Realm Of Ends Research Articles

In the Realm of Ends: The Fate of Moveable Type

There is something strange, perhaps, in producing a journal called ‘Moveable Type’ that has never appeared in print, or been anywhere near a press. How or why the editors of the first volume landed on the name is lost to history, or at least in need of some research. But what is certain is that the journal, born (enrolled?) in the (academic) year 2004-5, is a child of the Internet. A thoroughly digital native; assembled, uploaded, published, downloaded and read—one hopes—online. There is, perhaps, a further irony in the fact that, until recently, Moveable Type was a repository for papers delivered at the UCL English Department’s annual graduate conference, and so a record of the spoken word. And last year, the journal made a tentative move into the realm of podcasts. From the oral to the written to the digital, from written record to sound recording. We appear to be leaving the Gutenberg Galaxy.

Нежелательная уступка: Кантова критика политической философии Х. Гарве

In the second section of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant introduces the concept of an end in itself and defines it as something whose existence has an absolute value. He continues with the assertion that the ground of a possible categorical imperative lies solely in this end in itself. Now Kant, in his remarks on the realm of ends, also operates with the notions of an end in itself and absolute value — seemingly in a different way, however. Thus, in the remarks on the realm of ends, the rational being becomes an end in itself through its real moral willing and acting, both of which presuppose the validity of the categorical imperative. Basically, the difference in the ways of using the concepts of absolute value and an end in itself consists in the fact that in the first case both serve as precondition for the categorical imperative’s validity, whereas in the passages concerning the realm of ends both are a consequence of its validity. At first glance we therefore must register an inconsistent use of both terms. In what follows, I aim to show that the assumption of such a putative inconsistency expresses a misleading understanding of the internal structure of the end in itself rather than a real problem in Kant’s way of arguing. The present study tries to solve this supposed problem of inconsistency by sketching a more appropriate understanding of the internal structure of the end in itself.

“A Community of Rational Beings”. Kant’s Realm of Ends and the Dinstinction between Internal and External Freedom

Abstract:This paper proposes a new account of the relationship between Kant’s ethics and Kant’s philosophy of right. I reject the claim of some philosophers that Kant’s

THE REALM OF ENDS AS A COMMUNITY OF SPIRITS: KANT AND SWEDENBORG ON THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND THE CLEANSING OF THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

In this paper I examine the genesis of Kant’s conception of a realm of ends, arguing that Kant first started to think of morality in terms of striving to be a member of a realm of ends, understood as an ideal community, in the early 1760s, and that he was influenced in this by his encounter with the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In 1766 Kant published Dreams of a Spirit Seer, a commentary on Swedenborg’s magnum opus, Heavenly Secrets. Most commentators take Kant’s attitude towards Swedenborg to have been entirely negative, and argue that, at the most, Kant’s encounter with him had a purely negative impact on Kant’s development, inducing him to reject certain of his early metaphysical positions. I argue, in contrast, that Swedenborg had a positive influence on Kant’s development, particularly on his ethics, for Kant’s conception of a realm of ends is modeled on Swedenborg’s conception of heaven as a community of spirits governed by moral laws. For the mature Kant, the idea of a realm of ends is an idea of pure reason, being the idea of an intelligible world, or community of autonomous beings. Central to this idea is the thought that there is some sort of real interaction between members of such a community. Until his engagement with Swedenborg, however, Kant had believed that interaction was only possible between embodied beings. I argue that Kant’s engagement with Swedenborg in the early 1760s convinced him that it is possible for us to conceive of interaction between spirits. Swedenborg’s descriptions of heaven as a community of spirits governed by moral laws, standing in non-spatial relationships to one another, provided Kant with a way of conceiving of a community of intelligible individuals. That Kant’s idea of a realm of ends is modeled on a particular conception of heaven should not be surprising if we remember that Kant often refers to the idea of a realm of ends as ‘the kingdom of Heaven’. Although we can trace the genesis of Kant’s idea of a realm of ends to Swedenborg’s account of heaven, by the 1780s Kant’s idea of such a realm had departed from Swedenborg’s conception in two major respects. Firstly although Swedenborg conceives of heaven as a kingdom governed by divine laws, he does not suggest that the members of the kingdom must be the ‘givers’ of these laws. The mature Kant, in contrast, will argue that the idea of a realm of ends is the idea of a community in which the members of the community are the givers of the laws that provide the community with its unity. In other words, the mature Kant believes that our idea of a realm of ends is the idea of a community of autonomous individuals. Secondly, Swedenborg conceives of heaven as a community of spirits governed by laws of love, or what Kant will call laws of benevolence. The mature Kant, however, will maintain that we must conceive of the realm of ends as a political

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.

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism.

The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism.

Book Review:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1907-10. James Ward

Book Review:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1907-10. James Ward

Book Review: II. Religion and Apologetics: Pragmatism and Its Critics, the Philosophy of Bergson, the Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism

Book Review: II. Religion and Apologetics: Pragmatism and Its Critics, the Philosophy of Bergson, the Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism

The Realm of Ends: or Pluralism and Theism.

The Realm of Ends: or Pluralism and Theism.

The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1907-1910 . By James Ward, Sc.D. (Camb.), etc., Fellow of the British Academy and of the New York Academy of Sciences, Professor of Mental Philosophy, Cambridge. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1911. 8vo. Pp. xv + 490. Price,

<i>The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1907-1910</i> . By James Ward, Sc.D. (Camb.), etc., Fellow of the British Academy and of the New York Academy of Sciences, Professor of Mental Philosophy, Cambridge. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1911. 8vo. Pp. xv + 490. Price,