Kant's Lectures

In this paper, I provide an account of the role of the associative function of the imagination in causal cognition for Kant. I consider, first, Kant’s treatment of the imaginative faculty in the student notes to Kant’s lectures on anthropology in the 1770s, with the aim of working up a more-or-less comprehensive taxonomy of its various sub-faculties. I then turn to Kant’s account of the activity of the imagination, particularly in accordance with the law of association, in the theory of (...) cognition presented in the notes, and show that Kant, apparently in spite of Hume, takes the result of this activity as the basis for causal cognition. I then contend that Kant’s treatment of affinity in the A edition Deduction is animated precisely by his concern to shore up his previous account of causal cognition against Hume’s sceptical challenge. (shrink)

In this short paper, I make the case that Kant did not hold the adversarial view of Pyrrhonian skepticism which he has sometimes been portrayed as holding. I show that Kant’s critical method in the Critique of Pure Reason, rather than competing with the Pyrrhonist’s skeptical method to find a more satisfying solution to pure reason’s internal conflicts, instead works alongside the skeptical method to produce a mutually agreeable resolution to the disputes of pure reason, and that this resolution turns (...) out to be far more Pyrrhonian than Kant initially lets on. I begin by piecing together Kant’s interpretation of Pyrrhonian skepticism (referred to here as "mitigated Pyrrhonism"), which he sees as a moderate form of skepticism that does not aim to undermine the possibility of knowledge or certainty in general and that concedes that we often have adequate reason to stop suspending judgment and endorse a belief over another incompatible belief. I then show that Kant’s critical method in the Antinomies is not meant to provide a general refutation of Pyrrhonian skeptical arguments from equipollence. Instead, it offers a tacit endorsement of the mitigated Pyrrhonist’s procedure as both a method for identifying the limits of human knowledge and a means of attaining knowledge within those limits. The larger project, of which this represents only the first piece, aims to offer a comprehensive Pyrrhonian reading of Kant's critical philosophy which uses the account offered here as its foundation. (shrink)

There is substantial scholarship concerning the origin and use of the question “quid facti” in Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. There is also substantial scholarship concerning the question in the work of Salomon Maimon, the skeptical critic of Kant. The pictures of the “quid facti” question that emerge from these two bodies of literature, however, are rather different, and there has been no attempt to reconcile them. The goal of this paper is thus to compare Kant’s and Maimon’s understandings of the quaestio (...) facti in order to understand how and why they differ. Part I begins by summarizing the legal context of the quaestio facti and identifying three sub-questions within it. Part II lays out Kant’s understanding of the quid facti as concerning the question of the empirical origin of a judgment. Part III shows how Maimon’s skeptical use of the quid facti question was made possible by his focus on a different aspect of the legal question: the question of whether a judgment has been made. Finally, using these results, Part IV argues, against the usual interpretation, that Maimon’s skeptical use of the quaestio facti can stand alone, separate from the quaestio juris. (shrink)

This paper investigates the development of Kant’s concept of ‘heart’ (Herz). Though it has been largely overlooked, ‘heart’ is an important term for Kant, referring to the power of the faculty of desire to produce desires based on feelings. In his Anthropology lectures, the heart belongs entirely to an agent’s Sinnesart (‘way-of-sensing’). In Religion Kant reintroduces it to connect the Sinnesart and the intelligible Denkungsart (‘way-of-thinking’). Whether we freely choose a good or evil heart partly determines how our feelings cause (...) desires, letting Kant say what his mature theory of freedom requires: that we are responsible for our own motivations. (shrink)

Readers should be aware that content about Kant’s racism may be difficult and distressing to read. In various texts, Kant makes statements alleging that Indigenous Americans have ‘no culture’ and Black people possess only the ‘culture of slaves’. These are straightforwardly repugnant commitments. In order to address the role of Kant’s account of ‘culture’ in his racism and provide additional support to Charles Mills’ ‘Untermensch (subhuman) interpretation’ of Kant’s views on race, this article situates Kant’s comments on ‘racialized cultures’ within (...) his teleological account of human history. In his system, ‘culture’ refers to the possession of developed capacities to achieve the ends that one sets for oneself. He sees achievement of culture as part of the development of human beings into members of a socialized, moral kingdom. Given his understanding of culture, I argue that Kant’s remarks on the cultural limitations of persons of color commit him to the further claims that Indigenous Americans and Black people are incapable of setting their own ends and that these deficiencies are hereditary and permanent. For Kant, this has the consequence that these individuals do not possess genuine moral worth in his system, thus supporting Mills’ Untermensch interpretation of Kant’s views on race. (shrink)

In 1786 Georg Forster published a widely read critique of Immanuel Kant’s theory of race. Since then, the dispute between Forster and Kant on the unity of mankind has been widely discussed in light of both Forster’s essay and Kant’s decision to write a lengthy response to Forster in 1788. In this discussion I widen the frame for considering the two positions by focusing on Kant’s lectures on Physical Geography. In these notes Kant emerges as an ethnographer asking many of (...) the same questions posed by Forster himself, a man who had become famous since his time spent onboard James Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific (1772-1775). Placing Kant’s ethnography in closer conversation with Forster reveals the many similarities (and some well-known differences) between the two. By including some of Forster’s other writings from the 1780s in an assessment of their debate, a much fuller picture can be had regarding natural historical investigations into the unity and difference of mankind at the time. (shrink)

Thus the enormous value of a philosophy of life that weakens the feeling for our individuality by constantly referring to universal laws, that teaches us to lose our miniscule selves in the context...

The General Remark to the Dynamics (hereafter, “the Remark”), appended to the second chapter of Kant’s MAN (4:523–35), is a perplexing tract. Therein, Kant offers a quadripartite characterization of the “specific variety of matter” – that is, those properties that vary among bodies, such as density, cohesion, aggregative state, friction, elasticity, and chemical affinity – that is bookended by reflections on his preference for a force-based methodology for explaining natural phenomena, which he dubs the “metaphysical-dynamical mode of explanation” (4:525). These (...) considerations, particularly the discussion of the specific variety of matter, appear prima facie divorced from priorities of MAN. In this chapter, I clarify the relationship between rational and empirical physics to which Kant aspired in MAN and argue for the following theses. First, rational physics grounds empirical physics insofar as the forces or phenomena of empirical physics are derived from the fundamental forces of rational physics (attraction and repulsion). Second, the relation of derivation between these forces is a real relation; that is, the derivative forces are not simply logically defined in terms of the fundamental forces, but rather emerge from a complex interplay between the fundamental forces. Finally, I contend that additional posits—different sorts of matter as well as an omnipresent dynamical aether—are necessary to derive empirical, physical phenomena from the interactions of fundamental forces. (shrink)

Kant lectured on moral philosophy fairly regularly over the course of his long, 40-year teaching career. Bearing a variety of different titles such as “Practical Philosophy”, “Ethics”, and “Universal Practical Philosophy and Ethics”, we have evidence that Kant offered a course on moral philosophy in at least 28 different semesters (of these we can prove that 19 actually took place, 9 others were advertised and there is good reason to think that they took place - see Arnoldt 1909). This means (...) that Kant offered a course on ethics in approximately one third of every semester he taught. The student notes from these lectures have proved invaluable resources for gaining insight into Kant’s intellectual development, his opinion on issues not covered extensively in the published works, and his character as a university instructor, among many others things. From his lectures on ethics, 23 distinct sets of notes are thought to have existed at any one point in time, but many of these have since been lost or destroyed (see Naragon 2006). Only 14 sets of notes still exist, either as an original, a copy, a published version of a subsequently lost manuscript, or just a collection of fragments (ibid.). But each of these are not unique, distinct sets of notes. For example: of the 23 sets of known notes, 13 of them belong to the same group in the sense that they are thought to all be copies of one original set. In the end, we possess only five distinct sets of notes from Kant’s lectures on ethics, stemming from various periods of his life: Herder (1760s), Kaehler/Collins (1770s), Powalski (1782/3), Mrongovius (1784/5), and Vigilantius (1790s). In what follows, each of these sets of notes will be given their own brief discussion. (shrink)

The chapter deals with the two most distinctive elements of the Introduction of the Naturrecht Feyerabend, namely the notions of an end in itself and autonomy. I shall argue that both are to be interpreted with regard to the aim of explaining the ground of right. In this light, I suggest that the notion of an end in itself counters a voluntarist conception like Achenwall’s with a claim whose necessity has a twofold ground: First, the representation of an unconditional worth (...) emerges as a structural element of the practical use of reason. Second, that representation concerns the necessary self-understanding of moral subjects. Finally, I argue that the other distinctive element, the occurrence of the notion of autonomy, is best understood as an application of that idea to a specific issue, which Kant addresses by showing that freedom is a self-regulating domain. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 3 Seiten: 482-486.

This paper sheds light on Kant’s notion of autonomy in his moral philosophy by considering Kant’s critique of the rationalist theories of morality that Kant discussed in his lectures on practical philosophy from the 1760s to the time of the Groundwork. The paper first explains Kant’s taxonomy of moral theories and his perspective on the history of ethics. Second, it considers Kant's arguments against the two main variants of ‘rationalism’ as he construes it, that is, perfectionism and theological voluntarism, pointing (...) out the similarities to previous criticisms. Third, the paper argues that Kant’s discussion of the 'rationalist' views does not amount to an unqualified dismissal, but to an attempt at working out a novel rationalist position. Kant’s criticisms of rationalist views suggest that his project emerges from the failures of previous rationalism, with the aim to work out a rationalist view that can account for moral obligation by integrating insights from the theological conception. The combination of perfectionism and theological views yields the basic outline of the idea of autonomy, consisting in the lawgiving function of a rational will as a key to the legislation of a necessary law. (shrink)

Autonomy is one of the central concepts of contemporary moral thought, and Kant is often credited with being the inventor of individual moral autonomy. But how and why did Kant develop this notion? The Emergence of Autonomy in Kant's Moral Philosophy is the first essay collection exclusively devoted to this topic. It traces the emergence of autonomy from Kant's earliest writings to the changes that he made to the concept in his mature works. The essays offer a close historical and (...) philosophical analysis of what prompted Kant to develop his conception of autonomy, charting the historical background which prompted his search, and thoroughly analysing different stages of his writings in order to see which element of autonomy was introduced at which point. The resulting volume will be of interest to both scholars and students of Kantian moral philosophy, as well as to anyone interested in the subject of autonomy. (shrink)

No centro da filosofia moral de Kant está sem dúvida sua doutrina do imperativo categórico. Por esse motivo não é de se surpreender que a Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes (1785), na qual Kant explica, em detalhes, essa doutrina pela primeira vez, tenha sido o foco da atenção por décadas. Mas há alguns anos é observável uma significativa mudança na literatura que é univocamente bem vinda: ao lado da pesquisa das Doutrinas da Virtude e do Direito publicadas por Kant nos (...) anos noventa do século 18, agora também são intensamente estudadas suas perspectivas filosófico-morais desenvolvidas antes de 1781. Nesse sentido assume uma posição de destaque o manuscrito estudantil de uma lição de ética ministrada no meio dos anos 70, que é publicada aqui, em língua portuguesa, pela primeira vez em uma tradução comentada. Ainda hoje, esta lição serve como uma introdução à ética de Kant, muito embora pareça divergir, em alguns aspectos, da doutrina crítica do imperativo categórico. As Lições de Ética são um „trabalho em andamento“. Por um lado, somos capazes de assistir Kant "pensando" e compreender como ele se reporta ao livro de Alexander Baumgarten sobre os Príncípios da Metafísica Prática (Initia philosophiae practicae primae, 1760). E, por outro lado, somos capazes de vivenciar como ele desenvolve suas próprias perspectivas filosófico-morais em contraste a Baumgarten. Para todos que se interessam pela filosofia moral de Kant e pela história da ética na época da Aufklärung, o estudo desse manuscrito é indispensável. Heiner F. Klemme (Martin Luther Universität - Halle-Wittenberg). (shrink)

Kant divided his course of lectures on metaphysics into six parts: a section entitled 'prolegomena' followed by chapters on ontology, cosmology, empirical psychology, rational psychology, and natural theology. This volume's ten chapters, written by leading Kant scholars, constitute the most comprehensive and informed analysis of his metaphysics lectures to date. The book provides balanced coverage of the lecture transcripts from Kant's course by following his general structure, with at least one chapter devoted to major themes from each of its parts. (...) As well as examining what the lecture transcripts can tell us about the content, context, and development of Kant's thought on a range of key topics - from his conception of transcendental philosophy to his critical theism - the contributors to this volume also offer expert discussion and insight on how to make responsible use of these key primary materials from the Kantian corpus. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 4 Seiten: 635-637.

In this paper, I shed light on Kant’s notion of Erkenntnis or cognition by focusing on texts pertaining to Kant’s thoughts on logic. Although a passage from Kant’s Logik is widely referred to for understanding Kant’s conception of Erkenntnis, this work was not penned by Kant himself but rather compiled by Benjamin Jäsche. So, it is imperative to determine its fidelity to Kant’s thought. I compare the passage with other sources, including Reflexionen and students’ lecture notes. I argue that several (...) of the text’s peculiarities stem from Jäsche rather than Kant, but that nevertheless Jäsche largely got Kant's view right, with two major exceptions. First, Jäsche’s text fails to reproduce Kant’s key thesis that kennen and verstehen are jointly sufficient for Erkenntnis. Second, Jäsche’s text gives the false impression that Kant holds that animals have consciousness. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta por primera vez en castellano la “Introducción” de las lecciones kantianas conocidas como Naturrecht Feyerabend, a partir de la nueva edición del manuscrito preparada por Heinrich P. Delfosse, Norbert Hinske y Gianluca Sadun Bordoni. La traducción está antecedida por un estudio crítico en el que sostenemos la tesis de que la obra en cuestión constituye una fuente jurídico-política crucial para entender la formación del pensamiento práctico de Kant. Intentamos mostrar que si bien el texto puede ser leído (...) como complemento de la Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres, la preocupación central de la “Introducción” de Naturrecht Feyerabend gira en torno a tres ejes conceptuales que recaen, por entero, dentro del reino de la filosofía jurídica y política. En primer lugar, encontramos en el curso una preocupación por definir el concepto de la obligación jurídica desde la idea de coacción, distinguiéndolo así del de la obligación ética y asociándolo a la definición de derecho subjetivo como potestad o título para ejercer coacción de manera legítima. En segundo lugar, es central la tesis propiamente kantiana de que el derecho debe fundarse en la libertad externa y en la posibilidad de su compatibilidad universal, y no en la felicidad entendida como fin natural que todos los individuos deberían perseguir y como propósito del Estado. En tercer lugar, aparecen in nuce los fundamentos conceptuales por los cuales Kant delimita la obligación jurídica desde la realidad práctica del derecho político, esto es, de un Estado, y no desde una supuesta confluencia pre-jurídica de intereses privados. (shrink)

This book is the first translation into English of the Reflections which Kant wrote whilst formulating his ideas in political philosophy: the preparatory drafts for Theory and Practice, Toward Perpetual Peace, the Doctrine of Right, and Conflict of the Faculties; and the only surviving student transcription of his course on Natural Right. Through these texts one can trace the development of his political thought, from his first exposure to Rousseau in the mid 1760s through to his last musings in the (...) late 1790s after his final system of Right was published. The material covers such topics as the central role of freedom, the social contract, the nature of sovereignty, the means for achieving international peace, property rights in relation to the very possibility of human agency, the general prohibition of rebellion, and Kant's philosophical defense of the French Revolution. (shrink)

القيادة الإدارية هي القدرة على توجيه الآخرين من أجل تحقيق الأهداف عن طريق التأثير... وهو إما بالتبني وقبول المرؤوسين للقائد، أو باستخدام السلطة الرسمية عند الضرورة، ومن هنا نعرف أن القيادة عملية هامة جدا لدى كل مؤسسة، لما تقوم به من بدور كبير في بناء، وتكوين الجماعات داخل العمل، وتأمين البيئة المناسبة لسير طبيعة العمل اليومي، إذ تتولى رسم السياسات والاستراتيجيات، وتسعى لتحقيق الأهداف من خلال نشاطاتها المتعددة. تعد الحاجة إلى القائد من الضرورات القصوى لكل عمل ناجح، لأن القائد يقوم (...) بالتفاعل مع الآخرين، ويعمل معهم لبلوغ أهداف العمل، والحفاظ على تماسك أفراده واندفاعهم وحماسهم، وبالتالي هي وظيفة نفسية واجتماعية وفكرية لابد منها للحفاظ على المؤسسة داخل المجتمع والبيئة المحيطة بها، و قدتوجد هذه المهمة الصعبة في شخص فذ، أوفي أسلوبه، أو الأفضل في هيئة، أو في لجنة، أو في مجلس قيادة يتحكم بالسلوكيات ويحدد المسارات، وينجز الأعمال بفاعلية ونجاح، هذا، ويعمل المديرون على ممارسة القيادة بفضل عوامل عديدة. تحتاج عملية التدبير اليومي إلى عنصر القيادة لتوجيهه نحو الوجهة الصائبة المرغوب فيها، وعلى هذا الأساس، يمكن أن نقول إن القيادة سلوك يومي لصيق بالإنسان يمارسه الأفراد يوميا عن طريق تعاملهم مع الآخرين أو فيما بينهم، ويخضع هذا السلوك لحجم السلطة المتاحة ومدى استقلالية المنصب، أو الموقع، أو الوضعية التي يوجد فيها الفرد/الفاعل، ومن هنا نطرح السؤال الإشكال التالي: - ما القيادة؟. (shrink)

The chapter shows how Kant’s ethical thought as reflected in the lectures, responds to Baumgarten’s works on moral philosophy. I argue that Kant chose Baumgarten’s textbooks for his classes for genuinely philosophical reasons. The thorough discussion of Baumgarten’s views provided Kant with important clues for developing an original position, even if mostly in opposition to Baumgarten. I illustrate this complex role of Baumgarten with a few significant examples, that also highlight some original aspects of Baumgarten’s position in comparison to Wolff’s: (...) (1) Kant follows Baumgarten’s in focusing on obligation as the crucial issue in moral philosophy, but Kant regards Baumgarten’s account as not satisfying. (2) Baumgarten’s sharply theistic foundation of morality is rejected by Kant. (3) Kant rejects also several significant aspects of Baumgarten’s division of ethical duties, thereby revealing profound differences in their conceptions of morality. (shrink)

The editor's introduction to the volume gives an overview of its main themes and provides a summary of each of the twenty-two chapters.

This is the first book devoted to an examination of Kant's lectures on ethics, which provide a unique and revealing perspective on the development of his views. In fifteen newly commissioned essays, leading Kant scholars discuss four sets of student notes reflecting different periods of Kant's career: those taken by Herder, Collins, Mrongovius and Vigilantius. The essays cover a diverse range of topics, from the relation between Kant's lectures and the Baumgarten textbooks, to obligation, virtue, love, the highest good, freedom, (...) the categorical imperative, moral motivation and religion. Together they provide the reader with a deeper and fuller understanding of the evolution of Kant's moral thought. The volume will be of interest to a range of readers in Kant studies, ethics, political philosophy, religious studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

How serious was Kant about his suggestion, in the first edition Preface to Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (6:10), that he hoped his book would be suitable for use as compulsory reading for a philosophy class that theology students of the future would be required to take in their final year of study? This chapter (of a forthcoming anthology that will include chapters on all of Kant's lecturing activity) begins by sketching the pedagogical themes that develop progressively throughout (...) Religion, becoming more prominent as the text proceeds. I then turn to Kant’s own lectures, especially his Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion and relevant passages from the various editions of his Lectures on Metaphysics, with the goal of answering two additional questions. First, do the student notes for lectures delivered prior to 1792 provide evidence that Kant followed his own, subsequently-articulated theory of moral-religious pedagogy when he taught university courses relating to religion and/or theology? And second, do the lectures notes (including those relating to lectures given after 1792) provide any evidence that Kant’s views on moral pedagogy within a religious community predated his writing of Religion? (shrink)

In der Kritik der Urteilskraft vertritt Kant noch die analogische Beziehung zwischen Schönheit und Sittlichkeit (KU, AA 05: 351–354). Aber wir befinden uns hier in einem ganz anderen Zusammenhang. Und dies nicht nur, weil die Erörterung dieser analogischen Beziehung eine Lösung für das Problem der Verknüpfung zwischen theoretischer und praktischer Vernunft beansprucht. Die Reflexionen in den Vorlesungen über Anthropologie über die pragmatische Dimension des Geschmacks setzten die Möglichkeit dieser Verknüpfung bereits voraus, bevor Kant eine kritische Begründung derselben erreichte. Wir dürfen (...) aber diese Reflexionen nicht als das Ergebnis unreifer Versuche zur Lösung dieses kritischen Problems der Rationalitätstheorie Kants deuten. Während der Paragraph 59 der Kritik der Urteilskraft Teil der spekulativen Philosophie ist, wird die Kritik des Geschmacks in den Vorlesungen über Anthropologie vielmehr insofern sinnvoll, da sie zu einem pragmatischen, populären und aufgeklärten Bildungsprogramm der Anthropologie Kants gehört. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 3 Seiten: 394-405.

Kant was one of the inventors of anthropology, and his lectures on anthropology were the most popular and among the most frequently given of his lecture courses. This volume contains the first translation of selections from student transcriptions of the lectures between 1772 and 1789, prior to the published version, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, which Kant edited himself at the end of his teaching career. The two most extensive texts, Anthropology Friedländer and Anthropology Mrongovius, are presented here (...) in their entirety, along with selections from all the other lecture transcriptions published in the Academy edition, together with sizeable portions of the Menschenkunde, first published in 1831. These lectures show that Kant had a coherent and well-developed empirical theory of human nature bearing on many other aspects of his philosophy, including cognition, moral psychology, politics and philosophy of history. (shrink)

This chapter explains how Kant's metaphysics and practical philosophy allowed him to remain deeply attached to the notion of a moral creator, although the very end of his last _Critique_ makes a systematic case against the whole tradition of natural theology's reliance on teleological arguments. Kant argues that even if for ordinary scientific or prudential purposes we must look at matters ‘as if’ they are purposive, this is theoretically compatible with a serious skeptical thought that we might just be fooled (...) by nature. The chapter also explains the terminological reasons why Kant felt it appropriate to characterize pure practical belief in a moral creator as ‘subjective’, even though the content of that belief is rational and treated as a kind of objective ‘matter of fact’. (shrink)

Shortly after Kant's own history essay, he wrote some critical reviews works on history by Herder. A remarkable feature of these reviews is that, although Kant was deeply disturbed by what he took to be Herder's cavalier treatment of the basic notions of freedom and purpose, the reviews do not go into detail on this point. Given that Kant had been thinking about absolute freedom for two decades but without any substantive publications in practical philosophy, and that right then he (...) had become aware that anti-libertarian philosophies such as Herder's were gaining great momentum, it only makes sense to suppose that he could not restrain himself any longer from publishing as quickly as possible his most basic views on morality and freedom. This can help resolve the old mystery of why Kant suddenly wrote his most popular book, the _Groundwork_, when he did. (shrink)

This chapter assesses Kant's late debate with his former main ally, Reinhold, over the definition of the will. It concludes that, despite Kant's special emphasis on our absolute libertarian freedom, it was correct for him to criticize Reinhold's insistence on putting the liberty of multiple open sensory alternatives into the very definition of will. Even if human _Willkür_ (choice) in fact has absolute liberty, pure will as such, _Wille_, which is practical reason and provides the standard for morality (and is (...) common to God), is best defined as a pure positive faculty rather than in terms of indifference or the capacity to reject sensibility. This point reconfirms a non-foundationalist interpretation of the second Critique's notion of the ‘fact of reason’ and Kant's Critical philosophy in general. (shrink)

This book explores the main stages and key concepts in the development of Kant's critical philosophy, from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Karl Ameriks provides a detailed and concise account of the main ways in which the later critical works provide a plausible defense of the conception of humanity's fundamental end that Kant turned to after reading Rousseau in the 1760s. Separate essays are devoted to each of the three Critiques, as well as to earlier notes and lectures and (...) several of Kant's later writings on history and religion. A final section devotes three chapters to post-Kantian developments in German Romanticism, accounts of tragedy up through Nietzsche, and contemporary philosophy. The theme of an elliptical path is shown to be relevant to these writers as well as to many aspects of Kant's own life and work. The topics of the book include fundamental issues in epistemology and metaphysics, with a new defense of the Amerik's 'moderate' interpretation of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

This chapter explores the anti-empiricist dimension of Kant's early work by arguing that the recent publication of a new edition, by Kuehn and Stark, of Kant's early (1770s) ethics lectures need not be taken, despite appearances, to imply a temporary inclination on Kant's part toward an empiricist ethical view that would encourage an emphasis on sensibility and happiness rather than purity and absolutely strict moral demands. Although, as Schwaiger has shown, Kant takes much of the framework of his discussion from (...) Baumgarten, it can also be argued that already in this period he is working toward a pure and realistic conception of morality that can connect positively with religion in a non-heteronomous way. The chapter concludes that the main difference between this early period and Kant's Critical philosophy is not so much a matter of content as the fact that Kant has not yet worked out his full theory of freedom. (shrink)

This chapter explores a difficult aspect of Kant's ambivalent attitude toward religion in his final writings, namely, his sharp critique of appeals to miracles even while he himself remained committed to a purposive non-natural ground of existence on the whole. His _Religion_ is an ‘end’ of theodicy in not only a negative sense, in that it attacks all prior explanations that invoke particular divine providence, but also a positive sense, insofar as it is a last grand systematic attempt to still (...) warrant, as compelling for all reasonable agents, the assertion of a benevolent creator, albeit on pure practical grounds alone. With mixed success, Kant invokes his technical understanding of ‘nature’ to help distinguish his own reliance on non-sensory conceptions of freedom and divine assistance from anything like an appeal to miracles. (shrink)

This chapter discusses similarities between Kant and the poet-philosophers Hšlderlin and Novalis with respect to the thought of an elliptical path governing humanity's movement toward a recovery of its moral and religious purpose. Kant's confidence in pure moral reason is contrasted with the more nuanced historical picture that the poets construct of our past course and future prospects. Despite many deep similarities, a significant difference between the creative writers and Kant lies in the fact that, as creative, the Early Romantics (...) could see themselves as not merely analyzing contemporary cultural problems but as having a chance to directly reawaken humanity's practical capacities at a broad and primordial level, as explained in recent accounts such as Kneller's, of their extension of Kant's key notion of imagination. (shrink)

This chapter begins the section of the book that focuses primarily on the practical rather than theoretical branch of Critical philosophy. It stresses, however, that there are analogies between Kant's rejections of thoroughgoing humanism at both the theoretical and practical levels. At the theoretical level, Kant's metaphysics requires leaving open a space for non-mundane items, such as God and finite free agency, which transcend the cosmos on Kant's traditional definition. At the practical level, Kant's doctrine of pure will, or pure (...) practical reason, distinguishes his position from the humanistic constructivism of many contemporary interpreters of Kant's notion of moral law. To illustrate the hermeneutical and systematic shortcomings of a typical merely humanistic approach, a critical account is given of a recent discussion of ‘Willing the Law’ by Velleman. (shrink)

This chapter starts from a distinction between Kant's ‘transcendental turn’, as a positive theory about the pure and objective but immanent structures of experience, and the additional metaphysical commitments of Kant's doctrine of transcendental idealism. Interpreters who focus merely on the ‘transcendental turn’, such as Wood, tend to do so because they fear that a metaphysical reading of Kant's idealism must lead to contradictions or a ‘demoting’ of the objectivity of experience. The chapter concludes by focusing on some supposedly contradictory (...) passages, and by explaining how a moderate interpretation of transcendental idealism, and of the relevant meaning of terms such as ‘ideal’ and ‘in itself’, can save Kant from charges of inconsistency or absurdity. (shrink)

In the second Critique, Kant ultimately concedes that his practical philosophy rests on the notion of a ‘fact of reason’. This chapter explores and criticizes two valuable recent attempts, by Sussman and Kleingeld, to interpret Kant's discussions of morality's dominant authority in a less dogmatic way. They each have the goal of showing that Kant has arguments grounded on an aspect of rationality that is not already characterized as moral, and that therefore his view does not rest, after all, on (...) acceptance of a pure, non-derived ‘fact’. The textual criticism of these subtle attempts admittedly leaves Kant's espousal of morality in a kind of dogmatic situation, without a foundational defense — although such a situation may be not only textually unavoidable but also realistic. (shrink)

This chapter outlines a broader narrative of post-Kantian thought about purpose, nature, and history. It uses the idea of tragedy as a positive theme that connects the main figures Kant, Lessing, Schiller, Hegel, Schelling, the Romantics, and Nietzsche. Instead of thinking of tragedy in terms of common notions of unhappiness or conflicting duties, the chapter uses the broader late modern notion that a perspective on human existence can be called ‘tragic’ simply insofar as it upholds a positive attitude to existence (...) even in the face of grave doubts about all traditional teleological accounts of humanity's path. Early works of Nietzsche are used to demonstrate that he was thinking explicitly of Kant's early cosmological speculations when he fashioned his own version of a non-teleological but yet distinctly aesthetic and meaningful conception of human existence. (shrink)

The Introduction focuses on how the concept of an elliptical path, which is central to Kant's early work on Keplerian cosmology, unifies his conception of his own life and work and also his view about the ideal shape of the life of individual modern agents and the course of human history. In addition to giving an overview of each of the book's fifteen chapters, the Introduction highlights Kant's new concern, in the 1760s, with Rousseau's respect for common sense, egalitarianism, and (...) a primacy of practical reason. This concern animates the rest of Kant's work, and his relation to figures such as Herder, Reinhold, Jacobi, Milton, Schiller, and others in a way that remains relevant to contemporary ethics, aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. (shrink)

This chapter defends a ‘moderate’ reading of Kant's central doctrine of transcendental idealism that does not retreat from giving it an explicitly metaphysical meaning, and yet also shows how this meaning implies a ‘weighty’ objective understanding of ‘appearance’, with realistic implications at both the empirical and transcendental levels. This interpretation has similarities with recent interpretations by Allais and Rosefeldt, who point out analogies with contemporary treatments of secondary qualities as having an objective as well as subjective aspect. The moderate interpretation (...) is then compared with Hanna's ‘naturalist humanist’ treatment of Kant, which also reads Kant's idealism in an objective way, but one that is less metaphysical and also more difficult to connect with theoretical science and Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter extends the narrative of stages in post-Kantian philosophy by noting elements in Kant's own aesthetic theory that anticipate the growing contemporary rejuvenation of the post-Kantian conception of philosophy as a basically historical, interpretative, and broadly aesthetic enterprise. An especially useful model for understanding philosophy as an activity of this kind can be found in the third _Critique_'s discussion of the role of the aesthetic genius as an ‘exemplar’. This passage is then linked to proposals by Rorty and Bloom (...) that ‘strong’ writers show their genius by ‘misreading’ their great predecessors and creating new rules for future geniuses. It is proposed that late modern philosophy, which is neither pure science nor art, can be understood best in these terms, as a creative and progressive interpretative endeavor. (shrink)

This chapter begins the section of the book focusing on Kant's discussions of a final purpose for existence. Kant compares the main hypothesis of his essay on the Idea of history with Kepler's plotting of the elliptical pattern of planets. He argues that the cosmopolitan political aim of a world of just institutions can be brought about according to a pattern of eccentric historical developments, whereby the expansion of the antagonistic aspects of human nature lead to a need for just (...) institutions. His deeper belief, however, is that our complete development has to involve satisfaction of the ‘self-esteem’ of our pure moral vocation. Ultimately, Kant holds that this vocation implies the need for powers that go beyond nature, and hence an affirmation of religion. (shrink)

The fact that Kant was heavily influenced by Rousseau is well known, but it is only very recently that a properly edited and now fully translated version of Kant's notes on Rousseau, by Frierson and Guyer, has been available. This chapter makes use of these materials to argue in detail that in the 1760s Kant suddenly expressed a very new and well-thought-out conception of human nature and history. Kant borrowed from Rousseau but also moved toward his own more complex historical (...) and metaphysical understanding of human beings. In particular, he took them to be absolutely free and equal rational agents who need to go through series of complex elliptical developments in late modern life in order to have the chance of returning to a fulfillment of their fundamental end. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on passages in Schleiermacher's notebooks, highlighted in recent work by Mari–a, which carefully describes similarities between Kant's Critical treatment of the self in the Paralogisms, and Spinoza's view, as interpreted by Jacobi, that finite subjects are not substances. Schleiermacher is right that there are striking similarities between Kant's and Spinoza's rejection of certain Cartesian doctrines about theoretical knowledge of the self. In the end, however, Kant's direct references to Spinoza and his own treatment of Jacobi reveal that (...) Kant has long-standing differences with Spinozism about philosophical method, purpose, freedom, monism, and the reality of finite personal substances. The philosophical strength of these differences is difficult to evaluate, but they reveal Kant's enduring commitment to Rousseauian beliefs. (shrink)

Kant was one of the inventors of anthropology, and his lectures on anthropology were the most popular and among the most frequently given of his lecture courses. This volume contains the first translation of selections from student transcriptions of the lectures between 1772 and 1789, prior to the published version, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), which Kant edited himself at the end of his teaching career. The two most extensive texts, Anthropology Friedländer (1772) and Anthropology Mrongovius (1786), (...) are presented here in their entirety, along with selections from all the other lecture transcriptions published in the Academy edition, together with sizeable portions of the Menschenkunde (1781-1782), first published in 1831. These lectures show that Kant had a coherent and well-developed empirical theory of human nature bearing on many other aspects of his philosophy, including cognition, moral psychology, politics and philosophy of history. (shrink)

Denis, Lara. Moral Self-Regard: Duties to Oneself in Kant's Moral Theory. New York: Garland Publishing. 2001. Engstrom, Stephen. “The Concept ofthe Highest Good in Kant's Moral The- ory.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52, ...