Dusing, Klaus. Subjektivitat und Freiheit: untersuchungen zum Idealismus von Kant bis Hegel.
Pozzo, Riccardo
DUSING, Klaus. Subjektivitat und Freiheit: Untersuchungen zum
Idealismus von Kant bis Hegel. Spekulation und Erfahrung, series II,
vol. 47. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2002. 321 pp.
Cloth, 50.00 [euro]--This volume contains nine essays published between
1980 and 1997 by Klaus Dusing, the director of Cologne's
Husserl-Archiv. It is divided in four parts: (1) theoretical philosophy
in transcendental idealism; (2) theory of subjectivity and metaphysics
in speculative idealism; (3) ethics and theory of freedom; and (4)
idealistic aesthetics. It is, however, focused in its entirety on the
notion of subjectivity from Kant to Heidegger. Philosophical discussions
about subjectivity or self-consciousness are enjoying a renewed success,
as Dusing notes in his introductory essay on the notion of subjectivity
in classical and contemporary German philosophy (p. 7-32). But this
comes after a long period of dearth, during which it was mainstream to
decompose the unity of the self-consciousness into a complex of
conscious or preconscious lived experiences (p. 7). Dusing does not
question the nature of the brain; his wish is to take a stance on what
separates consciousness from self-consciousness or spirit, which English
speakers might want to think of also in terms of mind (p. 11-12).
Obviously, Kant and Hegel come handy for such an endeavor. In fact, the
basis of all contemporary theories of self-consciousness and
subjectivity is provided by Kant's theories of apperception and
imagination. Kant does not conceive of thinking as an anonymous process.
He insists on the "I think," namely, on the unity of
self-consciousness (p. 21). Kant did not, however, specify how is it
possible for logical forms and categories to think through this "I
think," which is their constitutive center of origin (p. 22). In
other words, how can both pure logic and the theory of pure subjectivity
claim to be founding elements, if they cannot be opened up by thought
itself? The young Fichte and the young Schelling based their
philosophical attempts on an interpretation of the theory of
subjectivity in terms of transcendental idealism, which, however, leaves
unexplained how one should provide a scientific treatment for
transcendental idealism that implies those determinations and laws of
pure logic that transcendental idealism cannot do without.
It was Hegel who gave the most satisfying answer. While writing his
logic in terms of a theory of pure subjectivity, Hegel followed a
completely new strain. He shows (1) that philosophy is about the gradual
constitution (and restitution) of pure subjectivity, so that (2) the
whole deduction of the categories ends up by being nothing else but the
self-deployment of pure thought of itself in its determinations (pp.
23). The first part of the volume includes papers on Kant's theory
of time (pp. 35-88), on Kant's theory of imagination (pp. 89-110),
and on Kant and Heidegger on the circle of self-consciousness (pp.
111-40); the second part contains papers on constitution and structure
of the identity of the ego (p. 143-80), on Hegel's critique of
Kant's theory of apperception (pp. 143-80), and on negative
theology in Schelling and Hegel (pp. 181-207); the third part includes
papers on spontaneity and freedom in Kant (pp. 211-35), Hegel on
Plato's Republic and Laws (pp. 236-50); the fourth part has papers
on Schelling's aesthetics of genius (pp. 253-74), and on tragedy in
Holderlin and Hegel (pp. 275-321). Dusing thus provides a very welcome
integration and some afterthoughts to his milestone book on the role of
subjectivity in Hegel's logic (see Das Problem der Subjektivitat in
Hegels Logik: Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche
Untersuchungen zum Prinzip des Idealismus und der Dialektik, third
edition [Bonn: Bouvier, 1995]).--Riccardo Pozzo, University of Verona.
