Manfred Frank, emeritus professor of the University of Tübingen, will give the next Utrecht Philosophy Lecture entitled: From Fichte’s Original Insight to a Moderate Defense of Self-Representationalism. Please find the abstract and more general information on Manfred Frank as scholar below.

The lecture will be held November 18th, from 15:00 – 17:00, in the Grote Vergaderzaal of the Universiteitsmuseum in Utrecht. Attendance is free, but registration is required. To register please send an email to: d.k.during@uu.nl

Abstract: “From Fichte’s Original Insight to a Defense of Moderate Self-Representationalism”

In contrast to physical states, mental states, when occuring consciously, seem to have been “always already self-registered”. If there is little risk of disagreement on recognizing the phenomenon, philosophers widely disagree on the interpretation of the assumed registration mechanism. Most of them defend (or have defended) a higher-order view, widespread throughout the tradition of the modern “philosophy of the subject” up to our days. According to a ground-breaking publication by Dieter Henrich (1966), it was Fichte who first clearly diagnosed that and why what is henceforth called the “reflection model” fails due to vicious circularity and infinite regress. For how could one reflecting know that the reflected-on, in spite of its numerical difference, belongs to her herself, unless she had already been familiar with herself prior to the objectifying act of reflection (i.e., “pre-reflectively“)? The article attempts to show that this objection is still valid for some recently developed same-order (or self-representational) theories of self-awareness.

Manfred Frank (born in 1945) is one of the most prominent contemporary German philosophers. Within his very broad research interests there are three main areas;

He is interested in the development of early German idealism and German romanticism as it developed around 1800. In that context he published widely on the philosophy of the early Schelling and his concept of ‘identity’.  Besides that he emphasized the specific approach of the early romanticists (Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel) as distinct from the later idealistic approaches. His book “The Philosophical Foundation of Early German Romanticism” presents the synthesis of his research in this area.

He widely published about theories of subjectivity, self-consciousness and philosophy of mind. In this research he particularly related discussions in the analytical philosophy of mind to continental debates, e.g. of Fichte, Brentano and Sartre. This research is a quite unique attempt to bridge various lines of philosophical discussions with the aim to show that an appropriate theory of self-consciousness would have to take the pre-reflexive unity of the self into account.

Already in the 1990s he wrote book on the hermeneutics of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Das individuelle Allgemeine. Textstrukturierung und -interpretation nach Schleiermacher, Frankfurt 1977). He showed that Schleiermachers approach has a potential for the understanding of understanding that has advantages as well in comparison to the hermeneutics of Gadamer as well in comparison to French developments of so-called poststructural philosophy, which Frank discussed and criticized widely.