Reviews for Politics in France and Europe

The average rating for Politics in France and Europe based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-03-16 00:00:00 Kyle Renberg This is a nice little book in with Henrich explains Kant's aesthetic theory within the context of the first and second critiques. The lynchpin connecting judgment to ethics and reason occurs in the free play between imagination and the understanding in its lawfulness. Henrich provides a strong justification for Kant's arguments which is grounded in Kant's intellectual development and refinement of aesthetics as it can be understood within the context of his critical project as a whole. The second essay is the best of the four for providing insight into Kant's work. The third essay is a much more generalized application of Kant's theory of freedom applied to the historical development of human rights from enlightenment to present. Set up as a dialectic between nihilism and imperialism, Henrich offers an alternative grounded in the critical project and freedom. If there is a criticism of this small text, it is that it is too short. Each of the essays is sufficiently rich that I would have preferred a more extended work focused on how the moral image as he introduces it in essay one can be understood in the history of enlightenment political and philosophical development that he addresses in essays three and four.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-26 00:00:00 Jim Wilson This is a brief book and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. But, the issues addressed are quite intriguing. We learn that Kant was centrally concerned with preserving the moral principles of Rousseau having to do with the liberty and dignity of man, and how these principles have to be preserved against a dialectic of sophistry and materialism that constantly threaten them. The moral image of the world has to be protected from the conditions of the unity of experience which would otherwise threaten them, in a rational way that does not merely establish the moral image as a ungrounded perspective. In the second essay on aesthetics, Henrich explains how the freedom of the imagination, in the formation of empirical concepts through reflecting judgment that begins with particulars, accords with the lawfulness of the understanding, and in his presentation (darstellung) beauty is generated. Especially interesting is Henrich's call to reconceptualize our grounding for rights as they have moved from the egocentrism of the Enlightenment to a logical progression to nihlism.