Kritik der reinen Theorie

Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer shows that radical enlightenment must include a critique of pure theories in scientism and naturalism as well as in theology. It cannot remain content with Kant's love of physical objects (Hegel), nor with phrases like »in principle,« »ideally,« or »ceteris paribus.« It shows that any formal logic holds literally only for pure mathematics and that all world-related, even probabilistic, knowledge is generic in the correct sense of Frege's example »a horse has four legs.« As in the case of metaphors, applications of generic theories presuppose experienced judgement, especially about the limits of the particular domain of the knowledge and the normally robust contrasts between conceptual and empirical knowledge, belief, reflective logical cartography, and world images. Natural science needs, therefore, the same techniques of projecting its theoretical systems of figurative sentences onto the world as religion, philosophy, or our way of talking about mind and spirit in normal life, psychology or the humanities.