This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s _Paralogisms, _and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic. _Praise for the earlier edition: _ “Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by (...) any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.”—Lewis White Beck “This masterful study... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.”—Garrett Green, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

Hume’s account of causation is often regarded a challenge Kant must overcome if the Critical philosophy is to be successful. But from Kant’s time to the present, Hume’s denial of our ability to cognize supersensible objects, a denial that relies heavily on his account of causation, has also been regarded as a forerunner to Kant’s critique of metaphysics. After identifying reasons for rejecting Wayne Waxman’s recent account of Kant’s debt to Hume, I present my own, more modest account of this (...) debt, an account that seeks to unite the two very different pictures of Kant’s relationship to Hume sketched above. (shrink)

Kant's response to scepticism in the Critique of Pure Reason is complex and remarkably nuanced, although it is rarely recognized as such. In this paper, I argue that recent attempts to flesh out the details of this response by Paul Guyer and Michael Forster do not go far enough. Although they are right to draw a distinction between Humean and Pyrrhonian scepticism and locate Kant's response to the latter in the Transcendental Dialectic, their accounts fail to capture two important aspects (...) of this response. The first is that Kant's response to Pyrrhonian scepticism is also a response to Hume. The second is that aspects of this response are decidedly positive. In particular, I argue (1) that Kant believed Hume's scepticism manifested important elements of Pyrrhonian scepticism and (2) that both Pyrrhonian scepticism and Hume had a significant positive influence on the development of the Transcendental Dialectic. (shrink)

Eric Watkins has argued on philosophical, textual, and historical grounds that Kant’s account of causation in the first Critique should not be read as an attempt to refute Hume’s account of causation. In this paper, I challenge the arguments for Watkins’ claim. Specifically, I argue (1) that Kant’s philosophical commitments, even on Watkins’ reading, are not obvious obstacles to refuting Hume, (2) that textual evidence from the “Disciple of Pure Reason” suggests Kant conceived of his account of causation as such (...) a refutation, and (3) that none of Hume’s early German critics provided responses to this account that would have satisfied Kant. Watkins’ reading of Kant’s account of causation is thus more compatible with traditional views about Kant’s relationship to Hume than Watkins believes. (shrink)

Over the past decade, scholarship on Kant’s practical philosophy has developed from a one-dimensional focus on his objective normative doctrines toward a more richly textured engagement with his views of character, virtue, and subjective moral consciousness. A significant contribution to this trend is made by G. Felicitas Munzel’s new study of the formal notion of character running throughout Kant’s mature works. As Munzel notes, the exhaustive attention that has long been focused on the Groundwork’s justification of fundamental moral principles has (...) obscured the equally crucial issue “of what it means for the human subject concretely to actualize such moral insight”. In Kant’s Conception of Moral Character, she provides a meticulously detailed and multi-dimensional answer to this question. Her book argues “not only that [Kant] has a very rich notion of moral character, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formal moral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy”. While the book is almost entirely devoted to the latter exegetical aim, Munzel’s larger purpose is to highlight the gulf between Kant’s conception of moral character and the Aristotelian conception that underlies much recent philosophical work in virtue theory. By demonstrating the possibility of a notion of character focusing on the principled, rigorously controlled conduct of thought, she wants to present the Kantian account as one capable of contributing to contemporary debates about character, virtue, and moral education. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study in any language to examine in detail and critically assess the second part of Kant's ethics- -an empirical, impure part, which determines how best to apply pure principles to the human situation. Drawing attention to Kant's under-explored impure ethics, this revealing investigation refutes the common and long-standing misperception that Kants ethics advocates empty formalism. Making detailed use of a variety of Kantian texts never before translated into English, author Robert B. Louden reassesses the strengths (...) and weaknesses of Kantian ethics as a whole, once the second part is re-admitted to its rightful place within Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

_The first comprehensive examination in English of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View._.

This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This innovative (...) conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume. (shrink)

This major study of Kant provides a detailed examination of the development and function of the doctrine of transcendental illusion in his theoretical philosophy. The author shows that a theory of 'illusion' plays a central role in Kant's arguments about metaphysical speculation and scientific theory. Indeed, she argues that we cannot understand Kant unless we take seriously his claim that the mind inevitably acts in accordance with ideas and principles that are 'illusory'. Taking this claim seriously, we can make much (...) better sense of Kant's arguments and reach a deeper understanding of the role he allots human reason in science. (shrink)

Currently fashionable among critics of enlightenment thought is the charge that Kant's ethics fails to provide an adequate account of character and its formation in moral and political life. G. Felicitas Munzel challenges this reading of Kant's thought, claiming not only that Kant has a very rich notion of moral character, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formal moral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy. The first (...) book to focus on character formation in Kant's moral philosophy, it builds on important recent work on Kant's aesthetics and anthropology, and brings these to bear on moral issues. Munzel traces Kant's multifaceted definition of character through the broad range of his writings, and then explores the structure of character, its actual exercise in the world, and its cultivation. An outstanding work of original textual analysis and interpretation, _Kant's Conception of Moral Character_ is a major contribution to Kant studies and moral philosophy in general. (shrink)

“THE ONLY THING NECESSARY IS NOT THEORETICAL LEARNING, but the Bildung of human beings, both in regard to their talents and their character.” Kant’s epigrammatic observation in his 1778 letter to Christian Wolke, director of the Philanthropin, adumbrates not only his mature sense of “enlightenment” but also the pedagogical role of his critical philosophy and his own life’s work. Over a decade earlier, his reading of Rousseau’s Emile: or, On Education had “set him straight” about what constitutes the true dignity (...) of humanity, namely, that it did not consist in the advance of knowledge by scholarly inquiry as he had believed. The primary thing was, instead, the “restoration of the rights of humanity,” an objective articulated in Kant’s mature moral thought as that pedagogical method which facilitates the self-consciousness and efficacy of the moral law in the individual. In another 1778 letter, this time to his former student, Marcus Herz, Kant states that the “main purpose of his academic life,” which he “at all times keeps before him,” is to “cultivate good characters.” In both his lectures on anthropology and on pedagogy, Kant repeatedly emphasizes the need for education and, by extension, for attending to the education of the educator. Human beings are nothing save what education makes of them, but they can only be educated by other human beings who must themselves first be educated. As early as his 1775/ 76 anthropology lectures, Kant observes that “if teachers and priests were educated, if the concepts of pure morality would prevail among them, then... the whole could afterwards be educated.” The resulting task is clear: it is incumbent on every generation to work on the plan of a more purposive education,” a task Kant describes as the “greatest and most difficult problem that can be assigned to humankind.”. (shrink)