Bøker i Bloomsbury Studies in Modern G-serien

Hope is understood to be a significant part of human experience, including for motivating behaviour, promoting happiness, and justifying a conception of the self as having agency. Yet substantial gaps remain regarding the development of the concept of hope in the history of philosophy. This collection addresses this gap by reconstructing and analysing a variety of approaches to hope in late 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy.In 1781, Kant's idea of a "rational hope" shifted the terms of discussion about hope and its role for human self-understanding. In the 19th century, a wide-ranging debate over the meaning and function of hope emerged in response to his work. Drawing on expertise from a diverse group of contributors, this collection explores perspectives on hope from Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, J. S. Beck, J. C. Hoffbauer, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Kierkegaard and others. Chapters consider different aspects of the concept of hope, including the rationality of hope, appropriate and inappropriate applications of hope and the function of hope in relation to religion and society.The result is a valuable collection covering a century of the role of hope in shaping cognitive attitudes and constructing social, political and moral communities. As an overview of philosophical approaches to hope during this period, including by philosophers who are seldom studied today, the collection constitutes a valuable resource for exploring the development of this important concept in post-Kantian German philosophy.

The Latin American philosopher Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla published the first study of Kant's concept of nothingness in 1965. This translation of Mayz Vallenilla's ground-breaking work makes it available in English for the first time. Mayz Vallenilla's interpretation is deeply informed by Heidegger's reading of Kant, against the background of the early 20th century neo-Kantian tradition. He offers a detailed interpretation and critique of "nothing" as it appears in the Amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason and presents an analysis of Kant's Table of Nothing which understands temporality as the horizon of all possible cognition[AE1] , including cognition of real nothings. Accompanied by translator's notes and a glossary, Addison Ellis' translation includes extensive commentary and an introduction providing historical context and references to the original sources in German. He preserves key terminology and phrasing from the original text and allows an often-neglected connection to be made between the Kantian tradition in Latin America and the tradition in the Anglophone world.