Kantian Model Research Articles

Putting a spin on circulating reference, or how to rediscover the scientific subject

Bruno Latour claims to have shown that a Kantian model of knowledge, which he describes as seeking to unite a disembodied transcendental subject with an inaccessible thing-in-itself, is dramatically falsified by empirical studies of science in action. Instead, Latour puts central emphasis on scientific practice, and replaces this Kantian model with a model of “circulating reference.” Unfortunately, Latour's alternative schematic leaves out the scientific subject. I repair this oversight through a simple mechanical procedure. By putting a slight spin on Latour's diagrammatic representation of his theory, I discover a new space for a post-Kantian scientific subject, a subject brilliantly described by Ludwik Fleck. The neglected subjectivities and ceaseless practices of science are thus re-united.

The Strategic Significance of Ethical Imperatives

The theoretical discourse in civil–military relations tends to perpetuate the notion that efficiency of military organizations is often negatively affected by the influence of domestic ideological factors. Societal norms are frequently portrayed as antithetical to the functional imperatives of the military. This article questions this notion and argues that an effective form of military organization can be produced by incorporating ethical norms of domestic society into its defense organization. To understand the role of societal ethical imperatives in defense policy, the Kantian model of societal–military relations is introduced here. This model emphasizes the normative character of military missions and suggests that its effective fulfillment requires an institutional culture consistent with such a mission. This is demonstrated in the case studies of West German rearmament and the post–Cold War transformation of the Bundeswehr. These empirical cases demonstrate that the societal ethical norms should be considered integral to military functional requirements.

Exploration of ethical debates through Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Smith's On Beauty.

This essay examines debates over alternative ethical formulations that break from the Kantian model through contemporary fiction--Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) and Zadie Smith's On Beauty (2005). The essay returns to the theory, the ethics of care, put forward by Carol Gilligan in In a Different Voice (1982), which has regained significance in the context of questions surrounding care in contemporary ethical thinking. While the three novels are concerned with ideas of care, beauty, justice and the tyranny of the mainstream, this essay examines particular themes in particular texts which suggest that ideas with otherwise subversive potential--like care or beauty or justice--lose their radicalism when they are incorporated within the impersonal, masculinist mainstream. Carol Gilligan's feminine ethics of care, with its respect for the particular, is not only still important as the stimulus to thinking about alternatives to overarching ethical discourses, but it could also re-confer these concepts of care, beauty and justice their revolutionary potential.

La justice est aveugle

Résumé L’article soutient que l’impartialité conçue comme ignorance est un premier pas, nécessaire mais insuffisant, vers la justice sociale. Il montre la pertinence de placer l’évaluateur social sous un voile d’ignorance : ses jugements sont alors soumis au principe moral d’universalisation, lequel en garantit l’impartialité. Mais la modélisation de l’impartialité diffère selon que l’on interprète de manière kantienne ou utilitariste le principe sous-jacent d’universalisation. L’article compare le modèle utilitariste de l’observateur impartial de Harsanyi au modèle kantien de l’observateur ignorant de Gajdos et Kandil. Il défend ce dernier, lequel prouve que, contrairement à ce que prétendait Rawls, le critère de choix sous voile d’ignorance n’est pas univoque.

Re-Thinking Theoretical Foundations of Retributive Theory of Punishment

Retributive Theory of punishment is considered as a relic of the bygone era. Any defense of the retributive theory seems to be an exercise in conservative penology bidden adieu by the progressive thinkers of criminology. However, what are the precise formative ideas of retributive theory. What was the Kantian model of retribution and is it worth a reconsideration for a proper appreciation of theories of punishment? This paper delves into the philosophical dimensions of these and related ideas developing of the ideas of J.G. Murphy on retribution. The paper argues that retributive theory is never a theory of vengeance or 'eye for eye' as the critics of the theory propose it to be, and diagnoses the philosophical foundations of the theory into the ideas of justice and fairness.

Adorno interprete di Kant

Adorno’s theoretical engagement with Kant’s thought entails some important consequences for the concept of the dialectic of utopia. Utopia represents another society with respect to the administered world; it alludes to the promise of happiness. Kantian models - the theory of the imagination, the intelligible character and natural beauty - attenuate the negative side of Adorno’s philosophy and lay the emphasis on the image of conciliation.

What Conscience Can Do for Equity

The paper argues that there are good reasons to frame the categories of equitable liability around the concept of conscience. A quick look at recent case law reveals an increasing use of conscience categories to discourage overly selfish behaviour among parties to commercial relationships. Critics discard ‘conscionability’ as an empty category of reference, or see it as a dangerously subjective point of reference. I want to show that the critics assume a very specific, and controversial, model of conscience in which it is a mere subjective psychological disposition to follow one’s hunch about right and wrong. Instead, conscionability should be interpreted in accordance with the Kantian objectivist model, as referring to the point of convergence between people’s motivation to do good and their commitment to objective moral norms. On this model, conscience has a strong public aspect as the reasons on which it operates apply to all reasonable human beings at all times.

Critical Theory

Critical Theory

Kant on Intentionality, Magnitude, and the Unity of Perception

AbstractThis paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning Kant's model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude [Gröβe]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant's views on these issues. I then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant's theory of perception as elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant's position by considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way to make sense of Kant's argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell's response to Bradley's regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer, in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant's account has significant strengths, a number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps.

Vestiges of the Phoenix: De Quincey, Kant and the Heavens

This essay examines the context surrounding Thomas De Quincey's 1846 essay, ‘System of the Heavens as Revealed by Lord Rosse's Telescope’, placing it in relation to the thesis of Robert Chambers’ then anonymous proto-evolutionary Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. I argue that De Quincey's essay – which never mentions Vestiges – can be read as an attempt to refute the ‘succession’ model of evolution and development put forward by Chambers, and that it does so by turning to Immanuel Kant's ‘Phoenix of Nature’. The article traces the complex relationship between De Quincey and Kant's model of the Heavens through a comprehensive analysis of both Kant and astronomy in De Quincey's voluminous body of work, complicating our understanding of De Quincey's relationship to the ‘destroyer’ of Königsberg, and revealing the crisis of experience that emerged in De Quincey's engagement with Kant and the Heavens.

Relating to Ourselves without a Self: Eckhart and Neuroscience

This paper questions models of identity that take individual consciousness as a focus, comparing the understanding of subjectivity in Eckhart's work to that found in recent empirical studies of the forms and mechanisms of social cognition. The argument begins by questioning the instrumental purpose of recent research into meditative states. Researchers in this field pursue a goal-orientated agenda, which is in stark contrast to Eckhart's non-agenda and relinquishment of control. A close reading of Sermon Q69 then shows how Eckhart challenges our intellectual habits and first-person perspective, suggesting that what he calls our ‘intellect’ can be without instrumental assumptions: pure surprise. In the last part, the paper compares Eckhart's exhortation that we intelligently accept insecurity with recent research into automated responses and mirror neurons. The findings of this research present a model of human identity comparable to Eckhart's: one which questions the focus on consciousness and control associated with Cartesian and Kantian models of human identity.

Reciprocity in Economic Games

Abstract The evidence of laboratory experiments of behavioral economists shows that individuals behave reciprocally. These data put into question the pure self-interest thesis of human motivation of the homo oeconomicus model and call for alternative models. Focusing on the explanation of reciprocal behavior in Trust Games, this article proposes two directions that economists and other social scientists might want to consider in order to establish a more solid foundation for economic theory. First, it presents models that economic theorists developed to explain the laboratory evidence of reciprocal behavior. It highlights that all of these models subscribe to the Humean view that desires are at the source of any human motivation and suggests an alternative Kantian model where reasons have the capacity to motivate human action. Second, it emphasizes that a supplementary examination of the social background conditions would illuminate the analysis of the findings because of the connection between the 'local' and society-wide demands of reciprocity.

Viewpoint: Interests, rights and standards of care in the context of globalized medicine

Viewpoint: Interests, rights and standards of care in the context of globalized medicine

Purity (Benjamin with Kant)

The essay analyses the notion of ‘purity’ in the early writings of Walter Benjamin, focusing more specifically on three essays written around the crucial year 1921: ‘Critique of Violence’, ‘The Task of the Translator’, and ‘Goethe's Elective Affinities’. In these essays, ‘purity’ appears in the notions of ‘pure means’, ‘pure violence’, ‘pure language’, and, indirectly, the ‘expressionless’. The essay argues, on the one hand, that the ‘purity’ of these concepts is one and the same notion, and, on the other, that it is strongly indebted to, if not a by-product of, Kant's theorisation of the moral act. In order to make this claim, the essay analyses Benjamin's intense engagement with Kant's writings in the 1910s and early 1920s: ‘purity’ is a category strongly connoted within the philosophical tradition in which the young Benjamin moved his first steps, namely Kantian transcendental criticism. The essay argues that the notion of ‘purity’ in Benjamin, though deployed outside and often against Kant's theorisation and that of his followers, and moreover influenced by different and diverse philosophical suggestions, retains a strong Kantian tone, especially in reference to its moral and ethical aspects. Whereas Benjamin rejects Kant's model of cognition based on the ‘purity’ of the universal laws of reason, and thus also Kant's theorisation of purity as simply non empirical and a priori, he models nonetheless his politics and aesthetics around suggestions that arise directly from Kant's theorisation of the moral act and of the sublime, and uses a very Kantian vocabulary of negative determinations construed with the privatives-los and -frei (motiv-frei, zweck-los, gewalt-los, ausdrucks-los, intention-frei, etc). The essay explores thus the connections that link ‘pure means’, ‘pure language’ and ‘pure violence’ to one another and to the Kantian tradition.

Can Kant Have an Account of Moral Education?

There is an apparent tension between Immanuel Kant's model of moral agency and his often-neglected philosophy of moral education. On the one hand, Kant's account of moral knowledge and decision-making seems to be one that can be self-taught. Kant's famous categorical imperative and related ‘fact of reason’ argument suggest that we learn the content and application of the moral law on our own. On the other hand, Kant has a sophisticated and detailed account of moral education that goes well beyond the kind of education a person would receive in the course of ordinary childhood experience. The task of this paper will be to reconcile these seemingly conflicting claims. Ultimately, I argue, Kant's philosophy of education makes sense as a part of his moral theory if we look not only at individual moral decisions, but also at the goals or ends that these moral decisions are intended to achieve. In Kant's case, this end is what he calls the highest good, and, I argue, the most coherent account of the highest good is a kind of ethical community and end of history, similar to the Groundwork's realm of ends. Seen as a tool to bring about and sustain such a community, Kant's philosophy of moral education exists as a coherent and important part of his moral philosophy.

Moral psychology and the “Mencian creature”

Recent work in various branches of philosophy has reinvigorated debate over the psychology behind moral judgment. Using Marc Hauser's categorization of theories as “Kantian,” “Humean,” or “Rawlsian” to frame the discussion, I argue that the existing evidence weighs against the Kantian model and partly in favor of both the Humean and the Rawlsian models. Emotions do play a causal role in the formation of our moral judgments, as the Humean model claims, but there are also unconscious principles shaping our moral judgments, as the Rawlsian model predicts. Thus, Hauser's tripartite division of possible models of moral psychology is inadequate. Drawing on research in cognitive neuroscience, clinical and behavioral psychology, and psychopathology, I sketch a new, developmental sentimentalist model of moral psychology. I call it a “Mencian” model, after the Confucian philosopher Mencius. On this model, moral judgments are caused by emotions, but because of the way emotions are mapped onto particular actions, moral judgments unconsciously reflect certain principled distinctions.

'Relief in the Interest of Justice': Reflections on the HCJ Unconventional Functional Authority

This paper examines the jurisprudence of the Israeli High Court of Justice (hereinafter: HCJ) functional authority to grant relief in the interest of justice. Since the HCJ inauguration, the prevailing tendency of the jurisprudence was to expand the HCJ authority to review governmental actions in the interest of justice. This authority has also contributed to the development of Israel's substantive and procedural public law. However, this article argues that beginning in the 1980s, and especially after the constitutional revolution, a change has occurred in the normative foundations of this jurisdiction expansion. The direct effect of this normative change has been, mainly, the adoption of a different methodology in resolving questions regarding the HCJ jurisdictional authority. In this regard, the article identifies two contested jurisdictional models: the Kantian and the Lockean. According to the Kantian model, the HCJ functional authority is entailed by the virtues and advantages of judicial intervention. According to the Lockean model, the jurisdiction of HCJ is based on deeds and interactions that reveal the will of the people in favor of judicial intervention. Although the two models exist at any given time, the focus in the jurisprudence has been shifted from a Lockean approach to a Kantian one. The Lockean-Kantian distinction provides a better understanding of the HCJ case law and the method adopted in dealing with jurisdictional questions, and increases our understanding of the debates and difficulties surrounding the HCJ authority to grant relief in the interest of justice.

A Desconstrução da Fé Cristã. A Respeito de Um Livro de Jean-Luc Nancy

Formado na fenomenologia e discípulo de Jacques Derrida, o autor aplica aqui o método da desconstrução ao cristianismo, no seu vínculo indissociável à história do Ocidente. Trata-se, em particular, da fé cristã, a qual deve ser liberada – conforme o modelo kantiano – de seus conteúdos concretos e reduzida fenomenologicamente a seus elementos intencionais constitutivos.

A deliberative model of contractualism

Despite an impressive philosophical pedigree, contractualism (or contractarianism) has only been properly developed in two ways: by appeal to the idea of an instrumentally rational bargain or contract between self-interested individuals (Hobbesian contractualism) and by appeal to the idea of a substantively reasonable agreement among individuals who regard one another as free and equal persons warranting equal moral respect (Kantian contractualism). Both of these existing models of contractualism are susceptible to apparently devastating objections. In this article, I outline a third, `deliberative' model of contractualism, which is based on the idea of a deliberatively rational agreement and which, I argue, represents a significant improvement on the Hobbesian and Kantian models in certain important respects.

RIGHT AND GOODS: PROCEDURAL LIBERALISM AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY

Abstract In this essay, James Scott Johnston asks what sort of liberalism is best for the educational systems of early twenty‐first century, late capitalistic democratic nations, looking at the procedural liberalism extant. Two major models are John Rawls’s Justice as Fairness and Jürgen Habermas’s Communicative Action. Both owe their foundational movements to Immanuel Kant in various respects, and Johnston therefore examines Kant in those areas both thinkers draw upon. Johnston then turns to Rawls and to Habermas, discussing what is central to their frameworks. Johnston finally claims that neither liberalism will work without due attention to issues critics have raised regarding the distinction between Right and Good and suggests an alternative Kantian model in the conclusion.