| Description: |
Some recent historians of early analytic philosophers have urged that we understand them as drawing on Kantian and neo-Kantian ideas. In this seminar, we'll explore these claims by reading Frege and some of the positivists (Reichenbach, Schlick, and/or Carnap) along with both Kant's own writings and the writings of the neo-Kantian philosophers who dominated German philosophy during analytic philosophy's formative period. Among the latter, we'll read Lotze and Cassirer – and maybe some others. Topics to be discussed include the nature of logic and mathematics, scientific rationality and objectivity, truth, and empirical confirmation. (Depending on student interest and expertise, we may look at more technical writings on the philosophy of geometry or general relativity.) |