Markus Gabriel - Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism

Transcendental Ontology

Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy

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Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy is a major monograph series from Bloomsbury. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across the whole field of philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research.

Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion, Aaron Preston

Augustine and Roman Virtue, Brian Harding

The Challenge of Relativism, Patrick Phillips

Demands of Taste in Kants Aesthetics, Brent Kalar

Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, Justin Skirry

Descartes Theory of Ideas, David Clemenson

Duns Scotus and the Problem of Universals, Todd Bates

Freedom and Nature in Schellings Philosophy of Art, Devin Zane Shaw

Hegels Philosophy of Language, Jim Vernon

Hegels Philosophy of Right, David James

Hegels Theory of Recognition, Sybol S. C. Anderson

The History of Intentionality, Ryan Hickerson

Kantian Deeds, Henrik Jker Bjerre

Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory, Alison Assiter

Kierkegaards Analysis of Radical Evil, David A. Roberts

Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy, H. O. Mounce

Nietzsche and the Greeks, Dale Wilkerson

Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Delbert Reed

Philosophy of Miracles, David Corner

Platonism, Music and the Listeners Share, Christopher Norris

Poppers Theory of Science, Carlos Garcia

Postanalytic and Metacontinental, edited by James Williams, Jack Reynolds, James Chase, and Ed Mares

Rationality and Feminist Philosophy, Deborah K. Heikes

Re-thinking the Cogito, Christopher Norris

Role of God in Spinozas Metaphysics, Sherry Deveaux

Rousseau and Radical Democracy, Kevin Inston

Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, James Delaney

Rousseaus Theory of Freedom, Matthew Simpson

Spinoza and the Stoics, Firmin DeBrabander

Spinozas Radical Cartesian Mind, Tammy Nyden-Bullock

St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War, John Mark Mattox

Transcendental Ontology

Essays in German Idealism

Markus Gabriel

Bloomsbury Academic
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Markus Gabriel, 2011

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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-1629-1
PB: 978-0-5670-5780-8
ePUB: 978-1-4411-0823-4
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Contents

Acknowledgments

This book contains a variety of essays on German or post-Kantian idealism. Earlier versions of some of these essays have been published in German. I would like to thank Tom Krell for his help with the translation of large parts of these original essays into English, and Julian Ernst, Jens Rometsch, and Francey Russell for their critical comments on the translated essays, which led me to significantly change and unify them into a book. I would also like to thank Matt Congdon for his help with editing the manuscript and his critical comments. In addition to this, I thank all participants in the First Annual International Summer School in German Philosophy that was held on the topic of Transcendental Ontology in Bonn in June 2010. Particular thanks go to G. Anthony Bruno, Jon Burmeister, Karen Ng, Andreja Novakovic, Sebastian Ostritsch, Daniel Smyth, Clayton Shoppa, and Sebastian Stein for discussions during their stay in Germany. As always, I am deeply indebted to Wolfram Hogrebe, discussions with whom have consistently inspired me over the last ten years.

Introduction: Transcendental Ontology in Context

According to a widespread standard picture, modern philosophy is defined by an alienation of thought from being. While ancient metaphysics set out to grasp being as such, modern philosophy instead humbly investigates our access to being. In modernity, being turns into the external world, made up of objects suitable for an investigation more geometrico. Mind (thought) and world (being) come to be opposed as a result of a general (methodical) skepticism. Given that from this skeptical vantage point our access to the world appears such that it potentially distances us from what there is (being), it is at least prudent to secure the access to what there is prior to the somewhat nave attempt to grasp being. Modern philosophy thus seems to be defined as epistemology, which replaces ontology as prima philosophia.

To a certain extent, this picture corresponds to the current state of the art in analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy still talks about mind and world as if there were an epistemic realm of minds on the one hand, and on the other, an ontological realm of things/facts, defined primarily through its opposition to mind as mind-independent reality. Despite various attempts to overcome this Cartesian dualism, analytic philosophy (in its narrow academic sense) has never dared to question its notion of the world. Of course, in particular the Harvard school (Quine, Goodman, and Putnam)and to some degree also Davidsonhave undermined the methodological Cartesianism of analytic philosophy in such a way that one has referred to them as post-analytic philosophers. However, as Rorty correctly pointed out, they nevertheless remain within the framework of modern philosophy as epistemology, investigating the nature of the conceptual structure of our access to what there is.

Continental philosophy, on the other hand (a label even fuzzier than that of analytic philosophy), and in particular some of the most prominent developments in twentieth and twenty-first century French and German philosophy, can be seen as a rediscovery of being. This is obvious if we look at phenomenologys attempt to overcome the implicit Cartesianism of modern epistemology. In this sense, Heidegger has argued against Husserls methodological solipsism in favor of a notion of Being as the temporality of Daseins constitutive relationship with its own finitude. This led him to a new attempt to rethink the concept of the world both in Being and Time and in other writings. Most recently, Alain Badiou has developed his own ontology on the basis of a reconsideration of the relation between Being and the necessarily nonexistent whole, to name but one example.