Immanuel Kant hat wie kein anderer Denker die Philosophie der Neuzeit geprägt. Aufgrund seiner überragenden Bedeutung liegen inzwischen mehrere Bände zu seinen Schriften in der Reihe "Klassiker Auslegen" vor. Kant ist im wahrsten Sinne ein universeller Denker, der sein Interesse auf nahezu alle Bereiche des menschlichen Lebens richtet. Nach ihm lässt sich dieses Interesse in drei Fragen bündeln: Was kann ich wissen? Wie soll ich handeln? Und: Was darf ich hoffen? Der Antwort auf die dritte Frage geht Kant in seiner (...) Schrift Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793) nach. Hier, in seiner Religionsphilosophie, setzt er, gemäß der Grundüberzeugung der Aufklärung, seine Moralphilosophie fort. Gott ist für Kant nicht mehr wie etwa in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, auch noch bei Descartes ein Gegenstand des Wissens, sondern des Hoffens: Der moralisch handelnde Mensch hofft auf eine sinnvolle Ordnung des Weltganzen, auf einen Gott, dessen Existenz zusammen mit der Unsterblichkeit der Seele die notwendige Voraussetzung für das letzte Ziel des praktischen Handelns, für das höchste Gut, ist. Diese originelle Verbindung von zunächst als gegensätzlich Erscheinendem, von einer Moral der Autonomie mit dem Glauben an einen übernatürlichen Gott, bildet jedoch nicht das einzige Thema der Schrift. In ihr entwickelt Kant darüber hinaus eine differenzierte Theorie des moralisch Bösen und erörtert das Verhältnis zwischen einem bloßen Kirchenglauben (die "sichtbare Kirche") und dem moralischen Religionsglauben (die "unsichtbare Kirche"). Dieser thematisch reichhaltige Text wird im von Otfried Höffe herausgegebenen Band in Form eines kooperativen Kommentars von international renommierten Autoren interpretiert und somit aktuell erschlossen. Alle Beiträge wurden für die 2. Auflage anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants überarbeitet und auf den neuesten Forschungsstand gebracht. Mit Beiträgen von Jochen Bojanowski, Johannes Brachtendorf, Andrew Chignell, Katrin Flickschuh, Maximilian Forschner, Otfried Höffe, Christoph Horn, Eberhard Jüngel, Douglas McGaughey, Reza Mosayebi, Burkhard Nonnenmacher, Friedo Ricken, Allen Wood. (shrink)

In this paper I propose an interpretation of Kant’s notion of the highest good which bears political, ethical, and religious layers simultaneously. I argue that a proper analysis of what Kant allows us to hope for necessarily involves what we should hope for as moral agents. I argue that Kant’s conception of the highest good plays a crucial role in his moral theory as it designates the ideal “context” of moral experience which can be described as “a moral world”. Each (...) of these three layers or aspects of the moral world (i.e., political, ethical, and religious) as the interrelated contexts in and through which we realize our moral agency is inextricably linked with the highest good. Without any dichotomy between secular or religious conceptualization of the highest good, in the political and in certain aspects of the ethical contexts we should adopt certain hopes as an implicit aspect of being virtuous, whereas from a religious perspective we are able to, and we may legitimately adopt hope and faith about the cosmic/ teleological context of our moral experience. (shrink)

The problem of Kant’s Neglected Alternative is that while his Aesthetic provides an argument that space and time are empirically real – in applying to all appearances – its argument seems to fall short of the conclusion that space and time are transcendentally ideal, in not applying to any things in themselves. By considering an overlooked passage in which Kant explains why his Transcendental Deduction is ‘unavoidably necessary’, I argue that it is not solely in his Aesthetic but more so (...) in his Deduction where he intends to provide his argument for the transcendental ideality of space and time. His Deduction shows that space and time do not have a valid application to any things in themselves by arguing that the categories do have a valid application to everything in space and time, but that the categories do not have a valid application to any things in themselves. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a novel way of thinking about Kant’s philosophical methodology during the critical period. According to this interpretation, the critical Kant can generally be understood as operating within a “capacities‐first” philosophical framework – that is, within a framework in which our basic rational or cognitive capacities play both an explanatorily and epistemically fundamental role in philosophy – or, at least, in the sort of philosophy that limited creatures like us are capable of. In discussing this idea, (...) I consider the complicated relationship between the explanatory and epistemic roles that such capacities play in Kant. I also sketch how this way of thinking about Kant’s methodology can illuminate the foundations of both his theoretical and his practical philosophy, before discussing some of Kant’s reasons for finding this approach to philosophy attractive. I close with a brief discussion of the contemporary relevance of this approach. (shrink)

Manifest reality is easily one of the best books in a long time on Kant’s transcendental idealism. So there is a great deal in Allais’s discussion to celebrate. But I want to focus here on two aspects of her views that I am not yet sure about: First, Allais’s understanding of the relationship between concepts and intuitions. And second, her characterization of the manner in which intuitions are object-dependent. I’ll close by making some general remarks about the significance of this (...) for Allais’s understanding of the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant presents an argument for the centrality of <motion> to our concept <matter>. This argument has long been considered either irredeemably obscure or otherwise defective. In this paper I provide an interpretation which defends the argument’s validity and clarifies the sense in which it aims to show that <motion> is fundamental to our conception of matter.

This paper addresses the question of what we can legitimately say about things in themselves in Kant's critical doctrine. Many Kant scholars believe that Kant allows that things in themselves can be characterized through the unschematized or ‘pure’ concepts of our understanding such as ‘substance’ or ‘causality’. However, I show that on Kant's view things in themselves do not conform to the unschematized categories : the pure categories, like space and time, are merely subjective forms of finite, discursive cognition. I (...) then examine what this interpretation might entail for central aspects of Kant's system such as his doctrine of noumenal freedom. (shrink)

Kant’s published arguments for the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves have not been well received. I argue that Kant has available to himself an argument for the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves that is premised upon a disparity between the compositional structure of the intelligible world and the structure of space and time. I argue that Kant was unwaveringly committed to the premises of this argument throughout his career and that he was aware of their idealistic implications. I also argue (...) that this argument is consistent with Kant’s restrictive mature epistemology. If my argument is successful, then even if Kant’s published arguments for transcendental idealism fail, we need not regard his ambitious metaphysical project as a failure. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper I reconstruct Kant’s proof of the existence of a ‘most real being’ while also highlighting the theory of modality that motivates Kant’s departure from Leibniz’s version of the proof. I go on to argue that it is precisely this departure that makes the being that falls out of the pre-critical proof look more like Spinoza’s extended natura naturans than an independent, personal creator-God. In the critical period, Kant seems to think that transcendental idealism (...) allows him to avoid this conclusion, but in the last section of the paper I argue that there is still one important version of the Spinozistic threat that remains. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I give an explanation and defense of Kant’s claim that we cannot comprehend how freedom is possible. I argue that this is a significant point that has been underappreciated in the secondary literature. My conclusion has a variety of implications both for Kant scholars and for those interested in Kantian ideas more generally. Most notably, if Kant is right that there are principled reasons why freedom is beyond our comprehension, then this would release his ethical views from (...) an undesirable explanatory burden. It would be a boon for Kantians if they could ground their lofty claims about the unique, elevated status of rational agency without committing to an implausible view of libertarian freedom. I also suggest that there are certain debates concerning moral motivation and transcendental idealism that might have to change in response to Kant’s claims about the incomprehensibility of freedom. (shrink)

Famously, in the second Critique, Kant claims that our consciousness of the moral law provides us with sufficient grounds for the attribution of freedom to ourselves as noumena or things-in-themselves. In this way, while Kant insists that we have no rational basis to make substantive assertions about things-in-themselves from a theoretical point of view, it is rational for us to assert that we are noumenally free from a practical one. This much is uncontroversial. What is controversial is the cognitive relation (...) to things-in-themselves that is possible from a practical point of view. Interpreters have tended to regard such “practical cognition” of things-in-themselves as a poor step-cousin of its theoretical counterpart — as a sort of mere “rational faith” unworthy of comparison with genuine theoretical knowledge or cognition. Recent work on these issues has begun to shift this picture. But this reassessment is in its early stages and remains highly controversial. My aim here is to take this tendency and push it farther than most have generally been willing to go - at least with respect to our practical self-understanding as noumenally free agents. Indeed, I believe that, far from representing an impoverished cousin of theoretical cognition and knowledge, our practical awareness of ourselves as free possesses the central marks of cognition and knowledge in Kant’s sense of these terms, albeit on practical grounds. Thus, it is no surprise that Kant is willing to speak of our consciousness of the moral law as enabling genuine cognition of noumenal freedom. (shrink)