Reviews for Metaphysics and Its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge

The average rating for Metaphysics and Its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-02 00:00:00 Greg Whitmore This book, beginning to end, was not what I expected. It didn't sit well with me after the first two pages, and it's not any better after I've finished the whole thing. Much alike, but not completely, my bacground is similar to the authors - I'm a child of what some consider mixed background (a few Donauschwaben lurking in my pedigree, some Bosnian Croats and some Vojvodina Croats) and have been 'insulted' for it ('not Croatian enough'), and I lives most of my life in a highly multicultural city, on a border at that. That being said, I found this book best described as childish whingeing and showing up childhood bullies. Granted, race was never an issue in my life, as Croatia doesn't, and never has had much of a racial diversity (we were the slaves, really, and it's not a country that's attractive to even us, as we keep proving that by emigrating often and en masse), but we can tell who's who. It's culture, really - preferred colours, actions, etc. At any rate, the book begins with a description of a primary school class on family trees. Which I thought a norm, but ok. It's an issue with the author because he felt shamed, so he insults others because they're "noticably inbred" or some such. Right. The book goes on in the same tone, though, long after he left his home country - he goes on and on about being "a Cosmopolitan", now and again stepping back for the sake of seeming not-as-into-it as he truly is, seemingly finding a "solution" to people not seeing pedigree and race and the concept of being better that another based on blood inheritance as something to be proud of - which has always been there. This is, basically, a form of communism, and not really anything new. What didn't sit with me isn't that the author wishes for qhat he sees as equality, but the sense he left me, a reader, with - he wishes to enforce a general equality of 'beyond blood', he sees this 'blood blindness' as posthumanity, but the sense of his own identity being formed by his blood is always there. He wishes to erase cultures as he sees them as against Cosmopolitanism, but his own has formed him, he carries it as a burden and as a honor. And yet... I can't tell anyone not to read it, but I can't recommend it as a great read. The very topic of posthumanity has far better views and authors describing its ideas, and some of them do not, in fact, include giving up all that made you for something someone else has a vague idea of, and keeps being pulles down by race, but saying it's the best. Due to this being on my literature list for my Masters, I'm likely to re-read this again, and gods, what a force of will I'll need!

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-01 00:00:00 Dave Del Maestro This is one the best interpretations of Critical Theory and Habermas' approach to critical theory going. I used this text as an interpretative approach to understanding several of Habermas' works. It is accessible, straighforward and one of the better books available on critical theory.