| FEL-273562-21 | Research Programs: Fellowships | Katharina Teresa Kraus | Individuality and Interconnectedness: Essays on the Enlightenment Idea of Harmony | 1/1/2022 - 12/31/2022 | $60,000.00 | Katharina | Teresa | Kraus | | | | University of Notre Dame | Notre Dame | IN | 46556-4635 | USA | 2020 | History of Philosophy | Fellowships | Research Programs | 60000 | 0 | 60000 | 0 | Research and writing leading to publication of three articles on the idea of systemic order in Enlightenment philosophy.
My project aims to reconceive the relation between individuality and interconnectedness in modern societies by examining Enlightenment conceptions of harmony. Many Enlightenment philosophers draw on some notion of harmony (or systematic order), that is, the idea that there is some overall coherence within a whole composed of diverse elements. Specifically, I plan to compare Leibniz’s and Kant’s accounts of harmony in their historical context and in their distinctive differences, paying attention to their employment of scientific models of harmonic motions. I shall argue that Kant turns Leibniz’s metaphysical assumption of a divinely created world-order into a normative principle that guides human life. Moreover, I intend to study critiques that this Enlightenment idea has received from contemporary empiricists and from post-Kantian thinkers who emphasize the irrational and disorderly aspects of human life. Finally, I aim to develop a novel defense of this idea. |