The Natural, the Pragmatic and the Moral in Kant’s Anthropology: The Case of Temperaments

Abstract

This paper explores the interconnections between the normative and the descriptive dimensions of Kant’s anthropology. It suggests that, far from being independent of each other or even excluding each other, as is often presupposed, the normative standpoint necessitates the explanatory one. To support this claim, I discuss the case of human temperaments and show in what sense a necessary component of pragmatic anthropology consists in the naturalistic study of human nature – what Kant calls “what nature makes of the human being.”1