The goal of our research is to analyze Natorp’s redefinition of the distinction between intuitions and concepts in relation to his conception of the method of philosophy. We will exhibit the... Show moreThe goal of our research is to analyze Natorp’s redefinition of the distinction between intuitions and concepts in relation to his conception of the method of philosophy. We will exhibit the connection between the way in which Natorp redefines the Kantian dichotomy and his conception of the method of philosophy. We will investigate how Natorp introduces his position in dialogue with Kant’s position and with contemporary approaches to the problem, psychologism and logicism. We will argue that the question of how a cognition may refer to the object requires rethinking the method of philosophy. It will be shown that the Kantian question of how thinking can have reference to objects was badly posed. The question is how the understanding can be the source of objectivity and not how it relates to the objects. We will study the arguments that led Natorp to argue that the object is the result of a construction of the understanding The hypothesis of this investigation is that Natorp’s redefinition of the distinction between intuitions and concepts is based on a new conception of the philosophical method. Show less
Shaping Idealisms consists of eleven articles published earlier and three unpublished articles, a general introduction and a conclusion. The articles are mostly about Middle English romances and... Show moreShaping Idealisms consists of eleven articles published earlier and three unpublished articles, a general introduction and a conclusion. The articles are mostly about Middle English romances and nineteenth- and twentieth-century romance-related texts. The general theme is the tension between conventional hegemonic idealism and embedded criticism of that. The approach is an application of modern critical theories to medieval texts and modern related texts in order to analyse their subtextual premisses preliminary to other types of analysis. The texts have been treated as autonomous for the occasion. The main themes are: the difference between romance and allegory (symbolism); __dialogic texts__ and the agendas of clerkly and minstrel authors (formalism); linear, cyclic and concentric narrative structures (structuralism); characters as __actants__, and the symbolism of settings (narratology); and __diff_rance__, and 'the other' as antitype (poststructuralism). For the nineteenth-century texts the emphasis lies on medieval stories in new cultural contexts and on the perspective of hindsight (Tennyson, William Morris); for the twentieth-century texts on fantasy and the development of romance in modern times (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lodge). Show less
