According to Kant's theory of thought or cognition, thoughts are rules for empirical reactions in the compass of spatial and temporal constructions. Theses rules function to represent our situation in relation to all the ways it is proper to interact with reality. After outlining Kant's theory, I present a modified version in which rules are identified with executive mechanisms for behavioural output. Following Kant, I show how such rules can pertain to the past in terms of mechanisms for being beyond (...) or past stages of temporal constructions. This identification of rules with mechanisms allows for a real definition of the truth of thoughts as the active realizability of the mechanisms that thoughts are. I show how this modified version can encompass the full scope of even relativistic spatio-temporal reality, and indicate why this theory deserves consideration as against rival descriptive and causal theories of cognition. (shrink)

This paper provides analysis of Kant's Categorical Imperative and its relevance to religion. I discuss what the concept of a categorical imperative implies about self-transcendence, and what this understanding of self-transcendence indicates about the self's relation to God and others.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 259-288 [Access article in PDF] Substitutes for Wisdom:Kant's Practical Thought and the Tradition of the Temperaments Mark Larrimore [Appendix]For much of Western history, the theory of the four temperaments played a vital part in medicine, anthropology, and moral reflection. The Hippocratic foursome of sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic survives on the margins of modernity, but its role in moral theory and (...) practice has been largely forgotten. Premodern understandings of human diversity based in climate, temperament, and politics collapsed with the Galenic medical tradition with which they harmonized. Yet temperament continued to be a feature of moral philosophies and philosophical anthropologies even into the twentieth century, and arguably has had a symbiotic relationship with the egalitarian aspirations of modern moral and political thought. This essay surveys the development and practical consequences of the theory of the temperaments developed by one of the greatest prophets of modern values, Immanuel Kant.Temperament was a feature in Kant's course in anthropology from the 1760s until the end of his life. Kant's teachings on temperament are by turns creative and conservative, and bespeak a deep understanding of the logic and rationale of humoral characterology in ethics. But as Kant moves from an ethics based in feeling to an ethics based on the possibility of autonomy, his theory of temperament also changes. In 1764's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, Kant eloquently celebrates the melancholy as the temperament capable of "genuine virtue" (Obs2:217-18/60); by the time of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), he is commending instead "phlegma as strength" (a variant of a temperament he had earlier dismissed), which can serve as a "substitute for wisdom" (Ant7:290/155). 1 Both of these [End Page 259] positions are distinctive, especially for an eighteenth-century thinker. As we will see, however, they are not without precedent in the tradition of temperament theory. Whether Kant knew he was developing countertraditions of temperament or not, his arguments in each case creatively exploit tensions in the humoral system which go back to its origins in ancient Greece.The mature Kant defended the classic foursome at a time when it had come under fire from many quarters. The early nineteenth century historian of temperament theories Harro Wilhelm Dircksen thought Kant played a decisive role in saving the classical theory from oblivion. 2 Why did Kant think it worth retrieving? One would expect him to reject a category which eighteenth-century German Popularphilosophie understood as a proto-psychological category bridging the gap between body and mind, nature and freedom. Yet, as I shall argue, the very things which might seem to render a theory of temperament incompatible with his mature ethics of autonomy make it important to [End Page 260] Kant. An understanding of human embodiment and diversity like that of the tradition of the temperaments forms part of the background to Kant's practical thought, and ethical formalism makes more rather than less sense if difference is taken seriously. For the same reason, it is important to have the right account of diversity. The complicated view of temperament in the Anthropology furnishes a microcosm of Kant's understanding of the fraught role of empirical considerations in recognizing and promoting freedom in rational agents embodied in human form(s).In this essay I will (1) provide a brief survey of the tradition of temperament theorizing before Kant, and expound Kant's (2) early and (3) mature views of temperament in the context of this tradition, as well as in the context of his emerging practical philosophy. 3 Some well-known parts of Kant's ethics make a new kind of sense when read in the light of the fact that their author thought humanity subdivided into temperaments. 1. The Tradition of the Temperaments 1.1. The history of moralizing about and through the temperaments is complex and—once one moves beyond the melancholy—largely uncharted. Here I will... (shrink)

On essaie dans ces pages d’appliquer à la philosophie de Kant et de Dilthey certains concepts en vue d’une perspective critique de l’histoire. La distinction diltheyenne entre explication et compréhension est mise en rapport avec celle qu’opère Kant entre jugement déterminant et jugement réfléchissant. Puisque la majeure partie de la complexité historique ne peut trouver son explication dans des lois générales, on propose une compréhension réfléchissante du récit historique. Mettre en relation le jugement réfléchissant et la compréhension revient à souligner (...) la dimension normative de l’interprétation historique. La perspective anthropologique de Kant fait également place aux jugements préréflexifs, préliminaires sur l’histoire, tandis que l’approche diltheyenne par les Geisteswissenschaften ramène à une conscience réflexive ou autoréférée qui replace l’individu en son temps et en son lieu. D’autres aspects peuvent encore conduire à notre rapport critique à l’histoire : le modèle kantien d’une orientation réfléchissante de la communauté humaine, les limites qu’il pose à l’interprétation authentique, la conception heideggerienne de l’authenticité historique, l’analyse diltheyenne des systèmes d’influence réciproque comme cadre de l’idée d’une imputation causale singulière chez Paul Ricœur. (shrink)

El núcleo central de este trabajo consiste en presentar a la Crítica de la Facultad de Juzgar de Kant como un recurso significativo en la formación del pensamiento político de Hanna Arendt. Según la interpretación que la autora realiza del juicio reflexivo y su vinculación con la comunidad ampliada presente en la concepción kantiana de sensus communis, es posible considerar una redefinición del juicio ahora más ligada a la contingencia de la acción y a la pluralidad de los espectadores en (...) el ámbito de la esfera política. En síntesis, se trata de señalar los aspectos más problemáticos de la localización del legado de Kant en los últimos trabajos de Arendt a la vez que llamar la atención sobre la cuestión concerniente a la importancia del aporte kantiano a los ejes centrales del debate de la teoría política contemporánea. (shrink)

In the 82/2 (2000) issue of this journal, Michael Friedman has offered a stimulating discussion of my recent book, Kant and the Capacity to Judge. His conclusion is that on the whole I fail to do justice to what is most revolutionary about Kant's natural philosophy, and instead end up attributing to Kant a pre-Newtonian, Aristotelian philosophy of nature. This is because, according to Friedman, I put excessive weight on Kant's claim to have derived his categories from a set of (...) logical forms of judgment which he inherits from a traditional Aristotelian logic. In taking Kant at his word on this point, I fail to give their full import to Kant's insights into the newly discovered applications of mathematical concepts and methods to the science of nature. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the immediate philosophical aftermath of Kant's Inaugural Dissertation. I will try to show what Kant himself took to be the problems left unsettled in the dissertation, and how he tried to deal with them. At the end of the paper, I will briefly sketch how he may have proceeded after the famous letter to Marcus Herz of 1772, and what path he would have had to take to recognize the need (...) for a transcendental deduction. (shrink)

Kant's distinction between things in themselves and things as they appear, or appearances, is commonly attacked on the ground that it delivers a radical and incoherent ‘two world’ picture of what there is. I attempt to deflect this attack by questioning these terms of dismissal. Distinctions of the kind Kant draws on are in fact legion, and they make perfectly good sense. The way to make sense of them, however, is not by buying into a profligate ontology but by using (...) some rather different tools – surprisingly enough, tools first developed in the area of aesthetics. Once this is done, much of what Kant says begins to look perfectly coherent. In the final part of the paper, I point out that none the less all is not well. Kant's Critical doctrines make it hard for us to accept Kant's own version of this otherwise coherent distinction. (shrink)

Kant’s use of the terms ‘Nature’ and ‘Providence’ in his essays on history has long puzzled commentators. Kant personifies Nature and Providence in a curious way, by speaking of them as “deciding” to give humankind certain predispositions, “wanting” these to be developed, and “knowing” what is best for humans Moreover, he leaves the relationship between the two terms unclear. In this essay, I argue that Kant’s use of ‘Nature’ and ‘Providence’ can be clarified and explained. Moreover, I show that Kant’s (...) use of the terms is symptomatic of a much more important and not sufficiently appreciated fact about Kant’s philosophy of history, viz., that it fulfils a function in both his theoretical and his practical philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 559-580 [Access article in PDF] Problems in Kant's Vindication of Pure Reason Ted Kinnaman One of the most important questions in interpreting the Critique of Pure Reason concerns the proper way of characterizing Kant's view of the faculty of reason. Clearly, one of Kant's intentions is to show that reason is incapable of cognition of objects such as God or the (...) soul, because such cognition would require going beyond possible experience. At the same time, he also wants to defend reason, to "institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions" (Axi-xii). Denied the possibility of attaining theoretical knowledge, reason instead finds its fulfillment in its practical employment, striving to bring the world into conformity with the moral law. This, however, can make it appear that the task of guiding action is one that reason must merely settle for, having unfortunately been denied its true goal, knowledge of the supersensible. It is thus difficult to see how Kant can claim to have vindicated reason.Recently, a number of scholars have suggested that a proper understanding of Kant's account of reason can correct this purely negative view of Kant's theory. In particular, Richard Velkley and Susan Neiman have argued separately that Kant's emphasis on the goal-directed nature of reason's task helps to justify Kant's belief that the first Critique defends as well as limits reason. 1 Because this reading truly does justice to Kant's insistence on the unity of theoretical and practical reason, it goes a long way toward bringing out Kant's overall project in the Critique of Pure Reason. But I will argue that Velkley's and Neiman's defense of Kant's conception of reason, while persuasive as a reading of Kant's intentions in the first Critique and a clear improvement over a simply negative view of reason, is ultimately unsuccessful philosophically. I will show that Kant's defense of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason is vulnerable [End Page 559] to two strong objections, of which Kant himself was made aware of in the years after the publication of the Critique: We have no grounds, on the basis of the argument of the first Critique, to think that the goals reason sets for us can be achieved; nor does Kant's theory provide a basis for defending his conception of reason against other plausible and coherent sources of warranted assertion, such as religion or culture. Indeed, Kant's appreciation of the seriousness of the deficiency of his defense of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason helps to explain the importance of the concept of the purposiveness of nature in the later Critique of Judgment. First I explain in detail why it appears that Kant's analysis of reason produces only a negative result—that reason cannot attain knowledge of its objects. Second, I will look at how the readings of Velkley and Neiman attempt to defend Kant's account of reason's positive use. I will then argue that without some argument for the suitability of appearances to systematization according to ideas of pure reason, we can be assured neither of the possibility of reaching the goals reason sets for us nor of the superiority of Kant's views over competing views on morality and religion. In particular, I will look briefly at the writings of Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder, with the intention of showing that they offer at least prima facie plausible alternatives to Kant's view of reason. 1. The central problem concerning Kant's conception of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason results from the conjunction of two of his most important philosophical claims. First, it clearly is crucial to Kant's philosophical outlook that "we cannot cognize any object that is thought except through intuitions that correspond to those concepts" (B165). But, second, Kant says that unlike the understanding reason does not relate directly to intuition, and... (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard affirms that Enlightenment morality is true: humanity is valuable. To many of us few claims seem more obvious. Yet Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant do not limit themselves to affirming that humanity is valuable. They appeal to reason in an effort to establish it. They try to show that, in some sense, we are rationally compelled to recognize the value of humanity. Korsgaard joins in this effort. She champions the claim that unless we (...) take humanity to be valuable, we condemn ourselves to complete practical skepticism, i.e., to the view that we have no reason to do anything at all.Korsgaard discusses two arguments that, she believes, support this claim. The first she attributes directly to Kant in a series of influential papers on his ethics. The second argument, which she calls a ‘fancy new model’ of the first, she constructs under her own name in The Sources of Normativity. I will defend the view that neither of these arguments succeeds. In doing so, I will not be trying to show that we are mistaken in believing humanity to be valuable. (shrink)

Das allgemeine Kausalprinzip findet sich bei Kant in zwei Fassungen, einer gesetzesimplizierenden („Alles in der Welt geschieht nach Gesetzen der Natur“) und einer gesetzesneutralen („Alles, was geschieht, hat seine Ursache“). Äquivalent sind die beiden Fassungen nur unter einer bestimmten kausalitätstheoretischen Annahme, nämlich der des Prinzips vom nomologischen Charakter der Kausalität. Kant hat dieses Prinzip, demzufolge jede Kausalbeziehung zwischen zwei Einzelereignissen ein striktes Sukzessionsgesetz impliziert, angenommen, doch hat er es auch begründet? In diesem Beitrag wird die Auffassung ver-treten, daß Kant den (...) nomologischen Charakter der Kausalität weder in der Zweiten Analogie der Erfahrung noch an anderer Stelle begründet, sondern ihn vielmehr als analytischen Bestandteil des Kausalbegriffs angesehen hat. Angesichts der in der jüngeren Wissenschaftsphilosophie diskutierten Schwierigkeiten, strikte kausale Gesetze aufzutreiben (vgl. Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie), wird dafür plädiert, das transzendentale Prinzip der Gleichförmigkeit der Natur in einer Weise zu verstehen, die auch mit nichtnomologischen Kausalitätsauffassungen vereinbar ist. (shrink)

Dans la Remarque générale sur l'exposition des jugements réfléchissants esthétiques, Kant formule une cinquième et dernière définition du beau, synthèse des quatre premières: „Schön ist das, was in der bloßen Beurtheilung gefällt.” Le texte de cette définition, donnant matière ultérieurement à des développements dans la Déduction des jugements esthétiques purs, doit être corrigé: la parenthèse explicative ne peut se comprendre telle quelle. Une sensation qui aurait lieu d'après un concept irait à l'encontre de l'ensemble des enseignements de la philosophie de (...) Kant. (shrink)

Le formalisme qui caractérise si bien la morale kantienne demeure sans conteste un des aspects les plus critiqués de sa pensée. Pour notre part, nous nous situons ici dans une perspective qui considère que le formalisme kantien est victime d'une longue tradition critique qui a fini par perdre de vue la portée réelle, sinon l'essence même de la morale de Kant. Notre propos ne sera pas pour autant une réponse directe aux différentes critiques qui ont été adressées à Kant sur (...) cette question. Nous éviterons autant que possible ce que d'aucuns seraient tentés de qualifier de veine et anachronique plaidoirie du formalisme kantien. (shrink)