We are pleased to announce a Call for Applications for the 3rd International Summer School on Kant and German Idealism, “Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant, Schelling and Hegel”, which will be held at University of Tuebingen, on June 04th-06th 2018.

Organization: Ulrich Schloesser, Stefan Lang

Tuebingen plays a crucial role in the development of German idealism, since three of its main protagonists – Hegel, Schelling, Hoelderlin – took up their philosophical and theological studies here in the 1780s. The Philosophy Department at the University of Tuebingen has a long tradition of important research in the philosophy of Kant and German idealism. Building on this tradition, we are running a biannual series of international summer schools on Kant and German idealism. The aim of our summer school series is to provide a forum for exploring philosophical texts which have contributed essentially to the emergence of German idealism and the development of Kantian transcendental philosophy.

This year’s summer school is devoted to questions revolving around the relation between aesthetic evaluation and cognition in Kant, Schelling and Hegel. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that not only our judgment of taste, but also the aesthetic feeling underlying it are communicable. He has argued that this is possible only insofar as we humans are finite beings who have already actualized our (intuitive and conceptual) cognitive capacities. Kant thereby conceives of a complex balance between our aesthetic and our cognitive response to the world. This balance introduces new elements into Kant’s theory of cognition as it had been outlined in the first Critique several years earlier. How exactly are aesthetic evaluation and cognition related and how does this relationship evolve?

Topics will include: the status of synthesis and relation (as opposed to private sensation), reflection in concept formation, judging and aesthetic evaluation, the power of imagination, communicability and the universal voice, purposiveness and systematicity, and the function of ideas. We will follow the trajectory of Kant’s ideas in the writings of Schelling and Hegel.

The summer school puts a major emphasis on in-depth reading and discussion. Combined with complementary lectures by invited speakers, extensive discussion sessions will allow participants to explore highly complex and often obscure philosophical texts in a joint effort, thereby opening up new perspectives on a central topic in Kantian and German idealist philosophy. All discussions and public lectures at the summer school will be in English.

Confirmed speakers and discussants include:
Sebastian Gardner (UCL)
Paul Guyer (Brown University)
Fiona Hughes (University of Essex)
Ulrich Schloesser (Tuebingen)
Guenter Zoeller (LMU Munich)
Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern University)

Applications are invited for up to 10 SUMMER SCHOOL GRANTS for PhD students:

• Grant holders will attend the summer school, read assigned texts in advance, participate in discussions and attend lectures.
• Grants cover travel expenses (within Europe) and accommodation in Tuebingen for four nights.
• Applicants must be PhD students in philosophy working on topics related to the theme of the summer school. Postdocs are eligible to apply to attend the summer school but cannot receive a grant.
• PhD students travelling from outside Europe are welcome to apply, but their travel expenses can be covered only partially by the grant (the amount covered will be roughly equivalent to travel costs from within Europe).
• Applications should include the following documents: a CV; a statement of interest (max. two pages) outlining how the candidate’s research interests connect with the theme of the summer school and how her/his attendance of the summer school would contribute to the progress of her/his research.
• Applications may be in German or English.
• Application deadline: 12 March 2018.
• Applications should be submitted electronically to lang@uni-tuebingen.de
• Notification of acceptance will be given by end of March/early April 2018.
• For any queries concerning the grants or the application procedure, please contact lang@uni-tuebingen.de

Candidates who are interested in attending the summer school without applying for a summer school grant should follow the application procedure specified above and indicate in their application that they are not applying for a grant, but only to attend the summer school.
Since places are strictly limited, we will be able to admit only candidates who have been selected through the application procedure.