In the Wilderness of Thinking: Kant's 'Sign of History'

Peter Gilgen

Other Voices, v.2, n.3 (January 2005)

Summary:

This talk will examine the importance of Kant's notion of the "sign of history" in relation to "foundation"—that is, the foundation of a "new" university as well as the establishment of a "new" society by means of revolution. In the process, we will ask whether Kant's distinction between moral philosophy and the philosophy of history must be revised and what the consequences are for a thinking as disciplined (in every sense) as Kant's.

Resource: In the Wilderness of Thinking: Kant's 'Sign of History'
File Type: RealAudio
Length: 01:09:19

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Peter Gilgen received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in German Studies and the Graduate Program in Humanities. He has been an Assistant Professor of German Studies at Cornell University since the Fall of 1997 and a fellow at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University from 2002-2003. His main areas of specialization are late 18th and early 19th century philosophy and literature, especially poetry and poetics. He has published articles, among others, on Holderlin, R. P. Gruber, W. Serner, J.-F. Lyotard, the theory of literature and the university. Forthcoming articles include essays on Walter Benjamin and W. v. der Vogelweide, as well as two long articles on Hegel currently under consideration. In 1999 he published Unterlandschaft (Eggingen, Germany: Edition Isele, 1999), a philosophico-poetic essay that attempts to read a landscape in its phenomenal, historical, political, and linguistic dimensions.