The aim of this chapter is to describe a set of post-Kantian accounts of meaning, according to which: (i) meaningful properties are formal ones; (ii) these properties should be described in terms of the natural processes out of which they emerge; (iii) meanings should therefore be considered natural forms and be explained in the same way as any other natural fact. This is a set of naturalist positions that typically construes meaning as a ‘living form’, but equally—at its most radical—exceeds this organicist framework to think inorganic meanings. I consider this tradition through a detailed interrogation of Lectures Eight and Nine of F. W. J. Schelling’s Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, arguing that this is one exemplary instance of the confusion of forms and grounds in such a post-Kantian tradition of accounting for meaning. Ultimately, I suggest it is a position that puts into question the traditional category of meaning itself.

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Living and Dead Forms: The Factuality of Meaning in Schelling and Other Naturalists

  • Daniel Whistler

摘要

The aim of this chapter is to describe a set of post-Kantian accounts of meaning, according to which: (i) meaningful properties are formal ones; (ii) these properties should be described in terms of the natural processes out of which they emerge; (iii) meanings should therefore be considered natural forms and be explained in the same way as any other natural fact. This is a set of naturalist positions that typically construes meaning as a ‘living form’, but equally—at its most radical—exceeds this organicist framework to think inorganic meanings. I consider this tradition through a detailed interrogation of Lectures Eight and Nine of F. W. J. Schelling’s Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, arguing that this is one exemplary instance of the confusion of forms and grounds in such a post-Kantian tradition of accounting for meaning. Ultimately, I suggest it is a position that puts into question the traditional category of meaning itself.