The Matter of Wit in Kant’s Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht

Abstract

The essay begins with an examination of Kant's account of wit in the Anthropologie. It argues that Kant's unexpected inclusion of wit in the higher faculty of cognition raises fundamental questions about the subject matter of Kantian anthropology as well as its link to critical philosophy. The essay situates Kant's subsequent exclusion of wit from the understanding proper within the context of the shift from critical philosophy's focus on the rational universal subject to anthropology, with its depiction of man as an actor in and for the world. It is within this world that is comprised, first and foremost, of other men, men who differ greatly in the use of their mental capacities, that communication emerges as a necessity. Orderly conversation becomes, for Kant, the primary means for sorting subjective thought into objectivity reality. While Kant acknowledges that wit is both the driver of conversation as well as the very quality of being sociable, he also deems it a standing threat to conversation and the objectivity that is given with it.