Overview

Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant is the first history of the concept of facticity. G. Anthony Bruno argues that the coining, transmission, and repurposing of this concept by major thinkers has produced a deep and lasting divide between theorists who have, following Kant, addressed the question of whether a science of intelligibility can tolerate brute facts. In the phenomenological tradition, 'facticity' is associated with the undeducibly brute conditions of intelligibility such as sociality, mortality, and temporality. This suggests an affirmative answer to the post-Kantian question. In contrast, however, the original use of the term in the German idealist tradition was associated with a negative answer: a science of intelligibility must eliminate bruteness to be systematic, as Fichte says, or presuppositionless, as Hegel says. Moreover, eliminating bruteness requires a new logic for deducing conditions of intelligibility from reason's self-contradictions, a dialectical logic Fichte invents and Hegel develops. In response to this, Heidegger came to reject presuppositionlessness in favour of a hermeneutics of facticity. The trajectory from German idealism to phenomenology is accordingly one in which facticity is initially an obstacle to the science of intelligibility, but comes ultimately to characterize the situation in which this science is possible. The untold history of facticity thus contains the deepest parting of the ways after Kant. Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant explores this divisive history, one we inherit in the form of this still-pressing post-Kantian question.

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9780198875673

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Reviews

G. Anthony Bruno's study breaks new ground in showing how the quest for a 'presuppositionless' science of knowledge shaped the main contours of post-Kantian thought into the early twentieth century. The book is a tour de force investigation of the lasting legacy of German Idealism, one that offers original insight into its historical context and enduring philosophical value. * Owen Ware, University of Toronto * Bruno has elegantly demonstrated that debates about the nature of reason from Kant and German Idealism (including Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) to Heidegger (via Husserl, Dilthey, and Lask) turn inter alia on the problem of 'facticity' (the problem of whether reason can be completely self-justifying or rather rests on irreducibly non-rational grounds, such as the contingent ontological constitution of the human being). The scholarship is superior, the interpretations provocative, and the prose eminently readable. Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant provides an original historical genealogy seamlessly connecting German idealism to phenomenology by reference to a fundamental philosophical problem. Historians and philosophers interested in modern philosophy in and after Kant stand to learn a great deal from Bruno's carefully crafted monograph. * Tarek Dika, University of Toronto * Bruno's book sheds new light on the history of post-Kantian thought from Fichte to Heidegger by turning to the under-appreciated problem of facticity: can a philosophical account of the necessary conditions of intelligibility avoid the problem of brute facts? Through the lens of this question, Bruno stages a series of illuminating confrontations between the key figures of German idealism and phenomenology, making a strong case that the fault lines of post-Kantian thought revolve around facticity as a central problem. * Karen Ng, Vanderbilt University *

G. Anthony Bruno's study breaks new ground in showing how the quest for a 'presuppositionless' science of knowledge shaped the main contours of post-Kantian thought into the early twentieth century. The book is a tour de force investigation of the lasting legacy of German Idealism, one that offers original insight into its historical context and enduring philosophical value. * Owen Ware, University of Toronto * Bruno has elegantly demonstrated that debates about the nature of reason from Kant and German Idealism (including Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) to Heidegger (via Husserl, Dilthey, and Lask) turn inter alia on the problem of 'facticity' (the problem of whether reason can be completely self-justifying or rather rests on irreducibly non-rational grounds, such as the contingent ontological constitution of the human being). The scholarship is superior, the interpretations provocative, and the prose eminently readable. Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant provides an original historical genealogy seamlessly connecting German idealism to phenomenology by reference to a fundamental philosophical problem. Historians and philosophers interested in modern philosophy in and after Kant stand to learn a great deal from Bruno's carefully crafted monograph. * Tarek Dika, University of Toronto * Bruno's book sheds new light on the history of post-Kantian thought from Fichte to Heidegger by turning to the under-appreciated problem of facticity: can a philosophical account of the necessary conditions of intelligibility avoid the problem of brute facts? Through the lens of this question, Bruno stages a series of illuminating confrontations between the key figures of German idealism and phenomenology, making a strong case that the fault lines of post Kantian thought revolve around facticity as a central problem. * Karen Ng, Vanderbilt University * G. Anthony Bruno's study breaks new ground in showing how the quest for a 'presuppositionless' science of knowledge shaped the main contours of post-Kantian thought into the early twentieth century. The book is a tour de force investigation of the lasting legacy of German Idealism, one that offers original insight into its historical context and enduring philosophical value. * Owen Ware, University of Toronto *

G. Anthony Bruno's study breaks new ground in showing how the quest for a 'presuppositionless' science of knowledge shaped the main contours of post-Kantian thought into the early twentieth century. The book is a tour de force investigation of the lasting legacy of German Idealism, one that offers original insight into its historical context and enduring philosophical value. * Owen Ware, University of Toronto * Bruno's book sheds new light on the history of post-Kantian thought from Fichte to Heidegger by turning to the under-appreciated problem of facticity: can a philosophical account of the necessary conditions of intelligibility avoid the problem of brute facts? Through the lens of this question, Bruno stages a series of illuminating confrontations between the key figures of German idealism and phenomenology, making a strong case that the fault lines of post Kantian thought revolve around facticity as a central problem. * Karen Ng, Vanderbilt University * G. Anthony Bruno's study breaks new ground in showing how the quest for a 'presuppositionless' science of knowledge shaped the main contours of post-Kantian thought into the early twentieth century. The book is a tour de force investigation of the lasting legacy of German Idealism, one that offers original insight into its historical context and enduring philosophical value. * Owen Ware, University of Toronto * Bruno's book sheds new light on the history of post-Kantian thought from Fichte to Heidegger by turning to the under-appreciated problem of facticity: can a philosophical account of the necessary conditions of intelligibility avoid the problem of brute facts? Through the lens of this question, Bruno stages a series of illuminating confrontations between the key figures of German idealism and phenomenology, making a strong case that the fault lines of post Kantian thought revolve around facticity as a central problem. * Karen Ng, Vanderbilt University *

G. Anthony Bruno's study breaks new ground in showing how the quest for a 'presuppositionless' science of knowledge shaped the main contours of post-Kantian thought into the early twentieth century. The book is a tour de force investigation of the lasting legacy of German Idealism, one that offers original insight into its historical context and enduring philosophical value. * Owen Ware, University of Toronto * Bruno's book sheds new light on the history of post-Kantian thought from Fichte to Heidegger by turning to the under-appreciated problem of facticity: can a philosophical account of the necessary conditions of intelligibility avoid the problem of brute facts? Through the lens of this question, Bruno stages a series of illuminating confrontations between the key figures of German idealism and phenomenology, making a strong case that the fault lines of post Kantian thought revolve around facticity as a central problem. * Karen Ng, Vanderbilt University *

Author Information

G. Anthony Bruno is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London and Co-Director of the London Post-Kantian Seminar. Recently, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Alumni Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin, an Alexander von Humboldt Alumni Fellow at the University of Tübingen, and an Experienced Research Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism at the University of Leipzig. He is the editor of Schelling's Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom: A Critical Guide (forthcoming), co-editor of Transformation and the History of Philosophy, editor of Schelling's Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity, and co-editor of Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries.

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