Criticism and the Cunning of Reason

Abstract

Philosophical thinking is essentially a critical reflection on the nature of reality and our place in it. It is about our understanding of what the world is like and what we, who live in this world, are like. Both our cognitive-epistemic status and our status as normative-evaluative beings are matters of humanity's critical self-understanding. It is the articulation of such self-understanding in a distinctively critical idiom that earns the distinction of philosophy.