Ohio State nav bar

Sebastian Rödl: Nature and the Good

Picture of Sebastian Rodl
September 12, 2018
All Day
The Mortar Board Room 202 located on the second floor of Thompson Library

Title: Nature and the Good

Description:

Does practical reason end in a state of mind or in an action? Debate on this question has missed that the answer is given in practical reason: practical reasoning itself understands its conclusion to be an action. The larger significance of this is the following: understanding its conclusion to be an action, practical reasoning recognizes the good as the supreme principle of nature. As this understanding is internal to practical reasoning, practical reasoning is ethical knowledge of nature.

 

 

In the tradition of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Sebastian Rödl studies the formal character that defines distinctively human activity: it contains and is pursued through an understanding of itself. His new book Self-Consciousness and Objectivity undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. Sebastian Rödl revives the thought–as ancient as philosophy but largely forgotten today–that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.

This event is being organized by Humanities Institute Working Group.

More information please contact Christopher Brown.