In this thesis I attempt to elucidate the complex relationship between life and justice in Nietzsche's thought. My basic contention is that this relationship needs to be understood metaphysically as a relation ofaccordance, such that just people and their acts accord with the nature ofthe world. I argue that the recent preference in the literature for naturalistic readings ofNietzsche misses something important about life and justice and in doing so fails to give an adequate account ofNietzsche's moral thought. In the opening introductory chapter I set out the ways that Nietzsche uses the terms 'life' and 'justice' and then outline three basic questions that his usage provokes. I go on to look at the way these terms have been understood in the secondary literature, focusing on two examples representative ofdifferent styles ofinterpretation and giving reasons for favouring my own metaphysical reading. In the second chapter I pursue the question ofjustice through an analysis ofHeidegger's interpretation ofNietzsche, in which I introduce the idea ofjustice as a metaphysical idea. I develop this in chapter three by tracing out the influence ofHeraclitus' conception ofjustice on the second Untimely Meditation. In chapter four I consider the alternative naturalistic account of justice through an engagement with Nietzsche's critique ofutilitarianism. The final two chapters ofthe thesis are concerned with the key idea ofself-overcoming, through which the relationship between life and justice is mediated. In chapter five I examine this in relation to the idea oflove in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and in chapter six I trace the connections between Nietzsche and Kant by offering a close reading ofthe third essay ofOn the Genealogy ofMorality. I return to the questions posed at the outset in my conclusion.

This thesis examines Adorno's critique of Kant's practical philosophy, as it is developed in Negative Dialectics and in Adorno's published lectures. Its starting point is the conviction that Adorno's Kant critique is best understood as a critique of conceptual reification. According to Adorno, Kant reifies the foundational concepts of his practical philosophy and thereby elides their historically specific and socially contested character. The thesis begins with an elaboration ofAdorno's critique of conceptual reification, which it will apply to the foundational concepts of Kant's practical philosophy. In the second chapter it focuses on Kant's 'rescuing urge'. It argues that Kant's philosophy is motivated by the urge to save the achievements of the rationalist philosophical tradition from the onslaught of philosophical scepticism, scientific progress and sociopolitical change. It concludes that Kant achieves this salvation in part, but only at the cost of rendering concepts such as freedom so abstract and thing-like that their mediation with empirical reality becomes impqssible. In the next three chapters the thesis discusses Kant's resolution of the antinomy of freedom and determinism, his moral psychology (focusing on Kant's conception of the will) and his account of the good and the phenomenology of moral judgment. It concludes that in all these cases conceptual reification undermines the force of Kant's thought. The thesis contrasts two important concepts of Kant's practical philosophy: rational agency and maturity (Miindigkeit). Adorno is very critical of Kant's philosophy, because it imbues rational agency with unconditional value. On Adorno's analysis, rational agency is conceptually reified in modern capitalist societies. Its hypostatisation establishes a standard of self-determination, which most people fail to achieve. It is damaging to those who cannot. The thesis concludes with the suggestion that Adorno finds in maturity a more suitable concept for the elaboration of an ethics of resistance.

In the thesis I examine the articulations of nature and politics in the thought ofG.W.F. Hegel. I claim that for the Western philosophical tradition nature is the irreducible horizon in which the political is played out. This I take to be the case in both a negative and a positive sense: on the one hand, nature channels the community toward sensuous particularity and the satisfaction ofneeds, thus contravening the movement towards a higher ethical life; on the other hand, it is the very nature of the zoon politikon that gives rise to the ethical moment that community properly is. Taking my cue from Hegel's concept of'speculative words', i.e. words that incorporate two opposite me'anings, I argue that this apparent contradiction can be resolved ifwe distinguish between two different senses operative in philosophical and ~veryday thinking about nature, namely nature as sensuousness and as the index ofa being's inherent potentialities. Hegel's distinctive contribution consists, I suggest, in showing that these two meanings have not been accidentally conjoined in the word 'nature' but are a symptom of the dialecticity at work in that concept. I examine how this dialecticity operates in the areas of (a) language and logic and (b) society and politics, and argue for are-evaluation of Hegel's philosophy in terms of the possibilities it opens for re-thinking politics in the direction of finitude and the fragility of sense.

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This study offers a reconstructive account of the concept of pure synthesis as it occurs in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In order to make sense of a pure sensible synthesis, it will be necessary to provide a detailed account of the transcendental processes that are derived from the subjective sources of the mind prior to any working account of the logical functions ofjudgment. Stated succinct.~y, our approach will deal with the concept of synthesis from a transcendental 'psycholo'gical perspective. I will argue that a metalevel of transcendental psychology can be uncovered that releases certain functions for concepts of comparison that is different to how Kant stipulates their use in the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection section of the Critique. To supplement an account of pure sensible synthesis, I will argue that what I call a 'pure rule of apprehension' or a 'pure rule of synthesis' is constructed out of concepts of comparison and functions as a pure sensible schema. The 'pure rule of apprehension' is modelled on the fundamental action of Kant's Pure Synthesis of Apprehension as it appears in the A Version of the Transcendental Deduction. The rule of synthesis acts as an original schema that can be applied directly to the pl!re manifolds oftime and space prior to objects. It will be argued that the concept of pure sensible synthesis and its accompanying pure sensible schema carry out an ontological function as transcendental elements prior to the reflections carried out by the categories, and prior to the comparisons of empirical representations that first generate concepts of objects. The reconstruction of synthesis and a corresponding schema constitutes the first two main stages of the thesis in Chapters One and Two. This part of the thesis will relate to the area of Kant scholarship that pays particular attention to the subjective sources of the mind, especially the role of the transcendental synthesis of imagination and the determination of intuitions in the Critique. I will subject certain authors to a series of close readings in order to develop the concepts of pure sensible synthesis and a pure sensible schema. In the third and fourth stages of the thesis will move away from the concepts of synthesis and schematism. In Chapter Three I will develop a line of argument that sheds new light on the concept of an object prior to synthesis by examining Kant's Refutation ofIdealism. I will argue that it is possible to conceive of a pure transcendental 'place' or 'location' of a pure object of permanence not mentioned by Kant, by making use of concepts of comparison functioning as pure orientational concepts. In the Fourth Chapter I will round the study off by expounding the central conceptual processes that are at work in the project as a whole, which differ significantly from the way' that Kant employs I' concepts in the first Critique. I will argue that concepts of comparison exhibit functions that are not confined to discursive procedures involved in generating concepts of objects. This completes the thesis. The project starts by examining the concept of synthesis, before moving on to the related theme of schematism. I then deal with the concept of an object, finishing with an examination of the nature of conceptualitx that unifies the project as a whole.

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