The anthropology of hope and the philosophy of history
Rethinking Kant's third and fourth questions with Blumenberg and McCarthy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4480707 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Vida Pavesich (California State University, East Bay, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 20-39 |
| Publication date | 2011-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Thesis Eleven (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0725513610386099 |
| OpenAlex | W2329401805 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
In order to address the question of hope in the present, it behooves us to revisit Kant's third and fourth questions: 'What may we hope?' and 'What is the human being?' I reexamine these questions through an analysis of Thomas McCarthy's recent book Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development and several works by Hans Blumenberg. I agree with McCarthy that Kant's anthropology is incomplete and that the postmodern rejection of macronarratives was premature, but I claim that he requires a more complex philosophical anthropology to guide a philosophy of history. In order to address the question about hope, I reconstruct the anthropology implied in Blumenberg's writings. I claim that this answer to Kant's fourth question supplies conceptual scaffolding missing from McCarthy's book, provides resources necessary for making normative claims on behalf of all human beings, and can inform a multiversal history for grounding rational hope in the present
Epistemology · Normative · Philosophical anthropology · Postmodernism · Sociology · Anthropology · Humanities and Social Sciences · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
| Highly cited | No |
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