Although the best-known Hegelian objection against Kant's moral philosophy is the charge that the categorical imperative is an ‘empty formalism’, Hegel's criticisms also include what we might call the realizability objection. Tentatively stated, the realizability objection says that within the sphere of Kantian morality, the good remains an unrealizable ‘ought’ – in other words, the Kantian moral ‘ought’ can never become an ‘is’. In this paper, I attempt to come to grips with this objection in two steps. In the first (...) section of the paper, I provide an initial reading of the objection, according to which Hegel agrees with Kant's formulation of the realizability problem but disagrees with the specific Kantian solution, namely, with the Kantian idea of the highest good and the doctrine of the postulates. In the second section, I go on to argue that this reading is potentially too superficial and offer a more far-reaching interpretation whereby Hegel is ultimately targeting fundamental distinctions of Kant's moral theory. I end by employing these more far-reaching results of Hegel's objection to sketch some features of Hegel's alternative ethical view. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Kant’s account of freedom fits with his theory of the human sciences. Several Kant scholars have recently acknowledged a tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his works on anthropology in particular. I believe that in order to clarify the issue at stake, the tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his anthropology should be broken down into three distinct problems. Firstly, Kant’s Anthropology studies the human being “as a freely acting being”. This approach thus (...) presupposes that such an inquiry can acknowledge freedom and appeal to it in its accounts of human behaviour. Yet, the Critique of Pure Reason clearly asserts that “as regard [man’s] empirical character there is no freedom; and yet it is only in the light of this character that man can be studied”. This, in contrast, seems to indicate that the human sciences should be carried out independently of freedom. Secondly, the Anthropology seems to suggest that empirical factors encompassed by culture, civilisation and mores can have an impact on the human being’s moral status by generating some form of moral progress. Yet if freedom and moral agency are restricted to the domain of the intelligible, they cannot be influenced by anything empirical. Thirdly, the Anthropology provides numerous moral and prudential recommendations as to how one should behave in particular circumstances. Thus, it seems to presuppose that anthropological knowledge, as well as the practical guidance based on this knowledge, can have an impact on the free choices we make. Yet how can the human sciences be legitimately, and efficaciously, prescriptive vis-à-vis our free choices? Regarding the first problem, which I tackle in section 1, I will hold that the human sciences can legitimately refer to ‘practical freedom’ understood as the power to determine one’s aims and to act independently of sensuous impulses, through intentions and the representation of purposes. I will address the second and third problems in two steps. Section 2 will tackle them negatively through a distinction between the conditions of moral agency and the conditions of moral improvement. It will allow me to argue that the possibility of any direct influence of the empirical on the intelligible is metaphysically invalid in principle, and hence, that empirical factors cannot effect any direct change in one’s moral character. In the third section, I will turn to the positive side of my account by focusing on the issue of the moral relevance of culture and civilisation as well as that of the human sciences (which study their influence), and suggest that they are morally relevant insofar as they make us more morally efficacious. (shrink)

Este trabajo parte de la constatación del carácter central que en la reconocimiento adorniano de lo estético tiene la rehabilitación de su vínculo al conocimiento y a la verdad. Se reconstruye así la crítica de Adorno a la teoría estética kantiana desde su rechazo de la separación que Kant estableció entre el ámbito estético y el epistemológico. Esta crítica, que acusa a la estética kantiana de subjetivista, se retrotrae finalmente a la insatisfacción de Adorno respecto al enfoque trascendental, en tanto (...) que no dialéctico. En este punto deviene patente la necesidad de determinar la especificidad de su propia comprensión de lo estético y de la dialéctica. Sorprendentemente se descubre entonces una inesperada cercanía entre su posición y la de la misma estética kantiana que permite reconocer en ésta última ciertos rasgos que desbordan el propio sistema crítico hacia el planteamiento adorniano. Pero esta cercanía prueba también la inmanencia y legitimidad de la (ambigua) crítica de Adorno a Kant y, de resultas, el carácter insatisfactorio de la determinación kantiana del conocimiento y la verdad. (shrink)

This article offers a new interpretation of Adorno’s new categorical imperative : it suggests that the new imperative is an important element of Adorno’s moral philosophy and at the same time runs counter to some of its essential features. It is suggested that Adorno’s moral philosophy leads to two aporiae, which create an impasse that the new categorical imperative attempts to circumvent. The first aporia results from the tension between Adorno’s acknowledgement that praxis is an essential part of moral philosophy, (...) and his view according to which existing social conditions make it impossible for moral knowledge to be translated into right action. The second aporia results from the tension between the uncompromising sensitivity to suffering that underlies Adorno’s moral thought, and his analysis of the culture industry mechanisms which turn people into happy, satisfied customers—an incompatibility which threatens to pull the rug out from under Adorno’s moral philosophy. My interpretation of the new categorical imperative focuses on two characteristics it inherits from the old, Kantian one—self-evidence and unconditionality—in order to present the new imperative as a response to these two aporiae. (shrink)

: Most contemporary attempts to draw inspiration from Kant's cosmopolitan project focus exclusively on the prescriptive recommendations he makes in his article, ‘On Perpetual Peace’. In this essay, I argue that there is more to his cosmopolitan point of view than his normative agenda. Kant has a unique and interesting way of problematizing the way individuals and peoples relate to one another on the stage of world history, based on a notion that human beings who share the earth in common (...) ‘originally’ constitute a ‘commercium’ of thoroughgoing interaction. By unpacking this concept of ‘commercium’, we can uncover in Kant a more critical perspective on world history that sets up the cosmopolitan as a specific kind of historical-political challenge. I will show that we can distinguish this level of problematization from the prescriptive level at which Kant formulates his familiar recommendations in ‘Perpetual Peace’. I will further show how his particular way of framing the cosmopolitan problematic can be expanded and expatiated upon to develop a more critical, reflexive, and open-ended conception of cosmopolitan thinking. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Adorno's metacritique of freedom in Negative Dialectics and related texts remains fruitful today. I begin with some background on Adorno's conception of ‘metacritique’ and on Kant's conception of freedom, as I understand it. Next, I discuss Adorno's analysis of the experiential content of Kantian freedom, according to which Kant has reified the particular social experience of the early modern bourgeoisie in his conception of unconditioned freedom. Adorno argues against this conception of freedom and suggests (...) that freedom is always conditioned by our embodiment and by our social and historical situation. Finally, I turn to Adorno's criticism of Kant's discussion of freedom and determinism in the Critique of Pure Reason and argue that while his philosophical argument against Kant fails, his metacritical argument remains suggestive. Scepticism about freedom arises when the standpoint of theoretical reason encroaches upon the standpoint of practical reason and assimilates persons to things. (shrink)

This article analyses the teleological argument justifying historical progress in Kant's Guarantee of Perpetual Peace. It starts by examining the controversies produced by Kant's claim that the teleology of nature supports the idea of a providential development of humanity towards moral progress and the possibility of achieving a cosmopolitan political constitution. It further illustrates how Kant's teleological argument in Perpetual Peace needs to be assessed with reference to two systematically relevant issues: first, the problem of coordination linked to the necessity (...) of realizing the ‘highest good’ as a historical end of practical reason, and secondly the problem of continuity posed by the temporal limitation of all individual efforts to cultivate moral dispositions. To illustrate the implications of both issues for the teleological argument in Perpetual Peace, the article draws attention to some important developments in Kant's analysis of teleology following the Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Kant’s account of freedom fits with his theory of the human sciences. Several Kant scholars have recently acknowledged a tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his works on anthropology in particular. I believe that in order to clarify the issue at stake, the tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his anthropology should be broken down into three distinct problems. -/- First, Kant’s Anthropology studies the human being ‘as a freely acting being.’5 This approach (...) thus presupposes that such an inquiry can acknowledge freedom and appeal to it in its accounts of human behaviour. Yet the Critique of Pure Reason clearly asserts that ‘as regard [man’s] empirical character there is no freedom; and yet it is only in the light of this character that man can be studied.’ This, in contrast, seems to indicate that the human sciences should be carried out independently of freedom. -/- Second, the Anthropology seems to suggest that empirical factors encompassed by culture, civilisation and mores can have an impact on the human being’s moral status by generating some form of moral progress. Yet if freedom and moral agency are restricted to the domain of the intelligible, they cannot be influenced by anything empirical. -/- Third, the Anthropology provides numerous moral and prudential recommendations as to how one should behave in particular circumstances. Thus it seems to presuppose that anthropological knowledge, as well as the practical guidance based on this knowledge, can have an impact on the free choices we make. Yet how can the human sciences be legitimately, and efficaciously, prescriptive vis-à-vis our free choices? -/- Regarding the first problem, which I tackle in section I, I will hold that the human sciences can legitimately refer to ‘practical freedom’ understood as the power to determine one’s aims and to act independently of sensuous impulses, through intentions and the representation of purposes. I will address the second and third problems in two steps. Section II will tackle them negatively through a distinction between the conditions of moral agency and the conditions of moral improvement. It will allow me to argue that the possibility of any direct influence of the empirical on the intelligible is metaphysically invalid in principle, and hence, that empirical factors cannot effect any direct change in one’s moral character. In the third section, I will turn to the positive side of my account by focusing on the issue of the moral relevance of culture and civilisation as well as that of the human sciences (which study their influence), and suggest that they are morally relevant insofar as they make us more morally efficacious. (shrink)

Several interpretive disagreements about Kant's theory of divine commands (esp. in the work of Allen Wood and John E. Hare) can be resolved with further attention to Kant's works. It is argued that Kant's moral theism included (at least until 1797) the claim that practical reason, reflecting upon the absolute authority of the moral law, should lead finite rational beings like us to believe that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and holy being who commands our obedience to the moral law (...) and proportions happiness to virtue. Kant's apparently contradictory claims about the relationship between morality and religion reflect his view that our acceptance of the authority of the moral law is incomplete or rationally unstable absent such a theological postulate. (shrink)

Kant’s ethics conceives of rational beings as autonomous–capable of legislating the moral law, and of motivating themselves to act out of respect for that law. Kant’s ethics also includes a notion of the highest good, the union of virtue with happiness proportional to, and consequent on, virtue. According to Kant, morality sets forth the highest good as an object of the totality of all things good as ends. Much about Kant’s conception of the highest good is controversial. This paper focuses (...) on the apparent conflict between Kant’s claim that we are autonomous, and passages in which he seems to suggest that we require belief in the possibility of the highest good to motivate moral action. I distinguish three distinct versions of these problematic claims that seem to be present in Kant’s texts: that the highest good serves as (1) a motivational supplement to respect for the moral law, (2) a fundamental spring of right action, and (3) a condition of the bindingness of moral requirements. I argue that the texts are better interpreted to yield alternatives to (2) and (3) that do not conflict with our autonomy. I also argue that, properly understood, (1) does not conflict with our autonomy. In arguing for the last claim, I explore Kant’s notion of radical evil and its implications for human agency and virtue. (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)

This critical survey of recent work on Kant's doctrine of the fact of reason and his doctrine of the practical postulates (of freedom, God, and immortality) assesses the implications of these doctrines for the debate about realism and antirealism in Kant's moral philosophy. Section 1 briefly surveys some salient considerations from the first Critique and Groundwork. In section 2, I argue that recent work on the role, content, "factual" nature, and epistemic status of the fact of reason does not support (...) an anti-realist interpretation of Kant's ethics. In section 3, I argue that recent work on the derivation and epistemic and ontological status of the practical postulates does not support an anti-realist interpretation of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

Este artigo intenta mostrar em que sentido o ensaio de Kant, À paz perpétua: um projeto filosófico, serve como um elemento fundacional para um tratado internacional e para uma nova ordem mundial com base moral. Assim, a forma de governo que ele denomina de ‘republicana’ será, mediante uma ‘constituição republicana’, a melhor. Nesta forma de governo os cidadãos e o legislador têm, dado o “acordo da política com a moral em acordo com o conceito transcendental de direito público”, uma voz, (...) a qual vem a ser a ‘voz da razão’, agora em uma perspectiva internacional – cosmopolita. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Kant's conception of the history of pure reason and its relation to his metaphilosophy as it is presented in the Critique of Pure Reason [Kritik der reinen Vernunft] (KrV). In particular, I will attempt to answer the following question: why did Kant conclude the KrV with the history of pure reason and why did he insist that, without it, a gap would remain in his system? In the course of attempting to answer this question, I (...) will argue that Kant chose to conclude the KrV with a sketch of the history of pure reason because he took his ability to provide the history of pure reason to be a mark of the adequacy and success of his own philosophical system, in so far as it is the system which comprehends the nature of human reason, specifically the teleological nature of human reason (i.e., the system that recognizes that reason has intrinsic, self-imposed interests and goals) and insofar as it is the only system which, as the culmination of all the past systems of philosophy, is in a position to identify and satisfy all of the interests of human reason. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some relevant theses of Caranti?s Kant?s Political Legacy, whose aim is to provide a consistent account of how we could develop Kant?s political thought and see to what extent Kant?s insights can help us to critically understand the 21st century?s political world. First, I will focus on autonomy as the ground of dignity and discuss Caranti?s arguments against the exclusiveness of the Categorical Imperative as the sole principle of true moral agency. Second, I will take (...) into account Caranti?s views on history and consider whether human rational nature can be regarded as containing teleological - though non-biological - elements, thereby questioning Caranti?s Separability Thesis. nema. (shrink)

Este artigo concerne três questões: a concepção kantiana da política, a sua relação com a doutrina do direito e o papel da Urteilskraft na esfera da política. No § 1 sublinha-se que a perspectiva kantiana é caracterizada por uma flexibilidade contextual que permite de realizar o modelo normativo da Rechtslehre em diversas circunstâncias culturais: à política diz respeito, de fato, o como ‘traduzir’ as prescrições do direito em princípios contextuais que se adaptem corretamente a uma determinada comunidade humana. No § (...) 2 analisa- se o papel da capacidade de juízo enquanto instrumento capaz de compreender as especificidades do contexto no qual se realizam as reformas políticas solicitadas pela razão pratica; a propósito será evidenciado que através da reflektierende Urteilskraft é possível construir regras que refletem as peculiaridades do contexto ao qual são aplicadas as normas a priori do direito. (shrink)

This essay argues that whereas ‘analytic’ political philosophy is focussed on generating reasons that are oriented to the issue of articulating norms of justice, legitimacy and so on, that guide political judgements about institutions and/or forms of conduct; ‘Continental’ political philosophy is oriented to critically assessing the practices of reasoning that characterise our social and political institutions and forms of conduct as well as our first-order normative reflection on them. It explores the distinction between the two orientations in terms of, (...) what are called, their ‘structural problematics’: the guidance problem and the critique problem, before considering briefly ways in which they may be combined. (shrink)

El ensayo estudia dos fuentes de tensión en la idea kantiana de sociedad: por un lado, la tensión configurada por las conexiones y diferencias entre la moral y la política; y, por otro, las tensiones entre dos relatos o líneas argumentales que dominan los textos kantianos, los relatos trascendental y teleológico. La propuesta del ensayo es que tales tensiones pueden atenuarse con un sesgo particular, esto es, enfatizando el relato trascendental y la tesis de la primacía de la moral, frente (...) al relato teleológico y la tesis de la independencia de la política respecto de la moral. (shrink)

Taking the Critique of Judgement for an answer to the problem raised by the kantian dualisms, I offer a reading of this work according to which in the part devoted to the teleological judgement Kant practices a Hegelian way of resolution, whereas, in the “critique of the aesthetic judgement”, he thinks the relation between the opposites of such dualisms in a new way that opens up the possibility of a dialectical thought rid of the absolutness of the Hegelian reason.

This paper considers two contenders for the title of highest good in Kant's theory of practical reason: happiness proportioned to virtue and the maximization of happiness and virtue. I defend the against criticisms made by Andrews Reath and others, and show how it resolves a dualism between prudential and moral practical reasoning. By distinguishing between the highest good as a principle of evaluation and an object of agency, I conclude that the maximization of happiness and virtue is a corollary of (...) the instantiation of the proportionality thesis. (shrink)