Abstract
Having “taxonomized” various positions related to the visionary critique of metaphysics in previous chapters, in this chapter I initiate a second level of the project, which I exemplify in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics with respect to the philosophical programs of Kant and Husserl. In each case, a particular feature of Kant’s or Husserl’s philosophy is “dislocated” and emphasized at the expense of others, much as I showed in Chap. 3 how practical rationality is dislocated and emphasized at the expense of theoretical rationality in the philosophies of Kant and Peirce. This chapter serves as an extended exercise in illustrating how visionary critique can be “lifted” to a second level through selective emphasis.
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Notes
- 1.
Though, for Kant, not the only bedrock: the status of intuition and understanding are equiprimordial for his enterprise.
- 2.
Hilbert’s philosophical orientation, and even more so that of his close collaborator Bernays, were inspired by to some extent by the neo-Friesian-Kantianism of Nelson, but that is not my concern here. See Mancosu (1998, 170–175). Mancosu concludes that Hilbert and Bernays should not be seen as “standing in the Kantian tradition” (Mancosu 1998, 175).
- 3.
One thinks, before, of the esoteric philosophy of Plato , of Spinoza’s geometrization , and of Leibniz’s mathesis universalis , to name but three earlier instances.
- 4.
Because Eley’s work is not available in translation , I have quoted from it more amply than has elsewhere been my practice in this work.
- 5.
I have consistently translated ‘Sinn’ as ‘sense’ and ‘Bedeutung’ as ‘significance’. I have translated ‘bedeuten’ as ‘to stand for’ rather than ‘to signify’ in order to avoid any confusion with semiotic accounts.
- 6.
In the same way that Frege’s emphasis on judgeability leads to his distinction between sense and significance, we might see Longuenesse’s reading of Kant in terms of the capacity to judge as proto-Husserlian. Arguably, too, it is just this power which found its most overt (but not its most sophisticated or penetrating) exemplification in the power of the productive imagination in the A edition of the Critique.
- 7.
- 8.
Marion refers to Church (1932).
- 9.
I have used Marion’s expression for the rule.
- 10.
The problem is especially in Marion’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later position as operational. What is potentially most interesting about Marion’s interpretation emerges in its conjunction with issues concerning the interpretation of second-order quantifiers; see Marion (1998, 48ff.). Here Marion, building on work of Hintikka and others, makes inroads into what I view as a very prospective approach to Wittgenstein’s philosophical relevance. In particular, it provides a fruitful external context for Wittgenstein’s debates with Ramsey.
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Bassler, O.B. (2018). Spotlight on Mathematics: Dislocations of Kant and Husserl. In: Kant, Shelley and the Visionary Critique of Metaphysics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77291-2_4
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