Sensibility First

Robert Hanna

doi:10.36311/2318-0501.2021.v9n1.p97

Abstract

In the practical realm just as in the theoretical realm, everything comes down to human sensibility as an equally empirical and non-empirical primitive starting point that constitutively motivates, intentionally pervades, and intentionally structures our innately-specified yet also “human, all-too-human” capacities for theoretical and practical rationality, all the way up. Strong Kantian non-conceptualism says that according to Kant, the faculty of human intuition or Anschauung, that is, human inner and outer sense perception, together with the faculty of imagination or Einbildungskraft, jointly constitute this sensible starting point for objective cognition and theoretical reason; and Kantian non-intellectualism says that according to Kant, human affect, desire, and moral emotion—in a word, the human heart—jointly constitute this sensible starting point for free agency and practical reason. Conjoined, they provide what I call the Sensibility First approach, which, in a nutshell, says that human rationality flows from the groundedness of our discursive, intellectual, and embodiment-neutral powers in our sensible, non-intellectual, and essentially embodied powers, without in any way reducing the former to the latter. If I’m correct about all this, then the result is a sharply non-classical and unorthodox, hence “shocking,” nevertheless fully unified and textually defensible approach to Kant’s proto-Critical philosophy (i.e., from 1768 to 1772), Critical philosophy (i.e., from 1781 to 1787) and post-Critical philosophy (i.e., from the late 1780s to the late 1790s) that encompasses his theoretical philosophy and the practical philosophy alike.

Highlights

In the practical realm just as in the theoretical realm, everything comes down to human sensibility as an empirical and non-empirical primitive starting point that constitutively motivates, intentionally pervades, and intentionally structures our innately-specified yet “human, all-too-human” capacities for theoretical and practical rationality, all the way up
Strong Kantian non-conceptualism says that according to Kant,[4] the faculty of human intuition or Anschauung, that is, human inner and outer sense perception, together with the faculty of imagination or Einbildungskraft,[5] jointly constitute this sensible starting point for objective cognition and theoretical reason; and strong Kantian non-intellectualism says that according to Kant, human affect, desire, and moral emotion—in a word, the human heart—jointly constitute this sensible starting point for free agency and practical reason
On the contrary and instead, the Sensibility First approach seeks to turn classical, orthodox Kant-scholarship entirely on its head by establishing a new interpretation of the Critical philosophy as a whole that fully retains the fundamental distinction between sensibility and understanding—thereby fully retaining the irreducibility of both basic mental faculties or powers of the rational human mind either to one another or to any other faculty or power of the rational human mind—yet asserts the theoretical and practical primacy and priority of the sensible and non-intellectual powers over the discursive and intellectual powers

Summary

Introduction

In the practical realm just as in the theoretical realm, everything comes down to human sensibility as an empirical and non-empirical primitive starting point that constitutively motivates, intentionally pervades, and intentionally structures our innately-specified yet “human, all-too-human” capacities for theoretical and practical rationality, all the way up. That: I believe that the Sensibility First approach to the Critical philosophy as a whole is independently defensible in a contemporary context In this way, looking towards the philosophy of the future, I hope to win “the Kant wars”[8] and bring about a lasting philosophical peace on the battlefield of late modern philosophy (i.e., from 1781 right up to this morning at 6 am) by showing that those apparently forever-divided forking streams of classical neo-Kantian philosophy—Analytic philosophy and existential phenomenology— have a “common root” in a comprehensive contemporary Kantian doctrine that I call rational anthropology.[9] By contrast, in Being and Time and the existentially- and phenomenologically-motivated writings prior to it, Heidegger rightly emphasized our finitude, our caring, and our “being-with” or sociality,[10] he wrongly overlooked what Michelle Maiese and I have called our essential embodiment, and, correspondingly, the mind-body politic;[11] and more generally, in part for tragic political reasons,[12] Heidegger was altogether unable to achieve a conception of philosophy that could overcome the divisions between neo-Kantianism, Analytic philosophy, and existential phenomenology. Where Heidegger altogether failed, rational anthropology can succeed.[13]

Strong Kantian non-conceptualism

Transcendental idealism for sensibility

Strong Kantian non-intellectualism

Two Conclusions

C CPR CPrR