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SUMMARY:'Lucretian pessimism' or\, what was Kant's critical philosophy cri
 tical of? - Catherine Wilson (University of Aberdeen)
DTSTART:20120503T153000Z
DTEND:20120503T170000Z
UID:TALK37592@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Karin Ekholm
DESCRIPTION:Kant's 'critical turn' is often said to reflect his discovery 
 of a third way between Lockean empiricism and Leibniz-Wolffian rationalism
 . Yet settling the debate over the role of experience vs. the a priori in 
 the style of 1703 does not seem to have been at the top of Kant's philosop
 hical agenda. The talk presents an interpretation of the critical turn as 
 Kant's secular solution to 'Lucretian pessimism' – the existential angst
  of an 18th-century student of physical geography and anthropology disturb
 ed by conjectures regarding the kinship of human and ape\, the absence of 
 a proper foundation for morals\, and the apparent futility of the individu
 al human life from the perspective of the student of nature.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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