Rousseau, Kant and philosophical auto-criticism

the practical ends of critical thinking

Philip Quadrio

Philip Quadrio

pp. 48-65

in: Karinde Boer, Karin de Boer, Ruth Sonderegger (eds), Conceptions of critique in modern and contemporary philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

In this paper I want to consider the nature of critical philosophy and suggest that much of what is called, in the Anglophone world, continental philosophy is — in a sense that I will develop below — critical philosophy. The notion that philosophy is, or ought to be, a critical practice entails that philosophy must also be auto-critical, that philosophy and more importantly reason itself are not exempt from philosophical criticism. Further, I will suggest that the features that I thematise as distinctive of critical philosophy are best thought of as first coalescing in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; that Rousseau ought to be acknowledged as one of the most important midwives to such a tradition of critique. This focus on Rousseau is somewhat of a departure from the tradition as it is more usual to think about critical philosophy by beginning with Kant. Yet while the latter is almost constantly in the background of my thoughts, I hold that the focus on Kant tends to marginalise Rousseau's contribution to birthing the tradition that I am calling critical philosophy. Hence this essay aims to bring Rousseau out of the shadows.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Rousseau Jean-Jacques