El presente artículo pretende apurar algunas consideraciones kantianas en torno al uso de ejemplos en su filosofía, sea en el empleo especulativo o bien en el práctico en que la razón se implica. El argumento se dispone de modo que a la concepción general que de los ejemplos y las ilustraciones se suele adjudicar a Kant –una concepción que los tacha de irrelevantes– se le contesta con una corrección a dicha acusación sacada de su utilidad aparente en la Doctrina del (...) método de la KpV, desde la Doctrina trascendental del método de la primera Crítica. Se tratará con ello de hacer plausible la tesis según la cual los exempla cumplirían un papel análogo a las intuiciones empíricas, pero en el uso práctico de la razón. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivism is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, they are not fixed by normative facts that are independent of what rational agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. The appeal of this view lies in the promise to explain how normative truths are objective and independent of our actual judgments, while also binding and authoritative for us. -/- Constructivism comes in several varieties, some of which claim a place within metaethics while others claim (...) no place within it at all. In fact, constructivism is sometimes defended as a normative theory about the justification of moral principles. Normative constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical or idealized process of rational deliberation. -/- Metaethical constructivist theories aim to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. They bear a problematic relation to traditional classifications of metaethical theories. In particular, there are disagreements about how to situate constructivism in the realism/antirealism debate. These disagreements are rooted in further differences about the definition of metaethics, the relation between normative and metaethical claims, and the purported methods pertinent and specific to metaethical inquiry. The question of how to classify metaethical constructivism will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories have been designed to answer. Section 1 explains the origin and motivation of constructivism. Sections 2–4 examine the main varieties of metaethical constructivism. Section 5 illustrates related constructivist views, some of which are not proposed as metaethical accounts of all normative truths, but only of moral truths. Sections 6 and 7 review several debates about the problems, promise and prospects of metaethical constructivism. (shrink)

This essay traces the influence of Carl Schmitt on an interpretative tendency found in a number of contemporary readings of Kant’s political philosophy. This influence can be traced back to two basic commitments: the idea that Kant’s philosophy seeks to defend a pacifist and humanitarian ideal of history and progress, and that political conflict must, for this reason, be somehow pacified or eradicated. I argue that these ‘anti-conflict’ readings of Kant go astray in ignoring the systemic role conflict plays in (...) Kant’s understanding of agency and freedom on the one hand, and in overlooking that this conflict is not empirical but normative, and thereby, unavoidable. In light of this ‘agential conflict’, Schmitt’s critique to Kant begins to lose all its force. (shrink)

This article turns to early modern and Enlightenment advocates of tolerance in order to discover and lay bare the line of argument that informed their commitment to free speech. This line of argument will subsequently be used to assess the shift from free speech to the contemporary ideal of free self-expression. In order to take this assessment one step further, this article will finally turn to Immanuel Kant’s famous defense of the public use of reason. In the wake of Katerina (...) Deligiorgi’s readings of Kant, it will show that the idea of free speech requires a specific disposition on behalf of speakers and writers that is in danger of being neglected in the contemporary prevailing conception of free speech as freedom of self-expression. (shrink)

This paper compares the Pali-Buddhist conception of the self outlined in Jonardon Ganeri’s Attention, Not Self with a Kantian understanding of the self as a form of reflexive consciousness. Noting that both reject conceptions of the self as ‘inner agent’, the paper points to significant differences between them via a consideration of popular ‘mindfulness practice’ that teaches practitioners how to achieve emotional detachment from the contents of consciousness. It questions the possibility and desirability of focus on the present at the (...) expense of past and future moments and argues that, in contrast to Buddhist meditative practice that favours a passive model of engagement with the world, Kantian reflexive consciousness is bound up with active engagement with the world and others. It points to important differences between contemplating the happiness of oneself and others and the forms of practical judgment and action that may help to bring about such outcomes. (shrink)

This paper situates the problem of defeaters in a larger debate about the source of normative authority. It argues in favour of a constructivist account of defeasibility, which appeals to the justificatory role of normative principles. The argument builds upon the critique of two recent attempts to deal with defeasibility: first, a particularist account, which disposes of moral principles on the ground that reasons are holistic; and second, a proceduralist view, which addresses the problem of defeaters by distinguishing between provisional (...) and strictly universal principles. The particularist view fails to establish that moral principles have no epistemological import, but it raises important questions about their role in practical reasoning. The proceduralist view fails to distinguish between reasoning by default and reasoning by principles, but it shows that normative principles have a structural justificatory role. The constructivist view recognizes that the moral valence of normative claims vary across contexts, but denies that this is because of holism about reasons. Rather, it defends defeasibility within a constructivist account of reasoning where universality serves as the matrix of judgment. The constructivist view vindicates the justificatory role of universal normative principles, and makes room for some ordinary sources of defeasibility, which are left unaccounted by competing views, and which depend on the agent’s own progress. (shrink)

Constructivism in ethics is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, for example, truths about what we ought to do, they are in some sense determined by an idealized process of rational deliberation, choice, or agreement. As a “first-order moral account”--an account of which moral principles are correct-- constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept or follow are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical (...) or idealized process of rational deliberation. As a “metaethical account” – an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like – constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. In working to provide a more precise definition of constructivism in metaethics, the focus of this entry, one faces two main difficulties. The first difficulty is that constructivism comes in several varieties, each of which claims a different niche within metaethics, and some claim no space at all. The second difficulty concerns where to place constructivism on the metaethical map in relation to realism and anti-realism. These are terms of art, and it is highly contested which views count as realist and which as antirealist. These two difficulties will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories are designed to answer. Section §1 defines the scope of constructivism in ethics, in contrast to constructivism in political theory. Sections §§2-5 illustrate the main varieties of metaethical constructivism, which are designed to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. Section §6 presents the main varieties of constructivist accounts of the justification of moral judgments of right and wrong. Section §7 discusses the metaethical status of constructivism, and its distinctive import. (shrink)

Kant’s writings on political philosophy do not clearly and conclusively determine its place and significance in his critical philosophy. To address this issue, most accounts of Kant’s political philosophy concentrate on his explicitly political texts that cluster around the second and third Critiques. Although many of these interpretations illuminate different aspects of Kant’s political philosophy, they are silent with regard to a concept of publicness that is implied in the first Critique. This article suggests that Kant’s critical method of metaphysics (...) implies a disciplinary conception of publicness, which is foundational for his political philosophy. It demonstrates how this conception of publicness can be found in the Doctrine of Method of the first Critique, more specifically, in Kant’s argument that all acts of reason must be subjected to the discipline of pure reason. (shrink)

En este trabajo se reflexiona en torno al concepto de _usucapio_ del §33 de la _Metafísica de las costumbres_. Para ello se piensan las condiciones y relación entre la posesión sensible y de la posesión inteligible o jurídica sin caer en una mera implicación causal. La posibilidad de uso de los objetos como garantía de la libertad legitimaría el principio de la usucapio, de la que, además, dice Kant que las dificultades que entraña la convierten en un concepto contradictorio.

This paper explores the implications of Manfred Kuehn’s observation that Kant’s claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that the ethical community must be a community under God seems “a bit strained.” After clarifying Kant’s train of thought that results in his conception of the ethical community in the form of the “visible church,” the paper argues that the seemingly strong religious dimension may be misleading. If we understand the ethical community to be the development of the kingdom (...) of ends in the Groundwork, it becomes apparent that Kant’s notion of God’s “sovereignty” over the ethical community is a shared sovereignty lodged in rationality and not in God’s own will. The “strain” that Kuehn senses thus suggests the potentially gratuitous nature of Kant’s references to God’s sovereignty over the ethical community. Despite the initial appearances, Kant’s account of the ethical community in the form of the visible church is, over the long term, closer to a secularizing move than to a robustly religious one. (shrink)

En este trabajo se presenta un aspecto de las posibles relaciones entre “historia” y “acción” en la obra de Kant. Contra lo que usualmente es sostenido en la literatura, la obra de Kant parece mostrar, a partir del aspecto que se analiza aquí, una conexión íntima con algunos de los presupuestos básicos de la concepción hegeliana de la acción, que fundan la sensible concepción social que éste tiene de ella.