(Philosophics, 2022)
In “The Philosophy of Limits and Life-Shaping Philosophy,” Robert Hanna argues that, bracketting the issue of transcendental idealism, Kant’s 18th century philosophy of limits can be smoothly exported to our contemporary 21st century philosophical situation. Considered superficially, one might think that this exploration is essentially negative and skeptical. But on the contrary, upon a closer examination, we can clearly see that although the investigation proceeds initially via skepticism, its upshot is essentially positive and anti-skeptical. In other words, it’s only by means of healthy, sane skeptical method, when taken together with Socrates’s Delphic-Oracle-inspired thesis that the ultimate aim of philosophy is to “know thyself,” that authentic human knowledge can be finally achieved. This leads directly to what Hanna calls life-shaping philosophy, which says that (i) philosophers should critically and reflectively shape human thinking about the world, so that (ii) people, not only individually but also social-institutionally, can freely shape and change their own lives for the better or even the best, and then finally (iii) all of them, philosophers and non-philosophers alike, can act freely together in order to change the world for the better or even the best.
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