This is the first book-length study to provide a structured interpretation of the significance of Michael Oakeshott's critique of the Enlightenment. By seeing the thinker as a 'sceptical idealist' posing a serious challenge to the intellectual positions informed by the Enlightenment, this book attempts to resolve some of the issues debated by Oakeshott scholars. The author argues that Oakeshott's famous critique of philosophisme and Rationalism in fact expresses a sense of the crisis of philosophical modernity. Moreover, notwithstanding some recent interpretations, throughout his intellectual career Oakeshott has never altered his analysis of these two themes: philosophy as the persistent re-establishment of completeness by transcending abstractness, and the modes of experience as self-consistent worlds of discourse. To apply this philosophy in his moral and political writings, Oakeshott has redressed an imbalance in favour of the Enlightenment ethical position -- 'the sovereignty of technique', 'demonstrative moral truth', 'the politics of faith' and 'enterprise association' -- by revitalising the importance of 'traditional knowledge', 'conversation', 'intimation', 'the politics of scepticism' and 'civil association'. Oakeshott is neither a doctrinal liberal nor a dogmatic conservative, but a philosophical sceptic. Moreover, Oakeshott's contribution to history not only lies in his effort to transcend the Enlightenment historiographical position -- by separating the historical from the naturalised conception of History on which so-called 'scientific history' rests -- but also in his idealistic solution for the 'temporal dilemma' and the 'epistemic tension' in history that have long bothered philosophers.

Interest in German Idealism--not just Kant, but Fichte and Hegel as well--has recently developed within analytic philosophy, which traditionally defined itself in opposition to the Idealist tradition. Yet one obstacle remains especially intractable: the Idealists' longstanding claim that philosophy must be systematic. In this work, the first overview of the German Idealism that is both conceptual and methodological, Paul W. Franks offers a philosophical reconstruction that is true to the movement's own times and resources and, at the same time, deeply relevant to contemporary thought. At the center of the book are some neglected but critical questions about German Idealism: Why do Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel think that philosophy's main task is the construction of a system? Why do they think that every part of this system must derive from a single, immanent and absolute principle? Why, in short, must it be all or nothing? Through close examination of the major Idealists as well as the overlooked figures who influenced their reading of Kant, Franks explores the common ground and divergences between the philosophical problems that motivated Kant and those that, in turn, motivated the Idealists. The result is a characterization of German Idealism that reveals its sources as well as its pertinence--and its challenge--to contemporary philosophical naturalism.

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Presents a reappraisal of Immanuel Kant's conception of and response to skepticism, as set forth principally in the "Critique of Pure Reason". This book argues that Kant undertook his reform of metaphysics primarily in order to render it defensible against these types of skepticism.

In this book, Henrik Lagerlund offers students, researchers, and advanced general readers the first complete history of what is perhaps the most famous of all philosophical problems: skepticism. As the first of its kind, the book traces the influence of philosophical skepticism from its roots in the Hellenistic schools of Pyrrhonism and the Middle Academy up to its impact inside and outside of philosophy today. Along the way, the book covers skepticism during the Latin, Arabic, and Greek Middle Ages and during the Renaissance before moving on to cover Descartes’ methodological skepticism and Pierre Bayle’s super-skepticism in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, it deals with Humean skepticism and the anti-skepticism of Reid, Shepherd, and Kant, taking care to also include reflections on the connections between idealism and skepticism (including skepticism in German idealism after Kant). The book covers similar themes in a chapter on G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and then ends its historical overview with a chapter on skepticism in contemporary philosophy. In the final chapter, Lagerlund captures some of skepticism’s impact outside of philosophy, highlighting its relation to issues like the replication crisis in science and knowledge resistance.

Transcendental Ontology in German Idealism: Schelling and Hegel sheds remarkable light on a question central to post-Kantian philosophy: after the Copernican Revolution in philosophy, what can philosophy say about the world or reality as such? What remains of ontology's task after Kant? This is a question often overlooked in contemporary scholarship on German Idealism. Markus Gabriel offers a refreshing reinvigoration of a range of questions concerning scepticism, corporeality, freedom, the question of being, the absolute and the modal status of our determinations and judgments, all crucial to our understanding of the truly radical nature of post-Kantian philosophy. Gabriel's assessment of the experiments undertaken in post-Kantian ontology reaffirms Schelling's and Hegel's place at the heart of contemporary metaphysics. The book shows how far we still have to go in mining the thought of Hegel and Schelling and how exciting, as a result, we can expect twenty-first century philosophy to be.

This book reassesses the origins, development and legacy of the philosophy of the British idealists, demonstrating the enduring relevance of their thought for the modern discipline. This body of work coheres around the single unifying theme of the self – a concept of central importance to the idealist school. Particular attention is also paid to the many connections that hold between various philosophers and branches of philosophy, as well as creating a set of continuously running dialogues between contributing authors. Readers will discover a comprehensive, stimulating and sharply focused panorama of British idealist thought, which will be useful to philosophers, historians of ideas, political and social theorists, psychologists, and policy-makers who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the citizen as a self.