Books by Edward Kanterian
From Plato to the Atmosphere: Two Millenia of Communistic Thought (forthcoming)
Ratio & Revelatio, 2023
The Drama of Philosophy from Erasmus to Kant, Ratio & Revelatio, Oradea, 2023, 228 pages
Kant, God and Metaphysics. The Secret Thorn, 2018
Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times.
He undertook his famous... more Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times.
He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality
from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with
his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments,
which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen
creature and in need of ‘redemption’. He intended to provide a fortress
protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from
the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, from the new mathematical science
of nature and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant
was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience,
an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by
his religious faith.
This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his
thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it).
It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness
from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner
with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments.
Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground (1763), one of the
most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. The book
takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent
Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical
tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thoughtprovoking
interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics, set against the background
of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy.
Frege. A Guide for the Perplexed
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was one of the founders of analytical philosophy and the
greatest inno... more Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was one of the founders of analytical philosophy and the
greatest innovator in logic since Aristotle. He introduced many influential philosophical ideas, such as the distinctions between function and argument, or between sense and reference. However, his thought is not readily accessible to the non-expert. His conception of logic, which was crucial to his grand project, the reduction of arithmetic to logic, is especially difficult to grasp. This book provides a lucid and critical introduction to Frege's logic, especially as he developed it in his groundbreaking first book Begriffsschrift (Conceptual Notation, 1879). It guides the reader directly to the core of Frege's philosophy, and to some of the most pertinent issues in contemporary philosophy of language, logic, mathematics, and mind. Unlike most other books, this commentary explains Frege's own logical notation, allowing students to study and appreciate those aspects of his work that he valued most but are least understood today. The book also raises many objections to some of Frege's fundamental ideas which have come to shape what is now known as analytic philosophy.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction \ 2. Begriffsschrift: probing the terrain \ 2.1 Scope of a concept-script\ 2.2 The epistemological dimension of logic \ 2.3 The struggle against intuition and language \ 2.4 Concept-script: a brief overview \ 3. Begriffsschrift: digging deeper \ 3.1 The judgment-stroke and the content-stroke \ 3.2 Subject and predicate \ 3.3 Modes of judgment, negation \ 3.4 Conditionality \ 3.5 The functional character of concept-script\ 3.6 Identity \ 3.7 Definition \ 3.8 Logical analysis and elucidations \ 3.9 Functions and functional analysis \ 3.10 Functions, concepts, properties \ 3.11 Generality \ 3.12 Inference \ 4. Later developments \ 4.1 Sense and Meaning \ 4.2 The function-theoretic account of Sense \ 4.3 The challenge of contingent thoughts \ 4.4 Are concepts functions? \ 4.5 Concept and object \ 4.6 Fictional discourse \ 5. Epilogue \ 6. Literature \ Notes \ Index
Wittgenstein
Published in the acclaimed series Critical Lives
Translated into Russian, Turkish, Chinese. Fort... more Published in the acclaimed series Critical Lives
Translated into Russian, Turkish, Chinese. Forthcoming in Romanian and Persian.
Norman Manea, Curierul de Est. Dialog cu Edward Kanterian
Wittgenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker (co-edited)
Introduction (editors).
1. Perspectives on Wittgenstein: An Intermittently Opinionated Survey (H... more Introduction (editors).
1. Perspectives on Wittgenstein: An Intermittently Opinionated Survey (Hans-Johann Glock).
2. Wittgenstein’s Method: Ridding People of Philosophical Prejudices (Katherine Morris).
3. Gordon Baker’s Late Interpretation of Wittgenstein (P. M. S. Hacker).
4. The Interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations: Style, Therapy, Nachlass (Alois Pichler).
5. Ways of Reading Wittgenstein: Observations on Certain Uses of the Word ‘Metaphysics’ (Joachim Schulte).
6. Metaphysical/Everyday Use: A Note on a Late Paper by Gordon Baker (Hilary Putnam).
7. Wittgenstein and Transcendental Idealism (A. W. Moore).
8. Simples and the Idea of Analysis in the Tractatus (Marie McGinn).
9. Words, Waxing and Waning: Ethics in/and/of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Stephen Mulhall).
10. The Uses of Wittgenstein’s Beetle: Philosophical Investigations §293 and Its Interpreters (David G. Stern).
11. Bourgeois, Bolshevist or Anarchist?: The Reception of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics (Ray Monk).
12. Wittgenstein and Ethical Naturalism (Alice Crary).
Bibliography.
Index.
Descriptive Names: A Contribution to the Semantics of Referring Expressions, DPhil thesis, 2006
Abstract:
A theory of descriptive names is developed and defended against several objections. De... more Abstract:
A theory of descriptive names is developed and defended against several objections. Descriptive names pose an interesting challenge to any theory of reference, since they possess features of both proper names and definite descriptions, i.e. of expressions which are often considered to be radically different from each other. These features are referentiality and descriptive sense. The thesis takes as its point of departure Gareth Evans’s theory of descriptive names, improves upon it and discusses several other authors and related theories along the way.
Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the topic and an abstract of the main lines of argument. Chapter 2 argues that descriptive names possess both referential status and descriptive sense, and that these qualities constitute the two most basic elements of the notion of descriptive reference (which is contrasted with Russellian reference). It is demonstrated that not all names introduced by description are descriptive names, a claim which is given additional substance by a comparison between Evans’s and Kripke’s accounts of such names. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with two major challenges to the possibility of descriptive names. Chapter 3 explores the possibility of a truth-conditional theory of meaning for descriptive names, but it is shown that if we follow Evans’s suggestion that the semantic value of a descriptive name is to be construed according to model theory – namely, as an entity distinct from the referent (a set) – such a theory will result in treating descriptive names as predicates, and thus eliminate them qua referring expressions. Similar accounts given by other authors are also examined and found to be problematic. I conclude by rejecting the model-theoretic notion of semantic value. Chapter 4 addresses a second challenge, posed by the fact that if a descriptive name has a descriptive sense, then given a Russellian analysis of definite descriptions, descriptive names must be quantifier phrases, and thus, again, non-referring expressions. It is argued that if this is true, then the use of negative free logic is unnecessary. Using the idea of rigidified descriptions, it is shown that Evans’s arguments, based on modality and simplicity considerations, fail to save both the referentiality and descriptive sense of descriptive names while semantically dissociating them from descriptions. I show that descriptive names can be treated as shorthand for rigidified descriptions and thus semantically on a par with the latter, which, as I demonstrate, is still consistent with Evans’s own (convincing) solution of the puzzle of the contingent a priori. Nevertheless, this still does not guarantee the referentiality of descriptive names. Chapter 5 defends the referentiality and descriptive sense of descriptive names by offering arguments in favour of a referential treatment of definite descriptions. Several negative arguments undermining the most influential defences of Russellianism are given and three positive accounts of referring descriptions, Wettstein’s, Sainsbury’s and Strawson’s, are critically discussed, finally settling, with some proviso, for Strawson’s. In the course of this discussion, topics such the attributive-referential distinction and semantic presupposition and metalinguistic negation are investigated. Finally, the principles of a ‘Fregean’ free logic for Strawsonian semantics are sketched, and I suggest ways in which a truth theory could be expressed by means of these principles. Chapter 6 summarises the achievements, sketches possible research concerning descriptive names and concludes that the analysis of descriptive names is useful in at least three ways: it provides us with means to, first, solve problems that arise from the introduction of artificial expressions such as descriptive names (e.g. the problem of the contingent a priori), second, to better understand our natural language and its relation to formal theories of meaning, and, last but not least, to give a strong rationale for a referential treatment of definite descriptions. Chapter 7 includes the bibliography.
Voller Entsetzen, aber nicht verzweifelt - Tagebücher 1935-44
Claassen Verlag, 2005
Editor and author of the introductory essay. Translated from Romanian with Roland Erb and Larisa ... more Editor and author of the introductory essay. Translated from Romanian with Roland Erb and Larisa Schippel.
Acclaimed and reviewed in the German press, received the Geschwister Scholl Preis in 2006.
ANALYSE UND DEFINITION: EINE ERSTE ANNÄHERUNG
1. DIE VORGESCHICHTE: SPIELARTEN DER ANALYSE VON... more ANALYSE UND DEFINITION: EINE ERSTE ANNÄHERUNG
1. DIE VORGESCHICHTE: SPIELARTEN DER ANALYSE VON PLATON BIS KANT
2. ONTOLOGISCHE ANALYSE
2.1 Arithmetik und Logik: Frege
2.2 Begriffsatomismus: Moore
2.3 Logischer Atomismus: Russell
3. DER LINGUISTIC TURN
3.1 Sprachanalyse und Metaphysik: Wittgensteins Tractatus
3.2 Sprachanalyse und logischer Positivismus: Der Wiener Kreis
4. DESKRIPTIVE UND VERBINDENDE ANALYSE
4.1 Übersicht und Therapie: Der spätere Wittgenstein
4.2 Oxforder Sprachphilosophie
4.2.1 Der Begriff des Geistes: Ryle
4.2.2 Die Feinheiten des Sprachgebrauchs: Austin
4.2.3 Sprache, Logik und deskriptive Metaphysik: Strawson
5. ABSCHIED VON DER ANALYSE? VOM NATURALISMUS ZUR MENTALISTISCHEN WENDE
5.1 Quines naturalistische Wende
5.2 Bedeutungstheorien der natürlichen Sprache
5.3 Neue Metaphysik
5.4 Die mentalistische Wende
6. RÜCKBLICK UND AUSBLICK
7. LITERATUR
7.1 Primärtexte
7.2 Sekundärliteratur
7.3 Zeitschriften und Internetlinks
8. GLOSSAR
9. KURZBIOGRAPHIEN
Der Yoga des Patanjali. Der Ursprung östlicher Weisheitspraxis, Herder Verlag, 1999, 190 pp.
Patanjali - dieser Name führt zu den Ursprüngen des Yoga, zum Verfasser der ersten systematischen... more Patanjali - dieser Name führt zu den Ursprüngen des Yoga, zum Verfasser der ersten systematischen Lehrschrift des Yoga. Patanjali hat die über viele Jahrhunderte mündlich überlieferten Praktiken des Yoga erstmals zu einem Handbuch zusammengestellt, dem Yoga-Sutra. Mircea Eliade erschließt die Welt des Yoga von diesem Ursprung her bis heute. Eines der besten Bücher für alle Yoga-Übenden, die mehr über den tieferen Sinn ihres täglichen Tuns erfahren möchten.
Translated from French
Diederichs Verlag, 1996
Edited and translated from Romanian, with an introductory essay.
Articles & essays by Edward Kanterian
„Ecologii e comuniști!” – Trei întrebări despre o narativă răspândită (link)
Contributors.ro, 2025
Leben wir in einer multipolaren oder bipolaren Welt? Reflexionen im Anschluss an Vittorio Hösles Globale Fliehkräfte (draft)
Wittgenstein and the Vices of Untruthfulness: Towards an Ideologiekritik of Recent Analytic Philosophy
forthcoming
humanities, 2025
Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is widely known as a poet and sometimes described as a poet's poe... more Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is widely known as a poet and sometimes described as a poet's poet (Heidegger). However, more recent interpretations, undertaken by Dieter Henrich, Michael Franz and others, have shown that he was a genuine philosopher as well, who had an original conception of the relation between art, poetry and metaphysics, with neo-Platonic and theological roots. This paper reconstructs Hölderlin's ideas and their relation to those of Kant and Fichte. Hölderlin emerges, on the interpretation offered here, as a metaphysician of life, a poet of the biosphere and as such most relevant to our present-day predicament.
Bede Rundle and Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Metaphysics and Language
forthcoming
Ordoliberalism, Libertarianism and the Environment (draft)
Uploads
Books by Edward Kanterian
He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality
from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with
his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments,
which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen
creature and in need of ‘redemption’. He intended to provide a fortress
protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from
the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, from the new mathematical science
of nature and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant
was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience,
an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by
his religious faith.
This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his
thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it).
It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness
from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner
with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments.
Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground (1763), one of the
most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. The book
takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent
Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical
tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thoughtprovoking
interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics, set against the background
of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy.
greatest innovator in logic since Aristotle. He introduced many influential philosophical ideas, such as the distinctions between function and argument, or between sense and reference. However, his thought is not readily accessible to the non-expert. His conception of logic, which was crucial to his grand project, the reduction of arithmetic to logic, is especially difficult to grasp. This book provides a lucid and critical introduction to Frege's logic, especially as he developed it in his groundbreaking first book Begriffsschrift (Conceptual Notation, 1879). It guides the reader directly to the core of Frege's philosophy, and to some of the most pertinent issues in contemporary philosophy of language, logic, mathematics, and mind. Unlike most other books, this commentary explains Frege's own logical notation, allowing students to study and appreciate those aspects of his work that he valued most but are least understood today. The book also raises many objections to some of Frege's fundamental ideas which have come to shape what is now known as analytic philosophy.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction \ 2. Begriffsschrift: probing the terrain \ 2.1 Scope of a concept-script\ 2.2 The epistemological dimension of logic \ 2.3 The struggle against intuition and language \ 2.4 Concept-script: a brief overview \ 3. Begriffsschrift: digging deeper \ 3.1 The judgment-stroke and the content-stroke \ 3.2 Subject and predicate \ 3.3 Modes of judgment, negation \ 3.4 Conditionality \ 3.5 The functional character of concept-script\ 3.6 Identity \ 3.7 Definition \ 3.8 Logical analysis and elucidations \ 3.9 Functions and functional analysis \ 3.10 Functions, concepts, properties \ 3.11 Generality \ 3.12 Inference \ 4. Later developments \ 4.1 Sense and Meaning \ 4.2 The function-theoretic account of Sense \ 4.3 The challenge of contingent thoughts \ 4.4 Are concepts functions? \ 4.5 Concept and object \ 4.6 Fictional discourse \ 5. Epilogue \ 6. Literature \ Notes \ Index
Translated into Russian, Turkish, Chinese. Forthcoming in Romanian and Persian.
1. Perspectives on Wittgenstein: An Intermittently Opinionated Survey (Hans-Johann Glock).
2. Wittgenstein’s Method: Ridding People of Philosophical Prejudices (Katherine Morris).
3. Gordon Baker’s Late Interpretation of Wittgenstein (P. M. S. Hacker).
4. The Interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations: Style, Therapy, Nachlass (Alois Pichler).
5. Ways of Reading Wittgenstein: Observations on Certain Uses of the Word ‘Metaphysics’ (Joachim Schulte).
6. Metaphysical/Everyday Use: A Note on a Late Paper by Gordon Baker (Hilary Putnam).
7. Wittgenstein and Transcendental Idealism (A. W. Moore).
8. Simples and the Idea of Analysis in the Tractatus (Marie McGinn).
9. Words, Waxing and Waning: Ethics in/and/of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Stephen Mulhall).
10. The Uses of Wittgenstein’s Beetle: Philosophical Investigations §293 and Its Interpreters (David G. Stern).
11. Bourgeois, Bolshevist or Anarchist?: The Reception of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics (Ray Monk).
12. Wittgenstein and Ethical Naturalism (Alice Crary).
Bibliography.
Index.
A theory of descriptive names is developed and defended against several objections. Descriptive names pose an interesting challenge to any theory of reference, since they possess features of both proper names and definite descriptions, i.e. of expressions which are often considered to be radically different from each other. These features are referentiality and descriptive sense. The thesis takes as its point of departure Gareth Evans’s theory of descriptive names, improves upon it and discusses several other authors and related theories along the way.
Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the topic and an abstract of the main lines of argument. Chapter 2 argues that descriptive names possess both referential status and descriptive sense, and that these qualities constitute the two most basic elements of the notion of descriptive reference (which is contrasted with Russellian reference). It is demonstrated that not all names introduced by description are descriptive names, a claim which is given additional substance by a comparison between Evans’s and Kripke’s accounts of such names. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with two major challenges to the possibility of descriptive names. Chapter 3 explores the possibility of a truth-conditional theory of meaning for descriptive names, but it is shown that if we follow Evans’s suggestion that the semantic value of a descriptive name is to be construed according to model theory – namely, as an entity distinct from the referent (a set) – such a theory will result in treating descriptive names as predicates, and thus eliminate them qua referring expressions. Similar accounts given by other authors are also examined and found to be problematic. I conclude by rejecting the model-theoretic notion of semantic value. Chapter 4 addresses a second challenge, posed by the fact that if a descriptive name has a descriptive sense, then given a Russellian analysis of definite descriptions, descriptive names must be quantifier phrases, and thus, again, non-referring expressions. It is argued that if this is true, then the use of negative free logic is unnecessary. Using the idea of rigidified descriptions, it is shown that Evans’s arguments, based on modality and simplicity considerations, fail to save both the referentiality and descriptive sense of descriptive names while semantically dissociating them from descriptions. I show that descriptive names can be treated as shorthand for rigidified descriptions and thus semantically on a par with the latter, which, as I demonstrate, is still consistent with Evans’s own (convincing) solution of the puzzle of the contingent a priori. Nevertheless, this still does not guarantee the referentiality of descriptive names. Chapter 5 defends the referentiality and descriptive sense of descriptive names by offering arguments in favour of a referential treatment of definite descriptions. Several negative arguments undermining the most influential defences of Russellianism are given and three positive accounts of referring descriptions, Wettstein’s, Sainsbury’s and Strawson’s, are critically discussed, finally settling, with some proviso, for Strawson’s. In the course of this discussion, topics such the attributive-referential distinction and semantic presupposition and metalinguistic negation are investigated. Finally, the principles of a ‘Fregean’ free logic for Strawsonian semantics are sketched, and I suggest ways in which a truth theory could be expressed by means of these principles. Chapter 6 summarises the achievements, sketches possible research concerning descriptive names and concludes that the analysis of descriptive names is useful in at least three ways: it provides us with means to, first, solve problems that arise from the introduction of artificial expressions such as descriptive names (e.g. the problem of the contingent a priori), second, to better understand our natural language and its relation to formal theories of meaning, and, last but not least, to give a strong rationale for a referential treatment of definite descriptions. Chapter 7 includes the bibliography.
Acclaimed and reviewed in the German press, received the Geschwister Scholl Preis in 2006.
1. DIE VORGESCHICHTE: SPIELARTEN DER ANALYSE VON PLATON BIS KANT
2. ONTOLOGISCHE ANALYSE
2.1 Arithmetik und Logik: Frege
2.2 Begriffsatomismus: Moore
2.3 Logischer Atomismus: Russell
3. DER LINGUISTIC TURN
3.1 Sprachanalyse und Metaphysik: Wittgensteins Tractatus
3.2 Sprachanalyse und logischer Positivismus: Der Wiener Kreis
4. DESKRIPTIVE UND VERBINDENDE ANALYSE
4.1 Übersicht und Therapie: Der spätere Wittgenstein
4.2 Oxforder Sprachphilosophie
4.2.1 Der Begriff des Geistes: Ryle
4.2.2 Die Feinheiten des Sprachgebrauchs: Austin
4.2.3 Sprache, Logik und deskriptive Metaphysik: Strawson
5. ABSCHIED VON DER ANALYSE? VOM NATURALISMUS ZUR MENTALISTISCHEN WENDE
5.1 Quines naturalistische Wende
5.2 Bedeutungstheorien der natürlichen Sprache
5.3 Neue Metaphysik
5.4 Die mentalistische Wende
6. RÜCKBLICK UND AUSBLICK
7. LITERATUR
7.1 Primärtexte
7.2 Sekundärliteratur
7.3 Zeitschriften und Internetlinks
8. GLOSSAR
9. KURZBIOGRAPHIEN
Translated from French
Articles & essays by Edward Kanterian