A critical note on Paul Guyer’s A Philosopher Looks at Architecture (2021). In his book, Paul Guyer proposes that the Vitruvian triad of venustas, utilitas, and firmitas represents central goals and normative values of architecture – ideals that architects should realize and success criteria regarding their realization – that persist through time, place, cultural settings, and other contextual parameters. Indeed, the triad presents sufficiently abstract goals that many disparate views in architectural theory may be subsumed under the triad (...) as distinctive ways of explaining how architecture may be beautiful, functional, or structurally sound. These are significant thematic values by which we experience and judge architecture (as are also useful in gauging other human pursuits), and which architects draw on in their creative acts. There is much to recommend this broad picture of the triad as architectural ideals. That said, I suggest two difficulties for Guyer’s claim as to the centrality of these values, relative to architectural success regardless of Vitruvian goal-satisfaction; and to non-persistence across architectural cultures. (shrink)

On the surface Kant himself seems quite clear about who is deserving of respect: The morally relevant others are all “rational, free beings” or all “human beings.” It is clear, however, that Kant does not want to identify “human beings” in this sense with members of a particular biological species, for he is explicitly open to the idea that there might be non-biologically human rational beings. Thus, for example he is explicitly open to the possibility of extraterrestrial rational beings, who (...) would not be members of the same biological species as us, but who would, presumably be worthy of respect. And it would seem possible that there are members of our biological species who are not “human” in the morally relevant sense. Given these facts, a Kantian needs to give some account of how we are to recognize who or what counts as “human” in the morally relevant sense. I argue that to be “human” in the morally relevant sense is to have the capacity for morality, and that this involves: (a) the capacity to recognize others as ends rather than merely as means and (b) the capacity to enter into relations of ethical community with us. I defend a position I name moral reliabilism. According to this position: (a) We have a quasi-perceptual capacity to directly ascribe moral status to various bits of the world around us. I will argue that this capacity is best thought of in Gibsonian terms as a capacity to pick up on certain types of social affordances; morally relevant others have the capacity to engage in ethical interaction with us, and recognizing the humanity of others involves picking up on this capacity. Those beings who are “human” in the morally relevant sense, then, afford interaction based on mutual respect. (b) We should assume as a postulate of practical reason that this capacity is reliable (although fallible). (shrink)

Guyer argues for four major theses. First, in his early, pre-critical discussions of morality, Kant advocated a version of rational egoism, in which freedom, understood naturalistically as a freedom from domination by both one's own inclinations and from other people, rather than happiness, is the fundamental value. From this point of view, the function of the moral law is to prescribe rules best suited to the preservation and maximization of such freedom, just as on the traditional eudaemonistic account it (...) is to prescribe rules for the maximization of happiness. Second, in the Groundwork, Kant abandoned this naturalistic approach and while retaining the same substantive thesis as his early moral philosophy, "namely that freedom is the value that is realized by adherence to the moral law" (Guyer 455), attempted to provide a non-naturalistic (transcendental) grounding for this valuation of freedom. Third, this took the form of a transcendental deduction, closely modeled on that of the first Critique, which was intended to demonstrate that we are in fact (noumenally) free and the moral law is the "causal law" of this freedom. Fourth, this deduction is a disaster, indeed, one of Western philosophy's "most spectacular train wrecks" (Guyer 445). I shall discuss each in turn, devoting the bulk of my attention to the last. (shrink)

of Paul Guyer, (from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews).

Before and in the Groundwork , Kant argues as follows for the validity of the moral law: we want to be free. Following the moral law is the only way to be free. So we should follow the moral law.1 The first premise of this syllogism is treated differently before and in the Groundwork . First Kant thought it an empirical fact that men want to be free and want it more than anything else.2 Later he sought an a priori (...) argument showing that we ought to want to be free and are right in thinking it good.3 The former justification of the moral law is superior. When we look to “salvage the normative core of Kantian moral philosophy” (Guyer 445), we should turn to it. - So far Paul Guyer. It is evident that Guyer fails to describe Kant's thought in the Groundwork . It is equally clear that Kant never held the position Guyer claims he held before the Groundwork . (The quotations Guyer gives in support of his claim show this.) Therefore I shall not discuss Guyer's interpretation of Kant. Instead I shall consider the philosophical merits of the position he ascribes to the pre-critical Kant, and which he recommends as superior. We shall see that that position makes no sense. This indirectly addresses the interpretive question, as it is a reason against ascribing it to Kant. (shrink)

Before and in the Groundwork, Kant argues as follows for the validity of the moral law: we want to be free. Following the moral law is the only way to be free. So we should follow the moral law.1The first premise of this syllogism is treated differently before and in the Groundwork. First Kant thought it an empirical fact that men want to be free and want it more than anything else.2 Later he sought an a priori argument showing that (...) we ought to want to be free and are right in thinking it good.3 The former justification of the moral law is superior. When we look to “salvage the normative core of Kantian moral philosophy” , we should turn to it. – So far Paul Guyer.It is evident that Guyer fails to describe Kant's thought in the Groundwork. It is equally clear that Kant never held the position Guyer claims he held before the Groundwork. Therefore I shall not discuss Guyer's interpretation of Kant. Instead I shall consider the philosophical merits of the position he ascribes to the pre‐critical Kant, and which he recommends as superior. We shall see that that position makes no sense. This indirectly addresses the interpretive question, as it is a reason against ascribing it to Kant. (shrink)

Paul Guyer's paper "Naturalistic and Transcendental Moments in Kant's Moral Philosophy" raises a set of issues about how Kantian ethics should be understood in relation to present day "philosophical naturalism" that are very much in need of discussion. The paper itself is challenging, even in some respects iconoclastic, and provides a highly welcome provocation to raise in new ways some basic questions about what Kantian ethics is and what it ought to be. Guyer offers us an admirably informed (...) and complex argument, both historical and philosophical, that tangles with some of the most difficult problems in Kant's moral philosophy. It begins with some ambitious and controversial claims about Kant's moral philosophy prior to the Groundwork of 1785. It then offers an interpretation, and also a fundamental criticism, of the Groundwork's attempt to establish the moral law based on the idea of freedom of the will. And finally, it raises - and expresses some opinions on - the large and vexed questions of the relationship between transcendental philosophy and philosophical naturalism, and whether Kantian ethics can be made consistent with a naturalistic philosophical outlook. In these comments I will have something to say on each of these three topics, without pretending (any more than Guyer does) to have exhausted what might be said about them. (shrink)

Revitalizing the “patchwork theory” of Hans Vaihinger and Norman Kemp Smith, yet repudiating their assumption that a chronological order of composition can be discerned in the disjointed lines of argumentation in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Paul Guyer’s Kant and the Claims to Knowledge presents a formidable though questionable analysis of the Critique showing Kant’s sustained ambivalence between ontological realism and transcendental idealism that begins in his early writings and continues through the revision of the Critique and in his (...) later unpublished manuscripts. (shrink)

Book Reviews Graham Bird, Kantian Review, FirstView Article.

I want to acknowledge Paul Guyer’s accomplishment in his essay “Examples of Perfectionism,” which opens this volume, impressive in its scope and detail and at the same time pioneering in its treatment of Stanley Cavell. Among other useful features of his account, Guyer takes notice of the fact that the writing of Cities of Words, a principal text of Cavell’s perfectionism, began as lectures. This reminds us that the exchanges between reader and writer begin as exchanges between living (...) persons. At least in the hands of certain writers, these exchanges remain representative of precisely such other exchanges. Without the possibility of such exchanges, nothing like a perfectionist education, and, indeed, nothing like.. (shrink)