This article examines Charles Villers's Essay on the Spirit and Influence of Luther's Reformation (1804) in its intellectual and historical context. Exiled from France after 1792, Villers intervened in important French and German debates about the relationship of religion, history, and philosophy. The article shows how he took up a German Protestant discussion on the meaning of the Reformation that had been underway from the 1770s through the end of the century, including efforts by Kantians to seize the mantle of (...) Protestantism for themselves. Villers's essay capitalized on a broad interest in the question of Protestantism and its meaning for modern freedom around 1800. Revisiting the formation of the narrative of Protestantism and progress reveals that it was not a logical progression from Protestant theology or religion but rather part of a specific ideological and social struggle in the wake of the French Revolution and the collapse of the Old Regime. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century philosophy. Locke introduces the concept of persons as subjects of consciousness who also simultaneously recognize themselves as such subjects. Hume, however, argues that minds are nothing but bundles of perceptions, lacking intrinsic unity at a time or across time. Yet Hume thinks our emotional responses to one another mean that persons in everyday life are defined by their virtues, vices, bodily qualities, property, riches, and the like. Rousseau also (...) takes persons to be fundamentally determined by our socially-mediated emotional responses to one another, though unlike Hume or Locke, he has little interest in placing this account of persons alongside a larger discussion of the human mind and its operations. Developing this idea further, Kant argues that our moral commitments require that we must take ourselves to be free. The fundamental equality that Rousseau sought in the political order is, for Kant, a requirement that reason puts on all of us. (shrink)

Consider two competing interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the epistemic and cognitive interpretations. The epistemic interpretation presents the first Critique as a work of epistemology, but what is more, it sees Kant as an early proponent of anti-psychologism—the view that descriptions of how the mind works are irrelevant for epistemology.2 Even if Kant does not always manage to purge certain psychological-sounding idioms from his writing, the epistemic interpretation has it, he is perfectly clear that he means his evaluation (...) of knowledge to be carried out independently of psychology.3 In contrast, the cognitive interpretation presents the first Critique as a description of the operation of human .. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no (...) reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works. (shrink)

The article is devoted primarily to the analysis of Reinhold’s Letters on Kantian Philosophy, published in the “Der Teutsche Merkur” (German Mercury) 1786-1787. The purpose of this analysis is to reveal the peculiarities of Reinhold’s interpretation of Kant’s philosophy, as well as the possibility of the influence of these letters on Kant's practical philosophy and the further development of German idealism in general. To more clearly define Reinhold's own position, the article turns to Reinhold's early works, written before Letters, as (...) well as to the 1790 and 1923 editions of the Letters. Particular respect is given to three topics that are closely related to each other: “Why did Reinhold’s Letters bring fame to Kant?”, “To what extent was Reinhold an independent philosopher?” і “What kind of infusion did his Letters make into the development of Kant’s philosophy and German idealism?” The article proves that before 1786, Reinhold had, in general terms, formed a program for the reform of philosophy, which was critical in its nature and had a clearly expressed practical focus. However, Reinhold's criticism was closer to the criticism of the eclectics and Leibniz than of Kant: it was aimed at overcoming the limitations of the original points of view and assumed a deep knowledge of the history of philosophy. The main reason for the popularity of Reinhold’s Letters lies in his idea of the “scientific revolution” in Germany, which should have become an alternative to social revolutions in other countries of Europe. Formed in “pre-revolutionary” articles, this idea received its justification in the second edition of the Letters. It was the nationalist idea of transforming the Germans into a “nation of scientists”, that became the reason for the rise of national consciousness in Germany and attracted “thinking youth” to it Reinhold's program for the reform of all philosophical sciences from a generally valid point of view gave impetus and largely determined the further development of German classical philosophy: not only Fichte, but also Schelling and Hegel relied primarily on his program. The first edition of his Letters largely determined the main themes of the Critique of Practical Reason, and the second - the Metaphysics of Morals. The second edition inspired Kant to develop a system of criticism and the basic ideas of Kant’s philosophy of law. (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)

This paper examines Fichte's conception of the freedom of choice in Das System der Sittenlehre of 1798 as a solution to the dilemma posed by determinism and indeterminism. It show that Fichte does not simply affirm an indifferent power of voluntary choice, but demonstrates how such a power might co-exist with the measure of regularity and lawfulness we normally admit of human choices. Particular choices do not occur at random, but are based on general reasons. These reasons are in turn (...) based on the extent to which we have freely reflected on our original drive. Thus our choices can be comprehended and predicted from the point of reflection from which we choose. This does not lead to the denial of the freedom of choice, but only to rethinking it in terms of the freedom of reflection: Though we cannot choose other than what we choose from the point of reflection we occupy, we can choose other than what we choose by raising or lowering ourselves through reflection to a higher or lower point of reflection. (shrink)