There can sometimes be weariness surrounding coordinated efforts to induce inclusion. Detractors of certain such efforts may cite coercion or a loss of autonomy as a concern. In their book Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein presented the idea of the “nudge.” Nudges change the context in which a decision is made to increase the likelihood that a certain choice is made by the decision maker. However, nudges are designed to be easy to avoid. Thaler and Sunstein laid out criteria such that (...) nudges can remain ethical. In this paper, I show that certain nudges that greatly increased inclusion in their respective communities do follow these criteria. In fact, subjected even to the relatively tighter constraints imposed by a prominent critic of Thaler and Sunstein’s philosophy, Wilkinson, these nudges remain unscathed. Thus, inclusion-promoting nudges are not necessarily unethical from the standpoint of manipulation or autonomy. (shrink)

There are different narratives on mathematics as part of our world, some of which are more appropriate than others. Such narratives might be of the form ‘Mathematics is useful’, ‘Mathematics is beautiful’, or ‘Mathematicians aim at theorem-credit’. These narratives play a crucial role in mathematics education and in society as they are influencing people’s willingness to engage with the subject or the way they interpret mathematical results in relation to real-world questions; the latter yielding important normative considerations. Our strategy is (...) to frame current narratives of mathematics from a virtue-theoretic perspective. We identify the practice of mathematizing, put forward by Freudenthal’s ‘Realistic mathematics education’, as virtuous and use it to evaluate different narratives. We show that this can help to render the narratives more adequately, and to provide implications for societal organization. (shrink)

This paper analyses the hidden use of new axioms in set-theoretic practice with a focus on large cardinal axioms and presents a general overview of set-theoretic practices using large cardinal axioms. The hidden use of a new axiom provides extrinsic reasons in support of this axiom via the idea of verifiable consequences, which is especially relevant for set-theoretic practitioners with an absolutist view. Besides that, the hidden use has pragmatic significance for further important sub-groups of the set-theoretic community---set-theoretic practitioners with (...) a pluralist view and set-theoretic practitioners who aim for ZFC-proofs. By describing this, the paper gives a more complete picture of new axioms in set-theoretic practice. These observations, for instance, show that set-theoretic practitioners interested in ZFC-proofs use tools that go beyond ZFC. The analysis is based on empirical data that was collected in an extensive interview study with set-theoretic practitioners. (shrink)

Translation from German to English by Daniel Fidel Ferrer -/- What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? -/- German title: "Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?" -/- Published: October 1786, Königsberg in Prussia, Germany. By Immanuel Kant (Born in 1724 and died in 1804) -/- Translation into English by Daniel Fidel Ferrer (March, 17, 2014). The day of Holi in India in 2014. -/- From 1774 to about 1800, there were three intense philosophical and theological controversies underway (...) in Germany, namely: Fragments Controversy, the Pantheism Controversy, and the Atheism Controversy. Kant’s essay translated here is Kant’s respond to the Pantheism Controversy. During this period (1770-1800), there was the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Urge (stress)) movement with thinkers like Johann Hamann, Johann Herder, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Goethe; who were against the cultural movement of the Enlightenment (Aufklärung). Kant was on the side of Enlightenment (see his Answer the Question: What is Enlightenment? 1784). -/- What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? / By Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). [Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren? English]. (shrink)

English translation of Kant's Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (Königsberg in Prussia, 30 September 1784).

Penelope Maddy’s Second Philosophy is one of the most well-known ap- proaches in recent philosophy of mathematics. She applies her second-philosophical method to analyze mathematical methodology by reconstructing historical cases in a setting of means-ends relations. However, outside of Maddy’s own work, this kind of methodological analysis has not yet been extensively used and analyzed. In the present work, we will make a first step in this direction. We develop a general framework that allows us to clarify the procedure and (...) aims of the Second Philosopher’s investigation into set-theoretic methodology; pro- vides a platform to analyze the Second Philosopher’s methods themselves; and can be applied to further questions in the philosophy of set theory. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of the puzzle posed by Greenberg’s failure to come to terms with the explosion of postmodernist experimentation in the 1960’s. Greenberg, one of the most influential critics of the immediately preceding period and a strong supporter of New York abstract expressionism and color field painting, is indelibly associated with modernist schools of painting. His short essay, “Modernist Painting”, valorized precisely these movements and was a tour de force catapulting Greenberg into critic superstar status; it is still (...) one of the central documents in debates about modernism. Because Greenberg there makes references to Kant’s aesthetics in identifying the virtues of modernism his account is usually interpreted in terms of the formalism of the period and Kant’s analytic of the beautiful. This offers a reading of Greenberg as a formalist and as identifying modernism with a concern for the formal properties of art, the flatness of the picture frame and the formal relations between the aesthetic properties. Greenberg was also celebrated as having a legendary acuteness of aesthetic appreciation—a critical eye penetrating immediately to a work’s aesthetic depth. (shrink)

Few of Kant’s distinctions have generated as much puzzlement and criticism as the one he draws in the Prolegomena between judgments of experience, which he describes as objectively and universally valid, and judgments of perception, which he says are merely subjectively valid. Yet the distinction between objective and subjective validity is central to Kant’s account of experience and plays a key role in his Transcendental Deduction of the categories. In this paper, I reject a standard interpretation of the (...) distinction, according to which judgments of perception are merely subjectively valid because they are made without sufficient investigation. In its place, I argue that for Kant, judgments of perception are merely subjectively valid because they merely report sequences of perceptions had by a subject without claiming that what is represented by the perceptions is connected in the objects the perceptions are of. Whereas the interpretation I criticize undercuts Kant’s strategy in the Deduction, I argue, my interpretation illuminates it. (shrink)

The increasingly common use of inclusive language (e.g., "he or she") in representing past philosophers' views is often inappropriate. Using Immanuel Kant's work as an example, I compare his use of terms such as "human race" and "human being" with his views on women to show that his use of generic terms does not prove that he includes women. I then discuss three different approaches to this issue, found in recent Kant-literature, and show why each of them is (...) insufficient. I conclude that the tension between gender-neutral and gender-specific views in Kant's work should be made explicit, and I offer several strategies for doing so. (shrink)

Despite recent essentialist approaches to Kant’s laws of nature, it is unclear whether Kant’s critical philosophy is compatible with core tenets of essentialism. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s position by identifying the key metaphysical and epistemological features of his notion of ‘nature’ or ‘essence’. Two theses about natures can be found in the literature, namely that they are noumenal in character (noumenal thesis) and that they guide scientific investigation as regulative ideas of reason (regulative thesis). (...) I argue that Kant’s notion of nature does not entail the noumenal thesis and, based on his model of causal explanation, I propose a novel, phenomenal thesis, that allows for a better understanding of the function of natures as regulative ideas. In the last part of the paper, I show that Kant’s ‘essentialism’ is a genuine form of essentialism committed to de re modality, although it differs in several respects from major contemporary essentialist accounts. I conclude by suggesting that Kant’s essentialism (if appropriately updated) can be relevant to the contemporary debate, which has so far been dominated by Humean and Aristotelian proposals. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of (...) the Egosplitting. My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. (shrink)

At the heart of Kant’s legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant’s, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical states we have inherited vague and confusing. The (...) aim of this paper is to untangle both puzzles by exploring Kant’s idea of self-governance. I argue that Kant’s idea of self-governance gives us a very good starting point for thinking about how to leave room for a variety of political systems—different ideals—that have grown out of and responding to different contingent historical and cultural circumstances. It also helps us identify those areas where we want to take extra care to build in safeguards to secure stability and to take sufficiently seriously humankind’s truly nasty sides. (shrink)

A familiar post-Kantian criticism contends that Kant enslaves sensibility under the yoke of practical reason. Friedrich Schiller advanced a version of this criticism to which Kant publicly responded. Recent commentators have emphasized the role that Kant’s reply assigns to the pleasure that accompanies successful moral action. In contrast, I argue that Kant’s reply relies primarily on the sublime feeling that arises when we merely contemplate the moral law. In fact, the pleasures emphasized by other recent commentators (...) depend on this sublime feeling. These facts illuminate Kant’s views regarding the relationship between morality, freedom, and the development of moral feelings. (shrink)

The question of how we should engage with a philosopher’s racial thought is of particular importance when considering Kant, who can be viewed as particularly representative of Enlightenment philosophy. In this article I argue that we should take a stance of deep acknowledgment when considering Kant’s work both inside and outside the classroom. Taking a stance of deep acknowledgment should be understood as 1) taking Kant’s racial thought to be reflective of his moral character, 2) Kant (...) being accountable for his racial thought and 3) being willing to consider the possibility that Kant’s racial thought is consistent with and inextricable from his moral philosophy. Alternative forms of engaging with Kant’s racial work have either moral or pedagogical failings, which range from simply teaching the history of philosophy uncritically to outright deception. A stance of deep acknowledgement will allow philosophers to understand how Kant’s racial thought interacts with his moral philosophy and allow instructors to teach philosophy in a historically contextualized approach so as to not alienate students whose demographic was disparaged by Kant. (shrink)

This paper investigates conceptions of explanation, teleology, and analogy in the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Richards (2000, 2002) and Zammito (2006, 2012, 2018) have argued that Kant’s philosophy provided an obstacle for the project of establishing biology as a proper science around 1800. By contrast, Russell (1916), Outram (1986), and Huneman (2006, 2008) have argued, similar to suggestions from Lenoir (1989), that Kant’s philosophy influenced the influential naturalist Georges Cuvier. In this article, (...) I wish to expand on and further the work of Russell, Outram, and Huneman by adopting a novel perspective on Cuvier and considering (a) the similar conceptions of proper science and explanation of Kant and Cuvier, and (b) the similar conceptions of the role of teleology and analogy in the works of Kant and Cuvier. The similarities between Kant and Cuvier show, contrary to the interpretation of Richards and Zammito, that some of Kant’s philosophical ideas, whether they derived from him or not, were fruitfully applied by some life scientists who wished to transform life sciences into proper sciences around 1800. However, I also show that Cuvier, in contrast to Kant, had a workable strategy for transforming the life sciences into proper sciences, and that he departed from Kant’s philosophy of science in crucial respects. (shrink)

I argue that the Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative is best interpreted as a test or decision procedure of moral rightness and not as a criterion intended to explain the deontic status of actions. Rather, the Humanity formulation is best interpreted as a moral criterion. I also argue that because the role of a moral criterion is to explain, and thus specify what makes an action right or wrong, Kant's Humanity formulation yields a theory of relevant descriptions.

An apathetic life is not the sort of life that most of us would want for ourselves or believe that we have a duty to strive for. And yet Kant argues that we have a duty of apathy, a duty to strive to be without affects (Affecten) and passions (Leidenschaften). But is Kant’s claim that there is a duty of apathy really as problematic as it sounds? In arguing that it is not, this paper investigates in detail in (...) Kant’s accounts of affects and passions and defends Kant’s argument that we have a duty of apathy. This investigation reveals Kant’s nuanced view on the role that sensible motivating states play in moral agency and the development of a virtuous character. (shrink)

“Everyone has a price at which he sells himself”: Immanuel Kant quotes this remark in the 1793 _Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone_, attributing it to “a member of English Parliament”. I argue, however, that the context of the quotation in the _Religion_ alludes to the arresting pedagogical practices of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who famously said that “different people sell themselves at different prices” (Discourses 1.2). I argue that there are two sides of Epictetus’s pedagogical strategies: a (...) jolting side meant to expose self-deception and practical inconsistency; and an uplifting side meant to arouse the resources by which it is possible to progress towards virtue — specifically, our sense of kinship with the divine insofar as we are rational. I argue that Kant develops a conception of self-respect in later practical works that plausibly draws on Epictetus, and his distinctive version of the traditional Stoic account of rational agency. (shrink)

In an intriguing but neglected passage in the Transcendental Deduction, Kant appears to link the synthetic activity of the understanding in experience with the phenomenon of attention (B156-7n). In this paper, we take up this hint, and draw upon Kant's remarks about attention in the Anthropology to shed light on the vexed question of what, exactly, the understanding's role in experience is for Kant. We argue that reading Kant's claims about synthesis in this light allows us (...) to combine two aspects of Kant's views that many commentators have thought are in tension with one another: on the one hand, Kant's apparent commitment to naïve realism about perception and, on the other, his apparent commitment to the necessity of synthetic activity by the understanding for any kind of cognitive contact with external objects. (shrink)

In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023), I argue that the first Critique is not only a ‘propaedeutic’ to metaphysics, but actually already establishes parts of metaphysics. These parts belong to what Kant calls transcendental philosophy. Additionally, I also provide an account of Kant’s critique of dogmatism and Wolff as its main defender. In this paper, I take up Luigi Filieri’s and Davide Dalla Rosa’s invitation to further develop my characterization of (...) transcendental philosophy and I respond to Michael Walschots’s objections against my interpretation of Kant’s critique of Wolff’s dogmatism. (shrink)

I suggest that looking at how Kant’s arguments relate to the stand of the discussion on the relationship between right and ethics in his times contributes to a better understanding of his own position in this matter. I contrast the terms of the pre-Kantian debate with Kant’s take on the matter, in order to point out how Kant gains a new perspective concerning the rela- tionship between ethics and right. While the most prominent pre-Kantian view construed right (...) and ethics as either resulting from the application of a general principle to di erent domains or reciprocally independent, Kant’s own account centres on the difference between outer and inner freedom. I argue that Kant thereby only differentiates two relations of freedom to different hindrances, without implying any separation. This distinction allows him to construe right and ethics as sharing the same normative force of moral obligation. Therefore I suggest that Kant’s view understands the relationship between right and ethics neither as dependence nor as independence, but highlights the normative continuity throughout morals. (shrink)

This essay examines Wolff’s science of teleology, which has historically been dismissed as a crude physico-theology resting on a simple confusion between uses and purposes. Focusing especially on his two German volumes (German Teleology, 1723, and German Physiology, 1725), I argue that, first, Wolff never intended teleology to be a self-standing theology; and second, that teleology, as a part of physics, is primarily an applied or practical discipline. In its theological function, teleology presupposes the ontological and cosmological arguments for the (...) being and attributes of God rendered in rational theology. As a part of physics, meanwhile, teleology presupposes the inert-mechanical view of nature which had emerged in the seventeenth century, and builds upon mechanistic physics by providing a perspective on nature as consisting of relations of benefit and advantage. The physiological part of teleology, or the study of plant and animal bodies, occupies a special place, for which Wolff deploys notions of health and sickness consistent with the mechanistic physics he accepts. With this in view, I argue that Wolff’s teleology could not be the proper target of Kant’s critique of physico-theology. Yet, there remain deeper differences between Wolff and Kant on the topic, which have to do with the sources and limits of teleological reasoning in general. (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 public health crisis is started with emergence of new coronavirus on 11 February 2020 which triggered as coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemics. The causative agent in COVID-19 is made up of positively wrapped single-stranded RNA viruses ~ 30 kb in size. The epidemiology, clinical features, pathophysiology, and mode of transmission have been documented well in many studies, with additional clinical trials are running for several antiviral agents. The spreading potential of COVID-19 is faster than its two previous families, the severe (...) acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Apart from clinical manifestation, comorbid status is playing key role for prevalence of COVID-19 infection and mortalities. The comorbid effects associated with COVID-19 are diabetes, cardiovascular, digestive, hepatitis-B, cerebrovascular, hypertension, liver injury, coronary heart disease, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and neurological impairment. Antimalarial drugs (chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine), remdesivir, Tocilizumab, clopinavir/ritonavir, convalescent plasma therapy, spike protein-angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) inhibitors, human monoclonal antibodies, mRNA-1273, mesenchymal stem cells, Indian and Chinese traditional medicine, small molecules antioxidant, natural products and dietary supplements, high doses of vitamin-E, -C, -D, minerals, flavonoids,and IFN-beta are therapeutic intervention running to develop treatment against COVID-19. Although clinical usage of these therapeutic agents against COVID-19 is well documented, cytokine storms, absence of appropriate animal model have limited its therapeutic use. This review explores the clinical information currently available on COVID-19 on the mechanisms of infection, prevention, management, comorbid status, and current drug treatment options. (shrink)

This Guide is designed to restore the theological background that informs Kant’s treatment of grace in Religion to its rightful place. This background is essential not only to understand the nature of Kant’s overall project in this book, namely, to determine the “association” or “union” between Christianity (as a historical faith) and rational religion, but also to dispel the impression of “internal contradictions” and conundrums” that contemporary interpreters associate with Kant’s treatment of grace and moral regeneration. That (...) impression, we argue, is the result of entrenched interpretative habits that can be traced back to Karl Barth’s reading of the text. Once we realize that such a reading rests on a mistake, much of the anxiety and confusion that plague current discussions on these issues can be put to rest. (shrink)

Hegel famously criticizes Kant’s resolution of the antinomies. According to Sedgwick, Hegel primarily chastises Kant’s resolution for presupposing that concepts are ‘one-sided’, rather than identical to their opposites. If Kant had accepted the dialectical nature of concepts, then (according to Sedgwick) Kant would not have needed to resolve the antinomies. However, as Ameriks has noted, any such interpretation faces a serious challenge. Namely, Kant’s first antinomy concerns the universe’s physical dimensions. Even if we grant that (...) the concept of the finite is necessarily related to that of the infinite, the physical universe cannot both have and lack a temporal beginning. I argue that Hegel neither adopts Sedgwick’s view that Kant’s antinomies require no resolution nor absurdly accepts that the physical universe both has and lacks a temporal beginning. Instead, Hegel proposes a sophisticated resolution of Kant’s first antinomy (including its physical aspect) that depends on Hegel’s theory of the Absolute. (shrink)

This paper examines Heidegger’s position on a foundational distinction for Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy: that between acting ‘in the light of’ a norm and acting ‘merely in accordance with it’. In section 1, I introduce the distinction and highlight several relevant similarities between Kant and Heidegger on ontology and the first-person perspective. In section 2, I press the Kantian position further, focusing on the role of inferential commitments in perception: this provides a foil against which Heidegger’s account can be (...) In section 3, I contrast this Kantian approach with Crowell’s highly sophisticated reading of Heidegger on care: I argue that, subject to certain conditions on how we view explanation, the two approaches are compatible and indeed mutually supporting. I close in section 4 by addressing an importantly distinct dimension of normativity, that marked by critique, broadly construed. I argue that we ultimately need to locate Heidegger in a context that. (shrink)

NOTE: The English translation is listed separately. ABSTRACT: A general interpretation and close textual analysis of Kant’s theory of the categories of freedom (or categories of practical reason) in his Critique of Practical Reason. My main concerns in the paper are the following: (1) I show that Kant’s categories of freedom have primarily three functions: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. (2) (...) I show that for Kant actions, although qua theoretical objects they are always already constituted by means of the theoretical categories, qua practical objects (objects of reason in its practical use, i.e. objects qua possibly good or bad) they are constituted by means of the categories of freedom; and that it is only in this way that actions, qua phenomena, can be a consequence of freedom, and can be understood and evaluated as such. (3) Since Kant's presentation of his theory of the Categories of Freedom is extremely brief, Kant's parallel theory of the theoretical categories in his Critique of Pure Reason is used as a guide for the interpretation of the practical categories and their systematic relevance. (shrink)

Against several recent interpretations, I argue in this chapter that Immanuel Kant's support for enlightened absolutism was a permanent feature of his political thought that fit comfortably within his larger philosophy, though he saw such rule as part of a transition to democratic self-government initiated by the absolute monarch himself. I support these contentions with (1) a detailed exegesis of Kant’s essay "What is Enlightenment?" (2) an argument that Kantian republicanism requires not merely a separation of powers but (...) also a representative democratic legislature, and (3) a demonstration that each stage of a democratic transition can potentially be in an absolute monarch’s short-run self-interest. (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)

The core of Kant’s criticism of the ontological argument is the thesis that existence is not a real predicate capable of being added to the concept of an object. The concept of the most perfect or the most real being is a subjective content that is as such completely determined, that is to say, that already has all the determinations that define that concept as such. Therefore, to know if that object also exists in the real world is indispensable (...) that the subject has an intuition of it. The absence of such intuition is, according to Kant, an insuperable obstacle for the different attempts to prove the existence of God. Although Hegel agrees in principle with Kant´s claim that existence must not be conceived as a real predicate, he considers, however, that to understand it as the position of the already exhaustively determined concept of the object does not imply a true overcoming of the particular notion of existence that is at the base of the ontological argument. In this article I defend the claim that Hegel´s counter-criticism of Kant´s criticism of the ontological argument is actually a radicalization of Kant´s general critique of metaphysics. (shrink)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) was not a philosopher. In fact, Winckelmann had a strong interest in distancing himself from academic philosophy as he knew it. As Goethe reports, Winckelmann “complained bitterly about the philosophers of his time and about their extensive influence.” Still less was Winckelmann a Kantian philosopher; the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason did not appear until 1781, thirteen years after the fifty-year-old Winckelmann was shockingly murdered in Trieste. Nevertheless, many of Winckelmann’s ideas (...) were philosophically rich and suggestive and interestingly relevant to the philosophical problems that were later to be addressed by Kant and his philosophical contemporaries. It is no wonder, then, that Winckelmann’s influence can be detected in the works of some of the most important philosophically oriented thinkers of Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to Kant himself, these thinkers included Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). (shrink)

Kant develops a concept of savagery, partly characterized by laziness, to envision a program for human progress. He also racializes savagery, treating native Americans, in particular, as literal savages. He ascribes to this “race” a peculiar physiological laziness, a supposedly hereditary trait of blunted life power. Accordingly, while he grants them the same “germs” for perfections as he does the civilized Europeans, he allows them no prospect of actually fulfilling any such perfection. For the road to perfection must be (...) paved through industry, a condition that Kant denies to the “savages” by racializing their alleged laziness. This case will shed new light on the debated relation between Kant’s moral universalism and his racism. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between beauty and aesthetic properties to argue that aesthetic properties are connected to a work’s content, to what a work conveys or expresses. I turn to Kant’s Critique of Judgement to make the case. My argument highlights two parts of Kant’s approach. Kant argues that pure aesthetic judgements of beauty are grounded in a harmonious yet free play of the imagination and understanding. Such free play is pleasurable and intimates that the power (...) or capacity of imagination is suitable for and can be brought within the conditions of the capacity for conceptual understanding. Within this broader frame, Kant’s account of artistic beauty specifies the relationship of aesthetic properties to the beauty of a work: aesthetic attributes help convey the aesthetic ideas that beautiful works express. I examine how Kant’s view helps us appreciate that aesthetic properties of artworks are integral to conveying the content of a work, and that the pleasure we feel has the potential to make us aware of the experience, its nature and value. (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.

ABSTRACT: Sellars once remarked on the “astonishing extent to which in ethics as well as in epistemology and metaphysics the fundamental themes of Kant’s philosophy contain the truth of the variations we now hear on every side” (SM x). Also astonishing was Sellars’ 1970 Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association (APA), which borrowed its title from the phrase in Kant’s Paralogisms, “...this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks...” (B404). In its compact twenty-five pages Sellars (...) managed to sketch novel yet plausible reconstructions of central aspects of Kant’s views on self-knowledge, persons, freedom, and morality, along the way suggesting how all of those Kantian views could plausibly be rendered consistent with a naturalistic ontology. In this chapter I focus on Sellars’ APA address as an occasion for reflection on how both Kant and Sellars offer insights into how we ought best to conceive the nature of and the relationships between our thinking selves, our practical agency, and our entirely natural, material embodiment. (shrink)

This article begins with the claim that the Formula of Universal Law, interpreted as a test of the deontic status of actions, can't be made to work. If not, then one might wonder whether what other work it might do in the overall economy of Kant's ethics. I defend what I call the "formal constraint" interpretation of FUL, explaining how it can figure in a defense of the Formula of Humanity, and its psychological significance in moral thinking.

The consensus is that in his 1755 Nova Dilucidatio, Kant endorsed broadly Leibnizian compatibilism, then switched to a strongly incompatibilist position in the early 1760s. I argue for an alternative, incompatibilist reading of the Nova Dilucidatio. On this reading, actions are partly grounded in indeterministic acts of volition, and partly in prior conative or cognitive motivations. Actions resulting from volitions are determined by volitions, but volitions themselves are not fully determined. This move, which was standard in medieval treatments of (...) free choice, explains why Kant is so critical of Crusius’s version of libertarian freedom: Kant understands Crusius as making actions entirely random. In defense of this reading, I offer a new analysis of the version of the principle of sufficient reason that appears in the Nova Dilucidatio. This principle can be read as merely guaranteeing grounds for the existence of things or substances, rather than efficient causes for states and events. As such, the principle need not exclude libertarian freedom. Along the way, I seek to illuminate obscure aspects of Kant’s 1755 views on moral psychology, action theory, and the threat of theological determinism. (shrink)

Además de las numerosas concomitancias que a menudo se han venido señalando en los últimos años entre la filosofía de Immanuel Kant y la de Ludwig Wittgenstein, es posible detectar una coincidencia ulterior entre ambos en el ataque que los dos realizan a la teoría disposicionalista de la normatividad (esto es, la tesis según la cual el agente que sigue una regla correctamente debe contar para ello en su interior con una especie de mecanismo causal o disposición que produzca, (...) ante el estímulo de una norma, el efecto del seguimiento correcto). Las razones por la cual ambos consideran defectuosa esta teoría son, fundamentalmente, tres: el hecho de que esa especie de mecanismo interno es incompatible con nuestra idea de lo que son los mecanismos; la ausencia en el dibujo que nos hace esta tesis disposicionalista de las prácticas reguladas de precisamente algún poder regulativo (es decir, un “deber ser” diferenciado de lo que de hecho se da, de lo fáctico; o, dicho en términos kantianos, la distinción entre actuar “según concepciones de reglas” y actuar “según reglas”); y lo inapropiado de aplicar el concepto de causa a mecanismos internos como aquellos por los cuales abogan los disposicionalistas. En nuestra comunicación examinaremos esta acometida conjunta kantiano-wittgensteiniana a la tesis disposicionalista, lo cual acaso sirva para comprender a su vez mejor los íntimos vínculos que ligaron al pensador alemán y al pensador austríaco en más de un recodo de sus respectivos caminos del pensar. (shrink)

In his influential work on Kant and history, Yirmiyahu Yovel identifies a problem which he terms ‘the historical antinomy.’ The problem states that no possible mediation can take place between the atemporal realm of pure reason and the empirical realm of human history. In this paper, I aim to bridge this gap based on a two-aspect reading of the faculty of reason, and then proceed to show reason’s ability to apply transcendental ideas on empirical history for the sake of (...) grasping a rational idea of history in a single, mediated process. (shrink)

In his Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant presents four antinomies. In his attempt to solve the first of these antinomies he examines and analyzes "thesis" and "antithesis" more thoroughly and employs the terms `part', `whole' and `boundary' in his argumentation for their validity. According to Kant, the whole problem surrounding the antinomy was caused by applying the concept of the world to nature and then using both terms interchangeably. While interesting, this solution is still not that much (...) more than a well thought out idea if it does not also include an adequate formal explication. Since the aforementioned terms all have counterparts in modern mereotopology, a discipline that has seen significant progress in recent times, we will apply these concepts to Kant's analysis in an attempt to evaluate Kant's solution in light of modern analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of the transcendental distinction between agents qua phenomena and qua noumena in Kant's theory of free will. It argues (1) that Kant's incompatibilism can be accommodated if one accepts the "ontological" interpretation of this distinction (i.e. the view that agents qua noumena are ontologically prior to agents qua phenomena), and (2) that Kant's incompatibilism cannot be accommodated by the "two-aspect" interpretation, whose defining feature is the rejection of the ontological priority of agents (...) qua noumena. The ontological interpretation allows Kant to be an incompatibilist because the ontological priority of agents qua noumena "ontologically undermines" the significance of phenomenal determinism for agents' free will. That is, since agents qua noumena are ontologically prior to agents qua phenomena, the fact that agents qua noumena are not subject to determinism is more fundamental than the fact that agents qua phenomena are subject to determinism, and it is the more fundamental fact that we should be concerned with in the metaphysical foundations of moral responsibility. Recent (independent) work by myself, Eric Watkins, and Robert Hanna is drawn on to demonstrate that the ontological interpretation can mount a better defense against some traditional objections than has often been thought. -/- According to the two-aspect interpretation, the transcendental distinction between agents qua noumena and qua phenomena is a semantic and epistemological distinction. Since it rejects the ontological priority of noumena, it has no way to assert that the non-determinism of agents qua noumena is more metaphysically fundamental than the determinism of agents qua phenomena. For the two-aspect interpretation, the truth of determinism must remain just as fundamental as the truth of any other characterization of agents. This means that, on the two-aspect interpretation, there is no better reason to call Kant an incompatibilist than there is to call him a compatibilist. Since Henry Allison has presented the most detailed two-aspect interpretation of the agential transcendental distinction, the arguments against the two-aspect distinction address his interpretation. Part of Allison's strategy is to argue that phenomenal determinism poses less of a problem for free will if we accept his accounts of the Second Analogy and empirical psychology. I point our problems in these accounts and argue that this strategy cannot be accepted. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I explore how Kant’s development of the idea of the disposition in the Religion copes with problems implied by Kant’s idea of transcendental freedom. Since transcendental freedom implies the power of absolutely beginning a state, and therefore of absolutely beginning a series of the consequences of that state, a transcendentally free act is divorced from the preceding state of an agent, and would thus seem to be divorced from the agent’s character as well. The paper (...) is divided into two parts. First I analyze Kant’s understanding of the disposition and discuss the ways in which it allows us to understand a person’s transcendentally free actions in terms of that person’s character. I then discuss Kant’s resources for understanding the Socratic injunction to care for the soul in light of his concept of the disposition. (shrink)

Plato conceived of the Form of Beauty as quite distinct from the Form of the Good. Beauty was a means to the Good. The ascent theory of the Symposium has suggested to some commentators that Plato envisaged two kinds of beauty, the sensuous and the intellectual, and that to reach the Good we must transcend our sensuous desires and cultivate an appreciation of intellectual beauty. However, in the Laws Plato presents us with a third notion of beauty, which is neither (...) sensuous nor intellectual. To experience beauty we need to cultivate our pleasure in harmonious forms. This is where we find a theory of beauty that resonates in Kant’s aesthetic theory. According to the latter, the feeling for beauty is a feeling for harmony that takes us beyond the confines of a world marked out by self-interest. I conclude that Plato’s aesthetic theory anticipates the role that aesthetic judgment would play in Immanuel Kant’s system of the mind. (shrink)

By transcendental aesthetic, Kant means “the science of all principles of a priori sensibility” (A 21/B 35). These, he argues, are the laws that properly direct our judgments of taste (B 35 – 36 fn.), i.e. our aesthetic judgments as we ordinarily understand that notion in the context of contemporary art. Thus the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled the Transcendental Aesthetic, enumerates the necessary presuppositions of, among other things, our ability to make empirical judgments about (...) particular works of art. These presuppositions are sensible rather than intellectual because on Kant's view, all intellection that considers objects of any kind, whether abstract or concrete, must at base connect to actual, material objects with which we come into direct contact; and this we can do only through sensibility (A 19/B 33). Thus the following discussion explores what Kant claims must be true of us in order to make the sorts of aesthetic judgments we make, rather than any particular class or quality of aesthetic judgments itself. On Kant's view, what must be true of us in order to make aesthetic judgments is not different from what must be true of us in order to make any other kind of judgment about empirical objects. This last point is worth emphasizing, in order to correct an interpretation of Kant's account of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment that wrongly reads Kant as claiming that aesthetic judgments do not have to satisfy the same basic requirements of judgment that any other kind of judgment also must satisfy, such as the synthetic subsumption of such objects under certain necessary and hard-wired concepts of understanding, the internal coherence of such judgments with other, non-aesthetic ones of a more abstract and comprehensive character, the unified consciousness within which such judgments are intelligibly made, and the like. Of course Kant recognizes the special character of aesthetic judgments and unpacks it in the... (shrink)

Master's Dissertation -/- (Awarded Distinction from Warwick University – assessed by Professors Stephen Houlgate and Christine Battersby, 2002).

Kant infamously opposes not only revolution but also any resistance or disobedience by citizens that aims to compel states to reform themselves. This paper argues that, in fact, the Kantian account of the legitimate state has the resources for a distinctive justification of principled disobedience, including even violent or destructive resistance, that applies to citizens of contemporary Western democracies. When a state fails to enforce the law equally, this lack of equal enforcement can deprive some citizens of the equal (...) assurance of the security of their rights that, on the Kantian account, forms part of the very basis of the state’s claim of legitimate authority. This failure of equal enforcement of the law will thus be a defect of legitimacy and, as a result, those citizens may engage not only in civil disobedience but also in uncivil disobedience, even violent or destructive resistance, in order to compel the state to reform itself. In this context, such disobedience or resistance will count as furthering rather than undermining the project of governance by legitimate law. (shrink)

Abstract: Kant and Arendt on Barbaric and Totalitarian Evil -/- This paper starts by sketching Kant’s four ideal legal and political conditions—'anarchy,’ ‘despotism,’ ‘republic,’ and ‘barbarism’—before showing their usefulness for analyzing different political forces that may operate in any given society. Contrary to the common tendency in political philosophy to view our societies as either in the so-called ‘state of nature’ (‘anarchy’) or in ‘civil society’ (‘republic’), I propose that we might find ourselves in societies where aspects or (...) ‘pockets’ of our lives are subject to any one of these (anarchic, despotic, republican, and barbaric) political forces. I then combine Kant’s ideas on barbaric evil with Arendt’s ideas on totalitarian evil, which gives us a four-fold conception of political evil. This fourfold distinction is then used to identify some types and patterns of destructive political forces as they occur in actual, historical societies, such as racist, sexist, or heterosexist violence and oppression. (shrink)