I examine the consistency of Kant's notion of moral progress as found in his philosophy of history. To many commentators, Kant's very idea of moral development has seemed inconsistent with basic tenets of his critical philosophy. This idea has seemed incompatible with his claims that the moral law is unconditionally and universally valid, that moral agency is noumenal and atemporal, and that all humans are equally free. Against these charges, I argue not only that Kant's notion of moral development is (...) consistent, but also that the assumption of the possibility of moral progress is indispensible for Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant divides duties of love into three categories: beneficent activity , gratitude and Teilnehmung – commonly referred to as the duty of sympathy . In this paper I will argue that the content and scope of the third duty of love has been underestimated by both critics and defenders of Kant's ethical theory. The account which pervades the secondary literature maintains that the third duty of love includes only two components: an obligation to make use (...) of our natural receptivity to sympathetic feelings as a means to fulfilling other duties of love, and an indirect duty to cultivate these feelings. As a result, Kant's duty of sympathy has been widely regarded as a duty whose value is derived from the way in which it serves other duties, in particular, the duty of beneficent activity, which obliges agents ‘to promote according to one's means the happiness of others in need’ . Teilnehmung has thus assumed something of a second-class status among the duties to others. My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that the prevailing account of Kant's third duty of love is incomplete. (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)

This paper claims that Kant’s conception of culture provides a new means of understanding how the two parts of the Critique of Judgment fit together. Kant claims that culture is both the ‘ultimate purpose’ of nature and to be defined in terms of ‘art in general’ (of which the fine arts are a subtype). In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, culture, as the last empirically cognizable telos of nature, serves as the mediating link between nature and freedom, while in the (...) Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, the connection between art and morality passes through culture. In either case, Kant offers distinct, yet interdependent, arguments for how culture demonstrates the amenability of nature to its supersensible ground: the central question Kant claims in the Introduction that the work seeks to answer. Thus, not only does this account advance a concept essential to both parts of the work; it also demonstrates how the two parts can be conceived as complementary, with each supplementing the other to solve Kant’s central question. As such, understanding the Critique of Judgment in terms of culture enables us to see how the two parts of the work do not merely share points of similarity or common themes, but presuppose one another in order to understand how nature is amenable to freedom. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ethical-political dilemma in Kant’s work, sometimes expressed through the metaphor of the “crooked wood of humanity.” Kant separates external and internal freedom and the types of legislation each form of freedom requires (coercive and noncoercive). Yet, he also argues that corrupt political institutions adversely affect individual ethical development, and, reciprocally, corrupt inner dispositions of a populace adversely affect the establishment of just political institutions. I argue that a major way in which Kant addresses this vicious circle (...) is through ethical institutions, that is, noncoercive public resources for articulating and disseminating the principles of the moral law. I discuss the idea of an ethico-civil society or ethical community formulated in the Religion as an ideal model for ethical institutions mediating the ethical and the legal-political in a noncoercive, progressive manner. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that genius is a talent for art, but not for science. Despite his restriction of genius to the domain of fine art, several recent interpreters have suggested that genius has a role to play in Kant’s account of cognition in general and scientific practice in particular. In this paper, I explore Kant’s reasons for excluding genius from science as well as the reasons that one might nevertheless be tempted to think that his account (...) allows room for the scientific genius. I then argue that Kant’s concerns are not only epistemic, but also moral, and together, they give us good reason for resisting the veneration of genius. (shrink)

In the last thirty years of his life Kant was preoccupied with the question of whether or not the "signs of progress" could be elicited from the vale of tears of the historical process. In what follows I am interested in the question of what kind of meaning Kant's historico-philosophical hypothesis of progress can have for us today. In order to provide an answer to this question, I make a distinction between system-conforming and system-bursting, or unorthodox, versions of historical progress. (...) This distinction is made in order to show that only system-bursting versions of progress can prompt us to confer contemporary meaning on Kant's philosophy of history as a learning process that is conflict ridden and without illusions. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

ABSTRACT Kant famously claims that we have all freely chosen evil. This paper offers a novel account of the much-debated justification for this claim. I reconstruct Kant’s argument from his affirmation that we all have a price – we can all succumb to temptation. I argue that this follows a priori from a theoretical principle of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that all empirical powers have a finite, changeable degree, an intensive magnitude. Because of this, our reason can always (...) be overpowered by sensible inclinations. Kant moreover holds that this necessary feature of our moral psychology should not have been the case: We ought to instead be like the divine human being, for whom the moral law yields a greater incentive than any possible temptation. On Kant’s view, we are thus responsible for having a price, and the synthetic a priori fact that we do proves that we each made an initial choice of evil. (shrink)

We are well served, both practically and morally, by moral and ethical diversity. Moral deliberation requires the collaboration of distinctive perspectives: consequentialist, deontological, perfectionist considerations each contribute significant dimensions in determining what is good and what is right; virtue theory highlights the development of reliable ethical character.

According to Kant, the opacity of human motivation takes two distinct forms – a psychological form: man ‘can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get entirely behind [his] covert incentives’ – and a social form: ‘everyone in our race finds it advisable to be on his guard, and not to reveal himself completely’. In other words, first, men's ‘interior’ cannot be entirely revealed to themselves and, second, they tend not to reveal their ‘interior’ to others. A number of Kant (...) scholars have acknowledged the importance of the first form of opacity in Kant's thought and have attempted to draw out from it implications for moral deliberation and ethics in general. The aim of this paper is to examine the second, social form of opacity and draw out its anthropological implications, an issue that has been overlooked in the literature. To do so, I focus on Kant's contrast between men and beings that I would like to call ‘sincere aliens’. These sincere aliens are beings who have the opposite features of man's opacity, namely beings who cannot but reveal their ‘interior’ both to others and to themselves. (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 fictionalized script traces the contours of the conversation that seeks to fathom the crisis unleashed by the outbreak and global spread of the coronavirus and the ensuing anxieties created in our current social living. The scenario of deepened isolation of the self from the other is considered, and it is proposed that isolation, while an unavoidable requirement, does not mean it is some mental lassitude but rather may be seen as an enthusiastic concern toward recovering physical and mental wellbeing (...) of the larger communities concerned to control the possible avenues of transmission of the contagion. The conversation meanders around the issue of quarantine, its attraction or otherwise, and who benefits from this restriction, its effects on one’s mental constitution, etc. Philosophers have been known to isolate themselves in other contexts and situations give us a taste of what is to come in the dialogue to resist the calamity of the coronavirus and its grim effects that engulf the entire humanity. (shrink)

A definitive feature of Kant's moral philosophy is its rationalism. Kant insists that moral theory, at least at its foundation, cannot take account of empirical facts about human beings and their circumstances in the world. This is the core of Kant's commitment to ‘metaphysics of morals’, and it is what he sees as his greatest contribution to moral philosophy. The paper clarifies what it means to be committed to metaphysics of morals, why Kant is committed to it, and where he (...) thinks empirical considerations may enter moral theory. The paper examines recent work of contemporary Kantians who argue that there is a central role for empirical considerations in Kant's moral theory. Either these theorists interpret Kant himself as permitting empirical considerations to enter, or they propose to extend Kant's theory so as to allow them to enter. With some qualifications, I argue that these interpretive trends are not supported by the texts, and that the proposed extensions are not plausibly Kantian. Kant's insistence on the exclusion of empirical considerations from the foundations of moral theory is not an incidental feature of his thought which might be modified while the rest remains unchanged. Rather, it is the very centre of his endeavours in moral philosophy. If we disagree with it, I argue, we have grounds for moving to a distinctly different theoretical framework. (shrink)

En este trabajo se intenta mostrar en primer lugar que la noción de providencia que Kant presenta en obras como Sobre la paz perpetua e Idea para una historia universal en clave cosmopolita corresponde en algunos puntos centrales a la idea estoica de providencia; segundo, que es en este contexto donde puede evaluarse correctamente la noción kantiana de cosmopolitismo; y, por último, que este modo de enfrentar filosóficamente los problemas de la historia y la política responde a una exigencia de (...) sistematicidad exigida por la propia razón, según Kant, y que esta misma idea de sistema se conecta en buena medida con la filosofía de los estoicos. (shrink)

While Kant’s account of humankind’s rational progress has been widely discussed, his views about the way in which this progress might have begun and the circumstances surrounding this beginning have been largely neglected. Implicit in such an omission is the assumption that Kant does not say much about the very beginning of human history or that whatever he says is of little philosophical value. This paper challenges these assumptions. I reconstruct Kant’s account of the emergence of reason by looking at (...) his various conjectural and more literal remarks about our species’ transition from mere irrational animals into primitive human beings possessing a rudimentary form of rationality. Next, I show how this account fits with Kant’s broader view of humankind’s rational progress and its subsequent stages. By doing so, I elucidate Kant’s guidelines for achieving this progress in the future by unifying them with his regulative view of reason’s past. (shrink)

El presente artículo expone la crítica a Kant realizada por los autores de la nueva cosmopolítica, corriente contestataria que renuncia al ideal de paz del cosmopolitismo, denunciando lo que Isabelle Stengers llama la tentación de Kant: la imposición de una paz trascendente que, impuesta de manera global como ajuste a un tribunal externo, encerraría una declaración de guerra. El artículo examina esta acusación y responde explicando el sentido del ideal cosmopolita en Kant y su relación con el logro de la (...) paz y el progreso moral de la humanidad, señalando tres aspectos fundamentales: la relación del ideal kantiano con la plasticidad humana, el papel del conflicto en la antropología de Kant y la consideración kantiana de la humanidad como un todo moral. Se concluye indicando que, a la luz de estas matizaciones, esta impugnación de Kant habría de ser revisada. (shrink)

The essay, ‘A renewed attempt to answer the question: “Is the human race continually improving?”’ appeared as Part II of Kant’s 1798 publication, The conflict of the faculties, where it was subordinated under a second title: ‘The conflict of the philosophy faculty with the faculty of law’. How did this new situation affects the meaning of the essay? My argument considers first, the conflict of the faculty of philosophy with the faculty of law; second, the earlier philosophy of history Kant (...) had developed; and, finally, the revision of this position in ‘A renewed attempt’. The situation of his argument in the contest between the philosophical and the legal faculties points to other veins of argumentation in Kant’s political theory, particularly his appeal to a principle of publicity, but they hardly achieve the theoretical clarity or the systematic centrality they should command. They are displaced in the quest for prediction of the future history of mankind. The question of human progress exceeds the frame of the coordination of the university, and the main question must remain: what was new in Kant’s approach to the question of human progress, and was it in fact an enhancement of his philosophy of history? In those terms, ‘A renewed attempt’ must be regarded a distinct failure. Its innovations prove problematic. Its retreats and equivocations, moreover, threaten to undermine the grander vision of Kant’s philosophical history and his political theory, entangling them in an unacceptably theological recourse.Keywords: Immanuel Kant; Philosophy of history; Progress; Publicity; Providence. (shrink)

Nach einem weit verbreiteten Urteil gibt Kant der Ökonomie in seinem Werk keinen nennenswerten Raum. Die vorliegende Studie widerlegt dies, indem sie Kants Äußerungen zu ökonomischen Themen systematisiert: zur Selbstständigkeit, zum Kaufmann, zum Handel, zum Geld, zur „Staatswirthschaft" sowie zum technischen Fortschritt. Sie erschließt Kants Ökonomie aus der Ergänzung rechtlicher und ethischer Pflichten durch deren anthropologische Ausführungsbedingungen. Dabei geht sie aus von einem zeitgenössischen Verständnis der Ökonomie als Wissenschaft vom Wohlstand. Im deutschsprachigen Raum des 18. Jahrhunderts konkurrieren hier drei Paradigmen (...) miteinander: das aristotelische, das smithianische und das kameralistische. Sie identifizieren jeweils das Haus, den Markt oder den Staat als zentrale Handlungssphäre der Ökonomie. Die Studie kommt zu dem Schluss, dass Kants praktische Philosophie für Ergänzungen aus jeder dieser ökonomischen Handlungssphären offen ist, solange diese freiheitliche Prinzipien erfüllen; sie ist damit nicht, wie gelegentlich behauptet, auf eine einzige Wirtschaftsordnung festgelegt, etwa auf eine rein marktliberale. Relevant ist dies für die Kant-Forschung, für die Wirtschaftsphilosophie sowie für die Ideengeschichte. (shrink)

This paper explains the empirical markers by which Kant thinks that one can identify moral responsibility. After explaining the problem of discerning such markers within a Kantian framework, I briefly explain Kant’s empirical psychology. I then argue that Kant’s empirical markers for moral responsibility—linked to higher faculties of cognition—are not sufficient conditions for moral responsibility, primarily because they are empirical characteristics subject to natural laws. Next, I argue that these markers are not necessary conditions of moral responsibility. Given Kant’s transcendental (...) idealism, even an entity that lacks these markers could be free and morally responsible, although as a matter of fact Kant thinks that none are. Given that they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions, I discuss the status of Kant’s claim that higher faculties are empirical markers of moral responsibility. Drawing on connections between Kant’s ethical theory and ‘common rational cognition’, I suggest that Kant’s theory of empirical markers can be traced to ordinary common sense beliefs about responsibility. This suggestion helps explain both why empirical markers are important and what the limits of empirical psychology are within Kant’s account of moral responsibility.Keywords: Immanuel Kant; Moral responsibility; Freedom; Empirical psychology; Transcendental idealism; Reason; Common sense; Anthropology. (shrink)

In seiner Geschichtsphilosophie, insbesondere der „Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht" (1784) erforscht Kant die Geschichte nicht in der bunten Fülle der Geschehnisse. Diese Aufgabe überlässt er der „eigentlichen bloß empirisch abgefassten Historie". Er betrachtet die Geschichte vielmehr, insoweit sie für den Menschen als praktisches Vernunftwesen von Interesse ist. Dabei wahrt er den Zusammenhang mit der transzendentalen Vernunftkritik und fragt, unter welchen erfahrungsunabhängigen Bedingungen der Gang der Geschichte als vernünftig, als sinnvoll erscheint. So wirft Kant jene Sinnfrage auf, (...) die von den empirischen Geschichtswissenschaften weder gestellt noch beantwortet wird. Für die 2. Auflage anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants wurden die einzelnen Beiträge komplett überarbeitet und auf den neuesten Forschungsstand gebracht. Mit Beiträgen von: Karl Ameriks, Reinhard Brandt, Volker Gerhardt, Otfried Höffe, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Pauline Kleingeld, Jane Kneller, Dieter Langewiesche, Jean-Michel Muglioni, Alessandro Pinzani und Wolfgang M. Schröder. (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)

Looking at two well-known discussions of Kant’s discourse on friendship, namely, the second half of Doctrine of Virtue and his Lecture on Friendship, this paper traces the points of overlap and separation whereby, through the paradigm of friendship, the morals and politics of Kant’s discourse are reconsidered. In what follows, I will show first, how Kant’s theory of friendship plays a role in his conception of social relations and morality and second, how the nature of his concerns with friendship reveals (...) both an insistence on moral duties and, in the spirit of Derrida, a difficult, if not paradoxical, politicization of these same duties. In doing so, I argue that Kant’s ideas on friendship are part of a necessary yet irreconcilable tension between political and ethical obligations. Friendship is thought necessary for the well-being of political states at the same time that its instrumentalization undermines the heterogeneous nature of ethical responsibilities and the call to particularity which distinguishes it from other forms of associations. In the end, I argue that Kant’s theory of friendship is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence whose contradictions do not pave the way for new possibilities for association, community, nationhood etc., but only highlight its aporetic underpinnings. (shrink)

This dissertation is intended as an intervention in the interminable and apparently antinomical philosophical exchange between political theories of radical democracy descended from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and liberal democracy descended from John Rawls. Radical democrats have deployed the friend-enemy distinction of Carl Schmitt to criticize liberal democracy as hypocritical and ultimately undemocratic in its refusal to critique its own ground; liberal democrats have riposted by characterizing radical democracy as dangerously anarchic. In this project, I read Immanuel Kant in (...) dialog with the work of Ingeborg Maus to show in a novel way that contemporary radical democratic theories ultimately fall to the very critique upon which they indict liberal democracy, that they degenerate into the valorization of mere war, and that it was in fact in full recognition of this dynamic that Kants theory of liberal democracy begins. Kants theory of countervailing liberalism is ultimately discovered to be a politics of love over barbarism. The project ranges over a wide ground, from a close reading of Kant, to the 19th Century Pantheismusstreit, to works by Arendt, Hardt and Negri, Žižek, and Strauss. (shrink)