Category Archives: Kant and/or Hume

Kant, Hegel, and how to be enlightened citizens

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Huenemann

[Reflections on reading Robert B. Brandom, “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism”, in his book Tales of the Mighty Dead (Harvard UP, 2002).] Both Kant and Hegel were writing in a time of thorough-going Enlightenment. For the most part they … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical episodes, Kant and/or Hume, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff | 2 Comments

What we know when we know particulars

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Huenemann

Some reflections on the early sections of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: If we try to think about what is most obvious in our experience, and what the most basic elements of knowledge are, we turn to sense perception. For it … Continue reading →

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Meet the idealists

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Huenemann

[excerpt from World as Idea] We have already met one idealist – Kant, who claimed that by the point at which we are conscious of experience, it has been shaped into a certain order in just the way a lecturer … Continue reading →

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Hegelian vs. Kuhnian idealism

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Huenemann

[from an essay in progress on idealism] What we have seen so far is that there is no observation of the world, and no understanding of it, without a theory. We have also met several idealists who believe, in varying … Continue reading →

Posted in Kant and/or Hume | 4 Comments

Krug’s pen

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Huenemann

Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770-1842) was the philosopher who succeeded Kant in the chair for logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Just before taking on that role, he had thrown down a challenge for Schelling’s idealist philosophy: could Schelling, … Continue reading →

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Idealism and contingency

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Huenemann

(Reading Terry Pinkard’s marvelous German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism) It may be that the tenability of idealism comes down to the question of history. A resolute idealist discovers that the most fundamental framework of existence is expressed as … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Kant and/or Hume, Metaphysical musings | 1 Comment

Natural and agreeable fools

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Huenemann

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escaped shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries … Continue reading →

Posted in Kant and/or Hume, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff | 6 Comments

Experiencing the moment

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Huenemann

David Hume, that most sly student of human experience, declared he couldn’t find himself anywhere. As he gazed inward, he came across sensations, feelings, passions, and moods, but he had never come across aself in the way one might come … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Kant and/or Hume | 2 Comments

Learning from Hume; or, Hume and Particle Physics

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Huenemann

Philosophy students are typically taught the wrong lesson from the great Scottish skeptic David Hume. The standard story goes something like this. British empiricists like Locke and Berkeley wanted to connect everything we know to what we experience through the … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Historical episodes, Kant and/or Hume | 1 Comment

On appreciating systems

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Huenemann

How wonderful it would be to be a systematic thinker! One marvels at the Aristotles, the Aquinases, the Descarteses, the Kants, and the Hegels and the Marxes (well, the Karl Marxes anyway), the Freuds – those who know how to … Continue reading →

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David Hume – the “Assassin’s Assessor”

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Huenemann

Edinburgh’s “Poker Club” began meeting in 1762. Each week, fifty or so gentlemen would congregate in a tavern for a long afternoon followed by dinner and argue events of the day ranging from politics to morals and culture – matters … Continue reading →

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Sloterdijk, Hume, and a healthy skepticism

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Huenemann

As I work through the recent works of Peter Sloterdijk (Spheres I: Bubbles, Spheres II: Globes), I am chiefly amazed and enthused by his ability to find deep symbolic and mythic connections throughout the history of philosophical thought, and to … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Kant and/or Hume | 2 Comments

More musings on Humean causality

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Huenemann

We expect that causal laws will be the same across all experience. Hume famously claims that this expectation is grounded neither in pure reason nor in experience. Not pure reason: for one can posit a cause and deny the effect … Continue reading →

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Hume and the expedition to Canada

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Huenemann

In 1746, Hume returned to London after touring Europe as tutor and caretaker of the mad Marquess of Annendale. He was not sure what was next in his life. He was already 35 and somewhat ashamed of not having yet … Continue reading →

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Hume falls into a bog, promises his way out

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Huenemann

At the beginning of book three of his Treatise on Human Nature, David Hume argues that justice is something we invent. In a word, justice is unnatural. It isn’t something we just see in the world, since we only ever … Continue reading →

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