Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this article I discuss the moral-coherence reading of Kant’s moral argument offered by Allen Wood in his recent book _Kant and Religion_, display some of the challenges that it faces and suggest that a moral-psychological formulation is preferable.

Development economists have suggested that the hopes of the poor are a relevant factor in overcoming poverty. I argue that Kant’s approach to hope provides an important complement to the economists’ perspective. A Kantian account of hope emphasizes the need for the rationality of hope and thereby guards against problematic aspects of the economists’ discourse on hope. Section 1 introduces recent work on hope in development economics. Section 2 clarifies Kant’s question “What may I hope?” and presents the outlines of (...) his answer. Crucially, hope is rational if it is rational to trust in the structures of reality on which the realization of one’s hope depends. Section 3 argues that central tenets of Kant’s account of what makes hope rational can be applied to the context of poverty. It becomes apparent that the poor often have good reason to be hopeless since they may not trust fundamental structures that are necessary for realizing their hope. Thus, the insight that the poor need more hope must go hand in hand with a commitment to establishing trustworthy political structures, such that their hope can be rational. Section 4 highlights the relevance of the secular highest good for a better understanding of the justification and scope of our duties to the poor in a Kantian framework. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the current literature on political hope overlooks its non-instrumental value. By proposing a Kant-inspired account of treating reasonable hopes as fundamental hopes, I argue that it is rational for people to hold certain political hopes not only because such hopes promote particular ends but also because they are constitutive of a person’s practical identity as a responsible political agent with limited power to make changes. This view reveals that victims of injustice face an affective (...) injustice because the unjust social system forces them to face a double bind in upholding their fundamental political hopes. (shrink)

The language of hope is a ubiquitous part of political life, but its value is increasingly contested. While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of historical and recent treatments of hope in political philosophy and to indicate lines of further research. We argue that even though political philosophy can draw on recent (...) analyses of hope in analytic philosophy, there are distinct challenges for an account of hope in political contexts. Examples such as racial injustice or climate change show the need for a systematic normative account that is sensitive to the unavoidability of hope in politics as much as its characteristic dangers. (shrink)

According to Lea Ypi, Kant’s attempt in the first Critique to unify reason via the practical route fails because his notion of purposiveness as design commits him to a dogmatic metaphysics. I challenge this claim on two grounds. First, I argue that practical reason does not have an interest in a strong modal connection that guarantees the unity of freedom and nature rather than a weak modal connection that merely affirms the possibility of our ends. Second, I highlight that the (...) epistemic status of practical ideas is one of faith or hope rather than knowledge. Hence, Kant’s attempt to unify reason via the practical route can be reconstructed in a way that is largely in line with the commitments of his critical philosophy. (shrink)