The LPKS Work-In-Progress (WIP) Sessions
The London Post-Kantian Seminar will host a monthly work-in-progress seminar for graduate students to present their work. Any philosophy graduate student is welcome to attend and present. Seminars will provide a forum for feedback and support, creating a space for students from around London to connect. Seminars will rotate through philosophy departments across London on the last Thursday of each month at 5:30pm. Each 2-hr session will start with a 45-min. presentation. Snacks and drinks provided. Students interested in presenting should send a short abstract to [email protected].
Next seminar: 27 Feb 2020, KCL (Philosophy Building, room 508)
John-Baptiste Oduor (Essex), "Schelling’s Resolution of the Conflict Between Freedom and Reason"
Abstract: The principle of sufficient reason, and the metaphysical rationalism which accompanies a thoroughgoing commitment to it, have received much interest in recent years. Essentially the principle states that for each thing (object, state of affairs etc) that exists, there must be an explanation for its existence. Intuitively the rationalist doctrine, which seems to rely only on the childlike assumption that things must have a why, appears relatively uncontroversial. What has made the principle controversial is that it has often been argued that a thoroughgoing commitment to it ought to lead to necessitarianism (Della Rocca 2010; Dasgupta 2016). Necessitarianism is the view that truths about the world are necessarily true. Understandably, Kantian defenders of libertarian conceptions of freedom have found the implications of necessitarianism dangerous and have tried to fashion arguments against them. This has produced a rich literature in which metaphysical problems, often treated by Kantians as a relic of pre-Critical modern philosophy, have once again taken their pride and place as important philosophical concerns. What has been absent from these debates has been a discussion of the striking historical parallels with German Idealist attempts to defend freedom against the threat of metaphysical rationalism. The German Idealists, much like contemporary defenders of freedom, were preoccupied with making sense of the tension between the rational need to understand the world and our practical commitment to our own freedom. The aim of my paper is to correct this historical oversight by looking at an early essay by F.W.J Schelling, his ‘Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism’. What I aim to show is that the young Schelling presents an innovative solution to the contemporary conflict between rationalism and freedom. Unlike the contemporary protagonists in the debate, Schelling does not try to come down decisively on the side of freedom or rationalism. Instead, Schelling attempts to occupy a meta-standpoint from which we can see why the conflict arises in the first place.
The London Post-Kantian Seminar will host a monthly work-in-progress seminar for graduate students to present their work. Any philosophy graduate student is welcome to attend and present. Seminars will provide a forum for feedback and support, creating a space for students from around London to connect. Seminars will rotate through philosophy departments across London on the last Thursday of each month at 5:30pm. Each 2-hr session will start with a 45-min. presentation. Snacks and drinks provided. Students interested in presenting should send a short abstract to [email protected].
Next seminar: 27 Feb 2020, KCL (Philosophy Building, room 508)
John-Baptiste Oduor (Essex), "Schelling’s Resolution of the Conflict Between Freedom and Reason"
Abstract: The principle of sufficient reason, and the metaphysical rationalism which accompanies a thoroughgoing commitment to it, have received much interest in recent years. Essentially the principle states that for each thing (object, state of affairs etc) that exists, there must be an explanation for its existence. Intuitively the rationalist doctrine, which seems to rely only on the childlike assumption that things must have a why, appears relatively uncontroversial. What has made the principle controversial is that it has often been argued that a thoroughgoing commitment to it ought to lead to necessitarianism (Della Rocca 2010; Dasgupta 2016). Necessitarianism is the view that truths about the world are necessarily true. Understandably, Kantian defenders of libertarian conceptions of freedom have found the implications of necessitarianism dangerous and have tried to fashion arguments against them. This has produced a rich literature in which metaphysical problems, often treated by Kantians as a relic of pre-Critical modern philosophy, have once again taken their pride and place as important philosophical concerns. What has been absent from these debates has been a discussion of the striking historical parallels with German Idealist attempts to defend freedom against the threat of metaphysical rationalism. The German Idealists, much like contemporary defenders of freedom, were preoccupied with making sense of the tension between the rational need to understand the world and our practical commitment to our own freedom. The aim of my paper is to correct this historical oversight by looking at an early essay by F.W.J Schelling, his ‘Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism’. What I aim to show is that the young Schelling presents an innovative solution to the contemporary conflict between rationalism and freedom. Unlike the contemporary protagonists in the debate, Schelling does not try to come down decisively on the side of freedom or rationalism. Instead, Schelling attempts to occupy a meta-standpoint from which we can see why the conflict arises in the first place.