archives@tulane.edu / I have composed my dissertation out of three distinct but related essays with each working, as the title of the work would indicate, to return philosophy to life. The first two essays seek this by challenging and offering alternatives to philosophical theories that would keep philosophers from fully engaging with life in its fundamental teleological being. The third essay works from the philosophical idea of Eros to bring about this engagement.
In the first essay “A Science of Consciousness – Physicalism or Phenomenology?” I enter what I describe as a dialectic in philosophy in its seeking the realization of the scientific ideal within its practice. As I observe in the essay, two opposing schools of thought within philosophy claim the mantle of this ideal, physicalist theory and phenomenology. I examine both in terms of two fundamental criteria of science – basic logicality and empirical substantiation. Upon these criteria, I argue that phenomenology with its basis in life itself, deserves the mantle and so a new respect within the philosophical community going forward.
In the second essay, “An Epistemology of Life,” I engage critically with Immanuel Kant’s epistemology as found in Critique of The Power of Judgment and in Critique of Pure Reason. In particular, I challenge Kant’s claim in Judgment that the constitution of our cognitive faculties precludes an intuition of life’s teleological being, the necessary basis, Kant argues, for our making determinant judgments about life. To make my case, I offer evidence to the contrary from the world of life itself. I then examine Kant’s understandings of the noumenal, the transcendental aesthetic and of our epistemic intuition of causal being and bring forward alternatives.
In the final essay “At Any Time the Heart Awakes!” I undertake a philosophical engagement with life through a children’s song and introductory philosophical essay for instructors. I have written these in the hope of bringing a first awakening within children of the philosophical ideal of love spoken to in Plato’s Symposium. In addition to Plato, I reference Aristotle, Kant, Kierkegaard and The Buddha as sources for the song’s content and methodology. / 0 / Keith J. Silverman
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_120556 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Contributors | Silverman, Keith (author), Velkley, Richard (Thesis advisor), School of Liberal Arts Philosophy (Degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | electronic, pages: 223 |
| Rights | No embargo, Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law. |
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