Meredith Trexler Drees – författare

This book addresses how Plato, Kant, and Iris Murdoch (each in different ways) view the connection aesthetic experience has to morality. While offering an examination of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy, it analyses deeply the suggestive links (as well as essential distinctions) between Plato’s and Kant’s philosophies. Meredith Trexler Drees considers not only Iris Murdoch’s concept of unselfing, but also its relationship with Kant’s view of Achtung and Plato’s view of Eros. In addition, Trexler Drees suggests an extended, and partially amended, version of Murdoch’s view, arguing that it is more compatible with a religious way of life than Murdoch herself realized. This leads to an expansion of the overall argument to include Kant’s affirmation of religion as an area of life that can be improved through Plato’s and Murdoch’s vision of how being good and being beautiful can be part of the same life-task.

This book addresses how Plato, Kant, and Iris Murdoch (each in different ways) view the connection aesthetic experience has to morality. While offering an examination of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy, it analyses deeply the suggestive links (as well as essential distinctions) between Plato’s and Kant’s philosophies. Meredith Trexler Drees considers not only Iris Murdoch’s concept of unselfing, but also its relationship with Kant’s view of Achtung and Plato’s view of Eros. In addition, Trexler Drees suggests an extended, and partially amended, version of Murdoch’s view, arguing that it is more compatible with a religious way of life than Murdoch herself realized. This leads to an expansion of the overall argument to include Kant’s affirmation of religion as an area of life that can be improved through Plato’s and Murdoch’s vision of how being good and being beautiful can be part of the same life-task.

Against the received view of Kant’s theory of religion, this collection explores a hermeneutic tradition that interprets Kant's moral vision as affirming a legitimate role for non-moral features of religion. Edited by Meredith Trexler Drees and Stephen R. Palmquist, the book explores a new way of interpreting Kant's theory of religion that has gradually gained traction among Kant scholars over the past half century, to the extent that in the past twenty years it has arguably overtaken the traditional way of reading Kant's theory of religion as the dominant hermeneutic paradigm. Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars read Kant's writings on religion as an attempt to reduce religion to nothing but morality. Following this view, one can dispose of any and all actual religious traditions and beliefs, as long as one lives a morally good life. During the past two decades the alternative new paradigm has come to be called the "affirmative" way of interpreting Kant's theology and philosophy of religion. Although past work on different aspects of the affirmative reading of Kant's theory of religion has been voluminous, only a few edited volumes have focused on affirmative interpretations. The contributors to this volume examine historical and methodological issues in interpreting Kant's theory of religion, investigatedifferent aspects of Kant's theory of rational faithand the role of the highest good in it, interpret specific theories in Kant’s Religion, and discuss the implications of Kant’s theory for religious faith. Together, the contributors to this edited collection provide an overview of the affirmative approach as a tool Kantians can use when explicating Kant’s philosophy of religion, while highlighting the variety of affirmative interpretations.

Innovative readings and creative reinterpretations of significant works in the field of ancient philosophy.In classical Greece, the word politeia in its largest sense meant the citizens' engagement with the shared project that is the lived life of their polis, city, civic society. Ancient philosophers, poets, historians, and orators constantly reflected on what this shared project should be and how citizens could participate in it. The chapters in this collection, inspired by the work of Anthony Preus, examine some of the products of their reflections, both the written works themselves and the variety of comparative contexts into which they can be put, from the Greeks' neighboring Asian polities to contemporary philosophical engagements with similar issues. The essays in Politeia hope to inspire readers to think about their own lives in conversation with the lives of the many communities to which we belong—to not only demonstrate the idea of politeia but to bring to life politeia's connection of the individual to the collective, something that seems to be of central importance in a world of division and to be the beating heart of the discipline of philosophy.