Objectivity in Question: Classical German Philosophy and the Contemporary Debate
The project sets to investigate the notion and understanding of objectivity in view of the inevitably situated standpoint of human cognition.
Our main question is: is it possible to develop a philosophical conception of reality that acknowledges the reality-shaping activity of (knowing) subjects, without reducing reality to a mere subjective construct? Can a dimension of genuine resistance and alterity of objects be thought and conceptualised?
Contemporary debates in the post-human and feminist theory have highlighted that such a notion of objectivity is needed to avoid the violent superimposition of anthropocentric and culturally dominant frameworks on empirical and socio-political reality, which block an appreciation of its complexity.
Similar questions defined the tradition of post-Kantian philosophy, which tried to overcome both traditional realist understandings of objectivity as merely "mind-independent" and "internalist" or "relativist" accounts of objectivity as a mere construct of human conceptual structures.
The project aims to build a much-needed bridge among these two traditions: while oftentimes German Idealism is taken in the Post-human and Feminist debate as the epitome of anthropocentrism, their encounter might provide groundbreaking insight on how to advance the debate in both fields.
We take a combined historical and systematic approach. On the one hand, contemporary issues raised by post-human and feminist theorists today will be used to open new lines of research and interpretation in Classical German Philosophy scholarship. On the other hand, insights from Classical German Philosophy will be used to further develop questions of the current debate in feminist and post-humanist theory and/or challenge current approaches within it.