In "Being after Rousseau, " Richard L. Velkley presents Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the founder of a modern European tradition of reflection on the relation of philosophy to culture--a reflection that calls both into question. Tracing this tradition from Rousseau to Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Martin Heidegger, Velkley shows late modern philosophy as a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resolve the dichotomies between nature and society, culture and civilization, and philosophy and society that Rousseau brought to the fore.
The Rousseauian tradition begins, for Velkley, with Rousseau's criticism of modern political philosophy. Although the German Idealists such as Schelling accepted much of Rousseau's critique, they believed, unlike Rousseau, that human wholeness could be attained at the level of society and history. Heidegger and Nietzsche questioned this claim, but followed both Rousseau and the Idealists in their vision of the philosopher-poet striving to recover an original wholeness that the history of reason has distorted.

In the Western tradition, freedom and the human person have been at the center of philosophical, theological, moral, and political debates since the origins of this tradition. Although contemporary discourse betrays the multiplicity of these roots, the necessary historical perspective for evaluating them is almost always lacking, even in scholarly studies. The terms ""freedom"" and ""person"" carry such overwhelming force in the modern world that the critical distance required for grasping what is at stake in using them is extremely hard to gain. The present collection seeks to contribute toward finding that distance by making the tradition of thought more a living reality and not an object of arid analyses. Unlike most collections the present one transcends disciplinary boundaries, as it acknowledges the interconnectedness of philosophical, theological, and political arguments on these themes. The contributors are prominent authorities in particular historical periods or in figures in Western thought, and they treat approaches to freedom and the human person in ancient Greek, biblical, medieval and modern sources, although the major emphasis is on the thought of leading philosophers (Plato, Boethius, Aquinas, Ockham, Machiavelli, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, et al.). Their essays bring forward profound contrasts in how freedom and personhood have been grounded and characterized, notably the contrasts between groundings in natural reason and in supernatural revelation, between premodern teleological thinking and modern thinking on self-sovereignty without teleology, and within modern thought between positions favoring individual autonomy and others securing freedom and its exercise in communal or traditional life. Several of the papers shed light on the relations of freedom and personhood to the human powers of speech, thought, and judgment. The contributors to the volume are Seth Benardete, Michael Gillespie, Leon Kass, Robert B. Pippin, Robert Rethy, John M. Rist, Brian J. Shanley, O. P., Susan Meld Shell, Robert Sokolowski, Eleonore Stump, Nathan Tarcov, and Michael P. Zuckert (with Jesse Covington and James Thompson).

Kant's Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764 1765 (a set of fragments written in the margins of his copy of the Observations) document a crucial turning point in his life and thought. Both reveal the growing importance for him of ethics, anthropology and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, reveals a revolution in Kant's thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who 'turned him around' by disclosing to Kant the idea of a 'state of freedom' (modelled on the state of nature) as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the categorical imperative. This collection of essays by leading Kant scholars illuminates the many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history and the 'rights of man'."

Kant's Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764 1765 (a set of fragments written in the margins of his copy of the Observations) document a crucial turning point in his life and thought. Both reveal the growing importance for him of ethics, anthropology and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, reveals a revolution in Kant's thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who 'turned him around' by disclosing to Kant the idea of a 'state of freedom' (modelled on the state of nature) as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the categorical imperative. This collection of essays by leading Kant scholars illuminates the many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history and the 'rights of man'.

Kant holds a key position in the history of modern philosophy as the last great figure to belong fully to both the Anglo-American analytic tradition and the Continental tradition. As the world's foremost scholar of Kant and German Idealism, Dieter Henrich combines an encyclopedic knowledge of Kant's texts with an equally profound understanding of the philosophers of preceding and succeeding centuries. In this collection comprising four of his most influential essays, Henrich proves himself unique in the conjunction of philosophical acumen, insight, and originality that he brings to Kant interpretation. Henrich's distinctive contribution has been to break through the entrenched stereotypes of the ontological and neo-Kantian schools of Kant interpretation in order to place Kant's major ideas in their historical and developmental context, demonstrating their enduring philosophical significance. Henrich has shown how Kant's attempt to overcome the dichotomy between rationalism and moral-sense philosophy led to a lifelong struggle to establish the unity of theoretical and practical reason and the inseparability of the motivational force of the principle of ethics from its function as a principle for ethical judgment. But Henrich has also shown how Kant's project of unification contained fundamental tensions that called forth the projects of such post-Kantians as Schiller, Fichte, and Hegel, which explored new approaches within the Kantian framework. The heart of Henrich's interpretation of Kant, the essays in this book present a persuasive picture of the development of Kant's moral philosophy and give an account of the argumentative strategies determining all the aspects of Kant'sphilosophy. They reflect Henrich's general interest in the unity of reason as well as his special interest in self-consciousness as both a key concept of modern philosophy and the key to the highly disputed interpretation of Kant's transcendental deduction of categories.

I hoped to use these letters to make a book, in which they would retain their character as individual utterances, although they would become parts of a larger whole."" So writes Clovis Mendling, professor of history at a Southern university, bequeathing his letters as an unfinished project to a friend shortly before he mysteriously disappears. Much is at stake in these letters for Mendling, as they reflect on a personal crisis in which he discovers philosophical, political, musical, and literary significance. By making an epistolary novel out of his letters he hopes to prove to himself that he is truly a living human and not a mechanical simulation. At the same time, his moral and intellectual world unravels as he questions the tenets of Enlightenment thought, especially Freemasonry, his scholarly focus. Through these accounts of his travels in China and Europe, a balletic inspiration in the classroom, a spectral vision on the streets of New Orleans, and insights drawn from opera, drama, and film, the reader learns how Mendling overcomes the quandary of whether he is human, but finally succumbs to a deeper challenge to his ordered existence: the pull of eros. Although moved by the music of Mozart's Sarastro, teacher of self-mastery and inner harmony through love, a bewitched and confused Mendling plunges into the mind's netherworld.

Among modern philosophers, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) has few rivals for his influence over the development of contemporary philosophy as a whole. While the issue of language has become a key fulcrum of continental philosophy since the twentieth century, Kant has been overlooked as a thinker whose breadth of insight has helped to spearhead this advance.

The Linguistic Dimension of Kant's Thought remedies this historical gap by gathering new essays by distinguished Kant scholars. The chapters examine the many ways that Kant's philosophy addresses the nature of language. Although language as a formal structure of thought and expression has always been part of the philosophical tradition, the "linguistic dimension" of these essays speaks to language more broadly as a practice including communication, exchange, and dialogue.