“Aufklärung” means “enlightenment,” as in The Enlightenment. But what is enlightenment? Here’s the core of what Immanuel Kant had to say about this fundamental cognitive, moral, and sociopolitical concept in his seminal 1784 essay, “What is Enlightenment?”: Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his own self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use … [continue reading]

Previous Installments #3: Context. #2: In an Instant. #1: Introduction, and On Sources. Section IV: Movement To think is to move.[i] Sometimes, this means moving around a given work or topic; sometimes it amounts to following a thread of thought in a sequence of steps, however staggering or hesitant they might be. Moving mentally involves … [continue reading]

You can also read or download a .pdf version of this essay HERE. 1. What do Thoreau’s Walden (written during the mid-1840s, published in 1854), Schopenhauer’s “On University Philosophy” (1851), Dewey’s “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy” (1917) and Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920/1948), Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918/1922), Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences … [continue reading]

[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. … [continue reading]

Previous Installments #2: In an Instant. #1: Introduction, and On Sources. Section III: Context If a series of insights creates a context, what is it—and what does it do for philosophy? The notion of context is one of the strangest concepts we have created. It is a waste basket of all those things that are … [continue reading]

You can download a .pdf version of this essay HERE. [F]or … non-Kantian philosophers, there are no persistent problems — save perhaps the existence of Kantians.[i] 1. Kant in the Twentieth Century More than a decade ago, I wrote this: Alfred North Whitehead … quotably wrote in 1929 that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical … [continue reading]

Borderless Philosophy‘s Editorial Team, whose members currently are: Dennis Earl (Coastal Carolina Univ., USA) https://www.coastal.edu/academics/facultyprofiles/humanities/philosophyandreligiousstudies/dennisearl/, Robert Hanna (Independent, USA) https://colorado.academia.edu/RobertHanna, Michelle Maiese (Emmanuel College, USA) http://www.emmanuel.edu/academics/our-faculty/michelle-maiese.html, Pablo Muchnik (Emerson College, USA) https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/pablo-muchnik, Otto Paans (Independent, Netherlands) https://tu-berlin.academia.edu/OttoPaans, and Hugh Reginald (Independent, Canada) (Editorial Team Leader), is pleased to announce a First Call for Submissions for … [continue reading]

Author’s Note: The following essay has a little back-story. Eight months ago, I was invited by the journal Idealistic Studies to do a review of Sebastian Rödl’s 2018 book, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, with a due date for submitting my review of 25 July 2019. As I worked my way through the book, I decided it … [continue reading]