Kant's View Research Articles

A Kantian view of Suits’ Utopia: ‘a kingdom of autotelically-motivated game players’

In this paper, I engage the debate on Suits’ theory of games by providing a Kantian view of Utopia. I argue that although the Kantian aspects of Suits’ approach are often overlooked in comparison to its Socratic-Platonic aspects, Kant’s ideas play a fundamental role in Suits’ proposal. In particular, Kant’s concept of ‘regulative idea’ is the basis of Suits’ Utopia. I regard Utopia as Suits’ regulative idea on game playing. In doing so, I take Utopia to play a double role in Suits’ theory of games. First, it highlights the primary condition of possibility of game-playing, namely, the lusory attitude. Second, it provides a normative criterion that serves as a critical principle to evaluate instances of game playing and as a counterfactual assumption that makes game playing possible. I provide further support for my Kantian interpretation of Suits’ Utopia by bringing to light the anthropological assumptions upon which Utopia is built. In doing so, I argue that both Suits’ theory of games, in general, and his Utopia, in particular, lay out the conditions of possibility of game playing, not an analysis on the life most worth living.

Kant’s Solution to the Euthyphro Dilemma

Are our actions morally good because we approve of them or are they good independently of our approval? Are we projecting moral values onto the world or do we detect values that are already there? For many these questions don’t state a real alternative but a secular variant of the Euthyphro dilemma: If our actions are good because we approve of them moral goodness appears to be arbitrary. If they are good independently of our approval, it is unclear how we come to know their moral quality and how moral knowledge can be motivating. None of these options seems attractive; the source of moral goodness unclear. Despite the growing literature on Kant’s moral epistemology and moral epistemology the question remains open what Kant’s answer to this apparent dilemma is. The Kantian view I attempt to lay out in this paper is supposed to dissolve the secular version of the Euthyphro dilemma. In responding to this dilemma we need to get clear about the source or the origin of our moral knowledge: Voluntary approval or mind-independent moral facts? Projectivism or detectivism? Construction or given? I believe that all these ways of articulating the problem turn out, on closer inspection, to be false alternatives.

Conceptos trascendentales, reflexión y juicio. Sobre el § 12 de la Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

<p class="p1">El presente trabajo ofrece una reconstrucción de la posición que Kant elabora en el § 12 de la Kritik der reinen Vernunft, con el objetivo de incorporar en su propia concepción la temática nuclear propia de la doctrina de los atributos trascendentales del ser elaborada por la tradición metafísica. El alcance sistemático de la recontextualización llevada a cabo por Kant se comprende cuando se pone en conexión la temática del § 12 con la concepción kantiana relativa a los presupuestos reflexivos del juicio, tal como ésta aparece desarrollada en el texto de la “Anfibología de los conceptos de reflexión”. En tal sentido, el este artículo constituye la continuación natural de uno anterior en el cual se discute la concepción que Kant elabora en la “Anfibología”. La interpretación ofrecida aquí apunta, entre otras cosas, a poner de relieve que los criterios lógicos que Kant tematiza en el § 12 cumplen funciones regulativas que orientan procesos de tipo reflexivo, entre los cuales destacan particularmente aquellos que subyacen a la formación originaria de conceptos empíricos.</p>

In Defence of Reinhold’s Kantian Representationalism: Aspects of Idealism in Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens

Abstract In this paper, I want to zero in on the Kantian idea that,whilst things in themselves must logically be presupposed as the ground underlying appearances and things are not reducible to their representations, (1) objects as appearances are not properties of things in themselves, and (2) things in themselves or the thing in itself cannot properly be represented or even thought. To do this, I turn to one of the earliest defenders and champions of the Kantian philosophy, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and specifically to his first major work Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, published in 1789. I am here interested neither in the extent to which Reinhold’s interpretation of Kant is correct or even adequately represents Kant’s thought in all of its aspects, nor whether Reinhold’s attempt to present a systematic philosophy based on a rigorous deduction from a single principle (his strong foundationalism) stands up to scrutiny. I am here solely interested in some of Reinhold’s positive insights, in the Versuch, concerning elements of his representationalism that may shed light on Kant’s idealism, specifically, the relation between appearances (as objects of knowledge) and things in themselves, i. e., points (1) and (2) described above. I read the early Reinhold of the Versuch as confirming the Kantian view that objects as appearances are not properties of things in themselves and that we are radically ignorant of things in themselves, in the sense that we can neither know things in themselves (through the senses) nor even intellectually grasp things in themselves through the understanding alone.

La potencialidad política del juicio estético: acerca de la reapropiación arendtiana de Kant

Hannah Arendt’s asseveration: that Kant’s unwritten political philosophy lies in the third critique, has led to the concentration almost exclusively on her reading of the aesthetic judgment. However, Arendt analyzes during most of her lectures on Kant his philosophy of history and his political writings. I intend to show that the peculiar reappropriation that Arendt makes of Kant proceeds in a double movement which, on the basis of these texts links them with the third critique so that both are reconfigured. Thus, I argue that the Kantian view of the French Revolution and the public use of reason, allows Arendt to put the aesthetic judgment in an actual communicative horizon.

Commentary: Cats prefer species-appropriate music.

Commentary: Cats prefer species-appropriate music.

Democracy and Security in the EU’s Eastern Neighborhood? Assessing the ENP in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine

ABSTRACTThis article explores the European Union’s (EU) democratic and security objectives in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) toward three post-Soviet states: Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. By discussing the ENP’s objectives, this study concludes the following: first, despite long-term ENP democracy promotion, there have been very limited democratic developments in the partner states between 2005 and 2014; second, security challenges remain in partner states in the breakaway regions in Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk in Ukraine. Therefore, EU’s Kantian view of security through democracy has failed, and its ambition to create a ring of Eastern friends has not led to improved relations in the Eastern neighborhood. On the contrary, the EU’s push eastward has instead intensified insecurity in its partner states due to limited democratization.

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment ed. by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Suprenant

Reviewed by: Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment ed. by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Suprenant Peter Thielke Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Suprenant, eds. Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment. New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. 367. Hardcover ISBN 978-1-138-20701-1, $140. Given Kant's seemingly dismissive attitude toward Scottish philosophers of common sense—in the Prolegomena, he famously describes how painful it is to see them miss Hume's point—one might expect that a book titled Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment would be a rather slim volume. However, as Manfred Kuehn in Scottish Common Sense in Germany and elsewhere has made abundantly clear, Scottish philosophy played a large role in eighteenth-century Germany, and was a significant influence on Kant. The present volume, which stands as a Festschrift for Kuehn, admirably follows on this path, and the nineteen papers collected here trace a number of interesting and surprising ways in which Scottish philosophy connects to Kant. Despite what Kant might have said about the Scots, Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment does an excellent job of demonstrating that there is much to be gained from exploring the relations between the two camps. The book is edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris Suprenant, but the introductory essay is supplied by Kuehn, who provides a broad overview of the ways in which the Scottish influence worked on Kant, and the extent to which this is typically overlooked. The papers that follow touch on a wide range of topics, but they fall into roughly four groups: six pieces on Kant's relation to Hutcheson and Beattie, eight papers comparing Kant and Hume, three papers on Kant and Smith, and two dealing with other topics. The contributors comprise established figures in the field as well as more junior people, and are drawn from scholars of both Kant and Scottish philosophy, so there is a nice mix of views and approaches. As with most anthologies, there is a range in the quality of the contributions, but fortunately all of the papers are worth reading, and reward careful attention. Kant scholars in particular will, I think, find the volume very helpful in expanding our understanding of the roots of the critical philosophy. There is not space to discuss the papers in any detail, but I will note some of the themes of the anthology. One of the impressive features of the volume is the fresh perspective it offers on Kant's broader thought, especially since many Kant scholars are not fully aware of the role that the Scots played in shaping his views on a variety of subjects. This is particularly the case with the works dealing with Hume, where, instead of rehashing the hidebound debates about the nature of causation, for example, we instead have papers addressing feeling in moral philosophy (by Oliver Sensen), religion and the highest good (Lawrence Pasternack), Hume and Kant on anthropology (Robert Louden), Hume and Kant on marriage (Elizabeth [End Page 252] Robinson), the status and role of the imagination in Hume and Kant (Frank Schalow), the nature of antinomical conflict in Hume and Kant (Bryan Hall), Hume and Kant on identity and substance (Mark Pickering), and Kant's response to Hume's thoughts about the social contract (Alexander Schaefer). These are all interesting, but the discussions by Robinson, Sensen, and Schaefer stand out as being particularly insightful and rewarding. The essays discussing Hutcheson's relation to Kant (by Aaron Garrett, Michael Walschots, Wiebke Deimling, Reed Winegar and Colin McQuillian) focus largely on moral feeling, though both Winegar and McQuillian also provide interesting insights into the connections between Hutcheson's and Kant's views on aesthetics, as does Paul Guyer's piece comparing Kant and Beattie. The three papers dealing with Kant and Smith address virtue in economics and politics (J. P. Messina), the phenomenology of moral motivation (John McHugh) and imagination, reason, and personhood (Jack Russell Weinstein). All of these make a strong case for thinking that Smith exercised far more influence over Kant than is typically recognized, and they help make clear why Markus Herz noted that Kant described Smith as his "Liebling"! Given that Smith's influence on Kant is even less appreciated than that...

Reid on the Autonomy of Ethics: From Active Power to Moral Nonnaturalism

ABSTRACT:Thomas Reid has the unusual distinction of arriving at a metaethical position very much like G. E. Moore's via a route very similar to that employed by the Kantians. That is, Reid embraces a version of nonnaturalist moral realism by appeal not to open question-style considerations but to a particular account of agency. In this essay, we reconstruct Reid's agency-centered argument for his constitutivist version of moral nonnaturalism, highlighting its commitments. Having presented Reid's argument, we close by considering a prominent contemporary Kantian view, namely, Christine Korsgaard's, and identifying where, despite their common commitments, Reid and Korsgaard part company. The comparison, we suggest, is instructive because it allows us to see more clearly why the link between agency-centered approaches to ethical theorizing and nonrealist, constitutivist views of morality, such as Korsgaard's, is deeply contingent.

Appraising Justice as Larger Loyalty

I examine Richard Rorty’s “justice as larger loyalty” proposal. He urges that we think of justice as a more capacious loyalty, rather than something altogether distinct from loyalty. While Rorty is right to reject the Kantian idea of a strict bifurcation between justice and loyalty, the former corresponding to reason the latter corresponding to sentiment, my argument is that it is nevertheless a mistake to follow Rorty in conceiving of justice as he recommends we should. This is not an endorsement of the rationalistic Kantian view Rorty rejects. Contrary to what Rorty sometimes implies, it is possible to be skeptical about the “justice as larger loyalty” thesis without thereby committing oneself to Kant’s view. There are compelling Rortyan reasons for rejecting the “justice as larger loyalty” proposal, which are not merely compatible with Rorty’s broader moral and political thinking, but paradoxically very much in its spirit.

What Properly Belongs to Me

Kant has a number of harsh-sounding things to say about beggars and giving to beggars. He describes begging as “closely akin to robbery” (6:326), and says that it exhibits self-contempt. In this paper I argue that on a particular interpretation of his political philosophy his critique of giving to beggars can be seen as part of a concern with social justice, and that his analysis makes sense of some troubling aspects of the phenomenology of being confronted with beggars. On Kant's view, without absolute poverty relief, the poor persons' external freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of those who have means. But the legitimacy of the state is based on ensuring that no one's basic freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of another. This means that in a legitimate state public structures must ensure that there is unconditional poverty relief. Having your basic needs met through private charity wrongs you. Kant's analysis is that when you encounter someone in a public space who asks you for money to meet their basic survival needs, you are being asked to solve a public problem in a private interaction, and there is no rightful way for you to do this.

F. Scott Fitzgerald at Work: The Making of The Great Gatsby

<i>F. Scott Fitzgerald at Work: The Making of</i> The Great Gatsby

Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics (1): Realism and Constructivism in a Kantian Context

AbstractMetaethical constructivism is one of the main movements within contemporary metaethics – especially among those with Kantian inclinations. But both the philosophical coherence and the Kantian pedigree of constructivism are hotly contested. In the first half of this article, I first explore the sense in which Kant's own views might be described as constructivist and then use the resulting understanding as a guide to how we might think about Kantian constructivism today. Along the way, I hope to suggest that a fairly diverse range of views within contemporary metaethics – including some without any explicit allegiance to Kant – may be thought of as pursuing a version of the resulting strategy.

Book Review: Kant and the Creation of Freedom: A Theological Problem

Kant and Creation of Freedom: A Theological Problem. By Christopher J. Insole. Changing Paradigms Historical and Systematic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. xiv + 264 pp. $125.00 (cloth).In this clear and well-organized volume, Insole argues that Kant's critical project was, part, generated by an irreducibly (p. 1). How can we coherently explain human freedom, given assertion that human beings are created by God?Chapters 2 through 5 provide core exposition of Insole's exegetical claim. Kant's view of divine freedom, despite shifting epistemic status, is constant across pre-critical and critical periods. Like Anselm, Kants view Gods perfect freedom is compatible with God being unable to do other than good (p. 26), where God is constrained by moral-metaphysical necessities internal to God's own nature. Kant, Insole remarks, has a positive and teleological conception of freedom simpliciter in his bones ... where what matters for freedom is that an agent wills good (p. 57).Kant's view of what constitutes meaningful human freedom continues to develop throughout his life. Originally a compatibilist, Insole argues, Kant comes to believe that human freedom requires both ultimate responsibility and ability to do otherwise (although this later feature of freedom is conceived of as a human failing). By Insole's reading, transcendental idealism develops to protect possibility of human freedom from physical determinism Newtonian science demands while protecting divine impassability from emanationism. Kant, Insole notes, comes to distinguish between human dependence on God (which does not threaten freedom) and human dependence on other created substances (which does). The possibility of meaningful human freedom, ultimately realized Kingdom of Ends Kant's mature view, is where noumenal self is dependent upon God alone, who enables reciprocal and nondependent interaction within a community of noumenal selves.Insole anticipates and replies to objections to more controversial aspects of this eonstrual of Kant. He addresses atemporal noumenal first causation and inexplicability of origins of evil when human freedom is construed as outside of space-time (chap. 6), and worries about status of Kant's belief God after 1770 (chap. 7). These are significant obstacles, but Insole presents his case a clear and well-cited way and even those who are not convinced by his reading will find Insole an articulate and well-versed opponent.In last three chapters, Insole turns to a fuller theological evaluation of Kant's mature position on divine-human interaction. Insole recites well-established evaluation that Kant's rational theology is hamstrung by limits Kant's epistemic discipline places on grace and atonement. Furthermore, Insole argues that Kant highlights the with problem (p. 226) when Insole considers what more can be known or hoped about divine action than creation and conservation, given Kant's articulation of human freedom within transcendental idealism. The argument between concurrentism and mere conservation stems from concerns about metaphysical possibility of meaningful human causality of events which are directly and sufficiently caused by divine agency. …

MAKNA BERAGAMA MENURUT IMMANUEL KANT DALAM RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF REASONALONE

The searching oflmmanuel Kant's thought in this paper will try to explain his ideas concerning to the meaning of religion from his critical philosophical perspective by set up from his work Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. That work, will show later, is one of important Kant's work, especially concerning the relation between reason, religion, and morality. Although Religion could be classified as a work in philosophy of religion's field, however Kant's writing style in this work was not in popular fashion as commonly the work in philosophy of religion's field to be written. Kant's views ofreligion and the meaning ofbeing religious in this work are closely related to the moral frame work that he explained in his other works. The writer underlines some important points of Kant's thoughts: First, Religion has showed Kant's interest to religious problems, especially concerning religious meaning, in relation to morality and rationality. Second, the main discussion in Religion is about religious meaning. Third, Kant's explanation to religious meaning in Religion could be traced in to areas, i.e. individual area and social-community area. Fourth, the core of religious meaning in Religion is situated to Kant's implicit invitation to shift from just as ''having religion" to the ''being religious", or from having religious falsely to being religious authentically. Fifth, being religious or to be religious authentically is a representation of critical religious attitude.

From Helmholtz to Schlick: The evolution of the sign-theory of perception

Efforts to trace the influence of fin de siècle neo-Kantianism on early 20th Century philosophy of science have led scholars to recognize the powerful influence on Moritz Schlick of Hermann von Helmholtz, the doyen of 19th Century physics and a leader of the zurȕck zu Kant movement. But Michael Friedman thinks that Schlick misunderstood Helmholtz' signature philosophical doctrine, the sign-theory of perception. Indeed, Friedman has argued that Schlick transformed Helmholtz' Kantian view of spatial intuition into an empiricist version of the causal theory of perception. However, it will be argued that, despite the key role the sign-theory played in his epistemology, Schlick thought the Kantianism in Helmholtz' thought was deeply flawed, rendered obsolete by philosophical insights which emerged from recent scientific developments. So even though Schlick embraced the sign-theory, he rejected Helmholtz' ideas about spatial intuition. In fact, like his teacher, Max Planck, Schlick generalized the sign-theory into a form of structural realism. At the same time, Schlick borrowed the method of concept-formation developed by the formalist mathematicians, Moritz Pasch and David Hilbert, and combined it with the conventionalism of Henri Poincaré. Then, to link formally defined concepts with experience, Schlick's introduced his ‘method of coincidences’, similar to the ‘point-coincidences’ featured in Einstein's physics. The result was an original scientific philosophy, which owed much to contemporary scientific thinkers, but little to Kant or Kantianism.

Robert Leslie Ellis, William Whewell and Kant: the role of Rev H F C Logan

Reverend H F C Logan is put forward as the formerly unidentified figure to which Robert Leslie Ellis referred in a journal entry of 1840 in which he wrote that it was due to his influence that William Whewell came to uphold particular Kantian views on time and space. The historical evidence of Ellis’s early familiarity with, and later commitment to Kant is noteworthy for at least two reasons. Firstly, it puts into doubt the accepted view of the second generation of reformers of British algebra as non-philosophical, practice-oriented mathematicians. Secondly, in so far as Logan was the correspondent of William Rowan Hamilton, it re-emphasizes that the role of Kantianism in the transition from ‘symbolical’ to ‘abstract’ algebra in nineteenth-century British algebra requires closer scrutiny.

“Der Faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus”: Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche

“Der Faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus”: Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche

Kant's View on Education

The purpose of this writing is to examine Kant's approach to education and moral education based on his moral philosophy. In this writing, it's going to take into consideration especially Kant's moral education about ideas and in general it will take up an educational issues. Kant see human being as a unique existence who needs education and think that human being can be a person only with education, thanks to education it's not according to person's natural tendency and material requests, set forth raising in appropriate way to moral laws. In this context, thinking to support Kant's education regarding opinions moral philosophy, it's going to take up about education and moral education opinions.

Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism and the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1820

Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism and the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1820