Throughout his life, Kant was concerned with questions about empirical psychology. He aimed to develop an empirical account of human beings, and his lectures and writings on the topic are recognizable today as properly 'psychological' treatments of human thought and behavior. In this book Patrick R. Frierson uses close analysis of relevant texts, including unpublished lectures and notes, to study Kant's account. He shows in detail how Kant explains human action, choice, and thought in empirical terms, and how a better (...) understanding of Kant's psychology can shed light on major concepts in his philosophy, including the moral law, moral responsibility, weakness of will, and cognitive error. Frierson also applies Kant's accounts of mental illness to contemporary philosophical issues. His book will interest students and scholars of Kant, the history of psychology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of action. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive account of Kant's theory of freedom and his moral anthropology. The point of departure is the apparent conflict between three claims to which Kant is committed: that human beings are transcendentally free, that moral anthropology studies the empirical influences on human beings, and that more anthropology is morally relevant. Frierson shows why this conflict is only apparent. He draws on Kant's transcendental idealism and his theory of the will and describes how empirical influences can affect (...) the empirical expression of one's will in a way that is morally significant but still consistent with Kant's concept of freedom. As a work which integrates Kant's anthropology with his philosophy as a whole, this book will be an unusually important source of study for all Kant scholars and advanced students of Kant. (shrink)

Philosophers, anthropologists and biologists have long puzzled over the question of human nature. It is also a question that Kant thought about deeply and returned to in many of his writings. In this lucid and wide-ranging introduction to Kant’s philosophy of human nature - which is essential for understanding his thought as a whole - Patrick R. Frierson assesses Kant’s theories and examines his critics. He begins by explaining how Kant articulates three ways of addressing the question ‘what is the (...) human being?’: the transcendental, the empirical, and the pragmatic. He then considers some of the great theorists of human nature who wrestle with Kant’s views, such as Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud; contemporary thinkers such as E.O.Wilson and Daniel Dennett, who have sought biological explanations of human nature; Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and Clifford Geertz, who emphasize the diversity of human beings in different times and places; and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Heidegger. He argues that whilst these approaches challenge and enrich Kant’s views in significant ways, all suffer from serious weaknesses that Kant’s anthropology can address. Taking a core insight of Kant’s - that human beings are fundamentally free but finite - he argues that it is the existentialists, particularly Sartre, who are the most direct heirs of his transcendental anthropology. The final part of the book is an extremely helpful overview of the work of contemporary philosophers, particularly Christine Korsgaard and Jürgen Habermas. Patrick R. Frierson explains how these philosophers engage with questions of naturalism, historicism, and existentialism while developing Kantian conceptions of the human being. Including chapter summaries and annotated further reading, What is the Human Being? is an outstanding introduction to some fundamental aspects of Kant’s thought and a judicious assessment of leading theories of human nature. It is essential reading for all students of Kant and the philosophy of human nature, as well as those in related disciplines such as anthropology, politics and sociology. (shrink)

Patrick Frierson - Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 313-338 Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes Patrick R. Frierson The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals. (...) Descartes is well known for his metaphysics and physics, the roots and trunk of his philosophical project. But Descartes's morals are generally neglected, partly because they are so difficult to find. He does not dedicate a major published work to morality. His most direct comments on it are in letters to Princess Elizabeth and Pierre Chanut. The published work that most touches on moral issues is The Passions of the Soul, which is primarily a treatise on the relationship between mind and body. As a result of this lack of primary sources , there have been only a few significant studies of Descartes's moral philosophy in French, and only two major works devoted to it in English. This neglect of Descartes's ethics is unfortunate, not least since ethical concerns sometimes influence his work in other areas. This.. (shrink)

As J. Baird Callicott has argued, Adam Smith's moral theory is a philosophical ancestor of recent work in environmental ethics. However, Smith's "all important emotion of sympathy" (Callicott, 2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in "History of Astronomy and Physics," I show that sympathy with non-sentient nature is (...) possible within a Smithian ethics. This provides the possibility of extending sympathy, and thereby benevolence and justice, to nature. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper lays out the epistemology of Maria Montessori . I start with what I call Montessori's ‘interested empiricism’, her empiricist emphasis on the foundational role of the senses combined with her insistence that all cognition is infused with ‘interest’. I then discuss the unconscious. Partly because of her emphasis on early childhood, Montessori puts great emphasis on unconscious cognitive processes and develops a conceptual vocabulary to make sense of the continuity between conscious and unconscious processes. The final sections turn (...) to two brief but important applications of this general epistemic framework, the importance of ‘meditation’ as an epistemic practice and Montessori's accounts of epistemic virtues. (shrink)

This article draws on Martha Nussbaum's distinction between basic, internal, and external capacities to better specify possible locations for children's ‘incapacity’ for autonomy. I then examine Maria Montessori's work on what she calls ‘normalization’, which involves a release of children's capacities for autonomy and self-governance made possible by being provided with the right kind of environment. Using Montessori, I argue that, in contrast to many ordinary and philosophical assumptions, children's incapacities for autonomy are best understood as consequences of an absence (...) of external conditions necessary for children to exercise capacities they already have internally, rather than intrinsic limitations based on their stage of life. In a closing section, I show how Montessori proposes a model wherein both children and adults have autonomy, power, and responsibility, but over different spheres, and suggest implications of these differences for who has responsibility for establishing the conditions under which children can flourish. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 (2006) 623-634 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Character and Evil in Kant's Moral AnthropologyPatrick FriersonIn the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains that moral anthropology studies the "subjective conditions in human nature that help or hinder [people] in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals" and insists that such anthropology "cannot be dispensed with" (6:217).1 But it is often difficult to find clear (...) evidence of this sort of anthropology in Kant's own works. In this paper, I discuss Kant's account of character as an example of Kantian moral anthropology.Kant's account of character is one of the most important parts of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.2 Kant describes the character of the person, in particular, as the "distinguishing mark of the human being as a rational being endowed with freedom" and says that character "indicates what the human being is prepared to make of himself" (7:285). Recently, Kant commentators have gone even further. G. Felicitas Munzel, for example, claims that character is "the systematic link between the moral, aesthetic, and anthropological elements of Kant's works."3 This paper will not investigate the full richness of Kant's account of character. Instead, I focus on one particular problem that arises in Kant's discussion of character—an apparent conflict between the moral relevance of character and the possibility of evil character. By showing why there is an apparent conflict and why it is merely apparent, I show some of the ways in which a particular subjective condition in human nature can help, but not force, people to fulfill the laws of a metaphysics of morals. [End Page 623]1. The Problem: Moral Character and the Case of SullaWhen Kant introduces character in the Anthropology, he distinguishes between the character of the person, of the sex, of the nation, of the race, and of the species. Even within the character of the person, he distinguishes between "natural aptitude," "temperament," and "character purely and simply," all of which are different kinds of individual character. But only the last—the "character purely and simply"4 of a person—"is moral" and "shows what man is prepared to make of himself" (7:285).5 This paper focuses only on that general, moral character.At first, Kant seems to describe general character as morally good. Twice in his opening discussion of character, Kant describes "character" (Charakter) as "moral" (moralische) (7:285), and he insists that "character has an inner worth, and is beyond all price" (7:292). Though not decisive, these comments suggest that one with character has a good will. But Kant goes further, adding that the person with character "relies on principles that are valid for everyone" (7:293). This reference to universally valid principles is picked up later in a way that highlights its moral goodness.For character requires maxims that proceed from reason and morally-practical principles. Therefore one cannot rightly say that the malice of this human being is a quality of his character; for then it would be diabolic. The human being, however, never sanctions the evil in himself, and so there is actually no malice from principles; but only from the forsaking of them.(7:293–94)It seems that Kant could not be more explicit. Character seems to involve acting on the basis of principles that conform to and even flow from "morally-practical principles," which he seems to distinguish from anything evil. This seems quite close to Kant's account of the good will as a will "whose principle is the categorical imperative" (4:444). (Although Kant's precise account of the good will is complicated, for our purposes here it is sufficient to define a good will as a will that consistently acts out of respect for the moral law.6) To have character, it would seem, is to have a good will.But this apparent identification of character with good character does not fit the rest of... (shrink)

In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains that moral anthropology studies the “subjective conditions in human nature that help or hinder [people] in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals” and insists that such anthropology “cannot be dispensed with” (6:217).1 But it is often difficult to find clear evidence of this sort of anthropology in Kant’s own works. in this paper, i discuss Kant’s account of character as an example of Kantian moral anthropology.

This paper shows how Maria Montessori's thought can enrich contemporary virtue epistemology. After a short overview of her ‘interested empiricist’ epistemological framework, I discuss four representative intellectual virtues: sensory acuity, physical dexterity, intellectual love, and intellectual humility. Throughout, I show how Montessori bridges the divide between reliabilist and responsibilist approaches to the virtues and how her particular treatments of virtues offer distinctive and compelling alternatives to contemporary accounts. For instance, she emphasizes how sensory acuity is a virtue for which one (...) can be responsible, highlights the embodied nature of cognition through a focus on physical dexterity, interprets intellectual love as a way of loving the world rather than as a love that takes knowledge as its object, and presents an alternative account of intellectual humility to contemporary emphases on the interpersonal dimensions of this virtue. (shrink)

Through philosophical analysis of Montessori’s critiques of psychology, I aim to show the enduring relevance of those critiques. Maria Montessori sees experimental psychology as fundamental to philosophy and pedagogy, but she objects to the experimental psychology of her day in four ways: as disconnected from practice, as myopic, as based excessively on methods from physical sciences, and—most fundamentally—as offering detailed examinations of human beings (particularly children) under abnormal conditions. In place of these prevailing norms, Montessori suggests a model of the (...) teacher-scientist in a specially prepared environment, who can engage in sustained and impassioned observation of “normalized” children. Drawing from a variety of texts and recently published lectures, this article lays out Montessori’s philosophy of experimental psychology and briefly discusses its relevance today. (shrink)

These remarks focus on Kraus’s claim that for Kant the category of substance cannot apply to the soul but that instead we can and should apply a merely regulative idea of the soul. While granting Kraus’s contention that we require an idea of the soul in order to investigate inner experience, I argue that the category of substance nonetheless applies to the soul, but that the notion of the soul as entirely non-corporeal is a regulative idea. To explore this contention, (...) I closely examine two crucial passages Kraus uses to argue against parity between inner and outer sense. (shrink)

For Kant, cosmopolitan ethical community is a necessary response to humans’ radical evil. To be cosmopolitan, this community must not depend on particular historical religions. But Kant’s defense of ethical community uses Christian concepts such as providence and divine mercy. This paper explores two ways—one more liberal and the other more religious—to relate the theological commitments underlying ethical cosmopolitanism with the non-dogmatic nature of Kantian religion.

Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform, by PapishLaura. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xvii + 257.

The Naked Self is a great book. It is good Kierkegaard scholarship and an excellent model of bringing history of philosophy to bear on contemporary metaphysics. After a stage-setting introduction, the book has eight main chapters and a conclusion including questions and answers from an imagined interlocutor. Stokes takes the reader from how “Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of self-experience may… be a useful resource for neo-Lockean metaphysics” to a sustained defense that “Kierkegaard himself is playing a different, and altogether more interesting, game”.Stokes’s (...) boldness is evident in his title, which remains mysterious until late in the book. Stokes draws on two key passages... (shrink)

Frederick Beiser continues to unfold the German philosophical tradition, refusing to let a static and narrowly construed canon of "big names" obscure important philosophical debates in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. Weltschmerz focuses on the pessimism controversy, the debate over "the thesis that life is not worth living, that nothingness is better than being, or that it is worse to be than not be".The most important philosopher in the book is Arthur Schopenhauer. Chapters 1–4 are devoted to Schopenhauer's legacy, metaphysics, pessimism, (...) and "the illusion of redemption." Chapter 1 lays out important information about Schopenhauer's central role in German philosophy in the latter half of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 292-294 [Access article in PDF] Secada, Jorge. Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 333. Cloth, $59.95. Descartes scholars can welcome this book. Secada supports trends in scholarship that criticize seeing Descartes as merely an anti-skeptical foundationalist, and he challenges many prominent interpretations of Descartes's metaphysics. In addition, Secada helpfully references (...) Scholastic sources to provide context for Descartes's views. This book is also valuable for philosophers in contemporary metaphysics and epistemology. Secada uses the tools and idiom of analytic philosophy to explain and defend Descartes, and he is sympathetic to Descartes's project, even if he grants that aspects of it "are difficult to articulate clearly and convincingly" (174).The book's central theme is the contrast between Descartes's "essentialism" and the "existentialism" of Scholastics. Secada explains the distinction as follows: "Essentialism (existentialism) is the doctrine, first, that one cannot know the existence (essence) of any substance without first knowing its essence (existence), and, secondly, that one can know the essence (existence) of some substance without knowing its existence (essence)" (8). Cartesian Metaphysics interprets Descartes's corpus as a defense of essentialism in the light of Scholastic existentialism.The first three chapters set the stage. Chapter One distinguishes essentialism from existentialism. Chapter Two provides historical background necessary to understand the role of Scholasticism in Descartes's thought. Chapter Three discusses the role of Christian Platonism in both Descartes and the Scholastics, especially their shared Augustinian presupposition that knowledge of essences is of "how things are in themselves" (56).The next three chapters discuss the metaphysical status of ideas. In Chapter Four, Secada contrasts Descartes's "immanent" theory according to which "the immediate objects of ideas must exist in the mind" (85) with the "realist Scholastic" theory that "takes mental acts to be immediately directed towards things" (83). In Chapter Five, this account is applied to an interpretation of the Second Meditation as a defense of intellectualist essentialism against Scholastics and empiricists. "Contrary to the Scholastics and other empiricists, Descartes attributed to the intellect and not to the senses the power to reach the world of substances existing outside of the inner theatre of the mind" (116). Through comparing Descartes with Suarez and Gassendi, Secada argues that all the proofs of existence in the Meditations, including for the cogito, argue from [End Page 292] knowledge of essence to knowledge of existence. Chapter Six turns to Descartes's proofs for the existence of God. According to Secada, even for a posteriori proofs, knowledge of God's existence depends on knowledge of his essence.The last three chapters examine Descartes's theory of substance. Chapter Seven reconstructs Descartes's distinction between substances and properties. A substance is something that "exists without inhering" and "exists uncaused" (185). Secada discusses the nature of substance, how substances other than God can be "uncaused," and the plausibility of Descartes's sharp distinction between substances and properties. The chapter ends by arguing that Descartes's doctrine about the relationship between substances and properties inadvertently "heralds Spinoza's pantheism" (185). Chapter Eight examines real and essential properties in Cartesian metaphysics in contrast to Suarez and Fonseca, and ends with a partial defense of Descartes's ontological argument. Chapter Nine offers a detailed discussion of two fundamental substances in Descartes's metaphysics: body and mind. Secada argues that Descartes offers no satisfactory explanations of body, mind, or the relationship between the two.As is clear from this brief summary, Cartesian Metaphysics is a rich book. It presents important historical details without endless irrelevant details (see especially the sketch of Descartes's Scholastic background on 27-33). The exegetical arguments make strong cases for new interpretations of Descartes. Secada effectively shows that Descartes is more concerned with metaphysics than with refuting skepticism. Comparisons with Suarez and Fonseca shed new light on Cartesian arguments. Reconstructions of Cartesian arguments even tempt one to take Descartes seriously in contemporary metaphysics. And the criticisms of Descartes are thought-provoking.Unfortunately, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in MeditationsPatrick FriersonDaniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen. Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations. New York: Routledge, 1999. Pp. 332. Cloth, $90.00.The book has two parts. The first (Chapters 1-3 and an appendix) outlines Descartes's method of analysis, a method for discovering laws and clarifying ideas. The second (Chapters 4-10) offers a running commentary of (...) the Meditations that can be read on its own and is valuable not only for specialists as a challenging comprehensive account but also for anyone looking for a concise and coherent secondary source.The method is taken from the Discourse and illustrated using the Optics. According to the authors, analysis in the search for laws "is a type of argument to the best explanation" (23) that involves "two different issues, discovery and confirmation" (21). In discovery, one isolates a phenomenon and posits one or more explanations (or causes) for it. In confirmation, one tests this explanation for "material truth" (whether it is recognized as true by the natural light). Then one shows how the phenomenon is "caused" by the explanation, and that it is the best explanation, and that it can be included in a systematic science.The discussion of analysis in the clarification of ideas argues against " 'the epistemic thesis,' that is, the thesis that all innate ideas are (materially) true and known to be true as soon as they are considered"(45). Most of the arguments here address the claim that innate ideas are known to betrue. These arguments are followed by an account of how analysis clarifies ideas through successive refinement, and an illustration of this method from Descartes's clarification of the idea of light in the Optics. The final chapter of the section on method defends the claim that Descartes uses "cause" to refer to formal rather than efficient causation.The authors then turn to the Meditations, offering a virtually line by line treatment of major themes, with attention to showing how the method outlined in part one structures the arguments of the Meditations. Meditations 1-3 "ascend" through discovery and preliminary confirmation, ending with a perfect, non-deceiving God as the best explanation of our idea of God. The final meditations "descend" from that best explanation to its implications. This descent confirms the explanation by showing its place in a system.The second part of the book also includes explanations of the part that conceptual clarifications play in the Meditations. Flage and Bonnen discuss the cogito argument, the account of the wax, the arguments for the existence of God, and the distinction of mind and body, all as examples of conceptual clarification through the method of analysis. In the case of God, for instance, Descartes begins with Hobbes's crude conception of God and clarifies it into the simple, clear, and distinct notion of a "most perfect being."The last chapter addresses the circle ascribed to Descartes by Arnauld: that the argument for the existence of God depends on the truth of clear and distinct ideas, which is only established on the basis of the existence of God. The authors argue that this is not a true circle, since Descartes assumes the material truth of clear and distinct ideas (which is indubitable) in his early argument and draws on their formal truth (in the mind of God) only after he proves the existence of God. They suggest their own circle, however: in his response to other concerns of Arnauld, Descartes suggests that God [End Page 436] stops a causal regress and thus commits himself to the formal truth of the idea of God, which he cannot independently justify.As one would expect in a book that offers a concise and unified interpretation of the Meditations, readers will find unnecessary asides and wish for attention to issues that are passed over. Moreover, though the authors support some views with extensive quotations, they leave others without textual support. The most unfortunate example is the identification of formal truth with actuality. The authors have several accounts of the distinction between formal and material truth and end their book with... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.1 (2000) 125-126 [Access article in PDF] Margaret Dauler Wilson. Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xx + 524. Cloth, $70.00. Ideas and Mechanism is a record of remarkable scholarship. It collects thirty-one essays by one of the most influential scholars in early modern philosophy. (Wilson herself did most of the editing, though Anne Jaap (...) Jacobson brought the book to completion after Wilson's death.) All but one of essays have been published previously. (The one new essay is "The Issue of 'Common Sensibles' in Berkeley's New Theory of Vision." There is also an essay on "True and Immutable Natures" previously published only in Portuguese.) Many are classics, united here with essays less well known. The collection begins with "Skepticism without Indubitability," an application of Wilson's scholarly might to Rorty's criticisms of the early modern legacy of foundationalism. Chapters 2-8 focus on Descartes. Several of these emphasize Descartes's accounts of sensation and representation. Chapters 9-12 discuss Spinoza. Then follows Wilson's influential essay on "Superadded Properties" and her related response to M. R. Ayers. Chapter 15-21 comprise an extended defense of Berkeley. The book ends with a long essay on the role of history of philosophy and a brief essay on animal ideas.In her essays, Wilson does not limit herself to one side of the classic divide between empiricists and rationalists. She succeeds in this ambitious endeavor by focusing on a problem common to both: the relation between mechanistic science and early modern views of ideas. Wilson is concerned with how philosophers' scientific views bear on their metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. This involves, in many cases, showing how philosophical positions take on new meaning as one considers the science underlying them. For example, Descartes's repeated claims that primary qualities "resemble" qualities in bodies are not taken to imply that any particular extension one sees is in a body. Extension in general, on which mechanistic explanations are based, is in bodies; color (and even perceived extension) is reducible by scientific explanation. The emphasis on the role of science also furnishes a platform for attention to neglected works. Wilson is exemplary in drawing from a wide range of texts to elucidate familiar points. In essays on Descartes and Berkeley, Wilson shows how their works on vision in particular enrich discussions of their epistemology. (One unfortunate limitation to Wilson's emphasis on mechanistic science is a neglect of political and theological works. Thus, she neglects to investigate the implications of, say, Spinoza's work in politics on his metaphysical views about man.)Of particular note is Wilson's defense of Berkeley. Wilson does not draw lines in terms of empiricists (Locke and Berkeley) and rationalists (Leibniz). Instead, she argues that Berkeley's defense of the common sense view that "physical things are as they are perceived" provides an alternative to the scientific realisms of Locke, Leibniz, and Kant. Defenders of Locke, for example, have claimed that Berkeley was insufficiently attentive to the role of mechanistic science in Locke's justifications of the primary-secondary distinction. Wilson shows how Berkeley took these Lockean arguments into account and why he objects to them. Rather than being a cure-all that saves Locke from Berkeley, the role of mechanistic science in his philosophy implicates Locke in the scientific realism against which Berkeley consistently defends common sense. [End Page 125]Not all of the essays directly relate to ideas and mechanism. Several deal with the closely related issue of mind-body interaction. One essay explains the epistemological argument for mind-body dualism in Descartes and another attacks Spinoza's account of mind and body. Wilson also writes on more general themes in Leibniz, such as necessity and contingency, causality, and confused and distinct ideas. She spends two chapters on the relationship between animals and humans. In one, she challenges appropriations of Spinoza that find in him the appealing view that there is no "radical ontological chasm" between humans and... (shrink)