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Kant’s Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine
by G. BanhamThis work presents Kant as a vital revolutionary thinker, showing that his Practical Philosophy has been marred by views that it is formalist and centred on categorical imperative. Discussing his commitment to the notion of rational religion and his treatment of evil, this important study provides a vivid account of Kant's concerns.
Kant’s Practical Philosophy Reconsidered: Papers presented at the Seventh Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, December 1986 (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées #128)
by YirmiyahuYovelThat Kant's ideas remain vitally present in ethical thinking today is as impossible to deny as it is to overlook their less persisting aspects and sometimes outdated idiom. The essays in this volume attempt to reassess some crucial questions in Kant's practical philosophy both by sketching the lines for new systematic interpretations and by examining how Kantian themes apply to contemporary moral concerns. In the previous decade, when Kant was primarily read as an answer to utilitarianism, emphasis was mainly laid on the fundamentals of his moral theory, stressing such concepts as universalization, duty for its own sake, personal autonomy, unconditional imperatives or humanity as end-in-itself, using the Groundwork and its broader (ifless popular) systematic parallel, the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason, as main sources. In recent years, however, emphasis has shifted and become diversified. The present essays reflect this diversification in discussing the extension of Kantian ethics in the domains of law, justice, politics and moral history, and also in considering such meta-philosophical questions as the relation between the various "inter ests of reason" (as Kant calls them), above all between knowledge and moral practice. The papers were first presented at the Seventh Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in December 1986. The Jerusalem Philosophical Encounters are a series of bi-annual international symposia, in which philosophers of different backgrounds meet in Jerusalem to discuss a common issue. Organized by the S. H.
Kant's Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction
by Dennis SchultingIn this book, Dennis Schulting presents a staunch defence of Kant’s radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge. This defence is mounted by means of a comprehensive analysis of what is arguably the centrepiece of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge is to be understood as the thesis that the possibility of knowledge of objects essentially and wholly depends on subjective functions of thought, or the capacity to judge by virtue of transcendental apperception, given sensory input. Subjectivism thus defined is not about merely the necessary conditions of knowledge, but nor is it claimed that it grounds the very existence of things. Novel interpretations are provided of such central themes as the objective unity of apperception, the threefold synthesis, judgement, truth and objective validity, spontaneity in judgement, figurative synthesis and spatial unity, nonconceptual content, idealism and the thing in itself, and material synthesis. One chapter is dedicated to the interpretation of the Deduction by Kant’s most prominent successor, G.W.F. Hegel, and throughout Schulting critically engages with the work of contemporary readers of Kant such as Lucy Allais, Robert Hanna, John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and James Van Cleve.
Kant's Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction
by Dennis SchultingIn this book, Dennis Schulting presents a staunch defence of Kant’s radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge. This defence is mounted by means of a comprehensive analysis of what is arguably the centrepiece of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge is to be understood as the thesis that the possibility of knowledge of objects essentially and wholly depends on subjective functions of thought, or the capacity to judge by virtue of transcendental apperception, given sensory input. Subjectivism thus defined is not about merely the necessary conditions of knowledge, but nor is it claimed that it grounds the very existence of things. Novel interpretations are provided of such central themes as the objective unity of apperception, the threefold synthesis, judgement, truth and objective validity, spontaneity in judgement, figurative synthesis and spatial unity, nonconceptual content, idealism and the thing in itself, and material synthesis. One chapter is dedicated to the interpretation of the Deduction by Kant’s most prominent successor, G.W.F. Hegel, and throughout Schulting critically engages with the work of contemporary readers of Kant such as Lucy Allais, Robert Hanna, John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and James Van Cleve.
Kant’s Rational Religion and the Radical Enlightenment: From Spinoza to Contemporary Debates (Bloomsbury Studies in Modern German Philosophy)
by Anna TomaszewskaKant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other early modern rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Providing reasons for prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity.
Kant’s Rational Religion and the Radical Enlightenment: From Spinoza to Contemporary Debates (Bloomsbury Studies in Modern German Philosophy)
by Anna TomaszewskaKant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other early modern rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Providing reasons for prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity.
Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant
by Prof Karl SchaferKant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or "comprehension"). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, it enables us to see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason reads Kant as presenting a compelling picture of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics. In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.
Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant
by Prof Karl SchaferKant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or "comprehension"). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, it enables us to see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason reads Kant as presenting a compelling picture of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics. In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.
Kant's 'Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason': A Reader's Guide (Reader's Guides)
by Eddis N. MillerImmanuel Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a seminal text in modern philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. It is a complex and challenging work, which students and scholars often find difficult to penetrate. This Reader's Guide provides a 'way in' to the text including: philosophical and historical context; an overview of key themes; section-by-section analysis of the text; a chapter on its reception and influence as a classic text of the Enlightenment; and a guide for further reading. It highlights the most important themes and ideas, clarifies certain opaque features, and examines the junctures in the text that are critical for any philosophical assessment of Kant's argument. Eddis N. Miller offers a sound understanding of Kant's Religion and the tools for students to philosophically assess Kant's overall argument.
Kant's 'Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason': A Reader's Guide (Reader's Guides)
by Eddis N. MillerImmanuel Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a seminal text in modern philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. It is a complex and challenging work, which students and scholars often find difficult to penetrate. This Reader's Guide provides a 'way in' to the text including: philosophical and historical context; an overview of key themes; section-by-section analysis of the text; a chapter on its reception and influence as a classic text of the Enlightenment; and a guide for further reading. It highlights the most important themes and ideas, clarifies certain opaque features, and examines the junctures in the text that are critical for any philosophical assessment of Kant's argument. Eddis N. Miller offers a sound understanding of Kant's Religion and the tools for students to philosophically assess Kant's overall argument.
Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality
by Uygar AbacıKant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality is a comprehensive study of Immanuel Kant's views on modal notions of possibility, actuality or existence, and necessity. Abacı locates Kant's views on these notions in their broader historical context, establishes their continuity and transformation across Kant's precritical and critical texts, and determines their role in the substance as well as the development of Kant's philosophical project. He makes two overarching claims. First, Kant's precritical views on modality, which appear in the context of his attempts to revise the ontological argument and are critical of the tradition only from within its prevailing paradigm of modality, develop into a revolutionary theory of modality in his critical period, radicalizing his critique of the ontotheological and rationalist metaphysical tradition. While the traditional paradigm construes modal notions as fundamental ontological predicates, expressing different modes or ways of being of things, Kant's theory consists in redefining them as subjective and relational features of our discursivity, expressing different modes in which our conceptual representations of objects are related to our cognitive faculty. Second, this revolutionary theory of modality is not only a crucial component of Kant's critical epistemology and his radical critique of rationalist metaphysics, but it is in fact directly constitutive of the critical turn itself, as Kant originally formulates the latter in terms of a shift from an ontological to an epistemological approach to the question of possibility. Thus, tracing the development of Kant's understanding of modality comes to fruition in an alternative reading of Kant's overall philosophical development.
Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality
by Uygar AbacıKant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality is a comprehensive study of Immanuel Kant's views on modal notions of possibility, actuality or existence, and necessity. Abacı locates Kant's views on these notions in their broader historical context, establishes their continuity and transformation across Kant's precritical and critical texts, and determines their role in the substance as well as the development of Kant's philosophical project. He makes two overarching claims. First, Kant's precritical views on modality, which appear in the context of his attempts to revise the ontological argument and are critical of the tradition only from within its prevailing paradigm of modality, develop into a revolutionary theory of modality in his critical period, radicalizing his critique of the ontotheological and rationalist metaphysical tradition. While the traditional paradigm construes modal notions as fundamental ontological predicates, expressing different modes or ways of being of things, Kant's theory consists in redefining them as subjective and relational features of our discursivity, expressing different modes in which our conceptual representations of objects are related to our cognitive faculty. Second, this revolutionary theory of modality is not only a crucial component of Kant's critical epistemology and his radical critique of rationalist metaphysics, but it is in fact directly constitutive of the critical turn itself, as Kant originally formulates the latter in terms of a shift from an ontological to an epistemological approach to the question of possibility. Thus, tracing the development of Kant's understanding of modality comes to fruition in an alternative reading of Kant's overall philosophical development.
Kant’s Second Critique and the Problem of Transcendental Arguments
by R.J. BentonThis work is in no way intended as a commentary on the second Cri tique, or even on the Analytic of that book. Instead I have limited myself to the attempt to extract the essential structure of the argument of the Analytic and to exhibit it as an instance of a transcendental argument (namely, one establishing the conditions of the possibility of a practical cognitive viewpoint). This limitation of scope has caused me, in some cases, to ignore or treat briefly concrete questions of Kant's practical philosophy that deserve much closer consideration; and in other cases it has led me to relegate questions that could not be treated briefly to appendixes ,in order not to distract from the development of the argu ment. As a result, it is the argument-structure itself that receives pri mary attention, and I think some justification should be offered for this concentration on what may seem to be a purely formal concern. One of the most common weaknesses of interpretations of Kant's works is a failure to distinguish the level of generality at which Kant's argument is being developed. This failure is particularly fatal in dealing with the Critiques, since in interpreting them it is important to keep clearly in mind that it is not this or that cognition that is at stake, but the possibility of (a certain kind of) knowledge as such.
Kant's Solution for Verification in Metaphysics (Routledge Library Editions: Kant)
by D. P. DryerFirst published in 1966. Professor Dryer has furnished a highly illuminating account of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by unfolding its central argument. Kant’s Solution for Verification in Metaphysics brings out the light which Kant has to throw on central topics of philosophy. It takes its place as an indispensable guide to every student of the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's Solution for Verification in Metaphysics (Routledge Library Editions: Kant)
by D. P. DryerFirst published in 1966. Professor Dryer has furnished a highly illuminating account of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by unfolding its central argument. Kant’s Solution for Verification in Metaphysics brings out the light which Kant has to throw on central topics of philosophy. It takes its place as an indispensable guide to every student of the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's System Of Nature And Freedom: Selected Essays
by Paul GuyerThe concept of systematicity is central to Immanuel Kant's conception of scientific knowledge and to his practical philosophy. But Kant also held that we must be able to unite the separate systems of nature and freedom into a single system: on the one hand, morality itself requires that we be able to see its commands and goals as realizable within nature, while on the other hand our experience of nature itself leads us to see it as a system with the goal of human moral development. The essays in this volume, including two published here for the first time, explore various aspects of Kant's conception of the system of nature, the system of freedom, and the system of nature and freedom. The essays in the first part explore the systematicity of concepts and laws as the ultimate goal of natural science, consider the implications of Kant's account of our experience of organisms for the goal of the unity of science, and examine Kant's attempts to prove that the existence of an ether is a necessary condition for a physical system of nature. The essays in the second part explore Kant's view that morality requires a systematic union of persons as ends in themselves and of the ends that persons set for themselves, and examine the system of duties and obligations necessary to realize such a systematic union of persons and their ends. These essays thus examine both the general foundations of Kant's moral philosophy and his final account of the duties of right or justice and of ethics or virtue in his late work, the Metaphysics of Morals. The essays in the third part examine Kant's attempt, in the last of his three great critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment., to unify the systems of nature and freedom through a radical transformation of traditional teleology as a theory of the creation of organic nature into an account of our experience of organic nature and of nature as a whole.
Kant’s Theory of Emotion: Emotional Universalism
by D. WilliamsonWilliamson explains, defends, and applies Kant's theory of emotion. Looking primarily to the Anthropology and the Metaphysics of Morals, she situates Kant's theory of affect within his theory of feeling and focuses on the importance of moral feelings and the moral evaluation of our emotions.
Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: Selected Papers from the Third International Kant Congress
by Lewis White BeckThe Third International Kant Congress met in Rochester, New York, March 30 to April 4, 1970. The Proceedings, published by D. Reidel Publishing Company in 1972, contained 76 complete papers and 30 ab stracts in three languages. Since this large volume covered many phases of Kant's philosophy from a wide variety of standpoints, it is unlikely that the entire contents of it will be of interest to anyone philosopher. I have therefore selected from that volume the 20 papers that seem to me to be most likely to be of interest to English-speaking philosophers who are, to use a fairly vague description, in the 'analytical tradition'. The topics treated here are those which are most relevant to current philosoph ical debate in the theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. The division of papers under the seven principal topics, however, is in some respects a little arbitrary. I hope this little volume, published 250 years after Kant's birth, will show philosophers who are not already convinced that Kant is one of the most contemporary of the great philosophers of the past. I believe that the efforts of the authors of the papers will show that there can be genuine Kantian contributions towards the solution of problems that have fre quently been handled in opposition to, or obliviousness of, the eighteenth century philosopher who did more than anyone else to formulate the problems which still worry philosophers in the analytic tradition.
Kant's Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument in the 'Critique of Pure Reason' (Routledge Library Editions: Kant)
by Graham BirdFirst published in 1962. Kant’s philosophical works, and especially the Critique of Pure Reason, have had some influence on recent British philosophy. But the complexities of Kant’s arguments, and the unfamiliarity of his vocabulary, inhibit understanding of his point of view. In Kant’s Theory of Knowledge an attempt is made to relate Kant’s arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason to contemporary issues by expressing them in a more modern idiom. The selection of issues discussed is intended to present a continuous argument, of an epistemological kind, which runs centrally through the Critique. The argument deals with essentially with the problems, raised in the Transcendental Analytic, about the status of categories. It deals with certain preliminary assumptions made in setting these problems, and discusses the way in which the various sections of the Analytic contribute to their solution. It also deals with Kant’s criticisms of traditional metaphysics, and ends with an account of his effort in the Third Antinomy to resolve the conflict between freedom and causality, and so to effect a transition of knowledge to moral philosophy.
Kant's Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument in the 'Critique of Pure Reason' (Routledge Library Editions: Kant)
by Graham BirdFirst published in 1962. Kant’s philosophical works, and especially the Critique of Pure Reason, have had some influence on recent British philosophy. But the complexities of Kant’s arguments, and the unfamiliarity of his vocabulary, inhibit understanding of his point of view. In Kant’s Theory of Knowledge an attempt is made to relate Kant’s arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason to contemporary issues by expressing them in a more modern idiom. The selection of issues discussed is intended to present a continuous argument, of an epistemological kind, which runs centrally through the Critique. The argument deals with essentially with the problems, raised in the Transcendental Analytic, about the status of categories. It deals with certain preliminary assumptions made in setting these problems, and discusses the way in which the various sections of the Analytic contribute to their solution. It also deals with Kant’s criticisms of traditional metaphysics, and ends with an account of his effort in the Third Antinomy to resolve the conflict between freedom and causality, and so to effect a transition of knowledge to moral philosophy.
Kant's Theory of Knowledge: An Analytical Introduction
by Georges DickerThe Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's acknowledged masterpiece, in which he tackles the question of how we can possibly have knowledge that does not rest on experience (a priori knowledge). The first half of the Critique advances a constructive theory of human cognition and defends the possibility of human knowledge against the skeptical empiricism of Hume. These sections of the Critique are difficult for beginners and for advanced students alike. While there exist many scholarly works discussing the Critique on an advanced level, this book is explicitly designed to be read alongside the text by first-time readers of Kant. Dicker makes Kant's views and arguments as accessible as possible without oversimplifying them, and synthesizes the views of contemporary scholars. Kant's Theory of Knowledge will be useful to both undergraduate and graduate students struggling with this notoriously difficult yet deeply influential thinker.
Kant's Theory of Knowledge: An Analytical Introduction
by Georges DickerThe Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's acknowledged masterpiece, in which he tackles the question of how we can possibly have knowledge that does not rest on experience (a priori knowledge). The first half of the Critique advances a constructive theory of human cognition and defends the possibility of human knowledge against the skeptical empiricism of Hume. These sections of the Critique are difficult for beginners and for advanced students alike. While there exist many scholarly works discussing the Critique on an advanced level, this book is explicitly designed to be read alongside the text by first-time readers of Kant. Dicker makes Kant's views and arguments as accessible as possible without oversimplifying them, and synthesizes the views of contemporary scholars. Kant's Theory of Knowledge will be useful to both undergraduate and graduate students struggling with this notoriously difficult yet deeply influential thinker.
Kant's Theory of Morals
by Bruce AuneWritten for the general reader and the student of moral philosophy, this book provides a clear and unified treatment of Kant's theory of morals. Bruce Aune takes into account all of Kant's principal writings on morality and presents them in a contemporary idiom.Originally published in 1980.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Kant’s Theory of Natural Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science #159)
by Peter PlaassPlaass's treatise stood at the beginning of a renewed wave of scholarship regarding Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MF). Plaass argues that the MF represents an integral step in Kant's development between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason. The MF repeats the `Copernican turn', using the conditions of subjectivity to derive the metaphysical determinations of `matter' as the object of natural science with the new method called `metaphysical construction', which simultaneously grounds the mathematizability of physics. The translators provide background and analysis of Plaass's work, extend it to include the body of the MF and offer a variation on the analysis of the relationship between mathematics and metaphysics in the MF. They discuss its relevance for contemporary paradigm-dependency approaches to the philosophy of science and for philosophical hermeneutics. The book will be of interest to Kant specialists as well as to students of the philosophy of science in general.
Kant's Theory of Science
by Gordon G. Brittan Jr.While interest in Kant's philosophy has increased in recent years, very little of it has focused on his theory of science. This book gives a general account of that theory, of its motives and implications, and of the way it brought forth a new conception of the nature of philosophical thought.To reconstruct Kant's theory of science, the author identifies unifying themes of his philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of physics, both undergirded by his distinctive logical doctrines, and shows how they come together to form a relatively consistent system of ideas. A new analysis of the structure of central arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena draws on recent developments in logic and the philosophy of science.Professor Brittan's unified account of the philosophies of mathematics and physics explores the nature of Kant's commitment to Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics as well as providing an integrated reading of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Contemporary ideas help both to illuminate Kant's position and to show how that position, in turn, illuminates contemporary problems in the philosophy of science.Originally published in 1978.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.