In this paper, I consider Baumgarten’s views on the soul in the context of the Pietist critique of Wolff’s rational psychology. My primary aim is to account for the largely unacknowledged differences between Wolff’s and Baumgarten’s rational psychology, though I also hope to show that, in some cases, the Pietists were rather more perceptive in their reading of Wolff than they are typically given credit for as their criticisms frequently succeed in drawing attention to significant omissions in Wolff’s (...) discussion. (shrink)

This paper defends the Principle of Sufficient Reason, taking Baumgarten as its guide. The primary aim is not to vindicate the principle, but rather to explore the kinds of resources Baumgarten originally thought sufficient to justify the PSR against its early opponents. The paper also considers Baumgarten’s possible responses to Kant’s pre-Critical objections to the proof of the PSR. The paper finds that Baumgarten possesses reasonable responses to all these objections. While the paper notes that in (...) the absence of a response to Kant’s Critical discussion of the PSR, this result does not vindicate the principle, it shows how this discussion provides a deeper understanding of what, according to Baumgarten, the PSR really assumes and intends, and prepares the way for a more responsible discussion of Kant’s critical objections to Baumgarten’s supposed proof. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to shed new light on the role of feeling in Kant’s psychology of moral motivation by focusing on the concept of an incentive (Triebfeder), a term he borrowed from one of his most important rationalist predecessors, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. I argue that, similar to Baumgarten, Kant understands an incentive to refer to the ground of desire and that feelings function as a specific kind of ground within Kant’s psychology of moral action, namely as (...) the ‘impelling cause’ of desire. I claim that this interpretation has several advantages over the alternatives currently on offer in the literature. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to present the distinct ways in which Wolff, Baumgarten, and Kant understand the relationship between necessitation, constraint, and reluctant action in an effort to illustrate the subtle ways in which their conceptions of obligation differ from each another. Whereas Wolff conceives of natural or moral obligation as incompatible with constraint, Baumgarten holds that constraint and reluctant action are, in some instances, compatible with natural obligation. Kant departs from Baumgarten by conceiving of (...) obligation as necessarily involving constraint: as Kant’s reply to Schiller’s famous objection reveals, obligation must take on the character of constraint to reluctant action on account of the fact that human beings possess inclinations that always threaten to impel them in directions that oppose morality. (shrink)

In § 37 of his "Elements of First Practical Philosophy", Baumgarten provides important qualifications to the controversial notion of ‘objective morality’, which had long been at the centre of the dispute between realists like Wolff and his adversaries. The chapter shall examine how he construes his view of morality in §§ 36-38 with a specific focus on the central § 37. I shall analyse that section, first considering how Baumgarten understands the key notion of ‘objective morality’ and how (...) he argues for it, focusing both on its relational character and its connection with God’s will. Then I will examine the last, and arguably most surprising of the implications that he draws per negativum from the main claim, namely that affirming objective morality does not amount to rule out what Baumgarten calls ‘subjective morality’. Finally, I will briefly consider how Baumgarten’s distinctive way to take side in the Wolffian camp in that dispute reflects, through the close dialogue with the "Elements" in Kant’s private notes and lectures, on the development of Kant’s own views in practical philosophy. (shrink)

The chapter shows how Kant’s ethical thought as reflected in the lectures, responds to Baumgarten’s works on moral philosophy. I argue that Kant chose Baumgarten’s textbooks for his classes for genuinely philosophical reasons. The thorough discussion of Baumgarten’s views provided Kant with important clues for developing an original position, even if mostly in opposition to Baumgarten. I illustrate this complex role of Baumgarten with a few significant examples, that also highlight some original aspects of (...) class='Hi'>Baumgarten’s position in comparison to Wolff’s: (1) Kant follows Baumgarten’s in focusing on obligation as the crucial issue in moral philosophy, but Kant regards Baumgarten’s account as not satisfying. (2) Baumgarten’s sharply theistic foundation of morality is rejected by Kant. (3) Kant rejects also several significant aspects of Baumgarten’s division of ethical duties, thereby revealing profound differences in their conceptions of morality. (shrink)

In the course of his philosophy, in various contexts, Kant comes to reject three theses about existence: (i) that the thoroughgoing determination of a thing implies its existence, (ii) that existence is a real predicate or determination of a thing, and (iii) that existence is the complement of inner possibility or essence. Kant’s target here is Baumgarten, who advocates these theses as the criterion, classification, and definition of existence. In this article I seek to clarify Kant’s elusive theory of (...) existence through its opposition to Baumgarten. I will show that Kant’s refutation of (i)–(iii) does not stand alone but is grounded on his own definition of existence as (absolute) positing. Thus contrary to common practice, Kant’s negative claims about what existence is not cannot be understood in isolation but must be taken as jointly dependent on Kant’s positive claim of what existence is. I will show that the theses (i)–(iii) fail because they presuppose that existence contributes to the intension or content of a concept, whereas according to Kant existence in fact posits a (non-empty) extension to the concept. (shrink)

I argue that by considering Kant’s engagement with previous theorists of natural right, we can gain a clearer understanding of how he transformed the discipline from its foundations. To do this, I focus my analysis on Kant’s (critical) reception of two models of natural right with which he was very familiar: one from Alexander Baumgarten’s Elements of First Practical Philosophy [Initia philosophiae practicae primae], the other from Gottfried Achenwall’s Natural Law [Ius naturae]. The Initia served as a basis for (...) Kant’s lectures on moral philosophy for over three decades and may thus be considered as having played an important role in shaping his practical philosophy as a whole. Achenwall’s Ius naturae was the textbook that Kant employed in his lectures on natural right for over two decades. I argue that Kant distances himself from previous models of natural right in three main regards: the identification of moral laws with laws of nature, the normative connection between the principles of right and a natural end, and the place of God as the author of moral laws. I then briefly discuss what Kant retains of Baumgarten’s and Achenwall’s models of natural right. Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals preserves the view that a rational doctrine of right belongs to a broader systematic doctrine that comprehends the entire system of duties. I address the question of the division of the Sittenlehre into two branches and claim that, whereas Kant did not consider Baumgarten’s answer to the problem of distinguishing juridical from ethical principles to be satisfactory, he found a key piece of his own resolution in Achenwall’s Ius naturae, namely the definition of right as a power to coerce. (shrink)

In all three of his major works on moral philosophy, Kant conceives of moral obligation, moral permissibility, and moral impermissibility in decidedly modal terms, namely in terms of moral necessity, moral possibility, and moral impossibility respectively. This terminology is not Kant’s own, however, but has a rather long history stretching back to a group of Spanish Jesuit theologians in the early seventeenth century, and it was used in two contexts: first, in the context of divine and human action to explain (...) how volition can be both metaphysically and physically free and yet morally necessary, and second in a deontic context to refer to moral obligation, permissibility, and impermissibility. In this paper, my first and primary aim is to sketch the way in which four of Kant’s most important German predecessors, namely Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Christian August Crusius, used the language of moral necessity, possibility, and impossibility in both the context of action and obligation. My second, more limited aim is to suggest that Kant’s use of these terms can be clarified by taking this background into consideration. (shrink)

The article examines Kant's various criticisms of the broadly Cartesian ontological argument as they are developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that each of these criticisms is effective against its intended target, and that these targets include—in addition to Descartes himself—Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. It is argued that Kant's most famous criticism—the charge that being is not a real predicate—is directed exclusively against Leibniz. Kant's argument for this thesis—the argument proceeding from his example of a (...) hundred thalers—although it may seem to beg the question, in fact succeeds against Leibniz. It does so because the charge of begging the question can be rebutted if one makes certain Leibnizian assumptions. (shrink)

Aunque no es posible ofrecer aquí un análisis detallado de las diferentes cues tionesimplicadas en la teoría de las representaciones en la Modernidad, sí pode mos atender auno de sus aspectos más relevantes, presente en la exposición de Leibniz, Wolff,Baumgarten y Kant, a saber: el reconocimiento progresivo y la vin dicación de unconocimiento específicamente sensible como un tipo específico de conocimiento en lafilosofía escolar alemana del siglo XVIII. A pesar de que Leibniz atribuye al conocimiento claro y confuso el (...) grado más bajo en su esquema de los niveles del conocimiento, tambiénes cierto que su exposición apunta ya a la irre ductibilidad de este ámbito en unconocimiento finito como el humano. Por lo demás, lo confuso aquí adquiere sentido en elsistema del saber en la medida en que Leibniz considera que todos los conocimientos obre cuestiones de hecho, si bien falibles, se encuentran en conexión con la verdad en lamedida en que parti cipan de la misma, al expresar el fundamento último de lo real y sersusceptibles de perfectibilidad en el seno de una subjetividad dinámica que comienza aser entendida como unidad vital. En Wolff y Baumgarten se profundiza en la vía que esabierta ya por Leibniz: la exposición de los niveles de conocimiento en el marco de unaimbricación de la lógica de la representación con una psicología vitalista, en la que sereconocerá la experiencia del sentimiento como expresión subjetiva de la perfectibilidaddel conocimiento humano. Aunque la filosofía de Kant supondrá una ruptura con laexposición escolar de esta teoría de los niveles de conocimiento o los tipos derepresentación, lo cierto es que el nacimiento de su teoría de la sensi bilidad tiene lugar enel marco histórico de esta concepción tradicional. (shrink)

Like cognition, the language in which the cognition finds expression has, in principle, a function of synthesis, that is, a function of connecting the cognizing subject with the object of cognition. The language enables the human subject to have epistemic access to the object; in its form and function this epistemic access constitutes the necessary referentiality of the language itself. Cognition must inevitably refer to the object of knowledge in the mode of pre-linguistic sensory and abstract-conceptual accesses, as clearly highlighted (...) by Kant in his basic notion of the synthetic nature and structure of conceptual knowledge. This points to an aporetic ambiguity of the epistemic referentiality of language. In the process of cognition the subject should have an epistemic access to the particular. However, the conceptual cognition departs from the particular and is directed to a general universal idea. The ambiguity between the referential access and the referential departure in cognition necessarily requires a supplementation of the abstractlogical through the pre-linguistic-sensory or aesthetic knowledge, as emphasized by Alexander G. Baumgarten in his doctrine of sensory cognition (cognitio sensitiva) and the aesthetic-logical truth. Such a supplementation within the framework of a theory of perception seems to establish a unique form of epistemological reference, in which the subjective-epistemic access to the particular object does not terminate in the ontological finality of a concept or conceptual cognition, but transcends the cognition into the infinity of an aesthetic perception. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the relation between man and the world in Kant’s anthropology. Within Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, used as a manual by Kant for his lessons, empirical psychology is situated between cosmology and rational psychology. However, this view is untenable for Kant, at least after the first Critique. Consequently, whereas Baumgarten explains, for instance, obscure ideas referring to the bodily position in the world, Kant’s pragmatic approach excludes this. Yet, the concept of «Welt» retains paramount importance within Kant’s (...) Anthropology. The two parts of the work are thus harmonically linked: the first offers an account of a largely pathological human psychology; the second a way out of the pathology through the construction of a social and historical human world. Accordingly, anthropology responds to the «Weltbegriff» of philosophy and helps to correct the deviations from the final rational destination of mankind. (shrink)

Metaphysics as an independent discipline has a surprisingly short history. Until the early eighteenth century, many, perhaps even most, writers on “metaphysics” primarily had the eponymous work of Aristotle in mind. In the writings of the early eighteenth-century German rationalists—Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten—we find a conception of metaphysics that is no longer necessarily tied to Aristotle’s great work. But metaphysics as a discipline was not blessed with longevity, as a dozen years or so before Louis XVI it was (...) condemned to the guillotine by Kant’s first critique. The fate of metaphysics after the Kantian revolution is a story that still needs to be told, but it would be fair to say, I think, that for the past two centuries engagement with heavy metaphysical concepts such as eternity has been taken to be either a form of backwardness (religious or otherwise) or a kind of eccentricity. Luckily, things seem to have changed somewhat over the past twenty years. Suddenly, for example, we are seeing debates about monism appear in mainstream journals. (This could hardly be imagined in the 1970s or 1980s.) The emergence of interest in metaphysical monism as well as the persistent engagement with the philosophy of modality may open a window of opportunity through which eternity could again take her rightful seat as a fundamental notion of metaphysics. (shrink)

No centro da filosofia moral de Kant está sem dúvida sua doutrina do imperativo categórico. Por esse motivo não é de se surpreender que a Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes (1785), na qual Kant explica, em detalhes, essa doutrina pela primeira vez, tenha sido o foco da atenção por décadas. Mas há alguns anos é observável uma significativa mudança na literatura que é univocamente bem vinda: ao lado da pesquisa das Doutrinas da Virtude e do Direito publicadas por Kant nos (...) anos noventa do século 18, agora também são intensamente estudadas suas perspectivas filosófico-morais desenvolvidas antes de 1781. Nesse sentido assume uma posição de destaque o manuscrito estudantil de uma lição de ética ministrada no meio dos anos 70, que é publicada aqui, em língua portuguesa, pela primeira vez em uma tradução comentada. Ainda hoje, esta lição serve como uma introdução à ética de Kant, muito embora pareça divergir, em alguns aspectos, da doutrina crítica do imperativo categórico. As Lições de Ética são um „trabalho em andamento“. Por um lado, somos capazes de assistir Kant "pensando" e compreender como ele se reporta ao livro de Alexander Baumgarten sobre os Príncípios da Metafísica Prática (Initia philosophiae practicae primae, 1760). E, por outro lado, somos capazes de vivenciar como ele desenvolve suas próprias perspectivas filosófico-morais em contraste a Baumgarten. Para todos que se interessam pela filosofia moral de Kant e pela história da ética na época da Aufklärung, o estudo desse manuscrito é indispensável. -/- Heiner F. Klemme (Martin Luther Universität - Halle-Wittenberg) . (shrink)

Apresentamos aqui a tradução de uma pequena seleção das notas kantianas sobre ética. A maioria dos fragmento traduzidos é parte das chamadas Reflexões de Filosofia Moral publicadas no tomo XIX de Kants gesammelte Schriften, que se constituem, em sua maior parte, como as anotações de Kant (algumas em folhas soltas) na margem de um dos exemplares de referência para seus cursos de ética17, a Initia philosophiae practicae primae de Alexander Baumgarten, em sua edição de 1760. Acrescentamos à mesma seleção, (...) no entanto, algumas Reflexões presentes em outros volumes do Legado Manuscrito que, de alguma maneira, abordam os mesmos temas. As Reflexões foram dispostas em ordem numérica e separadas de acordo com seus respectivos assuntos. Considerando a diversidade dos temas comentados por Kant, de acordo com o manual, tais como obrigação, coerção, imputação, lei, justiça, punição etc, tentamos selecionar alguns tópicos que assumem uma função basilar dentro da teoria moral kantiana. Dessa forma, o primeiro grupo de Reflexões contém algumas notas que tratam com o problema da liberdade e da lei moral. O segundo é um compilado contendo comentários sobre o sentimento moral. O terceiro apresenta algumas reflexões esparsas sobre imputabilidade e o mal moral e o quarto grupo traz algumas notas comentadas sobre o problema do sumo bem, sendo, em alguns casos, apenas trechos de anotações maiores. As traduções foram realizadas diretamente a partir dos fragmentos originais, embora, em alguns casos, tenha sido feito o cotejamento com outras versões, dentre as quais cito a tradução para o espanhol, Reflexiones sobre Filosofia Moral, publicada por J. Herceg, a seleção de notas da Cambridge Edition intitulada Notes and Fragments e a tradução francesa de Luc Langlois, Réflexions Sur La Philosophie Morale. Com o objetivo de dar mais clareza aos apontamentos, facilitando a interpretação, optei por completar, em alguns casos, as sentenças de Kant nas quais certas palavras ficam subentendidas. Este complemento está apresentado entre colchetes. Para fins comparativos, todas as Reflexões traduzidas são acompanhadas por sua correspondente original nas notas de rodapé. Ciente de todas as dificuldades desse tipo de trabalho, desde já, deixo aberto à comunidade acadêmica o espaço para críticas, sugestões e correções. (shrink)

(For English, scroll down) „Kreativität“ ist ein sehr junger Begriff und ein sehr altes Phänomen. Sie gilt als unaufklärbares Rätsel, als eine Art „Black Box“ des Denkens. Dem kollektiven Bewußtsein zufolge ist sie etwas Rares, Flüchtiges, strapaziös zu erzielen und nur wenige Glückliche begünstigend. Das vorliegende Buch präsentiert eine logische Grundidee zur Entstehung von schöpferisch Neuem – Elemente aus Logik, Symbotheorie, Informations-, Kommunikations- und Medientheorie verbindend. Diese „Formel“ wird an philosophischen Stationen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart erprobt und weiterentwickelt, (...) darunter Theorien von Platon, Aristoteles, Leibniz, Baumgarten, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nelson Goodman und Gregory Bateson. Kreativität zeigt sich als ein Transformationsphänomen, welches das Denken auf eine andere logische Ebene führt, kategoriale Grenzen transformiert und Anschlußformen öffnet. Im Ergebnis ist sie nichts per Definition Abwesendes, erreichbar nur über den Umweg von unverfügbarer Gunst, weltabgewandter Passion oder verborgenen Tricks. Kreativität ist vielmehr omnipräsent, schöpferische Energien sind nur mit großem Aufwand zu unterdrücken, und die Frage, wie man sie erreicht, wird zur Frage, wie man ihr eine optimale Basis bereitet, ohne sie wesentlich zu behindern. Creativity" is a young term and an old phenomenon. It is considered an unexplainable enigma, a kind of "black box" of thought. According to the default view, it is something rare, fleeting, hard to achieve and favoring only a lucky few. The present book presents a logical formula for the emergence of creative newness - combining elements from logic, theories of symbolization, information-theory, communication- and media theories. This structural idea is tested and further developed by confronting it with select philosophical theories regarding the production of ‘newness’ from antiquity to the present, including theories by Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Baumgarten, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nelson Goodman and Gregory Bateson. As a result, creativity shows up as a transformation phenomenon, including different logical levels, thereby transforming categorical boundaries. As a result, it is not something mostly absent, attainable only through of luck, manic passion, or hidden tricks. Creativity is rather omnipresent, creative energies can only be suppressed with great effort, and the question of how to achieve it becomes the question of how to prepare an optimal basis without significantly hindering it. (shrink)

Recently, I was reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials, and read selections from Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, and Kant's own teacher, Martin Knutzen. It was dope - real philosophical comfort food - and inspired this piece, written in the style of one of their textbooks.

In this essay I show that Kant intended his anthropology lectures and book, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, to be a Klugheitslehre (theory of prudence). The essay draws on many quotes from these sources to show that Kant wanted to develop a theory of how to use other people for one’s own ends. Although so much of the lectures and book are in conversation with Baumgarten’s empirical psychology, there are enough references to Klugheit (prudence) and klug (clever) (...) action to support this thesis. Prudence is a skill that human beings should develop and hence is not excluded from human life even though it is not the basis of morality. The purpose of Klugheit is to achieve happiness but the means to that happiness involves using other people for one’s own ends. In order to use others as a means to one’s own ends, a person must in someway satisfy the inclinations of the other person so that they cooperate in one’s ends. However it is also possible to dominate another person and use them as well if they are dominated by a passion but this is not prudent since it does not achieve happiness except in the case of a husband and wife. Kant’s distinction between Weltklugheit and Privatklugheit also appears to be confirmed in that he advances the idea that sociable means of gaining the cooperation of others (Privatklugheit) leads to the lasting happiness of a person and to the development of civilization. (shrink)

RESUMO:O objetivo deste artigo é discutir sobre os conceitos de obrigação e lei natural, tendo como referência o polêmico debate moderno envolvendo intelectualismo e voluntarismo. Em um primeiro momento, destacaremos a rejeição de Wolff ao voluntarismo de Pufendorf e sua orientação em direção ao intelectualismo de Leibniz. Conforme essa nova orientação, uma teoria da lei natural não deve basear seu conceito de obrigação na autoridade das leis e em seu poder coercitivo, mas, por outro lado, unicamente na ideia de necessidade (...) moral, interpretada como expressão da ligação natural universal dos seres racionais com o dever. Em um segundo momento, apresentaremos os efeitos dessa discussão no pensamento inicial de Kant, que, se posicionando diante mesmo de Wolff e Baumgarten, vai empreender a superação de seus predecessores, através de uma revisão conceitual do problema, a qual culminará nos pressupostos de sua doutrina ética madura. -/- ABSTRACT:This paper highlights the debate around the concepts of obligationand natural law, with reference to the controversial modern discussion involving intellectualism and voluntarism. Firstly, we highlight Wolff’s rejection of the voluntarism of Pufendorf and Wolff’s orientation toward the intellectualism of Leibniz. For intellectualism, a theory of natural law should not ground the concept of obligation in the authority of laws and in their coercive power, but in the idea of moral necessity, understood as an expression of the universal natural connection of rational beings with duty. We then present the effects of this discussion on Kant’s early thought. Kant undertook to go beyond Wolff and Baumgarten through a conceptual review of the problem, which culminated in the assumptions of his mature ethics -/- This paper highlights the debate around the concepts of obligation and natural law , with reference to the controversial modern discussion involving intellectualism and voluntarism. Firstly, we highlight Wolff’s rejection of the voluntarism of Pufendorf and Wolff’s orientation toward the intellectualism of Leibniz. For intellectualism, a theory of natural law should not ground the concept of obligation in the authority of laws (established as an arbitrary decree of God) and in their coercive power (interpreted as fear of punishment), but in the idea of moral necessity, understood as an expression of the universal natural connection of rational beings with duty. We then present the effects of this discussion on Kant’s early thought. Kant undertook to go beyond Wolff and Baumgarten through a conceptual review of the problem, which culminated in the assumptions of his mature ethics. (shrink)

Kant‘s moral philosophy is one of the great cornerstones of the Western ethical reflection. The little that is known is that the basic conception on which Kantian ethics was built – videlicet, the concept of autonomy of the will – was developed from the attempt to solve a set of problems of metaphysical and theological character that could only have been overcome through the adoption of a new practical metaphysics. With this in mind, this research is an attempt at a (...) reconstruction of the Kantian moral thought in its development, having as a higher aim the emphasis on the importance of the problem of theodicy in the genesis of Kant‘s original conceptions of freedom and the moral world, which emerged from the middle of the 1760s and only came to a bloom on the next decade. Such an attempt at a reconstruction will be guided by the chronological sequel of the pre-critical writings and Kant‘s reflections on the Manuscript Legacy, besides his Lectures on Ethics, sources that are temporally circumscribed from the late 1750s and the first half of the 1780 decade. In a first moment, the genesis of the moral problem will be analyzed from Kant‘s critical position – due to the objections that were raised precisely by the theodicy – in front of the intellectualistic comprehension of the concepts of perfection and will such as they were received by the German Scholastic. In a second moment, the beginning of a reformulation directly influenced by Crusius and the British moralists will be highlighted, and it will culminate in a repositioning of the ethical problem, having in mind the roles of reason and feeling. The third moment is marked by the Kantian assimilation of Rousseau‘s thought. Rousseau‘s influence will propel the emergency of a new understanding of the concept of perfection as an inner attribute of the will, enabling support for a new concept of practical philosophy. Indeed, a solution to the ethical problem regarding the conditions of possibility of free actions within the natural world will emerge and, besides that, a path to an adequate answer to the problem of theodicy will rise by means of the concept of a practical rational faith. Finally, the development of the Kantian doctrine of the categorical imperative will be highlighted – by means of the debate with Baumgarten‘s compendium – as the first attempts to lay down a systematic and unified view of morality that will try to establish a connection between the concepts of virtue and happiness – in this contexts, approach from the perspective of the highest Good. (shrink)

Kevin Harrelson's book commences with the following words: This book provides a philosophical analysis of the several debates concerning the "ontological argument" from the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century. My aim in writing it was twofold. First, I wished to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of the history of these debates, which I perceived to be lacking in the scholarly literature. Second, I wanted also to pursue a more philosophically interesting question concerning the (...) apparent unassailability of ontological arguments. In pursuit of this latter problem, the driving question that my account addresses is "why has this argument, or kind of argument, been such a constant in otherwise diverse philosophical contexts and periods?" I think that there is no doubt that Harrelson succeeds in the first of these aims. He has, indeed, produced a detailed scholarly account of the history of debates about ontological arguments from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth. His history is engaging and interesting, covering a wide range of authors with diverse philosophical orientations: Descartes, Arnauld, Caterus, Gassendi, Hobbes, Mersenne, More, Geulincx, Cudworth, Locke, Clarke, Malebranche, Huet, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Eberhard, Crusius, Kant, Mendelssohn, and Hegel, among others. It seems to me that anyone who works on the treatment of. (shrink)

A Book of First Philosophy . Currently practically finished . Over 25000 words , around 125 pages . Baskerville font , not double spaced , around 11 pt font . Various margins , not as large print as Baumgarten's Aestetica , but could benefit from stylistic inclusions similar to Baumgarten's Astetica . The book posits a first philosophy grounded in sense -- and actually succeeds in its telos . -/- Bergson's books are printed with 2 paragraphs per leaf (...) . i will report back with the length of my book if formatted in a similar way . : the book is roughly 170 pages when formatted similarly to Memory and Matter . -/- Update : the work is less than 1000 pages if including the refutations , which are all on https :/ / www . instagram . com /jacobromanparr . POLITICS is still not being written due to insufficient funding . (shrink)

Fürwahrhalten, or “holding-to-be-true”, is one of the most controversial concepts in Kant’s epistemology. Rarely mentioned in Kant’s edited works – where it is often used to describe moral faith – Fürwahrhalten has attracted the interest of Kant scholars only in recent years. The essay aims to shed light on some of the main issues that the notion of holding-to-be-true still rises, especially those concerning its origin and its theoretical function in the critical system. The book retraces the stages of Kant’s (...) reflection on this theme, starting from the precritical discussion with the main representatives of the German Enlightenment (Wolff, Knutzen, Baumgarten, Meier, and Crusius) to the definitive formulation of Fürwahrhalten after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason. The analysis of Kant’s logical corpus has shown that, far from being a marginal concept of critical epistemology, Fürwahrhalten is the core of a systematic theory of certainty, that Kant develops in accordance with his doctrine of modality. This theory represents the arrival point of a long and troubled reflection, that led Kant to deeply rethink most of the traditional themes of eighteenth-century logic. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)