Kant's Response Research Articles

Kant's Response to Hume on Natural Theology: Dogmatic Anthropomorphism, Analogical Inference, and Symbolic Representation

Kant's Response to Hume on Natural Theology: Dogmatic Anthropomorphism, Analogical Inference, and Symbolic Representation

Kant and Rehberg on political theory and practice

ABSTRACT This article examines the under-researched figure A.W. Rehberg in his exchange with Kant over the relationship between theory and practice in the philosophy of right. I argue that Rehberg raises, what I call, two problems of political matter which attempt to show that Kant's overly formal approach to political theory cannot justifiably determine political practice. The first problem is the problem of positive determinations of right, rather than merely negative prohibitions. Rehberg takes this to mean that Kant cannot determine us to a specific form of constitution (the republican constitution). I argue that Kant's innovation of intelligible property functions as a response to this critique in that it provides the possibility of synthetic propositions of right a priori. Second, Rehberg insists that an a priori system of right cannot relate to already formed historical communities. Here Kant's response comes close to agreeing with Rehberg as Kant takes prudential or historical reasoning to harmonize with the demands of a priori right in order to applied to the sensible world. Kant, in this instance, comes closer to Rehberg by denying centralized enlightened monarchy and the reliance on natural and historical development for the application of right.

Deleuze's Transcendental Empiricism Against Speculative Realism: How Deleuze's Hume Avoids the Challenge of Correlationism

ABSTRACTSpeculative realists claim that almost all post-Kantian philosophy suffers from what they call correlationism. Correlationism, they claim, originated with Kant's response to Hume. However, one of the major figures associated with the speculative realist movement, Levi Bryant, has argued that Gilles Deleuze's transcendental empiricism is able to confront the challenge of correlationism. My central claim is that while Bryant is correct not to label Deleuze as a correlationist, his analysis does not go far enough in that it takes speculative realism on its own terms and does not move beyond the logic of correlationism. Drawing from the recent literature on Deleuze's transcendental empiricism and Deleuze's first book on Hume, I argue that Deleuze does not read Hume to produce a non-correlationist ontology, but rather develops a non-ontological constructivist philosophy. Transcendental empiricism, as he later comes to call it, conceives of philosophy in such a way that not only avoids the problem of correlationsism, but reveals that the speculative realist project itself fails to move beyond the logic of correlationism.

Kant, Linnaeus, and the economy of nature

Ecology arguably has roots in eighteenth-century natural histories, such as Linnaeus's economy of nature, which pressed a case for holistic and final-causal explanations of organisms in terms of what we'd now call their environment. After sketching Kant's arguments for the indispensability of final-causal explanation merely in the case of individual organisms, and considering the Linnaean alternative, this paper examines Kant's critical response to Linnaean ideas. I argue that Kant does not explicitly reject Linnaeus's holism. But he maintains that the indispensability of final-causal explanation depends on robust modal connections between types of organism and their functional parts; relationships in Linnaeus's economy of nature, by contrast, are relatively contingent. Kant's framework avoids strong metaphysical assumptions, is responsive to empirical evidence, and can be fruitfully compared with some contemporary approaches to biological organization.

The Location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism

AbstractMany philosophers have been puzzled by Kant's decision to insert the Refutation of Idealism into the second edition of the first Critique at the end of his elucidation of the Second Postulate. This article proposes a solution to the puzzle. It defends an explanation for the location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism that is plausibly expressed by Kant's claim at the end of his elucidation of the Second Postulate that the Refutation of Idealism is ‘here in its right place’ because ‘[a] powerful objection against these rules for proving existence indirectly is made by idealism’ (B274). According to this explanation, the Refutation of Idealism is Kant's response to the objection that the Second Postulate must be false since otherwise idealism is true. This article also considers and rejects a number of alternative explanations for the location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism.

Hegel's critique of Kant

In this paper we present a reconstruction of Hegel's critique of Kant. We try to show the congruence of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We argue that this congruence is to be found in Hegel's criticism of Kant's hylemorphism in his theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant's response to the distinction between matter and form in his theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always takes place within a greater whole. He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel's appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, something resembling what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel's Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness in Sittlichkeit, a whole of social practices of mutual recognition. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within such a whole in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, it is necessary to recognise the status of Kantian Moralität as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous.

Ben Brice, Coleridge and ScepticismColeridge and Scepticism. Ben Brice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. x+229.

<i>Ben Brice</i>, Coleridge and Scepticism<i>Coleridge and Scepticism</i>. Ben Brice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. x+229.

Misunderstanding the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’: Venturi, Habermas, and Foucault

In his 1969 Trevelyan Lectures, Franco Venturi argued that Kant's response to the question “What is Enlightenment?” has tended to promote a “philosophical interpretation” of the Enlightenment that leads scholars away from the political questions that were central to its concerns. But while Kant's response is well known, it has been often misunderstood by scholars who see it as offering a definition of an historical period, rather than an attempt at characterizing a process that had a significant implications. This article seeks (1) to clarify, briefly, the particular question that Kant was answering, (2) to examine – using Jürgen Habermas’ work as a case in point – the tension between readings that use Kant's answer as a way of discussing the Enlightenment as a discrete historical period and those readings that see it as offering a broad outline of an “Enlightenment Project” that continues into the present, and (3) to explore how Michel Foucault, in a series of discussions of Kant's response, sketched an approach to Kant's text that offers a way of reframing Venturi's distinction between “philosophical” and “political” interpretations of the Enlightenment.

The Intuition of Simultaneity: Zugleichsein and the Constitution of Extensive Magnitudes

Kant's response to ‘Hume's problem’ in his analysis of the a priori structure of causality as law-governed succession in the Second Analogy of Experience has unquestionably overshadowed the account of simultaneity (Zugleichsein), which follows in the Third Analogy. The analysis of simultaneity in the first Critique relies entirely upon that of succession and is ultimately no more than a more complicated variant of the causal dependence of substances: two objects are experienced as simultaneous only when each of those objects grounds some determination of the other, that is when they are reciprocally determined in dynamic community. By investigating Kant's remark in the third Critique that the experience of the sublime “makes simultaneity intuitable” this paper develops a Kantian analysis of simultaneity that is irreducible to the more prominent analysis of causal succession. This more robust account of simultaneity is then seen to play an essential role in the constitution of the objects of perception (and not only the regulation of their relations) as thematized in the Axioms of Intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Scepticism and the Development of the Transcendental Dialectic

Kant's response to scepticism in the Critique of Pure Reason is complex and remarkably nuanced, although it is rarely recognized as such. In this paper, I argue that recent attempts to flesh out the details of this response by Paul Guyer and Michael Forster do not go far enough. Although they are right to draw a distinction between Humean and Pyrrhonian scepticism and locate Kant's response to the latter in the Transcendental Dialectic, their accounts fail to capture two important aspects of this response. The first is that Kant's response to Pyrrhonian scepticism is also a response to Hume. The second is that aspects of this response are decidedly positive. In particular, I argue (1) that Kant believed Hume's scepticism manifested important elements of Pyrrhonian scepticism and (2) that both Pyrrhonian scepticism and Hume had a significant positive influence on the development of the Transcendental Dialectic.

Knowledge, reason, and taste: Kant's response to Hume

Credits vii Sources and Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1: Common Sense and the Varieties of Skepticism 23 CHAPTER 2: Causation 71 CHAPTER 3: Cause, Object, and Self 124 CHAPTER 4: Reason, Desire, and Action 161 CHAPTER 5: Systematicity, Taste, and Purpose 198 Bibliography 255 Index 263

“Whatever begins to be must have a cause of existence”: Hume’s Analysis and Kant's Response

“Whatever begins to be must have a cause of existence”: Hume’s Analysis and Kant's Response

The Whole Story Either Kant is not a critical philosopher or “critical” does not mean what Kant says it does

As the Leibnizeans saw it, that upstart from Königsberg, having surreptitiously decanted their proprietary vintage, had proceeded to vend the Château Gottfried, done up with eye-popping appeal, as Mouton Immanuel. Shaken by the flocking to the Kantian brand, the guardians of the Leibnizean label delegated one of their domain, Johann August Eberhard, to found a philosophical magazine with the express raison d'être of exposing the “critical” potation's derivativeness. (The philosophical magazine bore the appellation “Philosophisches Magazin”. Evidently, their glutted cellars notwithstanding, about marketing the Leibnizean sellers came away empty from the encounter.) The bouquet of Kant's response to the charge of repackaging is captured by a joke retailed in the Critique of Judgement. Empty in hand, a customer arrives at the off-license for a refill. “What kind of fool do you take me for?” quoth he, gesticulating at the cask from which the tapster has come back to the counter with the now-brimming container. “You cannot get wine of that shape into a flask of this shape.” Just so, Kant insisted that the two positions differ irreducibly. Stung by the accusation, he did so in very rebarbative terms, as attests the title of his extended reply to Eberhard – about which title his publisher, pointing to the available paper stock, might easily have reacted with a leaf from the dissatisfied bibber. “How do you expect me to get a title of that size onto a page of this size?” The title? “On a discovery according to which any new critique of pure reason has been made superfluous by an earlier one”.

Duty, Nature, Right: Kant's Response to Mendelssohn in Theory and Practice III

AbstractThis paper offers an imminent interpretation of Kant's political teleology in the context of his response to Moses Mendelssohn in Theory and Practice III concerning prospects of humankind's moral progress. The paper assesses the nature of Kant's response against his mature political philosophy in the Doctrine of Right. In `Theory and Practice III' Kant's response to Mendelssohn remains incomplete: whilst insisting that individuals have a duty to contribute towards humankind's moral progress, Kant has no conclusive answer as to how individuals might act on that duty. `Theory and Practice III' lacks a clear conception of the distinctness of political morality from the domain of virtue; Kant's resort to teleological argumentation is indicative of his lack of an account of instituting Right. The latter can be found in the Doctrine of Right—yet Kant's earlier teleological arguments contribute crucially to the development of his mature morality of Right.

Metaphysical Dogmatism, Humean Scepticism, Kantian Criticism

In this article, I want to argue that scepticism for Kant must be seen in ancient and not just modern terms, and that if we take this into account we will need to take a different view of Kant's response to Hume from the one that is standardly presented in the literature. This standard view has been put forward recently by Paul Guyer, and it is therefore his view that I want to look at in some detail, and to try to correct.

Skepticism and the Role of Modest Transcendental Claims

What can modest transcendental claims do against skepticism? In this paper, I examine various anti-skeptical roles for modest transcendental claims suggested by Barry Stroud, Christopher Hookway, and Robert Stern (Stern, On Kant's Response to Hume: The Second Analogy asTranscendental Argument, Clarendon Oxford Press, 1999a, Stern, Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, Clarendon Oxford Press, 1999b, Hookway, Modest Transcendental Arguments and Sceptical Doubts: A Reply to Stroud, Oxford University Press, 1999, Stroud, Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and Invulnerability, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, Stroud, The Goal of Transcendental Arguments, Clarendon Oxford Press, 1999). I argue that contrary to what these writers suggest, modest transcendental claims do not achieve much. The strategies on offer either (i) fail to identify a clear anti-skeptical role for modest transcendental claims (Stroud), (ii) they do identify such a role, but only on the assumption that we are facing a non-standard skeptical challenge (Hookway), or (iii) the anti-skeptical strategies do successfully engage with standard forms of skeptical challenges, but they work only because of epistemological assumptions that make the transcendental claims largely redundant (Stern).

The rise of aesthetics: Baumgarten's radical innovation and Kant's response

Journal for Eighteenth-Century StudiesVolume 20, Issue 1 p. 53-61 The rise of aesthetics: Baumgarten's radical innovation and Kant's response HANS REISS, HANS REISSSearch for more papers by this author HANS REISS, HANS REISSSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 October 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-0208.1997.tb00206.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume20, Issue1March 1997Pages 53-61 RelatedInformation

Kant's “Appropriation” of Lampe's God

It would be difficult to find a philosopher who has suffered more injustices at the hands of his commentators (friends and foes alike) than Immanuel Kant. This is particularly true when it comes to the many anecdotes that commentators are, for some reason, quite fond of reciting about Kant. The problem is that such tales are often used surreptitiously to twist Kant's own explicit claims about what he was attempting to accomplish, so that when his writings are read with these stories in mind, misunderstanding is almost inevitable. As an example, it is only necessary to think of the tale of the old ladies of Königsberg who became so familiar with Kant's rigid schedule that they used to set their clocks by his daily comings and goings. This may or may not be true; the point is that unless this anecdote is recounted with a certain skepticism, it is likely to encourage a prejudice whereby the reader of Kant assumes at the beginning that Kant's writings are filled with the unreasonably rigid and formalistic ravings of someone out of touch with the unpredictable passions that punctuate the life of an ordinary person. In other words, such stories are in danger of creating an image of Kant that may have little or no justification in the text. One could cite other examples, such as the story of how Kant used to lead the procession of university professors up to the cathedral each Sunday, only to desert it at the door, or Bertrand Russell's quip that Kant's response to being “awakened” by Hume was merely to invent a transcendental “soporific” to help him fall asleep again.

What Enlightenment Was: How Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant Answered the Berlinische Monatsschrift

What Enlightenment Was: How Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant Answered the Berlinische Monatsschrift JAMES SCHMIDT 1. A QUESTION AND SOME ANSWERS IN DECEMBER 178 3 THE Berlinische Monatsschrift published an article by the theologian and educational reformer Johann Friedrich Z611ner on the advisability of purely civil marriage ceremonies. Noting the journal's frequent use of the terms aufldiiren, aufgekliirte, and Aufkl~rung, he asked in a footnote: "What is enlightenment? This question, which is almost as important as what is truth, should indeed be answered before one begins enlightening! And still have I never found it answered!", Few footnotes have made such a mark on the history of philosophy. For the next decade a discussion of the nature and limits of enlightenment filled the pages of German literary and scholarly journals." Immanuel Kant's response is by far the most famous. But, as Kant himself An earlier version of this essay was discussed with members of my 1989 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers. I profited enormously from these discussions and am also indebted to Frederick C. Beiser for his insightful comments on a later draft. Johann Friedrich Z611ner,"Ist es rathsam, das EhebiindniB nicht ferner durch die Religion zu sanciren?" Berlinische Monatsschrift lI (1783): 516. Reprinted in Was ist Aufkliirung? Beitriige aus der Berlinischen Monatsschrift, ~d. ed., ed. Norbert Hinske (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft , 1977), 115. For a discussion of the genesis of Z611ner'squestion and its immediate impact, see my article "The Question of Enlightenment: Kant, Mendelssohn, and the M/ttw0chsgesellschafl ,"Journal of the History of ldeas 5o/2 (1989): 269-91. ' See H. B. Nisbet, " 'Was ist Aufld~rung?': The Concept of Enlightenment in EighteenthCentury Germany,"Journal ofEuropean Studies a2 (1982): 77-95. For collections of the eighteenthcentury essays see Hinske, ed., Was ist Aufkl~rung? and Aufldiirung und Gedankenfreiheit, ed. Zwi Batscha (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977). [77] 7 8 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3o: 1 JANUARY 1992 noted, the Berlinische Monatsschrift had already published Moses Mendelssohn 's answer to the question before he had the chance to submit his response .s "I have not seen this journal, otherwise I should have held back the above reflections. I let them stand only as a means of finding out by comparison how far the thoughts of two individuals may coincide by chance."4 There is no record of what Kant thought of Mendelssohn's essay, nor--aside from a brief unpublished notes--do we know much about Mendelssohn's response to Kant's answer. Subsequent discussions of the question paid little attention to these first two contributions and few scholars since have taken up Kant's suggestion and compared his response to Mendelssohn's. 6 That rather simple assignment is the task of this paper, which will argue that the most significant point to emerge from the comparison is the remarkable /ack of agreement between the two responses. 2. THE TERMS OF THE DEBATE It is doubtful that ZOllner was as confused about the meaning of AufklArungas his article implied. Like Mendelssohn, ZOllner was a member of the Mittwochs gesellschaft, a secret society of "Friends of the Enlightenment" closely linked to the BerlinischeMonatsschrifl.7On December 17, 1783--the month of ZOllner's Moses Mendelssohn, "l]'ber die Frage: was heisst aufkl~iren?" Berlinische Monatsschrift IV (1784): 193-2oo. Reprinted in Mendelssohn, Gesamm~lte Schriften Jubiltiumsausgabe, Vol. 6/1 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 198 0, 115-19. For discussions of Mendelssohn 's essay see Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (University, Alabama : University of Alabama Press, 1973), 66o-66; Werner Schneiders, Die wahre Aufkltirung (Freiburg: Alber, a974), 43-51; and Norbert Hinske, "Mendelssohns Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufkl~irung? oder I]ber die Aktualit~it Mendelssohns," in Norbert Hinske, ed., lch handle rait Vernunft . . . : Moses Mendelssohn und die europ~ische Aufld~irung (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1981), 85-1 a7. 4 Immanuel Kant, "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufkltirung?" Berlinische Monatsschrift IV (1784): 494. Reprinted in AA VIII:42 (trans. by H.B. Nisbet in Kant's Political Writings, ed. H_ Reiss [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 197o], 6o). s See Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften 8:~27-~8. 6 For previous attempts to compare the essays see Frieder...

Kant and Newtonian Science: The Pre-Critical Period

Previous articleNext article No AccessKant and Newtonian Science: The Pre-Critical PeriodRonald CalingerRonald Calinger Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 70, Number 3Sep., 1979 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/352280 Views: 19Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1979 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Cinzia Ferrini A “Physiogony” of the Heavens: Kant’s Early View of Universal Natural History, HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12, no.11 (Mar 2022): 261–285.https://doi.org/10.1086/718995Brigitte Falkenburg Physics and Metaphysics, (Dec 2020): 3–31.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52290-2_1Matthew Rukgaber Space, Force, and Matter in the Early Natural Science Writings, (Nov 2020): 19–58.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60742-5_2Matthew Rukgaber Substances, Space, and Causality in the Early Metaphysical Writings, (Nov 2020): 59–107.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60742-5_3Luca Sciortino On Ian Hacking’s Notion of Style of Reasoning, Erkenntnis 82, no.22 (Jun 2016): 243–264.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9815-9Michela Massimi, Silvia De Bianchi Cartesian echoes in Kant’s philosophy of nature, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44, no.33 (Sep 2013): 481–492.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2012.10.011MI GYUNG KIM A HISTORICAL ATLAS OF OBJECTIVITY, Modern Intellectual History 6, no.33 (Nov 2009): 569–596.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244309990187Roger Jaquel Leonhard Euler, son Fils Johann Albrecht et leur ami Jean III Bernoulli jusqu’en 1766, (Jan 1983): 435–446.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-9350-3_24