Recent scientific advances in the field of gene editing have led to a renewed discussion on the moral acceptability of human germline modifications. Gene editing methods can be used on human embryos and gametes in order to change DNA sequences that are associated with diseases. Modifying the human germline, however, is currently illegal in many countries but has been suggested as a ‘last resort’ option in some reports. In contrast, preimplantation genetic diagnosis is now a well-established practice within reproductive medicine. (...) Both methods can be used to prevent children from being born with severe genetic diseases. This paper focuses on four moral concerns raised in the debate about germline gene editing and applies them to the practice of PGD for comparison: Violation of human dignity, disrespect of the autonomy and the physical integrity of the future child, discrimination of people living with a disability and the fear of slippery slope towards immoral usage of the technology, e.g. designing children for specific third party interests. Our analysis did not reveal any fundamental differences with regard to the four concerns. We argue that with regard to the four arguments analyzed in this paper germline gene editing should be considered morally as acceptable as the selection of genomes on the basis of PGD. However, we also argue that any application of GGE in reproductive medicine should be put on hold until thorough and comprehensive laws have been implemented to prevent the abuse of GGE for non-medical enhancement. (shrink)

The Critical Naturalism Manifesto is a common platform put forward as a basis for broad discussions around the problems faced by critical theory today. We are living in a time, e.g. a pandemic time, when present-day challenges exert immense pressure on social critique. This means that models of social critique should not be discussed from the point of view of their normative justification or political effects alone, but also with reference to their ability to tackle contemporary problematic issues (like the (...) dismantlement of the welfare state, the environmental catastrophe, and the sanitary crisis). With this manifesto, we invite varying practices of philosophical, artistic and scientific social critique to take seriously the enormous challenges our societies face with regard to inner and outer nature. We first identity eleven theses of critical naturalism which contemporary critical theory should take into consideration. We then identify the historical crises and catastrophes that critical naturalism seeks to respond to, dispelling the prejudices against naturalism in contemporary critical thought, and considering alternative answers to these questions such as social constructivism, accelerationism, xenofeminism, flat ontologism, and monist world ecology. By sketching the notions of nature and naturalism, we anchor critical naturalism in the history of materialism and critical theory, understood initially as that of the Frankfurt School, but expanded and enriched by other approaches to social critique. Finally, we sketch models and projects of critical naturalism, which are exemplary fragments of varying ways to practice naturalist social critique. (shrink)

In diesem Kapitel entwickeln wir in einem ersten Schritt zunächst ein Analyseraster, mit dem sich systematisch die in den einzelnen Städten umgesetzen Abfallvermeidungsmaßnahmen erfassen lassen. Das Tableau der Maßnahmen bildet das Spektrum einer „idealen Abfallvermeidungspolitik“ ab, entsprechend würde die Umsetzung in der Summe mit 100 Punkten bewertet werden. Anhand der Analyserasters beschreiben wir in einem zweiten Schritt außerdem, wie die Abfallvermeidungspolitiken und der 22 kreisfreien Städte im Untersuchungszeitraum ausgeprägt sind. Deutlich wird, dass zwar alle Städte Abfallvermeidungsmaßnahmen umsetzen und erhebliche Unterschiede (...) zwischen den einzelnen Städten bestehen, keine Stadt jedoch das vollständige Spektrum kommunaler Abfallvermeidungsmaßnahmen umsetzt. (shrink)

Books reviewed in this article: The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman with Gary A. Herion, David F. Graf, John David Pleins. The Gospel of Matthew. By Daniel J. Harrington. Paul: An Introduction to his Thought. By C. K. Barrett. A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identiy. By Daniel Boyarin. New Testament Theology. By G. B. Caird, completed and edited by L. D. Hurst. The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius. By Peter Widdicombe. Dieu et (...) le Christ selon Grégoire de Nysse. By Bernard Pottier. Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure. By Robert Sokolowski. Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance. By Werner Jeanrond. Theologie aus Efahrung der Gnade. Annäherungen an Karl Rahner: Edited by Mariano Delgado and Mathias‐Lutz Bachmann. Bernhard Welte's Fundamental Theological Approach to Christology.. By Anthony J. Godzieba. Sacred Identity: Exploring a Theology of the Person. By Jane Kopas. A Salvation Audit. By Colin Grant. Medical Ezhics: Sources Of Catholic Teachings, Second Edition. Edited by Kevin O'Rourke and Philip Boyle. Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire. By Martin Goodman. Literacy and Power in the Ancient World. Edited by Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf. St Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy. Its History, Theology and Texts. By John A. McGuckin. Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. By Neil B. McLynn. Basil of Cuesareu. By Philip Rousseau. Augustine. By Mary T. Clark. Irenaeus. By Dennis Minns. Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian Constantinople. By Vasiliki Limberis. The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature. By Charles D. Wright. Relics, Apocalypse and the Deceils of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034. By Richard Landes. Huguccio: The Life, Works, and Thought of a Twelfth‐Centuy Jurist. By Wolfgang P. Müller. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, Volume II: The Growth of Mysticism. By Bernard McGinn. Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century. By Christoph T. Maier. Mary Ward: A World in Contemplation. By Henriette Peters. The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin and Lucile Swan. Edited by Thomas M. King and Mary Wood Gilbert. Pseudo‐Marry: By John Donne. Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary, by Anthony Raspa. Donne and the Politics of Conscience in Early Modern England. By M. L. Brown. The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles 1 and the Remoulding of Anglicanism. By Julian Davies. Érudition et religion aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siécles. By Bruno Neveu. Cardinal Lavigerie: Churchman, Prophet and Missionary. By François Renault. Dom Columba Marmion: A Biography By Mark Tierney. Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century. By Timothy Yates. Religion in Africa: Experience and Expression. Edited by Thomas D. Blakely, Walter E. A. van Beek and Dennis Thomson. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to extract from Kant's writings an account of the nature of the emotions and their function – and to do so despite the fact that Kant neither uses the term ‘emotion’ nor offers a systematic treatment of it. Kant's position, as I interpret it, challenges the contemporary trends that define emotions in terms of other mental states and defines them instead first and foremost as ‘feelings’. Although Kant's views on the nature of feelings have (...) drawn surprisingly little attention, I argue that the faculty of feeling has the distinct role of making us aware of the way our faculties relate to each other and to the world. As I show, feelings are affective appraisals of our activity, and as such they play an indispensable orientational function in the Kantian mind. After spelling out Kant's distinction between feeling and desire, I turn to the distinction between feeling and cognition and show that while feelings are non-cognitive states, they have a form of derived-intentionality. §4 argues that what feelings are about, in this derived sense, is our relationship to ourselves and the world: they function as affective appraisals of the state of our agency. §5 shows that this function is necessary to the activity of the mind insofar as it is orientational. Finally, §6 discusses the examples of epistemic pleasure and moral contentment and argues that they manifest the conditions of cognitive and moral agency respectively. (shrink)

Kant famously identified 'What is man?' as the fundamental question that encompasses the whole of philosophy. Yet surprisingly, there has been no concerted effort amongst Kant scholars to examine Kant's actual philosophy of man. This book, which is inspired by, and part of, the recent movement that focuses on the empirical dimension of Kant's works, is the first sustained attempt to extract from his writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their presuppositions (...) as well as their methodology. In exploring his philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences, it reveals an unexpected picture of Kant, a picture of a thinker who is profoundly attentive to the diversity, detail and complexity of the human world. (shrink)

After showing that there is room in Kant’s account for doxastic responsibility, this paper sets out to explore the form it takes as well as the demands it makes on doxastic agents. To do so, I begin by showing that Kant’s account of cognition allows for an indirect form of doxastic voluntarism that pertains to the will’s capacity to influence the exercise of our cognitive faculties. I then argue that it would be a mistake to conclude on this basis that (...) Kant reduces doxastic agency to the realm of the voluntary, whether indirect or not. In fact, on the Kantian picture of everyday cognition as I interpret it, we don’t relate to our doxastic activity as something that we should or even can control, intend, or choose. In this sense, Kant isn’t a direct doxastic voluntarist. I show that instead, he provides us with the resources to think about doxastic agency in a more fundamental way; namely, the sense in which we are agents of our cognitive lives pertains to what I call our doxastic way of thinking as it is defined by our epistemic maxims and ultimately our logical character. (shrink)

Kant's lectures on anthropology, which formed the basis of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, contain many observations on human nature, culture and psychology and illuminate his distinctive approach to the human sciences. The essays in the present volume, written by an international team of leading Kant scholars, offer the first comprehensive scholarly assessment of these lectures, their philosophical importance, their evolution and their relation to Kant's critical philosophy. They explore a wide range of topics, including Kant's account (...) of cognition, the senses, self-knowledge, freedom, passion, desire, morality, culture, education and cosmopolitanism. The volume will enrich current debates within Kantian scholarship as well as beyond, and will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of Kant, the history of anthropology, the philosophy of psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of developing a Kantian account of the ethics of belief by deploying the tools provided by Kant's ethics. To do so, I reconstruct epistemic concepts and arguments on the model of their ethical counterparts, focusing on the notions of epistemic principle, epistemic maxim and epistemic universalizability test. On this basis, I suggest that there is an analogy between our position as moral agents and as cognizers: our actions and our thoughts are subject to (...) the same rational norm. (shrink)

This paper argues that contrary to what is often thought, virtue for Kant is not just a matter of strength of will; it has an essential affective dimension. To support this claim, I show that certain affective dispositions, namely moral feelings and desires, are virtuous in the sense that they are constitutive of virtue at the affective level. There is thus an intrinsic connection between an agent’s practice of virtue and the cultivation of her affective dispositions.

The aim of this paper is to defend the claim that epistemic autonomy plays a central role in Kant’s account of epistemic normativity. Just as the formula of autonomy ought to regulate the activity of the will, I argue that our epistemic activity, and in particular our beliefs (‘holding to be true’, Fürwahrhalten) ought to be regulated by an epistemic version of this formula. To support this claim, I show that while believing and willing are different kinds of activities, they (...) are subject to the same normative demands. Thus, contrary to what is often assumed, the demand for autonomy applies to cognitive as well as moral agency. However, there are many reasons to be suspicious of the application of Kant’s notion of autonomy to the epistemic realm, so the final section focuses on three objections that question its soundness. I conclude that the analogy between epistemic and moral autonomy turns out to be a lot more robust than is usually thought. (shrink)

In The Experience of Injustice, the French philosopher Emmanuel Renault opens an important new chapter in critical theory. He brings together political theory, critical social science, and a keen sense of the power of popular movements to offer a forceful vision of social justice. Questioning normative political philosophy’s conception of justice, Renault gives an account of injustice as the denial of recognition, placing the experience of social suffering at the heart of contemporary critical theory. Inspired by Axel Honneth, (...) Renault argues that a radicalized version of Honneth’s ethics of recognition can provide a systematic alternative to the liberal-democratic projects of such thinkers as Rawls and Habermas. Renault reformulates Honneth’s theory as a framework founded on experiences of injustice. He develops a complex, psychoanalytically rich account of suffering, disaffiliation, and identity loss to explain these experiences as denials of recognition, linking everyday injustice to a robust defense of the politicization of identity in social struggles. Engaging contemporary French and German critical theory alongside interdisciplinary tools from sociology, psychoanalysis, socialist political theory, social-movement theory, and philosophy, Renault articulates the importance of a theory of recognition for the resurgence of social critique. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore Kant’s account of normativity through the prism of the distinction between the natural and the human sciences. Although the pragmatic orientation of the human sciences is often defined in contrast with the theoretical orientation of the natural sciences, I show that they are in fact regulated by one and the same norm, namely reason’s demand for autonomy.

In “Raymond Ruyer and cybernetics”, Alix Veilhan sheds light on Ruyer’s reading of cybernetic theories, and especially on how a dialogue with the views of Norbert Wiener allows Ruyer to support the hypothesis of a “trans-spatial” origin of the information, and to demonstrate once again the inadequacy of mechanism in the explanation of the living world. Ruyer thus calls for the development of a renewed cybernetics, in conformity with his “neo-finalism”.

Kant’s ethics is traditionally portrayed as unequivocal on one issue: natural drives, including feelings, emotions and inclinations, are intrinsically at odds with morality. From the Groundwork to the Critique of Practical Reason and the Metaphysics of Morals, his works seem to warrant this view. For instance: ‘The inclinations themselves, as sources of needs, are so far from having an absolute worth, so as to make one wish to have them, that it must instead be the universal wish of every rational (...) being to be altogether free from them’ (4:428); Inclinations 'are always burdensome to a rational being, and though he cannot lay them aside, they wrest from him the wish to be rid of them.’ (5:118) ‘virtue necessarily presupposes apathy’; it ‘forbid[s] him to let himself be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); for unless reason holds the reins of government in its own hands, his feelings and inclinations play the master over him.’ (6:408) The passage from the Groundwork is read as claiming that grudgingly obeying one’s duty is morally preferable to doing one’s duty with pleasure; the passage from the Critique of Practical Reason as claiming that emotions need to be annihilated and that the ideal will is a holy will, a purely rational creature entirely devoid of feelings and always solely governed by reason, in contrast with impure human wills; and the passage from the Metaphysics of Morals as claiming we have a duty of apathy, a duty to strive to be without feelings. However, this does not entail that there is no moral role for them in Kant’s ethics. For instance, in the following passage, Kant seems to suggest that the feeling of sympathy is one noteworthy exception to his supposed emotionless ideal: 'While it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathise actively in their fate; and to this end it is therefore an indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate natural (aesthetic) feelings in us, and to make use of them as so many means to sympathy based on moral principles and the feelings appropriate to them.' (6:456-7) This statement is not only in conflict with traditional portrayals of his ethics, more importantly, it may seem surprising for Kantian morality to endorse the claim that we have duties, albeit indirect, to cultivate feelings of sympathy in order to use them as a means to moral ends. The aim of this paper is to spell out and defend the claim that the cultivation of certain emotions is one of our moral duties. To do so, I first argue that far from always being hindrances to the realisation of duty, emotions can be crucial helps to it insofar as their cultivation makes agents more morally efficacious. It is in this respect that we have an indirect duty to cultivate them so as to make sure they further rather than hinder it. Second, I question the sense in which the cultivation of emotions is in fact a moral duty. For, the fact that emotions are a means for promoting the performance of duty suggests that cultivating them is not morally required, and more importantly that acting from them has no moral colour. However, I argue that we have a duty to cultivate our emotions because doing so promotes and facilitates the exercise of virtue from the standpoint of worldly action, thus making human agents more morally efficacious. Third, I argue that far from being in conflict with Kant’s account of freedom, making the cultivation of our emotions a part of our moral lives points to the way we should think about the exercise of autonomy at the empirical level, as free embodied rational beings. (shrink)

In the recent literature on the issue, a number of commentators have argued that Kant’s aesthetic theory commits him to the position that nothing is ugly. For instance, in ‘Why Kant finds nothing ugly’, Shier argues that ‘within Kant’s aesthetics, there cannot be any negative judgments of taste’ (Shier (1998): 413). And in ‘Kant’s problems with ugliness’, Thomson claims that ‘Kant’s aesthetic theory precludes […] ugliness’ (Thomson (1992): 107). In other words, as it is presented in some of the literature, (...) Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment seems to preclude him from accounting for the possibility of ugliness. A number of reasons have been put forward to explain why there can be no ugliness for Kant. Some have to do with his account of experience in general. Others have to do with the very nature of the free play between imagination and understanding. Of course, the real source of the problem is that the Critique of Judgment does not actually discuss ugliness, so commentators are left with the task of filling in the gaps. This paper aims to argue that Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment commits him not only to the existence of the ugly, but to the distinction between two kinds of ugliness. To support this claim, I will start from the premise that if there is to be room for ugliness, it should be defined as the contrary of beauty. However, I will suggest that Kant’s account of beauty can be negated in two ways, one that gives rise to impure ugliness and the other to pure ugliness. I will examine them in turn, first by showing that impure ugliness is the contrary of beauty insofar as it contravenes our interests and produces a desire to dispose of it, whereas beauty is necessarily disinterested for Kant. In the second section, I will use Kant’s definition of judgments of pure beauty to carve a space for an account of pure ugliness. For, it should present all the characteristics that make it “pure” whilst replacing the characteristics that make it beautiful with the ones that make it ugly. On this basis, I will define pure ugliness as the disinterested displeasure caused by the experience of what I will call “foul play” between the imagination and the understanding. (shrink)

This is the first English-language translation of an important book that contributes to contemporary debates about social suffering in sociology, social psychology, political theory and philosophy. Renault provides a systematic account of the ways in which social suffering could be conceptualised.

While it is well known that Kant’s transcendental idealism forbids the transcendent use of reason and its ideas, what had been underexplored until the last decade or so is his account of the positive use of reason’s ideas as it is expounded in the “Appendix” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The main difficulty faced by his account is that while there is no doubt that for Kant we need to rely on the ideas of reason in order to gain (...) knowledge of the empirical world, the justificatory grounds for our use remain unclear. Commentators have suggested various ways of addressing this worry. Some emphasize that reason’s demand for systematicity is purely methodological; others that the assumption that nature itself is systematically unified is transcendentally necessary. Some simply deem Kant’s account “extremely self-contradictory.” What is clear is that if neither the presupposition of nature’s systematic unity nor the command to seek this unity have any justification, reason’s regulative function, which plays a crucial role in Kant’s account of cognition, also lacks justification. This would be a disastrous result, for it would threaten the very possibility of cognition and its progress. This chapter proposes to tackle this problem from a new angle by exploring the role of reason’s feelings in Kant’s account. While the relationship between practical reason and feeling has been explored at length in the literature, the relationship between theoretical reason and feeling has not, and my aim is to suggest that doing so can shed new light on reason’s cognitive activity. For focusing on the fact that theoretical reason’s need manifests itself as a feeling will enable me to reassess how this need is met through reason’s regulative use of its ideas. (shrink)

By combining new cutting-edge essays and reprints by leading Kant scholars and Kantian philosophers, this volume offer the first comprehensive assessment of Kant's account of the emotions and their connection to value, whether in his philosophy of mind, ethics, aesthetics, religion and politics. Through a mixture of interpretation and critical discussion, the essays in this volume illuminate the various aspects of Kant's distinctive approach to the emotions and demonstrate its continuing relevance to philosophical debates. This collection will enrich current debates (...) within Kantian scholarship as well as beyond, and will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of Kant, value theory, philosophy of emotion and aesthetics. (shrink)

On my interpretation of Kant, feeling plays a central role in the mind: it has the distinct function of tracking and evaluating our activity in relation to ourselves and the world so as to orient us. In this article, I set out to defend this view against a number of objections raised by Melissa Merritt and Uri Eran. I conclude with some reflections on the fact that, despite being very different, Merritt and Eran’s respective views of Kantian feelings turn out (...) to have something potentially problematic in common: they blur the boundary between feelings and other kinds of mental states. (shrink)

This paper shows that Kant’s account of cognition can be used to defend epistemic responsibility against the double threat of either being committed to implausible versions of doxastic voluntarism, or failing to account for a sufficiently robust connection between the will and belief. Whilst we have no direct control over our beliefs, we have two forms of indirect doxastic control that are sufficient to ground epistemic responsibility. It is because we have direct control over our capacity to judge as well (...) as the epistemic principles that govern belief acquisition that we have indirect control over the beliefs we thereby acquire. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring to light the anthropological dimension of Kant’s account of cognition as it is developed in the Lectures on Anthropology. I will argue that Kant’s anthropology of cognition develops along two complementary lines. On the one hand, it studies Nature’s intentions for the human species – the “natural” dimension of human cognition. On the other hand, it uses this knowledge to help us realise of our cognitive purposes – the “pragmatic” dimension of human (...) cognition. Insofar as it is intended for us as embodied human agents whose cognition takes place in the empirical world, it is concerned with the knowledge of the natural subjective conditions that help or hinder our cognition. Yet the idea that Kant’s anthropology of cognition has a pragmatic dimension turns out to be problematic. For whilst pragmatic anthropology is defined as ‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself’ (A 7:119), by contrast with acting, cognising seems to be beyond the realm of voluntary action. However, I will show that Kant’s account of cognition makes room for a form of epistemic control that is sufficient to account for the possibility of its pragmatic dimension. Therefore, far from portraying human beings as disembodied pure minds, Kant’s account not only acknowledges the empirical, contingent and messy features of our cognition, it helps us become better, more efficient knowers by recommending how we can improve upon the subjective features that further or hinder our cognitive perfection. I will conclude by drawing the implications on my interpretation for our overall understanding of Kant’s account of cognition. (shrink)

As one would expect, Kant believes that there is a tension, and even a conflict, between our bodily humanity and its ethical counterpart: ‘Inclination to pleasurable living and inclination to virtue are in conflict with each other’ (Anthropology, 185-86 [7:277]). What is more unexpected, however, is that he further claims that this tension can be resolved in what he calls an example of ‘civilised bliss’, namely dinner parties. Dinner parties are, for Kant, part of the ‘highest ethicophysical good’, the ultimate (...) resolution of the conflict between our physical body and our moral powers, which consists in finding the right proportions for the ‘mixture’ between our partly ‘sensuous’ and partly ‘ethicointellectual’ nature. The aim of this paper is not only to explain Kant’s account of the ideal proportions of ethicophysical good in dinner parties, but also, and more importantly, to argue that dinner parties are in fact the ultimate experience for us, human beings. (shrink)

Kant’s notorious remark about the impossibility of there ever being a Newton of a blade of grass has often been interpreted as a misguided pre-emptive strike against Darwin and evolutionary theories in general: 'It would be absurd for humans even to make such an attempt or to hope that there may yet arise a Newton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no intention has ordered; rather, we must absolutely deny (...) this insight to human beings. (CPJ 5:400) My aim in this chapter is to re-evaluate this claim in the context of Kant’s account of organic generation and argue that, contrary to what is usually thought, it does leave room for the possibility of evolution. After spelling out the constraints Kant identifies for any scientific study of the history of living beings, I examine his theory of generation and draw its implications for biological heredity, species diversity, and the role played by environmental factors in organic development. On this basis, I conclude that first, evolution is a possible albeit far-fetched hypothesis for Kant; second, Darwin’s theory of natural selection would have turned a far-fetched possibility into a plausible candidate; and third, it would not have disposed of the need for teleology. This is why, I argue, Darwin could never have been a Newton of a blade of grass. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on the emotions has a long history stretching back to classical Greek thought, even though at times philosophers have marginalized or denigrated them in favour of reason. Fourteen leading philosophers here offer a broad survey of the development of our understanding of the emotions. The thinkers they discuss include Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Brentano, Stumpf, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre. Central issues include the taxonomy of the emotions; the (...) distinction between emotions, passions, feelings and moods; the relation between the emotions and reason; the relationship between the self and the emotions. At a metaphilosophical level, the collection also raises issues about the value of historical study of the discipline, and what light it can shed on contemporary concerns. Thinking about the Emotions is a fascinating and illuminating collective study of how philosophers have grappled with this most intriguing part of our nature as beings who feel as well as think and act. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that for Kant, a combination of epigenesis and monogenesis is the condition of possibility of anthropology as he conceives of it and that moreover, this has crucial implications for the biological dimension of his account of human nature. More precisely, I begin by arguing that Kant’s conception of mankind as a natural species is based on two premises: firstly the biological unity of the human species (monogenesis of the human races); and secondly (...) the existence of ‘seeds’ which may or may not develop depending on the environment (epigenesis of human natural predispositions). I then turn to Kant’s account of man’s natural predispositions and show that far from being limited to the issue of races, it encompasses unexpected human features such as gender, temperaments and nations. These predispositions, I argue, are means to the realisation of Nature’s overall purpose for the human species. This allows me to conclude that man’s biological determinism leads to the species’ preservation, cultivation and civilisation. (shrink)

In line with familiar portrayals of Kant's ethics, interpreters of his philosophy of education focus essentially on its intellectual dimension: the notions of moral catechism, ethical gymnastics and ethical ascetics, to name but a few. By doing so, they usually emphasise Kant's negative stance towards the role of feelings in moral education. Yet there seem to be noteworthy exceptions: Kant writes that the inclinations to be honoured and loved are to be preserved as far as possible. This statement is not (...) only at odds with Kant's general claim that education should not encourage feelings, but more importantly, it encourages a feeling that is in many ways paradigmatically un-Kantian. How are we to understand the fact that of all feelings, the love of honour should be preserved? To answer this question, I begin by clarifying the reasons behind Kant's negative stance towards feelings in moral education. I then turn to his account of the feeling of love of honour. After distinguishing between its good and its bad forms, I consider two ways of making sense of the positive role Kant assigns to it. The first, modest reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour is morally useful because it has two functions: an epistemic one, and a motivational one. The second, more ambitious reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour enables the child to experience her inner worth as bearer of value. (shrink)

This paper examines Kant’s anthropological project and its relationship to his conception of ‘man’ in order to show that Kant’s answer to the question ‘what is man?’ entails a decisive re-evaluation of traditional conceptions of human nature. I argue that Kant redirects the question ‘what is man?’ away from defining man in terms of what he is, and towards defining him in terms of what he does, in particular through the distinction between three levels of what I will call ‘man’s (...) praxis’: the levels of technicality, prudence, and morality. As soon as man is understood in terms of what he makes of himself rather than in terms of what he is, two crucial issues arise: what is the purpose of his making? And how can he reach this destination? My claim is that whilst the first question is answered by ethics and a doctrine of prudence, the second question is answered by anthropology. In this sense, anthropology plays the crucial role of identifying the worldly helps and hindrances to the realisation of man’s purposes—and this is the reason why it should be understood as a ‘pragmatic’ discipline.Keywords: Immanuel; Kant; Pragmatic; Anthropology; Praxis; Aliens; Human nature. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that there is a genuine difficulty in Kant’s argument regarding the connection between mechanism and teleology. But this difficulty is not the one that is usually underlined. Far from consisting in a contradiction between the first and the third Critique, I argue that the genuine difficulty is intrinsic to the antinomy of reflective judgement: rather than having any hope of resolving anything, it consists in an inescapable conflict. In order to support this (...) claim, I show firstly why converting the thesis of the antinomy about mechanism into reflective judgement does not require renunciation of the universality of causality demonstrated in the first Critique. Then, I suggest that the actual difficulty with Kant’s argument is that there is a genuine conflict inherent in the reflective form of the antinomy. Finally, I examine in detail the antinomy of reflective judgement and compare it to the other Kantian antinomies in order to show that its uniqueness makes it uniquely troubling. This leads me to conclude that the Kantian resolution of the conflict between mechanism and teleology is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Kant’s account of freedom fits with his theory of the human sciences. Several Kant scholars have recently acknowledged a tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his works on anthropology in particular. I believe that in order to clarify the issue at stake, the tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his anthropology should be broken down into three distinct problems. First, Kant’s Anthropology studies the human being ‘as a freely acting being.’5 This approach thus (...) presupposes that such an inquiry can acknowledge freedom and appeal to it in its accounts of human behaviour. Yet the Critique of Pure Reason clearly asserts that ‘as regard [man’s] empirical character there is no freedom; and yet it is only in the light of this character that man can be studied.’ This, in contrast, seems to indicate that the human sciences should be carried out independently of freedom. Second, the Anthropology seems to suggest that empirical factors encompassed by culture, civilisation and mores can have an impact on the human being’s moral status by generating some form of moral progress. Yet if freedom and moral agency are restricted to the domain of the intelligible, they cannot be influenced by anything empirical. Third, the Anthropology provides numerous moral and prudential recommendations as to how one should behave in particular circumstances. Thus it seems to presuppose that anthropological knowledge, as well as the practical guidance based on this knowledge, can have an impact on the free choices we make. Yet how can the human sciences be legitimately, and efficaciously, prescriptive vis-à-vis our free choices? Regarding the first problem, which I tackle in section I, I will hold that the human sciences can legitimately refer to ‘practical freedom’ understood as the power to determine one’s aims and to act independently of sensuous impulses, through intentions and the representation of purposes. I will address the second and third problems in two steps. Section II will tackle them negatively through a distinction between the conditions of moral agency and the conditions of moral improvement. It will allow me to argue that the possibility of any direct influence of the empirical on the intelligible is metaphysically invalid in principle, and hence, that empirical factors cannot effect any direct change in one’s moral character. In the third section, I will turn to the positive side of my account by focusing on the issue of the moral relevance of culture and civilisation as well as that of the human sciences (which study their influence), and suggest that they are morally relevant insofar as they make us more morally efficacious. (shrink)

When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the book exploded into women's consciousness. Before the decade was out, what had begun as a campaign for women's civil rights transformed into a diverse and revolutionary movement for freedom and social justice that challenged many aspects of everyday life long accepted as fixed: work, birth control and abortion, childcare and housework, gender, class, and race, art and literature, sexuality and identity, rape and domestic violence, sexual harassment, pornography, and more. This (...) was the women's liberation movement, and writing--powerful, personal, and prophetic--was its beating heart. Fifty years on, in the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, this visionary and radical writing is as relevant and urgently needed as ever, ready to inspire a new generation of feminists. Activists and writers Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore have gathered an unprecedented collection of works--many long out-of-print and hard to find--that catalyzed and propelled the women's liberation movement. Ranging from Friedan's Feminine Mystique to Backlash, Susan Faludi's Reagan-era requiem, and framed by Shulman and Moore with an introduction and headnotes that provide historical and personal context, the anthology reveals the crucial role of Black feminists and other women of color in a decades long mass movement that not only brought about fundamental changes in American life--changes too often taken for granted today--but envisioned a thoroughgoing revolution in society and consciousness still to be achieved"--Back cover. (shrink)

Kant often seems to suggest that a cognition – whether an everyday cognition or a scientific cognition – cannot be beautiful. In the Critique of Judgment and the Lectures on Logic, he writes: ‘a science which, as such, is supposed to be beautiful, is absurd.’ (CJ 184 (5:305)) ‘The expression "beautiful cognition" is not fitting at all’ (LL 446 (24:708)). These claims are usually understood rather straightforwardly. On the one hand, cognition cannot be beautiful since on Kant’s account, it is (...) all about concepts whilst beauty is defined by its non-conceptual nature. On the other hand, beauty cannot contribute to cognition since the former is grounded on subjective feelings whilst cognition is all about objective knowledge. However, I will argue that Kant’s view of the relationship between cognition and beauty is not as straightforward as it may seem, and that both of these claims are in fact false. As I will show, cognition can be beautiful, and the feeling of beauty is cognitively valuable. Yet it is not because beauty is a sign of the truthfulness of a theory. Nor is it because the process that gives rise to the feeling of beauty, the free play, furthers scientific progress. Rather, it is because the experience of beauty stimulates our cognitive powers and thereby enhances our cognitive activity. On this basis, contrary to what is usually thought, cognition can, and in fact should, be beautiful for Kant. (shrink)

This paper begins by defending the twofold relevance, political and theoretical, of the notion of social suffering. Social suffering is a notion politics cannot do without today, as it seems indispensable to describe all the aspects of contemporary injustice. As such, it has been taken up in a number of significant research programmes in different social sciences (sociology, anthropology, social psychology). The notion however poses significant conceptual problems as it challenges disciplinary boundaries traditionally set up to demarcate individual and social (...) phenomena. I argue that philosophy has a role to play in the attempt to integrate the diverging perspectives stemming from the social sciences. I attempt to show that, as it engages with the social sciences to account for the conceptual and normative issues thrown open by the question of social suffering, philosophy in fact retrieves the very idea of critical theory, as a conjugated critique of social reality and of its knowledge. I conclude by showing how the question of social suffering then becomes a useful criterion to distinguish between the different existing approaches in critical theory. (shrink)

La théorie critique de la société, telle qu'elle s'est développée dans le cadre de ce qu'on appelle parfois l'école de Francfort, se caractérise notamment par le fait qu'elle donne toute son importance aux dominations et aux conflits dans son analyse du monde contemporain. L'une de ses figures aujourd'hui centrales, Axel Honneth, est aussi l'auteur de la théorie de la reconnaissance sans doute la plus systématique et riche en perspectives théoriques et critiques. C'est de cette théorie qu'Emmanuel Renault part dans (...) cc livre, tout en lui apportant des inflexions justifiées d'une part par l'histoire de la théorie critique, d'autre part par l'analyse du temps présent. L'analyse de l'imbrication de la reconnaissance, de la domination et du conflit demande une approche spécifique : l'apport du pragmatisme américain et les débats sociologiques contemporains, en particulier Dewey et Bourdieu, complètent ici le modèle hégélien et les intuitions de Marx. Quelques exemples choisis parmi des objets souvent délaissés par les sciences sociales la conduite oppositionnelle d'un groupe de punks squatters, le langage protestataire de jeunes de banlieues populaires mettent à l'épreuve la capacité d'analyse de l'approche proposée par l'auteur, celle d'une philosophie sociale conçue comme une hybridation de la philosophie et des sciences sociales. Une contribution d'importance au coeur des débats les plus actuels."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

According to Kant, the opacity of human motivation takes two distinct forms – a psychological form: man ‘can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get entirely behind [his] covert incentives’ – and a social form: ‘everyone in our race finds it advisable to be on his guard, and not to reveal himself completely’. In other words, first, men's ‘interior’ cannot be entirely revealed to themselves and, second, they tend not to reveal their ‘interior’ to others. A number of Kant (...) scholars have acknowledged the importance of the first form of opacity in Kant's thought and have attempted to draw out from it implications for moral deliberation and ethics in general. The aim of this paper is to examine the second, social form of opacity and draw out its anthropological implications, an issue that has been overlooked in the literature. To do so, I focus on Kant's contrast between men and beings that I would like to call ‘sincere aliens’. These sincere aliens are beings who have the opposite features of man's opacity, namely beings who cannot but reveal their ‘interior’ both to others and to themselves. (shrink)

En France, Lukács est considéré aussi bien comme un représentant de l’orthodoxie marxiste que comme un auteur subversif fondateur de la tradition du marxisme hétérodoxe. Cet article revient sur la genèse de cette appréciation ambivalente, qui trouve ses sources dans les années 1940 et 1950. C’est durant ces années que s’élaborent les cadres et présupposés de la réception française de son œuvre, à travers une série d’épisodes dont les enjeux sont à la fois théoriques, éditoriaux et politiques : l’intervention de (...) Lukács en France dans la bataille idéologique de la Guerre froide en 1948-1949 et sa polémique menée avec l’existentialisme français, l’éclatement international de « l’affaire Lukács » en 1949-1950 et ses retombées hexagonales, enfin le changement de statut de Lukács au cours des années 1950. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While the first generation of the so-called Frankfurt School has promoted a strong interconnection between social critique and knowledge of the social world, contemporary critical theory seems to consider that epistemological issues don’t deserve anymore consideration. Is it really possible to elaborate a convincing theory of social critique without taking seriously the various links between social critique and knowledge? This article argues that the answer is no. In a first step, it recalls the ways in which the philosophical debate (...) about social critique is currently articulated and how it disconnects social critique and knowledge. One of the reasons for such a disconnection relates to a vision of politics as consisting mainly in a conflict between normative principles, notably between conceptions of social justice. This vision of politics is criticized in the second step of this paper. A second reason, examined in the third part of the paper, relates to the risk of epistemic violence. The shared but questionable assumption is that any sociological or philosophical attempt to produce knowledge would necessarily lead to epistemic violence rather than to epistemic empowerment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:604 Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Alix Genter Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Butch-Femme Fashion and Queer Legibility in New York City, 1945–1969 The 1956 image of Sunny and Doris (figure 1) is a typical one when conjuring images of butch-femme lesbianism in the post-World War II era: a femme looking glamorous in a dress, makeup, and heels, and a dapper butch sporting (...) a man’s suit and tie and a slick D.A. haircut with a pompadour and one casual curl in front.1 The butch’s masculine appearance and the sharp gendered contrast between the two make their queerness highly legible, a standard feature in images of postwar butch-femme lesbians in both the public and scholarly imagination.2 Indeed, lesbian visibility at midcentury was almost entirely dependent on gender transgressions in the form of “mannishness,” demarcating butches as the public face of lesbianism—a role that scholars such as Joan Nestle, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline Davis, and Donna Penn argue had powerful political implications. Butches not only challenged normative conceptions of gender and claimed lesbian social space, they also defiantly announced their queerness through their looks, thereby expressing women’s sexual autonomy and acting as vehicles for introducing others to gay life. Alongside them, femmes, while generally undetectable by 1. D.A. refers to “duck’s ass,” a popular hairstyle from the 1950s. The hair was slicked back into a point at the nape of the neck that resembled a duck’s tail. 2. In addition to dress and appearance, postwar butch-femme lesbianism was defined by gendered behaviors and mannerisms, and by roles in courtship, relationships, and sex. Alix Genter 605 themselves, proclaimed their own lesbianism and contributed to these modes of visual resistance.3 In these analyses, femmes are incorporated into lesbian rebellion by association with butches—their willingness to stand beside butches and be read as queer and to provide love and support for their partners who bore the brunt of homophobic abuse because of their overt gender expression. Butch visibility remains the foundation of butch-femme resistance, and legible butch masculinity remains an idealized icon of subversive lesbian power. But what if butches in postwar America were not as visible as commonly believed? Consider Miriam Wolfson and May Brown, for example (figure 2), both butches in New York City in the 1950s. Wolfson sees herself as a shy-but-aggressive butch who has always felt masculine, and she sees her friend May Brown as “the butch of the century.”4 Yet, the image shows two women in skirts with feminine hairdos and hints of lipstick. Photographs such as this one demonstrate the visual disconnect between what one might expect butchness to look like and what it did look like for some women during this era. While New York City’s butches certainly employed the classic suit-and-tie and jeans-and-T-shirt looks, they also conveyed their identities through alternate means that included clandestine codes and plays on women’s fashions. In doing so, they offered a range of ways of interpreting butchness in their everyday lives that did not necessarily rely on the men’s clothing and styling that made lesbians visible in larger US culture. This article interrogates the relationship between masculine style and lesbian self-presentation during the postwar period. Queer legibility could enable entrance into lesbian communities and attract one’s next lover as well as provoke hostility, violence, and arrest. In this context, appearance carried tremendous significance, and butches and femmes employed diverse strategies to both convey and conceal their queerness, 3. See Joan Nestle, “Butch-Femme Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s,” in her A Restricted Country, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2003), 92–102; Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993); Donna Penn, “The Meanings of Lesbianism in Postwar America,” in Gender and American History since 1890, ed. Barbara Melosh (New York: Routledge, 1993), 106–24. 4. Miriam Wolfson, interview with author, New York, NY, July 1, 2010. 606 Alix Genter knowing that the consequences varied by time, place, and... (shrink)

This paper begins by examining the natural function of the feeling of love of honor. Like all natural drives, it has been implanted by nature to secure the survival and progress of the human species. However, mechanically, through the interplay of social forces, it soon turns into a competitive drive for superiority, what Kant calls “love of honor in a bad sense” (V-MS/Vigil 27: 695). This drive, which also enables the progress of human civilization, brings with it all the “vices (...) of culture” (RGV 6: 27). However, from “mere semblance and glittering misery” (IaG 8: 26) can emerge “something quite serious” (Anth 7: 153), for even the worst forms of love of honor contain a nugget of virtue. A shift thereby transforms its natural function from an inclination to fake virtue to an inclination that aids it, thereby going from generating the appearance of worth to generating moral worthiness. The feeling of the love of honor thus has a dual nature, as a means to preserve the species and as an aid to morality. As I will show, these two functions converge in the role of culture, at once anchored in natural predispositions and oriented towards morality, at once an end of civilization and a means to moralization. In this sense, as part of human culture, the feeling love of honor can be seen as the locus of the convergence, if not the reconciliation, of the perspective of nature and that of morality. (shrink)

Au cours de cet entretien, Emmanuel Renault nous offre un aperçu de la manière dont la thématique de la reconnaissance est traitée en France aujourd’hui, notamment à travers le renouveau des études sur Hegel et Marx. Il explique la façon dont la reconnaissance a pu s’ériger en paradigme (en dépit de ses usages multiples et variés en France comme ailleurs), au cours de la dernière décennie et le rôle joué par Axel Honneth dans ce procès. Finalement, il explicite sa (...) manière d’envisager la pratique de la philosophie politique et son projet d’une critique du capitalisme. Emmanuel Renault nous livre également un commentaire critique mais constructif sur la manière dont Paul Ricœur envisage la reconnaissance et suggère quelques pistes concernant les possibles développements futurs des usages de la reconnaissance. (shrink)

How can Jean-Paul Sartre’s criticism of the social ontology found in dialectical materialism be reconciled with the evidently ontological reflections he shares in his Critique of Dialectical Reason? Understanding the relationship between this book and the ontological discourse on society requires starting over from the critical project as Sartre presents it, as well as from the key role he attaches to critical experience to establish the possibility of a reflection on social being, before being able to explain the different aspects (...) of social ontology found in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. (shrink)

As has been noted in the recent literature on Kant’s ethics, Kant holds that although natural drives such as feelings, emotions and inclinations cannot lead directly to moral worth, they nevertheless play some kind of role vis-à-vis morality. The issue is thus to understand this role within the limits set by Kant’s account of freedom, and it is usually tackled by examining the relationship between moral and non-moral motivation in the Groundwork, the Critique of Practical Reason, and more recently, the (...) Anthropology. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to argue that the Observations is a peculiar work, for by contrast with later works, its focus is not on the ways in which nature helps human beings become more moral, or better moral agents, but rather on how it ensures that the human species survives and flourishes independently of its morality, and in particular despite its lack thereof. In this sense, the Observations emphasizes first that the human species can, and does, function independently of its moral worth; and second, that it is intended to function beautifully has a whole in spite of its lack of moral worth. On this basis, I will conclude that the Kant of the Observations is more akin to a Mandeville than a Rousseau – he describes the functioning of the species, spelling out its survival mechanisms through natural drives, rather than explains that and how it ought to perfect itself. (shrink)