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The Ground of the World: A Marginal Problem in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Matějčková, Tereza ; Karásek, Jindřich (advisor) ; Gutschmidt, Holger (referee) ; Kuneš, Jan (referee)
Is there a world in G. W. F. Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit? This is the central question my doctoral thesis aims to address. Both scholars and philosophers alike tend to consider Hegel a thinker who, having formulated the philosophy of absolute spirit, has surrendered the world. Despite this suspicion, the consciousness finds itself at nearly every level of Hegel's oeuvre in a place called "the world". At every stage, the world changes its shape - along with the consciousness - but its function seems to remain the same. The world is a conception of totality; thus, the world is an object of the consciousness that, by definition, surpasses the consciousness and thus reveals its limits. This moment of a "worldly" estrangement is especially pronounced as the consciousness sets itself into action. One of the most recurring motives in Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit is the inability of the consciousness to realize its intentions as planned. The consciousness fails to recognize itself in the deed, and thus devises strategies to distance itself from the deed. In my interpretation, this testifies that the deed is the door to the world, and obviously this world is not one that would be in the power of the consciousness. Instead, it is the consciousness that needs to subordinate itself to the deed...
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Hegel's Critique of Ideology
Korda, Tomáš ; Karásek, Jindřich (advisor) ; Znoj, Milan (referee)
This work explores the possibilities of Hegel's critique of liberalisms and Marxism. Firstly, I define the "Return to Hegel", or more precisely, the way how we should conceive of this return to Hegel in order to really return to him. In second part, this formal definition of return is given its content, i.e. Hegel's concept of state. This concept had been denied by the doctrine of liberalism as well as of Marxism and this denial, as I try to demonstrate, can be considered a theoretical cause of totalitarianism. Or, in other words, totalitarianism can be speculatively comprehended as the manifestation of this denial. Thus as long as we live in a post-totalitarian era, Hegel is our contemporary. The last part consists of an explication of Hegel's critique of understanding (Verstand). The main reason for this explication is that liberalism and Marxism are 'understanding'- theories of state, and because of that, they were not able to conceive of the state as an object of Reason (Vernunft) and therefore, they failed to recognize the state as rational in itself. The theoretical result of this analysis is that Hegel's critique of understanding can be grasped, so to speak, as a 'critique of ideology avant la lettre', if the concept of ideology is adequately redefined.
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Self-Consciousness and Self-Knowledge. A Study on the Role of the Subject and the Awareness of Thought in Descartes' Philosophy
Kollert, Lukáš ; Karásek, Jindřich (advisor) ; Palkoska, Jan (referee)
The thesis aims at examining Descartes's so called cogito from a wider perspective, especially as regards to the role in the development of Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641) and in the context of other relevant texts. Being an attempt to give a broad account of Descartes's "first cognition" the study deals not only with the cogito itself, e.g. with its logical structure, but also with other key Cartesian doctrines, so that we can understand the cogito as an integral part of Descartes's philosophy. The thesis inquires for this reason into the question of meditator's identity, the methodological skepticism, the question whether logical principles are called into question in the First meditation, the problem of the Cartesian circle, the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, the doctrine of innate ideas and finally, the question how to explain, according to Descartes, the awareness of our thoughts. Sometimes the considerations become rather systematic and go beyond a mere exegesis of Descartes's philosophy, especially when they concern the problem with the presence of ego in cogito and the explanation of our self-consciousness. There are three competing approaches to the second issue mentioned that are introduced and assessed in the last chapter. I have chosen this way of...
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Modern Theories of Consciousness and the Elusiveness of Subjectivity
Košová, Michaela ; Hill, James (advisor) ; Karásek, Jindřich (referee)
This diploma thesis is concerned with the question of the right conceptual approach towards consciousness. It opens up with the thesis that the crucial characteristic of consciousness - its subjective aspect - is profoundly elusive. To understand the nature of this elusiveness we get a loose inspiration from Karl Jaspers (of the continental tradition) and his idea of "subject-object dichotomy" whose main point is a realisation that the conscious subject is in principle unobjectifiable and can never be properly grasped by objectifying thinking. This main idea is then applied to various modern theories of consciousness (coming from the analytical tradition) in order to explore and demonstrate to what extend each of the theories misses or acknowledges the specific irreducibility of consciousness to objectively describable phenomena. Thus we observe that J. J. C. Smart omits subjectivity from his identity theory altogether since he understands reality as objectively graspable in all its aspects. Colin McGinn comes with an interesting explanation of our problems with grasping consciousness as part of the physical world and asserts that we are "cognitively closed" with respect to the solution of the mind-body problem. However, he concludes that a possible solution delivered in objectifying terms exists...
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The Analysis of Personal Identity in Hume's Treatise of Human Nature
Sýkorová, Tereza ; Palkoska, Jan (advisor) ; Karásek, Jindřich (referee)
This bachelor's thesis puts forward an interpretation of David Hume's analysis of personal identity in his Treatise of Human Nature, as well as an interpretation of his subsequent doubts expressed in the Appendix. In the first part of the thesis an interpretation of Hume's theory of mind as a "bundle of perceptions", as well as an interpretation of his explanation of our propension to regard this bundle as a synchronically and diachronically identical entity is presented, after an introduction describing the philosophical discourse around personal identity, Hume's conception of philosophy and his revisionist ontology. In the second part an interpretation of the passage from the Appendix is presented, in which Hume expresses dissatisfaction with his account of personal identity. In this thesis I hold the view that the main source of Hume's dissatisfaction is the fact that the idea of the mind as a collection of all present perceptions interconnected through causal relations, which Hume held for a true idea and which serves as an implied foundation of the whole first book of the Treatise, turned out to be fictitious, just as all the other metaphysical ideas. His explanation of our propension to regard the collection of perceptions as a synchronically and diachronically identical entity, which is...
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The State and Religion in Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Navrátilová, Olga ; Karfíková, Lenka (advisor) ; Landa, Ivan (referee) ; Karásek, Jindřich (referee)
The aim of this dissertation, The State and Religion in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, is to explore the issue of the modern secular state and its relation to religion in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. Before turning attention to this thinker two other concepts of the relationship between the state and religion, the one of Thomas Hobbes and the one of John Locke, will be introduced briefly. These two predecessors of Hegel in the modern political thought both share the same empirical presumptions; they nevertheless come to wholly different conclusions concerning the possibility of religious tolerance and the relationship of the state and the church. Hegel's political philosophy represents an alternative point of view on the nature of the secular state and its relation to religion to both of these exponents of the social contract theory of state. The question of the relationship between the state and religion, which will the focus in the main part of this work, will be discussed with regard to Hegel's concept of freedom. It is this very concept, which makes it possible to show both the mutual interconnection as well as the necessity of the differentiation between these two manifestations of the spirit, i.e. religion and the state, and to explain the tension, which remains present between them. This tension,...
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Kant and Husserl on Transcendental Character of Experience
Trnka, Jakub ; Moural, Josef (advisor) ; Karásek, Jindřich (referee) ; Novotný, Karel (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to examine both Husserl's and Kant's transcendentalism in a way that would avoid the tendency to put the main accent on Husserl, which is an approach common to almost all literature dealing with this topic so far. Since it is for the most part Husserl's own critique of Kant that inspires such ongoing underestimation of Kant in comparison to Husserl, this work focuss on the question of the legitimacy of this critique. The core of the thesis is an original interpretation of Kant's transcendental philosophy which, instead of taking for granted the phenomenological point of view, attempts to describe Kant's philosophical enterprise from its own perspective and in its own right. In its second part, the thesis provides a brief description of how Husserl, starting initially from the position of descriptive psychology, arrives at a transcendental dimension. When so put side by side, it becomes evident that the two transcendental positions are in fact very different. Husserl's critique of Kant then appears as unjustified, even though quite understandable as an attempt to draw back from certain immature motives of his own philosophy.
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Reality as Self, Thing and Their Relation
Jahoda, Lukáš ; Hill, James (advisor) ; Karásek, Jindřich (referee)
The meaning of this work is to grasp the development of early-modern philosophy into "modern" philosophy on the basis of the subject-object issue, which is considered and demonstrated as ontologically entirely fundamental. The expression of this development is illustrated for reason of deeper clarification of the sense and meaning of modern philosophy. The ontology of early-modern philosophy is essentially determined through the categories of subject and object, self and thing. The most universal nature of this ontology is based on object of reality fixation which is self, thing, or both. The notions of self and thing are in this work introduced in their totality through the extreme positions of two early-modern philosophers. The demonstration of the extreme philosophy of the subject is Berkeley. The demonstration of the extreme philosophy of the object is Spinoza. On the basis of explication of their ontology is explicated the universal nature of early-modern ontology. The end of early-modern ontology and its transition into "modern" ontology happens through the reconstruction of the subject-object figure. The author of this reconstruction is Hegel. Reality is now placed neither into the subject neither into the object, but into their mutual relation.
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Religion and Morality: God in Kant's practical philosophy
Bizubová, Barbora ; Kouba, Pavel (advisor) ; Karásek, Jindřich (referee)
I follow two basic lines in the inquired works: I find out, first, how Kant operates with the concept of God and how can this concept be understood in context of his philosophy as a whole. Second, as a consequence of it I consider the relation between human morality (or categorical imperative) and faith (religion). The postulate of the existence of God that Kant puts forward in the Critique of Practical Reason gives rise to the question: How can the idea of God be compatible with the autonomous morality, which is in fact the main pillar of Kant's ethics (formulated in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Moral)? The Religon within the limits of reason alone answers some of the basic questions considering the concept of God and religous belief. Thanks to these answers it can be shown how the autonomy of the will is compatible with the religion. Key words Human morality, philosophy of religion, God, the categorical imperative, the highest Good
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