly titled) Between Kant and Hegel are excellent sources. Henrich is a genius – truly one of the greats. If I might ask, what are your general philosophical interests? Or more broadly, what are intellectual interests in general?
That’s a difficult question – in professional terms I am mainly concerned with figures like Descartes and Kant, the latter’s theory of cosmopolitan right and the project of perpetual peace (thus, of course, connected to “Kantians” like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel). Personally, however, it’s all over the place, but mainly Derrida, some contemporary Russian philosophy, Greek tragedy and etc etc – this question is sort of like: What’s your favorite band? It depends. How about yourself?
Cool. All those things you’ve mentioned are the objects of my interest as well (save Derrida, perhaps, though I’m interested in responding to his positions). I’ve written a piece on Greek tragedy (well, Schelling’s theory of tragedy), and am interested in Russian philosophy. I studied Russian history and language at the Smolnyi Institut (Lenin’s famous headquarters) in St. Petersburg in Fall 2006, and must say I am enthralled by Russian culture and history. I just posted a piece (work-in-progress) I wrote on Russian Symbolist criticism at the turn of the century. Is this a period you’re familiar with? You could probably help me a good deal with these topics. It’s exerpted from a larger paper I am working on regarding the literary form of the manifesto as it pertained to aesthetic movements alongside political movements in the Russian Silver Age.
Off the top of my head, have you read Mikhail Epstein’s Russian Postmodernism? He has some stuff on manifestos in their, including his own, he’s at Emory these days. I’m not sure I’d be able to “help a good deal” but I would certainly be attuned to the similar conversations – my main interest in Russian thought is people like Losev or Averintsev (Ðверинцев), do you read Russian fairly well?
Hey Ross,
Sorry I haven’t conversed with a great intellectual mind like yourself in so long. I wanted to let you know that I put up a translation of Laruelle’s essay on Kant and finitude on the blog. I just finished it about an hour ago, and I figured you’d be one of the main people who might get a kick out of it! Let me know what you think.
Talk to you soon,
Taylor