This paper argues that there is an important respect in which Rae Langton's recent interpretation of Kant is correct: Kant's claim that we cannot know things in themselves should be understood as the claim that we cannot know the intrinsic nature of things. However, I dispute Langton's account of intrinsic properties, and therefore her version of what this claim amounts to. Langton's distinction between intrinsic, causally inert properties and causal powers is problematic, both as an interpretation of Kant, and as (...) an independent metaphysical position. I propose a different reading of the claim that we cannot know things intrinsically. I distinguish between two ways of knowing things: in terms of their effects on other things, and as they are apart from these. I argue that knowing things' powers is knowing things in terms of effects on other things, and therefore is not knowing them as they are in themselves, and that there are textual grounds for attributing this position to Kant. (shrink)

Many scholars, in view of the close link that he draws between morality and freedom, argue that Kant does not think that there are free choices between nonmoral ends. On this view, Kant only posits a freedom to resist our desires and act morally. We are still responsible for immoral choices because we always have the power to act morally. Henry Allison has opposed this reading by arguing that Kant grounds a notion of nonmoral freedom in the Incorporation Thesis. In (...) this paper, I criticize Allison’s argument and then try to replace it with an alternative that grounds nonmoral freedom in morality. (shrink)

Der Kommentar zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft bietet eine textnahe Erschließung der zentralen Begriffe, Thesen und Argumentationsgänge von Kants Hauptwerk auf aktuellem Forschungsstand. Es ist der erste Kommentar zur KrV, der den gesamten Text in der Fassung der ersten und zweiten Auflage gleichmäßig und lückenlos berücksichtigt. Davon profitieren vor allem die „Transzendentale Dialektik“ und die „Methodenlehre“, die in früheren Gesamtkommentaren meist nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt worden sind. Die Beiträge wurden nach einheitlichen Richtlinien verfasst, wobei unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen und Interpretationsansätze zur Geltung kommen. (...) Um dem Leser dieses Kommentars die Orientierung zu erleichtern, ist jeder Beitrag in drei bzw. vier Teile untergliedert: Der erste Teil behandelt die Stellung und Funktion des kommentierten Textabschnitts in der KrV, der zweite Teil gibt einen Überblick über Inhalt und Aufbau des Abschnitts, der dritte Teil enthält den eigentlichen Textkommentar. Wo dies sinnvoll erschien, wurden in einem vierten Teil wichtige Interpretationsfragen angesprochen. Hinweise auf weiterführende Spezialliteratur am Ende eines jeden Beitrags, eine Auswahlbibliographie zu Kant und zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft sowie ein Namen- und ein Sachregister machen den Band zu einem komfortablen Arbeitsmittel für den Benutzer. Die vorliegende zweite Auflage trägt der Tatsache Rechnung, dass der Band mittlerweile als Standardwerk der Kant-Forschung gilt. Mit Beiträgen von Henry Allison, Karl Ameriksm Reinhard Brandt, Wolfgang Carl, Konrad Cramer, Jean Ferrari Eckart Förster, Volker Gerhardt, Paul Guyer, Otfried Höffe, Hansgeorg Hoppe, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Heiner F. Klemme, Lothar Kreimendahl, Béatrice Longuenesse, Georg Mohr, Birgit Recki, Alain Renaut, Peter Rohs, Gerhard Seel, Dieter Sturma, Bernhard Thöle, Eric Watkins, Marcus Willaschek. (shrink)

To which extent is it justified to adopt Kant as a godfather of cognitive science? To prepare the stage for an answer of this question, we need to set aside Kant’s general transcendental approach to the mind which is radically anti-empiricist and instead turn our attention to his specific topics and claims regarding the mind which are often not focus of Kant’s epistemological investigations. If someone is willing to take this stance, it turns out that there are many bridges connecting (...) Kant with contemporary cognitive science. We investigate possible bridges suggested in the literature between some of Kant’s central claims about consciousness, mental content, and functions of mind, and some specific treatments of these topics in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. While doing so, we offer additional arguments for some proposed bridges, reconstruct others and completely destroy still other bridges by demonstrating that some suggested links between Kant and cognitive science remain only apparent. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to several important tensions between Kant’s account of moral education and his commitment to transcendental idealism. Our main claim is that, in locating freedom outside of space and time, transcendental idealism makes it difficult for Kant to both provide an explanation of how moral education occurs, but also to confirm that his own account actually works. Having laid out these problems, we then offer a response on Kant’s behalf. We argue that, while it might (...) look like Kant has to abandon his commitment to either moral education or transcendental idealism, there is a way in which he can maintain both. (shrink)

The article is a philosophical reflection of the current status of the humanities in Slovakia. In many areas of our society there is an evident deficit in humanities-science knowledge, reflected also in parliamentary election results in 2016 and having serious consequences on our society. The article therefore suggests the possibility of transposing the knowledge of the humanities, particularly philosophy, in the educational process appropriate to the character of a pluralistic liberal democracy in the 21st century.

Kant holds that the applicability of the moral ‘ought’ depends on a kind of agent-causal freedom that is incompatible with the deterministic structure of phenomenal nature. I argue that Kant understands this determinism to threaten not just morality but the very possibility of our status as rational beings. Rational beings exemplify “cognitive control” in all of their actions, including not just rational willing and the formation of doxastic attitudes, but also more basic cognitive acts such as judging, conceptualizing, and synthesizing.

In this essay, I investigate one aspect of Kant’s larger theory of the transcendental self. In the Prolegomena, Kant says that the transcendental self can be represented as a feeling of existence. In contrast to the view that Kant errs in describing the transcendental self in this fashion, I show that there exists a strand in Kant’s philosophy that permits us to interpret the representation of the transcendental self as a feeling of existence—as the obscurely conscious and temporally inaccessible modification (...) of the state of the discursive subject, which is built into all the representations of such a subject. I also provide an account of how the transcendental self can be legitimately understood both as an epistemic condition for the possibility of experience as well as the representation of a non-naturalistic feeling of existence. (shrink)

This article presents a critical analysis of two influential readings of Kant’s Second Analogy, namely, Gerd Buchdahl’s “modest reading” and Michael Friedman’s “strong reading.” After pointing out the textual and philosophical problems with each, I advance an alternative reading of the Second Analogy argument. On my reading, the Second Analogy argument proves the existence of necessary and strictly universal causal laws. This, however, does not guarantee that Kant has a solution for the problem of induction. After I explain why the (...) empirical lawfulness of nature does not guarantee the empirical uniformity of nature, I examine the modal status of empirical laws in Kant and argue contra Buchdahl and Friedman that empirical laws express two different kinds of necessity that are not reducible to each other. -/- . (shrink)

What method should we use to determine the nature of perceptual experience? My focus here is the Kantian thought that transcendental arguments can be used to determine the nature of perceptual experience. I set out a dilemma for the use of transcendental arguments in the philosophy of perception, one which turns on a comparison ofthe transcendental method with the first-personal method of early analytic philosophy, and with the empirical methods of much contemporary philosophy of mind. The transcendental method can avoid (...) this dilemma only if it commits to our possessing a capacity for imaginative reflection, one which is capable of identifying certain formal properties of experience.This result indicates some of the commitments which must be made if transcendental arguments are to be used in the philosophy of perception, and it has implications for those views that take the philosophy of perception to be autonomous of the empirical science of perception. (shrink)

This article discusses an interpretation of Kant's conception of transcendental subjectivity, which manages to avoid many of the concerns that have been raised by analytic interpreters over this doctrine. It is an interpretation put forward by selected C19 and early C20 neo-Kantian writers. The article starts out by offering a neo-Kantian interpretation of the object as something that is constituted by the categories and that serves as a standard of truth within a theory of judgment. The second part explicates transcendental (...) subjectivity as the system of categories, which is self-referential and constitutes objects, in order to then evaluate this conception by means of a comparison with Hegel's absolute subject. Rather than delineating the differences between neo-Kantian writers, the article systematically expounds a shared project, which consists in providing the ultimate foundation for judgments by means of an anti-psychologist and non-metaphysical interpretation of transcendental subjectivity. (shrink)

Consider the laws of nature—the laws of physics, for example. One familiar philosophical question about laws is this: what is it to be a law of nature? More specifically, is a law of nature a regularity, or a generalization stating a regularity? Or is it something else? Another philosophical question is: how, and to what extent, can we have knowledge of the laws of nature? I am interested here in Kant's answers to these questions, and their place within his broader (...) theoretical philosophy during the period spanning from the first to the third Critique. (shrink)

This is a defense of Kant against the allegedly neglected alternative in his formulation of transcendental idealism. What sets it apart from the contributions of others who have spoken for Kant in this regard is the construction of a general interpretive framework — a reconstruction of the one Kant provides for transcendental idealism — as opposed to the development of an ad hoc defensive strategy for refuting the charges. Hence, comprehensive clarification instead of pointed rebuttal. The difference is between focusing (...) on the text and focusing on the problem. No doubt, doing both is not only possible but also required, as the problem is supposed to be in the text, but the point is that it is not there, and further, that we need not go anywhere else to show that it is not there. Thus, the approach is constructive rather than defensive, or more accurately, constructive as well as defensive. And the construction rests on what Kant actually said rather than on what he might have meant or on what he should have said instead. (shrink)

Over the course of the past several decades, Kant scholars have made significant headway in showing that emotions play a more significant role in Kant's ethics than has traditionally been assumed. Closer attention has been paid to the Metaphysics of Morals (MS) where Kant provides important insights about the value of moral sentiments and the role they should play in our lives. One particularly important discussion occurs in sections 34 and 35 of the Doctrine of Virtue where Kant claims we (...) have a duty to use sympathetic feelings "as a means of promoting active and rational benevolence" (MS 6:457). Kant labels this the "duty of humanity," and he suggests that nature has implanted sympathetic feelings in us "to do what the representation of duty alone might not accomplish" (ibid.). Commentators have rightly highlighted these remarks as prime evidence that feelings do play a positive role in Kant's ethics after all. (shrink)

A well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal, or both. I argue that according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have (...) are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves. (shrink)

By comparing the theories of evil found in Kant and Kierkegaard, this article aims to shed new light on Kierkegaard, as well as on the historical and conceptual relations between the two philosophers. The author shows that there is considerable overlap between Kant's doctrine of radical evil and Kierkegaard's views on guilt and sin and argues that Kierkegaard approved of the doctrine of radical evil. Although Kierkegaard's distinction between guilt and sin breaks radically with Kant, there are more Kantian elements (...) in Kierkegaard than was shown by earlier scholarship. Finally, Kierkegaard provides an alternative solution to the problem of the universality of guilt, a problem much discussed in the literature on Kant. (shrink)

A new book by Stephen Engstrom repeats a criticism of Bruce Aune's of Kant's derivation of the universalizability formula of the categorical imperative. The criticism is that Kant omitted at least one substantive premise in the derivation of the formula: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.’ The grounds for the formula that are given in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, however, are said to support (...) only a weaker requirement, namely, that a maxim conform to a universal law. Hence, Kant omits at least one necessary substantive premise of the derivation. This paper attempts to show that nothing substantive is omitted from the argument. It only needs two principles of inference that it is assumed add nothing substantive to the premises. (shrink)

: This paper discusses the function and scope of incompatibilist or transcendental freedom in Kant's moral philosophy. The prevailing view among scholars, most notably Allison, is that the function of transcendental freedom is to enable us to articulate a first-person conception of ourselves as rational agents involved in deliberation and choice. Thus, the scope of transcendental freedom is rational agency in general. In order to perform this function, freedom has to be merely conceivable. Pace Allison, I argue that our first-person (...) conception is neutral with respect to causal determinism, and that the function of transcendental freedom is to provide the metaphysical conditions of the possibility of genuine moral responsibility and perfect justice, and to get rid of moral luck. In order to perform this function, transcendental freedom has to be not just conceivable, but metaphysically real. My view suggests that we only have reason to attribute freedom to ourselves in situations in which we are aware that the moral law commands us categorically. We do not have a similar reason to believe we are free in purely prudential choices. Thus, the scope of transcendental freedom is not rational agency in general, but only moral agency. (shrink)

The ethics of care, adopted in much of the nursing literature, is usually framed in opposition to the Kantian ethics of principle. Irrespective of whether the ethics of care is grounded in gender, as with Gilligan and Noddings, or inscribed on Heidegger's ontology, as with Benner, Kant remains the philosophical adversary, honouring reason rather than emotion, universality rather than context, and individual autonomy rather than interdependence. During the past decade, however, a great deal of Kantian scholarship – including feminist scholarship (...) – has rendered this series of oppositions questionable, challenging the view that an ethics of care and Kant's moral law are irreconcilable. This paper therefore re‐examines Kant's writings, drawing on recent scholarship, and argues both that they provide the care ethicists with everything they require, and that they offer something beyond an ethics of care, something that repairs the deficits in philosophies of caring. It concludes by suggesting that a Kantian ethics of care has significant implications for the construction of nursing knowledge. (shrink)

I defend a neo-Kantian view wherein we are capable of being completely autonomous and impartial and argue that this ability can ground normativity. As this view includes an existentialist conception of the self, I defend radical choice, a primary component of that conception, against arguments many take to be definitive. I call the ability to use radical choice “existentialist voluntarism” and bring it into a current debate in normative philosophy, arguing that it allows that we can be distanced from all (...) ends at once so as to be completely impartial. Finally, I indicate how this can be the source of normativity as it provides a purely impartial reason for being rational. (shrink)

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the (...) validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a problem for Kant's strategy of appealing to the agent qua noumenon to undermine the significance of determinism in his theory of free will. I then propose a solution. The problem is as follows: given determinism, how can some agent qua noumenon be 'the cause of the causality' of the appearances of that agent qua phenomenon without being the cause of the entire empirical causal series? This problem has been identified in the literature (Ralph Walker (...) provides what is perhaps the most dramatic presentation of it). But it has never received an adequate solution. In this paper, I argue that Walker’s objection is only decisive if we must understand our responsibility as responsibility for events, but not causal laws. I argue that we need not interpret Kant's theory in this way. I demonstrate that each agent qua noumenon could be responsible for "limited instantiation scope" causal laws which necessitate only the phenomenal actions of that same agent qua phenomenon. Part of this project involves showing that there are relevant constituents of actions which are "rare" enough to instantiate such laws. I demonstrate that, on Kant's view, events in agents’ bodies are not rare enough, but events in agents’ phenomenal souls are. (shrink)

In Eichmann in Jerusalem , Hannah Arendt struggled to defend the possibility of judgment against the obvious problems encountered in attempts to offer legally valid and morally meaningful judgments of those who had committed crimes in morally bankrupt communities. Following Norrie, this article argues that Arendt’s conclusions in Eichmann are equivocal and incoherent. Exploring her perspectival theory of judgment, the article suggests that Arendt remains trapped within certain Kantian assumptions in her philosophy of history, and as such sees the question (...) of freedom in a binary way. The article argues that Adorno’s philosophy of freedom provides the resources to diagnose and overcome Arendt’s shortcomings. Adorno’s position provides a way of embracing the antinomical character of judgment, by emphasising the need for elements of reason and nature in the phenomenon of freedom. In Adorno’s lights, judgment becomes an attempt to express a ‘spirit of solidarity’ with the tragic status of the potentially free but actually unfree subject of modernity. (shrink)

Since the initial reception of theCritique of Pure Reasontranscendental idealism has been perceived and criticized as a form of subjective idealism regarding space, time, and the objects within them, despite Kant's protestations to the contrary. In recent years, some commentators have attempted to counter this interpretation by presenting transcendental idealism as a primarily epistemological doctrine rather than a metaphysical one. Others have insisted on the metaphysical character of transcendental idealism. Within these debates, Kant's rejection ofontology(of the kind exemplified by Wolff (...) and Baumgarten) has received comparatively little treatment, although it is often acknowledged. The present essay seeks to contribute to the secondary literature on Kant by offering an analysis of this claim and elaborating its consequences for transcendental idealism. This will take the form of a critical examination of transcendental idealism's supposedontological agnosticism—that is, its disavowal of any ontological claims. The overall conclusion is that Kant's rejection of ontology is deeply problematic, and to such an extent that it may be necessary to reconsider the possibilities of defending transcendental idealism as a purely epistemological, non-ontological doctrine. (shrink)

Overview of the (non)conceptualism debate in Kant studies.

ABSTRACT: Critics have charged that there are gaps in the logic of Kant’s derivation of the formula of universal law. Here I defend that derivation against these charges, partly by emphasizing a neglected teleological principle that Kant alluded to in his argument, and partly by clarifying what he meant by actions’ “conformity to universal law.” He meant that actions conform to universal law just when their maxims can belong to a unified system of principles. An analogy with objects’ conformity to (...) universal law in nature helps show how Kant was correct in deriving the formula of universal law from the premises of his argument. RÉSUMÉ: Certains ont critiqué la dérivation de la formule de la loi universelle de Kant parce que la logique en serait lacunaire. Je prends la défense de la dérivation, en mettant d’abord l’accent sur un principe téléologique auquel Kant fait allusion dans son argument et, ensuite, en clarifiant ce que celui-ci entend par la «conformité à la loi universelle» des actions. Kant maintenait que les actions étaient conformes à une loi universelle seulement lorsque leurs maximes appartiennent à un système unifié de principes. Une analogie avec la conformité à la loi universelle des objets dans la nature aide à montrer pourquoi Kant avait raison de dériver la formule de la loi universelle des prémisses de son argument. (shrink)

La tesis principal de este trabajo es que el principio con el que Kant comprende el origen de la cultura o de la historia humana en la tesis cuarta de I dea de una historia universal desde el punto de vista cosmopolita, la insociable sociabilidad, no implica “conceptualmente” el mal moral. Defiendo así, contra una larga tradición de lectura que sostiene lo contrario, que la cultura es producto de dos disposiciones diferentes de la especie humana que son originarias e independientes (...) de su carácter moral y, por lo tanto, también son independientes de su propensión inmoral. Esto significa, específicamente, que si hubiera unos seres racionales que fueran como nosotros, sociables e insociables, pero que no tuvieran noticia, a diferencia de nosotros, de la ley moral, esto es, que fueran moralmente inocentes, producirían, sin embargo, cultura. Como tesis secundarias muestro que se pueden establecer otras relaciones de implicación entre los conceptos de insociable sociabilidad y mal moral: por un lado, inversamente, el mal moral puede implicar “conceptualmente” la insociable sociabilidad; por otro lado, este último principio implica “contingentemente” el mal moral cuando es referido a la especie humana. (shrink)

This paper considers Hegel's views on space and his account of Kant's theory of space. I show that Hegel's discussions of space exhibit a deep understanding of Kant's apriority argument in the first Critique , commit him to the central premise of that argument, and separate his concerns from the familiar problem of the neglected alternative. Nevertheless, Hegel makes two objections to Kant's theory of space. First, he argues that the theory is internally inconsistent insofar as Kant's identification of space (...) with an a priori intuition is incompatible with the doctrine of productive imagination in the transcendental deduction of the categories. Second, Hegel argues that the apriority argument is insufficiently critical insofar as it relies upon an unexamined theory of subjectivity as a set of representational capacities. I conclude by outlining Hegel's strategy for undermining the assumptions concerning subjectivity that give form to Kant's transcendental philosophy. Because Hegel's positive views on space depend upon his articulation of an alternate notion of subjectivity, the account of Hegel's position on space offered here remains incomplete. On the other hand, considering Hegel's discussions of space demonstrates both the nature and the importance of his examination of subjectivity in the Phenomenology. (shrink)

The book addresses two main areas of Kant’s theoretical philosophy: the doctrine of transcendental idealism and various central aspects of the arguments from the Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions, as well as the relation between the deduction argument and idealism. -/- Among the topics covered are the nature of objective validity, the role and function of transcendental logic in relation to general or formal logic, the possibility of contradictory thoughts, the meaning of the Leitfaden at A79 and the unity of cognition, (...) the two-steps-in-one-proof interpretation and categorial instantiation, categorial illusion, Strawson’s transcendental argument, the persistently perplexing question of the derivation of the categories, and the relation between apperception, objectivity, judgement, and idealism. -/- With regard to idealism in particular, the focus is on the metaphysical two-aspect interpretation and its problems, on the merits and demerits of the controversial phenomenalist reading of Kant’s idealism, and on the topic of subjectivism and epistemic humility. -/- In all of the aforementioned topics, the book presents wholly novel interpretations compared to the standard or mainstream interpretations. (shrink)

Abstract Carl Schmitt distinguishes between political theories in terms of whether they rest on the anthropological assumption that man is evil by nature or on the anthropological assumption that man is good by nature, and he claims that liberal political theory is based on the latter assumption. Contrary to this claim, I show how Kant's liberalism is shaped by his theory of the radical evil in human nature, and that his liberalism corresponds to the characterization of liberalism that Schmitt himself (...) offers. My discussion of this issue will be shown to have certain implications with respect to the view that for Kant evil is the product of society. I show that this view is mistaken insofar as it fails to recognize that Kant's political philosophy implies that human beings require the type of society that best suits their radically evil natures, namely, a commercial one in which the ?vices of culture? largely have free play, while the state's role is limited to that of preventing the antagonisms found in society leading to the mutual destruction of its members. (shrink)

Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) steht zu Unrecht oft im Schatten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft und der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Tatsächlich sind die Grundelemente der Kantischen Moralphilosophie im Gegensatz zu vielen Thesen der ersten Kritik bis heute weitgehend anerkannt, und erst der Nachweis der zweiten Kritik, dass Freiheit wirklich ist, macht "den Schlussstein von dem ganzen Gebäude eines Systems der reinen, selbst der spekulativen Vernunft aus". Entlang der Stichworte reiner Wille, gesetzgebende Form der Maxime, transzendentale Freiheit, (...) Autonomie und Faktum der Vernunft zeigt Kant in der "Analytik", dass reine Vernunft "für sich" praktisch sein, nämlich den Willen bestimmen kann. Die "Dialektik" sichert den Ideen von der Existenz Gottes und der Unsterblichkeit der Seele objektive Realität und untersucht das Verhältnis von theoretischer und praktischer Vernunft. Die "Methodenlehre" schließlich skizziert eine Theorie moralischer Erziehung, die für den heutigen Ethikunterricht noch aktuell ist. Die zwölf Beiträge dieses kooperativen Kommentars, der anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants in einer 3., überarbeiteten Auflage erscheint, rekonstruieren die Argumente eines Schlüsseltextes der Moralphilosophie und prüfen die sachliche Überzeugungskraft. Mit Beiträgen von: Karl Ameriks, Reinhard Brandt, Eckart Förster, Otfried Höffe Allen W. Wood Christoph Horn, G. Felicitas Munzel, Onora O'Neill Annemarie Pieper, Friedo Ricken, Nico Scarano. (shrink)

Kant describes the understanding as a faculty of spontaneity. What this means is that our capacity to judge what is true is responsible for its own exercises, which is to say that we issue our judgments for ourselves. To issue our judgments for ourselves is to be self-conscious – i.e., conscious of the grounds upon which we judge. To grasp the spontaneity of the understanding, then, we must grasp the self-consciousness of the understanding. I argue that what Kant requires for (...) explaining spontaneity is a conception of judgment as an intrinsic self-consciousness of the total unity of possible knowledge. This excludes what have been called ‘relative’ accounts of the spontaneity of the understanding, according to which our judgments are issued through a capacity fixed by external conditions. If so, then Kant conceives of understanding as entirely active. Or, to put it another way, he conceives of this capacity as absolutely spontaneous. (shrink)

It is well known that at the heart of Kant’s Critical philosophy is the claim that the mind possesses an essentially spontaneous power or capacity. It is also sometimes maintained that Kant’s appeals to this spontaneous power are intimately tied to his recognition of there being a fundamental and irreducible normative dimension to judgement. However, I attempt to complicate this picture by way of appeal to some less appreciated influences upon the development of Kant’s epistemology. A different conception of the (...) role of spontaneity in judgement has clear precedents, I claim, in the works of Cudworth and Rousseau. There the imagined role for the active power of the mind is not to identify criteria that might serve as norms for epistemically responsible judgement. Rather the spontaneous power of the mind is cited as the source of representational contents that secure the truth conditions of our everyday claims to empirical knowledge. (shrink)

At the core of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals lies his ‘derivation’ of the categorical imperative: his attempt to establish that, if there is a supreme principle of morality, then it is this imperative. Kant's argument for this claim is one of the most puzzling in his corpus. The received view, championed by Aune and Allison, is that there is a fundamental gap in the argument, which Kant elides by means of a simple but deadly confusion, thus robbing (...) the argument of all validity. We will here contest the received view, as well as Korsgaard's alternative interpretation of the argument. In place of these positions we will offer a reconstruction of the derivation which reveals its coherence and force. We will show that it illuminates some interesting grounds for rejecting certain candidates, including a utilitarian principle, for status as the supreme principle of morality. While certainly not free of all defects, the argument will be shown to be far more powerful and interesting than it has commonly been held to be. (shrink)

In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant offers an argument for transcendental idealism. This argument is one focus of the longstanding controversy between "one-world" and "two-world" interpretations of the distinction between things in themselves and things as they appear. I present an interpretation of the argument of the "Aesthetic" that supports a novel "one-world" interpretation. On this interpretation, Kant is concerned with the mind-dependence of spatial and temporal properties; and with the idea that space and time (...) can be identified with mental objects. I end by arguing that, for Kant, even on a "one-world" interpretation, we do not know the nature or even the existence of mind-independent things. (shrink)

The text aims to explore legal and moral aspects of torture. Under the legal aspect the text compares three definitions of torture: UN definition, Brazilian definition, and Spanish definition. In this regard, neither the UN formulation nor the Brazilian formulation are ideal, because the Brazilian legal definition restricts the element of action by the part of the perpetrator of torture, and the UN convention restricts the effect on the victim, given that pain or suffering should be severe. The hypothesis is (...) that a better proposal could be linked to the Spanish Penal Code, which in its art. 174 defines torture as the submission of someone “to conditions or procedures that, due to their nature, duration or other circumstances, involve physical or mental suffering, the suppression or decrease of their faculties of knowledge, discernment or decision, or that otherwise undermine their moral integrity”. Concerning the moral meaning of the repulse to torture it is intended to defend the paradigmatic character of the human right to not be tortured in at least two respects. The first aspect refers to its universalizing vocation in the full sense, since it can be extended to all sentient beings. In this regard, the prohibition of torture goes beyond the dominium of personality to advance in the direction of a domain of suffering not determined by the mask of personality. The second aspect is that the prohibition stands for an absolute right with no exceptions, precisely because of its deeper moral content.Keywords:radical evil, torture, perpetrator. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the debate on Kant and nonconceptual content. Inspired by Kant’s account of the intimate relation between intuition and concepts, McDowell (1996) has forcefully argued that the relation between sensible content and concepts is such that sensible content does not severally contribute to cognition but always only in conjunction with concepts. This view is known as conceptualism. Recently, Kantians Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, among others, have brought against this view the charge that it neglects the (...) possibility of the existence of essentially nonconceptual content that is not conceptualised or subject to conceptualisation. Their critique of McDowell amounts to nonconceptualism. However, both views, conceptualist and nonconceptualist, share the assumption that intuition is synthesised content in Kant’s sense. My interest is not in the validity of the philosophical positions of conceptualism or nonconceptualism per se. I am particularly interested in the extent to which the views that McDowell and Hanna and Allais respectively advance are true to Kant, or can validly be seen as Kantian positions. I argue that although McDowell is right that intuition is only epistemically relevant in conjunction with concepts, Hanna and Allais are right with regard to the existence of essentially nonconceptual content (intuitions) independently of the functions of the understanding, but that they are wrong with regard to non-conceptualised intuition being synthesised content in Kant’s sense. Kantian conceptualists (Bowman 2011; Griffith 2012; Gomes 2014) have responded to the recent nonconceptualist offensive, with reference to A89ff./B122ff. (§13)—which, confusingly, the nonconceptualists also cite as evidence for their contrary reading—by arguing that the nonconceptualist view conflicts with the central goal of the Transcendental Deduction, namely, to argue that all intuitions are subject to the categories. I contend that the conceptualist reading of A89ff./B122ff. is unfounded, but also that the nonconceptualists are wrong to believe that intuitions as such refer strictly to objects independently of the functions of the understanding, and that they are mistaken about the relation between figurative synthesis and intellectual synthesis. I argue that Kant is a conceptualist, albeit not in the sense that standard conceptualists assume. Perceptual knowledge is always judgemental, though without this resulting in the standard conceptualist claim that, necessarily, all intuitions or all perceptions per se stand under the categories (strong conceptualism). I endorse the nonconceptualist view that, for Kant, perception per se, i.e. any mere or ‘blind’ intuition of objects (i.e. objects as indeterminate appearances) short of perceptual knowledge, does not necessarily stand under the categories. Perception is not yet perceptual knowledge. In this context, I point out the common failure in the literature on the Transcendental Deduction, both of the conceptualist and nonconceptualist stripe, to take account of the modal nature of Kant’s argument for the relation between intuition and concept insofar as cognition should arise from it. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva demonstrar que a proposição "o homem é mau por natureza" é sintética a priori prática, uma vez que, o terceiro grau de propensão, a malignidade, trata de uma caraterística antropológica do caráter inteligível do ser racional finito. Para validar a nossa hipótese interpretativa, afirmaremos que os dois primeiros graus de propensão, a fragilidade e a impureza, se ocupam do caráter sensível do ser humano, pois ele é sobredeterminado tanto pela inclinação quanto pela lei moral, mas isso (...) não significa que o homem admitiu a inclinação como uma regra do seu arbítrio, mas apenas a sua dificuldade de lidar com esses diferentes motivos na execução da ação. Diferente desses níveis, a malignidade pressupõe admissão da inclinação como uma regra universal do arbítrio e conforme Kant esse ato do arbítrio é inteligível e cognoscível apenas pela razão, pois ele visa viabilizar a predicação da natureza humana como má, o que não pode ocorrer mediante qualquer característica antropológica empírica, mas apenas mediante a predicação do caráter inteligível do ser racional finito. Por essa razão, defenderemos que a proposição "o homem é mau por natureza" é sintética a priori prática. (shrink)

Sviluppando la mossa della prima Critica che imposta il problema della libertà nell’ambito delle idee cosmologiche, il saggio mostra che il successivo approfondimento etico-fondativo porta a recuperare la dimensione cosmologica della libertà sul piano della riflessione pratica in chiave teleologico-morale. La libertà infatti non risulta soltanto essere condizione essenziale della legge morale, della moralità e di un mondo morale. Concepita come autonomia la libertà da un lato viene a coincidere con la legge stessa della ragione; dall’altro, essendo così non solo (...) attributo essenziale ma anche principio e compito dell’essere razionale finito, essa viene a coincidere con lo scopo finale della ragione pratica e quindi a caratterizzare il mondo nella sua totalità in quanto sul piano pratico deve essere pensato come ultimamente concordante con tale finalità morale. (shrink)

Abstract Robert Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation is a remarkable achievement, representing an original reading of Kant's contribution to modern moral philosophy and the legacy he bequeathed to his later-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century successors in the German tradition. On Stern's interpretation, it was not the threat to autonomy posed by value realism, but the threat to autonomy posed by the obligatory nature of morality that led Kant to develop his critical moral theory grounded in the concept of the self-legislating moral agent. Accordingly, (...) Stern contends that Kant was a moral realist of sorts, holding certain substantive views that are best characterized as realist commitments about value. In this paper, I raise two central objections to Stern's reading of Kant. The first objection concerns what Stern identifies as Kant's solution to the problem of moral obligation. Whereas Stern sees the distinction between the infinite will and the finite will as resolving the problem of moral obligation, I argue that this distinction merely explains why moral obligations necessarily take the form of imperatives for us imperfect human beings, but does not solve the deeper problem concerning the obligatory nature of morality: why we should take moral norms to be supremely authoritative laws that override all other norms based on our non-moral interests. The second objection addresses Stern's claim that Kantian autonomy is compatible with value realism. Although this is an idea with which many contemporary readers will be sympathetic, I suggest that the textual evidence actually weighs in favor of constructivism. (shrink)