Discussion of Katharina Kraus' Kant's Ideas of Reason

This Element introduces Kant's ideas of reason, focussing on the ideas of theoretical reason in the study of nature. It offers a novel interpretation that shows how such ideas as the soul, the world-whole, and God provide a regulative orientation for coping with human perspectival situatedness in the world. This perspectivalist interpretation reconciles two interpretive tendencies: a realist reading, according to which ideas refer to real things independent of the human mind, and a fictionalist reading, according to which ideas are heuristic fictions without reference to anything real. The perspectivalist interpretation recognizes two functions of ideas: first, ideas outline domains of possible objects, thus presenting the human mind with contexts of intelligibility in which the cognition of objects can be meaningful at all. Second, ideas project an ultimate reality as a focus imaginarius, which serves as a normative ideal for evaluating the success of human inquiries into nature.

There is widespread agreement now that the critique of reason can be carried on only in conjunction with historical, social, and cultural analysis. But there is sharp disagreement as to just what form that critique should take. Arrayed along one side of the main front are those who, in the wakes of Nietzsche and Heidegger, attack enlightenment conceptions at their very roots, and along the other side, those who, in the wakes of Hegel and Marx, attempt to recast those conceptions in sociohistorical terms. This paper defends a position analogous to Kant's: ideas of reason are both necessary to thought and persistent sources of illusion. In the first part it examines some of the problems encountered by thinkers who take only the negative tack. Though their emphasis on the particular, changeable, and contingent is an understandable reaction to the traditional preoccupation with the universal, timeless, and necessary, it is, I argue, no less one-sided for that, nor any less questionable in its practical implications. The conclusion I try to reach along this path is that socialpractical analogues to Kant's ideas of reason are so deeply embedded in our form of life as to make doing without them unimaginableand undesirable. In the second part, it examines various aspects of Habermas's attempt to develop a more balanced approach. Kant's ideas of reason reappear there as pragmatic presuppositions of communication, more specifically as idealizing suppositions we cannot avoid making while attempting to arrive at mutual understanding. In reconstructing these idealizing presuppositions of communicative reason, however, Habermas does not give sufficient weight to the sorts of ontological presuppositions that occupy deconstructionists under the rubrics of language, culture, Seinsgeschick, diffirance, power, and the like. This, I argue, is what lends his project the transcendental air that so exercises his critics. The last part of the paper argues broadly that deconstructive concerns can be integrated into the reconstructive project, and can serve there as antidotes to the deepseated tendency to hypostatize ideas of reason into completely realized or realizeable states of affairs. The key to this approach is a shift in the level of the critique of impure reason from the negative

In the end of the First Critique, Kant predicted that near the end of the eighteenth century the metaphysical desire to construct a final philosophical system (following the examples of other a priori science of reason—logic, pure mathematics, and pure physics) will be fully satisfied. Such was not happened to be the case in the intellectual history. Kant’s philosophy is restless as long as it supports or endorses major ideas that in the end are incompatible. The illusion of completely satisfied reason or philosophical system is incompatible with quite a different Kantian idea (or even an ideal) of restless reason as an enemy to the smug reason, completely satisfied with its achievements and enjoying an eternal rest. According to the idea of restless reason, reason, as opposing to given data, is an endless effort to overcome the data by spontaneously creating principles, categories of necessary connections, and orders. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, humanity has realized that there is no final logic, pure mathematics, and pure physics and what Kant called sciences of reason (or of the a priori) are never completed and they require endless revisions. I show that in the heart of Kant critical philosophy the idea of restless and impelling reason has had the upper hand. The idea of a completely satisfied and final reason is simply a dogmatic one.KeywordsFinal philosophical systemPhilosophical satisfactionRestless reasonSmug reasonEmpirical data vs. reason’s principlesEndless revisionsDogmatism

In this paper we present a reconstruction of Hegel's critique of Kant. We try to show the congruence of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We argue that this congruence is to be found in Hegel's criticism of Kant's hylemorphism in his theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant's response to the distinction between matter and form in his theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always takes place within a greater whole. He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel's appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, something resembling what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel's Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness in Sittlichkeit, a whole of social practices of mutual recognition. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within such a whole in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, it is necessary to recognise the status of Kantian Moralität as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous.

This symposium begins with a critique by Paul Hirst of Wilfred Carr's ‘Philosophy and Education’(Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2004, 38.1), where Carr argues that philosophy of education should be concerned with ‘practical philosophy’ rather than ‘theoretical philosophy’. Hirst argues that the philosophy of education is best understood as a distinctive area of academic philosophy, in which the exercise of theoretical reason contributes critically to the development of rational educational practices and their discourse. While he acknowledges that these practices and their discourse must of their nature be directly developed in the exercise of practical reason, or phronesis, the notion of ‘practical philosophy’ is rejected as ultimately incoherent and illusory. In his reply to Hirst's critique, Carr identifies three central claims in Hirst's argument and takes issue with each of these. He reaffirms the need to draw upon the resources afforded by the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy in order to identify inadequacies in our present understanding of how philosophy is related to education. He suggests that it is only through bringing their own ‘prejudices’ into critical confrontation with this tradition that philosophers of education will be able to assess whether practical philosophy is incoherent and illusory, as Hirst claims, or whether it is indispensable to the future development of their discipline. In a rejoinder to Carr, Hirst, defends the claim that philosophy of education is a social practice concerned with developing justifiable propositional accounts of the conceptual relations, justificatory procedures and presuppositions of educational practices. He rejects the argument that this ‘theoretical philosophy’ approach must be replaced by that of a new ‘practical philosophy’.

Jaspers' nosology is indebted to Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge. He drew the distinction of form and content from the Transcendental Analytic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The distinction is universal to all knowledge, including psychopathology. Individual experience is constituted by a form or category of the Understanding to give a determinate or knowable object classified into the generic type of a real disease entity. The application of form and content is limited by the boundaries of experience. Beyond this boundary are wholes whose conception requires Ideas of reason drawn from the Transcendental Dialectic. Wholes are regulated by Ideas of reason to give an object or schema of the Idea collected into ideal types of an ideal typical disease entity. Jaspers drew ideal types from Max Weber's social theory. He anticipated that, as knowledge advanced, ideal typical disease entities would become real disease entities. By 1920, this had been the destiny of general paralysis as knowledge of its neuropathology, serology and microbiology emerged. As he presented the final edition of General Psychopathology in 1946, Jaspers was anticipating the transition of schizophrenia from ideal typical to real disease entity. Almost 70 years later, with knowledge of its aetiology still unclear, schizophrenia remains marooned as an ideal typical disease entity - still awaiting that crucial advance!

O presente artigo discute as relações entre a perspectiva transcendental inscrita na análise Kantiana das Idéias da Razão (principalmente a Idéia de Unidade) e a herança metafísica tradicional. Para tanto ensaia-se uma leitura da 1ª parte do Apêndice da Dialética Transcendental à luz da reelaboração critica do temário metafísico, com especial ênfase na noção escolástica de atributo transcendental do Ser.

BOOK REVIEWS 685 antinomies and his doctrine of the highest good. Reason seeks an absolute whole, but while this cannot be found in the natural world, it is provided by the construct of a moral world of harmonious self-legislating agents. By building on the work of Schmucker and Henrich, Velkley can show that this idea of a moral end of all reason is not a late and desperate appendage to Kant's critical philosophy, but rather precedes and governs it. Theoretical philosophy becomes a "propadeutic" for turning back the "beclouding" of the morality of "common reason" by dogmatic or skeptical speculation. Unlike other moderns, Rousseau and Kant see this project as no mere moderate reform, but as aiming at a new "grounding of" the sacred and noble" (33) through philosophy, which brings us back from "self-inflicted alienation" (145) . Unlike Rousseau, Kant believes reason can provide its own pure source of motivation for this project through a demand for independence that is found in everyone and justifies an expectation for "large-scaJe emancipation." Here Velkley introduces some of his few critical remarks, observing that Kant overlooks some of Rousseau's perceptions about the difficulty of this project (54, 69), and that in general it is not clear why Kant (and, in a worse way, later idealists) presumed reason is thoroughly systematic and "philosophy must answer [or the totality of human welfare" (168). This book is surely essential reading for students of the period, although its broad scope can disappoint those looking for analytic treatments of Kant's major works. And Velkley may go too far in making his point about the primacy of practical reason. It is no surprise that the practical should have practical primacy, but that does not mean ethics can determine logic, or the "end of reason" can legitimate the doctrine of transcendental idealism which first makes permissible Kantian freedom and morality. I would have preferred more respect for the gravity of the theoretical issue of determinism , for the objection that Kant's late reliance on a "fact of reason" is a reversion to dogmatism, and for the possibility that throughout his work Kant remains close to rationalism. Velkley holds that even the Dissertation claims no "dogmatic theoretical cognition" (131), but this seems contradicted by its account of substantial interaction grounded in God. Finally, while the insights of Strauss, Tonelli, Kuebn, Yovel, etc., are well documented in a very helpful set of notes, Velkley might have also compared his account with some of the following: Kroner, Auxter, Schneewind, O'Neill, Foucauh, Deleuze. KARL AMERIKS University of Notre Dame Roger J. Sullivan. Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xvii + 413 . Cloth, $49.5o. Paper, $16.95. Professor Sullivan's book is both modest and ambitious. His declared objective is merely to provide a "comprehensive survey" of Kant's practical (or "moral") philosophy rather than a highly original contribution to the field of Kant scholarship. To the layman this may seem an unassuming project, demanding no more than basic exposi- 686 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:4 OCTOBER t991 tory competence. Yet as any Kant specialist will attest, and as Sullivan is fully aware, it is in fact a bold undertaking. Books on Kant's practical philosophy usually concentrate on one of its two component parts, ethics or the theory ofjustice, or on a single text, typically the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals or the Critique of Practical Reason. Sullivan's project is larger: to give a "synoptic" account of the entirety of Kant's practical philosophy. Keeping in mind the scope, complexity, and notorious obscurity of much of Kant's thinking on moral questions, this is a daunting task. Sullivan is to be commended for having on the whole handled it quite well. Anyone who reads Sullivan's book will profit in some way. With a few exceptions I will discuss in a moment, the general reader will find it an accurate guide to the most important issues in Kant's practical philosophy. There are two admirably succinct and lucid chapters on Kant's political philosophy (Chapters 16 and 17), which manage in a brief twenty-eight pages to...

Even for those who have struggled with Hegel long enough to discover that he is neither a positivist nor a communitarian, nor (at the other end of the spectrum) a Platonist, the fact that he also insists upon distinguishing his approach to practical philosophy from Kant's may seem deeply puzzling. After all, the two philosophers share in common the same principal opponents. Both set out to undermine the sceptic's doubts about the possibility of objective practical judgments and requirements; both in addition reject positivist derivations of law, exclusively empiricist accounts of human behaviour, and intuitionist forms of justification. The two philosophers furthermore seem to share the same conception of the conditions of human freedom. For Hegel as well as Kant, a theory of morality and political right devoted to advancing the cause of freedom must require more than just the absence of obstacles preventing the satisfaction of our animal passions. For Hegel as well as Kant, freedom requires in addition the respect of the ends we have as rational natures. We achieve this kind of freedom when our actions are motivated by the legislation of reason and when the social norms which constrain us are norms we can rationally endorse.Despite these similarities, Hegel tells us in the Philosophy of Right that the conception of freedom he associates with Kant and discusses under the heading of “Moralität” must give way to the more adequate conception of “Sittlichkeit” or “ethical life”. It is clear that Hegel finds unacceptable what he calls the “empty formalism” of Kant's practical philosophy; it is also clear that he thinks that Kant's practical philosophy is “formal” because its supreme law or categorical imperative is an a priori law of reason. But this doesn't yet tell us why, for Hegel, these features of the Kantian approach are objectionable. In my view, we do his critique little justice if we say that it is aimed at a consequence which presumably follows from Kant's preoccupation with providing an a priori foundation for law and morality: namely, the failure to give sufficient moral weight to the empirical particulars which individuate persons and situations and need to be taken into account in the practice of moral assessment. As I shall argue below, the suggestion that Kant's formalism requires us to ignore empirical content in this way is neither plausible as a critique of Kant nor accurate as a representation of what troubles Hegel about Kant. We go more to the heart of the matter, I believe, if we say instead that Hegel is out to challenge the very distinction between the “empirical” and the “pure” or “a priori” so fundamental to both Kant's practical and theoretical philosophy. Hegel's critique of Kant's practical philosophy is an instance of his critique of Kant's idealism more generally, and of the assumptions about reason and nature upon which that idealism rests. Or so I shall argue here.

In what follows, I reply to the comments offered by Noam Hoffer, Jessica Tizzard, and Michael Lewin on my Cambridge Element on Kant’s Ideas of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Their insightful and diligent comments offer me the opportunity to clarify and refine my interpretation of the regulative use of ideas of reason – a particularly fascinating, but also deeply puzzling aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. I also thank Paula Órdenes for initiating this special issue on my book in Con-Textos Kantianos and for inviting these three distinguished experts to contribute.

In Freedom and the End of Reason, Richard L. Velkley offers an influential interpretation of the central issue of Kant's philosophy and an evaluation of its position within modern philosophy's larger history. He persuasively argues that the whole of Kantianism - not merely the Second Critique - focuses on a critique of practical and is a response to a problem that Kant saw as intrinsic to reason itself: the teleological problem of its goodness. Reconstructing the influence of Rousseau on Kant's thought, Velkley demonstrates that the relationship between speculative philosophy and practical philosophy in Kant is far more intimate than generally has been perceived. By stressing a Rousseau-inspired notion of reason as a provider of practical ends, he is able to offer an unusually complete account of Kant's idea of moral culture.

In this paper I express enthusiastic solidarity with Axel Honneth's inheritance and transformation of several core Hegelian ideas, and express one major disagreement. The disagreement is not so much with anything he says, as it is with what he doesn't say. It concerns his rejection of Hegel's theoretical philosophy, and so his attempt to reconstruct Hegel's practical philosophy without reliance on that theoretical philosophy. This attitude towards Hegel's Science of Logic – that it involves a “mystification” of essentially practical notions - has been typical of the Critical Theory tradition since Marx, and is disputed here. It also helps to raise the large issue of the proper understanding of the relation between theoretical and practical philosophy. The implications of ignoring the Hegelian understanding of this dependence of the latter on the former are further developed.

This chapter responds to Adrian Moore’s argument that, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein is committed to a form of transcendental idealism, manifest in his construal of the limits of language and of the world as limitations set by the representing subject. It begins by distinguishing the motivations for transcendental idealism apparent in Kant’s work, broadly, those connected with his ‘theoretical’ and his ‘practical’ philosophy. In connection with Wittgenstein’s ‘theoretical philosophy’, the chapter argues that the construal of limits as limitations is only symptomatic of idealism, and not constitutive of it, and on this basis enters some reservations about Moore’s account of how Wittgenstein is led towards transcendental idealism. In connection with Wittgenstein’s ‘practical philosophy’, the chapter argues that Moore’s Kantian interpretation of Wittgenstein’s account of ethics and value in the 6.4s would lead to a direct clash with Wittgenstein’s response to the theoretical sources of idealism.

Immanuel Kant was an enthusiastic geographer. His geographical thought was quite unmistakeably influenced by his philosophical system as a whole. This influence is particularly strong in the case of his ideas on geographical space. Kant argues that geographical space serves as a mental framework for the co-ordination of the individual's experiences of the world. In this respect he anticipates the notion of the cognitive or mental map, which geographers have recently adopted from psychological learning theory. In particular Kant stresses that it is impossible to make use of information about the world unless we have some concept of the earth's surface beyond our immediate environment. Some of the criticisms levelled against aspects of Kant's ideas on space can also be applied to the mental map concept in its present form. It is suggested that these criticisms are not as damaging or as conclusive as is sometimes thought. THROUGHOUT his university teaching career Immanuel Kant delighted in giving an annual series of lectures on the elements of geography. His biographer Jachmann assures us, in addition, that 'there is certainly no available book of travels which he has not read and graven in his memory' (quoted by Chamberlain, I914, 40). The reason for this remarkable degree of interest becomes apparent when we explore the connections between Kant's geography and his philo- sophy. There are, in particular, significant links between his conception of geographical space and the theme of space as developed in the critical philosophy. Kant's ideas on space-despite extensive criticism levelled against them (cf. Blaut, I96I; Cassirer, I954; Garnett, I939; and Harvey, 1969)- are still of some interest to geographers, especially in view of current enthusiasm for the distinctly Kantian notion of the mental map.

Kant clearly believes in the necessity of political reform. But he is on the oft-repeated record as outlawing revolution. What he does offer politics are a priori ideas of reason, specifically a pure republican constitution and a perpetual peace.1 These are active ideas, they for our use, as per Kant’s practical philosophy, that he first sets out in the Dialectic of the first Critique. In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant calls ‘a perfectly rightful constitution among human beings’ the thing in itself (TL, 6:371)2 and stipulates that the idea of a pure constitution, ‘if it is attempted and carried out by gradual reform in accordance with firm principles, … can lead to continual approximation to the highest political good, perpetual peace’ (RL, 6:354). Herein lies the apparent paradox of Kant’s logic of political transformation: the progress towards the better seems to take place without any achievement. How are we to apply the ideas of reason, of noumenal status, as they are if we cannot ever attain them? What conditions, and what are the conditions of, political change? What plausible foundations are there for this asymptotic progress? Understanding Kant’s account of political change is problematic because it seems as if there should be a passage from the specific imperfect condition to the perfect unconditioned condition, but he explicitly denies the possibility of such a transition.